The Young Man's Guide (part 2)

Although these institutions are yet in their infancy, and could hardly have been expected to accomplish more within the same period than they have, it is hoped they will not hereafter confine their inquiries so exclusively to matters of mere intellect, as has often been done. There are other subjects nearer home, if I may so say, than these. How strangely do mankind, generally, stretch their thoughts and inquiries abroad to the concerns of other individuals, states and nations, and forget themselves, and the objects and beings near by them, and their mutual relations, connections, and dependencies!

Lyceums, when they shall have obtained a firmer footing among us, may become a most valuable means of enlightening the mass of the community, in regard to the structure and laws of the human body, and its relation to surrounding objects; of discussing the philosophy of dress, and its different materials for different seasons; of food, and drink, and sleep and exercise; of dwellings and other buildings; of amusements and employments;—in short, of the ten thousand little things, as many call them, which go to make up human life, with its enjoyments or miseries. These things have been surprisingly overlooked by most men, for the sake of attending to others, whose bearing on human happiness, if not often questionable, is at least more remote.

In some of our larger cities there are respectable courses of useful lectures established during the months of winter, and sometimes throughout the year. Added to this are reading-rooms, and various sorts of libraries, which are accessible for a small sum, and sometimes for almost nothing. There have been three valuable courses of Franklin Lectures delivered in Boston, during the three last winters, of twenty lectures each, for only fifty cents a course. In most large towns, benevolent and spirited individuals might establish something of the same kind, at least every winter.

Section VI. Moral Instruction.

It was not my intention, at first, to say a single word, directly, on the subject of religion, but I should leave this chapter very incomplete indeed, as well as do violence to my own feelings, should I say nothing at all of Bible classes, and other means of religious instruction, with which the age, and especially this part of the country abounds, not only on Sundays, but during the long evenings of leisure which, for a part of the year, many young men enjoy.

Viewed merely as a means of improving the mind, and acquiring much authentic historical information to be found nowhere else, the study of the Bible is a most valuable exercise, and ought to be encouraged. To adults who labor, a walk to church, and prompt attention to the Bible lesson, is happily adapted to the health of the body, no less than to intellectual improvement; and whatever objections might be urged against subjecting infants and young children who attend other schools during the week, to the present routine of Sabbath instruction, I am quite sure that the class of young persons for whom I am writing, would derive the most lasting benefit from studying the Bible.

I have made these remarks on the presumption that they were to derive no moral improvement from Bible instruction. However, I see not how these schools can be long attended by ingenuous minds without inspiring a respect, at the least, for that book which is superior to all other books, and for that religion which it inculcates; which is above all sect, and beyond all price.

Section VII. Of Female Society in reference to Marriage.

It is now time to consider the subject of female society in reference to matrimony. I shall find it necessary, however, to make a division of my subject, reserving a more complete view of female qualifications for a succeeding chapter.

Whatever advice may be given to the contrary by friends or foes, it is my opinion that you ought to keep matrimony steadily in view. For this end, were it for no other, you ought to mingle much in society. Never consider yourself complete without this other half of yourself. It is too much the fashion among young men at the present day to make up their minds to dispense with marriage;—an unnatural, and therefore an unwise plan. Much of our character, and most of our comfort and happiness depend upon it. Many have found this out too late; that is, after age and fixed habits had partly disqualified them for this important duty.

All that has been hitherto said of female influence bears upon this point. According to the character of the person you select, in a considerable degree, will be your own. Should a mere face fascinate you to a doll, you will not need much mental energy to please her; and the necessity of exertion on this account being small, your own self will sink, or at least not rise, as it otherwise might do.

But were I personally acquainted with you, and should I perceive an honorable attachment taking possession of your heart, I should regard it as a happy circumstance. Life then has an object. The only thing to be observed is that it be managed with prudence, honor, and good sense.

The case of John Newton is precisely in point. In very early life this man formed a strong attachment to a lady, under circumstances which did not permit him to make it known; which was probably well for both parties. It did not diminish her happiness, so long as she remained in ignorance on the subject; and in scenes of sorrow, suffering, and temptation, the hope of one day obtaining her soothed him, and kept him from performing many dishonorable actions. 'The bare possibility,' he says, 'of seeing her again, was the only obvious means of restraining me from the most horrid designs, against myself and others.'

The wish to marry, if prudently indulged, will lead to honest and persevering exertions to obtain a reasonable income—one which will be satisfactory to the object of your hopes, as well as to her friends. He who is determined on living a single life, very naturally contracts his endeavors to his own narrow personal wants, or else squanders freely, in the belief that he can always procure enough to support himself. Indeed it cannot have escaped even the careless observer that in proportion as an individual relinquishes the idea of matrimony, just in the same proportion do his mind and feelings contract. On the contrary, that hope which aims at a beloved partner—a family—a fireside,—will lead its possessor to activity in all his conduct. It will elicit his talents, and urge them to their full energy, and probably call in the aid of economy; a quality so indispensable to every condition of life. The single consideration, 'What would she think were she now to see me?' called up by the obtrusion of a favorite image,—how often has it stimulated a noble mind and heart to deeds which otherwise had never been performed!

I repeat it, I am aware that this advice is liable to abuse. But what shall be done? Images of some sort will haunt the mind more or less—female influence in some shape or other will operate. Is it not better to give the imagination a virtuous direction than to leave it to range without control, and without end?

I repeat it, nothing is better calculated to preserve a young man from the contamination of low pleasures and pursuits, than frequent intercourse with the more refined and virtuous of the other sex. Besides, without such society his manners can never acquire the true polish of a gentleman,—general character, dignity, and refinement;—nor his mind and heart the truest and noblest sentiments of a man. Make it an object then, I again say, to spend some portion of every week of your life in the company of intelligent and virtuous ladies. At all events, flee solitude, and especially the exclusive society of your own sex. The doctrines even of Zimmerman, the great apostle of solitude, would put to shame many young men, who seldom or never mix in female society.

If you should be so unfortunate as not to have among your acquaintance any ladies whose society would, in these points of view, be profitable to you, do not be in haste to mix with the ignorant and vulgar; but wait patiently till your own industry and good conduct shall give you admission to better circles; and in the meantime cultivate your mind by reading and thinking, so that when you actually gain admission to good society, you may know how to prize and enjoy it. Remember, too, that you are not to be so selfish as to think nothing of contributing to the happiness of others. It is blessed to give as well as to receive.

When you are in the company of ladies, beware of silliness. It is true that they will sooner forgive foolishness than ill manners, but you will, of course, avoid both. I know one young gentleman of great promise, who adopted the opinion that in order to qualify himself for female society, he had only to become as foolish as possible, while in their presence. That young man soon lost the favor of all whose friendship might have operated as a restraint; but unwilling to associate with the despicable, and unable to live in absolute solitude, he chose the bottle for his companion; and made himself, and the few friends he had, miserable.

Nothing, unless it be the coarsest flattery, will give more offence, in the end, than to treat ladies as mere playthings or children. On the other hand, do not become pedantic, and lecture them on difficult subjects. They readily see through all this. Neither is it good manners or policy to talk much of yourself. They can penetrate this also; and they despise the vanity which produces it. In detecting deception, they are often much quicker than we apprehend.

A young gentleman, in one of the New England States, who had assumed the chair of the pedagogue, paid his addresses to the beautiful and sensible daughter of a respectable farmer. One day, as she was present in his school, he read to her a hymn, which he said was from his own pen. Now it was obvious to this lady, and even to some of the pupils, that the hymn was none other than that usually known by the name of the 'Harvest Hymn,' modified by the change of a few words only. How much effect this circumstance might have had I cannot say with certainty; but I know it disgusted one, at least, of the pupils; and I know, too, that his addresses to the lady were soon afterwards discontinued.

A young man who would profit from the society of young ladies, or indeed from any society, must preserve a modest and respectful spirit; must seek to conciliate their good will by quiet and unostentatious attentions, and discover more willingness to avail himself of their stock of information, than to display his own knowledge or abilities.

He should observe, and learn to admire, that purity and ignorance of evil, which is the characteristic of well-educated young ladies, and which, while we are near them, raises us above those sordid and sensual considerations which hold such sway over men, in their intercourse with each other. He should treat them as spirits of a purer sphere, and try to be as innocent, if not as ignorant of evil as they are; remembering that there is no better way of raising himself in the scale of intellectual and moral being. But to whatever degree of intimacy he may arrive, he should never forget those little acts of courtesy and kindness, as well as that respect, and self-denial, which lend a charm to every kind of polite intercourse, and especially to that of which I am now speaking.

Whenever an opportunity occurs, however, it is the duty of a young man to introduce topics of conversation which are decidedly favorable to mental and moral improvement. Should he happen to be attending to the same study, or reading the same book with a female acquaintance, an excellent opportunity will be afforded for putting this rule in practice.

CHAPTER VI.

Marriage.

Section I. Why Matrimony is a Duty.

Matrimony is a subject of high importance and interest. It is important, because it was among the earliest institutions of the great Creator; because it has always existed in some form or other, and must continue to exist, or society cannot be sustained; and because in proportion as the ends of the Creator are answered by its establishment, just in the same proportion does the happiness of society rise or fall. It points out the condition of society in this respect as accurately as a thermometer shows the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere. I might even go farther, and say, that in proportion as the original and real ends of marriage are answered, do the interests of religion also rise or sink.

This institution is peculiarly interesting from the fact that it involves so many items of human happiness. We often speak of the value of friendship. What friendship like that which results from a happy union of the sexes? We talk of education. What school so favorable to improvement as the domestic circle may be rendered? Whether we consider education in a physical, mental or moral point of view, all its plans are imperfect without this. No man or woman is, as a general rule, fully prepared for the humblest sphere of action on earth, without the advantages which are peculiar to this institution. Nor has any man done his whole duty to God, who has left this subject out of consideration.

It has sometimes been said, and with much truth, that 'no unmarried person was ever thoroughly and completely educated.' It appears to me that were we to consider the intellectual and physical departments of education, merely, this would be true; but how much more so when we take in morals? Parents,—teachers,—what are they? Their labors are indeed of infinite value, in themselves considered; but it is only in a state of matrimony, it is only when we are called to the discharge of those multiplied duties which are involved in the endearing relations of husband, wife, parent and guardian, that our characters are fully tested and established. Late in life as these relations commence, the circumstances which they involve are so peculiar that they modify the character of the parties much more than has usually been considered.

I am fond, therefore, of contemplating the married state as a school;—not merely for a short term, but for life;—not one whose teachers are liable to be changed once or twice a year to the great disadvantage of all who are concerned, but whose instructors are as permanent as the school itself. It is true, that like other schools, it may result in the formation of bad character; but in proportion to its power to accomplish either good or bad results, will be its value, if wisely improved.

It is not to be denied that this view of the subject is in favor of early marriage. And I can truly say, indeed, that every thing considered, early marriage does appear to me highly desirable. And it would require stronger arguments than any which I have yet seen adduced, even by some of our political economists, to make me surrender this opinion.

The only serious objection, of a popular kind, to early marriage, arises from the difficulty of supporting a family. But the parties themselves must be supported at all events, whether married or single. 'But the consequences'—And what are the consequences? An earlier family, indeed; but not of necessity a larger. I believe that facts will bear me out in stating that the sum total of the progeny of every thousand families who commence at from twenty-five to thirty, is as great as that of one thousand who begin at from twenty to twenty-five. I have even seen pretty large families where the eldest was thirty-five years younger than both the parents; and one or two instances of numerous families where marriage did not take place till the age of forty. Physiologists have long observed this singular fact, and it has sometimes been explained by saying, if indeed it be an explanation, that Nature, in these cases, unwilling to be cheated out of her rights, endeavors to make up in energy and activity what has been lost in time.

The question, however, will recur, whether families, though equally large, cannot be better maintained when marriage is deferred to a later period. And it certainly is a question of immense importance; For nothing is more painful than to see large families, whose parents, whether young or more advanced, have not the means of educating them properly. It is also not a little painful to find instances of poverty so extreme that there is absolute suffering, for want of food and clothing.

But the question must be determined by facts. And it would be greatly aiding the cause of humanity if extensive comparisons were made between the pecuniary condition of those who marry early and those who defer the subject to a later period. But from my own limited observation I am fully of opinion that the result of the comparison would be greatly in favor of early marriages. Should this prove to be true, the position which I have assumed is, I think, established; for it appears to me that no other argument for delay has any claim to our notice.

On the other hand, the following, among other evils, are the results of deferring marriage.

1. The temper and habits of the parties become stiff and unyielding when advanced in life, and they learn to adapt themselves to each other with difficulty. In the view which I have taken above they become miserable as teachers, and still more miserable as scholars.

2. Youth are thus exposed to the danger of forming habits of criminal indulgence, as fatal to the health and the character, as they are ruinous to the soul.

3. Or if they proceed not so far, they at least acquire the habit of spending time in vain or pernicious amusements. All mankind must and will seek for gratifications of some sort or other. And aside from religious principle, there is no certain security against those amusements and indulgences which are pernicious and destructive, but early and virtuous attachments, and the pleasures afforded by domestic life. He can never want for amusement or rational gratification who is surrounded by a rising family for whom he has a genuine affection.

4. Long continued celibacy contracts the mind, if it does not enfeeble it. For one openhearted liberal old bachelor, you will find ten who are parsimonious, avaricious, cold-hearted, and too often destitute of those sympathies for their fellow beings which the married life has a tendency to elicit and perpetuate.

5. Franklin says that late marriages are attended with another inconvenience, viz.; that the chance of living to see our children educated, is greatly diminished.

6. But I go much farther than I have hitherto done, and insist that other things being equal, the young married man has the advantage in a pecuniary point of view. This is a natural result from the fact that he is compelled to acquire habits of industry, frugality, and economy; and is under less temptation to waste his time in trifling or pernicious amusements. But I may appeal to facts, even here. Look around you in the world, and see if out of a given number of single persons, say one thousand, of the age of thirty-five, there be not a greater number in poverty, than of the same number who settled in life at twenty.

Perhaps I ought barely to notice another objection to these views. It is said that neither the mind nor the body come to full maturity so early as we are apt to suppose. But is complete maturity of body or mind indispensable? I am not advocating the practice of marrying in childhood. It takes sometime for the affections toward an individual to ripen and become settled. This is a matter involving too high responsibilities to justify haste. The consequences, speaking generally, are not confined to this life; they extend to eternity.

Section II. General Considerations.

We are now to enter on a most important part of our subject. Hitherto it had been my object to point out the proper course for you to pursue in reference to yourself, your own improvement, and consequent usefulness. In the remarks of the preceding chapter, and in those which follow, you are regarded as seeking a companion; as anxious to assume new relations, such as involve new duties and new responsibilities.

If you are successful, instead of educating yourself alone, you are to be concerned in improving the mental, moral, and social condition of two persons; and in the end, perhaps others. You are to be a teacher; you cannot avoid this station if you would. But you are also to be a learner. Dr. Rush says we naturally imitate the manners, and gradually acquire the tempers of persons with whom we live, provided they are objects of our affection and respect. 'This,' he adds, 'has been observed in husbands and wives who have lived long and happily together; and even in servants.' And nothing can be more true.

Not only your temper and that of your companion, but your whole character, considered as physical, mental, and moral beings, will be mutually improved or injured through life. You will be placed, as I have already intimated, at a school of mutual instruction, which is to continue without vacation or change of monitors,—perhaps half a century;—during every one of the earliest years of which, your character will be more really and more permanently modified than in the same amount of time at any prior period of your education, unless it were in the veriest infancy.

Surely then it is no light affair to make preparation for a school like this. There is no period in the life of a young man so important; for there is none on which his happiness and the happiness of others so essentially depend.

