“Just get up a musical show—a sort of Pierrot entertainment. It’ll be mostly singing and dancing, I expect.”
“I presume they have a charitable object in view.”
“I suppose so,” returned Adrian, in a tone that conveyed with sufficient accuracy to the majority of his hearers that he had no reason for supposing anything of the sort.
“The youth of today is an amazement to me,” said the Canon impressively. “After coming through Armageddon, the young men and young women of the present generation seem given over to a spirit of triviality—I can call it nothing else—that amazes me. There is no humour, today, there is ‘ragging’ or ‘rotting.’ There is no dancing—there is ‘fox-trotting,’ and ‘jazzing.’ There is no dressing, with beauty and dignity, for young womanhood—there is blatant indecency and an aping of a class that I cannot even name in this room. There is no art, no drama, no literature—there are revues, and a new class of novel of which I cannot even trust myself to speak.”
The Canon drew a long breath and Adrian murmured sub-audibly:
“And fifthly, and lastly——”
Mr. Clover gazed at the bowl in the middle of the table and said:
“Very—very—nice maidenhair,” in a rapid undertone, and Canon Morchard resumed:
“I yield to no one, as you young folk here should readily admit, in my appreciation of the lighter side of life. I believe, indeed, that I have poked some shrewd enough fun in my day, at those who would have us believe that this world is a gloomy place. Rather would I say, in the old words we all know: ‘A merry heart goes all the way, but a sad one tires in a mile’—ah! You children can very well vouch for the amount of innocent amusement and recreation that has gone on amongst us. Our Sunday walks, our collecting crazes, our family quips in which young and old have taken full share—with deference due, be it understood, with deference due—our evening readings-aloud—I think all these, if they have been an entertainment, have also provided a certain instruction. And that is as it should be, let me tell you, young people—as it should be.”
“My father read aloud the whole of the Waverly novels to us, when we were children,” Lucilla explained to the curate.