-'. ^ \ . 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 IN MEMORY CM- 
 STEWART S. HOWE 
 JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928 
 
 STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION 
 
 170 
 
 1844
 
 EVEN lECTlRES 
 
 YOUNG MEN, 
 
 ON VARIOUS I^IPORTANT SUBJECTS; 
 
 DELIVERED BEFOKE 
 
 THE YOUNG MEN OF INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, DURING 
 THE WINTER OF 1843-4. 
 
 BY HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THOMAS B. CUTLER : 
 
 CHARLES B. DAVIS, Bookseller and Stationer : 
 
 CINCINNATI, Wji. H. Moore & Co. 
 
 1844.
 
 Entered according to the Act of Congress:, in tiie year one thousand 
 eight hundred and forty-four, by 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER, 
 in the clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, within and for 
 the District of Indiana. 
 
 Cutier & Chamberlain, Printers.
 
 17c 
 
 MJLu. 
 
 LYMAN BEECHER, D. D. 
 
 To you 1 owe more than to any other living being. In childhood, 
 you were my Parent ; in later life, my Teacher ; in manhood, my 
 Companion. To your affectionate vigilance I owe my principles, 
 my knowledge, and that I am a Minister of the Gospel of Christ. For 
 whatever profit they derive from this little Book, the young will he 
 indebted to you.
 
 INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 9, 1844. 
 Rev. Henry W. Beecher, 
 
 Dear Sir. — The undersigned, having listened with great in- 
 terest to a series of Lectures to Young Men, recently delivered by you 
 in this city, are persuaded that the publication of them would be emi- 
 nently useful to the public. They, therefore, respectfully request of 
 you a copy of the Lectures for that purpose, under the conviction, that 
 by a compliance with their wishes, you will confer a lasting benefit 
 upon the young men of this country. 
 
 Very respectfully, yours, &c. 
 HUGH O'NEAL, 
 S. M. HENDERSON, 
 J. S. KEMPER, 
 CHARLES W. CADY, 
 ROBERT B. DUNCAN. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 15, J844. 
 Rev. Henry W. Beecher, 
 
 Dear Sir. — The Lectures delivered by you in this city, dur- 
 ing the present winter, have afforded much gratification to a numerous 
 auditory; and will, we believe, have a beneficial influence in arresting 
 the progress of the vices, against the prevalence of which they were 
 directed. That their usefulness may be extended beyond the place of 
 their delivery, permit us to request you to authorize their publication 
 in a book form; confident as we are, that their merits will be highly 
 appreciated by an intelligent community. 
 
 We are, dear sir, yours respectfully, 
 
 JOHN D. DEFREES, of St. Joseph, 
 W. T. S. CORNETT, of Ripley, 
 SAMUEL W. PARKER, o/Fa^e«e, 
 OLIVER H. SMITH, of Marion, 
 CALVIN FLETCHER, of Marion, 
 JOHN DOWLING, of Vigo, 
 PINCKNEY JAMES, of Dearborn, 
 SAMUEL MERRILL, o/ JUanoji.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Lect. I. INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS, 1 
 
 Lect. II. TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY, ... 31 
 
 Lect. III. SIX WARNINGS, 57 
 
 Lect. IV. THE PORTRAIT-GALLERY, 77 
 
 Lect. V. GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING, .... 103 
 
 Lect. VI. THE STRANGE WOMAN, 131 
 
 Lect. VII. POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, 167
 
 LECTURE 1. 
 
 Give us this (lay our daily bread. Matt. vi. 11. 
 
 This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should 
 he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you dis- 
 orderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that 
 are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. 2 Thess. 
 iii. 10, 12. 
 
 The bread which we solicit of God, he gives us 
 through our own Industry. Prayer sows it, and Indus- 
 try reaps it. 
 
 As Industry is habitual activity in some useful pursuit, 
 so, not only inactivity, but also all efforts without the 
 design of usefulness, are of the nature of Idleness. The 
 supine sluggard is no more indolent than the bustling 
 do-nothing. Men may walk much, and read much, and 
 talk much, and pass the day without an unoccupied 
 moment, and yet be substantially idle; because Indus- 
 try requires, at least, the intention of usefulness. But 
 gadding, gazing, lounging, mere pleasure-mongering, rea- 
 ding for the relief of ennui^ — these are as useless as 
 sleeping, or dozing, or the stupidity of a surfeit. A bee 
 is not more active than a fly, but it is more industrious, — 
 for it is usefully diligent: but the fly has no end in life, 
 but vexatious buzzing and prying impertinence. * 
 
 1
 
 'Z INDUSTRY AND 
 
 There are many grades of idleness; and veins of it 
 run through the most industrious life. We shall indulge 
 in some descriptions of the various classes of idlers, and 
 leave the reader to judge, if he be an indolent man, to 
 which class he belongs. 
 
 1. The lazy-man. — He is of a very ancient pedi- 
 gree; for his family is minutely described by Solo- 
 mon: "How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when 
 wilt thou awake out of sleep?" This is the language 
 of impatience; the speaker has been trying to awake 
 him — pulling, pushing, rolling him over, and shouting 
 in his ear; but all to > no purpose. He soliloquizes, 
 whether it is possible for the man ever to wake up! 
 At length, the sleeper drawls out a dozing petition 
 to be let alone: " Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a 
 little folding of the hands to sleep;" and the last words 
 confusedly break into a snore, — that somnolent lullaby of 
 repose. Long ago the birds have finished their matins, 
 the sun has advanced full high, the dew has gone from 
 the grass, and the labors of Industry are far in progress, 
 when our sluggard, awakened by his very efforts to 
 maintain sleep, slowly emerges to perform life's great 
 duty o{ feeding — with him, second only in importance 
 to sleep. And now, well rested, and suitably nourished, 
 surely he will abound in labor. " The sluggard will not 
 plough by reason of the cold." It is yet early spring; 
 there is ice in the north; and the winds are hearty: so 
 his tender skin shrinks from exposure, and he waits for 
 milder days, — envying the residents of tropical climates, 
 where cold never comes, and harvests wave sponta- 
 neously. He is valiant at sleeping and at the trencher; 
 but for other courage, " the slothful man saith, there is
 
 I D LENESS. 
 
 a lion without; I shall be slain in the street." He has 
 not been out to see; but he heard a noise, and reso- 
 lutely betakes himself to prudence. Under so thriving 
 a manager, so alert in the morning, so busy through the 
 day, and so enterprising, we might anticipate the thrift 
 of his husbandry. " I went by the field of the slothful 
 and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; 
 and lo! it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles 
 had covei'ed the face of it, and its stone wall v/as bro- 
 ken down." To complete the picture, only one thing 
 more is wanted — a description of his house — and then 
 we should have, at one view, the lazy-man, his farm, and 
 house. Solomon has given us that also: "By much 
 sloth fulness the building decayeth; and through idleness 
 of the hands the house droppeth through." Let all this 
 be put together, and possibly some reader may find an 
 unpleasant resemblance to his own affairs. 
 
 Long and late sleeping, stupid lounging, with indolent 
 eyes, sleepily rolling over neglected work; neglected be- 
 cause it is too cold in spring, and too hot in summer, 
 and too laborious at all times — a great coward in dan- 
 ger, and therefore very blustering in safety. His lands 
 running to waste, his fences dilapidated, his crops chiefly 
 of weeds and brambles; a shattered house, the side lean- 
 ing over as if wishing, like its owner, to lie down to 
 sleep; the chimney tumbling down, the roof breaking in, 
 with moss and grass sprouting in its crevices; the well 
 without pump or windlass, and its water drawn up by a 
 clothes-line, or a grape vine, with sometimes a pail, or 
 jug, or iron pot affixed. 
 
 This is the very castle of Indolence; — I would 
 rather be a stall-fed ox, than to be its owner; for an ox
 
 4 INDUSTRYAND 
 
 answers his end, alive or dead; but a lazy man is good 
 for nothing, dead or alive. 
 
 2. Another idler as useless, but vastly more active 
 than the last, attends closely to every one's business, 
 except his own. His wile earns the children's bread, 
 and his; procures her own raiment and his; she pro- 
 cures the wood; she procures the water, while he, with 
 hands in his pocket, is busy watching the building of a 
 neighbor's barn; or advising another neighbor how to 
 trim and train his vines; or he has heard of sickness in 
 a friend's family, and is there, to suggest a hundred 
 cures, and to do every thing but to help; he is a spec- 
 tator of shooting matches, a stickler for a ring and fair 
 play at every fight. He knows all the stories of all the 
 families that live in the town. If he can catch a stranger 
 at the tavern in a rainy day, he pours out a strain of 
 information, a pattering of words, as thick as the rain- 
 drops out of doors. He has good advice to every body, 
 how to save, how to make money, how to do every 
 thing; he can tell the saddler about his trade, he gives 
 advice to the smith about his work, and goes over with 
 him when it is forged to see the carriage-maker put it 
 on, suggests improvements, advises this paint or that 
 varnish, criticises the finish, or praises the trimmings. 
 He is a violent reader of newspapers, almanacs, and 
 receipt books; and with scraps of history and mutilated 
 anecdotes, he faces the very school master, and regards 
 himself a match for the minister, and gives up only to 
 the volubility of the oily village lawyer, — few have 
 the hardihood to match him. 
 
 And thus every day he bustles through his multifa- 
 rious idleness, and completes his circle of visits, as regu-
 
 IDLENESS. 5 
 
 larly as the pointers of a clock visit each figure on the 
 dial plate; but alas! the clock forever tells man the 
 useful lesson of time passing steadily away, and return- 
 ing never; but what useful thing do these busy buzzing 
 idlers perform? 
 
 3. We introduce another idler. He follows no voca- 
 tion; he only follows those who do. Sometimes he 
 sweeps along the streets, with consequential gait; some- 
 times perfumes it with wasted odors of tobacco. He 
 also haunts sunny benches, or breezy piazzas. His busi- 
 ness is to see; his desire to be seen, and no one fails 
 to see him, — so gaudily dressed, his hat sitting aslant 
 upon a wilderness of hair, like a bird half startled from 
 its nest, and every thread arranged to provoke atten- 
 tion. He is a man of honor; not that he keeps his word 
 or shrinks from meanness. He defrauds his laundress, 
 his tailor, and his landlord. He drinks and smokes at 
 other men's expense. He gambles and swears — and 
 fights, when he is too drunk to be afraid ; but still he 
 is a man of honor, for he has whiskers and looks fierce, 
 and wishes very much to have mustachios, and says, 
 "m/?07i 7ny honor ^ sir;'^ " do you doubt my honor ^ sir?''"' 
 
 Thus he appears by day; by night he does not appear: 
 he may be dimly seen flitting; his voice may be heard 
 loud in the carousal of some refection cellar, or above 
 the songs and uproar of a midnight return, and home 
 staggering. This well dressed creature is only a dis- 
 guised beast; take from him articulate speech, and 
 thrust him over upon his hands, and the natural j)hiloso- 
 pher would classify him without a moment's hesitation. 
 
 4. The next of this brotherhood excites our pity. 
 He began life most thriftily, for his rising family he was 
 
 1*
 
 6 INDUSTRY AND 
 
 gathering an ample subsistence, but involved in other 
 men's affairs, he went dovi'n in their ruin. Late in 
 hfe lie begins once more, and at length just secure 
 of an easy competence, his ruin is compassed again. 
 He sits down quietly under it, complains of no one, 
 envies no one, refuseth the cup, and is even more pure 
 in morals, than in better days. He moves on from day 
 to day, as one who walks under a spell — it is the spell 
 of lethargy, of dispondency, which nothing can disen- 
 chant or arouse. He neither seeks work nor refuses it. 
 He wanders among men a dreaming gazer, poorly clad, 
 always kind, always irresolute; able to plan nothing for 
 himself, nor to execute what others have planned for 
 him. He lives and he dies a discouraged man, and the 
 most harmless and excusable of all idlers. 
 
 5. I have not mentioned the fashionable idler, whose 
 riches defeat every object for which God gave him birth. 
 He has a fine form, and manly beauty, and the chief 
 end of life is to display it. With notable diligence he 
 ransacks the market for rare and curious fabrics, for 
 costly seals, and chains, and rings. A coat poorly fitted 
 is the unpardonable sin of his creed. He meditates upon 
 cravats, employs a profound discrimination in select- 
 ing a hat, or a vest, and adopts his conclusions upon 
 the tastefulness of a button or a collar, with the delib- 
 eration of a statesman. Thus caparisoned, he saunters 
 in fashionable galleries, or flaunts in stylish equipage, 
 or parades the streets with simpering belles, or delights 
 their itching ears with compliments of flattery, or with 
 choicely culled scandal. He is a reader of fictions, if 
 they be not too substantial; a writer of cards and billet- 
 doux, and is especially conspicuous in albums. Gay and
 
 IDLENESS. 7 
 
 frivolous, rich and useless, polished till the enamel is 
 worn off; his whole life serves only to make him an 
 animated puppet of pleasure. He is as corrupt in im- 
 agination as he is refined in manners; he is as selfish 
 in private as he is generous in public; and even what 
 he gives to another, is given for his own sake. He 
 worships where fashion worships — to day at a theatre — 
 to morrow at a church, as either exhibits the whi- 
 test hand, or the most polished actor. A gaudy, active 
 and indolent butterfly, he flutters without industry 
 from flower to flower, until summer closes, and frosts 
 sting him, and he sinks down and dies, unthought of and 
 unremembered. 
 
 6. One other portrait should be drawn of a business 
 man, who wishes to subsist by his occupation, while he 
 attends to every thing else. If a sporting club goes 
 to the woods, he must go. He has set his line in every 
 hole in the river, and dozed in a summer day under every 
 tree along its bank. He rejoices in a riding party — a 
 sleigh ride — a summer frolic — a winters glee. He is 
 every body's friend — universally good natured — forever 
 busy where it will do him no good, and remiss where 
 his interests require activity. He takes amusement for 
 his main business, which other men employ as a relaxa- 
 tion; and the serious labor of life, which other men are 
 mainly employed in, he knows only as a relaxation. 
 After a few years he fails — his good nature is some- 
 thing clouded, and as age sobers his buoyancy, without 
 repairing his profitless habits, he soon sinks to a lower 
 grade of laziness, and to ruin. 
 
 It would be endless to describe the wiles of idleness — 
 how it creeps upon men, how secretly it mingles with
 
 8 INPUSTRYAND 
 
 their pursuits, how much time it purloins from the 
 scholar, from the professional man, and from the arti- 
 zan. It steals minutes, it clips oft' the edges of hours, 
 and at length takes possession of days. Where it has 
 its will, it sinks and drowns employment; but where 
 necessity, or ambition, or duty resist such violence, then 
 indolence makes labor heavy; scatters the attention; 
 puts us to our tasks with wandering thoughts, with 
 irresolute purposes, and with dreamy visions. Thus 
 when it may, it plucks out hours and rules over them; 
 and where this may not be, it lurks around them to im- 
 pede the sway of industry, and turn her seeming toils 
 to subtle idleness. Against so mischievous an enchan- 
 tress, we should be duly armed. I shall, therefore, 
 describe the advantages of Industry, and the evils of 
 Indolence. 
 
 1. A hearty Industry promotes happiness. Some 
 men of the greatest industry are unhappy from infelicity 
 of disposition; they are morose, or suspicious, or envi- 
 ous. Such qualities make happiness impossible under 
 any circumstances. The more a wholesome soil is 
 worked, the more fruitful it will be; but to plough a 
 morass, would only cause it to give forth its deadly ex- 
 halations. 
 
 Health is the platform on which all happiness must be 
 built. Good appetite, good digestion, and good sleep, 
 are the elements of health, and Industry confers them. 
 As use polishes metals, so labor the faculties, until the 
 body performs its unimpeded functions, with elastic 
 cheerfulness and hearty enjoyment. 
 
 Buoyant spirits are an element of happiness, and 
 activity produces them; but they fly away from slug-
 
 I DLEN ESS. V 
 
 gishness, as fixed air from open wine. Men's spirits are 
 like water, which sparkles when it runs, but stagnates in 
 still pools, and is mantled with green, and breeds cor- 
 ruption and filth. God rewards with a peculiar satis- 
 faction, a mind in the daily discharge of its duty. The 
 applause of conscience, the self respect of pride, the con- 
 sciousness of independence, a manly joy of usefulness, 
 the consent of every faculty of the mind to one's 
 occupation, and their gratification in it — these con- 
 stitute a happiness as superior to the fever-flashes of 
 vice, as the broad and serene light of day is superior 
 to the storm-gleams of lighthing at midnight. Men pro- 
 fit by man's researches in the useful arts — in the sciences 
 — and in the fine arts. The mariner in strange seas, 
 sails with the chart of other men's voyages before him; 
 and by their discoveries or their mishaps, he improves 
 upon the track, as other ships will upon his. If on life's 
 sea, men were thus wise, fewer rovers would search for 
 the golden islands of happiness in seas, where they are 
 never found. After an experience of ages, which has 
 taught nothing different from this, men should have 
 learned, that satisfaction is not the product of excess, or 
 of indolence, or of riches; but of industry, temperance, 
 and usefulness. Every village has instances which 
 ought to teach young men, that he, who goes aside from 
 the simplicity of nature, and the purity of virtue, to 
 wallow in excesses, carousals, and surfeits, at length 
 misses the errand of his life; and sinking with shattered 
 body prematurely to a dishonored grave, mourns that he 
 mistook exhilaration for satisfaction, and admits that he 
 abandoned the very home of happiness, when he for- 
 sook the labors of useful Industry.
 
 10 INDUSTRY AND 
 
 The poor man with Indastry, is happier than the rich 
 man in Idleness; for labor makes the one more manly, 
 and riches unmans the other. The slave is often hap- 
 pier than the master, who is nearer undone by license 
 than his vassal by toil. Luxurious couches — plushy car- 
 pets from oriental looms, — pillows of eider-down — car- 
 riages contrived with cushions and springs to make 
 motion imperceptible, — is the indolent master of these 
 as happy as the slave that wove the carpet, the Indian 
 who hunted the northern flock, or the servant who drives 
 the pampered steeds? Let those who envy the gay 
 revels of city idlers, and pine for their masquerades, 
 their routes, and their operas, experience for a week the 
 lassitude of their satiety, the unarousable torpor of their 
 life when not under a fiery stimulus, their desperate 
 enyiui, and restless somnolency, they would gladly flee 
 from their haunts as from a land of cursed enchant- 
 ment. 
 
 If a young man will learn the fruits of gay idleness, let 
 the physician read to him his journal of fat invalids, plump 
 hypochondriacs, nervous beauties, complaining belles: 
 let him rehearse the midnight vigils over a pimple, the 
 anxious nursing of a finger, the prescriptions for the 
 imagination, and the endless ingenuities of science in 
 defending the indolently aflluent, from the misery of 
 having nothing to do, — and he may well believe, that the 
 sturdy health of the plough-boy, confers more happi- 
 ness than all the wealth of Astor. 
 
 2. Industry is the parent of thrift. In the overbur- 
 dened states of Europe, the severest toil often only suffices 
 to make life a wretched vacillation between food and 
 famine; but in America, Industry is prosperity. 
 
 '\-
 
 IDLENESS. II 
 
 Although God has stored the world with an endless 
 variety of riches for man's wants, he has made them all 
 accessible only to Industry. The food we eat, the rai- 
 ment which covers us, the house which protects, must 
 be secured by diligence. To tempt man yet more to 
 Industry, every product of the earth has a susceptibility 
 of improvement; so that man not only obtains the gifts 
 of nature at the price of labor, but these gifts become 
 more precious as we bestow upon them greater skill 
 and cultivation. The wheat and maize which crown 
 our ample fields, were food fit but for birds, before man 
 perfected them by labor. The fruits of the forest and 
 the hedge, scarcely tempting to the extremest hunger, 
 after skill has dealt with them and transplanted them to 
 the orchard and the garden, allure every sense with 
 the richest colors, odors, and flavors. The world is full 
 of germs which man is set to develope; and there is 
 scarcely an assignable limit, to which the hand of skill 
 and labor may not bear the powers of nature, — its fruits 
 and its flocks. 
 
 In this land of plenty, the relation between Industry 
 and affluence is so sure, that 1 may safely say that 
 riches are the sure heritage of Industry, and poverty is 
 the sure offspring of Indolence. The scheming specu- 
 lations of the last ten years have produced an aversion 
 among the young to the slow accumulations of ordi- 
 nary Industry, and fired them with a conviction that 
 shrewdness, cunning, and bold ventures, are a more 
 manly way to wealth. There is a swarm of men, bred 
 in the heats of adventurous times, whose thoughts scorn 
 pence and farthings, and who humble themselves to 
 speak of dollars; — hundreds and thousands are their
 
 12 INDUSTRY ANP 
 
 words. They are men of great operations. Forty 
 thousand dollars is a moderate profit of a single specu- 
 lation. They mean to own the Bank; and to look down, 
 before they die, upon Astor and Gerard. The young 
 farmer becomes almost ashamed to meet his school 
 mate, whose stores line whole streets, whose stocks are 
 in every bank and company, and whose increasing 
 money is already well nigh inestimable. But if the but- 
 terfly derides the bee in summer, he was never known 
 to do it in the lowering days of autumn. 
 
 Every few years. Commerce has its earthquakes, and 
 the tall and toppling warehouses which haste ran up, 
 are first shaken down. The hearts of men fail them for 
 fear; and the suddenly rich, made more suddenly poor, 
 fill the land with their loud laments. But nothing 
 strange has happened. When the whole story of com- 
 mercial disasters is told, it is only found out that they, 
 who slowly amassed the gains of useful Industry, built 
 upon a rock; and they, who flung together the imaginary 
 millions of commercial speculations, built upon the sand. 
 When times grew dark, and the winds came, and the 
 floods descended and beat upon them both — the rock 
 sustained the one, and the shifting sand let down the 
 other. If Mammon would tell its secrets, it would be 
 known that while Industry inherits wealth. Speculation 
 only dreams of it. One is the heir, and the other the 
 hungry expectant. If a young man has no higher ambi- 
 tion in life than riches— Industry— plain, rugged, brown- 
 faced, homely clad, old-fashioned Industry, must be 
 courted. Young men are pressed with a most unpro- 
 fitable haste. They wish to reap before they have 
 ploughed or sown. Every thing is driving at such a
 
 IDLKNESS. 13 
 
 rate, that they have become giddy. Laborious occupa- 
 tions are avoided. Money is to be earned in genteel 
 leisure, with the help of fine clothes, and by the soft 
 seductions of smooth hair and luxuriant whiskers. 
 
 Parents, equally wild, foster the delusion. Shall the 
 promising lad be apprenticed to his uncle, the black- 
 smith? The sisters think the blacksmith so very smut- 
 ty; the mother shrinks from the ungentility of his 
 swarthy labor; the father, weighing the matter pru- 
 dentially deeper, finds that a whole life had been spent 
 in earning the uncle's property. These sagacious pa- 
 rents, wishing the tree to bear its fruit before it has 
 ever blossomed, regard the long delay of industrious 
 trades as a fatal objection to them. The son then, 
 must be a rich merchant, or a popular lawyer, or a bro- 
 ker; and these, only as the openings to speculation, — 
 in whose realm, are supposed to lie all the mines of 
 silver and gold. 
 
 Young business men are often educated in two very 
 unthrifty species of contempt; a contempt for small 
 gains, and a contempt for hard labor. To do one's own 
 errands, to wheel one's own barrow, to be seen with a 
 bundle, bag, or burden, is disreputable. Men are so 
 sharp now-a-days, that they can compass by their shrewd 
 heads, what their father's used to do with their heads and 
 hands. The best method of merchandising may be thus 
 stated. Purchase upon credit, hire a book-keeper and a 
 salesman ; smoke your cigar while they conduct your 
 affairs; and if you make nothing, a man who began with 
 nothing, can lose nothing. Would you practice law? 
 Go to an eminent attorney's office, read Byron, Bulwer 
 and Dickens. Then run for the legislature, and by the 
 2
 
 14 IN DUST RY AND 
 
 exceeding tlesert of filthy services rendered to the party, 
 be sent to Congress, and tampering ^vith executive va- 
 nity, go abroad a Minister or come home a judge, to 
 make decisions in term-time, and flirtations in vacation. 
 
 Would you be a speculator? Buy up some thousands 
 worth of produce upon credit, run it to New Orleans 
 and cash it; return home and break. A few turns thus 
 well planned, will leave you an ample fortune, with 
 which to visit foreign parts. But would you be an hon- 
 est man, and enjoy a competence, with pleasure unknown 
 to the hasty wealth of sly roguery? — Work. Let your 
 sweat-drops wash your gains from all dishonesty. 
 You shall live to tell your children, that you have ob- 
 served or felt the wisdom of the Royal Preacher : tcealth 
 gathered by vanity shall be diminished, but wealth gathered 
 by labor shall ina-easc, 
 
 3. Industry gives character and credit to the young. 
 The reputable portion of society have maxims of pru- 
 dence, by which the young are judged and admitted to 
 their good opinion. Does he regard his word? Is he In- 
 dustrious? Is he economical? Is he free from immoral 
 habits? The answer which a young man's conduct 
 gives to these questions, settles his reception among 
 good men. Experience has shown that the other 
 good qualities of veracity, frugality, and modesty, are 
 apt to be associated with industry. A prudent man 
 w^ould scarcely be persuaded that a listless, lounging 
 fellow, would be economical or trust-worthy. An em- 
 ployer would judge wisely, that where there was little 
 regard for time, or for occupation, there would be as 
 little, upon temptation, for honesty or veracity. Pil- 
 ferings of the till, and robberies, are fit deeds for
 
 IDLENESS. 15 
 
 idle clerks, and lazy apprentices. Industry and knavery 
 are sometimes found associated ; but men wonder at it, 
 as at a strange thing. The epithets of society, which 
 betoken its experience, are all in favor of Industry. 
 Thus, the terms " a hard working-man;" "an indus- 
 trious man;" "a laborious artizan ;" are employed to 
 mean, an lionest man ; a trust-ivorthy man. 
 
 I may here, as well as any where, impart the secret of 
 what is called good and had luck. There are men 
 who, supposing Providence to have an implacable spite 
 against them, bemoan in the poverty of a wretched old 
 age the misfortunes of their lives. Luck forever ran 
 against them, and for others. One, with a good pro- 
 fession, lost his luck in the river, where he idled away 
 his time a-nshing, when he should have been in the 
 office. Another, with a good trade, perpetually burnt 
 up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his 
 employers to leave him. Another, with a lucrative busi- 
 ness, lost his luck by amazing diligence at every thing 
 but his business. Another, who steadily followed his 
 trade, as steadily followed his bottle. Another, who was 
 honest and constant to his work, erred by perpetual 
 mis-judgments; — he lacked discretion. Hundreds lose 
 their luck by endorsing ; by sanguine speculations ; by 
 trusting fraudulent men ; and by dishonest gains. A 
 man never has good luck who has a bad wife. I never 
 knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, care- 
 ful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who com- 
 plained of bad luck. A good character, good habits, and 
 iron industry, are impregnable to the assaults of all the 
 ill luck that fools ever dreamed of. But when I see a 
 tatterdemalion, creeping out of a grocery late in the
 
 16 I N D U S T R Y A N D 
 
 forenoon, with his hands stuck into iiis pockets, tlie rim 
 of his liat turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know 
 that he has had bad luck, — for the worst of all luck, is 
 to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler. 
 
 4. Industry is a substitute for Genius. Where one 
 or more faculties exist in the highest state of develop- 
 uient and activity, — as the faculty of music in Mozart, — 
 invention in Fulton, — ideality in Milton, — we call their 
 possessor a genius. But a genius is usual/// understood 
 to be a creature of such rare facility of mind, that he 
 can do any thing without labor. According to the 
 popular notion, he learns without study, and knows 
 w ithout learning. His mind does not absorb knowledge, 
 but radiates it. He is eloquent without preparation ; 
 exact without calculation ; and profound wiihout re- 
 flection. While ordinary men toil for knowledge bv 
 reading, by comparison, and by minute research; a 
 genius is supposed to receive it as the mind receives 
 dreams. His mind is like a vast Cathedral, through 
 whose colored windows the sunlight streams, painting 
 the aisles with the varied colors of brilliant pictures. 
 Such minds may exist. We have the testimony of those 
 veracious chroniclers, the Poets, that they do ; and nu- 
 merous instances are pointed out in a class of fictions 
 called biographies. 
 
 So far as my observations have ascertained the spe- 
 cies, they abound in academies, colleges, and Thespian 
 societies ; in village debating clubs ; in coteries of A'oung 
 artists, and among young professional aspirants. They 
 are to be known by a reserved air, excessive sensitive- 
 ness, and utter indolence ;. by very long hair, and very 
 open shirt collars ; by the reading of much wretched
 
 IDL ENESS . 17 
 
 poetry, and the writing of much, yet more wretched ; 
 by being very conceited, very affected, very disagreea- 
 ble, and very useless : — beings whom no man wants for 
 friend, pupil, or companion. 
 
 Setting aside these apes or insects of Idleness, who 
 trouble industrious men for a little time, and then take 
 the way of the fly, the gnat, the musquito, and such like 
 buzzing impertinences ; w^e recur to the class of men 
 whom God has largely endowed with strength and ac- 
 tivity of mind. The occupation of the great man, and of 
 the common man, are necessarily, for the most part, the 
 same ; for the business of life is made up of minute affairs, 
 requiring only judgment and diligence. A high order of 
 intellect is required for the discovery and defense of truth ; 
 but this is an unfrequent task. Where the ordinary 
 wants of life once required recondite principles, they wiU 
 need the application of familiar truths a thousand times. 
 Those who enlarge the bounds of knowledge, must 
 push out with bold adventure beyond the common walks 
 of men. But only a few pioneers are needed for the 
 largest armies, and a few profound minds in each occu- 
 pation may herald the advance of all the business of 
 society. The vast bulk of men are required to dis- 
 charge the homely duties of life ; and they have less need 
 of genius than of intellectual Industry and patient 
 enterprise. Young men should observe, that those who 
 take the honors and emoluments of mechanical crafts, of 
 commerce and of professional life, are rather distinguish- 
 ed for a sound judgment and a close application, than 
 for a brilliant genius. In the ordinary business of life, 
 Industry can do any thing which Genius can do ; and 
 very many things which it cannot. Genius is usually
 
 18 INDUSTRY AND 
 
 impatient of application, irritable, scornful of men's 
 duiness, squeamish at petty disgusts : — it loves a con- 
 spicuous place, a short v/ork, and a large reward. It 
 loathes the sweat of toil, the vexations of life, and the 
 dull burden of care. 
 
 Industry has a firmer muscle, is less annoyed by delays 
 and repulses, and like water, bends itself to the shape of 
 the soil over which it flows ; and if checked, will not 
 rest, but accumulates, and mines a passage beneath, or 
 seeks a side-race, or rises above and overflows the ob- 
 struction. What Genius performs at one impulse. Indus- 
 try gains by a succession of blows. In ordinary mat- 
 ters they difl'er only in rapidity of execution, and are 
 upon one level before men, — Avho see the result, but not 
 the process. 
 
 It is admirable to know that those things which in skill, 
 in art, and in learning, the world has been unwilling to 
 let die, have not only been the conceptions of genius, but 
 the products of toil. The master-pieces of antiquity, as 
 well in literature, as in art, are known to have received 
 their extreme finish, from an almost incredible continu- 
 ance of labor upon them. I do not remember a book in 
 all the departments of learning, nor a scrap in literature, 
 nor a work in all the schools of art, from which its 
 author has derived a permanent renown, that is not 
 known to have been long and patiently elaborated. 
 Genius needs Industry, as much as Industry needs Ge- 
 nius. If only Milton's imagination could have conceiv- 
 ed his visions, his consummate industry only could 
 have carved the immortal lines which enshrine them. 
 If only Newton's mind could reach out to the secrets of 
 Nature, even his could only do it by the homeliest toil.
 
 IDLENESS 
 
 19 
 
 The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night dreams, 
 but like coral islands, they have risen from the depths 
 of truth, and formed their broad surfaces above the 
 ocean by the minutest accretions of persevering labor. 
 The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perished 
 like a night's phantasy, had not his industry given them 
 permanence. The mind, like the soil, spontaneously 
 gives only a rank luxuriance of useless weeds, and 
 bitter fruit; and only then is its treasure worth our 
 hand, when toil has slain the weeds, and laborious skill 
 developed a luscious fruit. 
 
 From enjoying the pleasant walks of Industry we 
 turn reluctantly to explore the paths of Indolence. 
 
 All degrees of Indolence incline a man to rely upon 
 others, and not upon himself; to eat their bread and not 
 his own. His carelessness is somebody's loss ; his ne- 
 glect is somebody's downfall ; his promises are a per- 
 petual stumbling block to all who trust them. If he 
 borrows, the article remains borrowed ; if he begs and 
 gets, it is as the letting out of waters — no one knows 
 when it will stop. He spoils your work ; disappoints 
 your expectations; exhausts your patience; eats up 
 your substance ; abuses your confidence, and hangs a 
 dead weight upon all your plans : and the very best 
 thing an honest man can do with a lazy man, is to get 
 rid of him. Solomon says : Bray a fool loith a pestle^ 
 in a mortar with wheat, yet -will not his folly depart 
 from liim. He does not mention what kind of a fool 
 he meant ; but as he speaks of a fool by pre-eminence, I 
 take it for granted he meant a lazy-man ; and I am the 
 more inclined to the opinion, from another expression 
 of his experience : As vinegar to the teeth, and s?noke to 
 the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him.
 
 20 I N D U S T R Y A N I) 
 
 Indolence is a great spendthrift. An indolently in- 
 clined young man, can neither make nor keep property. 
 1 have high authority for this : He that is slothful in his 
 work, is brother to him that is a great waster. 
 
 When men conduct the waters of a neighboring 
 spring to their houses, the hollow log conveys the liquid, 
 not from itself, but from the spring. Property flows 
 through indolent men, from somebody who made it, to 
 somebody that will know how to use it. 
 
 But the malignancy of Indolence must be learned 
 from its effects upon the mind and morals. The mind 
 becomes like a noble castle abandoned of its owner. 
 Its gates sag down and fall ; its towers gradually topple 
 over ; its windows, beaten in by the tempest, give en- 
 trance to birds and reptiles ; and its stately halls and 
 capacious chambers are covered with the spider's tapes- 
 try, and feebly echo with mimic shrieks of the bat, blink- 
 ing hither and thither in twilight sports. The indolent 
 mind is not empty, but full of vermin. If the ap- 
 pointed passages of men's passions be stopped, like the 
 fountains of deserted cities, their waters flow down by 
 unlawful ' ways, to moulder and destroy the palaces 
 which they were built to cheer. 
 
 When Satan would put ordinary men to a crop of 
 mischief, like a wise husbandman, he clears the ground 
 and prepares it for seed ; but he finds the idle man al- 
 ready prepared, and he has scarcely the trouble of 
 sowing ; for vices, (the devil's seed) like weeds, ask little 
 strowing, except what the wind gives their ripe and 
 winged seeds, shaking and scattering them all abroad. 
 Indeed, lazy-men may fitly be likened to a tropical prai- 
 rie, over which the wind of temptation perpetually 
 blows, drifting every vagrant seed from hedge and hill,
 
 IDLENESS. 21 
 
 and which — without a moments rest through all the year 
 — waves its rank harvest of luxuriant weeds. 
 
 First, the imagination will be haunted with unlawful 
 visitants. Upon the outskirts of towns are shattered 
 houses, abandoned by reputable persons. They are not 
 empty, because all the day silent ; thieves, vagabonds 
 and strolling women haunt them, in joint possession 
 with rats, bats, and vermin. Such are idle men's imagi- 
 nations — full of unlawful company. 
 
 The imagination is closely related to the passions, and 
 fires them with its heat. The day-dreams of indolent 
 youth, glow each hour with warmer colors, and bolder 
 adventures. The imagination fashions scenes of en- 
 chantment, in which the passions revel ; and it leads 
 them out, in shadow at first, to deeds which soon they 
 will seek in earnest. The brilliant colors of far-away 
 clouds, are but the colors of the storm ; the salacious 
 day-dreams of indolent men, rosy at first and distant, 
 deepen every day, darker and darker, to the color of 
 actual evil. Then follows the blight of every habit. 
 Indolence promises without redeeming the pledge ; a 
 mist of forgetfulness rises up and obscures the memory 
 of vows and oaths. The negligence of laziness breeds 
 more falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. As 
 poverty waits upon the steps of Indolence, so, upon 
 such poverty, brood equivocations, subterfuges, lying 
 denials. Falsehood becomes the instrument of every 
 plan. Negligence of truth, occasional falsehood, wanton 
 mendacity, — these three strides traverse the whole road 
 of lies. 
 
 Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty, as to lying. 
 Indeed, they are but different parts of the same road,
 
 22 INDUSTRY AND 
 
 and not far apart. In directing the conduct of the 
 Ephesian converts, Paul says, Let him that stole, steal 
 no more, hiti rather let him labor, working with his 
 hands the thing which is good. The men who were 
 thieves, were those who had ceased to work. Industry 
 was the road back to honesty. When stores are broken 
 open, the idle are first suspected. The desperate for- 
 geries, and svvindlings of past years have taught men, 
 upon their occurrence, to ferret their authors among the 
 miemployed, or among those vainly occupied in vicious 
 pleasures. 
 
 The terrible passion for stealing rarely grows upon 
 the young, except through the necessities of their idle 
 pleasures. Business is first neglected for amusement, 
 and amusement soon becomes the only business. The 
 appetite for vicious pleasure outruns the means of pro- 
 curing it. The theatre, the circus, the card table, the 
 midnight carouse, demand money. When scanty earn- 
 ings are gone, the young man pilfers from the till. 
 First, because he hopes to repay, and next, because he 
 despairs of paying — for the disgrace of stealing ten dol- 
 lars or a thousand will be the same, but not their res- 
 pective pleasures. Next, he will gamble, since it is 
 only another form of stealing. Gradually excluded from 
 reputable society, the vagrant takes all the badges of vice, 
 and is familiar with her paths ; and through them enters 
 the broad road of crime. Society precipitates its lazy 
 members, as water does its filth ; and they form at the 
 bottom, a pestilent sediment, stirred up by every breeze 
 of evil, into riots, robberies and murders. An idle popu- 
 lation in a city, is the very nest and hatching place of all 
 abominations. Into it drains all the filth, and out of it.
 
 IDLENESS. 23 
 
 as from a swamp, flow all the streams of pollution. 
 Brutal wretches, desperately hunted by the law, craw- 
 ling in human filth, brood here their villain-schemes, 
 and plot mischief to man. Hither resorts the truculent 
 demagogue, to stir up the foetid filth against his adver- 
 saries, or to bring up mobs out of this sea, whicii can- 
 not rest, but casts up mire and dirt. 
 
 The results of Indolence upon communities, are as 
 marked as upon individuals. In a town of industrious 
 people, the streets would be clean ; houses neat and com- 
 fortable ; fences in repair ; school houses swai'ming with 
 rosy-faced children, decently clad, and well behaved. 
 The laws would be respected, because justly adminis- 
 tered. The church would be thronged with devout wor- 
 shippers. The tavern would be silent, and for the most 
 part empty, or a welcome retreat for weary travelers. 
 Grog-sellers would fail, and mechanics grow rich ; labor 
 would be honorable, and loafing a disgrace. For music, 
 the people would have the blacksmith's anvil, and the car- 
 penter's hammer ; and at home, the spinning-wheel, and 
 girls cheerfully singing at their work. Debts would be 
 seldom paid, because seldom made ; but if contracted, 
 no grim officer would be invited to the settlement. 
 Town-officers would be respectable men, taking office 
 reluctantly, and only for the public good. Public days 
 would be full of sports, without fighting ; and elections 
 would be as orderly as weddings or funerals. 
 