Before I advert to the particular qualifications which it is necessary for you to seek in so intimate a friend, I shall mention a few considerations of a general nature.

Settle it, in the first place, that absolute perfection is not to be found. There are not a few young men of a romantic turn of mind, fostered and increased by reading the fictitious writings of the day, who have pictured to themselves for companions in life unreal forms and angelic characters, instead of beings who dwell in 'houses of clay,' and are 'crushed before the moth.' Such 'exalted imaginations' must sooner or later be brought down: happy will it be with those who are chastened in due season.

In the second place, resolve never to be misled by any adventitious circumstances. Wealth, beauty, rank, friends, &c, are all proper considerations, but they are not of the first importance. They are merely secondary qualifications. Marriage must never be a matter of bargain and sale; for

In the third place, no marriage engagement should ever be thought of unless there is first a genuine and rational attachment. No cold calculations of profit or loss, no hereditary estates or other adventitious circumstances, though they were equivalent to a peerage, or a realm, should ever, for one moment, even in thought, be substituted for love. It is treason to Him who ordained this most blessed institution.

But fourthly, though wealth, however valuable in itself, is by no means a recommendation in the present case, yet the means of a comfortable support are certainly to be regarded. It is painful to see a very young couple, with a large family, and destitute of the means of support.

In the fifth place, a suitable age is desirable.

When we consider the varying tastes, habits and feelings of the same person at different periods of his life, is it not at once obvious that, other things being equal, those persons are most likely to find that happiness which is sought in matrimony, by associating with those whose age does not differ greatly from their own? It is true, some of the happiest human connexions that ever were formed were between persons of widely differing ages; but is this the general rule? Would not those who have found happiness under other circumstances, have been still happier, had their ages been more nearly equal?

There is little doubt that a person advanced in life may lengthen his days by a connection with a person much younger than himself. Whether the life of the other party is not shortened, in an equal degree, at the same time, and by the same means, remains to be determined; but probably it is so.

Some men and women are as old, in reality, whatever their years may indicate, at twenty, as others at twenty-five. The matrimonial connection then may be safely formed between parties whose ages differ a few years; but I think that as a general rule, the ages of the parties ought to be nearly equal.

Lastly, it was believed by a great observer of human nature, the late Dr. Spurzheim, that no person was fit for the domestic relations who had not undergone trials and sufferings. The gay reader may smile at this opinion, but I can assure him that many wise men besides Spurzheim have entertained it. Chateaubriand, among others, in his 'Genius of Christianity,' advances the same opinion. Some, as we have seen, hold that no person can be well educated without suffering. Such persons, however, use the term education as meaning something more than a little scientific instruction;—as a means of forming character. In this point of view no sentiment can be more true. Even the Bible confirms it, when it assures us, that the 'Captain of our Salvation was made perfect through sufferings.'

Section III. Female Qualifications for Marriage.

1. MORAL EXCELLENCE.

The highest as well as noblest trait in female character, is love to God. When we consider what are the tendencies of Christianity to elevate woman from the state of degradation to which she had, for ages, been subjected—when we consider not only what it has done, but what it is destined yet to do for her advancement,—it is impossible not to shrink from the presence of an impious, and above all an unprincipled atheistical female, as from an ungrateful and unnatural being.

Man is under eternal obligations to Christianity and its Divine Author, undoubtedly; but woman seems to be more so.

That charge against females which in the minds of some half atheistical men is magnified into a stigma on Christianity itself, namely that they are more apt to become religious than men; and that we find by far the greater part of professing Christians to be females, is in my own view one of the highest praises of the sex. I rejoice that their hearts are more susceptible than ours, and that they do not war so strongly against that religion which their nature demands. I have met with but one female, whom I knew to be an avowed atheist.

Indeed there are very few men to be found, who are skeptical themselves, who do not prefer pious companions of the other sex. I will not stop to adduce this as an evidence of the truth of our religion itself, and of its adaptation to the wants of the human race, for happily it does not need it. Christianity is based on the most abundant evidence, of a character wholly unquestionable. But this I do and will say, that to be consistent, young men of loose principles ought not to rail at females for their piety, and then whenever they seek for a constant friend, one whom they can love,—for they never really love the abandoned—always prefer, other things being equal, the society of the pious and the virtuous.

2. COMMON SENSE.

Next on the list of particular qualifications in a female, for matrimonial life, I place common sense. In the view of some, it ought to precede moral excellence. A person, it is said, who is deficient in common sense, is, in proportion to the imbecility, unfit for social life, and yet the same person might possess a kind of negative excellency, or perhaps even a species of piety. This view appears to me, however, much more specious than sound.

By common sense, as used in this place, I mean the faculty by means of which we see things as they really are. It implies judgment and discrimination, and a proper sense of propriety in regard to the common concerns of life. It leads us to form judicious plans of action, and to be governed by our circumstances in such a way as will be generally approved. It is the exercise of reason, uninfluenced by passion or prejudice. To man, it is nearly what instinct is to brutes. It is very different from genius or talent, as they are commonly defined; but much better than either. It never blazes forth with the splendor of noon, but shines with a constant and useful light. To the housewife—but, above all, to the mother,—it is indispensable.

3. DESIRE FOR IMPROVEMENT.

Whatever other recommendations a lady may possess, she should have an inextinguishable thirst for improvement. No sensible person can be truly happy in the world, without this; much less qualified to make others happy. But the genuine spirit of improvement, wherever it exists, atones for the absence of many qualities which would otherwise be indispensable: in this respect resembling that 'charity' which covers 'a multitude of sins.' Without it, almost everything would be of little consequence,—with it, every thing else is rendered doubly valuable.

One would think that every sensible person, of either sex, would aspire at improvement, were it merely to avoid the shame of being stationary like the brutes. Above all, it is most surprising that any lady should be satisfied to pass a day or even an hour without mental and moral progress. It is no discredit to the lower animals that—'their little all flows in at once,' that 'in ages they no more can know, or covet or enjoy,' for this is the legitimate result of the physical constitution which God has given them. But it is far otherwise with the masters and mistresses of creation; for

'Were man to live coeval with the sun,

The patriarch pupil should be learning still,

And dying, leave his lessons half unlearnt.'

There are,—I am sorry to say it—not a few of both sexes who never appear to breathe out one hearty desire to rise, intellectually or morally, with a view to the government of themselves or others. They love themselves supremely—their friends subordinately—their neighbors, perhaps not at all. But neither the love they bear to themselves or others ever leads them to a single series of any sort of action which has for its ultimate object the improvement of any thing higher than the condition of the mere animal. Dress, personal appearance, equipage, style of a dwelling or its furniture, with no other view, however, than the promotion of mere physical enjoyment, is the height of their desires for improvement!

Talk to them of elevating the intellect or improving the heart, and they admit it is true; but they go their way and pursue their accustomed round of folly again. The probability is, that though they assent to your views, they do not understand you. It requires a stretch of charity to which I am wholly unequal, to believe that beings who ever conceived, for one short moment, of the height to which their natures may be elevated, should sink back without a single struggle, to a mere selfish, unsocial, animal life;—to lying in bed ten or twelve hours daily, rising three or four hours later than the sun, spending the morning in preparation at the glass, the remainder of the time till dinner in unmeaning calls, the afternoon in yawning over a novel, and the evening in the excitement of the tea table and the party, and the ball room, to retire, perhaps at midnight, with the mind and body and soul in a feverish state, to toss away the night in vapid or distressing dreams.

How beings endowed with immortal souls can be contented to while away precious hours in a manner so useless, and withal so displeasing to the God who gave them their time for the improvement of themselves and others, is to me absolutely inconceivable! Yet it is certainly done; and that not merely by a few solitary individuals scattered up and down the land; but in some of our most populous cities, by considerable numbers.

A philanthropic individual not long since undertook with the aid of others, to establish a weekly or semi-weekly gazette in one of our cities, for almost the sole purpose, as I have since learned, of rousing the drones among her sex to benevolent action in some form or other, in behalf of members of their families, their friends or their neighbors. She hoped, at first, to save them from many hours of ennui by the perusal of her columns; and that their minds being opened to instruction, and their hearts made to vibrate in sympathy with the cries of ignorance, poverty, or absolute distress, their hands might be roused to action. But alas, the articles in the paper were too long, or too dry. They could not task their minds to go through with an argument.

Should the young man who is seeking an 'help meet,' chance to fall in with such beings as these—and some we fear there are in almost every part of our land,—let him shun them as he would the 'choke damp' of the cavern.

Their society would extinguish, rather than fan the flame of every generous or benevolent feeling that might be kindling in his bosom. With the fond, the ardent, the never failing desire to improve, physically, intellectually, and morally, there are few females who may not make tolerable companions for a man of sense;—without it, though a young lady were beautiful and otherwise lovely beyond comparison, wealthy as the Indies, surrounded by thousands of the most worthy friends, and even talented, let him beware! Better remain in celibacy a thousand years (could life last so long) great as the evil may be, than form a union with such an object. He should pity, and seek her reformation, if not beyond the bounds of possibility; but love her he should not! The penalty will be absolutely insupportable.

One point ought to be settled,—I think unalterably settled—before matrimony. It ought indeed so be settled in early life, but it is better late, perhaps, than never. Each of the parties should consider themselves as sacredly pledged, in all cases, to yield to conviction. I have no good opinion of the man who expects his wife to yield her opinion to his, on every occasion, unless she is convinced. I say on every occasion; for that she sometimes ought to do so, seems to be both scriptural and rational. It would be very inconvenient to call in a third person as an umpire upon every slight difference of opinion between a young couple, besides being very humiliating. But if each maintain, with pertinacity, their opinion, what can be done? It does seem to me that every sensible woman, who feels any good degree of confidence in her husband, will perceive the propriety of yielding her opinion to his in such cases, where the matter is of such a nature that it cannot be delayed.

But there are a thousand things occurring, in which there is no necessity of forming an immediate opinion, or decision, except from conviction. I should never like the idea of a woman's conforming to her husband's views to please him, merely, without considering whether they are correct or not. It seems to me a sort of treason against the God who gave her a mind of her own, with an intention that she should use it. But it would be higher treason still, in male, or female, not to yield, when actually convinced.

4. FONDNESS FOR CHILDREN.

Few traits of female character are more important than this. Yet there is much reason to believe that, even in contemplating an engagement that is expected to last for life, it is almost universally overlooked. Without it, though a woman should possess every accomplishment of person, mind, and manners, she would be poor indeed; and would probably render those around her miserable. I speak now generally. There may be exceptions to this, as to other general rules. A dislike of children, even in men, is an unfavorable omen; in woman it is insupportable; for it is grossly unnatural. To a susceptible, intelligent, virtuous mind, I can scarcely conceive of a worse situation in this world or any other, than to be chained for life to a person who hates children. You can purchase, if you have the pecuniary means, almost every thing but maternal love. This no gold can buy. Wo to the female who is doomed to drag out a miserable existence with a husband who 'can't bear children;' but thrice miserable is the doom of him who has a wife and a family of children, but whose children have no mother! If there be orphans any where in the wide world, they are these.

The more I reflect on the four last mentioned traits of female character, the more they rise in my estimation, eclipsing all others; unless perhaps, a good temper.

It is said that after every precaution, the choice of a wife is like buying a ticket in a lottery. If we were absolutely deaf and blind in the selection, and were so from necessity, the maxim might be just. But this is not so. We shut our eyes and stop our ears voluntarily, and then complain of the imperfection of our means of forming a judgment. In truth we impeach the goodness of Him who was the author of the institution.

No young man is worthy of a wife who has not sense enough to determine, even after a few interviews, what the bent of a lady's mind is;—whether she listens with most pleasure to conversation which is wholly unimproving, or whether she gladly turns from it, when an opportunity offers, to subjects which are above the petty chit-chat or common but fashionable scandal of the day; and above all, avoids retailing it. He knows, or may know, without a 'seven years' acquaintance, whether she spends a part of her leisure time in reading, or whether the whole is spent in dressing, visiting, or conversing about plays, actors, theatres, &c. And if she reads a part of the time, the fault must be his own, if he does not know whether she relishes any thing but the latest novel, or the most light—not to say empty—periodical. Let it be remembered, then, by every young man that the fault is his own, if he do not give himself time, before he forms an engagement that is to last for life, to ascertain whether his friendship is to be formed with a person who is desirous of improvement, or with one who, living only for pleasure, is 'dead while she liveth.'

You will say it is difficult to ascertain whether she is fond of children or not. But I doubt it. Has she then no young brothers, or sisters, or cousins? Are there no children in the neighborhood? For if there are,—if there is but one, and she sees that individual but once a week,—the fact may easily be ascertained. If she loves that child, the child will love her; and its eye will brighten when it sees her, or hears her name mentioned. Children seldom fail to keep debt and credit in these matters, and they know how to balance the account, with great ingenuity.

These remarks are made, not in the belief that they will benefit those who are already blinded by fancy or passion, but with the hope that some more fortunate reader may reflect on the probable chances of happiness or misery, and pause before he leaps into the vortex of matrimonial discord. No home can ever be a happy one to any of its inmates, where there is no maternal love, nor any desire for mental or moral improvement. But where these exist, in any considerable degree, and the original attachment was founded on correct principles, there is always hope of brighter days, even though clouds at present obscure the horizon. No woman who loves her husband, and desires to make continual improvement, will long consent to render those around her unhappy.

5. LOVE OF DOMESTIC CONCERNS.

Without the knowledge and the love of domestic concerns, even the wife of a peer, is but a poor affair. It was the fashion, in former times, for ladies to understand a great deal about these things, and it would be very hard to make me believe that it did not tend to promote the interests and honor of their husbands.

The concerns of a great family never can be well managed, if left wholly to hirelings; and there are many parts of these affairs in which it would be unseemly for husbands to meddle. Surely, no lady can be too high in rank to make it proper for her to be well acquainted with the character and general demeanor of all the female servants. To receive and give character is too much to be left to a servant, however good, whose service has been ever so long, or acceptable.

Much of the ease and happiness of the great and rich must depend on the character of those by whom they are assisted. They live under the same roof with them; they are frequently the children of their tenants, or poorer neighbors; the conduct of their whole lives must be influenced by the examples and precepts which they here imbibe; and when ladies consider how much more weight there must be in one word from them, than in ten thousand words from a person who, call her what you like, is still a fellow servant, it does appear strange that they should forego the performance of this at once important and pleasing part of their duty.

I am, however, addressing myself, in this work, to persons in the middle ranks of life; and here a knowledge of domestic affairs is so necessary in every wife, that the lover ought to have it continually in his eye. Not only a knowledge of these affairs—not only to know how things ought to be done, but how to do them; not only to know what ingredients ought to be put into a pie or a pudding, but to be able to make the pie or the pudding.

Young people, when they come together, ought not, unless they have fortunes, or are to do unusual business, to think about servants! Servants for what! To help them eat, and drink, and sleep? When they have children, there must be some help in a farmer's or tradesman's house, but until then, what call is there for a servant in a house, the master of which has to earn every mouthful that is consumed?

Eating and drinking come three times every day; they must come; and, however little we may, in the days of our health and vigor, care about choice food and about cookery, we very soon get tired of heavy or burnt bread, and of spoiled joints of meat. We bear them for once or twice perhaps; but about the third time, we begin to lament; about the fifth time, it must be an extraordinary affair that will keep us from complaining; if the like continue for a month or two, we begin to repent; and then adieu to all our anticipated delights. We discover, when it is too late, that we have not got a helpmate, but a burden; and, the fire of love being damped, the unfortunately educated creature, whose parents are more to blame than she is, unless she resolve to learn her duty, is doomed to lead a life very nearly approaching to that of misery; for, however considerate the husband, he never can esteem her as he would have done, had she been skilled in domestic affairs.

