“Fish that love the mud, Rising to no fancy flies.”
But man does not naturally revel in obscenity; the modesty of nature will stick to him for years. But the Judge and Jury Clubs make you familiar with the manners of the stews; and I solemnly believe that in Sodom and Gomorrah nothing more filthy could have been talked about, and that this side Pandemonium there is nothing more debasing or debased. If you wish to see your son thoroughly depraved, send him to a Judge and Jury Club. In a little while he will come back to you with every noble principle blotted out, with a mind stored with pollution, and with a fitting phraseology, ready to run a mad career of debauchery and vice. Some fifteen years back the writer was at college, and one of his fellow-students was a fine young fellow, the heir to a decent fortune, and said to be connected with a noble family. The last time I was at the Judge and Jury he was employed as one of the mock counsel; but he became too intemperate even for that, and enlisted, and miserably died. They have tragic ends, many of these frequenters of Judge and Jury Clubs, and it is sad to think that, when the merriment is the loudest, and the drink is most stimulating, and the fellowship most jovial, there is burlesque even then.
Reader, do you know the Cave of Harmony? If you do not, so much the better. If you are one of its _habitués_, I fear no words of mine can make you forsake it. It is said the Cave is altered since we were there—so much the better; Thackeray, I think, had something to do with that reform—and that now nothing objectionable is sung. Still, I doubt whether drinking and harmony after 12 P.M. can do much good. You and I, it may be, are old men,
“Ruin’d trunks on wither’d forks, Empty scarecrows you and I.”
We have run through youth with money in our pockets and time on our hands, and have seen all that life can offer, and know, what so many do not, that pleasure’s cup but sparkles near the brim. What we have done and been has been wine working on the fiery impulses of young blood, but now, sir, with our hair turning grey and our eyes growing dim, shall we not lift up a warning voice, and ask youth to pause ere it take the final plunge which for years, it may be for ever, shall estrange it from innocence, and peace, and God.