 In a town of lazy-men, I should expect to find crazy 
 houses, shingles and weather-boards knocked off' ; doors 
 hingeless, and all a-creak ; windows stuffed with rags, 
 hats, or pillows. Instead of flowers in summer, and 
 walks in winter, every side of the house would swarm
 
 24 1 N D U S T K y A N D 
 
 with vermin In hot weather — and with starvehng pigs in 
 cold ; fences would be curiosities of lazy contrivance, 
 and gates hung with ropes, or lying flat in the mud. 
 Lank cattle would follow every loaded wagon, suppli- 
 cating a morsel, with famine in their looks. Children 
 would be ragged, dirty, saucy ; the school house empty ; 
 the jail full; the church silent; the grog-shops noisy, 
 and the carpenter, the saddler, and the blacksmith, 
 would do their principal work at taverns. Lawyers 
 would reign ; constables flourish, and hunt sneaking 
 criminals ; burly justices (as their interests might dictate) 
 would connive a compromise, or make a commitment. 
 The peace-officers would wink at tun)ults, arrest rioters 
 in fun, and drink with them in good earnest. Good men 
 would be obliged to keep dark, and bad men would 
 swear, fight, and rule the town. Public days would be 
 scenes of confusion, and end in rows ; elections would 
 be drunken, illegal, boisterous and brutal. 
 
 The young abhor the last results of Idleness ; but they 
 do not perceive that the Jirst steps, lead to the last. 
 They are in the opening of this career ; but with them 
 it is genteel leisure, not laziness ; it is relaxation, not 
 sloth ; amusement, not indolence. But leisure, relaxa- 
 tion, and amusement, when men ought to be usefully 
 engaged, are Indolence. A specious Industry is the 
 worst Idleness. A young man perceives that the first 
 steps lead to the last, with every body but himself. He 
 sees others become drunkards by social tippling — he sips 
 socially, as if he could not be a drunkard. He sees 
 others become dishonest, by petty habits of fraud ; but 
 will indulge slight aberrations, as if he could not become 
 knavish. Though others, by lying, lose all character,
 
 IDLENESS. 25 
 
 he does not imagine that his little dalliances with false- 
 hood will make him a liar. He knows that salacious 
 imaginations, villanous pictures, harlot snuff-boxes, and 
 illicit familiarities, have led thousands to her door, 
 whose house is the loay to hell ; yet he never sighs or 
 trembles lest these things should take him to this inevi- 
 table way of damnation ! 
 
 In reading these strictures upon Indolence, you will 
 abhor it in others, without suspecting it in yourself. 
 While you read, I fear you are excusing yourselves ; 
 you are supposing that your leisure has not been lazi- 
 ness ; or that, with your disposition, and in your circum- 
 stances. Indolence is harmless. Be not deceived : if 
 you are idle, you are on the road to ruin : and there are 
 few stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice, 
 than a road. While I point out the temptations to In- 
 dolence, scrutinize your course and pronounce honestly 
 upon your risks. 
 
 1. Some are tempted to Indolence by their wretched 
 training, or rather, wretched want of it. How many 
 families are the most remiss, whose low condition and 
 sufferings are the strongest inducement to Industry. 
 The children have no inheritance, yet never work ; no 
 education, yet are never sent to school. It is hard to 
 keep their rags around them, yet none of them will 
 earn better raiment. If ever there was a case when a 
 Government should interfere between parent and child, 
 that seems to be the one, where children are started in 
 life with an education of vice. If, in every commu- 
 nity, three things should be put together, which always 
 work together, the front would be a grogshop^ — the 
 middle a jail^ — and the rear a gallows; — an infernal 
 3
 
 26 I N D U S T R Y A N D 
 
 trinity ; and the recruits for this 
 
 are largely drafted from the lazy children of worthless 
 
 parents. 
 
 2. The children of rich parents are apt to be reared 
 in Indolence. The ordinary motives to industry are 
 wanting, and the temptations to sloth are multiplied. 
 Other men labor to provide a support ; to amass 
 wealth ; to secure homage ; to obtain power ; to mul- 
 tiply the elegant products of art. The child of afflu- 
 ence inherits these things. Why should he labor who 
 may command universal service, whose money subsi- 
 dises the inventions of art, exhausts the luxuries of 
 society, and makes rarities common by their abun- 
 dance 1 Only the blind would not see that riches and 
 ruin run in one channel to prodigal children. The most 
 rigorous regimen, the most confirmed industry, and 
 s^eadflist morality can alone disarm inherited wealth, 
 and reduce it to a blessing. The profligate wretch, who 
 fondly watches his father's advancing decrepitude, and 
 secretly curses the lingering steps of death, (seldom too 
 slow except to hungry heirs,) at last is overblessed in 
 the tidings that the loitering work is done — and the 
 estate his. When the golden shower has fallen, he rules 
 as a prince in a court of expectant parasites. All the 
 sluices by which pleasurable vice drains an estate are 
 opened wide. A few years complete the ruin. The 
 hopeful heir, avoided by all whom he has helped, igno- 
 rant of useful labor, and scorning a knowledge of it, 
 fired with an incurable appetite for vicious excitement, 
 sinks steadily down, — a profligate, a wretch, a villain- 
 scoundrel, a convicted felon. Let parents who hate 
 their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit
 
 IDLENESS. 27 
 
 riches, and before long they will be stung by every vice, 
 racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty. 
 
 3. Another cause of Idleness is found in the secret 
 effects of youthful indulgence. The purest pleasures 
 lie within the circle of useful occupation. But the gol- 
 den sand of pleasure is scattered along the courses of 
 all the labors of love, or support, by which the family 
 subsists. Mere pleasure, — sought outside of useful- 
 ness — existing by itself — is fraught with poison. When 
 its exhilaration has thoroughly kindled the mind, the pas- 
 sions thenceforth refuse a simple food ; they crave and 
 require an excitement, higher than any ordinary occupa- 
 tion can give. After reveling all night in wine-dreams, 
 or amid the fascinations of the dance, or the deceptions 
 of the drama, what has the dull store, or the dirty shop, 
 which can continue the pulse at this fever-heat of de- 
 light ? The face of Pleasure to the youthful imagination, 
 is the face of an angel, a paradise of smiles, a home of 
 love ; while the rugged face of Industry, embrowned by 
 toil, is dull and repulsive : but at the end it is not so. 
 These are harlot charms which Pleasure wears. At last, 
 when Industry shall put on her beautiful garments, and 
 rest in the palace which her own hands have built — 
 Pleasure, blotched and diseased with indulgence, shall 
 lie down and die upon the dunghill. 
 
 4. Example leads to Idleness. Tlie children of indus- 
 trious parents at the sight of vagrant rovers seeking 
 their sports wherever they will, disrelish labor, and envy 
 this unrestrained leisure. At the first relaxation of pa- 
 rental vigilance, they shrink from their odious tasks. 
 Idleness is begun when labor is a burden, and industry 
 a bondage, and only idle relaxation a pleasure.
 
 28 . INDUST R Y AN D 
 
 The example of political men, office seekers, and pub- 
 lic officers, is not usually conducive to Industry. The 
 idea insensibly fastens upon the mind, that greatness 
 and hard labor are not companions. The inexperience 
 of youth imagines that great men, are men of great 
 leisure. They see them much in public, much ap- 
 plauded, and greatly followed. How disgusting in con- 
 trast is the mechanic's life ; a tinkering shop, — dark 
 and smutty — is the only theatre of his exploits ; and 
 labor, which covers him with sweat and fills him with 
 weariness, brings neither notice nor praise. The ambi- 
 tious apprentice, sighing over his soiled hands, hates his 
 ignoble work ; — neglecting it, he aspires to better things, 
 — plots in a caucus ; declaims in a bar-room ; fights in 
 a grogshop ; and dies in a ditch. 
 
 5. But the Indolence begotten by venal ambition must 
 not be so easily dropped. At those periods of occasional 
 disaster w^hen embarrassments cloud the face of com- 
 merce, and trade drags heavily, sturdy laborers forsake 
 industrial occupations, and petition for office. Had I a 
 son able to gain a livelihood by toil, I had rather bury 
 him, than witness his beggarly supplications for office ; — 
 sneaking along the path of men's passions to gain his 
 advantage ; holding in the breath of his honest opinions ; 
 and breathing feigned words of flattery to hungry ears, 
 popular or official ; and crawling, viler than a snake, 
 through all the unmanly courses by which ignoble 
 wretches purloin the votes of the dishonest, the drun- 
 ken, and the vile. 
 
 The late reverses of commerce have unsettled the 
 habits of thousands. Manhood seems debilitated, and 
 sturdy yeomen are ashamed of nothing but labor. For
 
 IDLENESS. 29 
 
 a farthing-pittance of official salary — for the miserable 
 fees of a constable's office, — for the parings and perqui- 
 sites of any deputy ship, a hundred men in every village, 
 rush forward — scrambling, jostling, crowding, — each 
 more obsequious than the other to lick the hand that 
 holds the omnipotent vote, or the starveling office. The 
 most supple cunning gains the prize. Of the disap- 
 pointed crowd, a few, rebuked by their sober reflections, 
 go back to their' honest trade, — ashamed and cured of 
 office-seeking. But the majority grumble for a day, 
 then prick forth their ears, arrange their feline arts, and 
 mouse again for another office. The general appetite 
 for office and disrelish for industi-ial callings, is a prolific 
 source of Idleness ; and it would be well for the honor 
 of young men if they were bred to regard office as fit 
 only for those who have clearly shown themselves able 
 and willing to support their families without it. No 
 office can make a worthless man respectable ; and a 
 man of integrity, thrift, and religion, has name enough 
 without badge or office. 
 
 6. Men become Indolent through the reverses of for- 
 tune. Surely, despondency is a grievous thing, and a 
 heavy load to bear. To see disaster and wreck in the 
 present, and no light in the future ; but only storms, lurid 
 by the contrast of past prosperity, and growing darker as 
 they advance ; — to wear a constant expectation of wo 
 like a girdle ; to see want at the door, imperiously 
 knocking, while there is no strength to repel, or courage 
 to bear its tyranny; — indeed, this is dreadful enough. 
 But there is a thing more dreadful. It is more dreadful 
 if the man is wrecked with his fortune. Can any thing 
 be more poignant in anticipation, than one's ownself, 
 3*
 
 30 INDUSTRYANDIDLENESS. 
 
 unnerved, cowed down and slackened to utter pliancy, 
 and helplessly drifting and driven down the troubled sea 
 of life ? Of all things on earth, next to his God, a bro- 
 ken man should cling to a courageous Industry. If it 
 brings nothing back, and saves nothing, it will save him. 
 To be pressed down by adversity has nothing in it of 
 disgrace ; but it is disgraceful to lie down under it like a 
 supple dog. Indeed, to stand composedly in the storm, 
 amidst its rage and wildest devastations ; to let it beat 
 over you, and roar around you, and pass by you, and 
 leave you undismayed, — this is to be a man. Adversity 
 is the mint in which God stamps upon us his image and 
 superscription. In this matter man may learn of in- 
 sects. The ant will repair his dwelling as often as the 
 mischievous foot crushes it ; the spider will exhaust life 
 itself, before he will live without a web ; — the bee can 
 be decoyed from his labor neither by plenty nor scar- 
 city. If summer be abundant it toils none the less ; if 
 it be parsimonious of flowers, the tiny laborer sweeps 
 a wider circle, and by Industry, repairs the frugality of 
 the season. Man should be ashamed to be rebuked in 
 vain by the spider, the ant, and the bee. 
 
 Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand 
 Iw.fore kings, he shall not stand before ?nean men.
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Providing for honest' things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but 
 also in the sight of men. 2 Cor. viii. 21. 
 
 Only extraordinary circumstances can give the ap- 
 pearance of dishonesty to an honest man. Usually, not 
 to seem honest, is not to he so. The quality must not 
 be doubtful like twilight, lingering between night and 
 day and taking hues from both ; it must be day light, 
 clear, and eflulgent. This is the doctrine of the Bible : 
 Providing for honest things^ not only in the sight of the 
 Lord, BUT ALSO IN THE SIGHT OF MEN. If the needle 
 traverses in the compass, you may be sure something 
 has attracted it ; and so good men's opinions will 
 point steadily to an honest man, nor vibrate without 
 a cause. In general it may be said that no one has 
 honesty without dross, until he has honesty without 
 suspicion. 
 
 We are passing through times upon which the seeds 
 of dishonesty have been sown broadcast, and they have 
 brought forth a hundred fold. These times will pass 
 away : but like ones will come again. As physicians 
 study the causes and record the phenomena of plagues 
 and pestilences, to draw from them an antidote against
 
 32 TWELVE CAUSES 
 
 their recurrence, so should we leave to another genera- 
 tion a history of moral plagues, as the best antidote to 
 their recurring malignity. 
 
 Upon a land, — capacious beyond measure, whose pro- 
 digal soil rewards labor with an unharvestable abun- 
 dance of exuberant fruits, occupied by a people signal- 
 ized by enterprise and industry, — there came a summer 
 of prosperity which lingered so long and shone so 
 brightly, that men forgot that winter could ever come. 
 Each day grew brighter. No reins were put upon the 
 imagination. Its dreams passed for realities. Even 
 sober men, touched with wildness, seemed to expect 
 a realization of oriental tales. Upon this bright day 
 came sudden frosts, storms, and blight. Men awoke 
 from gorgeous dreams in the midst of desolation. The 
 liarvests of years were swept away in a day. The 
 strongest firms were rent as easily as the oak by light- 
 ning. Speculating companies were dispersed as seared 
 leaves from a tree in autumn. Merchants were ruined 
 by thousands; clerks turned adrift by ten thousands. 
 Mechanics were left in idleness. Farmers sighed over 
 flocks and wheat as useless as the stones and dirt. The 
 wide sea of Commerce was stagnant ; upon the realm of 
 Industry settled down a sullen lethargy. 
 
 Out of this reverse swarmed an unnumbered host of 
 dishonest men, like vermin from a carcass — or wolves 
 and hyenas from a battle-ground. Banks were explo- 
 ded, — or robbed, — or fleeced by astounding forgeries. 
 Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces, 
 and hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that 
 came ashore. Cities were ransacked by troops of vil- 
 lains. The unparalleled frauds, which sprung like mines
 
 OF DISHONESTY. 33 
 
 on every hand, set every man to trembling lest the next 
 explosion should be under his own feet. Fidelity seemed 
 toJiave forsaken men. Many that had earned a reputa- 
 tion for sterling honesty were cast so suddenly headlong 
 into wickedness, that man shrank from man. Suspicion 
 overgrew confidence, and the heart bristled with the 
 nettles and thorns of fear and jealousy. Then had al- 
 most come to pass the divine delineation of ancient 
 wickedness : The good man is perished out of the earth : 
 and there is none upright a?nong men : they all lie in wait 
 for blood ; they hunt every man his brother with a net. 
 That they may do evil ivith both hands earnestly, the 
 prince and the judge ask for a reward : and the great 
 man uttereth his mischievous desire : so they wrap it up. 
 The best of them is a brier ; the inost upright is sharper 
 than a thorn hedge. * * * Trust ye not in a friend ; 
 put ye no confidence iii a guide; keep the door of thy 
 mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dis- 
 honoreth the father, the daughter riseth up against her 
 mother. * * * ^ mail's enemies are the men of his 
 own house."- The world looked upon a continent of in- 
 exhaustible fertility, (whose harvests had glutted the 
 markets, and rotted in disuse) — filled with lamentation, 
 and its inhabitants wandering like bereaved citizens 
 among the ruins of an earthquake, mourning for chil- 
 dren, for houses crushed, and property buried forever. 
 
 That no measure might be put to the calamit}', the 
 Church of God, which rises a stately tower of refuge to 
 disponding men, seemed now to have lost its power of 
 protection. When the solemn voice of Religion should 
 have gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man 
 
 a Micah. vii. 2—6.
 
 34 TWELVE CAUSES 
 
 to seek in him their strength ; in this time when Religion 
 should have restored sight to the blind, made the lame 
 to walk, and bound up the broken hearted, she was 
 herself mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came 
 the noise of warring sects ; some contending against 
 others with a warfare disgraceful to pirates ; and some, 
 possessed of a demon, wallowed upon the ground foam- 
 ing and rending themselves. In a time of panic, and 
 disaster, and distress, and crime, the fountain which 
 should have been for the healing of men, cast up its sedi- 
 ments, and gave out a bitter stream of pollution. 
 
 In every age, an universal pestilence has hushed the 
 clamor of contention, and cooled the heats of parties ; 
 but the greatness of our national calamity seemed only 
 to enkindle the fury of political parties. Contentions 
 never ran with such deep streams and impetuous cur- 
 rents, as amidst the ruin of our industry and prosperity. 
 States were greater debtors to foreign nations, than 
 their citizens were to each other. Both states and citi- 
 zens shrunk back from their debts, and yet more dis- 
 honestly from the taxes necessary to discharge them. 
 The General Government did not escape, but lay be- 
 calmed, or pursued its course, like a ship, at every furlong 
 touching the rocks, or beating against the sands. The 
 Capitol trembled with the first waves of a question 
 which is yet to shake the whole land. New questions 
 of exciting qualities perplexed the realm of legislation, 
 and of morals. To all this must be added a manifest 
 decline of family government ; an increase of the ratio 
 of popular ignorance ; a decrease of reverence for law, 
 and an effeminate administration of it. Popular tumults 
 have been as frequent as freshets in our rivers ; and like
 
 OF PIS HONES XT. 35 
 
 them, have swept over tlie land with desolation and 
 left their filthy slime in the highest places :— upon the 
 press ; — upon the legislature ; — in the halls of our 
 courts ; — and even upon the sacred bench of Justice. 
 If unsettled times foster dishonesty, it should have 
 flourished among us. And it has. 
 
 Our nation must expect a periodical return of such 
 convulsions ; but experience should steadily curtail their 
 ravages, and remedy their immoral tendencies. Young 
 men have before them lessons of manifold wisdom taught 
 by the severest of masters — experience. They should 
 be studied ; and that they may be, I shall, from this gen- 
 eral survey, turn to a specific enumeration of the causes 
 of dishonesty. 
 
 1. Some men find in their bosom from the first, a 
 vehement inclination to dishonest ways. Knavish pro- 
 pensities are inherent: born with the child and trans- 
 missible from parent to son. The children of a sturdy 
 thief, if taken from him at birth and reared by honest 
 men, would, doubtless, have to contend against a strongly 
 dishonest inclination. Foundlings and orphans under 
 public charitable charge, are more apt to become vicious 
 than other children. They are usually born of low and 
 vicious parents, and inherit their parent's propensities. 
 Only the most thorough moral training can overrule this 
 innate depravity. 
 
 2. A child naturally fair minded, may become dishon- 
 est by parental example. He is early taught to be sharp 
 in bargains, and vigilant for every advantage. Little is 
 said about honesty, and much upon shrewd trafiic. A 
 dexterous trick, becomes a family anecdote ; visiters are 
 regaled with the boy's precocious keenness. Hearing
 
 36 T W E L V E C A U S E S 
 
 the praise of his exploits, he studies craft, and seeks pa- 
 rental admiration by adroit knaveries. He is taught, for 
 his safety, that he must not range beyond the law : that 
 would be unprofitable. He calculates his morality thus : 
 Legal honesty is the best policy, — dishonesty, then, is a bad 
 bargain — and therefore wrong — every thing is wrong 
 which is unthrifty. Whatever profit breaks no legal sta- 
 tute — though it is gained by falsehood, by unfairness, by 
 gloss ; through dishonor, unkindness, and an unscrupu- 
 lous conscience — he considers fair, and says : The law 
 allouis it. Men may spend a long life without an in- 
 dictable action, and without an honest one. No law 
 can reach the insidious ways of subtle craft. The law 
 allows, and religion forbids men, to profit by others' mis- 
 fortunes, to prowl for prey among the ignorant, to over- 
 reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops from the 
 bleeding; to hover over men as a vulture over herds, 
 swooping down upon the weak, the straggling, and the 
 weary. The infernal craft of cunning men, turns the 
 law itself to piracy, and works outrageous fraud in the 
 hall of Courts, by the decision of Judges, and under the 
 seal of Justice. 
 
 3. Dishonesty is learned from one's employers. The 
 boy of honest parents and honestly bred, goes to a trade, 
 or a store, where the employer practices legal frauds. 
 The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of laughter 
 among the better taught clerks. The master tells them 
 that such blundering truthfulness must be pitied ; the 
 boy evidently has been neglected, and is not to be ridi- 
 culed for what he could not help. At first, it verily 
 pains the youth's scruples, and tinges his face to frame 
 a deliberate dishonesty, finish, and polish it. His tongue
 
 OF DISHONESTY. 37 
 
 stammers at a lie ; but the example ol' a rich master, 
 the jeers and gibes of shopmates, with gradual practice 
 cure all this. lie becomes adroit in fleecing customers 
 tor his masters sake, and equally dextrous in fleecing 
 his master for his own sake. 
 
 4. Extravagance is a prolific source of Dishonesty. 
 Extravagance, — which is foolish expense, or expense 
 disproportionate to one's means, — may be found in all 
 grades of society ; but it is chiefly apparent among the 
 rich, those aspiring to wealth, and those wishing to be 
 fhought aflluent. Many a young man cheats his busi- 
 ness, by transferring his means to theatres, race-courses, 
 expensive parties, and to the nameless and numberless 
 projects of pleasure. The enterprise of others is 
 baffled by the extravagance of their family ; for few men 
 can make as much in a year as an extravagant woman 
 can carry on her back in one winter. Some are ambi- 
 tious of fashionable society, and will gratify their vanity 
 at any expense. This disproportion between means 
 and expense soon brings on a crisis. Tlie victim is 
 straitened for money ; without it he must abandon his 
 rank ; for fashionable society remorselessly rejects all 
 butterflies which have lost their brilliant colors. Which 
 shall he choose, honesty and mortifying exclusion, or 
 gaiety purchased by dishonesty ? The severity of this 
 choice sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain ; and 
 a young man shrinks i'rom the gulf, appalled at the dark- 
 ness of dishonesty. But to excessive vanity, high-life 
 with or without fraud, is Paradise ; and any other life 
 Purgatory. Here many resort to dishonesty without a 
 scruple. It is at this point that public sentiment half sus- 
 4
 
 38 TWELVE CAUSES 
 
 tains dishonesty. It scourges the thief of Necessity, and 
 pities the thief of Fashion. 
 
 The struggle with others is on the very ground of 
 honor. A wife led from aflluence to frigid penury and 
 neglect ; from leisure and luxury to toil and want ; daugh- 
 ters, once courted as rich, to be disesteemed when poor 
 — this is the gloomy prospect, seen through a magic haze 
 of despondency. Honor, love and generosity, strangely 
 bewitched, plead for dishonesty as the only alternative 
 to such suffering. But go, young man, to your wife ; tell 
 her the alternative ; if she is worthy of you, she will 
 face your poverty with u courage which shall shame 
 your fears, and lead you into its wilderness and through 
 it, all unshrinking. Many there be who went weeping 
 into this desert, and ere long, having found in it the 
 fountains of the purest peace, have thanked God for the 
 pleasures of poverty. But if your wife unmans your 
 resolution, nnploring dishonor rather than penury, may 
 God pity and help you ! You dwell with a sorceress, 
 and few can resist her wiles. 
 
 5. Debt is an inexhaustible fountain of Dishonesty. 
 The Royal Preacher tells us : The borrower is servant 
 to the lender. Debt is a rigorous servitude. The 
 debtor learns the cunning tricks, delays, concealments, 
 and frauds, by which slaves evade or cheat their master. 
 He is tempted to make ambiguous statements ; pledges', 
 with secrei, passages of escape ; contracts, with fraudu- 
 lent constructions ; lying excuses, and more mendacious 
 promises. He is tempted to elude responsibility; to 
 delay settlements ; to prevaricate upon the terms ; to 
 resist equity, and devise specious fraud. When the 
 the eager creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law.
 
 OF DISHONESTT. 39 
 
 the debtor then thinks himself released from moral obliga- 
 tion, and brought to a legal game, in which it is lawful for 
 the best player to win. He disputes true accounts ; he 
 studies subterfuges ; extorts provocations delays ; and 
 harbors in every nook, and corner, and passage of the 
 law's labyrinth. At length the measure is filled up, and 
 the malignant power of debt is known. It has opened 
 in the heart every fountain of iniquity ; it lias besoiled 
 the conscience ; it has tarnished the honor ; it has made 
 the man a deliberate student of knavery; a systematic 
 practitioner of fraud : it has dragged him through all the 
 sewers of petty passions, — anger, hate, revenge, mali- 
 cious folly, or malignant shame. When a debtor is 
 beaten at every point, and the law will put her screws 
 upon him, there is no depth in the gulf of dishonesty 
 into which he will not boldly plunge. Some men put 
 their property to the flames, assassinate the detested 
 creditor, and end the frantic tragedy by suicide, or the 
 gallows. Others, in view of the catastrophe, have con- 
 verted all property to cash, and concealed it. The 
 law's utmost skill, and the creditor's fury, are alike pow- 
 erless now — the tree is green and thrifty ; its roots 
 drawing a copious supply from some hidden fountain. 
 
 Craft lias another harbor of resort for the piratical 
 crew of dishonesty ; viz. putting property out of the 
 law's reach hij a fraudulent conveyance. Whoever runs 
 in debt, and consumes the equivalent of his indebted- 
 ness ; whoever is fairh' liable to damage for broken con- 
 tracts ; whoever by folly, has incurred debts and lost 
 the benefit of his outlay ; whoever is legally obliged 
 to pay for his malice or carelessness ; whoever by 
 infidelity to public trusts, has made his property a just
 
 40 T \\' E L V E C A U S E S 
 
 remuneration for his defaults ; whoever of all tiiese, 
 or whoever, under any circumstances, puts out of his 
 Iiands property, morally or legally due to creditors, is 
 A DISHONEST 5IAN. The crazy excuses which men ren- 
 der to their consciences, are only such as every villain 
 makes, who is unwilling to look upon the black face of 
 his crimes. 
 
 He who'will receive a conveyance of property, know- 
 ing it to be illusive and fraudulent, is as wicked as the 
 principal ; and as much meaner, as the tool and subordi- 
 nate of villany, is meaner than the master who uses him. 
 
 If a church, knowing all these facts, or willfully igno- 
 rant of them, allows a member to nestle in the security 
 of the sanctuary ; then the act of this robber, and the 
 connivance of the church, are but the two parts of one 
 crime. 
 
 0. Bankruptcy, although a branch of debt, deserves a 
 separate mention. It sometimes crushes a man's spirit, 
 and sometimes exasperates it. The poignancy of the 
 evil depends much upon the disposition of the creditors ; 
 and as much upon the disposition of the victim. Should 
 they act with the lenity of christian men, and he with 
 manly honesty, promptly rendering up whatever sat- 
 isfaction of debt he has, — he may visit the lowest places 
 of human adversity, and find there the light of good 
 men's esteem, the support of conscience, and the suste- 
 nance of religion. The soils which yield gold are rocky 
 and barren of all else, and those rich in flowers and 
 fruit, yield no ore ; — and the heart which has only gold, 
 is barren indeed ; but that poverty is not poor, in which 
 every affection more sweetly blossoms and matures the 
 richest fruits of love.
 
 OF DISHONESTY. 41 
 
 A bankrupt may fall into the hands of men whose 
 tender mercies are cruel ; or his dishonest equivocations 
 may exasperate their temper and provoke every thorn 
 and brier of the law. When men's passions are let 
 loose, especially their avarice, whetted by real or im- 
 aginary wrong ; when there is a rivalry among credi- 
 tors, lest any one should feast upon the victim more 
 than his share ; and they all rush upon him like wolves 
 upon a wounded deer, dragging him down, ripping him 
 open, breast and flank, plunging deep their bloody muz- 
 zles to reach the heart and taste blood at the very 
 fountain ; — is it strange that resistance is desperate and 
 unscrupulous ? At length the sufferer drags his muti- 
 lated carcass aside, every nerve and muscle wrung with 
 pain, and his whole body an instrument of agony. He 
 curses the whole human crew with envenomed impreca- 
 tions ; and thenceforth, a brooding misanthrope, he pays 
 back to society, by studied villanies, the legal wrongs 
 which the relentless justice of a few, or his own kna- 
 very, have brought upon him. 
 
 7. There is a circle of moral dishonesties practiced 
 because the law allows them. The very anxiety of law 
 to reach the devices of cunning, so perplexes its stat- 
 utes with exceptions, limitations, and supplements, that 
 like a castle gradually enlarged for centuries, it has its 
 crevices, dark corners, secret holes and winding passa- 
 ges — an endless harbor for rats and vermin, where no 
 trap can catch them. We are villanously infested with 
 legal rats and rascals, who are able to commit the most 
 flagrant dishonesties with impunity. They can do all 
 of wrong which is profitable, without that part which is 
 actionable. The very ingenuity of these miscreants 
 4"^
 
 42 TWELVE CAUSES 
 
 excites such admiration of their skill, that their life is 
 gilded with a specious respectability. Men profess lit- 
 tle esteem for blunt, necessitous thieves, who rob and 
 run away ; but for a gentleman who can break the 
 whole of God's law so adroitly, as to leave man's law 
 unbroken ; who can indulge in such conservative steal- 
 ing that his fellow men award him a rank among honest 
 men for the excessive skill of his dishonesty — for such 
 an one, I fear, there is almost universal sympathy. 
 
 8. Political Dishonesty, breeds dishonesty of every 
 kind. It is possible for good men to permit single sins to 
 co-exist with general integrity, where the evil is indulg- 
 ed through ignorance. Once, undoubted christians 
 were slave-traders. They might be, while unenlight- 
 ened 5 but not in our times.- A state of mind which 
 will intend one fraud, will upon occasion, intend a thou- 
 sand. He that will lie upon one emergency, will be 
 supplied with emergencies. He that will perjure him- 
 self to save a friend, will do it, in a desperate juncture, 
 to save himself. The highest Wisdom has informed us 
 that He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. 
 Circumstances may withdraw a politician from tempta- 
 tion to any but political dishonesty ; but under tempta- 
 tion, a dishonest politician would be a dishonest cashier, 
 — would be dishonest any where, — in any thing. The 
 fire which burns on tiie hearth, would consume the 
 dwelling if permitted. The fury which destroys an 
 opponent's character, would stop at nothing, if barriers 
 were thrown down. That which is true of the leaders 
 in politics, is true of subordinates. Political dishonesty 
 in voters runs into general dishonesty, as the rotten 
 speck taints the whole apple. A community whose
 
 OF DISHONESTY. 43 
 
 politics are conducted by a perpetual breach of honesty 
 on both sides, will be tainted by immorality throughout. 
 Men will play the same game in their private affairs, 
 which they have learned to play in public matters. 
 The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishonest advantage, 
 the cunning sharpness ; — the tricks and traps and sly 
 evasions ; the equivocal promises, and unequivocal neg- 
 lect of them, which characterise political action, will 
 equally characterise private action. The mind has no 
 kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the parlor remains 
 clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere ; if it comes into 
 one apartment, it penetrates into every one. Who- 
 ever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will 
 slander in politics, will slander in personal squabbles. 
 A professor of religion who is a dishonest politician, is 
 a dishonest christian. His creed is a perpetual index of 
 his hypocrisy. 
 
 The genius of our government directs the attention 
 of every citizen to politics. Its spirit reaches the outer- 
 most bound of society, and pervades the whole mass. 
 If its channels are slimy with corruption, what limit 
 can be set to its malign influence ? The turbulence of 
 elections, the virulence of the press, the desperation of 
 bad men, the hopelessness of efforts which are not cun- 
 ning, but only honest, have driven many conscientious 
 men from any concern with politics. This is suicidal. 
 Thus the tempest will grow blacker and fiercer. Our 
 youth will be caught up in its whirling bosom and dashed 
 to pieces, and its hail will break down every green thing. 
 At God's house the cure should begin. Let the hand of 
 discipline smite the leprous lips which shall utter the 
 profane heresy : All is fair in politics. If any hoary
 
 44 T W E L V E C A U S E S 
 
 professor, drunk with tlie mingled wine of excitement, 
 shall tell our youth, that a christian man may act in 
 politics by any other rule of morality than that of the 
 Bible ; and that wickedness performed for a party, is not 
 as abominable, as if done for a man ; or that any ne- 
 cessity justifies or palliates dishonesty in word or deed 
 — let such an one go out of the camp, and his pestilent 
 breath no longer spread contagion among our youth. 
 No man who loves his country, should shrink from her 
 side when she groans with raging distempers. Let 
 every christian man stand in his place ; rebuke every 
 dishonest practice ; scorn a political as well as a perso- 
 nal lie ; and refuse with indignation to be insulted by the 
 solicitation of an immoral man. Let good men of all 
 parties require honesty, integrity, veracity, and morality 
 in politics, and there, as powerfully as any where else, 
 the requisitions of public sentiuient will ultimately be 
 felt. 
 
 9. A corrupt public sentiment produces Dishonesty. 
 A public sentiment, in which dishonesty is not disgrace- 
 ful ; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are 
 honored, are exalted — is a curse to the young. The 
 fever of speculation, the universal derangement of busi- 
 ness, the growing laxness of morals, is, to an alarming 
 extent, introducing such a state of things. Men of noto- 
 rious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose 
 private habits w'ould disgrace the ditch, are powerful 
 and popular. I have seen a man stained with every 
 sin, except those which required courage ; into whose 
 head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty 
 years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would find 
 itself alone in a desert; — in evil he was ripe and rotten ;
 
 OF DISHONESTY. 45 
 
 hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present Hte 
 and in all his past ; evil when by himself, and viler 
 among men ; corrupting to the young ; — to domestic 
 fidelity, a recreant ; to common honor, a traitor ; to 
 honesty, an outlaw ; to religion, a hypocrite ; to mod- 
 esty, a beast ; — base in all that is worthy of man, and 
 accomplished in whatever is disgraceful ; and yet this 
 wretch could go where he would ; enter good men's 
 dwellings, and purloin their votes. Men would curse 
 him, yet obey him ; hate him, and assist him ; warn 
 their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for 
 him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious 
 knaves, cannot breed honest men. 
 
 Any calamity, civil or commercial, which checks 
 tlie administration of justice between man and man, is 
 ruinous to honesty. The violent fluctuations of busi- 
 ness cover the ground with rubbish over which men 
 stumble ; and fill the air with dust, in which all the shapes 
 of honesty appear distorted. Men are thrown upon 
 unusual expedients ; dishonesties are unobserved ; those 
 who have been reckless and profuse, stave off the legiti- 
 mate fruits of their folly by desperate shifts. Society 
 resembles a city sacked by an army, in which each man 
 seizes what opportunity allows, and carries off what his 
 strength will permit. We have not yet emerged from 
 a period, in which debts were insecure ; the debtor 
 legally protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes 
 laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for political 
 effect ; and lowered to a dishonest insufficiency ; and 
 when thus diminished, not collected 5 the citizens resist- 
 ing their own officers ; officers resigning at the bidding of 
 the electors 5 the laws of property paralyzed ; bankrupt
 
 46 TWELVE CAUSES 
 
 laws built up ; and stay-laws unconstitutionally enacted, 
 upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to 
 deny them, lest the wildness of popular opinion should 
 roll back disdainfully upon the bench, to dispoil its dig- 
 nity, and prostrate its power. General suffering has 
 made us tolerant of general dishonesty ; and the gloom 
 of our commercial disasters threatens to become the pall 
 of our morals. 
 
 If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atro- 
 cious dishonesties is not aroused ; if good men do 
 not bestir themselves to drag the young from this foul 
 sorcery ; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tight- 
 ened, and conscience intoned to a severer morality, our 
 night is at hand, — our midnight not far off. Wo ! to 
 that guilty people who sit down upon broken laws, and 
 wealth saved by injustice ! Wo ! to a generation fed 
 upon the bread of fraud, whose children's inheritance 
 shall be a perpetual memento of their fathers' unright- 
 eousness ; to whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant 
 by association W'ith the revered memories of father, 
 brother, and friend ! 
 
 But when a whole people united by a common disre- 
 gard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors ; 
 and States vie with Slates in an infamous repudiation of 
 just debts, by open or sinister methods ; and Nations 
 exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the kna- 
 very of a Commonwealth ; then the confusion of do- 
 mestic affairs has bred a fiend, before whose flight honor 
 fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth 
 and the religion of solemn compacts, are stamped down 
 and ground into the dirt. Need we ask the causes of 
 growing dishonesty among the young, and the increas-
 
 O F D I S H O N E .S T Y . 47 
 
 ing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen 
 clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and Nations put 
 on fraud for their garments ? 
 
 Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalca- 
 tions, occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at 
 length ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common 
 accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week 
 is incomplete without its mob and run-away cashier — 
 its duel and defaulter ; and as waves which roll to the 
 shore are lost in those which follow on, so the villanies 
 of each week, obliterate the record of the last. 
 
 This mania of dishonesty cannot arise from local 
 causes ; it is the result of disease in the whole commu- 
 nity : an eruption betokening foulness of the blood ; 
 blotches symptomatic of a disordered system. 
 
 10. Financial agents are especially liable to the temp- 
 tations of Dishonesty. Safe merchants, and visionary 
 schemers ; sagacious adventurers, and rash speculators ; 
 frugal beginners, and retired millionaires, are constantly 
 around them. Every word, every act, every entry, 
 every letter, suggests only wealth — its germ, its bud, 
 its blossom, its golden harvest. Its brilliance dazzles the 
 sight ; its seductions stir the appetites ; its power fires 
 the ambition, and the soul concentrates its energies to 
 obtain wealth, as life's highest and only joy. 
 
 Beside the influence of such associations, direct deal- 
 ing in money as a commodity, has a peculiar efl^ect upon 
 the heart. There is no property between it and the 
 n\ind ; — no medium to mellow its light. The mind is 
 diverted and refreshed by no thoughts upon the quality 
 of soils ; the durability of structures ; the advantages of 
 sites ; the beauty of fabrics ; it is not invigorated by
 
 48 T ^V E L V E C A U S E S 
 
 the necessity of labor and ingenuity which the mechanic 
 feels ; by the invention of the artizan, or the taste of the 
 artist. The whole attention falls directly upon naked 
 Money. The hourly sight of it whets the appetite, and 
 sharpens it to avarice. Thus, with an intense regard of 
 riches, steals in also the miser's relish of coin — that insa- 
 tiate gazing and fondling, by which seductive metal 
 wins to itself all the blandishments of love. 
 
 Those who mean to be rich, often begin by imitating 
 the expensive courses of those who are rich. They are 
 also tempted to venture, before they have means of their 
 own, in brilliant speculations, which open as blandly as 
 spring — with as many germs, and the promise of a 
 prodigal harvest. ITow can a young cashier pay the 
 drafts of his illicit pleasures, or procure the seed, for the 
 harvest of speculation, out of his narrow salary ? Here 
 first begins to work the leaven of death. The mind 
 wanders in dreams of gain ; it broods over projects of 
 unlawful riches ; stealthily at first, and then with less 
 reserve ; at last it boldly meditates the possibility of 
 being dishonest and safe. When a man can seriously 
 reflect upon dishonesty as a possible and profitable 
 thing, he is already deeply dishonest. To a mind so 
 tainted, (as vultures to a carcass) flock stories of con- 
 summate craft, of effective knavery, of fraud covered 
 by its brilliant success. At times, the mind shrinks from 
 its own thoughts, and trembles to look down the giddy 
 cliff on whose edge they poise, or over which they fling 
 themselves like sporting sea-birds. But these imagina- 
 tions will not be driven from the heart where they have 
 once nested. They haunt a man's business, visit him in 
 dreams, and vampire-like, fan the slumbers of the victim
 
 OF DISHONESTY. 49 
 
 whom they will destroy. In some teverish hour, vibra- 
 ting between conscience and avarice, the man staggers to 
 a compromise. To satisfy his conscience he refuses to 
 steal ; and to gratify his avarice, he borrows the funds ; — 
 not openly — not of owners — not of men ; but of the 
 till — the safe — the vault ! 
 
