A YOUNG LADY’S OPINION OF MODERN YOUNC MEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 33, 16 August 1890, Page 7

A YOUNG LADY’S OPINION OF MODERN YOUNC MEN.

She was a pretty girl, even if her brows were knit in perplexity, and the dimples hidden by the serious look on her young face. But she was thinking on a very interesting subject, and presently she broke out with the remark—' I wonder where all the nice men are ? I never see any, at least under 50. By nice I mean men with courtly manners, men thatseem to think it worth while to be polite. I like the phrase, old school gentlemen, and I like the men that it represents. Why in the world should it be old school? Why isn’t it the present school just as well? I know what I am going to say seems very harsh and sweeping, but the saddest part of it is that it is true. Every young man I know is either a cad or a fool. He either wants to talk football and cricket matches, or else he is principally concerned about his clothes, and is troubled for fear he won’t have the latest thing in collars or the newest patterns in trousers. I think they have brains and intelligence hidden about somewhere—they couldn’t get through college as they do, and take positions in professions if they hadn’t—but they don’t seem to think that it is worth while to let the girls kiiow of their possessions in this direction. And yet they want us to be bright and nice and polite in all ways; ready to respond with a smile when they throw their handkerchiefs at us. ‘ And every girl that I know thinks just as I do. Of course, we don’t show them what we think, but we go on smiling and seeming interested in their conversation, because we don’t want to be unpolite. But if they knew how we girls measured them sometimes by the older men we know, and how they suffered by the comparison, they wouldn’t feel flattered at all. Now, I don’t know among all my acquaintances anybody so nice as my father. He is always polite, and he is as courteous to his daughters as he is to any one whom he meets in society. I don’t see young men with the grace of manner that my father has. I don’t know one of them all that I would marry. It is fashionable to be blase and indifferent and rude, and so all the young men will be in the fashion. They are not helpful and poncerned for your comfort. Not that one wants a man bothering her all the time to see if she doesn’t want this, and if he can’t give her that ; that's stupid and fussy. But there is a way of taking care of anybody without any fuss, a real honest anticipation of one’s wants, all so quietly done that you don’t know it’s being done. Just the way my father does things. I can’t describe it, but it’s nice, just as all indescribably good things are, and you know it when you have once been treated in such considerate fashion; so I don’t like the men of

to-day, and T shan’t until they better their manners, as my old nurse used to say.’ The young woman was quite unconscious that her criticism was being overheard by one who would repeat it ; perhaps she might have been more careful otherwise, but she meant what she said.