They go much about alone, and blush when women speak to them.

In truth, they are not as yet men, whatever the number may be of their years; and, as they are no longer boys, the world has found for them the ungraceful name of hobbledehoy.
Such observations, however, as I have been enabled to make in this matter have led me to believe that the hobbledehoy is by no means the least valuable species of the human race.

When I compare the hobbledehoy of one or two and twenty to some finished Apollo of the same age, I regard the former as unripe fruit, and the latter as fruit that is ripe.

Then comes the question as to the two fruits.
Which is the better fruit, that which ripens early,--which is, perhaps, favoured with some little forcing apparatus, or which, at least, is backed by the warmth of a southern wall; or that fruit of slower growth, as to which nature works without assistance, on which the sun operates in its own time,--or perhaps never operates if some ungenial shade has been allowed to interpose itself?
The world, no doubt, is in favour of the forcing apparatus or of the southern wall.
The fruit comes certainly, and at an assured period.

It is spotless, speckless, and of a certain quality by no means despicable.