One of the first things that would strike a thoughtful observer of the habitués of Paddy’s Market are the number of young people to be seen there,—that is, persons under twenty-one years of age. Of course anywhere in the Australian colonies, save, perhaps, in some parts of Tasmania, the balance of population will be found to be in favour of youth rather than age, but here there are far more than one would expect to meet at such a place and at such an hour, for it is past eleven o’clock.
Numbers of these young people are pale-faced girls of tender age, who, earning their own livelihood at the big warehouses or millinery establishments of the city, laugh at the discipline of home (too often far away “up-country”), and are rapidly following that easy path that, with ever-increasing declivity, will likely land them ultimately amongst the unfortunates of the pavements. The “pals” of these young damsels are also there by scores. Most of these have been “turned out” after one general pattern; and, to use another mechanic’s term, are chiefly “wasters.” The same disgusting, unnatural, and unhealthy manikin appearance surrounds all of them. There is hardly any sight more pitiful to behold than these youthful bodies, that have never known the youth which Coleridge describes as “the body and spirit in unity.” These little weak-eyed, weak-kneed, man-like creatures are mostly addicted to sham meerschaums, “flash ties,” and “blunderbuss” cut trousers, the bell-bottoms of which cover nearly the whole of their high-heeled “number nineteens.”
Why, for the sake of these unhappy chickens of Hers, does not fair Liberty—who is fast being dethroned in Sydney by her sly bastard-sister License—wake up, and let some paternal edict become law that will make it a State concern to watch over these truly “fatherless and motherless bairns”?
“The childhood,” said Milton, “shows the man, as morning shows the day.” What will Australia’s day be like with all this wealth of youth, that should one day form the voting and the thinking power of the rising Republic of the South, wasting its sweetness upon the tobacco-and-gin-stained wilderness of vice and idleness in all her cities? Who that knows Sydney is not also aware of the fact that these merry, over-dressed companions of these miserable little “market-toffs” fall an easy prey before the devilish machinations of the foul prowler and her client-slaves of appetence? Each girl—womanlike—vies with her work-fellows in extravagance of dress, destroying the beautiful architectural lines of “Nature’s divine building” with her uneducated idea of a perfect vestis forensis. If her legitimate exertions and the pocket money of her “pal” is insufficient for her purpose, other persons, whose business it is to do so, come forward to show her other means of obtaining the necessary funds, and the mischief is done.
The colony of New South Wales is badly in want of wives and mothers, and cries out ceaselessly to the older countries that she cannot give to every man a wife. Yet here are her own flesh and blood, female forms of which she need not be ashamed, all hurrying down the sewer of crime, like drowning butterflies, to rot in the foul slums and gutters of the capital.
As democracy grows used to her new-born powers, perhaps the people will cease to toy with the bright but keen-edged weapons of responsibility, and turn to guard their boys and girls. At present, however, and that is what concerns the object of this book, Sydney is a gigantic bait-pond where the wealthy debauchee can luxuriously roll in sin, and feed, shark-like and unchecked, upon the daughters of the colony.
But to return to Claude, and the delightful acquaintance he has made. Our hero, having discovered that he must wait a few days in Sydney before starting northwards to prosecute the object of his journey, has become fidgety and impatient. It is so annoying that he cannot begin his work at once; and he is only too glad to find any means of passing the intervening time. As the two men stroll along, Claude’s companion discourses eloquently to him upon the scenes around them, and Claude, walking silent and thoughtful at his side, feels grateful to him for doing all the talking.
“You have no idea, my dear fellow,” rattles on the young man in the grey coat, “you can’t have the slightest idea of the growing tendency which the unlimited freedom of the youth of this colony encourages towards the doctrine of Free-love.
“We see the lower orders here,” gracefully waving his cane, “and, mind you, the ‘lower orders’ is not a synonymous term with that of ‘poorer classes,’ as in the older countries. And which of the young people here to-night looks forward to marriage as more or less of a certainty, as people do in the older countries? Even in the parent-land the new doctrine is growing in strength. Here, I assure you, the girls dread marriage, and simply because it curtails that freedom of life, of following their own inclination, that passion that is bred in their bones, and was the holiest creed of their parents.
“Only a wealthy husband, who is not likely to be too uxorious or too particular, will be endured in a few years. Do we not see it already in some of the States of America? Steady fellows like you may call the new doctrine simply open sin. But after all, what is sin? What but the breaking of certain unstable laws, that change and give way to others, as the nations that made them clamber painfully upwards towards the attractive light of freedom. Divorce is becoming every day more common, and easier to obtain. Every day home life is more and more exposed, and is fading away before the searching bull’s-eye of the unsympathetic paper-reading public. The beauties of home, that suited our mutton-headed fathers, are departing; and the price—marriage—is too much nowadays to give for what is often everybody’s property, as much as that of the unfortunate and foolish purchaser. But, as I said, you can see here the lower orders of the people. If you can judge the mind from the exterior body, you will acknowledge I am right in my deductions. And now, if you have no objection, we will visit another place I want you to see, where we can study those human fowls that roost upon the second perch from the ground. Are you agreeable?”