While the young man who was a clerk in a
cellar has come up to be the first clerk, and he who a few years ago
ran errands for the bank has got to be cashier, and thousands of other
young men of the city have gone up to higher and more responsible
positions, he has been going down, until there he passes through the
street with bloated lip, and bloodshot eye, and staggering step, and
hat mud-spattered and set sidewise on a shock of greasy hair, the
ashes of his cigar dashed upon his cravat. Here he goes! Look at him,
all ye pure-hearted young men, and see the work of the fashionable
club-room. I knew one such who, after the contaminations of his
club-house, leaped out of the third-story window to put an end to his
wretchedness.
Many who would not be seen drinking at the bar of a restaurant, think
there is no dishonor and no peril connected with sitting down at a
marble stand in an elegantly furnished parlor, to which they go with a
private key, and where none are present except gentlemen as elegant
as themselves.
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