The mere manual performance of domestic labors is not, indeed, absolutely necessary in the female head of the family of professional men; but, even here, and also in the case of great merchants and of gentlemen living on their fortunes, surely the head of the household ought to be able to give directions as to the purchasing of meal, salting meat, making bread, making preserves of all sorts; and ought to see the things done.

The lady ought to take care that food be well cooked; that there be always a sufficient supply; that there be good living without waste; and that in her department, nothing shall be seen inconsistent with the rank, station, and character of her husband. If he have a skilful and industrious wife, he will, unless he be of a singularly foolish turn, gladly leave all these things to her absolute dominion, controlled only by the extent of the whole expenditure, of which he must be the best judge.

But, in a farmer's or a tradesman's family, the manual performance is absolutely necessary, whether there be domestics or not. No one knows how to teach another so well as one who has done, and can do, the thing himself. It was said of a famous French commander, that, in attacking an enemy, he did not say to his men 'go on,' but 'come on;' and, whoever has well observed the movements of domestics, must know what a prodigious difference there is in the effect of the words, go and come.

A very good rule would be, to have nothing to eat, in a farmer's or mechanic's house, that the mistress did not know how to prepare and to cook; no pudding, tart, pie or cake, that she did not know how to make. Never fear the toil to her: exercise is good for health; and without health there is no beauty. Besides, what is the labor in such a case? And how many thousands of ladies, who idle away the day, would give half their fortunes for that sound sleep which the stirring housewife seldom fails to enjoy.

Yet, if a young farmer or mechanic marry a girl, who has been brought up only to 'play music;' to draw, to sing, to waste paper, pen and ink in writing long and half romantic letters, and to see shows, and plays, and read novels;—if a young man do marry such an unfortunate young creature, let him bear the consequences with temper. Let him be just. Justice will teach him to treat her with great indulgence; to endeavor to persuade her to learn her business as a wife; to be patient with her; to reflect that he has taken her, being apprized of her inability; to bear in mind, that he was, or seemed to be, pleased with her showy and useless acquirements; and that, when the gratification of his passion has been accomplished, he is unjust, and cruel, and unmanly, if he turn round upon her, and accuse her of a want of that knowledge, which he well knew, beforehand, she did not possess.

For my part, I do not know, nor can I form an idea of, a more unfortunate being than a girl with a mere boarding school education, and without a fortune to enable her to keep domestics, when married. Of what use are her accomplishments? Of what use her music, her drawing, and her romantic epistles? If she should chance to possess a sweet disposition, and good nature, the first faint cry of her first babe drives all the tunes and all the landscapes, and all the imaginary beings out of her head for ever.

The farmer or the tradesman's wife has to help earn a provision for her children; or, at the least, to help to earn a store for sickness or old age. She ought, therefore, to be qualified to begin, at once, to assist her husband in his earnings. The way in which she can most efficiently assist, is by taking care of his property; by expending his money to the greatest advantage; by wasting nothing, but by making the table sufficiently abundant with the least expense.

But how is she to do these things, unless she has been brought up to understand domestic affairs? How is she to do these things, if she has been taught to think these matters beneath her study? How is the man to expect her to do these things, if she has been so bred, as to make her habitually look upon them as worthy the attention of none but low and ignorant women?

Ignorant, indeed! Ignorance consists in a want of knowledge of those things which your calling or state of life naturally supposes you to understand. A ploughman is not an ignorant man because he does not know how to read. If he knows how to plough, he is not to be called an ignorant man; but a wife may be justly called an ignorant woman, if she does not know how to provide a dinner for her husband. It is cold comfort for a hungry man, to tell him how delightfully his wife plays and sings. Lovers may live on very aerial diet, but husbands stand in need of something more solid; and young women may take my word for it, that a constantly clean table, well cooked victuals, a house in order, and a cheerful fire, will do more towards preserving a husband's heart, than all the 'accomplishments' taught in all the 'establishments' in the world without them.

6. SOBRIETY.

Surely no reasonable young man will expect sobriety in a companion, when he does not possess this qualification himself. But by sobriety, I do not mean a habit which is opposed to intoxication, for if that be hateful in a man, what must it be in a woman? Besides, it does seem to me that no young man, with his eyes open, and his other senses perfect, needs any caution on that point. Drunkenness, downright drunkenness, is usually as incompatible with purity, as it is with decency.

Much is sometimes said in favor of a little wine or other fermented liquors, especially at dinner. No young lady, in health, needs any of these stimulants. Wine, or ale, or cider, at dinner! I would as soon take a companion from the streets, as one who must habitually have her glass or two of wine at dinner. And this is not an opinion formed prematurely or hastily.

But by the word sobriety in a young woman, I mean a great deal more than even a rigid abstinence from a love of drink, which I do not believe to exist to any considerable degree, in this country, even in the least refined parts of it. I mean a great deal more than this; I mean sobriety of conduct. The word sober and its derivatives mean steadiness, seriousness, carefulness, scrupulous propriety of conduct.

Now this kind of sobriety is of great importance in the person with whom we are to live constantly. Skipping, romping, rattling girls are very amusing where all consequences are out of the question, and they may, perhaps, ultimately become sober. But while you have no certainty of this, there is a presumptive argument on the other side. To be sure, when girls are mere children, they are expected to play and romp like children. But when they are arrived at an age which turns their thoughts towards a situation for life; when they begin to think of having the command of a house, however small or poor, it is time for them to cast away, not the cheerfulness or the simplicity, but the levity of the child.

'If I could not have found a young woman,' says a certain writer, 'who I was not sure possessed all the qualities expressed by that word sobriety, I should have remained a bachelor to the end of life. Scores of gentlemen have, at different times, expressed to me their surprise that I was "always in spirits; that nothing pulled me down;" and the truth is, that throughout nearly forty years of troubles, losses, and crosses, assailed all the while by numerous and powerful enemies, and performing, at the same time, greater mental labors than man ever before performed; all those labors requiring mental exertion, and some of them mental exertion of the highest order, I have never known a single hour of real anxiety; the troubles have been no troubles to me; I have not known what lowness of spirits meant; and have been more gay, and felt less care than any bachelor that ever lived. "You are always in spirits!" To be sure, for why should I not be so? Poverty, I have always set at defiance, and I could, therefore, defy the temptations to riches; and as to home and children, I had taken care to provide myself with an inexhaustible store of that "sobriety" which I so strongly recommend to others.

'This sobriety is a title to trustworthiness; and this, young man, is the treasure that you ought to prize above all others. Miserable is the husband who, when he crosses the threshold of his house, carries with him doubts, and fears, and suspicions. I do not mean suspicions of the fidelity of his wife; but of her care, frugality, attention to his interests, and to the health and morals of his children. Miserable is the man who cannot leave all unlocked; and who is not sure, quite certain, that all is as safe as if grasped in his own hand.

'He is the happy husband who can go away at a moment's warning, leaving his house and family with as little anxiety as he quits an inn, no more fearing to find, on his return, any thing wrong, than he would fear a discontinuance of the rising and setting of the sun; and if, as in my case, leaving books and papers all lying about at sixes and sevens, finding them arranged in proper order, and the room, during the lucky interval, freed from the effects of his and his ploughman's or gardener's dirty shoes. Such a man has no real cares—no troubles; and this is the sort of life I have led. I have had all the numerous and indescribable delights of home and children, and at the same time, all the bachelor's freedom from domestic cares.

'But in order to possess this precious trustworthiness, you must, if you can, exercise your reason in the choice of your partner. If she be vain of her person, very fond of dress, fond of flattery at all, given to gadding about, fond of what are called parties of pleasure, or coquetish, though in the least degree,—she will never be trustworthy; she cannot change her nature; and if you marry her, you will be unjust, if you expect trustworthiness at her hands. But on the other hand, if you find in her that innate sobriety of which I have been speaking, there is required on your part, and that at once, too, confidence and trust without any limit. Confidence in this case is nothing, unless it be reciprocal. To have a trustworthy wife, you must begin by showing her, even before marriage, that you have no suspicions, fears, or doubts in regard to her. Many a man has been discarded by a virtuous girl, merely on account of his querulous conduct. All women despise jealous men, and if they marry them, their motive is other than that of affection.'

There is a tendency, in our very natures, to become what we are taken to be. Beware then of suspicion or jealousy, lest you produce the very thing which you most dread. The evil results of suspicion and jealousy whether in single or married, public or private life, may be seen by the following fact.

A certain professional gentleman had the misfortune to possess a suspicious temper. He had not a better friend on the earth than Mr. C., yet by some unaccountable whim or other, he began of a sudden to suspect he was his enemy;—and what was at first at the farthest possible remove from the truth, ultimately grew to be a reality. Had it not have been for his jealousy, Mr. C. might have been to this hour one of the doctor's warmest and most confidential friends, instead of being removed—and in a great measure through his influence—from a useful field of labor.

'Let any man observe as I frequently have,' says the writer last quoted, 'with delight, the excessive fondness of the laboring people for their children. Let him observe with what care they dress them out on Sundays with means deducted from their own scanty meals. Let him observe the husband, who has toiled, like his horse, all the week, nursing the babe, while the wife is preparing dinner. Let him observe them both abstaining from a sufficiency, lest the children should feel the pinchings of hunger. Let him observe, in short, the whole of their demeanor, the real mutual affection evinced, not in words, but in unequivocal deeds.

'Let him observe these things, and having then cast a look at the lives of the great and wealthy, he will say, with me, that when a man is choosing his partner for life, the dread of poverty ought to be cast to the winds. A laborer's cottage in a cleanly condition; the husband or wife having a babe in arms, looking at two or three older ones, playing between the flower borders, going from the wicket to the door, is, according to my taste, the most interesting object that eyes ever beheld; and it is an object to be seen in no country on earth but England.'

It happens, however, that the writer had not seen all the countries upon earth, nor even all in the interior of United America. There are as moving instances of native simplicity and substantial happiness here as in any other country; and occasionally in even the higher classes. The wife of a distinguished lawyer and senator in Congress, never left the society of her own children, to go for once to see her friends abroad, in eleven years! I am not defending the conduct of the husband who would doom his wife to imprisonment in his own house, even amid a happy group of children, for eleven years; but the example shows, at least, that there are women fitted for domestic life in other countries besides England.

Ardent young men may fear that great sobriety in a young woman argues a want of that warmth which they naturally so much desire and approve. But observation and experience attest to the contrary. They tell us that levity is ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the companion of a want of ardent feeling. But the licentious never love. Their passion is chiefly animal. Even better women, if they possess light and frivolous minds, have seldom any ardent passion.

I would not, however, recommend that you should be too severe in judging, when the conduct does not go beyond mere levity, and is not bordering on loose conduct; for something certainly depends here on constitution and animal spirits, and something on the manners of the country.

If any person imagine that the sobriety I have been recommending would render young women moping or gloomy, he is much mistaken, for the contrary is the fact. I have uniformly found—and I began to observe it in my very childhood—that your jovial souls, men or women, except when over the bottle, are of all human beings the most dull and insipid. They can no more exist—they may vegetate—but they can no more live without some excitement, than a fish could live on the top of the Alleghany. If it be not the excitement of the bottle, it must be that of the tea or the coffee cup, or food converted into some unwholesome form or other by condiments; or if it be none of these, they must have some excitement of the intellect, for intemperance is not confined to the use of condiments and poisons for the body; there are condiments and poisons to mind and heart. In fact, they usually accompany each other.

Show me a person who cannot live on plain and simple food and the only drink the Creator ever made, and as a general rule you will show me a person to whom the plain and the solid and the useful in domestic, social, intellectual, and moral life are insipid if not disgusting. 'They are welcome to all that sort of labor,' said one of these creatures—not rationals—this very day, to me, in relation to plain domestic employments.—Show me a female, as many, alas! very many in fashionable life are now trained, and you show me a person who has none of the qualities that fit her to be a help meet for man in a life of simplicity. She could recite well at the high school, no doubt; but the moment she leaves school, she has nothing to do, and is taught to do nothing. I have seen girls, of this description, and they may be seen by others.

But what is such a female—one who can hardly help herself—good for, at home or abroad; married, or single? The moment she has not some feast, or party, or play, or novel, or—I know not what—something to keep up a fever, the moment I say that she has not something of this sort to anticipate or enjoy, that moment she is miserable. Wo to the young man who becomes wedded for life to a creature of this description. She may stay at home, for want of a better place, and she may add one to the national census every ten years, but a companion, or a mother, she cannot be.

I should dislike a moping melancholy creature as much as any man, though were I tied to such a thing, I could live with her; but I never could enjoy her society, nor but half of my own. He is but half a man who is thus wedded, and will exclaim, in a literal sense, 'When shall I be delivered from the body of this death?'

One hour, an animal of this sort is moping, especially if nobody but her husband is present; the next hour, if others happen to be present, she has plenty of smiles; the next she is giggling or capering about; and the next singing to the motion of a lazy needle, or perhaps weeping over a novel. And this is called sentiment! She is a woman of feeling and good taste!

7. INDUSTRY.

Let not the individual whose eye catches the word industry, at the beginning of this division of my subject, condemn me as degrading females to the condition of mere wheels in a machine for money-making; for I mean no such thing. There is nothing more abhorrent to the soul of a sensible man than female avarice. The 'spirit of a man' may sustain him, while he sees avaricious and miserly individuals among his own sex, though the sight is painful enough, even here; but a female miser, 'who can bear?'

Still if woman is intended to be a 'help meet,' for the other sex, I know of no reason why she should not be so in physical concerns, as well as mental and moral. I know not by what rule it is that many resolve to remain for ever in celibacy, unless they believe their companion can 'support' them, without labor. I have sometimes even doubted whether any person who makes these declarations can be sincere. Yet when I hear people, of both sexes, speak of poverty as a greater calamity than death, I am led to think that this dread of poverty does really exist among both sexes. And there are reasons for believing that some females, bred in fashionable life, look forward to matrimony as a state, of such entire exemption from care and labor, and of such uninterrupted ease, that they would prefer celibacy and even death to those duties which scripture, and reason, and common sense, appear to me to enjoin.

Such persons, whatever may be their other qualifications, I call upon every young man to avoid, as he would a pestilence. If they are really determined to live and act as mere drones in society, let them live alone. Do not give them an opportunity to spread the infection of so wretched a disease, if you can honestly help it.

The woman who does not actually prefer action to inaction—industry to idleness—labor to ease—and who does not steadfastly resolve to labor moderately as long as she lives, whatever may be her circumstances, is unfit for life, social or domestic. It is not for me to say, in what form her labor shall be applied, except in rearing the young. But labor she ought—all she is able—while life and health lasts, at something or other; or she ought not to complain if she suffers the natural penalty; and she ought to do it with cheerfulness.

I like much the quaint remark of a good old lady of ninety. She was bred to labor, had labored through the whole of her long and eventful life, and was still at her 'wheel.' 'Why,' said she, 'people ought to strain every nerve to get property, as a matter of Christian duty.'

I should choose to modify this old lady's remark, and say that, people ought to do all they can without straining their muscles or nerves; not to get property, but because it is at once, their duty and their happiness.

The great object of life is to do good. The great object of society is to increase the power to good. Both sexes should aim, in matrimony, at a more extended sphere of usefulness. To increase an estate, merely, is a low and unworthy aim, from which may God preserve the rising generation. Still I must say, that I greatly prefer the avaricious being—a monster though she might be—to the stupid soul who would not lift a finger if she could help it, and who determines to fold her arms whenever she has a convenient opportunity.