 He resolves to restore the money before discovery can 
 ensue, and pocket the profits. Meanwhile, false entries 
 are made, perjured oaths are sworn, forged papers are 
 filed. His expenses grow profuse, and men wonder 
 from what fountain so copious a stream can flow. 
 
 Let us stop here to survey his condition. He flour- 
 ishes, is called prosperous, thinks himself safe. Is he safe, 
 or honest ? He has stolen, and embarked the amount 
 upon a sea over which wander perpetual storms ; where 
 wreck is the common fate, and escape the accident ; 
 and now all his chance for the semblance of honesty, 
 is staked upon the return of his embezzlements from 
 among the sands, the rocks, and currents, the winds 
 and waves, and darkness, of tumultuous speculation. At 
 length dawns the day of discovery. His guilty dreams 
 have long betokened it. As he confronts the disgrace 
 almost face to face, how changed is the hideous aspect 
 of his deed, from that fair face of promise with which it 
 tempted him ! Conscience, and honor, and plain hon- 
 esty, which left him when they could not restrain, now 
 come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the 
 prospect of open shame, of his wife's disgrace, and his 
 children's beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of 
 life a frantic suicide. 
 
 Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They 
 meet their fate with cool impudence ; defy their em- 
 5
 
 50 T W E L V K C A U S E S 
 
 ployers ; brave the court, and too often with success. 
 The delusion of the public mind, or the confusion of 
 aflairs is such, that, while petty culprits are tumbled 
 into prison, a cool, calculating, and immense scoundrel 
 is pitied, dandled and nursed by a sympathizing commu^ 
 nity. In the broad road slanting to the rogue's retreat, 
 are seen the officer of the bank, the agent of the state, 
 the officer of the church, in indiscriminate haste, out- 
 running a lazy justice, and bearing off the gains of as- 
 tounding frauds. Meanwhile, the victim of these villa- 
 nies, the good-natured public, as if bled to weakness, 
 feebly asks with complacent smiles: "How speeds the 
 race?" Avarice and pleasure seem to have dissolved 
 the conscience. It is a day of trouble and of perplexity 
 from the Lord. We tremble to think that our children 
 must leave the covert of the family, and go out upon 
 that dark and yesty sea, from whose wrath so many 
 wrecks are cast up at our feet. Of one thing I am cer- 
 tain ; if the church of Christ is silent to such deeds, and 
 makes her altar a refuge to such dishonesty, the day is 
 coming when she shall have no altar, the light shall go 
 out from her candle-stick, her walls shall be desolate, 
 and the fox look out at her windows. 
 
 11. Executive clemency, by its frequency, has been a 
 temptation to Dishonesty. Who will fear to be a cul- 
 prit when a legal sentence is the argument of pity, and 
 the prelude of pardon ? What can the community ex- 
 pect but growing dishonesty, when juries connive at ac- 
 quittals, and judges condemn only to petition a pardon ; 
 when honest men and officers fly before a mob ; when 
 jails are besieged and threatened, if felons are not relin- 
 quished ; when the Executive, consulting the spirit of
 
 OF DISHONESTY 
 
 the community, receives the demands of the mob, and 
 humbly complies, throwing down the fences of the law, 
 that base rioters may walk unimpeded to their work of 
 vengeance, or unjust mercy? A sickly sentimentality too 
 often enervates the administration of justice ; and the 
 pardoning power becomes the master-key to let out 
 unwashed, unrepentant criminals. They have fleeced 
 us, robbed us, and are ulcerous sores to the body politic ; 
 yet our heart turns to water over their merited punish- 
 ment. A fine young fellow, by accident, writes another's 
 name for his own ; by a mistake equally unfortunate, he 
 presents it at the bank ; innocendy draws out the large 
 amount ; generously spends a part, and absent-mindedly 
 hides the rest. Hard-hearted wretches there are, who 
 would punish him for this ! Young men, admiring the 
 neatness of the affair, pity his misfortune, and curse a 
 stupid jury that knew no better than to send to a peni- 
 tentiary, him, whose skill deserved a cashier-ship. He 
 goes to his cell, the pity of a whole metropolis. Bulle- 
 tins from Sing-Sing inform us daily what Edwards is 
 doing, as if he were Napoleon at St. Helena. At length 
 pardoned, he will go forth again to a renowned liberty ! 
 
 If there be one way quicker than another, by which 
 the Executive shall assist crime, and our laws foster it, 
 it is that course which assures every dishonest man, that 
 it is easy to defraud, easy to avoid arrest, easy to escape 
 punishment, and easiest of all to obtain a pardon. 
 
 12. CoMMKRciAL SPECULATIONS are prolific of Dishonesty. 
 Speculation is the risking of capital in enterprises greater 
 than we can control, or in enterprises whose elements 
 are not at all calculable. All calculations of the 
 future are uncertain ; but those w^hich are based upon
 
 52 TWELVE CAUSES 
 
 long experience approximate certainly, while those which 
 are drawn by sagacity from probable events, are noto- 
 riously unsafe. Unless, however, some venture, we 
 shall forever tread an old and dull path ; therefore en- 
 terprise is allowed to pioneer new ways. The safe en- 
 terpriser explores cautiously, ventures at first a little, 
 and increases the venture with the ratio of experience. 
 A speculator looks out upon the new region, as upon a 
 far-away land-scape, whose features are softened to 
 beauty by distance ; upon a hope., he stakes that, which, 
 if it wins, will make him ; and if it loses, will ruin him. 
 When the alternatives are victory, or utter destruction, a 
 battle may, sometimes, still be necessary. But com- 
 merce has no such alternatives ; only speculation pro- 
 ceeds upon them. 
 
 If the capital is borrowed, it is as dishonest, upon such 
 ventures, to risk, as to lose it. Should a man borrow 
 a noble steed and ride among incitements which he knew 
 would rouse up his fiery spirit to an uncontrolable height, 
 and, borne away with wild speed, be plunged over a 
 precipice, his destruction might excite our pity, but 
 could not alter our opinion of his dishonesty. He bor- 
 rowed property, and endangered it where he knew that it 
 would be uncontrolable. Sanguine to a seeming certain- 
 ty, he staked, and lost anothers' property, upon a Hope. 
 
 If the capital be one's own, it can scarcely be risked 
 and lost, without the ruin of other men. No man could 
 blow up his store in a compact street, and destroy only 
 his own. Men of business are, like threads of a fabric, 
 woven together, and subject, to a great extent, to a com- 
 mon fate of prosperity or adversity. I have no right to 
 cut ofT my hand ; I defraud myself, my family, the com-
 
 OF DISiiONKSTY. 53 
 
 inunity, and God ; for all these have an interest in that 
 hand. Neither has a man the right to throw away his 
 property. He defrauds himself, his family, the commu- 
 nity in which he dwells ; for all these have an interest in 
 that property. If waste is dishonesty, then every risk, 
 in proportion as it approaches it, is dishonest. It would 
 be a high crime for a General, heedlessly, to hazard his 
 whole army. Money is soldiery, — its owner the General ; 
 his forces are not to be risked, needlessly, in engage- 
 ments beyond his control or calculation. To venture, 
 without that foresight which experience gives, is wrong ; 
 and if we cannot foresee, then we must not venture. 
 
 Scheming speculation demoralizes honesty, and al- 
 most necessitates dishonesty. He who puts his own 
 interests to rash ventures, will scarcely do better for 
 others. The Speculator regards the weightiest affairs as 
 only a splendid game. Indeed, a Speculator on the ex- 
 change, and a Gambler at his table, follow one vocation, 
 only with different instruments. One employs cards or 
 dice, the other property. The one can no more foresee 
 the result of his schemes, than the other what spots will 
 come up on his dice ; the calculations of both are onlv 
 the chances of luck. Both burn with unhealthy excite- 
 ment ; both are avaricious of gains, but careless of what 
 they win ; both depend more upon fortune than skill ; 
 they have a common distaste for labor ; with each, right 
 and wrong are only the accidents of a game ; neither 
 would scruple in any hour to set his whole being on the 
 edge of ruin, and going over, to pull down, if possible, 
 a hundred others. 
 
 The wreck of such men leaves them with a drunk- 
 ard's appetite, and a fiend's desperation. The revulsion 
 5*
 
 54 TWELVE CAUSES 
 
 from extravagant hopes, to a certainty of midnight dark- 
 ness ; the sensations of poverty, to him who was in 
 fancy just stepping upon a princely estate ; the humilia- 
 tion of gleaning for cents, wiiere he has been profuse of 
 thousands ; the chagrin of seeing old competitors now 
 above him, grinning down upon his poverty a malig- 
 nant triumph ; the pity of pitiful men, and the neglect 
 of such as should have been his friends, — and who were, 
 W'hile the sunshine lay upon his path — all these things, 
 like so many strong winds, sweep across the soul so that 
 it cannot rest in the cheerless trancjuility of honesty, 
 but casts up mire a7id dirt. They who meant to soar 
 above all men, and by wide flights to compass imperial 
 {)ossessions, at last, bereft of wings, and unable to walk — 
 crawl. How stately the balloon rises and sails over con- 
 tinents, as over petty landscapes ! The slightest slit in 
 its frail covering, sends it tumbling down, swaying wild- 
 ly, whirling and pitching hither and thither, until it 
 plunges into some dark glen, out of the path of honest 
 men, and too shattered to tempt even a robber. So 
 have we seen a thousand men pitched down ; — so now, 
 in a thousand places may their wrecks be seen. But 
 still other balloons are framing, and the air is full of vic- 
 tim-venturers. 
 
 If our young men are introduced to life with distaste 
 for safe ways, because the sure profits are slow ; if the 
 opinion becomes prevalent that all business is great, 
 only as it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant, and 
 the romantic ; then we may stay our hand at once, nor 
 waste labor in absurd expostulations of honesty. I had 
 as lief preach humanity to a battle of eagles ; or teach 
 decency to vultures upon a carcass ; or cleanliness to
 
 •OF IMSHONESTY. 55 
 
 liyenas foul with human corpses, as to urge Iionesty and 
 integrity upon those who have detennined to be rich, and 
 to gain it by gambling stakes, and madmen's ventures. 
 
 All the bankruptcies of commerce are harmless com- 
 pared with a bankruptcy of public morals. Should the 
 Atlantic ocean break over our shores, and roll sheer 
 across lo the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of culti- 
 vation, and burying our wealth, it would be a mercy, 
 compared to that ocean-deluge of dishonesty and crime, 
 which, sweeping over the whole land, has spared our 
 wealth and taken our virtue. What are cornfields and 
 vineyards, what are stores and manufactures, and what 
 are gold and silver, and all the precious commodities of 
 the earth, among beasts ? — and what are men, bereft of 
 conscience and honor, but beasts ? 
 
 We will forget those things which are behind, and 
 hope a more cheerful future. We turn to you, young 
 MEN ! — All good men, all patriots, turn to watch your 
 advance upon the stage, and to implore you to be wor- 
 thy of yourselves, and of your revered ancestry. Oh ! 
 ye favored of Heaven ! with a free land, a noble inheri- 
 tance of wise laws, and a prodigality of w^ealth in pros- 
 pect, — advance to your possessions! — May you settle 
 down, as did Israel of old, a people of God in a promised 
 and protected land ; — true to yourselves, true to your 
 country, and true to your God.
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The generation of the upright shall be blessed, wealth and riches shall 
 
 be in his house. Ps. cxii, 2, 3. 
 He that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst 
 
 of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. Jer. xvii. 11. 
 
 When justly obtained, and rationally used, riches are 
 called a gift of God, an evidence of his favor, and a great 
 reward. When gathered unjustly, and corruptly used, 
 wealth is pronounced a canker, a rust, a fire, a curse. 
 There is no contradiction, then, when the Bible per- 
 suades to industry, obedience, and integrity, by a pro- 
 mise of riches ; and then dissuades from wealth, as a 
 terrible thing, destroying soul and body. The bee has 
 honey for its friends, and a sting for its enemies. Bless- 
 ings are vindictive to abusers, and kind to rightful users; 
 — they serve us, or rule us. Fire warms our dvi^elling, 
 or consumes it. Steam serves man, and also destroys 
 him. Iron, in the plough, the sickle, the house, the ship, 
 is indispensable. The dirk, the assassin's knife, the cruel 
 sword and the spear, are iron also. 
 
 The constitution of man, and of society, alike evinces 
 the design of God. Both are made to be happier 
 by the possession of riches ; — their full development
 
 58 S I X \\' A R X I N G S . 
 
 and perfection are dependent, to a large extent, upon 
 wealth. Without it, there can be neither books nor 
 implements ; neither commerce nor arts, neither towns 
 nor cities. It is a folly to denounce that, a love 
 of which God has placed in man by a constitutional 
 faculty ; that, with which he has associated high grades 
 of happiness ; that, which has motives touching every 
 faculty of the mind. Wealth is an artist : by its patro- 
 nage men are encouraged to paint, to carve, to design, 
 to build and adorn ; — A master-mechanic : and inspires 
 man to invent, discover, to apply, to forge and fashion : — 
 A husbandman : and under its influence men rear the 
 flock, till the earth, plant the vineyard, the field, the orch- 
 ard, and the garden : — A manufacturer : and teache> 
 men to card, to spin, to weave, to color and dress all 
 useful fabrics : — A merchant : and sends forth ships, and 
 fills ware-houses with their returning cargos, gath- 
 ered from every zone. It is the scholar's patron ; sus- 
 tains his leisure, rewards his labor, builds the college, 
 and gathers the library. 
 
 Is a man weak ? — he can buy the strong. Is he igno- 
 rant ? — the learned will serve his wealth. Is he rude of 
 speech? — he may procure the advocacy of the eloquent. 
 The rich cannot buy honor, but honorable places they 
 can ; they cannot purchase nobility, but they may its 
 titles. Money cannot buy freshness of heart, but it can 
 every luxury which tempts to enjoyment. Laws are its 
 body-guard, and no earthly power may safely defy it ; 
 either while running in the swift channels of commerce, 
 or reposing in the reservoirs of ancient families. Here 
 is a wonderful thing, that an inert metal, which neither 
 thinks, nor feels, nor stirs, can set the whole world
 
 SIX WARNINGS. 59 
 
 to thinking, planning, running, digging, fashioning, and 
 drives on the sweaty mass with never-ending labors ! 
 
 Avarice seeks gold, not to build or buy therewith ; 
 not to clothe or feed itself; not to make it an instrument 
 of wisdom, of skill, of friendship, or religion. Avarice 
 seeks it to heap it up ; to walk around the pile, and gloat 
 upon it ; to fondle, and court, to kiss and hug the darling 
 stuff" to the end of life, with the homage of beastly idol- 
 atry. 
 
 Pride seeks it; — for it gives power, and place, and 
 titles, and exalts its possessor above his fellows. To be 
 a thread in the fabric of life, just like any other thread, 
 hoisted up and down by the treddle, played across by 
 the shuttle, and woven tightly into the piece, — this may 
 suit humility, but not pride. 
 
 Vanity seeks it ; — what else can give it costly clothing, 
 and rare ornaments, and stately dwellings, and showy 
 equipage, and attract admiring eyes to its gaudy colors 
 and costly jewels ? 
 
 Taste seeks it ; — because by it, may be had whatever 
 is beautiful, or refining, or instructive. What leisure has 
 poverty for study, and how can it collect books, manu- 
 scripts, pictures, statues, coins, or curiosities ? 
 
 Love seeks it ; — to build a home full of delights for 
 lather, wife or child ; and wisest of all. 
 
 Religion seeks it ; — to make it the messenger and ser- 
 vant of benevolence, to want, to suffering, and to igno- 
 rance. 
 
 What a sight does the busy world present, as of a 
 great workshop, where hope and fear, love and pride, 
 and lust, and pleasure, and avarice, separate or in part- 
 nership, drive on the universal race for wealth : delving
 
 60 SIX WARNINGS. 
 
 in the mine, digging in the earth, sweltering at the forge, 
 plying the shuttle, ploughing the waters ; in houses, in 
 shops, in stores, on the mountain-side, or in the valley : 
 by skill, by labor, by thought, by craft, by force, by 
 traffic ; all men, in all places, by all labors, fair and un- 
 fair, the world around, busy, busy ; ever searching for 
 wealth, that wealth may supply their pleasures. 
 
 As every taste and inclination may receive its grati- 
 fication through riches, the universal and often fierce 
 pursuit of it arises, not from the single impulse of ava- 
 rice, but from the impulse of the whole mind ; and on 
 this very account, its pursuit should be more exactly 
 regulated. The ship which cannot resist the gale, must 
 be skillfully steered before it. The helm may be deserted 
 in a calm, but never in a storm. Let me set up a warn- 
 ing over against the special dangers which lie along the 
 
 ROAD TO RICHES. 
 
 I. I warn you against thinking that riches necessa- 
 rily confers happiness ; and poverty, unhappiness. Do 
 not begin life supposing that you shall be heart-rich, 
 when you are purse-rich. A man's happiness depends 
 primarily upon his disposition ; if that be good, riches 
 will bring pleasure ; but only vexation, if that be evil. 
 To lavish money upon shining trifles, to make an idol of 
 one's self for fools to gaze at, to rear mansions beyond 
 our w^ants, to garnish them for display and not for use, 
 to grin and chatter through the heartless rounds of plea- 
 sure, to lounge, to gape, to simper and giggle : — can 
 wealth make vanity happy by such folly ? If wealth 
 descends upon avarick, does it confer happiness ? It 
 blights the heart, as autumnal fires ravage the prairies ! 
 The eye glows with greedy cunning, conscience shrivels.
 
 SIXAVARNINGS. 61 
 
 the light of love goes out, and the wretch moves amidst his 
 coin no better, no happier than a loathsome toad hop- 
 ping in a mine of gold. A dreary fire of self-love burns 
 in the bosom of the avaricious rich, as a hermit's flame 
 in a ruined temple of the desert. The fire is kindled for 
 no deity, and is odorous with no incense, but only warms 
 the shivering anchorite. 
 
 Wealth will do little for lust, but to hasten its cor- 
 ruption. There is no more happiness in a foul heart, 
 than there is health in a pestilent morass. Satisfaction 
 is not made out of such stuff as fighting carousals, ob- 
 scene revelry, and midnight beastliness. An alligator, 
 gorging or swoln with surfeit and basking in the sun, 
 has the same happiness which riches bring to the human 
 brute, who eats to gluttony, drinks to drunkenness, and 
 sleeps to stupidity. But riches indeed bless that heart 
 whose almoner is benevolence. If the taste is refined, if 
 the affections are pure, if conscience is honest, if charity 
 listens to the needy, and generosity relieves them, if 
 the public-spirited hand fosters all that embellishes and 
 all that ennobles society — then is the rich man happy. 
 
 On the other hand, do not suppose that poverty is a 
 waste and howling wilderness. There is a poverty of 
 vice — mean, loathsome, covered with all the sores of 
 depravity. There is a poverty of indolence — where 
 virtues sleep, and passions fret and bicker. There is a 
 poverty which despondency makes — a deep dungeon, in 
 which the victim wears hopeless chains. — May God save 
 you from that ! There is a spiteful and venomous pov- 
 erty, in which mean and cankered hearts, repairing none 
 of their own losses, spit at others' prosperity, and curse 
 the rich, — themselves doubly cursed by their own hearts. 
 6
 
 (32 SIX WARNINGS. 
 
 But there is a contented poverty in which industry 
 and peace rule ; and a joyful hope, which looks out into 
 another world where riches shall neither fly nor fade. 
 This poverty may possess an independent mind, a heart 
 ambitious of usefulness, a hand quick to sow the seed 
 of other men's happiness, and find its own joy in 
 their enjoyment. If a serene age finds you in such 
 ])overty, it is such a wilderness, if it be a wilderness, as 
 that invvhich God led his chosen people, and on which 
 he rained every day a heavenly manna. 
 
 If God open to your feet the way to wealth, enter 
 it cheerfully; but remember that riches will bless or 
 curse you, as your own heart determines. But if cir- 
 cumscribed by necessity, you are still indigent, after all 
 your industry, do not scorn poverty. There is often in 
 the hut, more dignity than in the palace ; more satisfac- 
 tion in the poor man's scanty fare, than in the rich man's 
 satiety. 
 
 II. Men are warned in the Bible against making haste 
 TO BE RICH. He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, 
 and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him.^'' 
 This is spoken, not of the alacrity of enterprise, but of 
 the precipitancy of avarice. That is an evil eye which 
 leads a man into trouble by incorrect vision. When a 
 man seeks to prosper by crafty tricks instead of careful 
 industry ; when a man's inordinate covetousness pushes 
 him across all lines of honesty that he may sooner clutch 
 the prize ; when gambling speculation would reap where 
 it had not strewn ; when men gain riches by crimes — 
 there is an evil eye, which guides them through a spe- 
 cious prosperity, to inevitable ruin. So dependent is 
 
 a Prov. xxviii. 22.
 
 S I X AV A RNl N GS. 63 
 
 success upon patient Industry, that he who seeks it 
 otherwise, tempts his own ruin. A young lawyer, un- 
 willing to wait fur that practice which rewards a good 
 reputation, or unwilling to earn that reputation by se- 
 vere application, rushes through all the dirty paths of chi- 
 cane to a hasty prosperity ; and he rushes out of it, by the 
 dirtier paths of discovered villany. A young politician, 
 scarcely waiting till the law allows his majority, sturdily 
 begs for that popularity which he should have patiently 
 earned. In the ferocious conflicts of political life, cun- 
 ning, intrigue, falsehood, slander, vituperative violence, at 
 first sustain his pretensions, and at last demolish them. 
 It is thus in all the ways of traffic, in all the arts, and 
 trades. That prosperity which grows like the mush- 
 room, is as poisonous as the mushroom. Few men are 
 destroyed ; many destroy themselves. He whose haste 
 sends him a-cross-lots for riches, takes the direct road to 
 inflimy, bankruptcy, the poor-house, the jail, and the 
 gallows. 
 
 When God sends wealth to bless men, he sends it 
 gradually like a gentle rain. When God sends riches 
 to punish, men, they come tumultuously, like a roar- 
 ing torrent, tearing up landmarks and sweeping all be- 
 fore them in promiscuous ruin. Almost every evil which 
 environs the path to wealth, springs from that criminal 
 haste which substitutes adroitness for industry, and 
 trick for toil. 
 
 III. Let me warn you against covetousnes.^. Thou 
 
 shall not covet., is the law by v/hich God sought to bless 
 
 a favorite people. Covetousness is greediness of money. 
 
 The Bible meets it by significant icoes^^a by God's hatred, f^ 
 
 a Hah. n. 9. b Ps. x. 3.
 
 64 SIX WARNINGS. 
 
 by solemn iva7-Jiings,<i by denunciations,!^ by exclusion 
 fro7n Heaven.'^ This pecuniary gluttony comes upon 
 the competitors for wealth insidiously. At first, busi- 
 ness is only a means of paying for our pleasures. 
 Vanity soon whets the appetite for money, to sustain 
 her parade and competition, to gratify her piques and 
 jealousies. Pride throws in fuel for a brighter flame. 
 Vindictive hatreds often augment the passion, until the 
 whole soul glows as a fervid furnace, and the body is 
 driven as a boat whose ponderous engine trembles with 
 the utmost energy of steam. 
 
 Covetousness is unprofitable. It defeats its own pur- 
 poses. It breeds restless daring, where it is dangerous to 
 venture. It works the mind to fever, so that its judg- 
 ments are not cool, nor its calculations cahu. Greed 
 of money is like fire ; the more fuel it has, the hotter it 
 burns. Every thing conspires to intensify the heat. 
 Loss excites by desperation, and gain by exhilaration. 
 When there is fever in the blood, there is fire on the 
 brain ; and courage turns to rashness, and rashness runs 
 to ruin. 
 
 Covetousness breeds misery. The sight of houses 
 better than our own, of dress beyond our means, of 
 jewels costlier than we may wear, of stately equipage, 
 and rare curiosities beyond our reach, these hatch the 
 viper brood of covetous thoughts ; vexing the poor — who 
 would be rich ; tormenting the rich — who would be 
 richer. The covetous man pines to see pleasure ; is 
 sad in the presence of cheerfulness ; and the joy of the 
 world is his sorrow, because all the happiness of others 
 
 a Luke xii. 15. b 1 Cot. p. 10, 11., Isai. hii. 17. c 1 Cor. vi. 10.
 
 SIX WARNINGS. 65 
 
 is not his. I do not wonder that God aiZ/or^a iiim. He 
 inspects his heart, as he would a cave full of noisome 
 birds, or a nest of rattling reptiles, and loathes the sight 
 of its crawling tenants. To the covetous man life is a 
 nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he 
 may. Mammon might build its palace on such a heart, 
 and Pleasure bring all its reveh\y there, and Honor all 
 its garlands — it would be like pleasure in a sepulchre, 
 and garlands on a tomb. 
 
 The creed of the greedy man is brief and consistent ; 
 and, unlike other creeds, is both subscribed and believed. 
 The chief end of man is to glorify gold and enjoy it for- 
 ever: life is a time afforded man to grow rich in: death, 
 the winding up of speculations : heaven, a mart with gol- 
 den streets : hell, a place ivhere shiftless men are punished 
 with everlasting poverty. 
 
 God searched among the beasts, (and took a very 
 mean one.) for a fit emblem of contempt, to describe the 
 end of a covetous prince : He shall he buried with the 
 burial of an Ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates 
 of Jerusalem.^ He whose heart is turned to greediness, 
 who sweats through life under the load of labor only 
 t^ heap up money, and dies without private useful- 
 ness, or a record of public service, is no better, in God's 
 estimation, than a pack-horse — a mule — an ass ; a crea- 
 ture for burdens, to be beaten, and worked and killed, 
 and dragged off' by another like him, abandoned to the 
 birds and forgotten. 
 
 He is buried with the burial of an ass ! This is 
 the miser's epitaph — and yours, young man ! if you wish 
 it, and earn it by covetousness ! 
 
 a I's. X. 3. b Jer. xxii. 19. 
 
 6*
 
 66 SIX WARNINGS. 
 
 IV. I warn you against selfishness. Of riches it is 
 written : There is no good in them hut for a man to re- 
 joice and do good in his life.a If men absorb their pro- 
 perty, it parches the heart so that it will not give forth 
 blossoms and fruits, but only thorns and thistles. If 
 men radiate and reflect upon others some rays of the 
 prosperity which shines upon themselves, wealth is 
 not only harmless, but full of advantage. 
 
 The thoroughfares of wealth are crowded by a throng 
 who iostle,and thrust, and conflict, like men in the tumult 
 of a battle. The rules which crafty old men breathe 
 into the ears of the young are full of selfish wisdom ; — 
 teaching them that the chief end of man is to harvest, 
 to husband, and to hoard. Their life is made obedient to 
 a scale of preferences graded from a sordid experience ; 
 a scale which has penury for one extreme, and parsi- 
 mony for the other ; and the virtues are ranked between 
 them as they are relatively fruitful in physical thrift. 
 Every crevice of the heart is caulked with costive max- 
 ims, so that no precious drop of wealth may leak out 
 through inadvertent generosities. Indeed, generosity and 
 all its company are thought to be little better than pilfer- 
 ing picklocks, against whose wiles the heart is prepared, 
 like a coin-vault, with iron-clenched walls of stone, and 
 impenetrable doors. Mercy, pity, and sympathy, are va- 
 grant fowls ; and that they may not scale the fence be- 
 tween a man and his neighbors, their wings are clipped 
 by the Misers master-maxim — Charity begins at home. 
 It certainly stays there. 
 
 The habit of regarding men ' as dishonest rivals, 
 dries up, cJso, the kindlier feelings. A shrewd traf- 
 
 a Eccl. in. 12
 
 S I X AV A R N I N G S . 67 
 
 ficker must watch his fellows, be suspicious of their 
 proffers, vigilant of their movements, and jealous of 
 their pledges. The world's way is a very crooked way, 
 and a very guileful one. Its travellers creep by stealth, 
 or walk craftily, or glide in concealments, or appear in 
 specious guises. He who stands out-watching among 
 men, to pluck his advantage from their hands, or to lose 
 it by their wiles, comes at length to regard all men os 
 either enemies or instruments. Of course he thinks it 
 fair to strip an enemy ; and just as fair to use an instru- 
 ment. Men are no more to him than bales, boxes, or 
 goods — mere matters of traffic. If he ever relaxes his 
 commercial rigidity to indulge in the fictions of poetry, it 
 is when, perhaps on Sundays or at a funeral, he talks 
 quite prettily about friendship, and generosity, and phi- 
 lanthropy. The tightest ship may leak in a storm, and 
 an unbartered penny may escape from this man, when 
 the surprise of the solicitation, gives no time for thought. 
 He is, however, generous : — very generous, very con- 
 siderate, and very kind, — to himself; but here the 
 stream sinks and is seen no more. 
 
 The heart cannot wholly petrify without some hon- 
 est revulsions. Opiates are administered to it. This 
 business-man tells his heart that it is beset by unscrupu- 
 lous enemies; that beneficent virtues are doors to let 
 them in ; that liberality is bread given to one's foes ; and 
 selfishness only self-defence. At the same time, he 
 enriches the future with generous promises. While 
 he is getting rich, he cannot afford to be liberal ; but 
 when once he is rich, ah ! how liberal he means to be ! 
 — as though habits could be unbuckled like a girdle, 
 and were not rather steel-bands rivetted, defying the
 
 68 S I X AV A R N I N G S . 
 
 edge of any man's resolution, and clasping the lieart 
 with invincible servitude ! 
 
 Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. 
 A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a 
 citadel stormed in war. The banner of victory waves 
 over dilapidated walls, desolate chambers, and maga- 
 zines riddled with artillery. ]Men, covered with sweat, 
 and begrimmed with toil, expect to find joy in a heart 
 reduced by selfishness to a smouldering heap of ruins. 
 
 I warn every aspirant for wealth against the infernal 
 canker of selfishness. It will eat out the heart with thr 
 fire of hell, or bake it harder than a stone. The heart 
 of avaricious old age stands like a bare rock in a bleak 
 wilderness, and there is no rod of authority, nor incanta- 
 tion of pleasure, which can draw from it one chrystal 
 drop to quench the raging thirst for satisfaction. But 
 listen not to my w^ords alone ; hear the solemn voice of 
 God, pronouncing doom upon the selfish : Your riches are 
 corrupted^ and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold 
 and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a wit- 
 ness against you, and shall eat yourjlesh as it were fire. « 
 y. 1 warn you against seeking wealth by covert 
 prsHoxESTY. The everlasting plea of petty fraud or open 
 dishonesty, is, its necessity or profitableness. 
 
 It is neither necessary nor profitable. The hope is a 
 deception, and the excuse a lie. The severity of com- 
 petition affords no reason for dishonesty in word or 
 deed. Competition is fair, but not all methods of com- 
 petition. A mechanic may compete with a mechanic, 
 by rising earlier, by greater industry, by greater skill, 
 more punctuality, greater thoroughness, by employing 
 
 a James v. 2, 3.
 
 s r X W A R N I N G s . 69 
 
 better materials ; by a more scrupulous fidelity to prom- 
 ises, and by facility in accommodation. A merchant 
 may study to excel competitors, by a better selection of 
 goods, by more obliging manners, by more rigid hon- 
 esty, by a better knowledge of the market, by better 
 taste in the arrangement of his goods. Industry, hon- 
 esty, kindness, taste, genius and skill, are the only mate- 
 rials of all rightful competition. 
 
 But whenever you have exerted all your knowledge, 
 all your skill, all your industry, with long continued pa- 
 tience and without success, then," it is clear, not that 
 you may proceed to employ trick and cunning, but that 
 you must stop ! God has put before you a bound which 
 no man may overleap. There may be the appearance 
 of gain on the knavish side of the wall of honor. Traps 
 arc always baited with food sweet to the taste of the in- 
 tended victim ; and Satan is too crafty a trapper not to 
 scatter the pitfall of dishonesty with some shining parti- 
 cles of gold. 
 
 But what if fraud ice7-e necessary to permanent suc- 
 cess ? will you take success upon such terms ? I per- 
 ceive, too o(^en, that young men regard the argument as 
 ended, when they prove to themselves that they cannot 
 be rich withoul guile. Yery well ; then be poor. But if 
 you prefer money to honor, you may well swear fidelity 
 to this villain's law ! If it is not base and detestable to 
 gain by equivocation, neither is it by lying ; and if not 
 by lying, neither is it by stealing ; and if not by stealing, 
 neither by robbery or murder. Will you tolerate the 
 loss of honor and honesty for the sake of profit? For 
 exactly this, Judas betrayed Christ, and Arnold his 
 country. Because it is the only w^ay to gain some plea-
 
 70 SIX WARNINGS. 
 
 sure, may a wife yield her lionor ? — a politician sell 
 himself? — a statesman barter his counsel? — a judge 
 take bribes? — a juryman forswear himself? — or a wit- 
 ness commit perjury ? Then virtues are marketable 
 commodities, and may be hung up, like meat in the sham- 
 bles, or sold at auction to the highest bidder. 
 
 Who can afford a victory gained by a defeat of his 
 virtue ? What prosperity can compensate the plunder- 
 ing of a man's heart? A good name is rather to be cliosen 
 than great riches : (^ sooner or later every man will find 
 it so. 
 
 With what dismay would Esau have sorrowed for a 
 lost birthright, had he lost also the pitiful mess of pot- 
 tage for .which he sold it ? With what double despair 
 would Judas have clutched at death, if he had not ob- 
 tained even the thirty pieces of silver which were t-- 
 pay his infamy ? And with what utter confusion will all 
 dishonest men, who were learning of the Devil to de- 
 fraud other men, find at length, that he was giving his 
 most finished lesson of deception, — by cheating thei7i! 
 and making poverty and disgrace the only fruit of the 
 lies and frauds which were framed for prn^t! Getting 
 treasure by a hjing tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro 
 of them that seek death. f* 
 
 Men have only looked upon the beginning of a career 
 when they pronounce upon the profitableness of dis- 
 honesty. Many a ship goes gaily out of harbor which 
 never returns again. That only is a good voyage which 
 brings hoine the richly freighted ship. God explicitly 
 declares that an inevitable curse of dishonesty shall fall 
 upon the criminal himself, or upon his children : He that 
 
 a Prov. xxii. 1. b Prov. xxi. 6.
 
 S I X -W A K N I N G S . 71 
 
 by usury, and tinjust gain, increaselh his substance, he, 
 shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."' His 
 children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the 
 gate. Neither is there any to deliver them: the robber 
 swalloweth up their substance.^ 
 
 Iniquities, whose end is dark as midnight, are permitted 
 to open bright as the morning ; the most poisonous bud 
 unfolds with brilliant colors. So the threshold of perdi- 
 tion is burnished till it glows like the gate of paradise. 
 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the 
 ends thereof are the ways of death. c This is dishonesty 
 described to the life. At first you look down upon a 
 smooth and verdant path covered with flowers, perfum- 
 ed with odors," and overhung with fruits and grateful 
 shade. Its long perspective is illusive; for it ends quick- 
 ly in a precipice, over which you pitch into irretrievable 
 ruin. 
 
 For the sources of this inevitable disaster, we need 
 look no further than the eflect of dishonesty upon a 
 man's own mind. The difference between cunning and 
 wisdom, is the difference between acting by the certain 
 and immutable laws of nature, and acting by the shifts 
 of temporary expedients. An honest man puts his pros- 
 perity upon the broad current of those laws which gov- 
 ern the world. A crafty man means to pry between 
 them, to steer across them, to take advantage of them. 
 An honest man steers by God's chart ; and a dishonest 
 man by his own. Which is the most liable to perplexi- 
 ties and fatal mistakes of judgment ? Wisdom steadily 
 ripens to the end ; cunning is worm-ljitten, and soon 
 drops from the tree. 
 
 a Prov. xxnii. 8. b Job. v. 4, 5. c Prov. xiv. 12.
 
 72 S I X W A R N I N G S . 
 
 I could repeat the names of many men (every village 
 has such, and they swarm in cities) who are skillful, inde- 
 fatigable, but audaciously dishonest ; and for a time they 
 seemed going straight forward to the realm of wealth. 
 I never knew a single one to avoid ultimate ruin. Men 
 who act under dishonest passions, are like men riding 
 fierce horses. It is not always with the rider when or 
 where he shall stop. If for his sake, the steed dashes 
 wildly on while the road is smooth ; so, turning suddenly 
 into a rough and dangerous way, the rider must go 
 madly forward for the steed's sake, — now chafed, his 
 mettle up, his eye afire, and beast and burden like a bolt 
 speeding through the air, until some bound or sudden 
 fall tumble both to the ground — a crushed and mangled 
 mass. 
 
 A man pursuing plain ends by honest means may be 
 troubled on every side, yet not distressed: perplexed, but not 
 in dispair: persecuted, but not forsaken: cast down, but 
 not destroyed.'' But those that pursue their advantage 
 by a round of dishonesties, ivhen fear cometh as a deso- 
 lation, and destruction as a wliirlwind, when distress and 
 anguish come upoji them, . . . shall eat of the fruit of 
 their own loay, and be filled icith their own devices ; for 
 the turning away of the simple shall slay them ; and the 
 prosperity of fools shall destroy them.'' 
 
 VI. The Bible overflows with warnings to those 
 who gain wealth by violent extortion, or by any flagrant 
 villany. Some men stealthily slip from under them, the 
 possessions of the poor. Some beguile the simple and 
 heedless of their patrimony. Some tyranize over igno- 
 rance, and extort from it its fair domains. Some steal 
 
 a 2 Cor. iv. 8, 9. b Prov. i. 27—32.
 
 SIX WARNINGS. 73 
 
 away the senses, and intoxicate the mind — the more 
 readilv and largely to cheat ; some set their traps in all 
 the dark places of men's adversity, and prowl for 
 wrecks all along the shores on which men's fortunes go 
 to pieces. Men will take advantage of extreme misery, 
 to wring it with more griping tortures, and compel it to 
 the extremest sacrifices ; and stop only when no more 
 can be borne by the sufferer, or nothing more extracted 
 by the usurer. The earth is as full of avaricious mon- 
 sters, as the tropical forests are of beasts of prey. But 
 amid all the lions, and tigers, and hyenas, is seen the 
 stately bulk of three huge Behemoths. 
 
 The first Behemoth is that incarnate fiend who navi- 
 gates the ocean to traffic in human misery and freight 
 with the groans and tears of agony. Distant shores are 
 sought with cords and manacles ; villages surprised with 
 torch and sword ; and the loathsome ship swallows what 
 the sword and the fire has spared. By night and day 
 the voyage speeds, and the storm spares wretches more 
 relentless than itself. The wind wafts and the sun 
 lights the path for a ship whose log is written in blood. 
 Hideous profits, dripping red, even at this hour, lure these 
 infernal miscreants to their remorseless errands. The 
 thirst of gold inspires such courage, skill, and cunning 
 vigilance, that the thunders of four allied navies cannot 
 sink the infamous fiieet. 
 
