PROFESSIONAL MASHERS.

Observer, Volume 9, Issue 532, 2 March 1889, Page 3

PROFESSIONAL MASHERS.

There is a class of men in this city who are about as contemptible as men can well be. Some of them move in ! h upper suckle' Auckland society, and 'go ouj' a good deal. They delight to be considered 'mashers,' and count girls by the dozen amongst their circle of acquaintance. Go down Queen-street any line afternoon between four and five o'clock, say, and you may see men of this sort ' doiny the block ' and jerking off their hats every half-minute or so as they saunter along. Your professional masher is, generally speaking, a precious poor speei.men of humanity. He fancies himself irresistible, and lays the flattering unction to his soul that every girl he meets is captivated by his charms, and ready to throw herdelf at his head.

If he stopped there, no great harm would be done. Girls of education and refinement are for the most part tolerably good judges of character, and appreciate the professional masher at his true worth, not at his own valuation. They know he is an empty-headed, conceited fop ; and and although his inanities, his solicitude about the cut of his coat, the style of his collar, the set of his tie and the size of his cane may amuse them, they keep him at a safe distance.

What, unfortunately, many of these girls in their ignorance of the ways of the world do not know, is that the professional masher is prone to exercise the small mind with which nature has endowed him by spreading scandalous reports abroad about them. These reports the masher concocts and circulates mainly to gratify his own inordinate vanity. He loves to gather a knot of his ins le friends about him in th .illiard or smoking-room, and relate how Miss ." and-So is 'hopelessly mashed upon him.' .chen tell them, as he sips his B. and _,ipuffs> at his cigar, that the lady in question is a dooced fine girl and all that, doncherknow, but that she is not his style. He confesses that he is sorry for her. The case is so hopeless. He really likes the little girl well enough, but she is not the sort of girl he would care to mawwy. This is said so significantly that he is of course asked 'Why? I—and,1 — and, as likely as not, just by way of keeping up the excitement, he thereupon invents some yarn in which there is not one solitary word of truth, reflecting on the girl's moral character.

A woman's reputation is like a bit of thistledown—a puff, and it is gone. The story told in the smoking-room or the billiard-room spreads. Cuffs tells it to Gollahs, and Collahs in his turn relates it to McDude, who carries it to some other smoking or billiard-room— and the girl's

character is blackened. And all to gratify the vanity of a malicious, brainless noodle.

The foregoing remarks ara ajn'opos of a case of the kind indicated, which came to my knowledge last week. A young lady of good social position and the most irreproachable character had the misfortune to meet one of these professional mashers, who, doubtless on account of the girl's popularity and her being so well-known, selected her as the heroine of a little affair, in which hehimself, of course, played a leading part. The girl, fascinated by his attractions, fell captive to them, and what the deyvil was a fellow to do ? He couldn't help it if the deah creatures would fling themselves at him. Fortunately for the young lady, and most unfortunately for the masher in this instance, one of his auditors happened to know the girl, and his knowledge of her convinced him that the masher was lying. He therefore promptly administered to that worthy one of the soundest thrashings he ever received in the course of his life.

But the masher, although for the time discomfited, could not long remain silent. He deliberately took away the girl's character in the first place, simply in order to let his friends see what a devil of a fellow he was amongst the petticoats. But in repeating the story he was actuated by another object — revenge for the thrashing. A. male relative of the young lady, on hearing thestory, traced it to the masher, and gave him another thrashing. But he would appear to be incorrigible, for he has been at the same gameagain, this time essaying to injure the character of another girl.

Men of this stamp should be tarred and feathered, and ridden on a rail, in the American fashion, or if that is impracticable, they should be horsewhipped by some friend of the injured party, in what the police call ' a public place ' — to wit, a leading thoroughfare. # * * It may be asked : Why should ladies of education and refinement associate with men capable of acting as the professional masher above referred to acted? The answer is simple. Colonial society is at the best, very mixed. Men holding fairly decent positions, bank and insurance clerks, and that class, and men filling billets in Government offices are, if they care about it, sure to be asked out a good deal. No gentleman would take away a girl's character without the shadow of an excuse, or the smallest justification — but then, you see, all bank and insurance clerks are not gentlemen, anymore than are all holders of Government billets, and it is precisely these men that furnish the largest number of our professional mashers.