at last our enfeebled palates have even lost the capacity for enjoying a "jolly good row."
There can be no more melancholy sight in the world than that of your young man or young woman suffering from suppressed pugnacity. Up to the end of the school years it was well with them; they had ample scope for this wholesome commerce, the neat give and take of offence. In the family circle, too, there are still plentiful chances of acquiring the taste. Then, suddenly, they must be gentle and considerate and all the rest of it. A wholesome shindy, so soon as toga and long skirts arrive, is looked upon as positively wrong; even the dear old institution of the "cut" is falling into disrepute. The quarrelling is all forced back into the system, as it were; it poisons the blood. This is why our literature grows sinister and bitter, and our daughters yearn after this and that, write odd books, and ride about on bicycles in remarkable clothes. They have shut down the safety valve, they suffer from the present lamentable increase of gentleness. They must find some outlet or perish. If they could only put their arms akimbo and give each other a piece of their minds for a little in the ancient way, there can be not the slightest doubt that much of this fin de siècle unwholesomeness would disappear.
Possibly this fashion of gentleness will pass. Yet it has had increasing sway now for some years. An unhealthy generation has arisen—at least among the more educated class—that quarrels little, regards the function, as the East-ender does a taste for fine art or literature, as a vice or a nuisance. We seem indeed
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