 What wonder? Just such a Behemoth of rapacity 
 stalks among us, and fattens on the blood of our 
 sons. Men there are, who, without a pang or gleam of 
 remorse, will coolly wait for character to rot, and health 
 to sink, and means to melt, that they may suck up the 
 last drop of the victim's blood. Our streets are full of 
 7
 
 74 SIX WARNINGS. 
 
 reeling wretches whose bodies and nianhood and souls 
 have been crushed and put to the press, that monsters 
 might wring out of them a wine for their infernal thirst. 
 The agony of midnight massacre, the phrenzy of the 
 ship's dungeon, the living death of the middle passage, 
 the wails of separation, and the dismal torpor of hope- 
 less servitude — are these found only in the piracy of 
 the slave-trade ? They all are among us ! worse assassi- 
 nations ! worse dragging to a prison-ship ! worse groans 
 ringing from the fetid hold 1 worse separations of fami- 
 lies ! worse bondage of intemperate men, enslaved by 
 that most inexorable of all task-masters — sensiftil habit ! 
 The third Behemoth is seen luiiiing among the Indian 
 savages, and bringing the arts of learning, and the skill 
 of civilization, to aid in plundering the debauched bar- 
 barian. The cunning, murdering, scal[)ing Indian, is no 
 match for the christian white-man. Compared with the 
 midnight knavery of men reared in schools, rocked by 
 religion, tempered and taught by the humane institutions 
 of liberty and civilization, all the craft of the savage is 
 twilight. Vast estates have been accumulated, without 
 having an honest farthing in them. Our Penitentiaries 
 might be sent to school to the Treaty-grounds and Coun- 
 cil-grounds. Smugglers and swindlers might humble 
 themselves in the presence of Indian traders. All the 
 crimes against property known to our laws flourish with 
 unnatural vigor ; and some, unknown to civilized villany. 
 To swindle ignorance, to over-reach simplicity, to lie 
 without scruple to any extent, from mere implication 
 down to perjury ; to tempt the savages to rob each 
 other, and to receive their plunder ; to sell goods at in- 
 credible prices to the sober Indian, then to intoxicate 
 him, and steal them all back by a sham bargain, to he
 
 S I X AV A R N I N G S . 75 
 
 sold again, and stolen again ; to employ falsehood, lust, 
 threats, whiskey, and even the knife and the pistol ; iu 
 short, to consume the Indian's substance by every vice 
 and crime possible to an unprincipled heart inflamed 
 with an insatiable rapacity, unwatched by Justice, and 
 unrestrained by Law — this it is to be an Indian Tra- 
 der. I would rather inherit the bowels of V^esuvius, or 
 make my bed in Etna, than own the burning lava of 
 those estates which have been scalped off from human 
 beings as the hunter strips a beaver of its fur. Of all 
 these, OF all who gain possessions by extortion and rob- 
 beiy, never let yourself be envious ! 1 loas envious at 
 the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Their 
 eyes stand out with fatness: thei/ have more than heart 
 could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concern- 
 ing oppression. They have set their mouth against the 
 heaven, and their tongue walketh ilirough the earth. 
 When I sought to know this, it was too j}ainful for me, un- 
 til I went into the sanctuary. Surely thou didst set them 
 in slippery jilacesl thou castedst them down into destruc- 
 tion as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with 
 terrors. As a dream when one awakelh, so O Lord! lolien 
 thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image!"' 
 
 I would not bear their hearts who have so made 
 money, were the world a solid globe of gold, and mine. 
 1 would not stand for them in the judgment, were every 
 star of Heaven a realm of riches, and mine. I would 
 not walk with them the burning marl of Hell, to bear 
 their torment, and utter their groans, for the throne of 
 God itself. 
 
 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.
 
 SIX -WARNINGS. 
 
 Riches got by deceit, cheat no man so much as the 
 getter. Riches bought with guile, God will pay for 
 with vengeance. Riches got by fraud, are dug out of 
 one's own heart, and destroy the mine. Unjust riches 
 curse the owner in getting, in keeping, in transmitting. 
 They curse his children in their father's memory, in 
 their own wasteful habits, in drawing around them all 
 bad men to be their companions. 
 
 While I do not discourage your search for wealth, 1 
 warn you that it is not a cruise upon level seas, and 
 under bland skies. You advance where ten thousand 
 are broken in pieces before they reach the mart ; where 
 those who reach it are worn out by their labors past 
 enjoying their riches. You seek a land pleasant to the 
 sight, but dangerous to the feet ; a land of fragrant winds, 
 which lull to security ; of golden fruits, which are pois- 
 onous ; of glorious hues, which dazzle and mislead. 
 
 You may be rich and be pure ; but it will cost you a 
 struggle. You may be rich and go to heaven ; but ten, 
 doubtless, will sink beneath their riches, where one 
 breaks through them to Heaven. If you have entered 
 this shining way, begin to look for snares and traps. Go 
 not careless of your danger, and provoking it. See, on 
 every side of you, how many there are who seal God's 
 word with their blood : — 
 
 They that will be rich, fall into temjAalion and a snare, 
 and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men 
 in destruction and perdition. For the love of Money is 
 the root of all evil, lohich, while some have coveted after, 
 they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves 
 through icith many sorrovjs.'^ 
 
 a 1 Tim. li. 9, 10.
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 My son, if sinners entice tliee, consent thou not. Prov. i. 10. 
 
 He who is allured to embrace evil under some engag- 
 ing form of beauty, or seductive appearance of good, is 
 enticed. A man is tempted to what he knows to be sin- 
 ful ; he is enticed where the evil appears to be innocent. 
 The Enticer wins his way by bewildering the moral 
 sense, setting false lights ahead of the imagination, paint- 
 ing disease with the hues of health, making impurity to 
 glow like innocency, strewing the broad-road with flow- 
 ers, lulling its travellers with soothing music, hiding all 
 its chasms, covering its pitfalls, and closing its long per- 
 spective with the mimic glow of Paradise. Enticers are 
 mean, under the guise of magnanimity ; corrupt, under 
 the appearance of virtue ; v/ith a great show of jionor, 
 they are base ; they cover a foul and pestilent heart 
 with the show of modesty. They scruple at nothing 
 which is wicked, if it is baptized with the name of some 
 virtue. Their tricks are christened sagacity ; their sel- 
 fishness, frugality; their pride, personal dignity; their 
 extortion, justice ; their salacious heats, human nature : 
 and the full tide of depravity, only man's weakness. 
 7*
 
 /o PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 The young are seldom tempted to outright wicked- 
 ness ; evil comes to them as an enticement. The hon- 
 est generosity and fresh heart of youth would revolt 
 from open meanness and undisguised vice. The Adver- 
 sary conforms his wiles to their nature. He tempts 
 them to the basest deeds by beginning with innocent 
 ones, gliding to more exceptionable, and finally, to posi- 
 tively wicked ones. 
 
 The deadliest ends have the pleasantest beginnings, 
 as, often, destructive paths open in sunny meads and 
 meadovi^s. All our warnings then must be against the 
 vernal beauty of vice. Its autumn and winter none 
 wish. It is the bud and graceful blossom, hiding poison 
 under brilliant colors, that entice the unwary to pluck 
 the fatal beauty. — It is my purpose to describe the en- 
 ticement of particular men upon the young. 
 
 Every youth knows that there are dcngerous men 
 abroad who would injure him by lying, by slander, by 
 over-reaching and plundering him. From such they have 
 little to fear, because they are upon their guard. Few 
 imagine that they have any thing to dread from those 
 who have no designs against them ; yet, such is the 
 instinct of imitation, so insensibly does the example 
 of men steal upon us and warp our conduct to their 
 likeness, that the young often receive a deadly injury 
 from men with whom they never spoke. As all 
 bodies in nature give out or receive caloric until there 
 is an equilibrium of temperature, so there is a radia- 
 tion of character upon character. Our thoughts, our 
 tastes, our emotions, our partialities, our prejudices, and 
 finally, our conduct and habits, are insensibly changed 
 l)y the silent influence of men who never once directlv
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 79 
 
 tempted us, or even knew the effect which they pro- 
 duced. I shall draw for your inspection some of these 
 dangerous men, whose open or silent enticement has 
 availed against thousands, and will be exerted upon 
 thousands more. 
 
 I. The \vn. It is sometimes said by phlegmatic 
 theologians that Christ never laughed, but often wept. 
 1 shall not quarrel with the assumption. I only say that 
 men have within them a faculty of mirthfulness which 
 God created. I suppose it was meant for use. Those 
 who do not feel the impulsion of this faculty, are not the 
 ones to sit in judgment upon those who do. It would 
 be very absurd for an owl in an ivy bush, to read lec- 
 tures on optics to an eagle ; or for a mole to counsel a 
 lynx on the sin of sharp-sightedness. Stupid as these 
 animals are, we know not that they ever attempted such 
 folly. It is worthy of God, that beside the sober facul- 
 ties of the mind, there should be an Imagination to see 
 a bloom and beauty on every thing ; and Wit, to the 
 eye of which every thing glances with varied colors, like 
 changeable silk. He is divinely favored who thus may 
 trace a silver vein in all the affairs of life ; see sparkles of 
 light in the gloomiest scenes ; and absolute radiance in 
 those which are bright. There are in the clouds ten 
 thousand inimitable forms and hues to be found no 
 where else ; there are in plants and trees beautiful 
 shapes and endless varieties of color ; there are in 
 flowers minute pencilings of exquisite color; in fruits a 
 delicate bloom, — like a veil, making the face of beauty 
 more beautiful ; sporting among the trees, and upon the 
 flowers, are tiny insects — gems which glow like living dia- 
 monds. Ten thousand eyes stare full upon these things
 
 80 PORTRAIT gallp:ry. 
 
 and see nothing ; yet they are, to those who observe 
 them, the poHsh with which the Divine Artist has finished 
 his matchless work. Thus, too, upon all the labors of 
 life, the events of each hour, the course of good or evil ; 
 upon each action, or word, or attitude ; upon all the end- 
 less changes transpiring among myriad men, there is a 
 delicate grace, or bloom, or sparkle, or radiance, which 
 catches the eye of Wit, and delights it with appearances 
 which are to the weightier matters of life, what odor, 
 colors, and symmetry, are to the marketable and commer- 
 cial properties of matter. 
 
 A mind imbued with this feeling is full of dancing 
 motes, such as we see moving in sunbeams when they 
 pour through some shutter into a dark room ; and when 
 the sights and conceptions of wit are uttered in words, 
 they diffuse upon others that pleasure whose brightness 
 shines upon its own cheerful imagination. 
 
 It is not strange that the Wit is a universal favorite. 
 All companies rejoice in his presence, watch for his 
 words, repeat his language. He moves like a comet 
 whose incomings and outgoings are uncontrolable. He 
 astonishes the regular stars with the eccentricity of his 
 orbit, and flirts his long tail athwart the heaven without 
 the slightest misgivings that it will be troublesome, and 
 coquets the very sun with audacious familiarity. When 
 wit is unperverted, it lightens labor, makes the very 
 face of care to shine, diffuses cheerfulness among men, 
 multiplies the sources of harmless enjoyment, gilds the 
 dark things of life, and heightens the lustre of the bright- 
 est. If perverted, wit becomes an instrument of ma- 
 levolence, it gives a deceitful coloring to vice, it reflects
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 81 
 
 a semblance of truth upon error, and distorts the fea- 
 tures of real truth by false lights. 
 
 The Wit is liable to indolence by relying upon his 
 genius ; to vanity, by the praise which is offered as in- 
 cense ; to malignant sarcasm, to revenge his affronts ; 
 to dissipation, from the habit of exhilaration, and from 
 the company which court him. The mere Wit is only 
 a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses, 
 not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while 
 the horses draw. 
 
 The young often repine at their own native dullness ; 
 and since God did not choose to endow them with this 
 shining quality, they will make it for themselves. Forth- 
 with they are smitten with the itch of imitation. Their 
 ears purvey to their mouth the borrowed jest ; their 
 eyes note the Wit's fashion, and the awkward youth 
 clumsily apes, in a side circle, the Wit's deft and grace- 
 ful gesture, the smooth smile, the roguish twinkle, the 
 sly look — much as Caliban would imitate Ariel. Everv 
 community is supplied with self-made Wits. One retails 
 other men's sharp witticisms, as a Jew puts off thread- 
 bare garments. Another roars over his own brutal ([uo- 
 tations of scripture. Another invents a witticism by a 
 logical deduction of circumstances, and sniffs and gig- 
 gles over the result, as^ complacently as if other men 
 laughed too. Others lay in wait around your conversa- 
 tion to trip up some word, or strike a light out of some 
 sentence. Others fish in dictionaries for pitiful puns ; — 
 and all fulfill the prediction of Isaiah : Ye shall conceive 
 chaj\ and bring forth stuhhk. 
 
 It becomes a mania. Each school has its allusions, 
 each circle has its apish motion, each companionhood
 
 82 POKTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 ils park of wit-artillery ; and we find street- wit, shop- 
 wit, auction-wit, school-wit, fool's wit, whiskey-wit, 
 stable-wit, and almost every kind of wit, but mother- 
 wit ; — puns, quibbles, catches, would-be-jests, thread-bare 
 stories, and gew-gaw tinsel, — every thing but the real 
 diamond^ which sparkles simply because God made it so 
 that it could not help sparkling. Real, native mirthful- 
 ness is like a pleasant rill which quietly wells up in 
 some verdant nook, and steals out from among reeds 
 and willows noiselessly, and is seen far down the 
 meadow, as much by the fruitfulness of its edges in 
 flowers, as by its own glimmering light. Allected wit, 
 like a pump, draws up from an artificial well, every 
 drop by the force-w^ork of the handle. 
 
 Let every one beware of the insensible effect of witty 
 men upon him ; they gild lies, so that base coin may pass 
 for true ; that which is grossly wrong, wit may make fasci- 
 nating ; when no argument could persuade you, the cor- 
 ruscations of wit may dazzle and blind you ; when duty 
 presses you, the threatenings of this human lightning may 
 make you afraid to do right. Remember that the very 
 best office of wit, is only to lighten the serious labors of life; 
 that it is only a torch, by which men may cheer the gloom 
 of a dark way. When it sets up to be your counsellor or 
 your guide, it is the fool's fire, flitting irregularly and 
 leading you into the quag or morass. The great Dra- 
 matist represents a witty sprite to have put an ass's 
 head upon a man's shoulders ; beware that you do not 
 let this mischievous sprite put an ape's head upon yours. 
 
 If God has not given you this quicksilver, no art can 
 make it; nor need you regret it. The stone, the 
 wood, and the iron, are a thousand times more valua-
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 83 
 
 ble to society than pearls and diamonds and rave gems ; 
 and sterling sense, and industry, and integrity, are better 
 a thousand times, in the hard work of living, than the 
 brilliance of wit. 
 
 II. There is a character which I shall describe as the 
 Humorist. I do not employ the term to designate one 
 who indulges in that pleasantest of all wit — latent wit ; 
 but to describe a creature who conceals a coarse ani- 
 malism under a brilliant, jovial exterior. The danger- 
 ous humorist is of a plump condition, evincing the excel- 
 lent digestion of a good eater, and answering very well 
 to the Psalmist's description : His eyes stand out with 
 fatness; he is not in trouble as other men are; he has 
 more than heart could wish, and his tongue walketh 
 through the earth. Whatever is pleasant in ease, what- 
 ever is indulgent in morals, whatever is solacing in 
 luxury ; the jovial few, the convivial many, the glass, the 
 cards, the revel, and midnight uproar, — these are his de- 
 lights. His manners are easy and agreeable ; his face 
 redolent of fun and good nature ; his whole air that of 
 a man fond of the utmost possible bodily refreshment. 
 Withal, he is sufficiently circumspect and secretive of his 
 course, to maintain a place in genteel society ; for that 
 is a luxury. He is not a glutton, but a choice eater. 
 He is not a gross drinker, only a gentlemanly consumer 
 of every curious compound of liquor. He has travelled; 
 he can tell you which, in every city, is the best bar, the 
 best restaurateur, the best stable. He knows every 
 theatre, each actor, particularly is he versed in the select 
 morsels of the scandalous indulgence peculiar to each. 
 He knows every race-course, every nag, the history of 
 all the famous matches, and the pedigree of every distin-
 
 84 PORTRAIT GALLKRY. 
 
 guished horse, even to the apocalyptic horse which John 
 saw. The whole vocabulary of pleasure is v- ernacular, — 
 its wit, its slang, its watchwords, and blackletter litera- 
 ture. He is a profound annalist of scandal ; every 
 stream of news, clear or muddy, disembogues into the 
 gulf of his prodigious memory. He can tell you, after 
 living but a week in a city, who gambles, when, for what 
 sums, and w^ith what fate ; who is impure, who was, 
 who is suspected, who is not suspected — but ought to 
 be. He is a morbid anatomist of morals ; a brilliant 
 flesh-fly — unerring to detect taint. 
 
 Like other men, he loves admiration and desires to ex- 
 tend his influence. AH these manifold accomplishments 
 are exhibited before the callow young. That he may 
 secure a train of useful followers, he is profuse of money; 
 and moves among them with an easy, insinuating frank- 
 ness, a never-ceasing gaiety, so spicy with fun, so di- 
 verting with stories, so full of little hits, sly innuendoes, 
 or solemn wit, with now and then a rare touch of 
 dextrous mimicry, and the whole so pervaded by the in- 
 describable flavor, the changing hues of humor, — that 
 the young are bewildered with idolatrous admiration. 
 What gay young man, who is old enough to admire him- 
 self and be ashamed of his parents, can resist a man so 
 bedewed with humor, narrating exquisite stories with 
 such mock gravity, with such slyness of mouth, and 
 twinkling of the eye, with such grotesque attitudes, 
 and significant gestures ? He is declared to be the most 
 remarkable man in the world. Now take off this man's 
 dress, put out the one faculty of mirthfulness, and he 
 would stand disclosed without a single positive virtue ! 
 With strong appetites deeply indulged, hovering perpet-
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 85 
 
 ually upon the twilight edge of every vice ; and whose 
 wickedness is only not apparent, because it is garnished 
 with flowers and leaves and garlands ; who is not des- 
 pised, only because his various news, artfully told, keep 
 us in good humor with ourselves ! At one period of 
 youthful life this creature's influence supplants, that of 
 every other man. There is an absolute fascination 
 in him which awakens a craving in the mind to be 
 of his circle ; plain duties become drudgery, home has 
 no light, life at its ordinary key is monotonous, and must 
 be screwed up to the concert pitch of this wonderful 
 genius ! As he tells his stories, so with a wretched 
 grimace of imitation, apprentices will try to tell them ; 
 as he gracefully swings through the street, they will 
 roll ; they will leer because he stares genteelly ; he 
 sips, they guzzle — and talk impudently, because he talks 
 with easy confidence. He walks erect, they strut; 
 he lolls, they lounge ; he is less than a man, and they 
 become even less than he. 
 
 Copper-rings, huge blotches of breast-pins, wild stream- 
 ing neckerchiefs, jaunty hats, odd clothes, superfluous 
 walking-sticks, ill-uttered oaths, stupid jokes, and blun- 
 dering pleasantries — these are the first fruits of imitation ! 
 There are various grades of it, from the office, store, 
 shop, street, clear down to the hostlery and the stable. 
 Our cities are filled with these juvenile non-descript 
 monsters, these compounds of vice, low wit and vul- 
 garity. The original is morally detestable, and the 
 counterfeit is a very base imitation of a very base thing ; 
 the dark shadow of a very ugly substance. 
 
 III. The Cynic. The Cynic is one who never sees a 
 good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one.
 
 TRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 lie is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to 
 light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. 
 The Cynic puts all human actions into only two classes 
 — openly bad, and secretly bad. All virtue and generosity 
 and disinterestedness are merely the appearance of good, 
 but selfish at the bottom. He holds that no man does 
 a good thing except for profit. The effect of his con- 
 versation upon your feelings is to chill and sear them ; 
 to send you away sore and morose. His criticisms and 
 innuendoes lall indiscriminately upon every lovely thing, 
 like frost upon flowers. If a man is said to be pure and 
 chaste, he will answer : Yes, in the day thne. If a wo- 
 man is pronounced virtuous, he will reply : yes, as xjel. 
 3'Ir. A. is a religious man : yes,on Sundays. Mr. B. has 
 just joined the church : certainly; the elections are coming 
 on. The minister of the gospel is called an example of 
 diligence : It is his trade. Such a man is generous : of 
 vther men's money. That man is obliging : to lull suspi- 
 cion and cheat you. This man is upright : because he is 
 green. Thus his eye strains out every good quality, 
 and takes in only the bad, — as the vulture, when in 
 the highest heaven, will sail by living flocks and herds, 
 but comes like an arrow down upon the smallest 
 carcass. To him religion is hypocrisy, honesty a pre- 
 paration for fraud, virtue only want of opportunity, and 
 undeniable purity, asceticism. The live-long day he w ill 
 coolly sit with sneering lip, uttering sharp speeches 
 in the quietest manner, and in polished phrase, transfix- 
 'm<r every character which is presented: His words are 
 softer than oil, yet are they drawn srcords. « 
 
 All this, to the young, seems a wonderful knowledge of 
 
 a Ps. Iv. 21.
 
 PORTRAIT CALLER r. 87 
 
 human nature ; they honor a man who appears to have 
 found out mankind. They begin to indulge themselves 
 in flippant sneers ; and with supercilious l)row, and im- 
 pudent tongue, wagging to an empty brain, call to 
 naught the wise, the long tried, and the venerable. 
 
 I do believe that man is corrupt enough ; but some- 
 thing of good has survived his wreck ; something of 
 evil religion has restrained, .and something partially re- 
 stored ; yet, I look upon the human heart as a mountain 
 of fire. I dread its crater. I tremble when 1 see its 
 lava roll the fiery stream. Therefore, I am the more 
 glad, if upon the old crust of past eruptions, I can find 
 a single flower springing up. A flower in a howling 
 wilderness, is yet more precious to the pilgrim, because 
 the lonely tenant of desolation. So far from rejecting 
 appearances of virtue in the corrupt heart of a depraved 
 race, I am eager to see their light as ever mariner was 
 to see a star in a stormy night. 
 
 Moss will grow upon grave-stones ; the ivy will cXm'j, 
 to the mouldering pile ; the mistletoe springs from the 
 dying branch ; and, God be praised, something green, 
 something fair to the sight and grateful to the heart, 
 will yet twine around and grow out of the seams and 
 cracks of the desolate temple of the human heart! 
 
 Who could walk through Thebes, Palmyra, or Petraaa, 
 and survey the wide waste of broken arches, crumbled 
 altars, fallen pillars, eflaced cornices, toppling walls, and 
 crushed statues, with no feelings but those of con- 
 tempt? Who, unsorrowing, could see the stork's nest 
 upon the carved pillar, satyrs dancing on marble pave- 
 ments, and hateful scorpions nestling where beauty once 
 dwelt, and dragons the sole tenants of royal palaces ?
 
 o8 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 Amid such melancholy magnificence, even the misan- 
 thrope might weep ! If here and there an altar stood 
 unbruised, or a graven column unblighted, or a statue 
 nearly perfect, he might well feel love for a man- 
 wrought stone, so beautiful, when all else is so dreary 
 and desolate. Thus, though man is as a desolate city, 
 and his passions are as the wild beasts of the wilderness 
 howling in king's palaces, yet he is God's workmanship, 
 and a thousand touches of exquisite beauty remain. 
 Since Christ hath put his sovereign hand to restore 
 man's ruin, many points are remoulded, and the fair 
 form of a new fabric already appears growing from the 
 ruins, and the first faint flame is glimmering upon the 
 restored altar. 
 
 It is impossible to indulge in such habitual severity of 
 opinion upon our fellow men, without injuring the ten- 
 derness and delicacy of our own feelings. A man will 
 be what his most cherished feelings are. If he encour- 
 ages appetites, he will be not far from beastly ; if he 
 encourage a noble generosity, such will he be ; if he 
 nurse bitter and envenomed thoughts, his own spirit will 
 absorb the poison ; and he will crawl among men as 
 a burnished adder, whose life is mischief, whose errand 
 is death. 
 
 Although experience should correct the indiscriminate 
 confidence of the young, no expeiience should render 
 them callous to goodness wherever seen. He who 
 hunts for flowers, will find flowers ; but he who hunts 
 for vermin, will find vermin ; and he who loves weeds, 
 may find weeds. Let it be remembered, that no man, 
 who is not himself mortally diseased, will have a relish 
 for disease in others. A swoln wretch, blotched all
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 89 
 
 over with leprosy, may grin hideously at, every wart or 
 excrescence upon beauty. A wholesome man will be 
 pained at it, and seek not to notice it. Reject, then, the 
 morbid ambition of the Cynic, or cease to call yourself a 
 man ! 
 
 IV. 1 fear that few villages exist without a specimen 
 of the LinF.RTiNE. 
 
 He is a beast, put by accident into human form. His 
 errand into this world is to explore every depth of sen- 
 suality, and collect upon himself the foulness of every 
 one. He is proud to be vile ; his ambition is to be viler 
 than other men. Were we not confronted almost daily 
 by such wretches, it would be hard to believe that any 
 could exist, to whom purity and decency were a burden, 
 and only corruption a delight. This creature has chang- 
 ed his nature, until only that which disgusts a pure mind 
 pleases iiis. He is lured by the scent of carrion. His 
 coarse feelings, stimulated by gross excitants, are insen- 
 sible to delicacy. The exquisite bloom, the dew and 
 freshness of the ilowers of the heart which delight botii 
 good men and God himself, he gazes upon, as a Behe- 
 moth would gaze enraptured upon a prairie of flowers. 
 It is so much pasture. The forms, the odors, the hues 
 are only a mouthful for his terrible appetite. Therefore, 
 hi* breath blights every innocent thing. He sneers at 
 the mention of purity, and leers in the very fiice of 
 Virtue, as though she was herself corrupt, if the truth 
 were known. He assures the credulous disciple that 
 there is no purity ; that its appearances are only the 
 veils which cover indulgence — the paint which hides 
 decay. Nay, he solicits praise for the very openness 
 of his evil ; and tells the listener that all act as he acts, 
 8"
 
 90 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 but only few are courageous enough to own it. Tiius, 
 iiis shameless excess is sanctified with sacred names. 
 But the uttermost parts of depravity are laid open only 
 when several such monsters meet together, and vie 
 with each other, as we might suppose shapeless mud- 
 monsters disport in the slimiest ooze of the ocean. 
 They dive in fierce rivalry which shall reach the most 
 infernal depth, and bring up the blackest sediment. It 
 makes the blood of an honest man run cold, to iiear but 
 the echo of the shameless rehearsals of their salacious 
 enterprises. Each strives to tell a blacker tale than the 
 other. When tlie abomination of their actual life is not 
 damnable enough to satisfy the ambition of their unutter- 
 able corruption, they devise, in their imagination, scenes 
 yet moi'e flagrant ; swear that they have performed them, 
 and when they separate, each strives to make his lying- 
 boastings true. It would seem as if miscreants so 
 loathsome would have no power of temptation upon the 
 young. Experience shows that the worst men are, often, 
 the most skilfull in touching the springs of human ac- 
 tion. A young man knows little of life ; less of himself. 
 He feels in his bosom the various impulses, wild desires, 
 restless cravings he can hardly tell for what, a som- 
 bre melancholy when all is gay, a violent exhilaration 
 when others are sober. These wild gushes of feeling, 
 peculiar to youth, the sagacious tempter has felt, has 
 studied, has practiced upon, until he can sit before that 
 most capacious organ, the human mind, knowing eVery 
 stop and ail the combinations, and competent to toucli 
 every note throughout the diapason. As a 'serpent de- 
 ceived the purest of mortals, so now a beast may mis- 
 lead their posterity. He begins afar oft'. He decries
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 91 
 
 the virtue of all men ; studies to produce a doubt that 
 any are under selt-restraint. He unpacks his filthy 
 stories, plays off the fire-works of his corrupt imagi- 
 nation — its blue-lights, its red-lights, and green-lights, 
 and sparkle-spitting lights ; and edging in upon the 
 yielding youth, who begins to wonder at his experi- 
 ence, he boasts his first exploits, he hisses at the pu- 
 rity of woman ; he grows yet bolder, tells moi-e wicked 
 deeds, and invents worse even than he ever performed, 
 though he has performed worse than good men ever 
 thought of. All thoughts, all feelings, all ambition, are 
 merged in one and that the lowest, vilest, most detes- 
 table ambition. 
 
 Had I a son of years, I could, with thanksgiving, see 
 him go down to the grave, rather than fall into the maw 
 of this most besotted devil. I had rather see him rot in 
 a lazar-house, than putrify with such corruption. The 
 plague is mercy, the cholera is love, the deadliest fever 
 is refreshment to man's body, in comparison with this 
 epitome and essence of moral disease. He lives among 
 men. Hell's ambassador with full credentials ; nor can 
 we conceive that there should be need of any other 
 fiend to perfect the works of darkness, while he carries 
 his body among us, stufled with every pestilent druo- (^f 
 corruption. The heart of every virtuous young man 
 should loathe him ; if he speaks, you should as soon hear 
 a wolf bark. Gather around you the venomous snake, 
 the poisonous toad, the fetid vulture, the ijrowling hy- 
 ena, and their company would be an honor to you above 
 his ; for they at least remain within their own nature ; 
 but he goes out of his nature that he may become more 
 ])eastly than it is possible for a mere beast to be.
 
 92 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 He is liateful to religion, hateful to virtue, hateful to 
 decency, hateful to the coldest morality. The stenchful 
 iciior of his dissolved heart, has flowed over every feel- 
 ing of his nature, and left them as the burning lava 
 leaves the garden, the orchard, and the vineyard. And 
 it is a wonder that the bolt o£ God which crushed Sod- 
 om does not slay him. It is a wonder that the earth 
 does not refuse the burden and open and swallow him 
 up. 1 do not fear that the young will be undermined 
 by his direct assaults. But some will imitate, and their 
 example will be again feebly imitated, and finally, a 
 remote circle of disciples will spread the diluted conta- 
 gion among the virtuous. This man will be the foun- 
 tain-head, and though none will come to drink at a hot- 
 spring, yet further down along the stream it sends out, 
 will be found many scooping from its waters. 
 
 Y. I have described the devil in his native form, but he 
 sometimes appears as an angel of light. There is a pol- 
 ished Libertine, in manners studiously refined, in taste 
 faultless ; his face is mild and engaging ; his words drop 
 as pure as newly made honey. In general society, he 
 would rather attract regard as a model of purity, and 
 suspicion herself could hardly look askance upon him. 
 Under this brilliant exterior his heart is like a sepulchre, 
 full of all uncleanness. Contrasted with the gross liber- 
 tine, it would not be supposed that he had a thought in 
 common with him. If his heart could be opened to our 
 eye, as it is to God's, we should perceive scarcely dis- 
 similar feelings in respect to appetite. Professing un- 
 bounded admiration of virtue in general, he leaves not in 
 private a point untransgressed. His reading has culled 
 every glowing picture of am.orous poets, every tempting
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 93 
 
 scene of loose dramatists, and looser novelists. Enriched 
 by these, his imagination, like a rank soil, is overgrown 
 with a prodigal luxuriance of poison-herbs and deadly 
 flowers. Men, such as this man is, frequently aspire to 
 be the censors of morality. They are hurt at the inju- 
 dicious reprehensions of vice from the pulpit ! They 
 make great outcry when plain words are employed to 
 denounce base things. They are astonishingly sensitive 
 and fearful lest good men should soil their hands with 
 too much meddling with evil. Their cries are not the 
 evidence of sensibility to virtue, but of too lively a sensi- 
 bility to vice. Sensibility is, often, only the flutter- 
 ing of an impure heart. 
 
 At the very time that their voice is ringing an alarm 
 against immoral reformations, they are secretly scepti- 
 cal of every tenet of virtue, and practically unfaithful to 
 every one. Of these two libertines, the most refined is 
 the most dangerous. The one is a rattlesnake which 
 carries its warning with it ; the other, hiding his bur- 
 nished scales in the grass, skulks to perform unsuspected 
 deeds in darkness. The one is the visible fog and miasm 
 of the morass ; the other is the serene air of a tropical 
 city, which, though so brilliant, is loaded with invisible 
 pestilence. 
 
 The Politician. If there be a man on earth whose 
 character should be framed of the most sterling honesty, 
 and whose conduct should conform to the most scrupu- 
 lous morality, it is the man who administers public 
 affairs. The most romantic notions of integrity are 
 here not extravagant. As, under our institutions, pub- 
 lic men will be, upon the whole, fair exponents of the 
 character of their constituents, the plainest way to
 
 94 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 secure honest public men, is to inspire those wiio make 
 them, with a right understanding of what political char- 
 acter ought to be. Youn^ men should be prompted to 
 discriminate between the specious, and the real ; the art- 
 ful, and the honest ; the wise, and the cunning ; the 
 patriotic, and the pretender. I will sketch — 
 
 VI. The Demagogue. The lowest of politicians is 
 that man who seeks to gratify an invariable selfishness 
 by pretending to seek the public good. For a pro- 
 fitable popularity he accommodates himself to all opin- 
 ions, to all dispositions, to every side, and to each preju- 
 dice. He is a mirror, with no face of its own, but a 
 smooth surface from which each man of ten thousand 
 may see himself reflected. He glides from man to man 
 coinciding with their views, pretending their feelings, 
 simulating their tastes ; with this one, he hates a man ; 
 with that on€, he loves the same man ; he favors a law, 
 and he dislikes it ; he approves, and opposes ; he is on 
 both sides at once, and seemingly wishes that lie could 
 be on one side more than both sides. He attends meet- 
 ings to suppress intemperance, — but at elections makes 
 every grog-shop free to all drinkers. He can with equal 
 relish plead most eloquently for temperance, or toss 
 oir a dozen glasses in a dirty grocery. He thinks that 
 there is a time for every thing, and therefore, at one 
 time he swears and jeers and leers witii a carousing 
 crew ; and at another Hime, having happily been con- 
 verted, he displays the various features of devotion. 
 Indeed, he is a capacious christian ; an epitome of faith. 
 He piously asks the class-leader of the welfare of his 
 charge, for he was always a Methodist and always sliall 
 be, — until he meets a Presbyterian ; then he is a Pres-
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 95 
 
 byterian, old-school or new, as the case requires. How- 
 ever, as he is not a bigot, he can afford to be a Baptist, 
 in a good Baptist neighborhood, and with a wink he tells 
 the zealous elder, tl;at he never had one of his children 
 baptised, not he ! He whispers to the Reformer that he 
 abhors all creeds but Baptism and the Bible. After all 
 this, room will be found in his heart for the fugitive sects 
 also, which come and go like clouds in a summer-sky. 
 His flattering attention at church edifies the simple- 
 hearted preacher, who admires that a plain sermon 
 should make a man whisper amen ! and weep ; or at 
 least wipe his eyes to coax a tear. Upon the stump his 
 tact is no less rare. He roars and bawls with coura- 
 geous plainness, on points about which all agree : but 
 on subjects where men differ, his meaning is nicely 
 ballanced on a pivot that it may dip either way. He 
 depends for success chiefly upon humorous stories. A 
 glowing patriot a-telling stories is a dangerous antago- 
 nist ; for it is hard to expose the fallacy of a hearty 
 laugh, and men convulsed with merriment are slow to 
 jjerceive in what way an argument is a reply to a story. 
 Perseverance, effrontery, good nature, and versatile 
 cunning have advanced many a bad man higher than a 
 good man could attain. Men will admit that he has not 
 a single moral virtue ; but he is smart. Smart? — It does 
 not occur to many, that there is much difference between 
 men and game ; or that offices and laws are much more 
 than beaver-traps ; or public men very different from 
 smart trappers. We object to no man for amusing him- 
 self at the fertile resources of the politician here painted; 
 for sober men are sometimes pleased with the grimaces 
 and mischievous tricks of a versatile monkey ; but would
 
 96 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 it not be strange indeed if tiiey should select him for a 
 ruler, or make him an examplar to their sons ? 
 
 VII. I describe next a more respectable and more dan- 
 gerous politician— the Party Man. He has associated 
 his ambition, his interests, and his aflections with a 
 party. His very self-love is love of party. He pre- 
 fers, doubtless, that his side should be victorious by 
 the best means, and under the championship of good 
 men ; but rather than lose the victory, he will con- 
 sent to any means, and follow any man. Thus, with 
 a general desire to be upright, the exigency of his 
 party constantly pushes him to dishonorable deeds. 
 He opposes fraud by craft ; lie, by lie ; slander, by 
 counter-aspersion. To be sure it is wrong to mis-state, 
 to distort, to suppress, or color facts ; it is wrong to 
 employ the evil passions ; to set class against class ; 
 the poor against the rich, the country against the 
 city, the farmer against the mechanic, one section 
 against another section. But his opponents do it, and 
 if they will take advantage of men's corruption, he must, 
 or lose by his virtue. He gradually adopts two charac- 
 ters, a personal and a political character. All the re- 
 quisitions of his conscience he obeys in his private char- 
 acter ; all the requisitions of his party, he obeys in his 
 political conduct. In one character, he is a man of prin- 
 ciple ; in the other, a man of mere expedients. As a 
 man he means to be veracious, honest, moral ; as a poli- 
 tician^ he is deceitful, cunning, unscrupulous, — any thing 
 for party. As a man, he abhors the slimy demagogue ; 
 as a politician, he employs him as a scavenger. As a 
 man, he shrinks from the flagitiousness of slander ; as a 
 politician, he permits it, smiles upon it in others, rejoices
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 97 
 
 in the success gained by it. As a man, he respects no 
 one who is rotten in heart ; as a politician, no man 
 through whom victory may be gained can be too bad. 
 As a citizen, he is an apostle of temperance ; as a politi- 
 cian, he puts his shoulder under the men who deluge 
 their track with whiskey, marching a crew of brawling 
 patriots, pugnaciously drunk, to exercise the freeman's 
 noblest franchise, — the vote. As a citizen, he is consid- 
 erate of the young, and counsels them with admirable 
 wisdom ; then, as a politician, he votes for tools, sup- 
 porting for the magistracy worshipful aspirants scraped 
 from the ditch, the grogshop, and the brothel ; thus say- 
 ing by deeds which the young are quick to understand : 
 "I jested, when I warned you of bad company; for 
 you perceive none worse than those whom I delight to 
 honor." For his religion he will give up all his secular 
 interests ; but for his politics he gives up even his reli- 
 gion. He adores virtue, and rewards vice. Whilst 
 bolstering up unrighteous measures, and more unrighte- 
 ous men, he prays for the advancement of religion, and 
 justice, and honor ! I would to God that his prayer 
 might be answered upon his own political head ; for 
 never was there a place where such blessings were 
 more needed ! I am puzzled to know what will happen 
 at death to this politic christian, but most unchristian 
 politician. Will both of his characters go heavenward 
 together ? If the strongest prevails, he will certainly 
 go to hell. If his weakest, (which is his christian charac- 
 ter,) is saved, what will become of his political character ? 
 Shall he be sundered in two, as Solomon proposed to 
 divide the contested infant ? If this style of character 
 were not flagitiously wicked, it Vv'ould still be supremely 
 9
 
 98 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 ridiculous— but it is both. Let young men mark these 
 amphibious exemplars to avoid their influence. The 
 young have nothing to gain from those who are saints in 
 religion and moi'als, and Machiavels in politics ; who 
 have partitioned oH' their heart, invited Christ into one 
 half, and Belial into the other. He who does not act by 
 Justice, right, and truth, but only by passion, prejudice, 
 interest, and selfishness, is a robber in jirinciple, if circum- 
 stances have restrained him from being one in practice. 
 Tlie robber's principles are only dangerous to the young 
 when adopted by moral men, and baptized into the name 
 of some virtue. 
 
 It is widely said, that a strictly honest man who de- 
 sires purely the public good, who will not criminally 
 flatter the people, nor take part in lies, or party-slander, 
 nor descend to the arts of the rat, the weasel, and the 
 fox, cannot succeed in politics. It is calmly said by 
 thousands that one cannot be a politician and a chris- 
 tian. Indeed, a man is liable to downright ridicule if he 
 speaks in good earnest of a scrupulously honest and reli- 
 giously moral politician. I regard all such representa- 
 tions as false. We are not without men whose career 
 is a refutation of the slander. It poisons the commu- 
 nity to teach this fatal necessity of corruption in a 
 course which so many must pursue. It is not strange, if 
 such be the popular opinion, that young men include the 
 sacrifice of strict integrity as a necessary element of a 
 political life, and calmly agree to it, as to an inevitable 
 misfortune, rather than to a dark and voluntary crime. 
 
