The ragbag Author:Nathaniel Parker Willis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE AETICLE "YOUTH" AT NEW-YORK. The comparative value of this perishable commodity, at Paris or at New-York, is a matter of necessary knowledge which we migh... more »t have expected to see dwelt upon before now. As far as we know, however, this important statistic has been overlooked till within a few days; and each young man, there- fore, has been obliged to decide, by chance information or instinct, whether to invest his stock of adolescence in Broadway or the Boulevards. A very amusing and well written article on the subject appears in the Courrier des Etats- Unis of Thursday last, written by Th. Lacombe, the able contributor to that paper. We would translate it, if we had any manner of leisure—possibly we shall do so when novelties slacken a little with the summer solstice—but as our class of readers hav-scharming minds of their own, and can understand a matter as well by suggestion as by amplification, we will simply name a point or two of Mons. Lacombe's two column analysis, and so fulfil the chief object of the Home Journal, which is to keep subscribers promptly supplied with the knowledge to live by. They have a phrase in Paris—la jeunesse doree—which we have no equivalent expression for, in English, but which means young dandies with plenty of money. Of ten boys born with a natural banker—(a papa that instinctively furnishes funds) —five at least in Paris, take up the life of la jeunesse doree, supremely happy to have nothing to do but wake, dress, breakfast, and push discoveries as to what can be had for their two superfluities of youth and money. Most of these ruin themselves, and worse-ify in various ways—some become satiated, and take to virtue for a change—and some, after quite exhausting pleasure, but still holding on to a corner of the pocket, make a marriage of mode...« less