If a female be lazy, there will be lazy domestics, and, what is a great deal worse, children will acquire this habit. Every thing, however necessary to be done, will be put off to the last moment, and then it will be done badly, and, in many cases, not at all. The dinner will be too late; the journey or the visit will be tardy; inconveniences of all sorts will be continually arising. There will always be a heavy arrear of things unperformed; and this, even among the most wealthy, is a great evil; for if they have no business imposed upon them by necessity, they make business for themselves. Life would be intolerable without it; and therefore an indolent woman must always be an evil, be her rank or station what it may.

But, who is to tell whether a girl will make an industrious woman? How is the pur-blind lover especially, to be able to ascertain whether she, whose smiles and dimples and bewitching lips have half bereft him of his senses; how is he to be able to judge, from any thing that he can see, whether the beloved object will be industrious or lazy? Why, it is very difficult; it is a matter that reason has very little to do with. Still there are indications which enable a man, not wholly deprived of the use of his reason, to form a pretty accurate judgment in this matter.

It was a famous story some years ago, that a young man, who was courting one of three sisters, happened to be on a visit to her, when all the three were present, and when one said to the others, 'I wonder where our needle is.' Upon which he withdrew, as soon as was consistent with the rules of politeness, resolving to think no more of a girl who possessed a needle only in partnership, and who, it appeared, was not too well informed as to the place where even that share was deposited.

This was, to be sure, a very flagrant instance of a want of industry; for, if the third part of the use of a needle satisfied her, when single, it was reasonable to anticipate that marriage would banish that useful implement altogether. But such instances are seldom suffered to come in contact with the eyes and ears of the lover. There are, however, as I have already said, certain rules, which, if attended to with care, will serve as pretty sure guides.

And, first, if you find the tongue lazy, you may be nearly certain that the hands and feet are not very industrious. By laziness of the tongue I do not mean silence; but, I mean, a slow and soft utterance; a sort of sighing out of the words, instead of speaking them; a sort of letting the sounds fall out, as if the party were sick at stomach. The pronunciation of an industrious person is generally quick, and distinct; the voice, if not strong, firm at the least. Not masculine, but as feminine as possible; not a croak nor a bawl, but a quick, distinct, and sound voice.

One writer insists that the motion of those little members of the body, the teeth, are very much in harmony with the operations of the mind; and a very observing gentleman assures me that he can judge pretty accurately of the temper, and indeed of the general character of a child, by his manner of eating. And I have no doubt of the fact. Nothing is more obvious than that the temper of the child who is so greedy as to swallow down his food habitually, without masticating it, must be very different from that of him who habitually eats slowly. Hunger, I know, will quicken the jaws in either case, but I am supposing them on an equal footing in this respect.

Another mark of industry is, a quick step, and a somewhat heavy tread, showing that the foot comes down with a hearty good will. If the body lean a little forward, and the eyes keep steadily in the same direction, while the feet are going, so much the better, for these discover earnestness to arrive at the intended point. I do not like, and I never liked, your sauntering, soft-stepping girls, who move as if they were perfectly indifferent as to the result. And, as to the love part of the story, who ever expects ardent and lasting affection from one of these sauntering girls, will, when too late, find his mistake. The character is much the same throughout; and probably no man ever yet saw a sauntering girl, who did not, when married, make an indifferent wife, and a cold-hearted mother; cared very little for, either by husband or children; and, of course, having no store of those blessings which are the natural resources to apply to in sickness and in old age.

8. EARLY RISING.

Early rising is another mark of industry; and though, in the higher stations of life, it may be of no importance in a mere pecuniary point of view, it is, even there, of importance in other respects; for it is rather difficult to keep love alive towards a woman who never sees the dew, never beholds the rising sun, and who constantly comes directly from a reeking bed to the breakfast table, and there chews, without appetite, the choicest morsels of human food. A man might, perhaps, endure this for a month or two, without being disgusted; but not much longer.

As to people in the middle rank of life, where a living and a provision for children is to be sought by labor of some sort or other, late rising in the wife is certain ruin; and rarely will you find an early-rising wife, who had been a late-rising girl. If brought up to late rising, she will like it; it will be her habit; she will, when married, never want excuses for indulging in the habit. At first she will be indulged without bounds; and to make a change afterwards will be difficult, for it will be deemed a wrong done to her; she will ascribe it to diminished affection. A quarrel must ensue, or, the husband must submit to be ruined, or, at the very least, to see half the fruit of his labor snored and lounged away.

And, is this being unreasonably harsh or severe upon woman? By no means. It arises from an ardent desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate, and salutary influence of the female sex. The tendency of this advice is to promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration of their beauty; to cause them to be loved to the last day of their lives; and to give them, during the whole of those lives, that weight and consequence, and respect, of which laziness would render them wholly unworthy.

9. FRUGALITY.

This means the contrary of extravagance. It does not mean stinginess; it does not mean pinching; but it means an abstaining from all unnecessary expenditure, and all unnecessary use of goods of any and of every sort. It is a quality of great importance, whether the rank in life be high or low.

Some people are, indeed, so rich, they have such an over-abundance of money and goods, that how to get rid of them would, to a spectator, seem to be their only difficulty. How many individuals of fine estates, have been ruined and degraded by the extravagance of their wives! More frequently by their own extravagance, perhaps; but, in numerous instances, by that of those whose duty it is to assist in upholding their stations by husbanding their fortunes.

If this be the case amongst the opulent, who have estates to draw upon, what must be the consequences of a want of frugality in the middle and lower ranks of life? Here it must be fatal, and especially among that description of persons whose wives have, in many cases, the receiving as well as the expending of money. In such a case, there wants nothing but extravagance in the wife to make ruin as inevitable as the arrival of old age.

To obtain security against this is very difficult; yet, if the lover be not quite blind, he may easily discover a propensity towards extravagance. The object of his addresses will, nine times out of ten, never be the manager of a house; but she must have her dress, and other little matters under her control. If she be costly in these; if, in these, she step above her rank, or even to the top of it; if she purchase all she is able to purchase, and prefer the showy to the useful, the gay and the fragile to the less sightly and more durable, he may be sure that the disposition will cling to her through life. If he perceive in her a taste for costly food, costly furniture, costly amusements: if he find her love of gratification to be bounded only by her want of means; if he find her full of admiration of the trappings of the rich, and of desire to be able to imitate them, he may be pretty sure that she will not spare his purse, when once she gets her hand into it; and, therefore, if he can bid adieu to her charms, the sooner he does it, the better.

Some of the indications of extravagance in a lady are ear-rings, broaches, bracelets, buckles, necklaces, diamonds, (real or mock,) and nearly all the ornaments which women put upon their persons.

These things may be more proper in palaces, or in scenes resembling palaces; but, when they make their appearance amongst people in the middle rank of life, where, after all, they only serve to show that poverty in the parties which they wish to disguise; when the mean, tawdry things make their appearance in this rank of life, they are the sure indications of a disposition that will always be straining at what it can never attain.

To marry a girl of this disposition is really self-destruction. You never can have either property or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she will want a gig: earn the gig, she will want a chariot: get her that, she will long for a coach and four: and, from stage to stage, she will torment you to the end of her or your days; for, still there will be somebody with a finer equipage than you can give her; and, as long as this is the case, you will never have rest. Reason would tell her, that she could never be at the top; that she must stop at some point short of that; and that, therefore, all expenses in the rivalship are so much thrown away. But, reason and broaches and bracelets seldom go in company. The girl who has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured and not beautified by parcels of brass and tin, or even gold and silver, as well to regret, if she dare not oppose the tyranny of absurd fashions, is not entitled to a full measure of the confidence of any individual.

10. PERSONAL NEATNESS.

There never yet was, and there never will be sincere and ardent love, of long duration, where personal neatness is wholly neglected. I do not say that there are not those who would live peaceably and even contentedly in these circumstances. But what I contend for is this: that there never can exist, for any length of time, ardent affection, in any man towards a woman who neglects neatness, either in her person, or in her house affairs.

Men may be careless as to their own person; they may, from the nature of their business, or from their want of time to adhere to neatness in dress, be slovenly in their own dress and habits; but, they do not relish this in their wives, who must still have charms; and charms and neglect of the person seldom go together. I do not, of course, approve of it even in men.

We may, indeed, lay it down as a rule of almost universal application, that supposing all other things to be equal, he who is most guilty of personal neglect; will be the most ignorant and the most vicious. Why there should be, universally, a connection between slovenliness, ignorance, and vice, is a question I have no room in this work to discuss.

I am well acquainted with one whole family who neglect their persons from principle. The gentleman, who is a sort of new light in religious concerns, will tell you that the true Christian should 'slight the hovel, as beneath his care.' But there is a want of intelligence, and even common refinement in the family, that certainly does not and cannot add much to their own happiness, or recommend religion—aside from the fact that it greatly annoys their neighbors. And though the head of the family observes many external duties with Jewish strictness, neither he nor any of its members are apt to bridle their tongues, or remember that on ordinary as well as special occasions they are bound to 'do all to the glory of God.' As to the connection of mind with matter—I mean the dependence of mind and soul on body, they are wholly ignorant.

It is not dress that the husband wants to be perpetual: it is not finery; but cleanliness in every thing. Women generally dress enough, especially when they go abroad. This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that a husband wants: he wants it always; in-doors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor as well as on the table; and, however he may complain about the trouble and the 'expense' of it, he would complain more if it were neglected.

The indications of female neatness are, first, a clean skin. The hands and face will usually be clean, to be sure, if there be soap and water within reach; but if on observing other parts of the head besides the face, you make discoveries indicating a different character, the sooner you cease your visits the better. I hope, now, that no young woman who may chance to see this book, will be offended at this, and think me too severe on her sex. I am only telling that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who reads this, shall find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, let her take the hint, and correct the defect.

In the dress, you can, amongst rich people, find little whereon to form a judgment as to cleanliness, because they have not only the dress prepared for them, but put upon them into the bargain. But, in the middle ranks of life, the dress is a good criterion in two respects: first, as to its color; for if the white be a sort of yellow, cleanly hands would have been at work to prevent that. A white-yellow cravat, or shirt, on a man, speaks at once the character of his wife; and, you may be assured, that she will not take with your dress pains which she has never taken with her own.

Then, the manner of putting on the dress, is no bad foundation for judging. If this be careless, and slovenly, if it do not fit properly,—no matter for its mean quality; mean as it may be, it may be neatly and trimly put on—if it be slovenly put on, I say, take care of yourself; for, you will soon find to your cost, that a sloven in one thing, is a sloven in all things. The plainer people, judge greatly from the state of the covering of the ankles; and, if that be not clean and tight, they conclude that the rest is not as it ought to be. Look at the shoes! If they be trodden on one side, loose on the foot, or run down at the heel, it is a very bad sign; and as to going slipshod, though at coming down in the morning, and even before daylight, make up your mind to a rope, rather than live with a slipshod woman.

How much do women lose by inattention to these matters! Men, in general, say nothing about it to their wives, but they think about it; they envy their more lucky neighbors, and in numerous cases, consequences the most serious arise from this apparently trifling cause. Beauty is valuable; it is one of the ties, and a strong one too; but it cannot last to old age; whereas the charm of cleanliness never ends but with life itself. It has been said that the sweetest flowers, when they really become putrid, are the most offensive. So the most beautiful woman, if found with an uncleansed skin, is, in my estimation, the most disagreeable.

11. A GOOD TEMPER.

This is a very difficult thing to ascertain beforehand. Smiles are cheap; they are easily put on for the occasion; and, besides, the frowns are, according to the lover's whim, interpreted into the contrary. By 'good temper,' I do not mean an easy temper, a serenity which nothing disturbs; for that is a mark of laziness. Sullenness, if you be not too blind to perceive it, is a temper to be avoided by all means. A sullen man is bad enough; what, then, must be a sullen woman, and that woman a wife; a constant inmate, a companion day and night! Only think of the delight of setting at the same table, and occupying the same chamber, for a week, without exchanging a word all the while! Very bad to be scolding for such a length of time; but this is far better than 'the sulks.'

But if you have your eyes, and look sharp, you will discover symptoms of this, if it unhappily exist. She will, at some time or other, show it towards some one or other of the family; or, perhaps, towards yourself; and you may be quite sure that, in this respect, marriage will not mend her. Sullenness arises from capricious displeasure not founded in reason. The party takes offence unjustifiably; is unable to frame a complaint, and therefore expresses displeasure by silence. The remedy for it is, to suffer it to take its full swing, but it is better not to have the disease in your house; and to be married to it, is little short of madness.

Querulousness is a great fault. No man, and, especially, no woman, likes to hear a continual plaintiveness. That she complain, and roundly complain, of your want of punctuality, of your coolness, of your neglect, of your liking the company of others: these are all very well, more especially as they are frequently but too just. But an everlasting complaining, without rhyme or reason, is a bad sign. It shows want of patience, and, indeed, want of sense.

But the contrary of this, a cold indifference, is still worse. 'When will you come again? You can never find time to come here. You like any company better than mine.' These, when groundless, are very teasing, and demonstrate a disposition too full of anxiousness; but, from a girl who always receives you with the same civil smile, lets you, at your own good pleasure, depart with the same; and who, when you take her by the hand, holds her cold fingers as straight as sticks, I should say, in mercy, preserve me!

Pertinacity is a very bad thing in anybody, and especially in a young woman; and it is sure to increase in force with the age of the party. To have the last word, is a poor triumph; but with some people it is a species of disease of the mind. In a wife it must be extremely troublesome; and, if you find an ounce of it in the maid, it will become a pound in the wife. A fierce disputer is a most disagreeable companion; and where young women thrust their say into conversations carried on by older persons, give their opinions in a positive manner, and court a contest of the tongue, those must be very bold men who will encounter them as wives.

Still, of all the faults as to temper, your melancholy ladies have the worst, unless you have the same mental disease yourself. Many wives are, at times, misery-makers; but these carry it on as a regular trade. They are always unhappy about something, either past, present, or to come. Both arms full of children is a pretty efficient remedy in most cases; but, if these ingredients be wanting, a little want, a little real trouble, a little genuine affliction, often will effect a cure.

12. ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

By accomplishments, I mean those things, which are usually comprehended in what is termed a useful and polite education. Now it is not unlikely that the fact of my adverting to this subject so late, may lead to the opinion that I do not set a proper estimate on this female qualification.

But it is not so. Probably few set too high an estimate upon it. Its absolute importance has, I am confident, been seldom overrated. It is true I do not like a bookish woman better than a bookish man; especially a great devourer of that most contemptible species of books with whose burden the press daily groans: I mean novels. But mental cultivation, and even what is called polite learning, along with the foregoing qualifications, are a most valuable acquisition, and make every female, as well as all her associates, doubly happy. It is only when books, and music, and a taste for the fine arts are substituted for other and more important things, that they should be allowed to change love or respect to disgust.

It sometimes happens, I know, that two persons are, in this respect, pretty equally yoked. But what of that? It only makes each party twofold more the child of misfortune than before. I have known a couple of intelligent persons who would sit with their 'feet in the ashes,' as it were, all day, to read some new and bewitching book, forgetting every want of the body; perhaps even forgetting that they had bodies. Were they therefore happy, or likely to be so?

Drawing, music, embroidery, (and I might mention half a dozen other things of the same class) where they do not exclude the more useful and solid matters, may justly be regarded as appropriate branches of female education; and in some circumstances and conditions of life, indispensable. Music,—vocal and instrumental—and drawing, to a certain extent, seem to me desirable in all. As for dancing, I do not feel quite competent to decide. As the world is, however, I am almost disposed to reject it altogether. At any rate, if a young lady is accomplished in every other respect, you need not seriously regret that she has not attended to dancing, especially as it is conducted in most of our schools.

CHAPTER VII.

Criminal Behavior.

