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As it is the custom in fashionable
society in New York to prevent the
increase of families, it is natural
no doubt to try to destroy childhood
in those who are permitted to see
the light.
The fashionable child of New York is
made a miniature man or woman at the
earliest possible period of its
life. It does not need much labor,
however, to develop "Young America"
in the great metropolis. He is
generally ready to go out into the
world at a very tender age. Our
system of society offers him every
facility in his downward career.
When but a child he has his own
latch-key; he can come and go when
he pleases; he attends parties,
balls, dancing-school, the theatre
and other evening amusements as
regularly and independently as his
elders, and is rarely called upon by
"the Governor," as he patronizingly
terms his father, to give any
account of himself; he has an
abundance of pocket-money, and is
encouraged in the lavish expenditure
of it.
He cultivates all the vices of his
grown-up friends; and thinks church
going a punishment and religion a
bore. He engages in his dissipations
with a recklessness that makes old
sinners environs of his "nerve." His
friends are hardly such as he could
introduce into his home. He is a
famous "hunter of the tiger," and
laughs at his losses. He has a
mistress, or perhaps several; sneers
at marriage, and gives it as his
opinion that there is not a virtuous
woman in the land. When he is fairly
of age he has lost his freshness,
and is tired of life. His great
object now is to render his
existence supportable.
Girls are forced into womanhood by
fashion even more rapidly than boys
into manhood. They are dressed in
the most expensive manner from their
infancy, and without much regard to
their health. Bare arms and necks,
and short skirts are the rule, even
in the bleakest weather, for
children's parties, or for
dancing-school, and so the tender
frames of the little ones are
subjected to an exposure that often
sows the seeds of consumption and
other disease. The first thing the
child learns is that it is its duty
to be pretty, to look its best.
It is taught to value dress and show
as the great necessities of
existence, and is trained in the
most extravagant habits. As the girl
advances towards maidenhood, she is
forced forward, and made to look as
much like a woman as possible. Her
education is cared for after a
fashion, but amounts to very little.
She learns to play a little on some
musical instrument, to sing a
little, to paint a little, in short
she acquires but a smattering of
everything she undertakes. She is
left in ignorance of the real duties
of a woman's life, the higher and
nobler part of her existence. She
marries young, and one of her own
set, and her married life is in
keeping with her girlhood.
She is a creature in which nothing
has been fully developed but the
passions and the nerves. Her
physical constitution amounts to
nothing, and soon gives way. Her
beauty goes with her health, and she
is forced to resort to all manner of
devices to preserve her attractions.
It is a habit in New York to allow
children to give large
entertainments at fashionable
resorts, without the restraining
presence of their elders. Here
crowds of boys and girls of a
susceptible age assemble under the
intoxicating influence of music,
gas-light, full dress, late suppers,
wines and liquors. Sometimes this
juvenile dissipation has been
carried so far that it has been
sharply rebuked by the public press.
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