It requires a singular art, as well as the
vantage-ground of age, to deal these stunning corrections among the
coxcombs of the young. The pill is disguised in sugar of wit; it
is administered as a compliment - if you had not pleased, you would
not have been censured; it is a personal affair - a hyphen, A TRAIT
D'UNION, between you and your censor; age's philandering, for her
pleasure and your good. Incontestably the young man feels very
much of a fool; but he must be a perfect Malvolio, sick with self-
love, if he cannot take an open buffet and still smile. The
correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have
transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. If
a man were made of gutta-percha, his heart would quail at such a
moment. But when the word is out, the worst is over; and a fellow
with any good-humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of
witty criticism, every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with
a shrewd missile, and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a
fine moral reaction, and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-
third loath, for a repetition of the discipline.
There are few women, not well sunned and ripened, and perhaps
toughened, who can thus stand apart from a man and say the true
thing with a kind of genial cruelty. Still there are some - and I
doubt if there be any man who can return the compliment.
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