Section I. Inconstancy and Seduction.

In nineteen cases out of twenty, of illicit conduct, there is perhaps, no seduction at all; the passion, the absence of virtue, and the crime, being all mutual. But there are cases of a very different description. Where a young man goes coolly and deliberately to work, first to gain and rivet the affections of a young lady, then to take advantage of those affections to accomplish that which he knows must be her ruin, and plunge her into misery for life;—when a young man does this, I say he must be either a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of the name of man, or he must have a heart little inferior, in point of obduracy, to that of the murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let them be well aware, that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology can possibly avail them. Their character is not solely theirs, but belongs, in part, to their family and kindred. They may, in the case contemplated, be objects of compassion with the world; but what contrition, what repentance, what remorse, what that even the tenderest benevolence can suggest, is to heal the wounded hearts of humbled, disgraced, but still affectionate parents, brethren, and sisters?

In the progress of an intimate acquaintance, should it be discovered that there are certain traits of character in one of the parties, which both are fully convinced will be a source of unhappiness, through life, there may be no special impropriety in separating. And yet even then I would say, avoid haste. Better consider for an hour than repent for a year, or for life. But let it be remembered, that before measures of this kind are even hinted at, there must be a full conviction of their necessity, and the mutual and hearty concurrence of both parties. Any steps of this kind, the reasons for which are not fully understood on both sides, and mutually satisfactory, as well as easily explicable to those friends who have a right to inquire on the subject, are criminal;—nay more; they are brutal.

I have alluded to indirect promises of marriage, because I conceive that the frequent opinion among young men that nothing is binding but a direct promise, in so many words, is not only erroneous, but highly dishonorable to those who hold it. The strongest pledges are frequently given without the interchange of words. Actions speak louder than words; and there is an attachment sometimes formed, and a confidence reposed, which would be, in effect, weakened by formalities. The man who would break a silent engagement, merely because it is a silent one, especially when he has taken a course of conduct which he knew would be likely to result in such engagement, and which perhaps he even designed, is deserving of the public contempt. He is even a monster unfit to live in decent society.

But there are such monsters on the earth's surface. There are individuals to be found, who boast of their inhuman depredations on those whom it ought to be their highest happiness to protect and aid, rather than injure. They can witness, almost without emotion, the heavings of a bosom rent with pangs which themselves have inflicted. They can behold their unoffending victim, as unmoved as one who views a philosophical experiment;—not expiring, it is true, but despoiled of what is vastly dearer to her than life—her reputation. They can witness all this, I say, without emotion, and without a single compunction of conscience. And yet they go on, sometimes with apparent prosperity and inward peace. At any rate, they live. No lightning blasts them; no volcano pours over them its floods of lava; no earthquake engulfs them. They are permitted to fill up the measure of their wickedness. Perhaps they riot in ease, and become bloated with luxury. But let this description of beings—men I am almost afraid to call them—remember that punishment, though long deferred, cannot be always evaded. A day of retribution must and will arrive. For though they may not be visited by what a portion of the community call special 'judgments,' yet their punishment is not the less certain. The wretch who can commit the crime to which I have referred, against a fellow being, and sport with those promises, which, whether direct or indirect, are of all things earthly among the most sacred, will not, unless he repents, rest here. He will go on from step to step in wickedness. He will harden himself against every sensibility to the woes of others, till he becomes a fiend accursed, and whether on this side of the grave, or the other, cannot but be completely miserable. A single sin may not always break in upon habits of virtue so as to ruin an individual at once; but the vices go in gangs, or companies. One admitted and indulged, and the whole gang soon follow. And misery must follow sin, at a distance more or less near, as inevitably as a stone falls to the ground, or the needle points to the pole.

Some young men reason thus with themselves. If doubts about the future have already risen—if my affections already begin to waver at times—what is not to be expected after marriage? And is it not better to separate, even without a mutual concurrence, than to make others, perhaps many others, unhappy for life?

In reply, I would observe, in the first place, that though this is the usual reason which is assigned in such cases, it is not generally the true one. The fact is, the imagination is suffered to wander where it ought not; and the affections are not guarded and restrained, and confined to their proper object. And if there be a diminution of attachment, it is not owing to any change in others, but in ourselves. If our affection has become less ardent, let us look within, for the cause. Shall others suffer for our own fault?

But, secondly, we may do much to control the affections, even after they have begun to wander. We still seek the happiness of the object of our choice, more, perhaps, than that of any other individual. Then let us make it our constant study to promote it. It is a law of our natures, as irrevocable as that of the attraction of gravitation, that doing good to others produces love to them. And for myself I do not believe the affections of a young man can diminish towards one whose happiness he is constantly studying to promote by every means in his power, admitting there is no obvious change in her character. So that no young person of principle ought ever to anticipate any such result.

Nor has a man any right to sport with the affections of a young woman, in any way whatever. Vanity is generally the tempter in this case; a desire to be regarded as being admired by the women; a very despicable species of vanity, but frequently greatly mischievous, notwithstanding. You do not, indeed, actually, in so many words, promise to marry; but the general tenor of your language and deportment has that meaning; you know that your meaning is so understood; and if you have not such meaning; if you be fixed by some previous engagement with, or greater liking for another; if you know you are here sowing the seeds of disappointment; and if you persevere, in spite of the admonitions of conscience, you are guilty of deliberate deception, injustice and cruelty. You make to God an ungrateful return for those endowments which have enabled you to achieve this inglorious and unmanly triumph; and if, as is frequently the case, you glory in such triumph, you may have person, riches, talents to excite envy; but every just and humane man will abhor your heart.

The most direct injury against the spiritual nature of a fellow being is, by leading him into vice. I have heard one young man, who was entrusted six days in the week to form the immortal minds and hearts of a score or two of his fellow beings, deliberately boast of the number of the other sex he had misled. What can be more base? And must not a terrible retribution await such Heaven daring miscreants? Whether they accomplish their purposes by solicitation, by imposing on the judgment, or by powerful compulsion, the wrong is the same, or at least of the same nature; and nothing but timely and hearty repentance can save a wretch of this description from punishment, either here or hereafter.

'Some tempers,' says Burgh, (for nothing can be more in point than his own words) 'are so impotently ductile, that they can refuse nothing to repeated solicitation. Whoever takes the advantage of such persons is guilty of the lowest baseness. Yet nothing is more common than for the debauched part of our sex to show their heroism by a poor triumph, over weak, easy, thoughtless woman!—Nothing is more frequent than to hear them boast of the ruin of that virtue, of which they ought to have been the defenders. "Poor fool! she loved me, and therefore could refuse me nothing."—Base coward! Dost thou boast of thy conquest over one, who, by thy own confession, was disabled for resistance,—disabled by her affection for thy worthless self! Does affection deserve such a return Is superior understanding, or rather deeper craft, to be used against thoughtless simplicity, and its shameful success to be boasted of? Dost thou pride thyself that thou hast had art enough to decoy the harmless lamb to thy hand, that thou mightest shed its blood?'

And yet there are such monsters as Burgh alludes to. There are just such beings scattered up and down even the fairest portions of the world we live in, to mar its beauty. We may hope, for the honor of human nature, they are few. He who can bring himself to believe their number to be as great as one in a thousand, may well be disposed to blush

'And hang his head, to own himself a man.'

I have sometimes wished these beings—men they are not—would reflect, if it were but for one short moment. They will not deny the excellency of the golden rule, of doing to others as they wish others to do by themselves. I say they will not deny it, in theory; why then should they despise it in practice?

Let them think a moment. Let them imagine themselves in the place of the injured party. Could this point be gained; could they be induced to reflect long enough to see the enormity of their guilt as it really is, or as the Father in heaven may be supposed to see it, there might be hope in their case. Or if they find it difficult to view themselves as the injured, let them suppose, rather, a sister or a daughter. What seducer is so lost to all natural affection as not to have his whole soul revolt at the bare thought of having a beloved daughter experience the treatment which he has inflicted? Yet the being whom he has ruined had brothers or parents; and those brothers had a sister; and those parents a daughter!

Section II. Licentiousness.

I wish it were in my power to finish my remarks in this place, without feeling that I had made an important omission. But such is the tendency of human nature, especially in the case of the young and ardent, to turn the most valuable blessings conferred on man into curses,—and poison, at their very sources, the purest streams of human felicity,—that it will be necessary to advert briefly but plainly to some of the most frequent forms of youthful irregularity.

Large cities and thinly settled places are the extremes of social life. Here, of course, vice will be found in its worst forms. It is more difficult to say which extreme is worst, among an equal number of individuals; but probably the city; for in the country, vice is oftener solitary, and less frequently social; while in the city it is not only social but also solitary.

A well informed gentleman from New Orleans, of whose own virtue by the way, I have not the highest confidence, expressed, lately the strongest apprehension that the whole race of young men in our cities, of the present generation, will be ruined. Others have assured me that in the more northern cities, the prospect is little, if any, more favorable.

It is to be regretted that legislators have not found out the means of abolishing those haunts in cities which might be appropriately termed schools of licentiousness, and thus diminishing an aggregate of temptation already sufficiently large. But the vices, like their votaries, go in companies. Until, therefore, the various haunts of intemperance in eating and drinking, and of gambling and stage-playing, can be broken up, it may be considered vain to hope for the disappearance of those sties of pollution which are their almost inevitable results. We might as well think of drying up the channel of a mighty river, while the fountains which feed it continue to flow as usual.

There is now in Pennsylvania,—it seems unnecessary to name the place—a man thirty-five years old, with all the infirmities of 'three score and ten.' Yet his premature old age, his bending and tottering form, wrinkled face, and hoary head, might be traced to solitary and social licentiousness.

This man is not alone. There are thousands in every city who are going the same road; some with slow and cautious steps, others with a fearful rapidity. Thousands of youth on whom high expectations have been placed, are already on the highway that will probably lead down to disease and premature death.

Could the multitude of once active, sprightly, and promising young men, whose souls detested open vice, and who, without dreaming of danger, only found their way occasionally to a lottery office, and still more rarely to the theatre or the gambling house, until led on step by step they ventured down those avenues which lead to the chambers of death, from which few ever return, and none uninjured;—could the multitudes of such beings, which in the United States alone, (though admitted to be the paradise of the world,) have gone down to infamy through licentiousness, be presented to our view, at once, how would it strike us with horror! Their very numbers would astonish us, but how much more their appearance! I am supposing them to appear as they went to the graves, in their bloated and disfigured faces, their emaciated and tottering frames, bending at thirty years of age under the appearance of three or four score; diseased externally and internally; and positively disgusting,—not only to the eye, but to some of the other senses.

One such monster is enough to fill the soul of those who are but moderately virtuous with horror; what then would be the effect of beholding thousands? In view of such a scene, is there a young man in the world, who would not form the strongest resolution not to enter upon a road which ends in wo so remediless?

But it should be remembered that these thousands were once the friends—the children, the brothers,—yes, sometimes the nearer relatives of other thousands. They had parents, sisters, brothers; sometimes (would it were not true) wives and infants. Suppose the young man whom temptation solicits, were not only to behold the wretched thousands already mentioned, but the many more thousands of dear relatives mourning their loss;—not by death, for that were tolerable—but by an everlasting destruction from the presence of all purity or excellence. Would he not shrink back from the door which he was about to enter, ashamed and aghast, and resolve in the strength of his Creator, never more to indulge a thought of a crime so disastrous in its consequences?

And let every one remember that the army of ruined immortals which have been here presented to the imagination, is by no means a mere fancy sketch. There is a day to come which will disclose a scene of which I have given but a faint picture. For though the thousands who have thus destroyed their own bodies and souls, with their agonized friends and relatives, are scattered among several millions of their fellow citizens, and, for a time, not a few of them elude the public gaze, yet their existence is much a reality, as if they were assembled in one place.

'All this,' it may be said, 'I have often heard, and it may be true. But it does not apply to me. I am in no danger. You speak of a path, I have never entered; or if I have ever done so, I have no idea of returning to it, habitually. I know my own strength; how far to go, and when and where to stop.'

But is there one of all the miserable, in the future world, who did not once think the same? Is there one among the thousands who have thus ruined themselves and those who had been as dear to them as themselves, that did not once feel a proud consciousness that he 'knew his own strength?' Yet now where is he?

Beware, then. Take not the first step. Nay, indulge not for an instant, the thought of a first step. Here you are safe. Every where else is danger. Take one step, and the next is more easy; the temptation harder to resist.

Do you call this preaching? Be it so then. I feel, and deeply too, that your immortal minds, those gems which were created to sparkle and shine in the firmament of heaven, are in danger of having their lustre for ever tarnished, and their brightness everlastingly hid beneath a thicker darkness than that which once covered the land of Egypt.

C. S. was educated by New England parents, in one of the most flourishing of New England villages. He was all that anxious friends could hope or desire; all that a happy community could love and esteem. As he rose to manhood he evinced a full share of 'Yankee' activity and enterprise. Some of the youth in the neighborhood were traders to the southern States, and C. concluded to try his fortune among the rest.

He was furnished with two excellent horses and a wagon, and every thing necessary to ensure success. His theatre of action was the low country of Virginia and North Carolina, and his head-quarters, N——, whither he used to return after an excursion of a month or six week, to spend a few days in that dissipated village.

Young C. gradually yielded to the temptations which the place afforded. First, he engaged in occasional 'drinking bouts,' next in gaming; lastly, he frequented a house of ill fame. This was about the year 1819.

At the end of the year 1820, I saw him, but—now changed! The eye that once beamed with health, and vigor, and cheerfulness, was now dimmed and flattened. The countenance which once shone with love and good-will to man, was pale and suspicious, or occasionally suffused with stagnant, and sickly, and crimson streams. The teeth, which were once as white as ivory, were now blackened by the use of poisonous medicine, given to counteract a still more poisonous and loathsome disease. The frame, which had once been as erect as the stately cedar of Lebanon, was, at the early age of thirty, beginning to bend as with years. The voice, which once spoke forth the sentiments of a soul of comparative purity, now not unfrequently gave vent to the licentious song, the impure jest, and the most shocking oaths, and heaven-daring impiety and blasphemy. The hands which were once like the spirit within, were now not unfrequently joined in the dance, with the vilest of the vile!

I looked, too, at his external circumstances Once he had friends whom he loved to see, and from whom he was glad to hear. Now it was a matter of indifference both to him and them whether they ever saw each other. The hopes of parents, and especially of 'her that bare him' were laid in the dust; and to the neighborhood of which he had once been the pride and the ornament, he was fast becoming as if he had never been.

He had travelled first with two horses, next with one; afterward on foot with a choice assortment of jewelry and other pedlar's wares; now his assortment was reduced to a mere handful. He could purchase to the value of a few dollars, take a short excursion, earn a small sum, and return—not to a respectable house, as once,—but to the lowest of resorts, to expend it.

Here, in 1821, I last saw him; a fair candidate for the worst contagious diseases which occasionally infest that region, and a pretty sure victim to the first severe attack. Or if he should even escape these, with the certainty before him of a very short existence, at best.

This is substantially the history of many a young man whose soul was once as spotless as that of C. S. Would that young men knew their strength, and their dignity; and would put forth but half the energy that God has given them. Then they would never approach the confines of those regions of dissipation, for when they have once entered them, the soul and the body are often ruined forever.

There are in every city hundreds of young men—I regret to say it,—who should heed this warning voice. Now they are happily situated, beloved, respected. They are engaged in useful and respectable avocations, and looking forward to brighter and better scenes. Let them beware lest there should be causes in operation, calculated to sap the foundations of the castle which fancy's eye has builded, (and which might even be realized); and lest their morning sun, which is now going forth in splendor, be not shrouded in darkness ere it has yet attained its meridian height.

