Page:Tom Brown's School Days.djvu/58

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40
The Old Boy's Advice to young Swells.

wrestling and racing; something to try the muscles of men's bodies, and the endurance of their hearts, nnd to make them rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans which I see, this is all left out: and the consequence is, that your great Mechanics' Institutes end in intellectual priggism, and your Christian Young Men's Societies in religious Pharisaism.

Well, well, we must bide our time. Life isn't all beer and skittles,—but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman's education. If I could only drive this into the heads of you rising Parliamentary Lords, and young swells who "have your ways made for you," as the saying is,—you, who frequent palaver houses and West-end Clubs, waiting always ready to strap yourselves on to the back of poor dear old John, as soon as the present used-up lot (your fathers and uncles), who sit there on the great Parliamentary-majorities' pack-saddle, and make belief they're guiding him with their red-tape bridle, tumble, or have to be lifted off!

I don't think much of you yet—I wish I could; though you do go talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the working classes. But, bless your hearts, we "ain't so green," though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you think so. I'll tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss, which is only the old Parliamentary-majority dodge over again—just you go,