SEE him, with his dumb watch, made for showy suspended to a gilt chain, of the value of twelve and a half cents, descending gracefully from his neck, over his bosom, to his vest pocket, where it is gracefully deposited! With a cigar in his mouth, from which volumes of smoke are issuing, as from an active volcano! We see him, on a Sunday morning, stepping high, with long strides, passing along the street and shopping at, and walking into, every grocery that is kept open, and there taking his drink. He can swear as profanely as any full-grown sinner of a man. He can walk, when sober, on week days, gracefully on his toes, in his shrieking boots or shoes, and, if his stays will permit him, he can stoop so low that, with his little graceful cane, he can pick up his pocket handkerchief, which purposely he had let fall! Converse with him, he talks big, looks big, feels big, and acts big.

He is a man, and a great man, in his own estimation; but he cannot tell us how many states there are in the Union; how many planets belong to our solar system; nor the difference between a monarchy and a republic. He can rail against the administration of the general government or praise it, as is the fashion of the party to which he belongs. He can rail at all priests, scoff at all religion, and blaspheme the name of God and of the Saviour who died to save him. He prates of his acquaintance with every fashionable young lady, and well remembers the very name of her lap-dog! What a surprising memory! But, can he remember the Lord’s prayer and the ten commandments? No; these he has never learned.

He fancies that his looks, his dress, his address, his slender person and leaden eye, can captivate all hearts, especially those of the ladies. He is determined to marry a fortune. And when he goes into business, all the world will certainly come to his store to purchase their goods, or to his shop for medicines, or to his law-office for advice. His father, he says, was educated when the world knew nothing, and so taught him nothing. He knew not how to captivate all hearts by a mere look, by the dangling of a watch-chain, and the cut of his hair, and so he failed to amass a vast fortune for his son to waste. His wiser son says to himself, that he will soon show us how a fortune is to be made by his cleverness in business. He must begin the world, though, by a runaway match, and thus he gets an heiress for his wife. Her parents are overwhelmed with the calamity at first, but loving their daughter, they relent, and set him up in business. Extravagance, and want of care and foresight, involve him in difficulties of all sorts, and finally he fails, and becomes a ruined bankrupt, bankrupt in fame, character, health, and money.

His wife dies with grief, and her parents follow her and descend into their graves, leaving their worthless son-in-law a monument of his own folly, self-conceit, and wickedness. He totters around a few short years, out of business, out of health, and an object of scorn, which no one pities and no one aids. He dies and disappears from human sight, and is soon forgotten, without even a stone to tell us where he is buried. And this end of a fashionable young man and a fashionably educated young lady, is the very best and most correct one that can be drawn, with truth and impartiality. By far the greatest number of both sexes do not live long enough in the world to pass through such a life, opening with a farce and ending in a tragedy. No; ninety-nine out of every hundred such young men and young women run a shorter race on their way to the grave. The young man by drinking, gambling, and lewdness, contracts diseases which carry him off at an early age. The young lady, as she is politely called, by tight lacing, by exposure to the night air, after leaving the ball-room, the theatre, or the crowded assembly-room, contracts a violent cold, which ends in a pulmonary consumption that carries her off to the grave, her long home. Such is a fashionable education for both sexes, and such is the fashionable end of it. The sooner such persons disappear from our sight, perhaps, the better for them and for the world; but we advocate a system of education which shall prevent the whole play consisting of such a farce and ending with such a tragedy.

From: Atwater, Caleb: An Essay on Education.Cincinatti: Kendall & Henry, 1841: 48-50.