Every city affords places and means of amusement, at once rational, satisfying, and improving. Such are collections of curiosities, natural and artificial, lectures on science, debating clubs, lyceums, &c. Then the libraries which abound, afford a source of never ending amusement and instruction. Let these suffice. At least, 'touch not, handle not' that which an accumulated and often sorrowful experience has shown to be accursed.

Neither resort to solitary vice. If this practice should not injure your system immediately, it will in the end. I am sorry to be obliged to advert to this subject; but I know there is occasion. Youth, especially those who lead a confined life, seek occasional excitement. Such sometimes resort to this lowest,—I may say most destructive of practices. Such is the constitution of things, as the Author of Nature has established it, that if every other vicious act were to escape its merited punishment in this world, the one in question could not. Whatever its votaries may think, it never fails, in a single instance, to injure them, personally; and consequently their posterity, should any succeed them.

It is not indeed true that the foregoing vices do of themselves, produce all this mischief directly; but as Dr. Paley has well said, criminal intercourse 'corrupts and depraves the mind more than any single vice whatsoever.' It gradually benumbs the conscience, and leads on, step by step, to those blacker vices at which the youth would once have shuddered.

But debasing as this vice is, it is scarcely more so than solitary gratification. The former is not always at hand; is attended, it may be, with expense; and with more or less danger of exposure. But the latter is practicable whenever temptation or rather imagination solicits, and appears to the morbid eye of sense, to be attended with no hazard. Alas! what a sad mistake is made here! It is a fact well established by medical men, that every error on this point is injurious; and that the constitution is often more surely or more effectually impaired by causes which do not appear to injure it in the least, than by occasional and heavier shocks, which rouse it to a reaction. The one case may be compared to daily tippling, the other to those periodical drunken frolics, which, having an interval of weeks or months between them, give the system time to recover, in part, (but in part only) from the violence it had sustained.

I wish to put the younger portion of my readers upon their guard against a set of wretches who take pains to initiate youth, while yet almost children, into the practice of the vice to which I have here adverted. Domestics—where the young are too familiar with them—have been known to be thus ungrateful to their employers. There are, however, people of several classes, who do not hesitate to mislead, in this manner.

But the misfortune is, that this book will not be apt to fall into the hands of those to whom these remarks apply, till the ruinous habit is already formed. And then it is that counsel sometimes comes too late. Should these pages meet the eye of any who have been misled, let them remember that they have begun a career which multitudes repent bitterly; and from which few are apt to return. But there have been instances of reform; therefore none ought to despair. 'What man has done, man may do.'

They should first set before their minds the nature of the practice, and the evils to which it exposes. But here comes the difficulty. What are its legitimate evils? They know indeed that the written laws of God condemn it; but the punishment which those laws threaten, appears to be remote and uncertain. Or if not, they are apt to regard it as the punishment of excess, merely. They, prudent souls, would not, for the world, plunge into excess. Besides, 'they injure none but themselves,' they tell us.

Would it were true that they injured none but themselves! Would there were no generations yet unborn to suffer by inheriting feeble constitutions, or actual disease, from their progenitors!

Suppose, however, they really injured nobody but themselves. Have they a right to do even this? They will not maintain, for one moment, that they have a right to take away their own life. By what right, then, do they allow themselves to shorten it, or diminish its happiness while it lasts?

Here the question recurs again: Does solitary gratification actually shorten life, or diminish its happiness?

The very fact that the laws of God forbid it, is an affirmative answer to this question. For nothing is more obvious than that all other vices which that law condemns, stand in the way of our present happiness, as well as the happiness of futurity. Is this alone an exception to the general rule?

But I need not make my appeal to this kind of authority. You rely on human testimony. You believe a thousand things which yourselves never saw or heard. Why do you believe them, except upon testimony—I mean given either verbally, or, what is the same thing, in books?

Now if the accumulated testimony of medical writers from the days of Galen, and Celsus, and Hippocrates, to the present hour, could have any weight with you, it would settle the point at once. I have collected, briefly, the results of medical testimony on this subject, in the next chapter; but if you will take my statements for the present, I will assure you that I have before me documents enough to fill half a volume like this, from those who have studied deeply these subjects, whose united language is, that the practice in question, indulged in any degree, is destructive to body and mind; and that although, in vigorous young men, no striking evil may for some time appear, yet the punishment can no more be evaded, except by early death, than the motion of the earth can be hindered. And all this, too, without taking into consideration the terrors of a judgment to come.

But why, then, some may ask, are animal propensities given us, if they are not to be indulged? The appropriate reply is, they are to be indulged; but it is only in accordance with the laws of God; never otherwise. And the wisdom of these laws, did they not rest on other and better proof, is amply confirmed by that great body of medical experience already mentioned. God has delegated to man, a sort of subcreative power to perpetuate his own race. Such a wonderful work required a wonderful apparatus. And such is furnished. The texture of the organs for this purpose is of the most tender and delicate kind, scarcely equalled by that of the eye, and quite as readily injured; and this fact ought to be known, and considered. But instead of leaving to human choice or caprice the execution of the power thus delegated, the great Creator has made it a matter of duty; and has connected with the lawful discharge of that duty, as with all others, enjoyment. But when this enjoyment is sought in any way, not in accordance with the laws prescribed by reason and revelation, we diminish (whatever giddy youth may suppose,) the sum total of our own happiness. Now this is not the cold speculation of age, or monkish austerity. It is sober matter of fact.

It is said that young men are sometimes in circumstances which forbid their conforming to these laws, were they disposed to do so.

Not so often however, as is commonly supposed. Marriage is not such a mountain of difficulty as many imagine. This I have already attempted to show. One circumstance to be considered, in connection with this subject, is, that in any society, the more there is of criminal indulgence, whether secret or social, the more strongly are excuses for neglecting matrimony urged. Every step which a young man takes in forbidden paths, affords him a plea in behalf of the next. The farther he goes, the less the probability of his returning to the ways of purity, or entering those of domestic felicity.

People in such places as London and Paris, marry much later in life, upon the average, than in country places. And is not the cause obvious? And is not the same cause beginning to produce similar effects in our own American cities?

But suppose celibacy in some cases, to be unavoidable, can a life of continence, in the fullest sense of the term, be favorable to health? This question is answered by those to whose writings I have already referred, in the affirmative. But it is also answered by facts, though from the nature of the case these facts are not always easy of access. We have good reason to believe that Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Fothergill, never for once in their lives deviated from the strict laws of rectitude on this point. And we have no evidence that they were sufferers for their rigid course of virtue. The former certainly enjoyed a measure of health and reached an age, to which few, in any circumstances, attain; and the latter led an active and useful life to nearly three-score and ten. There are living examples of the same purity of character, but they cannot, of course, be mentioned in this work.

Several erroneous views in regard to the animal economy which have led to the very general opinion that a life of celibacy—strictly so, I mean—cannot be a life of health, might here be exposed, did either the limits or the nature of the work permit. It is not that a state of celibacy—entirely so, I always mean—is positively injurious; but that a state of matrimony is more useful; and, as a general rule, attended with more happiness.

It is most ardently to be hoped, that the day is not far distant when every young man will study the laws and functions of the human frame for himself. This would do more towards promoting individual purity and public happiness, than all the reasoning in the world can accomplish without it. Men, old or young, must see for themselves how 'fearfully' as well as 'wonderfully' they are made, before they can have a thorough and abiding conviction of the nature of disobedience, or of the penalties that attend, as well as follow it. And in proportion, as the subject is studied and understood, may we not hope celibacy will become less frequent, and marriage—honorable, and, if you please, early marriage—be more highly estimated?

This work is not addressed to parents; but should it be read by any who have sons, at an age, and in circumstances, which expose them to temptation, and in a way which will be very apt to secure their fall, let them beware.

Still, the matter must be finally decided by the young themselves. They, in short, must determine the question whether they will rise in the scale of being, through every period of their existence, or sink lower and lower in the depths of degradation and wo. They must be, after all, the arbiters of their own fate. No influences, human or divine, will ever force them to happiness.

The remainder of this section will be devoted to remarks on the causes which operate to form licentious feelings and habits in the young. My limits, however, will permit me to do little more than mention them. And if some of them might be addressed with more force to parents than to young men, let it be remembered that the young may be parents, and if they cannot recall the past, and correct the errors in their own education, they can, at least, hope to prevent the same errors in the education of others.

1. FALSE DELICACY.

Too much of real delicacy can never be inculcated; but in our early management, we seem to implant the false, instead of the true. The language we use, in answering the curious questions of children, often leads to erroneous associations of ideas; and it is much better to be silent. By the falsehoods which we think it necessary to tell, we often excite still greater curiosity, instead of satisfying that which already exists. I will not undertake to decide what ought to be done; but silence, I am certain, would be far better than falsehood.

There is another error, which is laid deeper still, because it begins earlier. I refer to the half Mohammedan practice of separating the two sexes at school. This practice, I am aware has strong advocates; but it seems to me they cannot have watched closely the early operations of their own minds, and observed how curiosity was awakened, and wanton imaginations fostered by distance, and apparent and needless reserve.

2. LICENTIOUS BOOKS, PICTURES, &C.

This unnatural reserve, and the still more unnatural falsehoods already mentioned, prepare the youthful mind for the reception of any thing which has the semblance of information on the points to which curiosity is directed. And now comes the danger. The world abounds in impure publications, which almost all children, (boys especially,) at sometime or other, contrive to get hold of, in spite of parental vigilance. If these books contained truth, and nothing but truth, their clandestine circulation would do less mischief. But they generally impart very little information which is really valuable; on the contrary they contain much falsehood; especially when they profess to instruct on certain important subjects. Let me repeat it then, they cannot be relied on; and in the language of another book, on another subject; 'He that trusteth' to them, 'is a fool.'

The same remarks might be extended, and with even more justice, to licentious paintings and engravings, which circulate in various ways. And I am sorry to include in this charge not a few which are publicly exhibited for sale, in the windows of our shops. You may sometimes find obscene pictures under cover of a watch-case or snuff box. In short, there would often seem to be a general combination of human and infernal efforts to render the juvenile thoughts and affections impure; and not a few parents themselves enter into the horrible league.

On this subject Dr. Dwight remarks; 'The numbers of the poet, the delightful melody of song, the fascination of the chisel, and the spell of the pencil, have been all volunteered in the service of Satan for the moral destruction of unhappy man. To finish this work of malignity the stage has lent all its splendid apparatus of mischief; the shop has been converted into a show-box of temptations; and its owner into a pander of iniquity.' And in another place; 'Genius, in every age, and in every country, has, to a great extent, prostituted its elevated powers for the deplorable purpose of seducing thoughtless minds to this sin.' Are these remarks too sweeping? In my own opinion, not at all. Let him, who doubts, take a careful survey of the whole of this dangerous ground.

3. OBSCENE AND IMPROPER SONGS.

The prostitution of the melody of song, mentioned by Dr. Dwight, reminds me of another serious evil. Many persons, and even not a few intelligent parents, seem to think that a loose or immoral song cannot much injure their children, especially if they express their disapprobation of it afterwards. As if the language of the tongue could give the lie to the language of the heart, already written, and often deeply, in the eye and countenance. For it is notorious that a considerable proportion of parents tolerate songs containing very improper sentiments, and hear them with obvious interest, how much soever they may wish their children to have a better and purer taste. The common 'love songs' are little better than those already mentioned.

It is painful to think what errors on this subject are sometimes tolerated even by decent society. I knew a schoolmaster who did not hesitate to join occasional parties, (embracing, among others, professedly Christian parents,) for the purpose of spending his long winter evenings, in hearing songs from a very immoral individual, not a few of which were adapted to the most corrupt taste, and unfit to be heard in good society. Yet the community in which he taught was deemed a religious community; and the teacher himself prayed in his school, morning and evening! Others I have known to conduct even worse, though perhaps not quite so openly.

I mention these things, not to reproach teachers,—for I think their moral character, in this country, generally, far better than their intellectual,—but as a specimen of perversion in the public sentiment; and also as a hint to all who have the care of the young. Pupils at school, cannot fail to make correct inferences from such facts as the foregoing.

4. DOUBLE ENTENDRES.

By this is meant seemingly decent speeches, with double meanings. I mention these because they prevail, in some parts of the country, to a most alarming degree; and because parents seem to regard them as perfectly harmless. Shall I say—to show the extent of the evil—that they are sometimes heard from both parents? Now no serious observer of human life and conduct can doubt that by every species of impure language, whether in the form of hints, innuendoes, double entendres, or plainer speech, impure thoughts are awakened, a licentious imagination inflamed, and licentious purposes formed, which would otherwise never have existed. Of all such things an inspired writer has long ago said—and the language is still applicable;—'Let them not be so much as named among you.'

I have been in families where these loose insinuations, and coarse innuendoes were so common, that the presence of respectable company scarcely operated as a restraint upon the unbridled tongues, even of the parents! Many of these things had been repeated so often, and under such circumstances that the children, at a very early age, perfectly understood their meaning and import. Yet had these very same children asked for direct information, at this time, on the subjects which had been rendered familiar to them thus incidentally, the parents would have startled; and would undoubtedly have repeated to them part of a string of falsehoods, with which they had been in the habit of attempting to 'cover up' these matters; though with the effect, in the end, of rendering the children only so much the more curious and inquisitive.

But this is not all. The filling of the juvenile mind, long before nature brings the body to maturity, with impure imaginations, not only preoccupies the ground which is greatly needed for something else, and fills it with shoots of a noxious growth, but actually induces, if I may so say, a precocious maturity. What I mean, is, that there arises a morbid or diseased state of action of the vessels of the sexual system, which paves the way for premature physical developement, and greatly increases the danger of youthful irregularity.

5. EVENING PARTIES.

One prolific source of licentious feeling and action may be found, I think, in evening parties, especially when protracted to a late hour. It has always appeared to me that the injury to health which either directly or indirectly grows out of evening parties, was a sufficient objection to their recurrence, especially when the assembly is crowded, the room greatly heated, or when music and dancing are the accompaniments. Not a few young ladies, who after perspiring freely at the latter exercise, go out into the damp night air, in a thin dress, contract consumption; and both sexes are very much exposed, in this way, to colds, rheumatisms, and fevers.

But the great danger, after all, is to reputation and morals. Think of a group of one hundred young ladies and gentlemen assembling at evening, and under cover of the darkness, joining in conclave, and heating themselves with exercise and refreshments of an exciting nature, such as coffee, tea, wine, &c, and in some parts of our country with diluted distilled spirit; and 'keeping up the steam,' as it is sometimes called, till twelve or one o'clock, and frequently during the greater part of the night. For what kind and degree of vice, do not such scenes prepare those who are concerned in them?

Nothing which is here said is intended to be levelled against dancing, in itself considered; but only against such a use, or rather abuse of it as is made to inflame and feed impure imaginations and bad passions. On the subject of dancing as an amusement, I have already spoken in another part of the work.

I have often wondered why the strange opinion has come to prevail, especially among the industrious yeomanry of the interior of our country, that it is economical to turn night into day, in this manner. Because they cannot very well spare their sons or apprentices in the daytime, as they suppose, they suffer them to go abroad in the evening, and perhaps to be out all night, when it may justly be questioned whether the loss of energy which they sustain does not result in a loss of effort during one or two subsequent days, at least equal to the waste of a whole afternoon. I am fully convinced, on my own part, that he who should give up to his son or hired laborer an afternoon, would actually lose a less amount of labor, taking the week together, than he who should only give up for this purpose the hours which nature intended should be spent in sleep.

But—I repeat it—the moral evil outweighs all other considerations. It needs not an experience of thirty years, nor even of twenty, to convince even a careless observer that no small number of our youth of both sexes, have, through the influence of late evening parties, gone down to the chambers of drunkenness and debauchery; and, with the young man mentioned by Solomon, descended through them to those of death and hell.