 Only if a man is an ignorant heathen, can he escape 
 blame for such a decision ! A young man, at this day, 
 in this land, who can coolly purpose a life of most un-
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 99 
 
 manly guile, who ineans to earn his bread and fame 
 by a sacrifice of integrity, is one who requires only 
 temptation and opportunity to become a felon. What a 
 heart has that man, who can stand in the very middle of 
 the Bible, with its transcendent truths raising their glow- 
 ing fronts on every side of him, and feel no inspiration 
 but that of immorality and meanness! He knows that 
 for him have been founded the perpetual institutions 
 of religion, for him prophets have spoken, miracles 
 been wrought, heaven robbed of its Magistrate, and 
 the earth made sacred above all planets as the Re- 
 deemers burial-place, — he knows it all, and plynges from 
 this height to the very bottom of corruption ! He hears 
 that he is immortal, and despises the immortality ; that 
 he is a son of God, and scorns the dignity ; an heir of 
 heaven, and infamously sells his heirship, and himself, for 
 a contemptible mess of loathsome pottage ! Do not tell 
 me of any excuses. It is a shame to attempt an excuse ! 
 If there were no religion, if that vast sphere, out of 
 which glow all the supereminent truths of the Bible, was 
 a mere emptiness and void, yet, methinks, the very idea 
 of Fatherland, the exceeding preciousness of the Laws 
 and Liberties of a great people, would enkindle such a 
 high and noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings would be 
 consumed ! But if the love of country, a sense of char- 
 acter, a manly regard for integrity, the example of our 
 most illustrious men, the warnings of religion and all its 
 solicitations, and the prospect of the future, — dark as 
 Perdition to the bad, and light as Paradise to the good, — 
 cannot inspire a young man to any thing higher than a 
 sneaking, truckling, dodging scramble for fraudulent
 
 100 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
 
 lias never felt one sensation of manly virtue ; — it is be- 
 cause his heart is a howling wilderness, inhospitable to 
 innocence, but a lair to wild beasts. 
 
 Thus have I sketched a few of the characters which 
 abound in every community ; dangerous, not more by 
 their direct temptations, than by their insensible influ- 
 ence. The sight of their deeds, of their temporary suc- 
 cess, their apparent happiness, relaxes the tense rigidity 
 of a scrupulous honesty, inspires a ruinous liberality of 
 sentiment toward vice, and breeds the iJiovghts of evil ; 
 and EVIL THOUGHTS are the cockatrice's eggs, hatching 
 into all bad deeds. 
 
 Remember, if by any of these you are enticed to ruin, 
 you will have to bear it alone ! They are strong to 
 seduce, but heartless to sustain their victims. They will 
 exhaust your means, teach you to despise the God of 
 your fathers, lead you into every sin, go with you while 
 vou afibrd them any pleasure or profit, and then, when 
 the inevitable disaster of wickedness begins to over- 
 whelm you, they will abandon whom they have debauch- 
 ed. When, at length, death gnaws at your bones and 
 knocks at your heart; when staggering, and worn out, 
 vour courage wasted, your hope gone, your purity, and 
 long, long ago your peace — will he who first enticed 
 vour steps, now^ serve your extremity with one ofiice of 
 kindness ? Will he stay your head ? — cheer your dying 
 agony with One word of hope ? — or light the way for 
 your coward steps to the grave ? — or w^eep when you 
 are gone ? — or send one pitiful scrap to your desolate 
 family ? What reveller wears crape for a dead drunk- 
 ard ? — what gang of gamblers ever intermitted a game 
 for the death of a companion 1 — or went on kind mis-
 
 PORTRAIT GALLERY. 101 
 
 sions of relief to broken-down fellow gamblers 1 What 
 liarlot weeps for a iiarlot ? — what debauchee mourns for 
 a debauchee 1 They would carouse at your funeral, and 
 gamble on your coffin. If one flush more of pleasure 
 were to be had by it, they would drink shame and ridi- 
 cule to your memory out of your own skull, and roar in 
 bacchanal-revelry over your damnation ! All the shame- 
 less atrocities of wicked men are nothing to their heart- 
 k'smess toward each other when broken-down. As I 
 l^ave seen worms writhing on a carcass, overcrawling 
 each other, and elevating their fiery heads in petty fero- 
 city against each other, while all were enshrined in the 
 corruption of a common carrion, — I have thought, ah ! 
 shameful picture of wicked men tempting each other, abet- 
 ting each other, until calamity overtook them, and then 
 fighting and devouring or abandoning each other, with- 
 out pity, or sorrow, or compassion, or remorse. Evil 
 men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you 
 on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity 
 you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in 
 the universe. 
 
 My S071, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they 
 say, Come with us, . . . ive shall find all precious sub- 
 stance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: Cast in thy lot 
 among us; let us all have one purse: My son, walk not 
 thou in the way with them; refrain thy feet from their 
 path: for their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed 
 blood, . . . and they lay in ivait for their own blood, 
 thetj lurk privily for their own lives. « 
 
 a Prov. i. 10—10.
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments 
 and made four parts, to every soldier a part, and also his coat. Now 
 the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout. They 
 said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lot's 
 for it, whose it shall be. These things therefore the soldiers did. 
 
 I HAVE condensed into one account the separate parts 
 of this gambling transaction as narrated by each evan- 
 gelist. How marked in every age is a Gambler's charac- 
 ter ! The enraged priesthood of ferocious sects taunted 
 Christ's dying agonies ; the bewildered multitude, accus- 
 tomed to cruelty, could shout ; but no earthly creature, 
 but a Gambler, could be so lost to all feeling as to sit 
 down coolly under a dying man to wrangle for his gar- 
 ments, and arbitrate their avaricious differences by cast- 
 ing dice for his tunic, with hands spotted with his spat- 
 tered blood, warm and yet undried upon them. The 
 descendants of these patriarchs of gambling, however, 
 have taught us, that there is nothing possible to hell, 
 uncongenial to these, its elect saints. In this lecture it 
 is my disagreeable task to lead your steps down the dark 
 path to their cruel haunts, there to exhibit their infernal 
 passions, their awful ruin, and their ghastly memorials.
 
 104 GAMBLERS 
 
 In lliis house of darkness amid fierce faces gleaming with 
 the fire of fiercer hearts, amid oaths and groans and 
 fiendish orgies, ending in murders and strewn with swel- 
 tering corpses, — do not mistake, and suppose yourself 
 in Hell — you are only in its precincts and vestibule. 
 
 Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon 
 mere hazard. Tlie husbandman renders produce for 
 his gains ; the mechanic renders the product of labor 
 and skill for his gains ; the gambler renders for his 
 gain the sleights of useless skill, or more often, down- 
 right cheating. Betting is gambling ; there is no hon- 
 est equivalent to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks 
 are oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its w^orst 
 evils. Profits so earned are no better than the profits of 
 dice, cards, or hazard. When skill returns for its earn- 
 ings a useful service, as knowledge, beneficial amuse- 
 ments, or profitable labor, it is honest commerce. 
 The skill of a pilot in threading a narrow channel, the 
 skill of the lawyer in threading a still more intricate 
 one, are as substantial equivalents for a price received, 
 as if they were merchant-goods or agricultural products. 
 But all gains of jnere skill which result in no real benefit, 
 are gambling gains. 
 
 Gaming, as it springs from a principle of our nature, 
 has, in some form, probably existed in every age. We 
 trace it in remote periods and among the most barbarous 
 people. It loses none of its fliscinations among a civilized 
 people. On the contrary, the habit of fierce stimulants.
 
 AND GAMBLING. 105 
 
 the jaded appetite of luxury, and the satiety of wealth, 
 seem to invite this master-excitant. Our land, not apt 
 to be behind in good or evil, is full of gambling in all its 
 forms — the gambling of commerce, the gambling of bets 
 and wagers, and the gambling of games of hazard. 
 There is gambling in refined circles, and in the low- 
 est ; among the members of our national government, 
 and of our state-governments. Thief gambles with thief, 
 in jail ; the judge who sent them there, the lawyer who 
 prosecuted, and the lawyer who defended them, gamble 
 too. In many circuits, not long ago, and in some now, 
 the judge, the jury, and the bar, shuflled cards by night, 
 and law by day — dealing out money and justice alike. 
 The clatter of dice and cards disturb your slumber on 
 the boat, and ring drowsily from the upper rooms of 
 the hotel. This vice pervades the city, extends over 
 every line of travel, and infests the most moral districts. 
 The secreted lamp dimly lights the apprentices to their 
 game ; with unsuspected disobedience, boys creep out 
 of their beds to it; it goes on in the store close by the 
 till ; it haunts the shop. The scoundrel in his lair, the 
 scholar in his room ; the pirate on his ship, gay women 
 at parties ; loafers in the street-corner, public functiona- 
 ries in their offices ; the beggar under the hedge, the 
 rascal in prison, and some professors of religion in the 
 somnolent hours of the Sabbath, — waste their energies 
 by the ruinous excitement of the game. Besides these 
 players, there are troops of professional gamblers, troops 
 of hangers on, troops of youth to be drawn in. An m- 
 experienced eye would detect in our peaceful towns no 
 signs of this vulture-flock ; — so in a sunny day when all 
 cheerful birds are singing merrily, not a buzzard can be
 
 106 GAMBLERS 
 
 seen ; but let a carcass drop, and they will push forth 
 their gaunt heads from their gloomy roosts, and come 
 flapping from the dark woods to speck the air, and dot 
 the ground with their numbers. 
 
 The universal prevalence of this vice is a reason for 
 parental vigilance ; and a reason of remonstrance from 
 the citizen, the parent, the minister of the gospel, the 
 patriot, and the press. I propose to trace its opening, 
 describe its subjects, and detail its ejects. 
 
 A young man proud of freedom, anxious to exert his 
 manhood, has tumbled his Bible and sober books and 
 letters of counsel into a dark closet. He has learned 
 various accomplishments, to flirt, to boast, to swear, to 
 fight, to drink. He has let every one of these chains be 
 put around him, upon the solemn promise of Satan that 
 he would take them olV whenever he wished. Hearing 
 of the artistic feats of eminent gambiers, he emulates 
 them. So, he ponders the game ; to-day, he has learned 
 I'-hist; to-morrow, iz-a^-; Siiiuvday, bluj' ; and Sunday, 
 poker. He teaches what lie has learned to his shop- 
 mates, and feels himself their master. As yet he has 
 never played for stakes. It begins thus : Peeping into a 
 book-store, he watches till the sober customers go out ; 
 then slips in, and with assumed boldness, not concealing 
 his shame, he asks for cards, buys them, and hastens out. 
 The first game is to pay for the cards. After the relish 
 of playing for a stake, no game can satisfy them xoiihout 
 a stake. A few nuts are staked ; then a bottle of wine; 
 an oyster-supper. At last they can venture a sixpence in 
 (/dual money — just for the amusement of it. I need go no 
 fji-ther — whoever wishes to do any thing with the lad, 
 can do it now. If properly plied, and gradually led, he will
 
 A N D G A M E L I N G . 107 
 
 go to any length, and stop only at the gallows. Do yoa 
 doubt it ? let us trace him a year or two further on. 
 
 With his fathers blessing, and his mother's tears, the 
 young man departs from home. He has received his 
 patrimony, and embarks for life and independence. 
 Upon his journey he rests at a city ; visits the 'school 
 of morals ;' lingers in more suspicious places ; is seen 
 by a sharper, and makes his acquaintance. The knave 
 sits by him at dinner ; gives him the news of the place, 
 and a world of advice ; cautions him against sharpers ; 
 enquires if he has money, and charges him to keep it 
 secret; offers himself to make with him the rounds of 
 the town, and secure him from imposition. At length, 
 that he may see all, he is taken to a gaming-house, but, 
 with apparent kindness, warned not to play. He stands 
 by to see the various fortunes of the game ; some, for- 
 ever losing ; some, touch what number they will, gain- 
 ing piles of gold. Looking is thirst where wine is 
 free. A glass is taken ; another of a better kind ; next 
 the best the landlord has, and two glasses of that. A 
 change comes over the youth ; his exhilaration raises 
 hisl courage, and lulls his caution. Gambling seen^ 
 seems a different thing from gambling paintec^ by a 
 pious father ! Just then his friend remarks that one 
 might easily double his money by a few ventures, 
 but that it was, perhaps, prudent not to risk. Only 
 this was needed to fire his mind. What ! only pru- 
 dence between me and gain ? Then that shall not 
 be long ! He stakes ; he wins. Stakes again ; wins 
 again. Glorious ! I am the lucky man that is to break 
 the bank ! He stakes, and wins again. His pulse 
 races ; his face burns ; his blood is up, and fear gone.
 
 108 GAMBLERS 
 
 He loses ; loses again ; loses all his winnings ; loses 
 more. But fortune turns again ; he wins anew. He 
 has now lost all self-command. Gains excite him, and 
 losses excite him more. He doubles his stakes ; then 
 trebles them — and all is swept. He rushes on, puts up 
 his whole purse, and loses the whole ! Then he would 
 borrow ; no man will lend. He is desperate, he will 
 fio-ht at a word. He is led to the street, and thrust out. 
 The cool breeze which blows upon his fevered cheek, 
 wafts the slow and solemn stroke of the clock, — one, — 
 tvvo, — three, — four; four of the morning! Quick work 
 of ruin !— an innocent man destroyed in a night ! He 
 stafTc^ers to his Hotel, remembers as he enters it, that he 
 has not even enough to pay his bill. It now flashes 
 upon him that his friend, who never had left him for an 
 hour before, has stayed behind where his money is, and, 
 doubtless, is laughing over his spoils. His blood boils 
 with rage. But at length comes up the remembrance of 
 home ; a parent's training and counsels for more than 
 twenty years, destroyed in a night ! " I have gambled 
 away my money and my salvation ! I have broken my 
 old father's heart ! Good God ! what a wretch 1 have 
 been ! I am not fit to live. 1 cannot go home. I am 
 a stranger here. Oh ! that I were dead ! Oh ! that I 
 had died before I knew this guilt, and were lying where 
 my sister lies ! Oh God ! Oh God ! my head will burst 
 with agony !" He stalks his lonely room with an agony 
 which only the young heart knows in its first horrible 
 awakening to remorse— when it looks despair full in the 
 face, and feels its hideous incantations tempting him 
 to suicide. Subdued at length by agony, cowed and 
 weakened by distress, he is sought again by those who
 
 AND GAMBLING. 109 
 
 plucked him. Canning to subvert inexperience, to raise 
 the evil passions, and to allny the good, they nnake him 
 their pliant tool. 
 
 Farewell, young man ! I see thy steps turned to that 
 haunt again ! I see hope lighting thy face ; but it is a 
 lurid light, and never came from heaven. Stop before 
 that threshold ! — turn, and bid farewell to home ! — fare- 
 well to innocence ! — farewell to venerable lather and 
 aged mother ! — the next step shall part thee from them 
 all forever. And now henceforth be a mate to thieves, 
 a brother to corruption. Thou hast made a league with 
 death, and unto death shalt thou go. 
 
 Let us here pause, to draw the likeness of a few 
 who stand conspicuous in that vulgar ci'owd of gam- 
 blers, with which hereafter he will consort. The first 
 is a taciturn, quiet man. No one knows when he 
 comes into town, or when he leaves. No man hears 
 of his gaining ; for he never boasts, nor reports his 
 luck. He spends little for parade ; his money seems 
 to go and come only through the game. He re?ds 
 none, converses none, is neither a glutton nor a hard 
 drinker ; he sports few ornaments, and wears plain cloth- 
 ing. Upon the whole, he seems a gentlemanly man ; 
 and sober citizens say, " his only fault is gambling." 
 What then is this '''•only fault?"' In his heart he has 
 the most intense and consuming lust of play. He is 
 quiet because every passion is absorbed in one ; and 
 that one burning at the highest flame. He thinks of 
 nothing else, cares only for this. All other things, even 
 the hottest lusts of other men, are too cool to be temp- 
 tations to him ; so much deeper is the style of his pas- 
 sion. He will sit upon his chair, and no man shall sec 
 10
 
 110 GAJIBLERS 
 
 liim move for hours, except to play his cards. He sees 
 none come in, none go out. Death might groan on one 
 side of the room, and marriage might sport on the other, 
 — he would know neither. Every created influence is 
 shut out ; one thing only moves him — the game; and 
 that leaves not one pulse of excitability unaroused, but 
 stirs his soul to the very dregs. 
 
 Very different is the roistering gamester. He bears 
 a jolly face, a glistening eye something watery through 
 watching and drink. His fingers are manacled in rings ; 
 his bosom glows with pearls and diamonds. He learns 
 the time which he wastes from a magnificent watch full 
 gorgeously carved, (and not with the most modest scenes.) 
 and slung around his neck by a ponderous golden chain. 
 His dress is richer than the richest wear. When he is 
 in luck, you may count his coats a dozen, his vests a 
 score, his stocks and cravats innumerable. There is 
 not so splendid a fellow to be seen sweeping through the 
 streets. The landlord makes him welcome — he will 
 bear a full bill. The tailor smiles like May — he will 
 buy half his shop. Other places bid him welcome — he 
 will bear large stealings. 
 
 Like the Judge, he makes his circuit, but not for jus- 
 tice ; like the Preacher, he has his appointments, but not 
 for instruction. His circuits are the race-courses, the 
 crowded capital, days of general convocation, conven- 
 tions, and mass-gatherings. He will flame on the race- 
 track, bet his thousands, and beat the ring at swearing 
 oaths vernacular, imported, simple, or compound. The 
 drinking-booth smokes when he draws in his welcome 
 suit. Did you see him only by day, flaming in apparel, 
 jovial, and free-hearted at the Restaurateur or Hotel,
 
 ANDGAMBLING. Ill 
 
 you would think him a Prince let loose — a cross between 
 Prince Hal and FalslafI'. 
 
 But night is his day. These are mere exercises, and 
 brief prefaces to his real accomplishments. He is a 
 good fellow, who dares play deeper; he is wild indeed, 
 who seems wilder ; and he is keen indeed, who is shar- 
 per than he is, after all this show of frankness. No one 
 is quicker, slyer, and more alert at a game. He can 
 shuffle the pack till an honest man would as soon think 
 of looking, for a particular drop of water in the ocean, 
 as for a particular card in any particular place. Per- 
 haps he is ignorant which is at the top and which at the 
 bottom ! At any rate, watch him closely, or you will 
 get a lean hand and he a fat one. A plain man would 
 think him a wizzard or the devil. When he touches a 
 pack they seem alive, and acting to his will rather than 
 his touch. He deals them like lightning, they rain like 
 snow-flakes, sometimes one, sometimes two, if need be 
 four and five together, and his hand hardly moved. If 
 he loses, very well, he laughs ; if he gains, he only 
 laughs a little more. Full of stories, full of songs, full 
 of wit, full of roistering spirit — yet do not trespass too 
 much upon his good nature with insult ! All this out- 
 side is only the spotted hide which covers the tiger. 
 He who provokes this man, shall see what lightning can 
 break out of a summer-seeming cloud ! 
 
 These do not fairly represent the race of gamblers, — 
 conveying too favorable an impression. Tiiere is one, 
 often met on Steam-boats, travelling solely to gamble. 
 He has the servants, or steward, or some partner, in 
 league with him, to iieece every unwary player whom 
 he inveifjiles to a game. He deals falsely ; heats his
 
 112 GAMBLERS 
 
 dupe to madness by drink, drinking none himself; 
 watches the signals of liis accomplice telegraphing his 
 opponent's hand ; at a stray look, he will slip your 
 money olf and steal it. To cover false playing or to get 
 rid of paying losses ho will lie fiercely, and swear uproar- 
 iously, and break up the play to fight with knife or pistol 
 — first scraping the table of every penny. When the 
 passengers are asleep, he surveys the luggage, to see 
 what may be worth stealing ; he pulls a watch from 
 under the pillow of one sleeper ; fumbles in the pockets 
 of another ; and gathers booty throughout the cabin. 
 Leaving the boat before morning, he appears at some 
 village hotel, a magnificent gentleman, a polished trav- 
 eller, or even a distinguished nobleman ! 
 
 There is another gambler, cowardly, sleek, stealthy, 
 humble, mousing, and mean — a simple bloodsucker. For 
 money, he will be a tool to other gamblers ; steal for 
 them, and from them ; he plays the jackall, and searches 
 victims for them, humbly satisfied to pick the bones 
 aftervt^ard. Thus, (to employ his own language) he ropes 
 in the inexperienced young, flatters them, teaches them, 
 inflames their passions, purveys to their appetites, cheats 
 them, debauches them, draws them down to his own 
 level, and then lords it over them in malignant mean- 
 ness. Himself impure, he plunges others into lascivious- 
 ness ; and with a train of reaking satellites, he revolves 
 a few years in the orbit of the game, the brothel, and 
 the doctor's shop ; then sinks and dies : the world is 
 purer, and good men thank God that he is gone. 
 
 Beside these, time would fail me to describe the inefl'a- 
 ble dignity of a gambling judge ; the cautious, phlegmatic 
 lawyer, gamblinjr from sheer avarice : the broken-down
 
 A N IJ G A M B L I N G . 113 
 
 and cast-away politician, seeking in the game the needed 
 excitement, and a fair field for all the base tricks he once 
 played oiT as a patriot ; the pert, sharp, keen, jockey- 
 gambler ; the soaked, obese, plethoric, wheezing, baccha- 
 nal ; and a crowd of ignoble worthies, wearing all the 
 badges and titles of vice, throughout its base peerage. 
 
 A detail of the e-vils of gambling should be preceded 
 by an illustration of that constitution of mind out of 
 which they mainly spring — ■! mean its KxcrrABinTY. 
 The body is not stored with a fixed amount of strength, 
 nor the mind with a uniform measure of excitement; 
 but both are capable, by stimulation, of expansion of 
 strength or feeling, almost without limit. Experience 
 shows, that within certain bounds, excitement is healthful 
 and necessary ; but beyond this limit, exhausting and 
 destructive. Men are allowed to choose between mode- 
 rate but long-continued excitement, and intense but 
 short-lived excitement. Too generally they prefer the 
 latter. To gain this intense thrill, a thousand methods 
 are tried. The inebriate obtains it by drink and drugs ; 
 the politician, by the keen interest of the civil cam- 
 paign ; the young, by amusements which violently in- 
 flame and gratify their appetites. When once this 
 higher flavor of stimulus has been tasted, all that is less 
 becomes vapid and disgustful. A sailor tries to live on 
 shore ; a few weeks suffice. To be sure, there is no 
 hardships, or cold, or suflering ; but neither is there the 
 strong excitement of the ocean, the gale, the storm, and 
 the world of strange sights. The politician perceives that 
 his private affairs are deranged, his family neglected, his 
 character aspersed, his feelings exacerbated. When 
 men hear him confess that his career is a hideous wak- 
 10-
 
 114 GAMBLERS 
 
 ing dream, the race vexatious, and the end vanity, they 
 wonder that he clings to it ; but he knows that nothing 
 but the fiery wine which he has tasted will rouse up that 
 intense excitement, now become necessary to his hap- 
 piness. For this reason, great men often cling to public 
 office with all its envy, jealousy, care, toil, hates, compe- 
 titions, and unrequited fidelity ; for these very disgusts, 
 and the perpetual struggle, strike a deeper cord of ex- 
 citement than is possible to the gentler touches of home, 
 friendship, and love. Here too is the key to the real 
 evil of promiscuous novel-reading, to the habit of reve- 
 rie and mental romancing. None of life's common du- 
 ties can excite to such wild pleasure as these ; and they 
 must be continued, or the mind reacts into the lethargy 
 of fatigue and ennui. It is upon this principle that men 
 love 7Jai« ; suffering is painful to a spectator; but in trag- 
 edies, at public executions, at pugilistic combats, at cock- 
 fightings, horse-races, bear-baitings, bull-fights, gladiato- 
 rial shows, it excites a jaded mind as nothing else can. 
 A tyrant torments for the same reason that a girl reads 
 her tear-bedewed romance, or an inebriate drinks his 
 dram. No longer susceptible even to inordinate stimuli, 
 actual moans, and shrieks, and the writhing of utter 
 agony, just suffice to excite his worn out sense, and 
 inspire, probably, less emotion than ordinary men have 
 in listening to a tragedy or reading a bloody novel. 
 
 Gambling is founded upon the very worst perversion 
 of this powerful element of our nature. It heats every 
 . part of the mind like an oven. The faculties which pro- 
 duce calculation, pride of skill, of superiority, love of 
 gain, hope, fear, jealousy, hatred, are absorbed in the 
 game, and exhilarated, or exacerbated by victory or
 
 AND GAMBLING. 115 
 
 defeat. These passions are, doubtless, excited in men 
 by the daily occurrences of life ; but then they are 
 transient, and counteracted by a thousand grades of 
 emotion, which rise and fall like the undulations of the 
 sea. But in gambling there is no intermission, nor coun- 
 teraction. The whole mind is excited to the utmost, 
 and concentrated at its extreme point of excitation for 
 hours and days, with the additional waste of sleepless 
 nights, profuse drinking, and other congenial immorali- 
 ties. Every other pursuit becomes tasteless ; for no 
 ordinary duty has in it a stimulus which can scorch a 
 mind which now refuses to burn without blazing, or to 
 feel an interest which is not intoxication. The victim 
 of excitement is like a mariner who ventures into the 
 edge of a whirlpool for a motion more exhilarating than 
 plain sailing. He is unalarmed during the first few 
 gyrations, for escape is easy. But each turn sweeps 
 him further in ; the power augments, the speed becomes 
 terrific as he rushes toward the vortex, all escape now- 
 hopeless. A noble ship went in ; it is spit out in broken 
 fragments, splintered spars, crushed masts, and cast up 
 for many a rood along the shore. The specific evils of 
 gambling may now be almost imagined. 
 
 I. It diseases the mind, unfiting it for the duties of 
 life. Gamblers are seldom industrious men in any useful 
 vocation. A gambling mechanic finds his labor less 
 relishful as his passion for play increases. lie grows 
 unsteady, neglects his work, becomes unfaithful to prom- 
 ises ; what he performs he slights. Little jobs seem 
 little enough ; he desires immense contracts, whose un- 
 certainty has much the excitement of gambling — and for 
 the best of reasons ; and in the pursuit of great and sud-
 
 116 GAMBLERS 
 
 den profits, by wild schemes, he stumbles over into ruin, 
 leaving all who employed or trusted him in the rubbish 
 of his speculations. 
 
 A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudgery of his- 
 profession, will court .its exciting duties. To explore 
 authorities, compare reason, digest, and write, — this is 
 tiresome. But to advocate, to engage in fiery contests 
 \vith keen opponents, this is nearly as good as gambling. 
 Many a ruined client has cursed the law, and cursed a 
 stupid jury, and cursed every body for his irretrievable 
 loss, except his lawyer, who gambled all night when he 
 should have prepared the case, and came half asleep and 
 debauched into court in the morning to lose a good case 
 mismanaged, and snatched from his gambling hands by 
 the art of sober opponents. 
 
 A gambling student, if such a thing can be, withdraws 
 from thoughtful authors to the brilliant and spicy ; from 
 the pure among these, to the sharp and ribald ; from all 
 reading about depraved life, to seeing ; from sight, to ex- 
 perience. Gambling vitiates the imagination, corrupts the 
 tastes, destroys the industry — for no man will drudge for 
 cents, who gambles for dollars by the hundred ; or prac- 
 tice a piddling economy, while, with almost equal indiffer- 
 ence, he makes or loses five hundred in a night. 
 
 11. For a like reason, it destroys all domestic habits 
 and affections. Home is a prison to an inveterate gam- 
 bler ; thiere is no air there that he can breathe. For a 
 moment he may sport w^ith his children, and smile upon 
 iiis wife ; but his heart, its strong passions, are not 
 there. A little branch-rill may flow through the family, 
 but the deep river of his aflections flows away from 
 home. On the issue of a game, Tacitus narrates that the
 
 A N 11 G A M B L I N G . 117 
 
 ancient Germans would stake their property, their wiv^es, 
 their children, and themselves. What less than this is 
 it, wiien a man will stake that properly which is to give 
 his family bread, and that honor which gives them place 
 and rank in society ? 
 
 When playing becomes desperate gamblings the heart 
 is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings have 
 smouldered to ashes ; and a thorough-paced gamester 
 could rattle dice in a charnel-house, and wrangle for his 
 stakes amid murder, and pocket gold dripping with the 
 blood of his own kindred. 
 
 III. Gambling is the parent and companion of every 
 vice which pollutes the heart, or injures society. 
 
 It is a practice so disallowed among Christians, and so 
 excluded by mere moralists, and so hateful to industrious 
 and thriving men, that those who practice it are shut 
 up to themselves ; unlike lawful pursuits, it is not 
 modified or restrained by collision with others. Gam- 
 blers herd with gamblers. They tempt and provoke 
 each other to all evil, without aflbrding one restraint, 
 and without providing the counterbalance of a single 
 virtuous impulse. They are like snakes coiling among 
 snakes, poison and poisoning ; like plague-patients, in- 
 fected and diftusing infection ; each sick, and all conta- 
 gious. It is impossible to put bad men together and not 
 have them grow worse. The herding of convicts pro- 
 miscuously, produced such a fermentation of depravity, 
 that, long ago, legislators forbad it. When criminals, out 
 of jail, herd together by choice, the same corrupt nature 
 will doom them to growing loathsomeness, because to 
 increasing wickedness. 
 
 IV. It is a provocative of thirst. The bottle is al-
 
 118 GAMBLERS 
 
 most as needful as the card, the ball, or the dice. Some 
 are seduced to drink ; some drink from imitation, at first, 
 and fashion. When super-excitements, at intervals, sub- 
 side, their victim cannot bear the deathlike gloom of the 
 reaction ; and, by drugs or liquor, wind up their system 
 to the glowing point again. Therefore, drinking is the in- 
 variable concomitant of the theatre, circus, race-course, 
 gaming-table ; and of amusements which powerfully ex- 
 cite all but the moral feelings. When the double fire of 
 dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will soon be con- 
 sumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are 
 the more noticeable because exceptions. 
 
 V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost inevita- 
 ble cause of dishonedy. Robbers have robbers' honor ; 
 thieves have thieves' law ; and pirates conform to pirates' 
 regulations. But where is there a gam.bler's code? One 
 law there is, and this not universal, j>ay your gamhling 
 debts. But on the wide question, how is it fair to win — 
 what law is there ? What will shut a man out from a 
 gambler's club ? May he not discover his opponent's 
 hand by fraud ? May not a concealed thread, pulling 
 the significant one; — one, tico; — or one, two, three; or the 
 sign of a bribed servant or waiter, inforni him, and yet 
 his standing be fair ? May he not cheat in shuHling, and 
 yet be in full orders and canonical? — may he not cheat 
 in dealing, and yet be a welcome gambler ? — may he 
 not steal the money from your pile by laying his hands 
 upon it, just as any other thief would, and yet be an 
 approved gambler? JMay not the whole code be stated 
 thus : Pay ivhat you lose, get what you can, and in any 
 icay you can ! I am told, perhaps, that there are honest 
 gamblers, gentlemanly gamblers. Certainly ; there are
 
 A X n GAM] 
 
 119 
 
 always ripe apples before t'lere are rotten. Men al- 
 ways begin before they end; there is always an approxi- 
 mation before tliere is contact. Players will play truly 
 till they get used to playing untruly ; will be honest, till 
 they cheat; will be honorable, till they become base; 
 and when you have said all this, what does it amount to 
 but this, that men who 7-eaUy gamble, really cheat ; and 
 that they only do not cheat, who are not yet real gam- 
 blers ? If this mends the matter, let it be so amended. I 
 have spoken of gamesters only among themselves ; this 
 is the least part of the evil ; for who is concerned when 
 lions destroy bears, or wolves devour wolf-cubs, or 
 snakes sting vipers ? In respect to that department of 
 gambling which includes the roping-in of strangers, 
 young men, collecting-clerks, and unsuspecting green- 
 hands, and robbing them, I have no language strong 
 enough to mark down its turpitude, its infernal rapacity. 
 After hearing many of the scenes not unfamiliar to 
 every gambler, I think Satan might be proud of their 
 dealings, and look up to them with that deferential res- 
 pect, with which one monster gazes upon a superior. 
 There is not even the expectation of honesty. Some 
 scullion-herald of iniquity decoys the unwary wretch 
 into the secret room ; he is tempted to drink ; made con- 
 fident by the specious simplicity of the game ; allowed to 
 win; and every bait and lure and blind is employed — 
 then he is plucked to the skin by tricks which appear as 
 fair as honesty itself. The robber avows his deed, does 
 it openly ; the gambler sneaks to the same result under 
 skulking pretences. There is a frank way, and a mean 
 way of doing a wicked thing. The gambler takes 
 the meanest way of doing the dirtiest deed. The vie-
 
 120 GAMBLERS 
 
 tim's own partner is sucking his blood ; it is a league ot" 
 sharpers, to get iiis money at any rate ; and the wicked- 
 ness is so unblushing and unmitigated, that it gives, at 
 last, an instance of what the deceiti'ul human heart, 
 knavish as it is, is ashamed to try to cover or conceal ; 
 but confesses with helpless honesty, that it is fraud, 
 cheating, stealing, robbery,— -and nothing else. 
 
 If I walk the dark street, and a perishing, hungry 
 wretch meets me and bears off my purse with but a sin- 
 gle dollar, the whole town awakes ; the officers are alert, 
 the myrmidons of the law scout, and scent, and hunt, 
 and bring in the trembling culprit to stow him in the 
 jail. But a worse thief may meet me, decoy my steps, 
 and by a greater dishonesty, filch ten thousand dollars, — 
 and what then ? The story spreads, the sharpers move 
 abroad unharmed, no one stirs. It is the day's conver- 
 sation ; and like a sound it rolls to the distance, and dies 
 in an echo. 
 
 Shall such astounding iniquities be vomited out amidst 
 us, and no man care ? Do we love our children, and yet 
 let them walk in a den of vipers ? Shall we pretend to 
 virtue, and purity, and religion, and yet make partners 
 of our social life, men whose heart has conceived such 
 damnable deeds, and whose hands have performed them ? 
 Shall there be even in the eye of religion, no difference 
 between the corruptor of youth and their guardian ? 
 Are all the lines and marks of morality so effaced, is the 
 nerve and courage of virtue so quailed by the frequency 
 and boldness of flagitious crimes, that men, covered 
 over with wickedness, shall find their iniquity no obstacle 
 to their advancement among a Christian people ? 
 
 In almost every form of iniquity there is some shade
 
 AND GAMBLING. 121 
 
 or trace of good. We have in gambling a crime stand- 
 ing alone — dark, malignant, uncompounded wickedness ! 
 It seems in its full growth a monster without a ten- 
 der mercy, devouring its own ofispring without one 
 feeling but appetite. If the genius of gambling would 
 have a form, God must create it ; for there is no form 
 yet fitly created unless it be a rock, — cold, hard, barren, 
 unsoftened by rain, unrelieved by verdure. A game- 
 ster, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential sj)i7^ii of con- 
 centrated avaricious selfishness. His intellect is a living 
 thing, quickened with double life for villainy ; his heart is 
 steel of fourfold temper. When a man begins to gamble 
 he is as a noble tree full of sap, green with leaves, a 
 shade to beasts, and a covert to birds. When one be- 
 comes a thorough gambler, he is like that tree lightning- 
 smitten, rotten in root, dry in branch, and sapless ; 
 -seasoned hard and tough ; nothing lives beneath it, 
 nothing on its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture 
 perches for a moment to whet its becik, and fly scream- 
 ing away for its prey. 
 
 To every young man who indulges in the leas't form 
 of gambling, I raise a warning voice ! Under the spe- 
 cious name of amusement, you are laying the foundation 
 of gambling. Playing is the seed which comes up gam- 
 bling. It is the light wind which brings up the storm. 
 It is the white frost which preludes the winter. You 
 are mistaken, however, in supposing that it is harmless 
 in its earliest beginnings. Its terrible blight belongs, 
 doubtless, to a later stage ; but its consumption of time, 
 its destruction of industry, its distaste for the calmer 
 pleasures of life, belong to the very beginning. You 
 will begin to play with every generous feeling. Amuse- 
 11
 
 122 GAMBLERS 
 
 ment will be the plea. At the beginning the game will 
 excite enthusiasm, pride of skill, the love of mastery, and 
 the love of money. The love of money at first almost 
 imperceptible, at last will rule out all the rest — like 
 Aaron's rod, — a serpent, swallowing every other ser- 
 pent. Generosity, enthusiasm, pride of skill, love of 
 mastery, will be absorbed in one mighty feeling, — the 
 savage lust of lucre. 
 
 There is a downward climax in this sin. The open- 
 ing and ending are fatally connected, and drawn toward 
 each other with almost irresistable attraction. If gam- 
 bling is a vortex, playing is the outer ring of the Mael- 
 strom. The thousand pcmnd's stake, the whole estate 
 put up on a game — what are these but the instruments 
 of kindling that tremendous excitement which a diseased 
 heart craves ? What is the amusancnt for which you 
 play but the excitement of the game ? And for what but 
 this does the jaded gambler play ? You differ from him 
 only in the degree of the same feeling. Do not solace 
 yourself that you shall escape because others have ; for 
 they stopped^ and ijou go on. Are you as safe as they, when 
 you are in the gulf-stream of perdition, and they on the 
 shore? But have you ever asked, hnw many have escap- 
 ed ? Not one in a thousand is left unblighted ! you have 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine chances against you, and 
 one for you ; and will you go on ? If a disease should 
 stalk through the town devouring whole families and 
 sparing not one in five hundred, would you lie down 
 under it quietly because you had one chance in five hun- 
 dred ? Had a scorpion stung you, would it alleviate 
 your pangs to reflect that you had only one chance in 
 one hundred 1 Had you swallowed corrosive poison.
 
 AND GAMBLING. 123 
 
 would it ease your convulsions to think there was only 
 one chance in fifty for you ? I do not call every man 
 who plays a gambler, but a ganibler in embryo. Let me 
 trace your course from the amusement of innocent play- 
 ing to its almost inevitable end. 
 
 Scene Jirst. A genteel coiTee-house, — whose humane 
 screen conceals a line of grenadier-bottles, and hides 
 respectable blushes from impertinent eyes. There is a 
 quiet little room opening out of the bar ; and here sit 
 four jovial youths. The cards are out, the wines are in. 
 The fourth, is a reluctant hand ; he does not love the 
 drink, nor approve the game. He anticipates and fears 
 the results of both. Why is he here ? He is a whole- 
 souled fellow, and is afraid to seem ashamed of any fash- 
 ionable gaiety. He will sip upon the importunity of a 
 friend newly come to town, and is too polite to spoil 
 that friend's pleasure by refusing a part in the game. 
 They sit, shuffle, deal ; the night wears on, the clock 
 telling no tale of passing hours — the prudent liquor-fiend 
 has made it safely dumb. The night is gettmg old ; its 
 dank air grows fresher ; the east is grey ; the gaming 
 and drinking and hilarious laughter are over, and the 
 youths wending homeward. What says conscience? 
 No matter what it says ; they did not hear, and we will 
 not ; for what business has a dashing young gentleman, 
 in this free country, with a prudish conscience ? What- 
 ever was said, it was very shortly answered thus : " This 
 has not been gambling; all were gentlemen ; there was 
 no cheating; simply a convivial evening; no stakes 
 except the bills incident to the entertainment. If any 
 body blames a young man for a little innocent exhilara- 
 tion on a special occasion, he is a superstitious bigot ;
 
 1 21 GAMBLERS 
 
 let him croak !" Such a garnished game is made the 
 text to justify the whole round of gambling. Let us, 
 then, look at 
 
 Scene the second. In a room so silent that there is no 
 sound except the shrill cock crowing the morning; 
 where the forgotten candles burn dimly over the long 
 and lengthening wick, sit four men. Carved marble could 
 not be more motionless, save their hands. Pale, watch- 
 ful though weary, their eyes pierce the cards, or furtively 
 read each others faces. Hours have passed over them 
 thus. At length they rise without words ; some with a 
 satisfoction which only makes their faces brightly hag- 
 gard, scrape ofl' the piles of money ; others, dark, sullen, 
 silent, fierce, move away from their lost money. The 
 darkest and fiercest of the four is that young friend who 
 first sat down to make out a game ! He will never sit 
 so innocently again. What says he to his conscience 
 now ? "I have a right to gamble ; I have a right to be 
 damned too, if I choose ; whose business is it ?" 
 
