him as a hero, when they saw that he was multiplying work for them, and so increasing their wealth and comforts. When Arkwright and Hargreaves were given the order of knighthood, and Jacquard the cross of the Legion of Honor, and a statue to his memory in his native city, where he had been mobbed, men gently acquiesced, and said it was well; these were men of common sense.

That once poor Danvers boy, George Peabody, who became the world's greatest philanthropist, both in the extent of his charities and the magnitude of the money he gave to help the poor, said in a public address when on a visit to his native place, "There is not a youth within the sound of my voice whose early opportunities and advantages are not very much greater than were my own, and I have achieved nothing that is impossible to the most humble boy among you." But they seem not to have believed him. For while since then many of her young men have been supported at the public expense in jail and poorhouse, Danvers has had no other George Peabody. Why? Said the Duke of Argyle, "The ideals that men worship, the propensities they indulge, the habits and manners they allow to grow up among them, the laws and institutions which embody their conceptions of political authority and of social obligations,—all these are the very seat and center of the causes which operate upon the rise, duration, and decline of wealth." ("The Unseen Foundation of Society," chap. 6, p. 163.)

Many a man is to-day cursing what he calls his "ill-luck," and talking as if he believed a malignant destiny had thwarted his every effort to succeed, whereas it is his own vices that have defeated him; and he who is now destitute, it may be, might have lived in competence if not in wealth, if he had been industrious and prudent at the beginning of his career. A few indeed are foredoomed at birth, by their inheritance of vicious tendencies, to be held in thrall by poverty, unless the grace of God rescues them. But the average man's wealth and advancement depend upon himself, upon his opportunities, and

the use he makes of them. It is good work that brings good luck. A productive machine cannot remain productive if it is constantly being damaged. You are a productive machine; both your body and mind are such. Why make them useless by neglect, or a vicious use of them, and so become at last yourself a burden on others? Why should thrift be taxed for the support and sole benefit of the idle and vicious? Surely to live on the industry and property of others, when you can support yourself, is both an indecency and an outrage. You may, if you choose, look on the necessity to work that is laid upon man as a wrong. Nevertheless, it is not so.

"Right," said Cicero, "is not founded on opinion, but in nature." If it is right to have a stomach, you should work to fill it if you can, or else go hungry. Why should another, perhaps not so able as yourself, work to put food in your mouth? Every refusal to obey the law of right is a folly and a crime against your own good. It is right that you should work. He who despises the right despises him whose likeness the right is. No man has ever yet been able to build an enduring structure on the foundation of a lie. Sooner or later his edifice tumbles into ruin. Now it is a lie that any success worth the name can be had without work, and hard work, too. A victory that is worth the naming must be fought for. And the victory that is offered you and me is of such magnitude and far-reaching results that it is an honor to be chosen of God for such a fight. Don't despise it, and be an idler. Don't despise it and compromise it away by an unwise or a vicious use of the powers given you. Many a young man and young woman fancy they may have a gay time in their youth, and ofttimes in places when vice is made splendidly attractive in order to wean the people from righteousness, and then after they have sowed their few wild oats, they can settle down in life and achieve success. Poor simpletons! they follow folly as the donkey does the grass which the driver offers him, but always an inch from his nose. And, like him, when they would return it is too late, and their strength has fled.

Ruin in Disguise.

ANTHONY COMSTOCK,

Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, New York City.

"The labor of a day will not build up a virtuous habit on the lines of an old and vicious character." -BUCKMINSTER.

T

HE folly of youth is, oftentimes, the ruin of future prosperity. The psalmist of old cried out because of the effect, in after years, of the sins of his youth. Ephraim "smote upon his thigh" and cried out bitterly because of the curse flowing from the sins of his youth. Job said, "Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to inherit the sins of my youth."

The sins of youth, or, to use a common expression, "the sowing of wild oats in youthful days,” brought a harvest of bitterness into the lives of these men of old.

It is not my purpose, in this article, to discuss the causes that have led to the decay of cities, fortresses, or castles, nor search for the secret that has overturned nations in the past.

Rather, we discuss the work of destruction to health and morals that is going on in our very midst.

The lives of men, like the history of cities and nations in the past, are for our example, instruction, and warning. We need not go back to ancient history, however, to ascertain the cause of decay and destruction that is going on about us. We must look facts, unpleasant though they be, in the face. the world, to-day, as it is, not as we would wish it were. People who live in our large cities, and are actively engaged in the busy world of manufacture, trade, and commerce, are mak

We must take

ing life a rapid transit, and are being whirled along at a pace that kills.

A fair illustration of the nerve-grinding process may be witnessed during the business hours at any of the stock, produce, manufacturing, or mercantile exchanges, where transactions, embracing thousands of dollars of stock or produce, are opened with a shout and closed with a nod of the head or gesture of the hand from the party fortunate enough, in the confusion, to catch the seller's eye.

Fortunes amounting to millions of dollars are made in a few brief years by sharp and unscrupulous men. But these fortunes cannot bring peace, happiness, and security into the home. They oftentimes smother conscience and torture the soul. Wealth and position cannot prevent death from entering the home, nor curb the appetite for strong drink and unclean living. Too often wealth is misapplied to furnish those things which an inherited appetite suggest, or which unhallowed passions and tastes crave and demand.

For every effect there stands a cause.

For every harvest there has been a seed sowing.

What is the cause, to-day, of the downfall and ruin of so many youth?

What is the cause of so many scandals in high life? Why are there so many houses of prostitution and dives in our great cities, and why are they steadily on the increase?

If diphtheria appears in a tenement house, if a case of yellow fever or smallpox is discovered in the community, immediately the health officers seek to quarantine the disease and discover its source. In like manner, let us look for the cause of the moral leprosy existing in our land. Our young men and maidens are falling like autumn leaves upon every side of us. Many are stricken down by a contagion that destroys character, blasts future prospects of happiness, and mortgages the soul to the devil.

Much of the sorrow and misery, squalor and want, moral leprosy and sin, that now curse the human race, and are leading

so many to ruin and destruction, is to be charged up to the four great crime-breeders of the day:

Intemperance, gambling, evil reading, and infidelity. The first three, like marauding guerrillas scattering missiles of death, are destroying thousands and tens of thousands. Their victims are struck down in the homes of the wealthy and through all grades in society to the hovels of the most wretched. Sons and daughters are stricken with a moral pestilence in the home. Guardians and parents are mourning over the loss of their children. Parents' hearts are broken, and schools, seminaries, and colleges are disgraced by the discovery of evils growing out of debauched minds.

Many evils sting to death in secret, while others stalk forth in open day.

The policy shop, lottery office, gambling hell, pool room, and race track gambling receive the patronage of some so-called respectable men, and are allowed by a deadened public conscience to conduct their business in open day, in defiance of law, order, and morals.

Intoxicating liquor is on tap in the land. Collected into one stream, and allowed to flow into one river, it would almost outrival Niagara's mighty flow.

Evil reading is the miasma of the moral atmosphere, which poisons the soul. Much of it is disseminated broadcast, and frequently enters the home where children dwell, with the tacit consent of the parent.

Outside of a very limited circle of earnest, devoted, and heroic men and women who have supported the work of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for the last score of years, there are very few in the community who have any idea of the blasting influences and the appalling effects flowing from the devil's printing press.

Many of the books are of a character so degrading that no human mind can be brought into contact with them without feeling a shock; while imagination receives an indelible stain that nothing but the grace of God can remove.