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But a young man may have higher aims; he may be somewhat literary in his tastes; may have studied rules of etiquette, and may select associations that are irreproachable. He permits his vanity, however, to grow into a chronic craving for admiration. He affects insensibility to attract attention; falls into the modern fashion of a supercilious apathy; looks unimpassioned under the most eventful circumstances, and twirls the points of his moustache with elegant nonchalance. Repudiating all domestic and common interests, he becomes valueless to humanity. The most beautiful emotions of man’s nature become frigid. His self-absorption grows into a conceit which relieves others from the duty of considering him. He never blesses, is never blessed. Ineffective in youth, unloved in manhood, he becomes testy and splenetic in old age, and dies at length unmissed and unmourned. And this is all he has made of a life that once bore so much of promise.

There is another, over whom my heart’s affections linger with a longing solicitude: I mean the clever and facetious young man. He has quick parts, can sing well, or give recitations; ever on the look-out for fun, he heaps up accumulating stores of witticisms and repartee; and can repeat in character, Mrs. Caudle, Mrs. Brown, or the newest offering of this literary school. No circle of his friends is complete without him; the evening party must be delayed if he is engaged; every body likes him—young men and ladies alike call him “such a good fellow.” And there is much that is good in him—his readiness and ability to make hours of recreation brighter are not to be despised; but his kind-heartedness and endowments fit him for something grander than to be a man who merely amuses society. He himself suffers loss; neglect of solid reading and of elevated thoughts lowers his own tone; the moral which he tacks on to the end of his recitation fails to clear the balance-sheet of his conscience in better hours; the very friends that he has charmed will seek another than him in the important moments of their life. He will find himself set aside ere long; his influence will die with the vivacity of youth; he has no acquirements that are cared for to carry into riper manhood; and then nothing is more revolting than the merely farcical and comic old man. This is all he has made of life; he has been the butterfly for sunny hours, and has gone out when sterner days came.