 Scene the thinh Years have passed on. He has seen 
 youth ruined at first with expostulation, then with only 
 silent regret, then consenting to take part of the spoils ; 
 and finally, he has himself decoyed, duped, and stripped 
 them without mercy. Go with me into that dilapidated 
 house, not far from the landing, at New Orleans. Look 
 into that dirty room. Around a broken table, sitting 
 upon boxes, kegs, or rickety chairs, see a filthy crew- 
 dealing cards smoutched with tobacco, grease and liquor. 
 One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with brandy ; 
 a shock of grizzly, matted hair, half covering his villain 
 eyes which glare out like a wild beast's from a thicket. 
 Close by him wheezes a white-faced, dropsical wretch,
 
 A N D G A M B L 1 N G . 125 
 
 vermin-covered, and stenchful. A scoundrel-Spaniard, 
 and a hurley negro, (the jolliest of the four,) complete the 
 group. They have spectators — drunken sailors, and 
 ogling, thieving, drinking women, who should have died 
 long ago, when all that was womanly died. Here hour 
 draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, some- 
 times with threat, and oath, and uproar. The last few 
 stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each charges each 
 with cheating, and high words ensue, and blows ; and 
 the whole gang burst out the door, beating, biting, 
 scratching, and rolling over and over in the dirt and 
 dust. The worst, the fiercest, the drunkest, of the four 
 is our friend who began by making up the game ! 
 
 Scene the fourth. Upon this bright day, stand with me, 
 if you would be sick of humanity, and look over that mul- 
 titude of men kindly gathered to see a murderer hung ! 
 At last, a guarded cart drags on a thrice-guarded wretch. 
 At the gallow's ladder his courage fails, drunk though he 
 be. His coward-feet refuse to ascend : dragged up, he 
 is supported by bustling officials ; his brain reels, his eye 
 swims, while the meek Minister utters a final prayer by 
 his leaden ear. The prayer is said, the noose is fixed, 
 the signal is given ; a shudder runs through the crowd 
 as he swings free. After a moment, his convulsed limbs 
 stretch down, and hang heavily and still ; and he who 
 began to gamble to make up a game and ended with 
 stabbing an eni'aged victim whom he had fleeced, has 
 here played his last game, — himself the stake ! 
 
 I feel impelled, in closing, to call the attention of all 
 sober citizens to some potent influences which are ex- 
 erted in favor of gambling. 
 
 In our civil economy we have Legislators to devise 
 11*
 
 126 GAMBLF. RS 
 
 and enact wholesome laws ; Lawyers to counsel and aid 
 those who need the laws' relief; and Judges to deter- 
 mine and administer the laws. If Legislators, Lawyers, 
 and Judges, are gamblers, with what hope do we warn 
 otF the young from this deadly fascination, against such 
 authoritative examples of high public functionaries ? 
 With what eminent fitness does that Judge press the 
 bench, who in private commits the vices which offi- 
 cially he is set to condemn ! With what singular 
 terrors does he frown on a convicted gambler with 
 whom he played last night, and will play again to-night ! 
 How wisely should the fine be light which the sprightly 
 criminal will win and pay out of the Judge's own pocket ! 
 
 With the name of Judge is associated ideas of immac- 
 ulate purity, sober piety, and fearless, favorless justice. 
 Let ii then be counted a dark crime for a recreant offi- 
 cial so far to forget his reverend place, and noble office, 
 as to run the gauntlet of filthy vices, and make the word 
 Judge, to suggest an incontinent trifler, who smites with 
 his mouth, and smirks with his eye ; who holds the rod 
 to strike the criminal, and smites only the law to make 
 a gap for criminals to pass through ! If God loves this 
 land, may he save it from truckling, drinking, swearing, 
 gambling, vicious Judges ! * 
 
 With such Judges I must associate corrupt legisla- 
 tors, whose bawling patriotism leaks out in all the sinks 
 of infamy of the Capital. These living exemplars of 
 vice, pass still-born laws against vice. Are such men 
 
 ^The general eminent integrity of the Bench is unquestiona'ole — 
 and no remari<8 in the text are to be construed as an oblique aspersion 
 of the profession. But the purer our Judges generally, the more 
 shameless is it that some will not abandon either their vices or their 
 office. No vice is worse than gambling.
 
 AND GAMBLING, 
 
 127 
 
 sent to the Capital only to practice debauchery 1 Labo- 
 rious seedsmen — they gather every germ of evil ; and 
 laborious sowers — at home they strew them far and 
 wide ! It is a burning shame, a high outrage, that pub- 
 lic men, by corrupting the young with the example of 
 manifold vices, should pay back their constituents for 
 their honors ! 
 
 Our land has little to fear from abroad, and much from 
 within. We can bear foreign aggression, scarcity, the 
 revulsions of commerce, plagues, and pestilences ; but 
 we cannot bear vicious Judges, corrupt Courts, gambling 
 Legislators, and a vicious, corrupt, and gambling con- 
 stituency. Let us not be deceived ! The decay of civil 
 institutions begins at the core. The outside wears all 
 the lovely hues of ripeness, when the inside is rotting. 
 DecUne does not begin in bold and startling acts ; but, 
 as in autumnal leaves, in rich and glowing colors. Over 
 diseased vitals, consumptive laws wear the hectic blush, 
 a brilliant eye, and transparent skin. Could the public 
 sentiment declare that personal morality, is the first ele- 
 ment of patriotism; that corrupt Legislators are the most 
 pernicious of criminals ; that the Judge who lets the vil- 
 lain off, is that villain's patron; that tolerance of crime is 
 intolerance of virtue, — our nation might defy all ene- 
 mies and live forever ! 
 
 And now, my young friends, I beseecii you to let alone 
 this evil before it be meddled with. You are safe from 
 vice when you avoid even its appearance ; and only 
 then. The first steps to wickedness are imperceptible. 
 We do not wonder at the inexperience of Adam ; but it 
 is wonderful that six thousand years' repetition of the 
 same arts, and the same uniform disaster should have
 
 128 GAMBLERS 
 
 taught men nothing! that generation after generation 
 should perish, and the wreck be no warning ! 
 
 The mariner searches his chart for hidden rocks, 
 stands oir from perilous shoals, and steers wide of reefs 
 on which liang shattered morsels of wrecked ships, and 
 runs in upon dangerous shores with the ship manned, 
 the wheel in hand, and the lead constantly sounding. 
 But the mariner upon life's sea, carries no chart of other 
 men's voyages, drives before every wind that will speed 
 him, draws upon horrid shores with slumbering crew, 
 or heads in upon roaring reefs as though he would not 
 perish where thousands have perished before him. 
 
 Hell is populated with the victims of '■^harmkss amuse- 
 7?ic7its:' Will man never learn that the way to hell is 
 through the valley of deceit ? The power of Satan to 
 hold his victims is nothing to that mastery of art by 
 which he first gains them. When he approaches to 
 charm us, it is not as a grim fiend, gleaming from a lurid 
 cloud, but as an angel of light radiant with innocence. 
 His words fidl like dew upon the flower; as musical as 
 the chrystal-drop warbling from a fountain. Beguiled 
 by his art, he leads you to the enchanted grounds. Oh 
 how it glows with every refulgent hue of Heaven ! 
 Afar off he marks the dismal gulf of vice and crime ; its 
 smoke of torment slowly rising, and rising forever ! and 
 he himself cunningly warns you of its dread disaster, for 
 the very purpose of blinding and drawing you thither. 
 He leads you to captivity through all the bowers of lull- 
 ing magic. He plants your foot on odorous flowers ; he 
 fans your cheek with balmy breath ; he overhangs your 
 head with rosy clouds ; he fills your ear with distant, 
 drowsy music, charming every sense to rest. Oh ye !
 
 AND GAMBLING. 
 
 129 
 
 who have thought the way to hell was bleak and frozen 
 as Norway, parched and barren as Sahara, strewed like 
 Golgotha with bones and skulls, reaking with stench 
 like the vale of Gehenna, — witness your mistake ! The 
 way to hell is gorgeous ! It is a highway, cast up ; no 
 lion is there, no ominous bird to hoot a warning, no 
 echoings of the wailing-pit, no lurid gleams of distant 
 fires, or moaning sounds of hidden woe ! Paradise is 
 imitated to build you a way to death : the flowers of 
 heaven are stolen and poisoned ; the sweet plant of 
 knowledge is here ; the pure white flower of religion ; 
 seeming virtue and the charming tints of innocence are 
 scattered all along like native herbage. The enchanted 
 victim travels on. Standing afar behind, and from a 
 silver-trumpet, a heavenly messenger sends down the 
 wind a solemn warning: There is a way which seemeth 
 
 RIGHT TO man, BUT THE END THEREOF IS DEATH. And 
 
 again, with louder blast : The wise man foreseeth the 
 EVIL ; FOOLS PASS ON AND ARE PUNISHED. Startled for a 
 moment, the victim pauses; gazes round upon the flow- 
 ery scene, and whispers, Is it not harmless? — '•'•Harm- 
 less'''' responds a serpent from the grass! — ^'•Harmless'''' 
 echo the sighing winds! — '•^Harmless'''' re-echoes a hun- 
 dred airy tongues ! If now a gale from heaven might 
 only sweep the clouds away through which the victim 
 gazes ; oh ! if God would break that potent power which 
 chains the blasts of hell, and let the sulpher-stench roll 
 up the vale, how would the vision change ! — the road be- 
 come a track of dead men's bones ! — the heavens a lower- 
 ing storm ! — the balmy breezes, distant wailings ! — and all 
 those balsam-shrubs that lied to his senses, sweat drops 
 of blood upon their poison-boughs !
 
 130 GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING. 
 
 Ye, who are meddling with the edges of vice, aix' 
 ou tliis road ! — and utterly duped by its enchant- 
 ments ! Your eye has already lost its honest glance, 
 your taste has lost its purity, your lieart throbs with 
 poison ! The leprosy is all over you, its blotches and 
 eruptions cover you. Your feet stand on slippei-y 
 places, whence in due time they shall slide, if you re- 
 fuse the warning which I raise. They shall slide from 
 heaven, never to be visited by a gambler ; slide down t(» 
 that fiery abyss below you, out of which none ever 
 come. Then, when the last card is cast, and the game 
 over, and you lost ; then, when the echo of your fall 
 shall ring through hell, — in malignant triumph, shall the 
 Arch-Gambler, who cunningly played for your soul, have 
 his prey ! Too late you shall look back upon life as a 
 MIGHTY GAME, in which you were the stake, and Satan the 
 w inner !
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doc- 
 trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness : 
 that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all 
 good works. 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. 
 
 Surely one cannot declare the whole counsel of God, 
 and leave out a subject which is interwoven with almost 
 every ciiapter of the Bible. So inveterate is the preju- 
 dice against introducing into the pulpit the subject of 
 Licentiousness, that Ministers of the Gospel, knowing the 
 vice to be singularly dangerous and frequent, have yet 
 by silence almost complete, or broken only by hints and 
 circuitous allusions, manifested their submission to the 
 popular taste. Since I announced, last Sabbath, the sub- 
 ject of this Lecture, how w^ide is the range of censure, 
 what protestations of modesty, what railings at a sermon 
 which had not been heard, or even written !* That Vice 
 
 * The liberality with which this Lecture was condemned before I had 
 written it, and the prompt criticisms afterwards, of those who did not 
 liear it, have induced me to print it almost unaltered. Otherwise I 
 should have changed many portions of it from forms of expression 
 peculiar to the pulpit into those better suited to a book. I await with 
 some solicitude, the effect of this Lecture upon those whose exquisite 
 sensibility has altogether out run the modesty of the Bible; — a book, 
 proper, perhaps, for the coarseness of a former age, but it would seem, 
 quite too indelicate for the refinement of this.
 
 132 THK STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 upon which it has pleased God to be more explicit and 
 full than upon any other; against which he uttered his 
 voice upon Sinai, Thou shall not commit adultery ; upon 
 which the lawgiver, Moses, legislated with boldness ; 
 which Judges condemned ; upon which the venerable 
 Prophets spake oft and again ; against which Christ with 
 singular directness and plainness uttered the purity of 
 religion ; and upon which He inspired Paul to discourse 
 to the Corinthians, and to almost every primitive church; 
 this subject upon which the Bible does not so much 
 speak, as thunder — not by a single bolt, but peal after 
 peal — we are solemnly warned not to introduce into 
 the pulpit ! 
 
 The church knows, and the whole community know, 
 that the sin of Impurity ismost deadly ; that itis prevalent ; 
 and that in every age ijt has raised its unblushing head, 
 unrebuked except by the voice of Religion: but now, that 
 voice is commanded to be still ; and Vice, grown wanton 
 and irrepressible, is to stalk whither it will, unchecked, 
 undenounced, uncondemned. 
 
 I am entirely aware of the delicacy of introducing this 
 subject into the pulpit. 
 
 One ditliculty arises from the sensitiveness of unalfect- 
 ed purity. A mind, retaining all the dew and freshness 
 of innocence, shrinks from the very idea of impurity, as 
 if it were sin to have thought or heard of it, — as if even 
 the shadow of the evil would leave some soil upon the 
 unsullied whiteness of the virgin-mind. Shall we be an- 
 gry with this 1 or shall we rudely rebuke so amiable a 
 feeling, because it regrets a necessary duty ? God for- 
 bid ! If there be, in the world, that whose generous 
 iaults should be rebuked only by the tenderness of a re-
 
 THE STRANGE UOMAN. 133 
 
 proving smile, it is the mistake of inexperienced purity. 
 We would as soon pelt an angel, bewildered among men 
 and half smothered with earth's noxious vapors, for his 
 trembling apprehensions. To any such, who have half 
 wished that I might not speak, I say : — Nor would I, did 
 I not know that purity will suffer more by the silence of 
 shame, than by the honest voice of truth. 
 
 Another difficulty springs from the nature of the 
 English language, which lias hardly been framed in a 
 school where it may wind and fit itself to all the phases 
 of impurity. But were I speaking French — the dialect 
 of refined sensualism and of licentious literature ; the 
 language of a land where taste and learning and art wait 
 upon the altars of impurity — then I might copiously speak 
 of this evil, nor use one plain word. But I thank God, 
 the honest English tongue which I have learned, has 
 never been so bred to this vile subservience of evil. 
 We have plain words enough to say plain things, but the 
 dignity and manliness of our language has never grown 
 supple to twine around brilliant dissipation. It has too 
 many plain words, vulgar words, vile words ; but it has 
 few mirror-words, which cast a sidelong image of an 
 idea ; it has few words which wear a meaning smile, a 
 courtezan-glance significant of something unexpressed. 
 When public vice necessitates public reprehension, it is, 
 for these reasons, difficult to redeem plainness from vul- 
 garity. We must speak plainly and properly ; or else 
 speak by innuendo — which is the devil's language. 
 
 Another difficulty lies in the confused echos which 
 
 vile men create in every community, when the pulpit 
 
 disturbs them. Do I not know the arts of cunning men? 
 
 Did not Demetrius, the Silver-smith (worthy to have 
 
 12
 
 1 34 T H K S T R A N G E W OMAN. 
 
 lived in our day !) become most wonderfully pious, and 
 run all over the city to rouse up the dormant zeal of 
 Diana's worshippers, and gather a mob, to whom he 
 preached tJiat Diana inust he cared for; when, to his 
 fellow-craftsmen, he told the truth: our craft is in dan- 
 ger ! Men will not quietly be exposed. They foresee 
 the rising of a virtuously retributive public sentiment, as 
 the mariner sees the cloud of the storm- rolling up the 
 heavens ! Tliey strive to forestall and resist it. How 
 loudly will a liquor-fiend protest against temperance 
 lectures — sinful enough for redeeming victims from his 
 paw ! How sensitive some men to a church bell ! they 
 are hin'h priests of revivals at a horse-race, a theatre, or 
 a liquor-supper ; but a religious revival pains their sober 
 minds. Even thus, the town will be made vocal with 
 outcries against sermons on licentiousness. Who cries 
 out? — the sober? — the immaculate? — the devout? It is 
 the voice of the son of midnight ; it is the shriek of the 
 STRANGE woman's victim ! and their sensitiveness is not of 
 purity, but of fear ! Men protest against the indecency 
 of the pulpit, because the pulpit makes them feel their 
 own indecency ; they would drive us from the investiga- 
 tion of vice, that they may keep the field open for their 
 own occupancy. I expect such men's reproaches. I 
 know the reasons of them. I am not to be turned by 
 them, not one hairs breadth, if they rise to double their 
 present volume, until I have hunted home the wolf to 
 his lair, and ripped off his brindled hide in his very den ! 
 Another difficulty exists in the criminal fastidiousness 
 of the community upon this subject. Fastidiousness is 
 the counterfeit of delicacy. It resembles it less than
 
 THE STRANGE WO M AN. 1 35 
 
 paste-jewels do the pure pearl. Where delicacy, the 
 atmosphere of a pure heart, is lost, or never was had, 
 a substitute is sought; and is found in forms of deli- 
 cacy, not in its feelings. It is a delicacy of exterior, of 
 etiquette, of show, of rules; not o^ thought, not of a pure 
 imagination.) not of the chrystal-current of the lieart ! 
 Criminal fastidiousness is the Pharisee's sepulchre ; clean, 
 white, beautiful without, full of dead men's bones with- 
 in ! — the Pharisees platter, the Pharisee's cup — it is the 
 very Pharisee himself; and like him of old, lays on bur- 
 dens grievous to be borne. Fastidiousness is a well 
 which men's hands have dug, and dug for their own con- 
 venience. Delicacy is a spring which God lias sunken 
 in the rock, which the winter never freezes, the summer 
 never heats ; which sends its quiet waters with music 
 down the flowery hill-side, and which is pure and trans- 
 parent, because it lias at the bottom no sediment. I 
 would that every one of us iiad this well of life, gushing 
 from our hearts — an everlasting and full stream ! 
 
 False modesty always judges by the outside ; it 
 cares how you speak, more than iclial. That which 
 would outrage in plain woi'ds, may be implied furtive- 
 ly, in the sallies of wit or fancy, and be admissible. 
 Every day I see this giggling modesty, which blushes at 
 language more than at its meaning ; which smiles upon 
 base things, if they will appear in the garb of virtue ! 
 That disease of mind to which I have frecfaently alluded 
 in these lectures, which leads it to clothe vice beautifully 
 and then admit it, has had a fatal effect also upon Litera- 
 ture ; giving currency to filth, by coining it in the mint of 
 beauty. It is under the influence of this disease of taste 
 and heart, that we hear expressed such strange judg-
 
 1 36 THE S T 11 A N G E -WOMAN. 
 
 nients upon English authors. Those wlio speak plainly 
 what they mean, when they speak at all, are called rude 
 
 and vulgar ; while those upon whose exquisite sentences 
 the dew of indelicacy rests like so many brilliant pearls 
 of the morning upon flowers, are called our moral au- 
 thors! 
 
 The most dangerous writers in the English language 
 are those whose artful insinuations and mischievous 
 polish reflect upon the mind the image of impurity, with- 
 out presenting the impurity itself. A plain vulgarity in 
 a writer is its own antidote. It is like a foe who attacks 
 us openly, and gives us opportunity of defence. But 
 impurity, secreted under beauty, is like a treacherous 
 friend who strolls with us in a garden of sweets, and 
 destroys us by the odor of poisonous flowers proffered to 
 our senses. Let the reprehensible grossness of Chaucer 
 
 * be compared with the perfumed, elaborate brilliancy of 
 Moore's license. 1 would not willingly answer at the 
 bar of God for the writings of either ; but of the two, I 
 W'ould rather bear the sin of Chaucers plain-spoken 
 words which never suggest more than they say, than 
 the sin of Moore's language, over which plays a witching 
 liue and shade of licentiousness. I would rather put the 
 downright, and often abominable, vulgarity of Swift into 
 my child's hand, than the scoundrel-indirections of 
 Sterne. They are both impure writers ; but not equally 
 harmful. The one says what he means; the other means 
 what he does not say. Swift is, in this respect, Belial 
 in his own form ; Sterne is Satan in the form of an avgd 
 of light : and many w^ill receive the temptation of the 
 Angel, who would scorn the profler of the Demon. 
 What an incredible state of morals, in the English
 
 THE STRxVNGE WOMAN. 137 
 
 church, that permitted two of her eminent clergy to be 
 the most licentious writers of the age, and as impure 
 as almost any of the English literature ! Even our most 
 classic authors have chosen to elaborate, with exijuisite 
 art, scenes which cannot but have more eli'ect upon the 
 passions than upon the taste. Embosomed in the midst 
 of Thompson's glowing Seasons, one finds descriptions 
 unsurpassed by any part of Don Juan ; and as much more 
 dangerous than it is, as a courtezan, countenanced by vir- 
 tuous society, is more dangerous than when among her 
 own associates. Indeed, an author who surprises you 
 with refined indehcacies in moral and reputable writ- 
 ings, is worse than one, who, without disguise, and on 
 purpose, serves up a whole banquet of indelicacies. 
 Many will admit poison-morsels well sugared, who would 
 revolt from an infernal feast of impurity. There is little 
 danger that robbers will tempt the honest young to rob- 
 bery. Someone first tempts him to falsehood ; next, to 
 petty dishonesties ; next, to pilfering ; then, to thieving; 
 and now, only, will the robber influence him, when others 
 have handed him down to his region of crime. Those au- 
 thors who soften evil, and show deformity with tints of 
 beauty ; who arm their general purity with the sting of 
 occasional impurity ; — these are they who take the feet 
 out of the strait path — the guiltiest part of seduction. He 
 who feeds an inflamed appetite with food spiced to fire, 
 is less guilty than he who hid in the mind the leaven 
 which wrought to this appetite. The polished seducer 
 is certainly more dangerous than the vulgar debauchee 
 — both in life, and in literature. 
 
 In the same contrast are to be placed Shakespeare 
 and Buiwer : Shakespeare is sometia^.cs gross, but not 
 12*
 
 138 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 often covertly impure. BuUver is slily impure, but not 
 often gross. I am speaking, however, only of Shakes- 
 peare's Plays, and not of his youthful fugitive pieces ; 
 which, I am afraid, cannot have part in this exception. 
 He began wrong, but grew better. At first, he wrote 
 by the taste of his age ; but when a man, he wrote to his 
 own taste : and though he is not without sin, yet, com- 
 pared with his cotemporaries, he is not more illustrious 
 for his genius than for his purity. Reprehension, to be 
 effective, should be just. No man is prepared to ex- 
 cuse properly the occasional blemishes of this wonderful 
 writer, who has not been shocked at the immeasurable 
 licentiousness of the Dramatists of his cycle. One 
 play of Ford, one act, one conversation, has more abom- 
 inations than the whole world of Shakespeare. Let 
 those women, who ignorantly sneer at Shakespeare, re- 
 member that they are indebted to him for the noblest 
 conceptions of woman's character in our literature — the 
 more praiseworthy, because he found no models in cur- 
 rent authors. The occasional touches of truth and 
 womanly delicacy in the early Dramatists are no com- 
 pensation for the wholesale coarseness and vulgarity oi 
 their female characters. In Shakespeare, woman appears 
 in her true form — pure, disinterested, ardent, devoted ; ca- 
 pable of the noblest feelings, of4he highest deeds, of any 
 thing — but meanness and vulgarity. The language of 
 many of Shakespeare's women would be shocking in our 
 day ; but so would be the domestic manners of that age. 
 The same actions may in one age be a sign of corrup- 
 tion, and be perfectly innocent in another. No one is 
 shocked that in a pioneer-cabin, one room serves for a 
 parlor, a kitchen, and a bed-room, for the whole family,
 
 THE STRANGE AV O M A N . 1 39 
 
 and for promiscuous guests. Should fastidiousness re- 
 volt at this, as vulgar ? — the vulgarity must be accredited 
 to the fastidiousness, and not to the custom. Yet, it 
 would be inexcusable in a refined metropolis. But 
 nothing in these remarks must apologise for language or 
 deed, which indicates an impure heart. No age, no cus- 
 tom, may plead extenuation for essential lust ; and no 
 sound mind can refrain from commendation of the mas- 
 ter-Dramatist of the world, when he learns that in 
 writing for a most licentious age, he rose above it so 
 far as to become something like a model to it of a more 
 virtuous way. 
 
 Bulwer has made the English novel-literature more 
 vile than he found it. Shakespeare left the dramatical 
 literature immeasurably purer than it came to him. The 
 one was a reformer, the other an implacable corrupter. 
 We respect and admire the one, (while we mark his faults) 
 because he withstood his age ; and we despise with utter 
 loathing the other, whose specific gravity of wickedness 
 sunk him below the level of his own age. With a mode- 
 rate caution, Shakespeare may be safely put into the 
 hands of the young. I regard the admission of Bulwer 
 as a crime against the first principles of virtue. 
 
 In all the cases which I have considered, you will 
 remark a greater indulgence to that impurity which 
 breaks out on the surface, than to that which lurks in 
 the blood and destroys the constitution. It is the 
 curse of our literature that it is traversed by so many 
 rills of impurity. It is a vast champaign, waving with 
 unexampled luxuriance of flower, and vine, and fruit ; 
 but the poisonous flower every where mingles with the 
 pure ; and the deadly cluster lays its cheek on the whole-
 
 140 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 some graj)e ; nay, in the same cluster grow both the 
 harmless and the hurtful berry ; so that the hand can 
 hardly be stretched out to gather llower or Iruit without 
 coming back poisoned. It is both a shame and an 
 amazing wonder, that the literature of a Christian na- 
 tion should reak with a filth which Pagan antiquity could 
 scarcely endure ; that the IMinisters of Christ should have 
 left floating in the pool of oHensive writings, much that 
 would have brought blood to the ciieek of a Roman 
 priest, and have shamed an actor of tlie school of Aris- 
 tophanes. Literature is, in turn, both the cause and 
 eflect of the spirit of the age. Its ellect upon tliis age 
 has been to create a lively relish for exipjisitely artful 
 licentiousness, and disgust only for vulgarity. A witty, 
 brilliant, suggestive indecency is tolerated for the sake of 
 its genius. An oge which translates and floods the com- 
 munity with French novels, (inspired by Venus and 
 Bacchus,) which reprints in popular forms, Byron, and 
 Bulwer, and Moore, and Fielding, proposes to revise 
 Shakespeare and expurgate the Bible ! ! Men who, at 
 home, allow Don Juan to lie within reach of every 
 reader, will not allow a Minister of the gospel to ex- 
 pose the evil of such a literature ! To read authors 
 whose lines drop with the -very gall of de;ith ; to vault in 
 elegant dress as near the edge of indecency as is possi- 
 ble without treading over; to express the utmost pos- 
 sible impurity so dextrously, that not a vulgar word is 
 used, but rosy, glowing, suggestive language — this, it 
 seems, is modern refinement. But to expose the prev- 
 alent vice ; to meet its glittering literature with the 
 plain and manly language of truth ; to say nothing ex- 
 cept what one desires to say plainly — this, it seems, is 
 vulgarity !
 
 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 141 
 
 One of the first steps in any reformation must be, not 
 alone nor first the correction of the grossness, but of 
 the elegancies of imparity. Could our literature, and 
 men's conversation, be put under such authority that 
 neither should express, by insinuation", what dared not 
 be said openly, in a little time, men would not dare to 
 say at all what it would be indecent to speak plainly. 
 
 If there be here any disciples of Bulwer ready to dis- 
 port in the very ocean of license, if its waters only seem 
 translucent ; who can read and relish all that fires the 
 heart, and are only then distressed and shocked when a 
 serious man raises the rod to correct and repress the 
 evil ; if there be here any who can drain his goblet 
 of mingled wine, and only shudder at chrystal-water ; 
 any who can see this modern Prophet of villainy 
 strike the rock of corruption, to water his motley 
 herd of revellers, but hate him who out of the Rock 
 of Truth should bid gush the healthful stream ; — I be- 
 seech them to bow their heads in this Christian assem- 
 bly, and weep their tears of regret in secret places, until 
 the evening service be done, and Bulwer can staunch 
 their tears, and comfort again their wounded hearts. 
 
 Whenever an injunction is laid upon plain and unde- 
 niable scripture-truth, and I am forbidden, upon pain of 
 your displeasure, to preach it ; then, I should not so much 
 regard my personal feelings, as the aflront which you 
 put upon my Master ; and in my inmost soul I shall re- 
 sent that afiront. There is no esteem, there is no love, 
 like that which is founded in the sanctity of religion. 
 Between many of you and me, that sanctity exists. I 
 stood by your side when you awoke in the dark valley of 
 conviction, and owned vourselves lost. I have led vou 
 
 'V.
 
 142 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 by tlie hand out of the darkness ; by your side I have 
 prayed, and my tears have mingled with yours. I have 
 bathed you in the chrystal-waters of a holy baptism ; and 
 when you sang the song of the ransomed captive, it 
 filled my heart with a joy as great as that which uttered 
 it. Love, beginning in such scenes, and drawn from so 
 sacred a fountain, is not comm.ercial, nor fluctuating. 
 Amid severe toils and not a few anxieties, it is the 
 crown of rejoicing to a Pastor. What iiave we in this 
 world but you ? To be your servant in the gospel, we 
 renounce all those paths by which other men seek pre- 
 fei-ment. Silver and gold is not in our houses, and our 
 names are not heard where fame proclaims others. Rest 
 we are forbidden until death ; and girded with the whole 
 armor, our lives are spent in the dust and smoke of con- 
 tinued battle. But even such love will not tolerate 
 bondage. We can be servants to love, but never slaves 
 to caprice ; still less can we heed the mandates of iniq- 
 uitv ! 
 
 The proverbs of Solomon are designed to furnish 
 us a series of maxims for every relation of life. There 
 will naturally be the most said where there is the most 
 needed. If the frequency of warning against any sin 
 measures the liability of man to that sin, then none is 
 worse than Impurity. In many separate passages is 
 the solemn warning against the strange woman, given 
 with a force which must terrify all but the innocent or 
 incorrigible ; and with a delicacy which all will feel but 
 those whose modesty is the fluttering of an impure
 
 THE ST RANG K WOMAN. 143 
 
 imagination. I shall take such parts of all these passa- 
 ges as Avill make out a connected narrative. 
 
 When icisdom entereth into tliy heart, and knowledge is 
 pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee . . . 
 to deliver thee from the strange woman, which flattereth 
 irith her tongue; Iter lips drop as a honey-comb. Iter mouth 
 is smoother than oil. She sitteth at the door of her house 
 on a seat in the high places of the city, to call to passen- 
 gers icho go right on their ways: ' whoso is simple let him 
 turn in hither.'' To him that wanteth understanding, she 
 saith ^stolen ivaters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is 
 pleasant;'' but he knoweth not that the dead are there. 
 Lust not after her beauty, neither let her take thee with her 
 eyelids. She forsaketh the guide of her youth, and for- 
 getteth the command of her God. Lest thou shouldst pon- 
 der the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou 
 canst not know them. Remove thy icay far from Iter, and 
 come not nigh the door of her house, for her house inclineth 
 unto death. She has cast down many loounded; yea, 
 many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is 
 the icay to Hell, going down to the chamber of death; none 
 that go unto her, return again; neither take they hold of 
 the paths of life. Let not thy heart decline to her ways, 
 lest thou mourn at last, ivhcn thy flesh and thy body are 
 consumed and say: ^How have I hated instruction, and my 
 heart deepised reproof. I was in all evil in the midst of 
 the congregation and assembly.'' 
 
 I. Can language be found which can draw a corrupt 
 beauty so vividly as this: Which forsaketh the guide of 
 her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. Look 
 out upon that fallen creature whose gay sally through
 
 144 THE STRANGE ^V O 51 A N . 
 
 the street calls out the significant laugh of bad men, the 
 pity of good men, and the horror of the pure. Was not 
 her cradle as pure as ever a loved infant pressed ? Love 
 soothed its cries. Sisters watched its peaceful sleep, 
 and a mother pressed it fondly to her bosom ! Had you 
 afterwards, when spring-flowers covered the earlh, and 
 every gale was odor, and every sound was music, seen 
 her, fiiirer than the lily or tiie violet, searching them, 
 would you not have said, ' sooner shall the rose grow 
 poisonous than she ; both may wither, but neither cor-, 
 rupt.' And how often, at evening, did she clasp her tiny 
 hands in prayer ? How often did she put the wonder- 
 raising questions to her mother, of God, and heaven, and 
 the dead — as if she had seen heavenly things in a vision ! 
 As voung womanhood advanced, and these foreshadowed 
 graces ripened to the bud and burst into bloom, health 
 flowed in her cheek, love looked from her eye, and pu- 
 rity was an atmosphere around her. Alas ! she forsook 
 the guide of her, youth. Faint thoughts of evil, like a far- 
 off cloud which the sunset gilds, came first ; nor does the 
 rosy sunset blush deeper along the heaven, than her 
 cheek, at the first thought of evil. Now, ah ! mother, 
 and thou guiding elder sister, could ye have seen the 
 lurking spirit embosomed in that cloud, a holy prayer 
 might have broke the spell, a tear have washed its stain ! 
 Alas ! they saw it not ; she spoke it not ; she was for- 
 saking the guide of her youth. She thinketh no more of 
 Heaven. She breatheth no more prayers. She hath 
 no more penitential tears to shed ; until after a long life, 
 she drops the bitter tear upon the cheek of despair, — 
 then her only suitor. Thou hast forsaken the covenant of 
 thy God. Go down ! fall never to rise ! Hell opens to 
 be thy home !
 
 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 145 
 
 Oh Prince of torment ! if thou hast transforming 
 power, give some relief to this once innocent child, 
 whom another has corrupted ! Let thy deepest damna- 
 tion seize him who brought her hither ! let his corona- 
 tion be. upon the very mount of torment ! and the rain 
 of fiery hail be his salutation ! He shall be crowned 
 with thorns poisoned and anguish-bearing ; and every 
 woe beat upon him, and every wave of hell roll over the 
 first risings of baffled hope. If Satan hath one dart 
 more poisoned than another ; if God hath one bolt more 
 transfixing and blasting than another ; if there be one 
 hideous spirit more unrelenting than others ; they shall be 
 thine, most execrable wretch ! who led her to forsake 
 the guide of her youth, and to abandon the covenant of her 
 God. Thy guilty thoughts and guilty deeds shall flit 
 after thee with bows which never break, and quivers 
 forever emptying but never exhausted ! 
 
 II. The next injunction of God to the young is upon 
 the ensnaring danger of Beauty. Desire .not her beauty 
 in thy heart, neitJier let her take thee with her eyelids. God 
 did not make so much of nature, with exquisite beauty, 
 or put within us a taste for it, without object. He 
 meant that it should delight us. He made every flower 
 to charm us ; He never made a color, nor graceful-flying- 
 bird, nor silvery insect, without meaning to please our 
 taste. When He clothes a man or woman with beauty. 
 He confers a favor, did we know how to receive it. 
 Beauty, with amiable dispositions and ripe intelligence, is 
 more to any woman than a queen's crown. The pea- 
 sant's daughter, the rustic belle, if they have woman's 
 sound discretion, may be rightfully prouder than kings' 
 daughters ; for God adorns those who are both good and 
 13
 
 146 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 beautiful ; man can only conceal the want of beauty, by 
 blazing jewels. 
 
 As motbs and tiny insects flutter around the bright 
 blaze wiiich was kindled for no harm, so the foolish 
 young fall down burned and destroyed by the IJlaze of 
 beauty. As the flame which burns to destroy the insect, 
 is consuming itself and soon sinks into the socket, so 
 beauty, too often, draws on itself that ruin which it in- 
 flicts upon others. 
 
 If God hath given thee beauty, tremble ; for it is as 
 gold in thy house — thieves and robbers will prowl 
 around, and seek to possess it. If God hath put beauty 
 before thine eyes, remember how many strong men have 
 been cast down wounded by it. Art thou stronger than 
 David ? Art thou stronger than mighty patriarchs ? — 
 than kings and princes, who, by its fascinations, have 
 lost peace, and purity, and honor, and riches, and ar- 
 mies, and even kingdoms ? Let other men's destruction 
 be thy wisdom ; for it is hard to reap prudence upon the 
 field of experience. 
 
 III. In the minute description of this dangerous crea- 
 ture, mark next how seriously we are cautioned of her 
 Wiles. 
 
 Her idles of dress. Coverings of tapestry and the ^7ie 
 linen of Egypt are hers ; the perfumes oiinijrih and aloes and 
 cinnainon. Silks and ribbons, laces and rings, gold and 
 equipage ; ah ! how mean a price for damnation. The 
 wretch who would be hung simply for the sake of riding 
 to the gallows on a golden chariot, clothed in king's rai- 
 ment — what a fool were he ! Yet how many consent 
 to enter the chariot of Death, — drawn by the fiery steeds 
 of lust which fiercely fly, and stop not for food or breath.
 
 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 147 
 
 till they have accomplished their fatal journey — if they 
 may spread their seat with flowery silks, or flaunt their 
 forms with glowing apparel and precious jewels ! 
 
 Her wiles of speech. Beasts may not speak ; this 
 honor is too high for them. To God's imaged-son this 
 prerogative belongs, to utter thought and feeling in ar- 
 ticulate sounds. We may breathe our thoughts to a 
 thousand ears, and infect a multitude with the best por- 
 tions of our soul. Our feelings are not like a smothered 
 heat in a choked furnace. How, then, has this soul's 
 breath, this echo of our thoughts, this only image of our 
 feelings, been perverted, that from the lips of sin it hath 
 more persuasion, than from the lips of wisdom ! What 
 horrid wizzard hath put the world under a spell and 
 charm, that words from the lips of a strange woman 
 shall ring upon the ear like tones of music ; while words 
 from the divine lips of religion fall upon the startled ear 
 like the funeral tones of the burial-bell ! Philosophy 
 seems crabbed ; sin, fair. Purity sounds morose and 
 cross ; but from the lips of the harlot, words drop as 
 honey, and flow smoother than oil ; her speech is fair, 
 her laugh is merry as music. The eternal glory of pu- 
 rity has no lustre, but the deep damnation of lust is made 
 as bright as the gate of heaven ! 
 
 Her wiles of love. Love is the mind's light and heat ; 
 it is that tenuous air in which all the other faculties 
 exist, as we exist in the atmosphere. A mind of the 
 greatest stature without love, is like the huge pyramid of 
 Egypt — chill and cheerless in all its dark halls and passa- 
 ges. A mind with love, is as a king's palace lighted for 
 a royal festival. 
 
 Shame ! tliat the sweetest of all the mind's attributes
 
 148 T 11 K STRANGE 'WOMAN. 
 
 should be suborned to sin ! that this daughter of God 
 should become a Ganymede to arrogant lusts ! — the cup- 
 bearer to tyrants ! — yet so it is. Devil-tempter ! will thy 
 poison never cease ? — shall beauty be poisoned ? — shall lan- 
 guage be charmed ? — shall love be made to defile like pitch, 
 and burn as the living coals 1 Her tongue is like a bend- 
 ed bow, which sends the silvery shaft of flattering words. 
 Her eye shall cheat thee, her dress shall beguile thee, 
 her beauty is a trap, her sighs are baits, her words are 
 lures, her love is poisonous, her flattery is the spider's 
 w^eb spread for thee. Oh ! trust not thy heart nor ear 
 with Delilah ! The locks of the mightiest Samson are 
 soon shorn olf, if he will but lay his slumbering head 
 upon her lap. He who could slay heaps upon heaps of 
 Philistines, and bear upon his huge shoulders the pon- 
 derous iron-gate, and pull down the vast temple, was yet 
 all too weak to contend with one, wicked, artful woman ! 
 Trust the sea with thy tiny boat, trust the fickle wind, 
 trust the changing skies of iVpril, trust the miser's gene- 
 rosity, the tyrant's mercy ; but ah ! simple man, trust not 
 thyself near the artful woman, armed in her beauty, her 
 cunning raiment, her dimpled smiles, her sighs of sorrow, 
 her look of love, her voice of flattery; — for if thou 
 hadst the strength of ten Ulysses, unless God help thee, 
 Calypso shall make thee fast, and hold thee in her island ! 
 
