The impassivity of the modern young man is indeed a weird and wonderful
thing. Is it a mark to hide from us the appalling sins he none the less
openly affects? Is it meant to conceal that once in his life he paid a
wild visit to 'The Empire'--by kind indulgence of the County Council?
that he once chucked a barmaid under the chin, that he once nearly got
drunk, that he once spoke to a young lady he did not know--and then ran
away?

One sighs for the young men of the days of Gautier and Hugo, the young
men with red waistcoats who made asses of themselves at first nights and
on the barricades, young men with romance in their hearts and passion in
their blood, fearlessly sentimental and picturesquely everything.

The lover then was not ashamed that you should catch radiant glimpses of
his love in his eyes--nay! if you smiled kindly on him, he would take
you by the arm and insist on your breaking a bottle with him in honour
of his mistress. Joy and sorrow then wore their appropriate colours,
according, so to say, to the natural sumptuary laws of the emotions--one
of which is that the right place for the heart is the sleeve.

It is the duty of those who are great, or to whom great destinies of joy
or sorrow have been dealt, to wear their distinctions for the world to
see. It is good for the world, which in its crude way indicates the
rudiments of this dramatic art of life, when it decrees that the bride
shall walk radiant in orange blossom, and the mourner sadden our streets
with black--symbols ever passing before us of the moving vicissitudes of
life.

The mourner cannot always be sad, or the bride merry; the bride indeed