A Social Mistake | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 15, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 19.

A Social Mistake.

WHAT is my opinion of fast young men? It isn't as good as it might be, and still it is better than the subject merits. I sat at my window the other day, and I noticed four or five "bloods" standing in front of a saloon from which they had just emerged, wiping their lips. I knew they were all society men, and presently I saw a pretty young lady of their "set" coming down the street toward them. Now, thought I, if that girl had the proper nerve, she would pass those fellows by as she would any other set of loafers, whose character was as good as theirs, but whose social position by accident of birth was less elevated. I wagered with myself, however, that she would not do it, and I won the wager. She spoke to them as sweetly and womanly as if every man in the lot was as pure and good as she was. If they had been women, instead of men, and she had known them, how quickly she would have cut them from the list of acquaintances, and how haughtily she would have snubbed them! These fast young men frequent saloons, loaf about their front doors, spend an evening in a gambling den, associate with disreputable men, only removed from the criminal class by "influence," get drunk as often as they please, swear like a mad teamster, have more or less "lady friends" they dare not recognize in public places, and so on down a long list of fashionable eccentricities, and yet they have the gall to apply for places of trust in the confidence and respect of decent women and men, and the startling part of it is, they are accepted as fit associates for mothers, for daughters, for sons, for husbands, for fathers. They may say they are not bad at heart, but are merely "sowing their wild oats." Conceded; but, in the name of all that is good and respectable, why are they not excluded from homes until this so-called necessary "wild oats" period is past? "Wild oats" is a very contagious kind of vegetable, and because a few must sow them, it does not follow that the seed must be spread broadcast and grow up into a crop of ruined homes, dishonored lives, and eternal destruction!—Sel.