 Next beware the wile of her reasonings. To him 
 that wanteth understanding she saith, stolen ivafers are 
 sweet, and bread eaten in seci'et is pleasant. I came forth 
 to meet thee, and I have found thee. 
 
 What says she in the credulous ear of inexperience ? 
 Why, she tells him that sin is safe ; she swears to him 
 that sin is pure ; she protests to him that sin is innocent.
 
 THE STRANGE AV O M A N . 1 49 
 
 Out of history she will entice him, and say : Who 
 hath ever refused my meat-ofterings and drink-offerings ? 
 What king have I not sought ? What conquerer have I 
 not conquered ? Philosophers have not, in all their wis- 
 dom, learned to hate me. I have been the guest of the 
 world's greatest men. The Egyptian priest, the Athe- 
 nian sage, the Roman censor, the rude Gaul, have all 
 worshipped in my temple. Art thou afraid to tread 
 where Plato trod, and the pious Socrates ? Art thou 
 wiser than iall that ever lived ? 
 
 Nay, she readeth the Bible to him ; she goeth back 
 along the line of history, and readeth of Abraham, and of his 
 glorious c6mpeers ; she skippeth past Joseph w-ith averted 
 looks, and readeth of David and of Solomon ; and what- 
 ever chapter tells how good men stumbled, there she 
 has turned down a leaf, and will persuade thee, with 
 honied speech, that the best deeds of good men were 
 their sins, and that thou shouldst only imitate them in 
 their stumbling and falls ! 
 
 Or, if the Bible will not cheat thee, how will she plead 
 thine own nature ; how will she whisper, God hath made 
 thee so. How, like her father, will she lure thee to pluck 
 the apple, saying. Thou shall not surely die. And she will 
 hiss at virtuous men, and spit on modest women, and 
 shake her serpent-tongue at any purity which shall keep 
 thee from her ways. Oh! then, listen to what God says : 
 With much fair speech she causeth him to yield ; with the 
 flattery of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her 
 as an ox goeth to the slaughter^ or as a fool to the correc- 
 tion of the stocks^ till a dart strike through his liver ^ — as a 
 bird hasteth to a snare and knowelh not that it is for his 
 life. 
 
 13*
 
 1 50 THE S T R x\ N G F, WOMAN. 
 
 I will ])oint only to another wile. When inexpe- 
 rience has been beguiled by her infernal machinations, 
 how, like a flock of startled birds, will spring up late re- 
 grets, and shame, and fear ; and worst of all, how will 
 conscience ply her scorpion-whip and lash thee, uttering 
 with stern visage, 'thou art dishonored, thou art a wretch, 
 thou art lost!' When the soul is full of such outcry, 
 memory cannot sleep ; she wakes, and while conscience 
 still plies the scourge, will bring back to thy thoughts, 
 youthful purity, home, a mothers face, a sister's love, a 
 father's counsel. Perhaps it is out of the high heaven 
 that thy mother looks down to see thy baseness. Oh ! 
 if she has a mother's heart, — nay, but she cannot weep 
 for thee, there 1 
 
 These wholesome pains, not to be felt if there were 
 not yet health in the mind, would save the victim, 
 could they have time to work. But how often have 
 1 seen the spider watch, from his dark round hole, 
 the struggling fly, until he began to break his web ; and 
 then dart out to cast his long lithe arms about him, and 
 fasten new cords stronger than ever. So, God saith, the 
 strange woman shall secure her ensnared victims if they 
 struggle: Lest thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her 
 ways are moveable that thou canst not know the??i. 
 
 She is afraid to see thee soberly thinking of leaving 
 her, and entering the path of life ; therefore her ways 
 are moveable. She multiplies devices, she studies a 
 thousand new wiles, she has some sweet word for every 
 sense — obsequience for thy pride, praise for thy vanity, 
 generosity for thy selfishness, religion for thy con- 
 science, racy quips for thy wearisomeness, spicy scan- 
 dal for thy curiosity. She is never still, nor the same ;
 
 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 151 
 
 but evolving as many shapes as a rolling cloud, and as 
 many colors as dress the wide prairie. 
 
 IV. Having disclosed her wiles, let me show you 
 what God says of the chances of escape to those who 
 once follow her : Nona that go unto her return again, 
 neither take they hold of the paths of life. The strength 
 of this language was not meant absolutely to, exclude 
 hope from those who, having wasted their substance in 
 riotous living, would yet return ; but to warn the un- 
 fallen, into what an almost hopeless gulf they plunge, if 
 they venture. Some may escape — as here and there a 
 mangled sailor crawls out of the water upon the beach, 
 — the only one or two of the whole crew ; the rest are 
 gurgling in the wave with impotent struggles, or already 
 sunk to the bottom. There are many evils which hold 
 their victims by the force of habit; there are others 
 which fasten them by breaking their return to society. 
 Many a person never reforms, because reform would 
 bring no relief. There are other evils which hold men 
 to them, because they are like the beginning of a fire ; 
 they tend to burn with fiercer and wider flames, until 
 all fuel is consumed, and go out only when there is 
 nothing to burn. Of this last kind is the sin of licen- 
 tiousness : and when the conflagration once breaks out, 
 experience has shown, what the Bible long ago declared, 
 that the chances of reformation are almost none. The 
 certainty of continuance is so great, that the chances of 
 escape are dropped from the calculation ; and it is said 
 roundly, none that go unto her return again. 
 
 V. We are repeatedly warned against the strange 
 woman's house. 
 
 There is no vice like licentiousness, to delude with the
 
 152 THE STRANGE AV0 3IAN. 
 
 most fascinating proflers of delight, and fulfill the promise 
 with the most loathsome experience. All vices at the 
 beginning are silver-tongued, but none so impassioned 
 as this. All vices in the end cheat their dupes, but none 
 with such overwhelming disaster as licentiousness. I 
 shall describe by an allegory, its specious seductions, 
 its plausible promises, its apparent innocence, its delu- 
 sive safety, its deceptive joys, — their change, their sting, 
 their flight, their misery, and the victim's ruin. 
 
 Her HOUSE has been cunningly planned by an evil 
 ARCHITECT to attract and please the attention. It stands 
 in a vast garden full of enchanting objects. It shines 
 in glowing colors, and seems full of peace and full of 
 pleasure. All the signs are of unbounded enjoyment — 
 safe, if not innocent. Though every beam is rotten, 
 and the house is the house of death, and in it are all the 
 vicissitudes of infernal misery ; yet, to the young it ap- 
 pears a palace of delight. They will not belj^ve that 
 death can lurk behind so brilliant a fabric. Those who 
 are within, look out and pine to return ; and those who 
 are without, look in and pine to enter. Such is the mas- 
 tery of deluding sin. 
 
 That part of the garden which borders on the high- 
 way of innocence is carefully planted. There is not a 
 poison-weed, nor thorn, nor thistle there. Ten thou- 
 sand flowers bloom, and waft a thousand odors. A vic- 
 tim cautiously inspects it ; but it has been too carefully 
 patterned upon innocency to be easily detected. This 
 outer garden is innocent ; — innocence is the lure to wile 
 you from the patii into her grounds ; — innocence is the 
 bait of that trap by which she has secured all her vic- 
 tims. At the gate stands a comely porter, saying
 
 THE STRANGE AVOM AN. 153 
 
 blandly : W/ioso is simple ht liim turn in hither. Will 
 the youth enter ? Will he seek her house ? To himself 
 he says, 'I will enter only to see the garden, — its fruits, 
 its flowers, its birds, its arbors, its warbling fountains !' 
 He is resolved in virtue. He seeks wisdom, not pleas- 
 ure ! — Dupe! you are deceived already; and this is 
 your first lesson of wisdom.. He passes, and the porter 
 leers behind him ! He is within an Enchanter's garden ! 
 Can he not now return, if he wishes ? — he will not wish 
 to return, until it is too late. He ranges the outer gar- 
 den near to the highway, thinking as he walks: 'how 
 foolishly have I been alarmed at pious lies about this 
 beautiful place ! I heard it was Hell : 1 find it is Para- 
 dise!' 
 
 Emboldened by the innocency of his first steps, he 
 explores the garden further from the road. The flow- 
 ers grow richer ; their odors exhilarate ; the very fruit 
 breathes perfume like flowers; and birds seem intoxi- 
 cated with delight among the fragrant shrubs and loaded 
 trees. Soft and silvery music steals along the air. ' Are 
 angels singing ? — Oh ! fool that I was, to fear this place ; 
 it is all the heaven I need ! Ridiculous priest, to tell me 
 that death was here, where all is beauty, fragrance, and 
 melody ! Surely, death never lurked in so gorgeous 
 apparel as this! Death is grim, and hideous!' He has 
 come near to the strange woman's House. If it was 
 beautiful from afar, it is celestial now ; for his eyes are 
 bewitched with magic. When our passions enchant us, 
 how beautiful is the way to death ! In every window 
 are sights of pleasure ; from every opening, issue sounds 
 of joy — the lute, the harp, bounding feet, and echoing 
 laugliter. Nymphs have descried this Pilgrim of tempta-
 
 154 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 tion ; — they smile and beckon. Where are his resolutions 
 now ? This is the virtuous youth who came to observe ! 
 He lias already seen too much ! but he will see more ; 
 he will taste, feel, regret, weep, wail, die ! The most 
 beautiful nymph that eye ever rested on, approaches 
 with decent guise and modest gesture, to give him hos- 
 pitable welcome. For a moment he recalls his home, his 
 mother, his sister-circle ; but they seem far-away, dim, 
 powerless ! Into his ear the beautiful herald pours the 
 sweetest sounds of love : ' you are welcome here, and 
 worthy ! You have early wisdom, to break the bonds 
 of superstition, and to seek these grounds where summer 
 never ceases, and sorrow never comes ! Hail ! and 
 welcome to the House of pleasure !' There seemed to 
 be a response to these words ; the house, the trees, and 
 the very air, seemed to echo, ' Hail ! and welcome ! ' 
 In the stillness which followed, had the victim been less 
 intoxicated, he might have heard a clear and solemn 
 voice which seemed to fall straight down from heaven : 
 Come not nigh the door of her house. Her house 
 
 IS the WAV TO HELL, GOING DOWN TO THE CHAMBERS 
 OF DEATH ! 
 
 It is too late ! He has gone in, — who shall never re- 
 turn. He goeth after her straitway as an ox goelh to the 
 slaughter; or as a fool to the correction of the stocks . . . 
 and knoioeth not that it is for his life. 
 
 Enter with me, in imagination, the strange woman's 
 House — where, God grant you may never enter in any 
 other way. There are five wards — Pleasure, Satiety, 
 Discovery, Disease, and Death. 
 
 Ward of Pleasure.— The eye is dazzled with the mag- 
 nificence of its apparel, — elastic velvet, glossy silks, bur-
 
 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 155 
 
 nished satin, crimson drapery, plushy carpets. Exquisite 
 pictures glow upon the walls, carved marble adorns every 
 niche. The inmates are deceived by these lying shows ; 
 they dance, they sing; with beaming eyes they utter sof- 
 test strains of flattery and graceful compliment. They 
 partake the amorous wine, and the repast which loads 
 the table. They eat, they drink, they are lithe and mer- 
 ry. Surely, they should be ; for after this brief hour, they 
 shall never know purity nor joy again ! For this mo- 
 ment's revelry, they are selling heaven ! The strange 
 woman walks among her guests in all her charms ; fans 
 the flame of joy, scatters grateful odors, and urges on 
 the fatal revehy. As her poisoned wine is quafl'ed, and 
 the gay creatures begin to reel, the torches wane and 
 cast but a twilight. One by one, the guests grow som- 
 nolent ; and, at length, they all repose. Their cup is 
 exhausted, their pleasure is forever over, life has exhaled 
 to an essence, and that is consumed ! While they sleep, 
 servitors, practiced to the work, remove them all to ano- 
 ther Ward. 
 
 Ward of Satiety. — Here reigns a bewildering twi- 
 light through which can hardly be discerned the wearied 
 inmates, yet sluggish upon their couches. Oerflushed 
 with dance, sated with wine and fruit, a fitful drowsi- 
 ness vexes them. They wake, to crave ; they taste, to 
 loathe ; they sleep, to dream ; they wake again from 
 unquiet visions. They long for the sharp taste of plea- 
 sure, so grateful yesterday. Again they sink, repining, 
 to sleep ; by starts, they rouse at an ominous dream ; 
 by starts, they hear strange cries ! The fruit burns and 
 torments ; the wine shoots sharp pains through their 
 pulse. Strange wonder fills them. They remember the
 
 156 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 recent joy, as a reveller in the morning thinks of his 
 midnight-madness. The glowing garden and the ban- 
 quet now seem all stripped and gloomy. They meditate 
 return; pensively they long for their native spot! At 
 sleepless moments, mighty resolutions form, — substantial 
 as a dream. Memory grows dark. Hope will not 
 shine. The past is not pleasant; the present is weari- 
 some ; and the future gloomy. 
 
 The ward of Discovery. — In the third ward no decep- 
 tion remains. The floors are bare ; the naked walls drip 
 filth ; the air is poisonous with sickly fumes, and echos 
 with mirth concealing hideous misery. None supposes 
 that he has been happy.. The past seems like the 
 dream of a miser, who gathers gold spilled like rain 
 upon the road, and wakes, clutching his bed, and crying 
 'where is it?' On your right hand, as you enter, close 
 by the door, is a group of fierce felons in deep drink 
 with drugged liquor. With red and swoln faces, or 
 white and thin ; or scarred with ghastly corruption ; 
 with scowling brows, baleful eyes, bloated lips and de- 
 moniac grins ; — in person all uncleanly, in morals all 
 debauched, in peace, bankrupt — the desperate wretches 
 wrangle with each other, swearing bitter oaths, and 
 heaping reproaches each upon each ! Around the room 
 you see miserable creatures unappareled, or dressed in 
 rags, sobbing and moaning. That one who gazes out 
 at the window, calling for her mother and weeping, was 
 right tenderly and purely bred. She has been baptised 
 twice, — once to God, and once to the Devil. She sought 
 this place in the very vestments of God's house. 'Call 
 not on thy mother! she is a saint in Heaven, and 
 cannot hear thee!' Yet, all night long she dreams of
 
 THE STRANG K AV O M A N . 157 
 
 home, and ciiildhoocl, nnd wakes to sigh and weep ; and 
 between her sobs, she cries 'mother! mother!' 
 
 Yonder is a youth, once a servant at God's altar. 
 His hair hangs tangled and torn ; his eyes are blood- 
 shot ; his face is livid ; his fist is clenched. All the day, 
 he wanders up and down, cursing sometimes himself, and 
 sometimes the wretch that brought him hither ; and 
 when he sleeps, he dreams of Hell ; and then he wakes 
 to feel all he dreamed. Tiiis is the Ward of reality. 
 All know why the first rooms looked so gay — they were 
 enchanted ! It was enchanted wine they drank ; and 
 enchanted fruit they ate : now they know the pain of 
 fatal food in every limb ! 
 
 Ward of Disease. — Ye that look wistfully at the 
 pleasant front of this terrific house, come with me now, 
 and look long into the terror of this Ward ; for here are 
 the seeds of sin in their full harvest form ! We are in 
 a lazar-room ; its air oppresses every sense ; its sights 
 confound our thoughts ; its sounds pierce our ear ; its 
 stench I'epels us : it is full of diseases. Here a shud- 
 dering wretch is clawing at his breast, to tear away that 
 worm which gnaws his heart. By him is another, 
 whose limbs are dropping from his ghastly trunk. Next, 
 swelters another in reeking filth ; his eyes rolling in 
 bony sockets, every breath a pang, and every pang a 
 groan. But yonder, on a pile of rags, lies one whose 
 yells of frantic agony appal every ear. Clutching his 
 rags with spasmodic grasp, his swoln tongue lolling from 
 a blackened mouth, his bloodshot eyes glaring and roll- 
 ing, he shrieks oaths ; now blaspheming God, and now 
 imploring him. He hoots and shouts, and shakes his 
 grisly head from side to side, cursing or praying ; now 
 14
 
 158 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 calling death, and then, as if driving away fiends, yelling 
 avaunt ! avaunt ! 
 
 Another has been ridden by pain, until he can no lon- 
 ger shriek ; but lies foaming and grinding his teeth, and 
 clenching his bony hands, until the nails pierce the palm — 
 though there is no blood there to issue out — trembling 
 all the time with the shudders and chills of utter agony. 
 The happiest wretch in all this Ward, is an Idiot; — 
 dropsical, distorted, and moping ; all day he wags his 
 head, and chatters, and laughs, and bites his nails ; then 
 he will sit for hours motionless, with open jaw, and 
 glassy eye fixed on vacancy. In this ward are huddled 
 all the diseases of pleasure. This is the torture-room 
 of the strange woman's House, and it excels the Inqui- 
 sition. The wheel, the rack, the bed of knives, the 
 roasting fire, the brazen room slowly heated, the slivers 
 driven under the nails, the hot pincers, — what are these 
 to the agonies of the last days of licentious vice ? Hun- 
 dreds of rotting wretches would change their couch of 
 torment in the strange woman's House, for the gloomi- 
 est terror of the Inquisition, and profit by the change. 
 Nature herself becomes the tormentor. Nature, long 
 trespassed on and abused, at length casts down the 
 wretch ; searches every vein, makes a road of every 
 nerve for the scorching feet of pain to travel on, pulls 
 at every muscle, breaks in the breast, builds fires in the 
 brain, eats out the skin, and casts living coals of torment 
 on the heart. What are hot pincers to the envenomed 
 claws of disease? What is it to be put into a pit of 
 snakes and slimy toads, and feel their cold coil or pierc- 
 ing fang, to the creeping of a whole body of vipers ? — 
 where every nerve is a viper, and every vein a viper,
 
 THE STRANGE AV O M A N . 1 59 
 
 and every muscle a serpent ; and the whole body, in all 
 its parts, coils and twists upon itself in unimaginable 
 anguish ? I tell you, there is no Inquisition so bad 
 a^ that which the Doctor looks upon ! Young man ! 1 
 can shew you in this Ward worse pangs than ever a 
 savage produced at the stake ! — than ever a tyrant 
 wrung out by engines of torment! — than ever an In- 
 quisitor devised ! Every year, in every town, die 
 wretches scalded and scorched with agony. Were the 
 sum of all the pain that comes with the last stages of 
 vice collected, it would rend the very heavens with its 
 outcry ; would shake the earth ; would blanch the very 
 cheek of Hell ! Ye that are listening in the garden of 
 this strange woman, among her cheating flow^ers ; ye 
 that are dancing in her halls in the first Ward, come 
 hither ; look upon her fourth Ward— its vomited blood, 
 its sores and fiery blotches, its prurient sweat, its dis- 
 solving ichor, and rotten bones ! Stop, young man ! 
 You turn your head from this ghastly room ; and yet, 
 stop ! — and stop soon, or thou shalt lie here ! Mark the 
 solemn signals of thy passage ! Thou hast had already 
 enough of warnings in thy cheek, in thy bosom, in thy 
 pangs of premonition ! 
 
 But ah ! every one of you who are dancing with the 
 covered paces of death, in the strange woman's first hall, 
 let me break your spell ; for now I shall open the doors 
 of the last Ward. Look ! — Listen '.—Witness your own 
 end, unless you take quickly a warning ! 
 
 Ward of Death. — No longer does the incarnate wretch 
 pretend to conceal her cruelty. She shoves — aye ! as if 
 they were dirt — she shovels out the wretches. Some fall 
 headlong through the rotten floor,— a long fall to a fiery
 
 160 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 bottom. The floor trembles to deep thunders which roll 
 below. Here and there, jets of flame spout up, and give 
 a lurid light to the murky hall. Some would fain es- 
 cape ; and flying across the treacherous floor, which 
 man never safely passed, they go through pitfalls and 
 treacherous traps, with hideous outcries and astounding 
 yells ! Fiends laugh ! The infernal laugh, the ciy of 
 agony, the thunder of damnation, shake the very roof 
 and echo from wall to wall. 
 
 Oh ! that the young might see the end of vice be- 
 fore they see the beginning ! 1 know that you shrink 
 from this picture ; but your safety requires that you 
 should look long into the Ward of Death, that fear may 
 supply strength to your virtue. See the blood oozing 
 from the wall, the fiery hands which pluck the wretches 
 down, the light of hell gleaming through, and hear its 
 roar as of a distant ocean chafed w^ith storms. Will 
 you sprinkle the wall with your blood ? — will you feed 
 those flames with your flesh ? — will you add your voice 
 to those thundering wails 1 — will you go down a prey 
 through the fiery floor of the chamber of death? Be- 
 lieve then the word of God : Her house is the way to 
 Hell, going down to the chambers of death, . . . avoid it, 
 pass not by it, turn fro7Ji it, and pass away ! 
 
 I have described the strange woman's House in strong 
 language, and it needed it. If your taste shrinks from 
 the description, so does mine. Hell, and all the ways to 
 Hell, when we pierce the cheating disguises and see 
 the truth, are terrible and trying to behold ; and if men 
 would not walk there, neither would we pursue their 
 steps,' to sound the alarm, and gather back whom we 
 can.
 
 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 161 
 
 Allow me to close by directing your attention to a 
 few points of especial danger. 
 
 I. I solemnly warn you against indulging a morbid im- 
 agination. In that busy and mischievous faculty begins 
 the evil. Were it not for his airy imaginations, man 
 might stand his own master — not overmatched by the 
 worst part of himself. But ah ! these summer-reveries, 
 these venturesome dreams, these fairy castles builded for 
 no good purposes, — they are haunted by impure spirits 
 who will fascinate, bewitch, and corrupt you. Blessed 
 are the pure in heart. Blessed art thou, jnost favored of 
 God, whose thoughts are chastened; whose imagination 
 will not breathe or fly in tainted air ; and whose path 
 has been measured by the golden reed of Purity. 
 
 May I not paint Purity, as a saintly virgin, in spot- 
 less white, walking with open face, in an air so clear 
 that no vapor can stain it. 
 
 "Upon her lightning-brow love proudly sitting. 
 Flames out in power, shines out in majesty." 
 
 Her steps are a queen's steps ; God is her father and 
 thou her brother, if thou wilt make her thine ! Let thy 
 heart be her dwelling; wear upon thy hand her ring, 
 and on thy breast her talisman. 
 
 II. Next to evil imaginations, I warn the young of 
 evil companions. Decaying fruit corrupts the neighbor- 
 ing fruit. You cannot touch pitch and be undefiled. 
 You cannot make your head a metropolis of base stories, 
 the ear and tongue a highway of immodest words, and 
 yet be pure. Another, as well as yourself, may throw 
 a spark on the magazine of your passions — beware how 
 your companions do it ! No man is your friend who 
 14*
 
 162 THE STRANGE AV O 31 A N . 
 
 will corrupt you. An impure man is every good man's 
 enemy — your deadly foe ; and all the worse, if he hide 
 his poisoned dagger under the cloak of good fellowship. 
 Therefore, select your associates, assort them, winnow 
 them, keep the grain, and let the wind sweep the chaff. 
 
 III. But I warn you, with yet more solemn emphasis, 
 against evil books and evil pictures. There is in every 
 town an undercurrent which glides beneath our feet un- 
 suspected by the pure ; out of which, notwithstanding, 
 our sons scoop many a goblet. Books are hidden in 
 trunks, concealed in dark holes ; pictures are stored in 
 sly portfolios, or trafficked from hand to hand ; and the 
 handiwork of depraved art is seen in other f(jrms which 
 ought to make a harlot blush. 
 
 I should think a man would loathe himself, and wake 
 up from owning such things as from a horrible nightmare. 
 Those who circulate them are incendiaries of morality ; 
 those who make them, equal the worst public criminals. A 
 pure heart would shrink from these abominable things as 
 from death. France, where religion long ago went out 
 smothered in licentiousness, has flooded the world with 
 a species of literature redolent of depravity. Upon the 
 plea of exhibiting nature and man, novels are now 
 scooped out of the very lava of corrupt passions. They 
 are true to nature, but to nature as it exists in knaves 
 and courtezans; — true, where luxury and license have 
 called to their aid, art, taste, literature, and ingenuity, to 
 pervert the delicacy of pure feeling, and stram it to 
 the extravagancies of corrupt sentimentalism. Under a 
 plea of humanity, we have shown up to us troops of har- 
 lots, to prove that they are not so bad as purists think : 
 gangs of desperadoes, to show that there is nothing in
 
 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 163 
 
 crime inconsistent witli the noblest feelings. We have 
 in French and English novels of the infernal school, 
 humane murderers, lascivious saints, holy infidels, hon- 
 est robbers. These artists never seem lost, except 
 when straining after a conception of religion. Their 
 devotion is such as might be expected from thieves, 
 in the purlieus of thrice-deformed vice. Their Deity is 
 to God, about what Jupiter or Juggernaut is to Jehovah. 
 Exhausted libertines are our professors of morality. 
 They scrape the very sediment and muclc of society to 
 mould their creatures ; and their volumes are monster- 
 galleries, in which the inhabitants of old Sodom would have 
 felt at home as connoisseurs and critics. Over loath- 
 some women, and unutterably vile men, huddled together 
 in motley groups, and over all their monstrous deeds, their 
 lies, their plots, their crimes, their dreadful pleasures, 
 their glorying conversation, is thrown the checkered 
 light of a hot imagination, until they glow with an 
 infernal lustre. Novels of the French school, and of 
 English imitators, are the common-sewers of society, 
 into which drain the concentrated filth of the worst pas- 
 sions of the worst creatures of the worst cities. Such 
 novels come to us impudently pretending to be refor- 
 mers of morals and liberalizers of religion ; they pro- 
 pose to instruct our laws, and teach a discreet humanity 
 to justice ! The Ten Plagues have visited our literature ; 
 wjiter is turned to blood; frogs and lice creep and hop 
 over our most familiar things, — the couch, the cradle, and 
 the bread-trough ; locusts, murrain, and fire, are smiting 
 every green thing. We are disgracing our tongue, by 
 translating into it the novel-literature of France. I am 
 ashamed and outraged when 1 think that wretches could 
 
 .-:i
 
 164 THE STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 be found to open these foreign seals, and let out their 
 plagues upon us — that any Satanic Pilgrim should voyage 
 to France to dip from the dead sea of her abomina- 
 tion, a baptism for our sons. It were a mercy to this, 
 to import serpents from Africa and pour them out on 
 our prairies ; lions from Asia, and free them in our for- 
 ests ; lizards and scorpions and black tarantulas, from 
 the Indies, and put them in our gardens. Men could 
 slay these, but those oflspring-reptiles of the French 
 mind, who can kill these? You might as well draw 
 sword on a plague, or charge a malaria with the bayo- 
 net. This black-lettered literature circulates in this 
 town, fioats in our stores, nestles in the shops, is finger- 
 ed and read nightly, and hatches in the young miud 
 broods of salacious thoughts. While the parent strives 
 to infuse Christian purity into his child's heart, he is an- 
 ticipated by most accursed messengers of evil ; and the 
 heart hisses already like a nest of young and nimble 
 vipers. 
 
 IV. Once more, let me persuade you that no exam- 
 ples in high places, can justify imitation in low places. 
 Your purity is too precious to be bartered, because an 
 official knave tempts by his example. I would that 
 every eminent place of state were a sphere of light, 
 from which should be flung down on your path a cheer- 
 ing glow to guide you on to virtue. But if these wan- 
 dering stars, reserved I do believe for final blackness of 
 darkness, wheel their malign spheres in the orbits of 
 corruption, — go not after thenl. God is greater than 
 wicked great men ; Heaven is higher than the highest 
 places of nations ; and if God and Heaven are not 
 brighter to your eyes than great men in high places,
 
 TflE STRANGE WOMAN. 165 
 
 then you must take part in tlieir doom, when, ere long, 
 God shall dash them to pieces ! 
 
 V. Let me beseech you, lastly, to guard your heart- 
 purity. Never lose it ; if it be gone, you have lost 
 from the casket the most precious gift of God. The 
 first purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling, if 
 soiled, can be cleansed by no fuller's soap ; if lost, can- 
 not be found, though sought carefully with tears. If a 
 harp be broken, art may repair it ; if a light be quenched, 
 the flame may enkindle it ; but if a flower be crushed, 
 what art can repair it ? — if an odor be wafted away, 
 who can collect or bring it back ? 
 
 The heart of youth is a wide prairie. Over it hang 
 the clouds of heaven to water it, the sun throws its 
 broad sheets of light upon it, to wake its life ; out of 
 its bosom spring, the long season through, flowers of a 
 hundred names and hues, twining together their lovely 
 forms, wafting to each other a grateful odor, and nod- 
 ding each to each in the summer-breeze. Oh ! such 
 would man be, did he hold that purity of heart which 
 God gave him ! But you have a depraved heart. It is 
 a vast continent; on it are mountain-ranges of powers, 
 and dark deep streams, and pools, and morasses. If 
 once the full and terrible clouds of temptation do settle 
 thick and fixedly upon you, and begin to cast down their 
 dreadful stores, may God save whom man can never! 
 Then the heart shall feel tides and slrean)S of irresisti- 
 ble power, mocking its control, and hurrying liercely 
 down from steep to steep, with growing desolation. 
 Your only resource is to avoid the uprising of your giant- 
 passions. 
 
 -^^
 
 166 THE STRANGE AV O M A N . 
 
 We are drawing near to a festival day,* by the usage 
 of ages, consecrated to celebrate the birth of Christ. At 
 his advent, God hung out a prophetic star in the heaven ; 
 guided by it, the wise men journeyed from the east and 
 worshipped at his feet. Oh ! let the star of Purity hang 
 out to thine eye, brighter than the orient orb to the 
 Magi ; let it lead thee, not to the Babe, but to His feet 
 who now stands in Heaven, a Prince and Savior ! If 
 thou hast sinned, one look, one touch, shall cleanse thee 
 whilst thou art worshipping, and thou shalt rise up 
 healed. 
 
 Note.— Tlie exceptions taken to the cnrrent reformation-novels of Godwin, 
 Bulwer, Dickens, (perhaps.) Eugene Sue, and a host of others, requires a 
 word of explanation. 1. We do not object to any reasonable effort at reform- 
 ation, moral, social, civil, or economical — much is needed. So far, the design 
 of this school of Romancers is praiseworthy. 2. But we doubt the propriety 
 of employing fictions as an instrument; especially fictions wrought to produce 
 a stage-eflect, a violent thrill, rather than a conviction. These works affect 
 the ^feelings more than the opinions. 3. Nine tenths of novel -readers are the 
 young, the unreflecting, or those whose hearts have been macadamised by the 
 incessant tramping often times ten thousand heroes and heroines, marching 
 across their feelings. Efforts at reformation should be directed to other read- 
 ers than these. 4. But the worst is yet to be told. Under the pretence of 
 social reformations, the most flagitious vices are inculcated. There can be no 
 doubt of it. An analysis of the best characters would give pride, lawlessness, 
 passion, revenge, lusts, hypocricies; in short, a catalogue of vices. Eugene 
 Sue seeks to raise the operatives, to shew the ruinous partiality of law, the 
 hideous evils of prisons, &c. &c. The design appears well. What part of 
 this design are the constant arid deliberate lies of Rodolphe, the hero ? This 
 wandering prince coolly justifies himself in putting out a man's eyes, because 
 the law would slay him if delivered up I — provides means for decoying con- 
 victs from prisons! — sets on foot atrocious deceptions, to crush deceptions! — 
 This is the best character. Unquestionably the purest woman is Goualeuse. 
 redeemed from prostitution ! Madame Lucenay lives in unblushing adultery 
 with Saint Remy, who proves to be a forger! " We are edified by a scene of 
 noble indignation and virtue, in which this woman, who has violated the most 
 sacred instincts, and all the sanctities of the family, teaches Remy his degra- 
 dation for violating civil laws ! Admirable reform ! An unblushing adulte- 
 ress preaches so well to her paramour forger ! The diabolical voluptuousness 
 of Cecily— the assignations of the pure Madame D"Harville — the astonishing 
 reformations produced in a single hour, in which harlots turn vestals, mur- 
 derers philanthropists, poachers and marauders more honest than honest men 
 — these are but specimens of the instnmients by which this new and popular 
 reform is changing our morals, and Christianizing us ! What then shall be 
 said of the works of George Sands, Masson, Dumas, M. de Balsac and 
 others like them, by whose side Eugene Sue is an angel of Purity ? 
 
 * This Lecture was delivered upon Christmas-eve.
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in 
 the days of thy youth, and walk, in the ways of thine heart, and in 
 the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God 
 will bring thee into judgment. Eccl. xi. 9. 
 
 I AM to venture the delicate task of reprehension, al- 
 ways unwelcome, but pecuHarly offensive upon topics 
 of public popular amusement. I am anxious, in the be- 
 ginning, to put myself right with the young. If I satisfy 
 myself, christian men, and the sober community, and do 
 not satisfy them^ my success will be like a physician's, 
 whose prescriptions please himself, and the relations, 
 and do good to every body except the patient^ — he dies. 
 
 Allow me, first of all, to satisfy you that I am not med- 
 dling with matters which do not concern me. This is 
 the impression which the patrons and partners of crimi- 
 nal amusements study to make. upon your minds. They 
 represent our duty to be in the church., — taking care 
 of doctrines, and of our own members. When more 
 than this is attempted, when we speak a word for 
 you who are not church-members, we are met with the 
 surly answer, ' Why do you meddle with things which 
 don't concern you 1 If you do not enjoy these pleasures,
 
 168 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 why do you molest those who do ? May not men do 
 as they please in a free country, without being hung up 
 in a gibbet of public remark V It is conveniently for- 
 gotten, I suppose, that in a free country we have the 
 same right to criticise pleasure, which others have to 
 enjoy it. — Indeed, you and I both know, young gentle- 
 men, that in cofiee-house circles, and in convivial feasts 
 nocturnal, the Church is regarded as little better than a 
 spectacled old beldam, whose impertinent eyes are spy- 
 ing every body's business but her own ; and who, too 
 old or too homely to be tempted herself, with compul- 
 sory virtue pouts at the joyous dalliances of the young 
 and gay. Religion is called a nun, sable with gloomy 
 vestments ; and the Church a cloister, where ignorance 
 is deemed innocence, and which sends out querulous rep- 
 rehensions of a world, which it knows nothing about, and 
 has professedly abandoned. This is pretty ; and is only 
 defective, in not being true. The Church is not a clois- 
 ter, nor her members recluses, nor are our censures of 
 vice intermeddling. Not to dwell in generalities, let us 
 take a plain and common case : 
 
 A strolling company offer to educate our youth ; and 
 to show the community the road of morality, which, 
 probably they have not seen themselves for twenty 
 years. We cannot help laughing at a generosity so 
 much above one's means : and when they proceed to 
 hew and hack each other with rusty iron, to teach our 
 boys valor; and dress up practical mountebanks, to teach 
 theoretical virtue ; if we laugh somewhat more, they 
 turn upon us testily : Do you mind your own business, 
 and leave us loith ours. We do not interfere with your 
 preaching, do you let alone our acting.
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 169 
 
 But softly — may not religious people amuse them- 
 selves with very diverting men ? I hope it is not bigo- 
 try to have eyes and ears : I hope it is not fanaticism, 
 in the use of these excellent senses, for us to judge that 
 throwing one's heels higher than their head a-dancing, 
 is not exactly the way to teach virtue to our daughters ; 
 and that women, whose genial warmth of temperament 
 has led them into a generosity something too great, 
 are not the persons to teach virtue, at any rate. Oh no ; 
 we are told, Christians must not know that all this is very 
 singular. Christians ought to think that men who are 
 kings and dukes and philosophers on the stage, are 
 virtuous men, even if they gamble all night, and are 
 drunk all day ; and if men are so used to comedy, that 
 their life becomes a perpetual farce on morality, we 
 have no right to laugh at this extra-professional acting ! 
 
 Are we meddlers, who only seek the good of our own 
 families, and of our own community where we live and 
 expect to die ? or they, who wander up and down with- 
 out ties of social connection, and without aim, except 
 of money to be gathered off from men's vices ? 
 
 1 am anxious to put all religious men in their right 
 position before you ; and in this controversy between 
 them and the gay world, to show you the facts upon bofh 
 sides. A floating population, in pairs or companies, 
 without leave asked, blow the trumpet for all our youth 
 to flock to their banners ! Are they related to them ? — 
 are they concerned in the welfare of our town ? — do 
 they live among us ? — do they bear any part of our bur- 
 dens ? — do they care for our substantial citizens ? We 
 grade our streets, build our schools, support all our 
 municipal laws, and the young men are ours ; our 
 15
 
 170 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 sons, our brothers, our wai'ds, clerks, or apprentices ; 
 they are living in our houses, or stores, or shops, and we 
 are their guardians, and take care of them in health, and 
 watch them in sickness ; yet every vagabond who floats 
 in hither, swears and swaggers, as if they were all his : 
 and when they ofler to corrupt all these youth, we pay- 
 ing them round sums of money for it, and we get courage 
 finally to say that we had rather not; that industry and 
 honesty are better than expert knavery — they turn upon 
 us in great indignation with, W/ii/ dun't you mind your 
 own business— XL-hat are you meddling iciih our a fairs 
 for ? 
 
 I will suppose a case. With much pains-taking, I 
 have saved enough money to buy a little garden-spot. 
 I put all around it a good fence — I cart in upon it a gen- 
 erous allowance of manure — I put the spade into it and 
 mellow the soil full deep : I go to the nursery and pick 
 out choice fruit trees — I send abroad and select the 
 best seeds of the rarest vegetables ; and so my garden 
 thrives. I know every inch of it, for I have watered 
 every inch with sweat. One morning I am awakened 
 by a mixed sound of sawing, digging, and delving ; 
 end looking out, I see a dozen men at work in my gar- 
 den. I run down and find one man sawing out a 
 huge hole in the fence ; "My dear sir, what are you 
 doing?"' "Oh, this high fence is very troublesome to 
 climb over; I am fixing an easier way for folks to get 
 in."' Another man has headed down several choice 
 trees, and is putting in new grafts. "Sir, what are you 
 changing the kind for?" "Oh, this kind don't suit me; 
 I like a new kind." One man is digging up my beans, 
 to plant cockles ; another is rooting up my strawber-
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 171 
 
 ries, to put in pursley ; and another is dfotroying my 
 currants, and gooseberries, and raspberries, to plant 
 mustard and Jamestown weed. At last, I lose all pa- 
 tience, and cry out, 'Well gentlemen, this will never do. 
 I will never tolerate this abominable imposition ; you 
 are ruining my garden.' One of them says, " You old 
 hypocritical bigot ! do you mind your business, and let 
 us enjoy ourselves. Take care of your house, and do 
 not pry into our pleasures." 
 
 Fellow citizens ! I own that no man could so invade 
 your garden; but men are allowed thus to invade our 
 town, and destroy our children. You will let them 
 evade your laws, to fleece and demoralize you ; and 
 you sit down under their railing, as though you were the 
 intruders ! — ^just as if the man, who drives a thief out 
 of his house, ought to ask the rascal's pardon for in- 
 terfering with his little plans of pleasure and profit ! 
 
 Every parent has a right — every citizen and every 
 minister has the same right to expose traps, which men 
 have to set them ; the same right to prevent mischief 
 which men have to plot it ; the same right to attack 
 vice which vice has to attack virtue ; a better right 
 to save our sons and brothers and companions, than 
 artful men have to destroy them. 
 
 The necessity of amusement is admitted on all hands. 
 There is an appetite of the eye, of the ear, and of every 
 sense, for which God has provided the material. Gaiety 
 of every degree, this side of puerile levity, is wholesome 
 to the body, to the mind, and to the morals. Nature is 
 a vast repository of manly enjoyments. The magni- 
 tude of God's works is not less admirable than its 
 exhilarating beautv. The rudest forms have somethinsr
 
 172 POPUX-AR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 of beauty ; the ruggedest strength is graced with some 
 charm ; the very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature, 
 are attractive by qualities of beauty more than is neces- 
 sary for mere utility. The sun could go down without 
 gorgeous clouds ; evening could advance v/ithout its 
 evanescent brilliance ; trees might have flourished with- 
 out symmetry ; flowers have existed without odor, and 
 fruit without flavor. When I have journeyed through 
 forests, where ten thousand shrubs and vines exist 
 without apparent use ; through prairies, wliose undula- 
 tions exhibit sheets of flowers innumerable and abso- 
 lutely dazzling the eye with their prodigality of beauty — 
 beauty, not a tithe of which is ever seen by man — I 
 have said, it is plain that God made a great many things 
 simply to please Himself. The earth is his garden, as 
 an acre is man's. God has made us like Himself, to be 
 pleased by the universal "beauty of the world. He has 
 made provision in nature, in society, and in the family, 
 for amusement and exhilaration enough to fill the heart 
 with the perpetual sunshine of delight. 
 
