Sketches of Young Gentlemen | Page 7

same part on a larger scale with increased eclat. Mr.
Mincin is invited to an evening party with his dear friends the Martins,
where he meets his dear friends the Cappers, and his dear friends the
Watsons, and a hundred other dear friends too numerous to mention.
He is as much at home with the Martins as with the Cappers; but how
exquisitely he balances his attentions, and divides them among his dear
friends! If he flirts with one of the Miss Watsons, he has one little
Martin on the sofa pulling his hair, and the other little Martin on the
carpet riding on his foot. He carries Mrs. Watson down to supper on
one arm, and Miss Martin on the other, and takes wine so judiciously,
and in such exact order, that it is impossible for the most punctilious
old lady to consider herself neglected. If any young lady, being
prevailed upon to sing, become nervous afterwards, Mr. Mincin leads
her tenderly into the next room, and restores her with port wine, which
she must take medicinally. If any gentleman be standing by the piano

during the progress of the ballad, Mr. Mincin seizes him by the arm at
one point of the melody, and softly beating time the while with his head,
expresses in dumb show his intense perception of the delicacy of the
passage. If anybody's self-love is to be flattered, Mr. Mincin is at hand.
If anybody's overweening vanity is to be pampered, Mr. Mincin will
surfeit it. What wonder that people of all stations and ages recognise
Mr. Mincin's friendliness; that he is universally allowed to be
handsome as amiable; that mothers think him an oracle, daughters a
dear, brothers a beau, and fathers a wonder! And who would not have
the reputation of the very friendly young gentleman?

THE MILITARY YOUNG GENTLEMAN

We are rather at a loss to imagine how it has come to pass that military
young gentlemen have obtained so much favour in the eyes of the
young ladies of this kingdom. We cannot think so lightly of them as to
suppose that the mere circumstance of a man's wearing a red coat
ensures him a ready passport to their regard; and even if this were the
case, it would be no satisfactory explanation of the circumstance,
because, although the analogy may in some degree hold good in the
case of mail coachmen and guards, still general postmen wear red coats,
and THEY are not to our knowledge better received than other men;
nor are firemen either, who wear (or used to wear) not only red coats,
but very resplendent and massive badges besides-much larger than
epaulettes. Neither do the twopenny post- office boys, if the result of
our inquiries be correct, find any peculiar favour in woman's eyes,
although they wear very bright red jackets, and have the additional
advantage of constantly appearing in public on horseback, which last
circumstance may be naturally supposed to be greatly in their favour.
We have sometimes thought that this phenomenon may take its rise in
the conventional behaviour of captains and colonels and other
gentlemen in red coats on the stage, where they are invariably
represented as fine swaggering fellows, talking of nothing but charming
girls, their king and country, their honour, and their debts, and crowing
over the inferior classes of the community, whom they occasionally
treat with a little gentlemanly swindling, no less to the improvement
and pleasure of the audience, than to the satisfaction and approval of

the choice spirits who consort with them. But we will not devote these
pages to our speculations upon the subject, inasmuch as our business at
the present moment is not so much with the young ladies who are
bewitched by her Majesty's livery as with the young gentlemen whose
heads are turned by it. For 'heads' we had written 'brains;' but upon
consideration, we think the former the more appropriate word of the
two.
These young gentlemen may be divided into two classes-young
gentlemen who are actually in the army, and young gentlemen who,
having an intense and enthusiastic admiration for all things
appertaining to a military life, are compelled by adverse fortune or
adverse relations to wear out their existence in some ignoble
counting-house. We will take this latter description of military young
gentlemen first.
The whole heart and soul of the military young gentleman are
concentrated in his favourite topic. There is nothing that he is so
learned upon as uniforms; he will tell you, without faltering for an
instant, what the habiliments of any one regiment are turned up with,
what regiment wear stripes down the outside and inside of the leg, and
how many buttons the Tenth had on their coats; he knows to a fraction
how many yards