Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow | Page 5

I am not the
only one who said it. I was a glittering dream. The groundwork was red,
trimmed with gold braid wherever there was room for gold braid; and
where there was no more possible room for gold braid there hung gold
cords, and tassels, and straps. Gold buttons and buckles fastened me,
gold embroidered belts and sashes caressed me, white horse-hair

plumes waved o'er me. I am not sure that everything was in its proper
place, but I managed to get everything on somehow, and I looked well.
It suited me. My success was a revelation to me of female human
nature. Girls who had hitherto been cold and distant gathered round me,
timidly solicitous of notice. Girls on whom I smiled lost their heads and
gave themselves airs. Girls who were not introduced to me sulked and
were rude to girls that had been. For one poor child, with whom I sat
out two dances (at least she sat, while I stood gracefully beside her--I
had been advised, by the costumier, NOT to sit), I was sorry. He was a
worthy young fellow, the son of a cotton broker, and he would have
made her a good husband, I feel sure. But he was foolish to come as a
beer-bottle.
Perhaps, after all, it is as well those old fashions have gone out. A week
in that suit might have impaired my natural modesty.
One wonders that fancy dress balls are not more popular in this grey
age of ours. The childish instinct to "dress up," to "make believe," is
with us all. We grow so tired of being always ourselves. A tea-table
discussion, at which I once assisted, fell into this:- Would any one of us,
when it came to the point, change with anybody else, the poor man
with the millionaire, the governess with the princess--change not only
outward circumstances and surroundings, but health and temperament,
heart, brain, and soul; so that not one mental or physical particle of
one's original self one would retain, save only memory? The general
opinion was that we would not, but one lady maintained the
affirmative.
"Oh no, you wouldn't really, dear," argued a friend; "you THINK you
would."
"Yes, I would," persisted the first lady; "I am tired of myself. I'd even
be you, for a change."
In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was--What sort of
man shall I decide to be? At nineteen one asks oneself this question; at
thirty-nine we say, "I wish Fate hadn't made me this sort of man."

In those days I was a reader of much well-meant advice to young men,
and I gathered that, whether I should become a Sir Lancelot, a Herr
Teufelsdrockh, or an Iago was a matter for my own individual choice.
Whether I should go through life gaily or gravely was a question the
pros and cons of which I carefully considered. For patterns I turned to
books. Byron was then still popular, and many of us made up our
minds to be gloomy, saturnine young men, weary with the world, and
prone to soliloquy. I determined to join them.
For a month I rarely smiled, or, when I did, it was with a weary, bitter
smile, concealing a broken heart--at least that was the intention.
Shallow-minded observers misunderstood.
"I know exactly how it feels," they would say, looking at me
sympathetically, "I often have it myself. It's the sudden change in the
weather, I think;" and they would press neat brandy upon me, and
suggest ginger.
Again, it is distressing to the young man, busy burying his secret
sorrow under a mound of silence, to be slapped on the back by
commonplace people and asked--"Well, how's 'the hump' this
morning?" and to hear his mood of dignified melancholy referred to, by
those who should know better, as "the sulks."
There are practical difficulties also in the way of him who would play
the Byronic young gentleman. He must be supernaturally wicked--or
rather must have been; only, alas! in the unliterary grammar of life,
where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the
indefinite, but from the present indicative, "to have been" is "to be";
and to be wicked on a small income is impossible. The ruin of even the
simplest of maidens costs money. In the Courts of Love one cannot sue
in forma pauperis; nor would it be the Byronic method.
"To drown remembrance in the cup" sounds well, but then the "cup," to
be fitting, should be of some expensive brand. To drink deep of old
Tokay or Asti is poetical; but when one's purse necessitates that the
draught, if it is to be deep enough to drown anything, should be of thin
beer at five-and-nine the four