 Upon this broad earth, purfled with flowers, scented 
 with odors, brilliant in colors, vocal with echoing and 
 re-echoing melody, I take my stand against all demor- 
 alizing pleasure. Is it not enough that our Father's 
 house is so full of dear delights, that we must wander 
 prodigal to the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough 
 for drink? — when the trees of God's heritage bend over 
 our head, and solicit our hand to pluck the golden fruit- 
 age, must we still go in search of the apples of Sodom — 
 outside fair, and inside ashes ? 
 
 Men shall crowd to the Circus to hear clowns, and 
 see rare feats of horsemanship ; but a bird may poise
 
 POPULAR AMUSKMENTS. 173 
 
 Lenealli the very sun, or flying downward, swoop from 
 the high iieaven ; then flit with graceful ease hither and 
 thither, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial 
 fountain of sound^no man cares for that. 
 
 Upon the stage of life, the vastest tragedies ^are per- 
 forming in every act ; nations pitching headlong to their 
 final catastrophe ; others, raising their youthful forms to 
 begin the drama of their existence. The world of so- 
 ciety is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of 
 beauty. The great dramatic throng of life is hustling 
 .along — the wise, the fool, the clown, the miser, the 
 bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles before us 
 smiles and tears, sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as 
 the spring mingles the winter-storm and summer-sun- 
 shine. To this vast Theatre which God hath builded, 
 where stranger plays are seen than ever author writ, 
 man seldom cares to come. When God dramatises, 
 when nations act, or all the human kind conspire to 
 educe the vast catastrophe, men sleep and snore, and 
 let the busy scene go on, unlocked, unthought upon ; and 
 turn from all its varied magnificence to hunt out some 
 candle-lighted hole and gaze at drunken ranters, or cry 
 at the piteous virtue of harlots in distress. It is my ob- 
 ject then, not to withdraw the young from pleasure, bul 
 from unworthy pleasures ; not to lessen their enjoy- 
 ments, but to increase them, by rejecting the counter- 
 feit and the vile. 
 
 Of gambling, I have already sufficiently spoken. Of 
 cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and pugilistic contests, 1 
 need to speak but little. These are the desperate 
 excitements of debauched men; but no man becomes 
 desperately criminal, until he has been genteelly crimi- 
 15*
 
 174 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 nal. No one spreads his sail upon such waters, at 
 first ; tliese brutal amusements are but the gulf into 
 which flow all the streams of criminal pleasures ; and 
 they who embark upon the river, are sailing toward 
 the gulfe Wretches who have waded all the depths 
 of iniquity, and burned every passion to the socket, 
 fmd in rage and blows and blood,. the -only stimulus of 
 which they are susceptible. You are training your- 
 selves to be just such wretches, if you are exhausting 
 your passions in illicit indulgences. 
 
 As it is impossible to analyze, separately, each vicious 
 amusement proffered to the young, I am compelled to 
 select two, each the representative of a clan. Thus, the 
 reasonings applied""to the amusement of Racing, apply 
 equally well to all violent amusements which con- 
 gregate indolent and dissipated men, by ministering in- 
 tense excitement. The reasonings applied to the Thea- 
 tre, with some modifications, apply to the Circus, to 
 promiscuous balls, to night-revelling, bachanalian feasts, 
 and to other similar indulgences. 
 
 Many, who are not in danger, may incline to turn 
 IVom these pages ; they live in rural districts, in vil- 
 lages, or towns, and are out of the reach of jockeys, and 
 actors, and gamblers. This is the very reason why you 
 should read. We are such a migratory, restless people, 
 that our home is usually every where but at home; and 
 almost every young man makes annual, or biennial visits 
 to famous cities ; conveying produce to market, or pur- 
 chasing wares and goods. It is at such times that the 
 young are in extreme danger ; for they are particularly 
 anxious, at such times, to appear at their full age. A 
 young man is ashamed, in a great hotel, to seem raw and
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 175 
 
 not to know the mysteries of the bar and of the town. 
 They put on a very remarkable air, which is meant for 
 easiness ; they affect profusion of expense ; they think it 
 meet for a gentleman to know nil that certain other city- 
 , gentlemen seem proud of knowing. As sober citizens 
 are not found lounging at Hotels ; and the gentlemanly 
 part of the travelling community, are usually retiring, 
 modest, and unnoticeable, — the young are left to come 
 in contact chiefly with a very flash class of men who 
 swarm about city-Restaurateurs and Hotels, — swoln 
 clerks, crack sportsmen, epicures, and rich green youth, 
 seasoning. These are the most numerous class which 
 engage the attention of the young. They bustle in 
 the sitting room, or crowd the bar, assume the chief 
 seats at the table, and play the petty lord in a manner 
 so brilliant, a,s altogether to dazzle our poor country boy, 
 who mourns at his deficient education, at the poverty 
 of his rural oaths, and the meagerness of those illicit 
 pleasures, which he formerly nibbled at with mouselike 
 stealth; and he sighs for these riper accomplishments. 
 Besides, it is well known, that large commercial es- 
 tablishments have, residing at such hotels, well appoint- 
 ed clerks to draw customers to their counter. It is their 
 business to make your acquaintance, to fish out the 
 probable condition of your funds, to sweeten your tem- 
 per with delicate tit-bits of pleasure ; to take you to the 
 Theatre, and a little further on, if need be ; to draw you 
 in to a generous supper, and initiate you to the high life 
 of men whose whole life is only the varied phases of 
 lust, gastronomical or amorous. 
 
 Besides these, there lurk in such places lynx-eyed pro- 
 curers ; men who have an interest in your appetites ;
 
 176 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 who look upon a young man, with some money, just as 
 a butcher looks upon a bullock — a thing of so many 
 pounds aviordupoise, of so much beef, so much tallow, 
 and a hide. If you have nothing, they will have nothing 
 to do with you ; if you have means, they undertake to 
 supply you with the disposition to use them. They 
 know the city, they know its haunts, they know its 
 secret doors, its blind passages, its spicy pleasures, its 
 racy vices, clear down to the mud-slime of the very 
 bottom. 
 
 Meanwhile, the accustomed restraint of home cast off, 
 the youth feels that he is unknown, and may do what he 
 chooses, unexposed. There is, moreover, an intense cu- 
 riosity to see many things of which he has long ago heard 
 and wondered; and it is the very art and education of 
 vice, to make itself attractive. It comes with garlands 
 of roses about its brow, with nectar in its goblet, and 
 love upon its tongue. 
 
 If you have, beforehand, no settled opinions as to 
 what is right and what is wrong ; if your judgment is 
 now, for the first time, to be formed upon the propriety 
 of your actions ; if you are not controlled by settled 
 principles, there is scarcely a chance for your purity. 
 
 For this purpose, then, I desire to discuss these things, 
 that you may settle your opinions and principles before 
 temptation assails you. As a ship is built upon the dry 
 shore, which afterwards is to dare the storm and brave 
 the sea, so w^ould I build you staunch and strong, ere 
 you be launched abroad upon life. 
 
 I. Racing. This amusement justifies its existence 
 by the plea of utility. We will examine it upon its 
 own ground. Who are the patrons of the Turf? — far-
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 177 
 
 mers ? — laborers 1 — men who are practically the most 
 interested in the improvement of stock? The unerring 
 instinct of self-interest would lead these men to patro- 
 nize the Course, if its utility were real. It is notorious 
 that these are not the patrons of racing. It is sustained 
 by two classes of men — gambling jockeys and jaded rich 
 men. In England and in our own country, where the 
 turf-sports are freshest, they owe their existence entirely 
 to the extraordinary excitement which they afford to 
 dissipation, or to cloyed appetites. For those industrial 
 purposes for which the horse is chiefly valuable, for road- 
 sters, hacks, and cart-horses, what do the patrons of the 
 turf care ? Their whole anxiety is centered upon win- 
 ning cups and stakes ; and that is incomparably the best 
 blood which will run the longest space in the shortest 
 time. The points required for this are not, ai*d never 
 will be, the points for substantial service. And it is noto- 
 rious, that racing in England deteriorated the stock in 
 such important respects, that the light-cavalry and dra- 
 goon-service suffered severely, until dependence upon 
 turf stables was abandoned. New England, where rac- 
 ing is unknown, is to this day the place where the horse 
 exists in the finest qualities; and for all economical 
 purposes, Virginia and Kentucky must yield to New 
 England. Except for the sole purpose of racing, an 
 eastern horse brings a higher price than any other. 
 
 The other class of patrons who sustain a Course are 
 mere gambling jockeys. As crows to a corn-field, or 
 vultures to their prey ; as flies to summer-sweet, so to 
 the annual races, flow the whole tribe of gamesters 
 and pleasure-lovers. It is the Jerusalem of wicked men ; 
 and thither the tribes go up, like Israel of old, but for a
 
 178 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 far different sacrifice. No form of social abomination 
 is unknown or unpracticed ; and if all the good that is 
 claimed, and a hundred limes more, were done to horses, 
 it would be a dear bargain. To ruin men for the sake 
 of improving horses ; to sacrifice conscience and purity 
 for the sake of good bones and muscles in a beast ; this 
 is paying a little too much for good brutes. Indeed, 
 the shameless immorality, the perpetual and growing 
 dishonesty, the almost immeasurable secret villainy 
 of gentlemen of the turf, has alarmed and disgusted 
 many stalwart racers, who, having no objection to 
 some evil, are appalled at the very ocean of depravity 
 which rolls before them. I extract the words of one 
 of the very leading sportsmen of England. '-'How many 
 fine domains have been shared among these hosts of 
 rapacious sharks, during the last two hundred years,- 
 and, unless the system be altered, how many more are 
 doomed to fall into the same gulf ! For, we lament 
 to say, the evil has increased: all heretofore has been 
 'tarts and cheese-cakes' to the villainous proceedings of 
 the last twenty years on the English tuif'' 
 
 1 will drop this barbarous amusement, with a few ques- 
 tions. 
 
 What have you, young men, to do with the turf, ad- 
 mitting it to be what it claims, a school for horses? Are 
 you particularly interested in that branch of learning? 
 
 Is it safe to accustom yourselves to such tremendous 
 excitement as that of racing ? 
 
 Is the invariable company of such places of a kind 
 which you ought to be found in ? — will races make you 
 more moral ? — more industrious ? — more careful ? — eco- 
 nomical ? — trustworthy ?
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. ITD 
 
 You \vho have attended them, what advice would 
 you give a young man, a younger brother for instance, 
 who should seriously ask if he had better attend ? 
 
 I digress, to say one word to women. When a Course 
 was opened at Cincinnati, ladies would not attend it : 
 when one was opened here, ladies would not attend it : 
 For very good reasons — tliey were ladies. If it be said 
 that they attend the Races at the South and in England, 
 I reply, that they do a great many other things which 
 you would not choose to do. 
 
 Roman ladies could see hundreds of gladiators stab 
 and hack each other — could you 1 Spanish ladies can 
 see savage bull-fights — would you ? It is possible for a 
 modest woman to countenance very questionable prac- 
 tices, where . the customs of society and the universal 
 public opinion approve them. But no woman can set 
 herself against public opinion, in favor of an immoral 
 sport, without being herself immoral ; for, if worse be 
 wanting, it is immorality enough for a woman to put 
 herself where her reputation will lose its suspiciousless 
 lustre. 
 
 II. The Theatre. Desperate eflbrts are made, year 
 by year, to resuscitate this expiring evil. Its claims are 
 put forth with vehemence. Let us examine them. 
 
 The Drama cultivates the taste. Let the appeal be to 
 facts. Let the roll of English literature be explored — 
 our Poets, Romancers, Historians, Essayists, Critics, 
 and Divines — and for what part of their memorable writ- 
 ings are we indebted to the Drama ? If we except one 
 period of our literature, the claim is wholly groundless ; 
 and at this day, the truth is so opposite to the claim, that
 
 180 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 extravagance, affectation, and rant, are proverbially de- 
 nominated theatrical. If agriculture should attempt to 
 supercede the admirable implements of husbandry, now 
 in use, by the primitive plough or sharpened sticks, 
 it would not be more absurd than to advocate that clum- 
 sy machine of literature, the Theatre, by the side of the 
 popular lecture, the pulpit, and the press. It is not con- 
 genial to our age or necessities. Its day is gone by — it 
 is in its dotage, as might be suspected, from the weak- 
 ness of the garrulous apologies which it puts forth. 
 
 It is a school of jnorals. — Yes, doubtless ! So the guil- 
 lotine is defended on the plea of humanity. Inquisitors 
 declare their racks and torture-beds to be the instru- 
 ments of love, affectionately admonishing the foUen of 
 the error of their ways. The slave-trade has been de- 
 fended on' the plea of humanity, and slavery is now 
 defended for its mercies. Were it necessary for any 
 school or party, doubtless we should hear arguments to 
 prove the Devil's grace, and the utility of his agency 
 among men. 
 
 But, let me settle these impudent pretensions to Thea- 
 tre-virtue, by the home thrust of a few plain questions. 
 
 Will any of you who have been to Theatres, please to 
 tell me vi'hether virtue ever received important acces- 
 sions from the gallery of Theatres ? 
 
 Will you tell me whether the Pit is a place where an 
 ordinarily modest man would love to seat his children ? 
 
 Was ever a Theatre known where a prayer at the 
 opening, and a prayer at the close, would not be tor- 
 mentingly discordant ? 
 
 How does it happen, that in a school for morals, the 
 teachers never learn their own lessons ?
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMKNTS. 181 
 
 Would you allow a son or daughter to associate alone 
 with actors or actresses ? 
 
 Do these men who promote virtue so zealously lohen 
 actiiig, take any part in public moral enterprises, when 
 their stage dresses are off? 
 
 Which would surprise you most, to see actors steadily 
 at Church, or to see Christians steadily at a Theatre ? 
 Would not both strike you as singular incongruities ? 
 
 What is the reason that loose and abandoned men 
 abhor religion in a Church, and love it so much in a 
 Theatre ? 
 
 Since the Theatre is the handmaid of virtue, why are 
 drinking houses so necessary to its neighborhood, yet so 
 offensive to Churches ? The trustees of the Tremont 
 Theatre in Boston, publicly protested against an order of 
 council forbidding liquor to be sold on the premises, on 
 the ground that it was impossible to support the Thea- 
 tre without it. 
 
 I am told that Christians do attend the Theatres. Then 
 I will tell them the story of the Ancients. A holy monk 
 reproached the devil for stealing a young man who was 
 found at the Theatre. He promptly replied, "I found 
 him on my premises, and took him." 
 
 But, it is said, if Christians would take Theatres in 
 hand, instead of abandoning them to loose men, they 
 might become the handmaids of religion. The Church 
 has had an intimate acquaintance with the Theatre for 
 eighteen hundred years. During that period, every 
 available agent for the diffusion of morality has been 
 earnestly tried. The Drama has been tried. The re- 
 sult is, that familiarity has bred contempt and abhor- 
 rence. If after so long and thorough an acquaintance, 
 16
 
 182 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 the Church stands the mortal enemy of Theatres, the 
 testimony is conclusive. It is the evidence of genera- 
 tions speaking by the most sober, thinking, and honest 
 men. Let not this vagabond prostitute pollute any lon- 
 ger the precincts of the Church, with impudent proposals 
 of alliance. When the Church needs an alliance it will 
 not look for it in the kennel. Ah ! what a blissful scene 
 would that be — the Church and Theatre imparadised in 
 each other's arms ! What a sweet conjunction would be 
 made, could we build our Churches so as to preach in the 
 morning, and play in them by night I And how melting 
 it would be, beyond the love of David and Jonathan, to 
 see minister and actor in loving embrace ; one slaying 
 Satan by direct thrusts of plain preaching, and the other 
 sucking his very life out by the enchantment of the 
 Drama ! To this millennial scene of Church and Thea- 
 tre, I only suggest a single improvement : that the vestry 
 be enlarged to a ring for a Circus, when not wanted for 
 prayer-meetings ; the Sabbath-school room should be 
 furnished with card-tables, and useful texts of scripture 
 might be printed on the cards, for the pious meditations 
 of gamblers during the intervals of play and worship. 
 When the very idea of such a thing is comedy even to 
 farce, what would its realization be ? 
 
 But if these places are jmt down, men will go to w'orse 
 ones. Where will they find worse ones ? Are those 
 who go to the Theatre, the Circus, the Race-course, the 
 men who abstain from worse places ? It is notorious 
 that the crowd of theatre-goers are vomited up from 
 these worse places. It is notorious that the Theatre is 
 the door to all the sinks of iniquity. It is through this 
 infamous place that the young learn to love those vi-
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 133 
 
 cious associates and practices to which, else, they would 
 liave been strangers. Half the victims of the gallows 
 and of the Penitentiary will tell you, that these schools 
 for morals were to them the gate of debauchery, the 
 porch of pollution, the vestibule of the very house of 
 Death. 
 
 The lyvama makes one acquainted with human life, and. 
 with nature. It is too true. There is scarcely an evil 
 incident to human life, which may not be fully learned 
 at the Theatre. Here flourishes every variety of wit — 
 ridicule of sacred things, burlesques of religion, and li- 
 centious douhle-entendres. No where can so much of 
 this lore be learned, in so short a time, as at the Thea- 
 tre. There one learns how pleasant a thing is vice; 
 amours are consecrated ; license is prospered ; and the 
 young come away alive to the glorious liberty of con- 
 quest and lust. But the stage is not the only place 
 about the Drama where human nature is learned. In 
 the Boxes the young may make the acquaintance of 
 those who abhor home and domestic quiet ; of those 
 who glory in profusion and obtrusive display ; of those 
 who expend all, and more than their earnings, upon gay 
 clothes and jewelry ; of those who think it no harm to 
 borrow their money ivithout leave from their employer's 
 till ; of those who despise vulgar appetite, but affect po- 
 lished and genteel licentiousness. Or, he may go to the 
 I'it, and learn the whole round of villain-life, from mas- 
 ters in the art. He may sit down among thieves, blood- 
 loving scoundrels, swindlers, broken-down men of plea- 
 sure — the coarse, the vulgar, the debauched, the inhuman, 
 the infernal. Or, if still more of human nature is wished, 
 he can learn yet more ; for the Theatre epitomizes every
 
 184 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 degree of corruption. Let the virtuous young scholar 
 go to the Gallery, and learn there, decency, modesty, 
 and refinement, among the quarrelling, drunken, ogling, 
 mincing, brutal women of the brothel ! Ah ! there is no 
 place like the Theatre for learning hmjian nature ! A 
 young man can gather up more experimental knowledge 
 here in a week, than elsewhere in half a year. But I 
 wonder that the Drama should ever confess the fact ; 
 and yet more, that it should lustily plead in self-defence, 
 that Theatres teach ?nen so 7)iuch of human nature! Here 
 are brilliant bars, to teach the young to drink ; here are 
 gay companions, to undo in half an hour the scruples 
 formed by an education of years ; here are pimps of 
 pleasure, to delude the brain with bewildering sophisms 
 of license ; here is ])leasure, all flushed in its gayest, 
 boldest, most fascinating forms ; and few there be who 
 cm resist its wiles, and fewer 3'et who can yield to 
 them and escape ruin. ]f you would pervert the taste — 
 go to the Theatre. If you would inibibe false views — 
 go to the Theatre. If you would eiface as speedily as 
 possible all qualms of conscience — go to the Theatre. If 
 you would put yourself irreconcilably against the spirit 
 of virtue and religion — go to the Theatre. If you would 
 be infected with each particular vice in the catalogue of 
 Depravity — go to the Theatre. Let parents, who wish 
 to make their children weary of home and quiet domes- 
 tic enjoyments, take them to the Theatre. If it be de- 
 sirable for the young to loathe industry and didactic 
 reading, and burn for fierce excitements, and seek them 
 by stealth or through pilferings, if need be — then send 
 them to the Theatre. It is notorious that the bill of fare 
 at these temples of pleasure is made up to the taste of
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 183 
 
 the lower appetites ; that low comedy, and lower farce, 
 running into absolute obscenity, are the only means of 
 filling a house. Theatres which should exhibit nothing 
 but the classic Drama, would exhibit it to empty seats. 
 They must be corrupt, to live ; and those who attend 
 them will be corrupted. 
 
 Let me turn your attention to several reasons which 
 should incline every young man to foreswear such crimi- 
 nal amusements. 
 
 I. The first reason is, their waste of time. I do not 
 mean that they waste only the time consumed while 
 you are within them ; but they make you waste your 
 time afterwards. You will go once, and wish to go 
 again ; you will go twice, and seek it a third time ; 
 you will go a third time, — a. fourth; and whenever the 
 bill flames, you will be seized with a restlessness and 
 craving to go, until the appetite will become a passion. 
 You will then waste your nights : your mornings being 
 heavy, melancholy, and stupid, you will waste them. 
 Your day will next be confused and crowded ; your 
 duties poorly executed or deferred; habits of arrant 
 shiftlessness will ensue ; and day by day, industry will 
 grow tiresome, and leisure sweeter, until you are a was- 
 ter of time — an idle man ; and if not a rogue, you will 
 be a fortunate exception. 
 
 II. You ought not to countenance these things, Z/"- 
 cause they will ivaste your money. Young gentlemen ! 
 squandering is as shameful as hoarding. A fool can throw 
 away, and a fool can lock up ; but it is a wise man, 
 who, neither parsimonious nor profuse, steers the mid- 
 dle course of generous economy and frugal liberality. 
 A young m.an, at first, thinks that all he spends at such 
 16*
 
 186 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 places, is the ticket-price of the Theatre, or the small 
 bet on the races ; and this he knows is not much. But 
 this is certainly not the whole bill — nor half. 
 
 First, you pay your entrance. But there are a thou- 
 sand petty luxuries which one must not neglect, or cus- 
 tom will call him niggard. You must buy your cigars, 
 and your friend's. You must buy your juleps, and treat 
 in your turn. You must occasionally wait on your lady, 
 and she must be comforted with • divers confections. 
 You cannot go to such places in homely working dress ; 
 new and costlier clothes must be bought. All your 
 companions have jewelry, — you will want a ring, or a 
 seal, or a golden watch, or an ebony cane, a silver tooth- 
 pick, or quizzing glass. Thus, item presses upon item, 
 and in the year a long i)\l\ runs up of money spent for 
 Ultle trifles. 
 
 But if all this money could buy you oft' from the yet 
 worse eftects, the bargain would not be so dear. But 
 compare, if you please, this mode of expenditure with 
 the j)rinciple of your ordinary expense. In all ordi- 
 nary and business-transactions you get an equivalent for 
 your money, — either food for support, or clothes for 
 comfoi't, or permanent property. But when a young 
 man has spent one or two hundred dollars for the The- 
 atre, Circus, Races, Balls, and revelling, what has he to 
 show for it at the end of the year? Nothing at all 
 good, and much that is bad. You sink your money as 
 really as if you threw it into the sea; and you do it in 
 such a way that you fprm habits of careless expense. You 
 lose all sense of the value of j)ropert.y; and when a man 
 sees no value in property, he will see no necessity for 
 labor ; and when he is lazy and careless of property,
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 187 
 
 both, he will be dislwnesl. Thus, a habit which seems 
 innocent — tlie habit of trifling with property — often de- 
 generates to worthlessness, indolence, and roguerv. 
 
 ni. Such pleasures are incompatible with your ordi- 
 nary pursuits. 
 
 The very way to ruin an honest business is to be 
 ashamed of it, or to put along side of it something which 
 a man loves better. There can be no industrial calling 
 so exciting as the Theatre, the Circus, and the Races. 
 If you wish to make your real business very stupid and 
 hateful, visit such places. After the glare of the Theatre 
 has dazzled your eyes, your blacksmith-shop will look 
 smuttier than ever it did before. After you have seen 
 stalwart heroes pounding their antagonists, you will find 
 it a dull business to pound iron ; and a valiant apprentice 
 who has seen such gracious glances of love, and such rap- 
 turous kissing of hands, will hate to dirty his heroic fin- 
 gers with mortar, or by rolling felt on the hatter's board. 
 If a man had a homely, but most useful wife — patient, 
 kind, intelligent, hopeful in sorrow and cheerful in pros- 
 perity, but yet very plain, very homely, — would he be 
 wise to bring under his roof a fascinating and artful 
 beauty 1 would the contrast, and her w iles, make him 
 love his own wife better? Young gentlemen, your 
 wives are your industrial callings ! These raree-shows 
 are artful jades, dressed up on purpose to purloin your 
 aflections. Let no man be led to commit adultery with 
 a Theatre, against the rights of his own trade. 
 
 IV. Another reason why you should let alone these 
 deceitful pleasures is, that they will engage you in bad 
 company. To the Theatre, the Ball, the Circus, the 
 Race-course, the gaming-table, resort all the idle, the
 
 188 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 dissipated, the rogues, the licentious, the epicures, the 
 gluttons, the artful jades, the immodest prudes, the joy- 
 ous, the worthless, the refuse. When you go, you will 
 not, at first, take introduction to them all, but to those 
 nearest like yourself; by them, the way will be opened 
 to others. And a very great evil has befallen a young 
 man, when wicked men feel that they have a right to his 
 acquaintance. When I see a gambler slapping a young- 
 mechanic on the back ; or a lecherous scoundrel sutiusing 
 a young man's cheek by a story at which, despite his 
 blushes, he yet laughs ; I know the youth has been guilty 
 of criminal indiscretion, or these men could not ap- 
 proach him thus. That is a brave and strong heart that 
 can stand up pure in a company of artful wretches. 
 When wicked men mean to seduce a young man, so 
 tremendous are the odds in favor of practised experi- 
 ence against innocence, that there is not one chance in 
 a thousand, if the young man lets ihem approach liim. 
 Let every young man remember that he carries, by 
 nature, a breast of passions just such as bad men have. 
 With youth, they slumber ; but temptation can wake 
 them, bad men can influence them ; they know the 
 road, they know how to serenade the heart ; how to 
 raise the sash, and flope with each passion. There is 
 but one resource for innocence among men or women ; 
 and that is, an embargo upon all commerce of bad men. 
 Bar the window ! — bolt the door ! — nor answer their 
 strain, if they charm never so wisely ! In no other wav 
 can you be safe. So well am I assured of the power of 
 bad men to seduce the erring purity of man, that I pro- 
 nounce it next to impossible for man or woman to 
 escape, if they permit bad men to approach and dally
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 189 
 
 ivith them. Oh ! there is more than mngic in tempta- 
 tion, when it beams down upon the heart of man, like 
 the sun upon a morass ! At the noontide-hour of pu- 
 rity, the mists shall rise and wreath a thousand fantastic 
 forms of delusion ; and a sudden freak of passion, a sin- 
 gle gleam of the imagination, one sudden rush of the 
 capricious heart, and the resistance of years may be 
 prostrated in a moment, the heart entered by the besieg- 
 ing enemy, its rooms sought out, and every lovely affec- 
 tion rudely siezed by the invader's lust, and given to 
 ravishment and to ruin ! 
 
 V. Putting together in one class, all gamblers, cir- 
 cus-riders, actors and racing jockeys, I pronounce tliem to 
 be men who live off of society without returning any 
 useful equivalent for their support. At the most lenient 
 sentence, they are a band of gay idlers. They do not 
 throw one cent into the stock of public good. They do 
 not make shoes, or hats, or houses, or harness, or any 
 thing else that is useful. A hostler is useful ; he per- 
 forms a necessary office. A scullion is useful ; some- 
 body must act his part. A street-sweeper, a chimney- 
 sweep, the seller of old clothes, a scavenger, a tinker, a 
 bootblack — all these men are respectable ; for though 
 their callings are very humble, they are founded on the 
 real wants of society. The bread which such men eat 
 is the representation of what they have done for society ; 
 not the bread of idleness, but of usefulness. But what 
 do pleasure-mongers do for a living ? — what do they 
 invent 1 — what do they make ? — what do they repair 1 — 
 what do they for the mind, for the body, for man, or 
 child, or beast ? The dog that gnaws a refuse bone, 
 pays for it in barking at a thief. The cat that purs its
 
 190 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 gratitude for a morsel of meat, will clear- our house of 
 rats. But what do we get in return for supporting 
 whole loads of play-mongers, and circus-clowns ? They 
 eat, they drink, they giggle, they grimace, they strut in 
 gairish clothes — and what else ? They have not aflbrded 
 even useful amusement ; they are professional laugh- 
 makers ; their trade is comical or tragical huffoonery — 
 the trade of tickling men. We do not feel any need of 
 them, before they come ; and when they leave, the only 
 etfects resulting from their visit are, unruly boys, aping 
 apprentices, and unsteady workmen. 
 
 Now, upon principles of mere political economy, is it 
 wise to support a growing class of improvident idlers ? 
 If, at the top of society, the government should erect a 
 class of favored citizens, and pamper their idleness 
 with fat pensions, the indignation of the whole com- 
 munity would break out against such privileged aristo- 
 crats. But, we have, at the bottom of society, a set of 
 wandering, joking, dancing, fiddling aristocrats, whom 
 we support for the sake of their capers, grins, and caric- 
 atures upon life, and no one seems to think tliis an evil. 
 
 VI. But even this is cheap and wise, to the evil 
 which I shall mention. If these renegade morality- 
 teachers could guarantee us against all evil from their 
 doings, we might pay their support and think it a cheap 
 bargain. The direct and necessary effect of their pur- 
 suit, however, is to demoralize men. The tyranny which 
 taxes our money is mild and angelic, to the despotic 
 tyranny which taxes our morals. 
 
 Those who defend Theatres would scora to admit ac- 
 tors into their society. It is within the knowledge of all, 
 that men, who thus cater for yublic pleasure, are excluded
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 191 
 
 from respectable society. The general fact is not alter- 
 ed by the exceptions — and honorable exceptions there 
 are. But where there is one Siddons, and one Ellen 
 Tree, and one Fanny Kemble, how many hundred ac- 
 tresses are there who dare not venture within modest 
 society ? Where there is one Garrick and Sheridan, how 
 many thousand licentious wretches are there, whose act- 
 ing is but a means of sensual indulgence ? In the support 
 of gamblers, circus-riders, actors, and racing-jockeys, a 
 Christian and industrious people are guilty of supporting 
 mere mischief-makers — men whose very heart is dis- 
 eased, and whose sores exhale contagion to all around 
 them. We pay moral assassins to stab the purity of om' 
 children. We warn our sons of temptation, and yet 
 plant the seeds which shall bristle with all the spikes and 
 thorns of the worst temptation. If to this strong lan- 
 guage, you answer, that these men are generous and 
 jovial, that their very business is to please, that they do 
 not mean to do harm, — I reply, that I do not charge 
 them with trying to produce immorality, but with pur- 
 suing a course which produces it, whether they try or 
 not. An evil example does harm by its own liberty, 
 without asking leave. Moral disease, like the plague, is 
 contagious, whether the patient wishes it or not. A vile 
 man infects his children in spite of himself. Criminals 
 make criminals, just as taint makes taint, disease makes 
 disease, plagues make plagues. Those who run the gay 
 round of pleasure cannot help dazzling the young, con- 
 founding their habits, and perverting their morals — it is 
 the very nature of their employment. 
 
 These demoralizing professions could not be sustained 
 but by the patronage of moral men. Where do the
 
 192 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 clerks, the apprentices, the dissipated, get their money 
 which buys an entrance ? From whom is that money 
 drained, always, in every land, which supports vice ? 
 Unquestionably from the good, the laborious, the careful. 
 The skill, the enterprise, the labor, the good morals of 
 every nation, are always taxed for the expenses of vice. 
 Jails are built out of honest men's earnings. Courts are 
 supported from peaceful men's property. Penitentiaries 
 are built by the toil of virtue. Crime never pays its 
 own way. Vice has no hands to work, no head to cal- 
 culate. Its whole faculty is to corrupt and to waste ; and 
 good men, directly or indirectly, foot the bill. 
 
 At this time, when we are waiting in vain for the re- 
 turn of that bread which we wastefuUy cast upon the 
 waters ; when, all over the sea, men are fishing up the 
 wrecks of those argosies, and full freighted fortunes, 
 which foundered in the sad storm of recent times, — some 
 question might be asked about the economy of vice ; — 
 the economy of paying for our son's idleness ; the econ- 
 omy of maintaining a whole lazy profession of gamblers, 
 racers, actresses, and actors, — human, equine, and bellu- 
 ine ; — whose errand is mischief, and luxury, and license, 
 and giggling folly. It ought to be asked of men who groan 
 at a tax to pay their honest foreign debts, whether they 
 can be taxed to pay the bills of mountebanks ?* 
 
 * We cannot pay for honest lonns, but we can pay Elssler hundreds of thou- 
 sands for being an airy sylph! America can pay vagabond-fiddlers, strumpet- 
 dancers, fashionable actors, dancing-horses, and boxing-men ! Heaven forbid 
 that these should want !— but to pay honest debts, — indeed, indeed, we have 
 honorable scruples of conscience about that ! ! 
 
 Let our foreign creditors dismiss their fears, and forgiv^ us the commercial 
 debt; write no more drowsy letters about public faith; let them write spicy 
 comedies, and send over fiddlers, and dancers, and[ actors, and singers ; — they 
 will soon collect the debt and keep us good natured ! After every extenuation 
 — hard times, deficient currency, want of market, &c., there is a deeper reason 
 than these at the bottom of our inert indebtedness. Living among the body 
 of the people, and having nothing to lose or gain by my opinions, I must say
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 193 
 
 It is astonishing how little the influence of those pro- 
 fessions has been considered, which exert themselves 
 mainly to delight the sensual feelings of men. That 
 whole race of men, whose camp is the Theatre, the Cir- 
 cus, the Turf, or the Gaming-table, is a race whose in- 
 stinct is destruction, who live to corrupt, and live off 
 of the corruption which they make. For their sup- 
 port, we sacrifice annual hecatombs of youthful victims. 
 Even sober Christian men, look smilingly upon the gairish 
 outside of these trainbands of destruction ; and while we 
 see the results to be, uniformly, dissipation, idleness, dis- 
 honesty, vice, and crime, still they lull us with the lying 
 lyric of ^classic drama^ and ''human life,'' hnoralitij.' 
 ^ poetry^ and ^divine comedy!'' 
 
 Disguise it as you will, these men of pleasure are, the 
 world over, corrupters of youth. Upon no principle 
 of kindness can we tolerate them; no excuse is bold 
 enough; we can take bail from none of their weaknesses 
 — it is not safe to have them abroad even upon excessive 
 bail. You might as well take bail of lions, and allow scor- 
 pions to breed in our streets for a suitable license ; or for 
 a tax indulge assassins. Men whose life is given to evil 
 
 plainly, that the community are not sensitive to the disgrace of flagrant pub- 
 lic bankruptcy; they do not seem to care whether their public debt be paid or 
 not. I perceive no enthusiasm on that subject : it is not a topic for either 
 party, nor of anxious private conversation. A profound indebtedness, ruin- 
 ous to our credit and to our morals, is allowed to lie at the very bottom of 
 the abyss of dishonest indifference. 
 
 Men love to be taxed for their lusts ; there is an open exchequer for licen- 
 tiousness, and for giddy pleasure. We grow suddenly saving, when benevo- 
 lence asks alms, or justice duns for debts: we dole a pittance to suppliant 
 creditors, to be rid ot their clamor. But let the divine Fanny, with evolutions 
 extremely efficacious upon the feelings, fire the enthusiasm of a whole Theatre 
 of men, whose applauses rise — as she does; let this courageous dancer, almost 
 literally true to nature, disjilay her adventurous feats before a thousand men. 
 whose hearts are glowing furnaces of ihrice-heated lusts, and the very miser 
 will turn spendthrift; the land which will not pay its honest creditors, will 
 enrich a strolling harlot, and rain down upon the stage a stream of golden 
 LiDxe.", or golden coin, wreaths and rosy billet-doux ! 
 
 17
 
 194 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 pleasure are, to ordinary criminals, what a universal pes- 
 tilence is to local disease. They fill the air, pervade the 
 community, and bring around every youth an amosphere 
 of death. Corrupters of youth have no mitigation of their 
 baseness. Their generosity avails nothing, their know- 
 ledge nothing, their varied accomplishments nothing. 
 These are only so many facilities for greater evil. Is a 
 serpent less deadly, because his burnished scales shine? 
 Shall a dove praise and court the vulture, because he has 
 such glossy plumage? The more accomplisments a bad 
 man has, the more dangerous is he ; — they are the gar- 
 lands which cover up the knife with which he will stab. 
 There is no such thing as good corrupters. You might 
 as well talk of a mild and pleasant murder, a very le- 
 nient assassination, a grateful stench, or a pious devil. 
 We denounce them ; for it is our nature to loathe perfi- 
 dious corruption. We have no compunction to withhold 
 us. We mourn over a torn and bleeding lamb ; but who 
 mourns the wolf which rent it ? We weep for despoiled 
 innocence ; but who sheds a tear for the savage fiend, 
 who plucks away the flower of virtue ? We shudder 
 and pray for the shrieking victim of the Incjuisition ; but 
 who would spare the hoary Inquisitor, before whose 
 shriveled form the piteous maid implores relief in vain ? 
 Even thus, we palliate the sins of generous youth ; and 
 their downfall is our sorrow : but for their destroyers, 
 for the Corrupters of youth, who practice the infernal 
 chemistry of ruin, and dissolve the young heart in vice — 
 we have neither tears, nor pleas, nor patience. We lift 
 our heart to Him who beareth the iron rod of vengeance, 
 and pray for the appointed time of judgment. Ye mis- 
 creants ! think ye that ye are growing tall, and walking
 
 POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 
 
 19^ 
 
 safely, because God hath forgotten ? The bolt shall yet 
 smite you ! you shall be heard as the falling of an oak in 
 the silent forest — the vaster its growth, the more terrible 
 its resounding downfall ! Oh thou Corrupter of youth ! 
 I would not take thy death, for all the pleasure of thy 
 guilty life, a thousand fold. Thou shalt draw near to tlie 
 shadow of death. To the Christian, these shades are the 
 golden haze which heaven's light makes, when it meets 
 the earth and mingles with its shadows. But to thee, 
 these shall be shadows full of phantom-shapes. Images 
 of terror in the Future shall dimly rise and beckon ; — 
 the ghastly deeds of the Past shall stretch out their 
 skinny hands to push thee forward ! Thou shall not 
 die unattended. Despair shall mock thee. Agony shall 
 tender to thy parched lips her fiery cup. Remorse shall 
 feel for thy heart, and rend it open. Good men shall 
 breathe freer at thy death, and utter thanksgiving when 
 thou art gone. Men shall place thy grave-stone as a 
 monument and testimony that a plague is stayed ; no 
 tear shall wet it, no mourner linger there ! And, as 
 borne on the blast, thy guilty spirit whistles toward the 
 gate of hell, the hideous shrieks of those whom thy hand 
 hath destroyed, shall pierce thee — hell's first welcome. 
 It is moved for thee ; it stirreth up the dead at thy com- 
 ing ! As a bird of prey, venturing out when a storm is 
 abroad, is caught up in the eddying whirlwind, and tossed, 
 ruffled and whirled, and at last wrapped and hid in the 
 dark cloud, and lost to our sight — so, in the bosom of that 
 everlasting storm which rains perpetual misery in hell, 
 shalt thou, CORRUPTER OF YOUTH ! be forever hidden from 
 our view : — and may God wipe out the very thougiits of 
 thee from our memorv^
 
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