Page:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, a Book for an Idle Holiday - Jerome (1886).djvu/71

 school-girl! Hide your heads, ye young Romeos and Leanders, this blasé old beau loves with an hysterical fervour that requires four adjectives to every noun to properly describe.

It is well, dear ladies, for us old sinners, that you study only books. Did you read mankind, you would know that the lad's shy stammering tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence. A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach. Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with the rushing fountain that wells up, when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.

Or is it that you like better its bitter flavour; that the clear, limpid water is insipid to your palate, and that the pollution of its after-course gives it a relish to your lips? Must we believe those who tell us that a hand foul with the filth of a shameful life is the only one a young girl cares to be caressed by?

That is the teaching that is bawled out day by day from between those yellow covers. Do they ever pause to think, I wonder, those Devil's Lady-Helps, what mischief they are doing, crawling about God's garden, and telling childish Eves and silly Adams that sin is sweet, and that decency is ridiculous and