It may be worth while for those sober minded and, otherwise, judicious Christians, who are in the habit of attending fashionable parties at late hours, and taking their 'refreshments,' to consider whether they may not be a means of keeping up, by their example, those more vulgar assemblies, with all their grossness, which I have been describing. Is it not obvious that what the wine, and the fruit, and the oysters, are to the more refined and Christian circles, wine and fermented liquors may be to the more blunt sensibilities of body and mind, in youthful circles of another description? But if so, where rests the guilt? Or shall we bless the fountains, while we curse the stream they form?

Section III. Diseases of Licentiousness.

The importance of this and the foregoing section will be differently estimated by different individuals. They were not inserted, however, without consideration, nor without the approbation of persons who enjoy a large measure of public confidence. The young ought at least to know, briefly, to what a formidable host of maladies secret vice is exposed.

1. Insanity. The records of hospitals show that insanity, from solitary indulgence, is common. Tissot, Esquirol, Eberle, and others, give ample testimony on this point. The latter, from a careful examination of the facts, assures us that in Paris the proportion of insane persons whose diseases may be traced to the source in question, is one in from fifty-one to fifty-eight, in the lower classes. In the higher classes it is one in twenty-three. In the insane Hospital of Massachusetts—I have it from authority which I cannot question,—the proportion is at least one in three or four. At present there are about twenty cases of the kind alluded to.

2. Chorea Sancti Viti; or St. Vitus's dance. This strange disease, in which the muscles of the body are not always at the command of the patient, and in which the head, the arms, the legs, and indeed every part which is made for muscular motion often jerks about in a very singular manner, is sometimes produced in the same way. Insanity and this disease are occasionally combined. I have known one young man in this terrible condition, and have read authentic accounts of others.

3. Epilepsy. Epileptic or falling sickness fits, as they are sometimes denominated, are another very common scourge of secret vice. How much they are to be dreaded almost every one can judge; for there are few who have not seen those who are afflicted with them. They usually weaken the mind, and sometimes entirely destroy it. I knew one epileptic individual who used to dread them more than death; and would gladly have preferred the latter.

4. Idiotism. Epilepsy, as I have already intimated, often runs on to idiotism; but sometimes the miserable young man becomes an idiot, without the intervention of any other obvious disease.

5. Paralysis or Palsy, is no uncommon punishment of this transgression. There are, however, several forms of this disease. Sometimes, a slight numbness of a single toe or finger is the first symptom of its approach; but at others a whole hand, arm, or leg is affected. In the present case, the first attacks are not very violent, as if to give the offender opportunity to return to the path of rectitude. Few, however, take the hint and return, till the chains of their slavery are riveted, and their health destroyed by this or some other form of disease. I have seen dissipated young men who complained of the numbness of a finger or two and the corresponding portion of the hand and wrist, who probably did not themselves suspect the cause; but I never knew the disorder permanently removed, except by a removal of the cause which produced it.

6. Apoplexy. This has occasionally happened; though more rarely.

7. Blindness, in some of its forms, especially of that form usually called gutta serena, should also be added to our dark catalogue. Indeed a weakness of sight is among the first symptoms that supervene on these occasions.

8. Hypochondria. This is as much a disease by itself as the small pox, though many regard it otherwise. The mind is diseased, and the individual has many imaginary sufferings, it is true; but the imagination would not be thus unnaturally awake, if there were no accompanying disturbance in the bodily functions. Hypochondria, in its more aggravated forms, is a very common result of secret vice.

9. Phthisis, or consumption, is still more frequently produced by the cause we are considering, than any other disease I have mentioned. And we know well the history of this disease; that, though slow in its progress, the event is certain. In this climate, it is one of the most destructive scourges of our race. If the ordinary diseases slay their thousands, consumption slays its tens of thousands. Its approach is gradual, and often unsuspected; and the decline to the grave sometimes unattended by any considerable suffering. Is it not madness to expose ourselves to its attacks for the shortlived gratifications of a moment?

There is indeed a peculiar form of this disease which, in the case in question, is more commonly produced than any other. It is called, in the language of physicians, tabes dorsalis, or dorsal consumption; because it is supposed to arise from the dorsal portion of the spinal marrow. This disease sometimes, it is true, attacks young married people, especially where they go beyond the bounds which the Author of nature intended; and it is occasionally produced by other causes entirely different; causes, too, which it would be difficult, if not impossible to prevent. Generally, however, it is produced by solitary vice.

The most striking symptom of this disease is described as being a 'sensation of ants, crawling from the head down along the spine;' but this sensation is not always felt, for sometimes in its stead there is, rather, a very great weakness of the small part of the back, attended with pain. This is accompanied with emaciation, and occasionally, though not always, with an irregular appetite. Indeed, persons affected with this disease generally have a good appetite. There is usually little fever, or at most only a slight heat and thirst towards evening, with occasional flushings of the face; and still more rarely, profuse perspirations in the latter part of the night. But the latter symptom belongs more properly to common consumption. The sight, as I have already mentioned, grows dim; they have pains in the head and sometimes ringing in the ears, and a loss of memory. Finally, the legs become weak, the kidneys and stomach suffer, and many other difficulties arise which I cannot mention in this work, followed often by an acute fever; and unless the abominable practice which produced all the mischief is abandoned, death follows. But when many of the symptoms which I have mentioned, are really fastened upon an individual, he has sustained an injury which can never be wholly repaired. All he can hope is to prolong his days, and lengthen out his life—often a distressing one. A few well authenticated examples of persons who debased themselves by secret vice, will, I hope, satisfy those who doubt the evils of this practice.

One young man thus expressed his sufferings to his physician. 'My very great debility renders the performance of every motion difficult. That of my legs is often so great, that I can scarcely stand erect; and I fear to leave my chamber. Digestion is so imperfect that the food passes unchanged, three or four hours after it has been taken into the stomach. I am oppressed with phlegm, the presence of which causes pain; and the expectoration, exhaustion. This is a brief history of my miseries. Each day brings with it an increase of all my woes. Nor do I believe that any human creature ever suffered more. Without a special interposition of Divine Providence, I cannot support so painful an existence.'

Another thus writes; 'Were I not restrained by sentiments of religion, I should ere this have put an end to my existence; which is the more insupportable as it is caused by myself.'

'I cannot walk two hundred paces,' says another 'without resting myself; my feebleness is extreme; I have constant pains in every part of the body, but particularly in the shoulders and chest. My appetite is good, but this is a misfortune, since what I eat causes pains in my stomach, and is vomited up. If I read a page or two, my eyes are filled with tears and become painful:—I often sigh involuntarily.'

A fourth says; 'I rest badly at night, and am much troubled with dreams. The lower part of my back is weak, my eyes are often painful, and my eyelids swelled and red. I have an almost constant cold; and an oppression at the stomach. In short, I had rather be laid in the silent tomb, and encounter that dreadful uncertainty, hereafter, than remain in my present unhappy and degraded situation.'

The reader should remember that the persons whose miseries are here described, were generally sufferers from hypochondria. They had not advanced to the still more horrid stages of palsy, apoplexy, epilepsy, idiotism, St. Vitus's dance, blindness, or insanity. But they had gone so far, that another step in the same path, might have rendered a return impossible.

The reader will spare me the pain of presenting, in detail, any more of these horrid cases. I write for young men, the strength—the bone, muscle, sinew, and nerve—of our beloved country. I write for those who,—though some of them may have erred—are glad to be advised, and if they deem the advice good, are anxious to follow it. I write, too, in vain, if it be not for young men who will resolve on reformation, when they believe that their present and future happiness is at stake. And, lastly, I have not read correctly the pages in the book of human nature if I do not write for those who can, with God's help, keep every good resolution.

There are a few publications to which those who are awake to the importance of this subject, might safely be directed. One or two will be mentioned presently. It is true that their authors have, in some instances, given us the details of such cases of disease as occur but rarely. Still, what has happened, in this respect, may happen again. And as no moderate drinker of fermented or spirituous liquors can ever know, with certainty, that if he continues his habit, he may not finally arrive at confirmed drunkenness, and the worst diseases which attend it, so no person who departs but once from rectitude in the matter before us, has any assurance that he shall not sooner or later suffer all the evils which they so faithfully describe.

When a young man, who is pursuing an unhappy course of solitary vice, threatened as we have seen by the severest penalties earth or heaven can impose,—begins to perceive a loss or irregularity of his appetite; acute pains in his stomach, especially during digestion, and constant vomitings;—when to this is added a weakness of the lungs, often attended by a dry cough, hoarse weak voice, and hurried or difficult breathing after using considerable exertion, with a general relaxation of the nervous system;—when these appearances, or symptoms, as physicians call them, take place—let him beware! for punishment of a severer kind cannot be distant.

I hope I shall have no reader to whom these remarks apply; but should it be otherwise, happy will it be for him if he takes the alarm, and walks not another step in the downward road to certain and terrible retribution. Happiest, however, is he who has never erred from the first; and who reads these pages as he reads of those awful scenes in nature,—the devastations of the lightning, the deluge, the tornado, the earthquake, and the volcano; as things to be lamented, and their horrors if possible mitigated or averted, but with which he has little personal concern.

Sympathizing, however, with his fellow beings—for though fallen, they still belong to the same family—should any reader who sees this work, wish to examine the subject still more intimately, I recommend to him a Lecture to Young Men, lately published in Providence. I would also refer him, to Rees' Cyclopedia, art. Physical Education.

The article last referred to is so excellent, that I have decided on introducing, in this place, the closing paragraph. The writer had been treating the subject, much in the manner I have done, only at greater length, and had enumerated the diseases to which it leads, at the same time insisting on the importance of informing the young, in a proper manner, of their danger, wherever the urgency of the case required it. After quoting numerous passages of Scripture, which, in speaking of impurity, evidently include this practice, and denouncing it in severe terms, he closes with the following striking remarks.

'There can be no doubt that God has forbidden it by the usual course of providence. Its moral effects, in destroying the purity of the mind, in swallowing up its best affections, and perverting its sensibilities into this depraved channel, are among its most injurious consequences; and are what render it so peculiarly difficult to eradicate the evil. In proportion as the habit strengthens the difficulty of breaking it, of course, increases; and while the tendency of the feelings to this point increases, the vigor of the mind to effect the conquest of the habit gradually lessens.

'We would tell him (the misguided young man) that whatever might be said in newspapers respecting the power of medicine in such cases, nothing could be done without absolute self-control; and that no medicine whatever could retrieve the mischiefs which the want of it had caused: and that the longer the practice was continued, the greater would be the bodily and mental evils it would inevitably occasion.

'We would then advise him to avoid all situations in which he found his propensities excited; and especially, as far as possible, all in which they had been gratified; to check the thoughts and images which excited them; to shun those associates, or at least that conversation, and those books, which have the same effect; to avoid all stimulating food and liquor; to sleep cool on a hard bed; to rise early, and at once; and to go to bed when likely to fall asleep at once; to let his mind be constantly occupied, though not exerted to excess; and to let his bodily powers be actively employed, every day, to a degree which will make a hard bed the place of sound repose.

'Above all, we would urge him to impress his mind (at times when the mere thought of it would not do him harm) with a feeling of horror at the practice; to dwell upon its sinfulness and most injurious effects; and to cultivate, by every possible means, an habitual sense of the constant presence of a holy and heart-searching God, and a lively conviction of the awful effects of his displeasure.'

I should be sorry to leave an impression on any mind that other forms of licentiousness are innocent, or that they entail no evils on the constitution. I have endeavored to strike most forcibly, it is true, at solitary vice; but it was for this plain reason, that few of the young seem to regard it as any crime at all. Some even consider it indispensable to health. This belief I have endeavored to shake; with how much success, eternity only can determine.

Of the guilt of those forms of irregularity, in which more than one individual and sex are necessarily concerned, many of the young are already apprized. At least they are generally acquainted with the more prominent evils which result from what they call excess. Still if followed in what they deem moderation, and with certain precautions which could be named, not a few are ready to believe, at least in the moment of temptation, that there is no great harm in following their inclinations.

Now in regard to what constitutes excess, every one who is not moved by Christian principle, will of necessity, have his own standard, just as it is in regard to solitary vice, or the use of ardent spirits. And herein consists a part of the guilt. And it is not till this conviction of our constant tendency to establish an incorrect standard for ourselves, and to go, in the end, to the greatest lengths and depths and heights of guilt, can be well established in our minds, that we shall ever be induced to avoid the first steps in that road which may end in destruction; and to take as the only place of safety, the high ground of total abstinence.

But although the young are not wholly destitute of a sense of the evils of what they call excess, and of the shame of what is well known to be its frequent and formidable results,—so far as themselves are concerned,—yet they seem wholly ignorant of any considerable danger short of this. For so far are they from admitting that the force of conscience is weakened by every repeated known and wilful transgression, many think, (as I have already stated) promiscuous intercourse, where no matrimonial rights are invaded, if it be so managed as to exempt the parties immediately concerned from all immediate suffering both moral and physical, can scarcely be called a transgression, at all.

I wish it were practicable to extend these remarks far enough to show, as plain as noon-day light can make it, that every criminal act of this kind—I mean every instance of irregularity—not only produces evil to society generally, in the present generation, but also inflicts evil on those that follow. For to say nothing of those horrid cases where the infants of licentious parents not only inherit vicious dispositions, but ruined bodies—even to a degree, that in some instances excludes a possibility of the child's surviving many days;—there are other forms of disease often entailed on the young which as certainly consign the sufferer to an early grave, though the passage thither may be more tedious and lingering.

How must it wring the heart of a feeling young parent to see his first born child, which for any thing he knows, might have been possessed of a sound and vigorous body, like other children, enter the world with incipient scrofula, diseased joints or bones, and eruptive diseases, in some of their worst forms? Must not the sight sink him to the very dust? And would he not give worlds—had he worlds to give—to reverse those irreversible but inscrutable decrees of Heaven, which visit the sins of parents upon their descendants—'unto the third and fourth generation?'

But how easy is it, by timely reflection, and fixed moral principle, to prevent much of that disease which 'worlds' cannot wholly cure, when it is once inflicted!

I hazard nothing in saying, then—and I might appeal to the whole medical profession to sustain me in my assertion—that no person whose system ever suffers, once, from those forms of disease which approach nearest to the character of special judgments of Heaven on sin or shame, can be sure of ever wholly recovering from their effects on his own person; and what is still worse, can ever be sure of being the parent of a child whose constitution shall be wholly untainted with disease, of one kind or another.

This matter is not often understood by the community generally; especially by the young. I might tell them of the diseased eyesight; the ulcerated—perhaps deformed—nose and ears, and neck; the discoloration, decay, and loss of teeth; the destruction of the palate, and the fearful inroads of disease on many other soft parts of the body; besides the softening and ulceration and decay and eventual destruction of the bones; and to crown all, the awfully offensive breath and perspiration; and I might entreat them to abstain, in the fear of God, from those abuses of the constitution which not unfrequently bring down upon them such severe forms of punishment.

A thorough knowledge of the human system and the laws to which all organized bodies are subjected, would, in this respect, do much in behalf of mankind; for such would be the change of public sentiment, that the sensual could not hold up their heads so boldly, as they now do, in the face of it. Happy for mankind when the vicious shall be obliged, universally, to pass in review before this enlightened tribunal!

