which every young and healthy
living creature on earth appreciates. So long as our young men are
genuinely manly, good, strong, and courageous, I am not inclined to find
fault with them, even if they happen to trip and fall into slight
extravagances in the matter of costume. The creature who lives to dress
I abhor, the sane and sound man who fulfils his life-duties gallantly
and who is not above pleasing himself and others by means of reasonable
adornments I like and even respect warmly. The philosophers may growl as
they chose, but I contend that the sight of a superb young Englishman
with his clean clear face, his springy limbs, his faultless habiliments
is about as pleasant as anything can be to a discerning man. Moreover,
it is by no means true that the dandy is necessarily incompetent when he
comes to engage in the severe work of life. Our hero, our Nelson, kept
his nautical dandyism until he was middle-aged. Who ever accused him of
incompetence? Think of his going at Trafalgar into that pouring Inferno
of lead and iron with all his decorations blazing on him! "In honour I
won them and in honour I will wear them," said this unconscionable
dandy; and he did wear them until he had broken our terrible enemy's
power, saved London from sack, and worse, and yielded up his gallant
soul to his Maker. Rather an impressive kind of dandy was that wizened
little animal. "There'll be wigs on the green, boys--the dandies are
coming!" So Marlborough's soldiers used to cry when the regiment of
exquisites charged. At home the fierce Englishmen strutted around in
their merry haunts and showed off their brave finery as though their one
task in life were to wear gaudy garments gracefully; but, when the
trumpet rang for the charge, the silken dandies showed that they had the
stuff of men in them. The philosopher is a trifle too apt to say,
"Anybody who does not choose to do as I like is, on the face of it, an
inferior member of the human race." I utterly refuse to have any such
doctrine thrust down my throat. No sage would venture to declare that
the handsome, gorgeous John Churchill was a fool or a failure. He beat
England's enemies, he made no blunder in his life, and he survived the
most vile calumnies that ever assailed a struggling man; yet, if he was
not a dandy, then I never saw or heard of one. All our fine fellows who
stray with the British flag over the whole earth belong more or less
distinctly to the dandy division. The velve