Young men ought to study physiology. It is indeed to be regretted that there are so few books on this subject adapted to popular use. But in addition to those recommended at page 346, there are portions of several works which may be read with advantage by the young. Such are some of the more intelligible parts of Richerand's Physiology, as at page 38 of the edition with Dr. Chapman's notes; and of the 'Outlines of Physiology,' and the 'Anatomical Class Book,' two works recently issued in Boston. It must, however, be confessed, that none of these works are sufficiently divested of technicalities, to be well adapted, as a whole, to the general reader. Physiology is one of those fountains at which it is somewhat dangerous to 'taste,' unless we 'drink deep;' on account of the tendency of superficial knowledge to empiricism. Still, I am fully of the opinion that even superficial knowledge, on this long neglected topic, is less dangerous both to the individual and to the community, than entire ignorance.

And after all, the best guides would be parents. When will Heaven confer such favors upon us? When will parents become parents indeed? When will one father or mother in a hundred, exercise the true parental prerogative, and point out to those whom God has given them, as circumstances may from time to time demand, the most dangerous rocks and whirlpools to which, in the voyage of life, they are exposed? When will every thing else be done for the young rather than that which ought never to be left undone?

Say not, young reader, that I am wandering. You may be a father. God grant that if you are, you may also act the parent. Let me beg you to resolve, and if necessary re-resolve. And not only resolve, but act. If you are ready to pronounce me enthusiastic on this subject, let me beg you to suspend your judgment till the responsibilities and the duties and the anxieties of a parent thicken round you.

It is painful to see—every where—the most unquestionable evidence that this department of education is unheeded. Do you ask how the evidence is obtained? I answer by asking you how the physician can discover,—as undoubtedly he can,—the progress of the drinker of spirituous liquors, by his eye, his features, his breath, nay his very perspiration. And do you think that the sons or daughters of sensuality, in any of its forms, and at any of its stages, can escape his observation?

But of what use is his knowledge, if he may not communicate it? What person would endure disclosures of this kind respecting himself or his nearest, perhaps his dearest and most valued friends? No! the physician's lips must be sealed, and his tongue dumb; and the young must go down to their graves, rather than permit him to make any effort to save them, lest offence should be given!

The subject is, however, gaining a hold on the community, for which none of us can be too thankful. I am acquainted with more than one parent, who is a parent indeed; for there is no more reserve on these subjects, than any other. The sons do not hesitate to ask parental counsel and seek parental aid, in every known path of temptation. Heaven grant that such instances may be speedily multiplied. A greater work of reform can scarcely be desired or anticipated.

But I must draw to a close. Oh that the young 'wise,' and that they would 'consider!' 'There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is death.'

There is, then, but one course for the young. Let them do that which they know to be right, and avoid not only that which they are sure is wrong, but that also of which they have doubts. Let them do this, moreover, in the fear and love of God. In the language of a great statesman of the United States to his nephew, a little before his death, let me exhort you, to 'Give up property, give up every thing—give up even life itself, rather than presume to do an immoral act.' Let me remind you too, of the declaration of that Wisdom which is Infinite;—'He that sinneth against God, destroyeth his own soul.'

AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.

Section I. Choice of Friends.

The importance, to a young man, of a few worthy female friends, has been mentioned in Chapter V. But to him who aspires at the highest possible degree of improvement or usefulness, a select number of confidential friends of his own sex is scarcely less valuable.

Great caution is however necessary in making the selection. "A man is known by the company he keeps," has long since passed into a proverb; so well does it accord with universal experience. And yet many a young man neglects or despises this maxim, till his reputation is absolutely and irretrievably lost.

Lucius was a remarkable instance of this kind. Extremely diffident, he was introduced to a neighborhood where every individual but one was an entire stranger to him; and this person was one whose character was despised. But what is life without associates? Few are wholly destitute of sympathy, even brute animals. Lucius began to be found in the company of the young man I have mentioned; and this too in spite of the faithful and earnest remonstrances of his friends, who foresaw the consequences. But, like too many inexperienced young men, conscious of his own purity of intention, he thought there could surely be no harm in occasional walks and conversations with even a bad man; and who knows, he sometimes used to say, but I may do him good? At any rate, as he was the only person with whom he could hold free conversation on "things that were past," he determined occasionally to associate with him.

But as it is with many a young lady who has set out with the belief that a reformed rake makes the best husband, so it was with Lucius; he found that the work of reforming the vicious was no easy task. Instead of making the smallest approaches to success, he perceived at last, when it was too late, that his familiarity with young Frederick had not only greatly lowered him in the estimation of the people with whom he now resided, but even in the estimation of Frederick himself; who was encouraged to pursue his vicious course, by the consideration that it did not exclude him from the society of those who were universally beloved and respected.

This anecdote shows how cautious we ought to be in the choice of friends. Had Lucius been a minister or reformer by profession, he could have gone among the vicious to reclaim them, with less danger. The Saviour of mankind ate and drank with "publicans and sinners;" but He was well known as going among them to save them, though even he did not wholly escape obloquy.

Few are aware, how much they are the creatures of imitation; and how readily they catch the manners, habits of expression, and even modes of thinking, of those whose company they keep. Let the young remember, then, that it is not from the remarks of others, alone, that they are likely to suffer; but that they are really lowered in the scale of excellence, every time they come in unguarded contact with the vicious.

It is of the highest importance to seek for companions those who are not only intelligent and virtuous, in the common acceptation of the term, but, if it were possible, those who are a little above them, especially in moral excellence.

Nor is this so difficult a task as many suppose. There are in every community, a few who would make valuable companions. Not that they are perfect,—for perfection, in the more absolute sense of the term, belongs not to humanity; but their characters are such, that they would greatly improve yours. And remember, that it is by no means indispensable that your circle of intimate friends be very large. Nay, it is not even desirable, in a world like this. You may have many acquaintances, but I should advise you to have but few near friends. If you have one, who is what he should be, you are comparatively happy.

Section II. Rudeness of Manners.

By rudeness I do not mean mere coarseness or rusticity, for that were more pardonable; but a want of civility. In this sense of the term, I am prepared to censure one practice, which in the section on Politeness, was overlooked. I refer to the practice so common with young men in some circumstances and places, of wearing their hats or caps in the house;—a practice which, whenever and wherever it occurs, is decidedly reprehensible.

Most of us have probably seen state legislatures in session with their hats on. This does not look well for the representatives of the most civil communities in the known world; and though I do not pretend that in this respect they fairly represent their constituents, yet I do maintain that the toleration of such a practice implies a dereliction of the public sentiment.

That the practice of uncovering the head, whenever we are in the house, tends to promote health, though true, I do not at this time affirm. It is sufficient for my present purpose, if I succeed in showing that the contrary practice tends to vice and immorality.

Who has not seen the rudeness of a company of men, assembled perhaps in a bar-room—with their hats on; and also witnessed the more decent behavior of another similar group, assembled in similar circumstances, without perceiving at once a connection between the hats and the rudeness of the one company, as well as between the more orderly behavior and the uncovered heads of the other?

To come to individuals. Attend a party or concert—no matter about the name;—I mean some place where it is pardonable, or rather deemed pardonable, to wear the hat. Who behave in the most gentle, christian manner,—the few who wear their hats or those who take them off? In a family or school, which are the children that are most civil and well behaved? Is it not those who are most scrupulous, always, to appear within the house with their heads uncovered? Nay, in going out of schools, churches, &c., who are they that put on their hats first, as if it was a work of self-denial to hold them in their hands, or even suffer them to remain in their place till the blessing is pronounced, or till the proper time has arrived for using them?

Once more. In passing through New England or any other part of the United States, entering into the houses of the people, and seeing them just as they are, who has not been struck with the fact that where there is the most of wearing hats and caps in the house, there is generally the most of ill manners, not to say of vicious habits and conduct.

Few are sufficiently aware of the influence of what they often affect to despise as little things. But I have said enough on this point in its proper place. The great difficulty is in carrying the principles there inculcated into the various conditions of life, and properly applying them.

Section III. Self-praise.

Some persons are such egotists that rather than not be conspicuous, they will even speak ill of themselves. This may seem like a contradiction; but it is nevertheless a truth.

Such conduct is explicable in two ways. Self condemnation may be merely an attempt to extort praise from the bystanders, by leading them to deny our statements, or defend our conduct. Or, it may be an attempt to set ourselves off as abounding in self knowledge; a kind of knowledge which is universally admitted to be difficult of attainment. I have heard people condemn their past conduct in no measured terms, who would not have borne a tithe of the same severity of remark from others. Perhaps it is not too much to affirm that persons of this description are often among the vainest, if not the proudest of the community.

In general, it is the best way to say as little about ourselves, our friends, our books, and our circumstances as possible. It is soon enough to speak of ourselves when we are compelled to do it in our own defence.

Footnotes

A teacher, who has been pleased to say much in behalf of this work, and to do much to extend its circulation, in a late letter, very modestly, but properly makes the following inquiry; 'Has not Dr. Franklin's precept, time is money, made many misers? Is it not used without sufficient qualification?'

There is no good thing, nor any good advice, but what may be abused, if used or taken without qualification. There may be misers in regard to time, as well as money; and no one can become miserly in the one respect without soon becoming so in the other. He who cannot or rather will not give any portion of his time to promote the happiness of those around him, in the various ways of doing good, which perpetually offer, lest it should take from his means of earning property, is as much to be pitied as he who hoards all his dollars and cents. Still it is true that youth should husband well their time, and avoid wasting either that or their money.

Dr. Franklin, in view of the latter fact, wrote a humorous Essay, at Paris, in which he labored hard to show the people of that luxurious and dissipated city, that the sun gives light as soon as it rises.

I have occasionally seen four or five persons in constant employ, solely to supply the wants of a family of the same number, whose health, collectively, required an amount of physical labor adequate to their own wants.

This fact, so obvious to every student of human nature, has sometimes given rise to an opinion that orphans make their way best in the world. So far as the business of making money is concerned, I am not sure but it is so.

Even Timothy--young Timothy as he has been often called--was probably in his 30th year when he was ordained.

A gentleman of my acquaintance assures me that he always leaves his books, accounts, &c., in so complete a state, on going to bed, that if he should die during the night, every thing could be perfectly understood. This rule he adheres to, as a matter of duty; not only to his fellow men, but to God.

These statements may seem to require a little qualification. There are two sorts of busy men. One sort are busy, as the result of benevolent purpose. These are often among the best of mankind; and though always busy in carrying out their plans, they find time to perform a thousand little acts of goodness, notwithstanding.--It has, indeed, been sometimes said, that when a great public enterprise is about to be undertaken, which requires the aid of individual contributions, either of time or money, those who are most busy, and from whom we might naturally expect the least, often do the most. It is also said that men of business have the most leisure; and it sometimes seems to be true, where they methodize their plans properly. These maxims, however, apply with the most force to men devoted to a higher purpose than the worship of this world--men who live for God, and the good of his universe, generally.

There are also two sorts of rich men. Some men may have property in their hands to an immense amount, without possessing a worldly spirit. The rich man referred to above, is of another sort. He is the man who 'gets all he can, and keeps all he can get.' This is probably the gospel definition of the term, a rich man, who, it is said, can no more enter a world of spiritual enjoyment than a camel or a cable can go through 'the eye of a needle.'

I should be sorry to be understood as affirming that a majority of suicidal acts are the result of intemperance;--by no means. My own opinion is, that if there be a single vice more fruitful of this horrid crime than any other, it is gross sensuality. The records of insane hospitals, even in this country will show, that this is not mere conjecture. As it happens, however, that the latter vice is usually accompanied by intemperance in eating and drinking, by gambling, &c., the blame is commonly thrown, not on the principal agent concerned in the crime, but on the accomplices.

Every man who enjoys the privileges of civilized society, owes it to that society to earn as much as he can; or, in other words, improve every minute of his time. He who loses an hour, or a minute, is the price of that hour debtor to the community. Moreover, it is a debt which he can never repay.

Some persons always read with a pen or pencil in hand, and when a thought occurs, note it in a little book, kept for the purpose.

Some of the topics of this section have been anticipated, in part, in a previous chapter; but their importance entitles them to a farther consideration.

I know this principle is sometimes disputed. A late English writer, in a Treatise on Happiness, at page 251 of Vol. II, maintains the contrary. He quotes from Lord Bacon, that 'Unmarried men are the best friends, best masters, and best servants,' and that 'The best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from unmarried or childless men.' He also introduces Jeremy Taylor, as saying that 'Celibacy, like a fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness.'

In commenting upon these remarks, this writer says, 'One half of the most eminent persons that have ever lived in the world of science and literature, have remained unmarried,' and 'in the connubial state, too frequently, the sympathies are connected within the family circle, while there is little generosity or philanthropy beyond.' And lastly, that 'Unmarried men possess many natural excellences, which if not engrossed by a family will be directed towards their fellow creatures.'

Now it is admitted that many eminent men, especially in science and literature, have been bachelors; and that among them were Newton and Locke. But this only proves that while thousands and tens of thousands of their fellow beings spent their lives in insignificance, for want of a definite object to live for, these men, having an object before them, accomplished something. And if you could induce one single man in a thousand, nay, one in ten thousand, to make a similar use of his exemption from the cares of a family, much might be expected from celibacy; or at least, the results of their labors might be a partial compensation to society for the evil tendency of their example. For marriage cannot be denied to be an institution of God, and indispensable to the existence of society. And who can say that he has purchased an indulgence to disobey a law which is in some respects paramount to every other, however great the price he may have paid?

That marriage tends to concentrate our sympathies within the family circle, I do not believe. A proper investigation of the subject will, I am certain, prove this assumption unfounded. Facts do not show unmarried men to be 'best friends, masters, servants' &c.; and I am sorry to find such a theory maintained by any sensible writer. Some of the illustrious examples of celibacy which are usually brought, were by no means estimable for their social feelings or habits. What would become of mankind, if they were all to immure themselves in dungeons, or what is nearly the same thing to social life, among books and papers? Better, by far, to remain in ignorance of the material laws which govern the universe, than to become recluses in a world like this. Better even dispense with some of the lights which genius has struck out to enable us to read suns and stars, than to understand attraction in the material world, while we are insensible to all attractions of a moral and social kind. God has made us to feel, to sympathize, and to love,--as well as to know.

It is worthy of remark, as a well established fact, that the Chinese have an Isan-mon or mother, to their silkworms! Her duty is, not to attend to the eggs and the hatching, for nature has made provision for that; but to take possession of the chamber where the young are deposited; to see that it be free from 'noisome smells, and all noises;' to attend to its temperature, and to 'avoid making a smoke, or raising a dust.' She must not enter the room till she is perfectly clean in person and dress, and must be clothed in a very plain habit; and in order to be more sensible to the temperature of the place, her dress must contain no lining.

Now although every mother of children does not have the care of silkworms, yet she has the care of beings who are in some respects equally susceptible. And I trust no person who knows the importance of temperature, ventilation, &c. especially to the tender infant, will be ashamed to derive an important lesson from the foregoing.

Parents who inform their children on this subject, generally begin too late. Familiar conversational explanation, begun as soon as there is reason to apprehend danger, and judiciously pursued, is perhaps the most successful method of preventing evil.

Pronounced entaunders.

What inadequate ideas are sometimes entertained by young professors of religion, and even by those more advanced, in regard to the purity of character which is indispensable to the enjoyment of a world of bliss--a world whose very source, sum, end and essence, are Infinite Purity itself!

Since the first edition of this work was published, I have received several letters of thanks for having ventured upon this long neglected, but important subject. Teachers, especially, have acknowledged their obligations, both in person and by correspondence. One teacher, in particular, a man of considerable experience, writes as follows:--

'The last chapter of the book, is by no means, in my view, the least important. I regret to say that many religious young men, through ignorance, are attached to the last mentioned vice. I could wish that what you have written could be carefully read by every young man, at least, in our land. Alas, dear sir, how little do mortals know, when they do not understand their physical structure!'