p. 97Home Destroyers (Continued)

We have seen a few of the dark foes whom the Enemy of God and man leagues with himself and his fallen angels to mar all the most merciful designs of the Creator on human society,—on the Home, especially, which is or ought to be the nursery of Godlike manhood.

Within the Earthly Paradise, as its Divine Author planned it in the beginning, we know how many perennial fountains of life-giving waters gushed forth and made everlasting springtide in the place.

There, too, was the Tree of Life, yielding man, by a loving provision of his Maker, the healthful nourishment that fed every vital source in the body, while keeping every faculty of the soul fresh and disposed for all the labor of intellectual life.

Why will man, instead of enjoying beneath the shadow of God’s wings, all these manifold sources of health, and sweetness, and strength, and joy, turn his back on God and them, and follow the beckoning of his soul’s enemies, to seek outside his little paradise, false pleasure, food that poisons both soul and body, misery, degradation, and death?

Let not the reader, however, misinterpret the lesson of the Divine Book, or misunderstand what is sought to be here conveyed. We are but too apt to attribute to the hidden working of the Evil One or his allied spirits, the moral degradation and temporal ruin wrought around us in the lives and homes of men by their own sin, originating in their own mind and heart, and consummated by their own free will, in spite of the lights and warning voice of conscience.

Of course, we do not and cannot deny it,—for it is the plain sense of God’s revealed word both in the Old and in the New Testament,—man is assailed by his inveterate and sleepless Foe in many ways, and has, as well, much to fear from the seductive words and examples of his fellow-men. Nevertheless, his true danger lies within his own heart: he is, himself, his own greatest enemy.

Hence, for once that our temptation and the occasion of our fall come from without, ten times, a hundred times, the sole cause of our sin and its consequences may be traced to ourselves. The guilty thought and imagination are the spontaneous growth of our own soul, as well as the subsequent resistance to conscience, and the final full and free consent given to evil.

There is nothing more pitiful in the brief story of the downfall and arraignment of our First Parents, as plainly told in Genesis,—than Adam’s shifting the guilt off his own shoulders to his companion’s, and her imitation of her husband’s pusillanimity and cowardice, in throwing the blame on the Serpent.

In this prevaricating weakness, we all show ourselves but too truly the offspring of these great criminals,—by transferring to the Tempter the primal blame for our misdeeds. Alas,—if we look well into our own soul and the truthful record of our own conscience, we shall most surely find that we are, ourselves, our own worst tempters, and, most frequently, our sole tempters.

Let us have the courage, then, to call our soul to a candid account for our transgressions. In looking into our own consciousness, and scrutinizing impartially the causes that have led to make of our lives a something so different from what God had designed and we had once hoped ourselves,—we shall find that our own hands have marred the plan of God and of the nature He so richly endowed. There is not one of us,—when some sudden illness or catastrophe places the soul on the verge of eternity,—to whom conscience does not hold up the twofold truthful image of what “I am” and what I “Might-have-been.” Beneath the all-revealing splendor of that light which issues from the near Judgment Seat, I cannot help seeing, with overwhelming evidence, what God designed me to be, with all the possibilities placed by Him at my disposal,—and side by side with that most loving and glorious plan, stands staring me in the face, that other image of what I have made myself. All my past life, with its misused graces and lost opportunities, like a horrible reflection of myself, cries out to me:

“Look in my face: my name is MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN.”

I seem, as the last waves of time, receding for ever, leave me stranded on the beach, to stand upon the shore of the Dead Sea of all my hopes, in which lie buried opportunities, graces, untold treasures of strength vouchsafed to lift me up to God’s own level,—and just as the foam of the last wave frets my feet, my own heart is like a shell picked up from that desolate strand; and holding it to my ear, I hear within it the echo of that abyss of time over which I have passed in vain. And the sound it brings to me, says: For thee time is “No More!” Thou wouldst fain profit of graces and opportunities, when it is all “Too Late.” Thou wouldst live as becometh a child of God, a fellow-citizen of the Angels, a dweller in the Heavenly Jerusalem,—when it is all in vain: thou must perforce bid “Farewell” to the society of the Angels, to the bliss of the Supernal City, and to that God who is their light and their love,—to all an eternal “Farewell!” The horrible image of what I made myself throws on the dying soul a dark “shadow” and a chill intolerable as of the everlasting death, while behind the thin “screen” which separates the ending present from the endless future, appear dim visions of that last doom, still “unuttered,” but “intolerable.”

If the true-hearted husband and father would, therefore, not be haunted and maddened in the last dreadful extremity by the apparition of his lost “Life and Love” rising up before him, to show him what both life and love in the home might have been, let him begin now in earnest to make that home his true and sole paradise.

Seeking Pleasure outside the Home

There is another class of husbands who are the enemies of their own domestic happiness,—such as seem to think that home can afford them neither congenial society, nor rational amusement.

Of course, we are perfectly aware, that many men of every rank in the community are driven to the tavern, the low theater, or the club-house, by deplorable selfishness or apathy of a wife or a mother, who will not or cannot make home attractive to the husband or the son. Elsewhere we have shown how the husband has to exert himself, as in the performance of a most sacred duty, to contribute his share, and if need be, the principal share, in all that makes the domestic hearth warm, bright, joyous, and delightful. Let the heart of a true man only be set on making of his own home the most attractive and soul-satisfying spot on earth, and he cannot fail of success. This is one of the fundamental and indispensable duties of a father and husband’s office, and God is bound to assist him in his earnest endeavor, nay, God and his angels are interested in promoting his purpose.

We suppose, however, in what we have to say here, that the fault is not on the side of the wife, the mother, or the daughters: that they are most anxious to keep the gentlemen of the family at home, most desirous to devote themselves to their comfort and amusement, and every way capable of rendering the evening hours and the Sabbath repose most pleasant and profitable.

It not unfrequently happens, in a country such as the United States, where steady and persevering industry is pretty sure to enable the laborer to rise to wealth and position, that a real difficulty is thus created for the husband. He has risen, and has given his family a luxurious home. But his wife and, sometimes, his daughters as well, have not risen with him. He is ambitious to mix with the cultivated society among which his fortune enables him to move. But he cannot invite to his home men who are his equals in wealth, and his superiors in birth and in long-acquired social standing; nor,—were his daughters sufficiently educated to make up for their mother’s deficiency, would such gentlemen,—save only for some passing political purpose,—be willing to accept his invitation, or to admit him and his to their home circles. Meanwhile there is in the bosom of men of this class a yearning for “better society,” which impels them to turn their back on their own fireside and seek so much of this society as they can find on the neutral ground of certain clubs and associations. Hence the danger of utterly neglecting what is due to one’s own home, and of seeking and never finding the happiness inseparably attached, for the husband and father, to the company of his wife and children. Hence, too, the many temptations thrown in the way of men, who have plenty of money, without the sweet attractions of home-enjoyment to hold them from pursuing a downward course of distraction and dissipation.

We have seen this evil,—so frequently to be met with in a society like our own,—remedied only by such wisdom and piety as we mentioned in a preceding chapter.¹1See pages 47-52, and Chapter IV. throughout.

Similar, and more touching instances of devotion to the dear ones who, having shared the early battle with poverty, have a right to share in all the home-bliss that affluence can bring,—are to be found all around us. For if there are many (shall we say too many?) who are all too anxious to assert themselves and make the most of their newly acquired wealth,—there are also very many, whom their natural good sense induces to be satisfied with the solid and substantial comforts of a modest home, of a sound education for their children, of devotion to the friends who have stood by them in the dark hours, and of the blissful satisfaction of being for the poor and the suffering within their reach God’s watchful eye and helpful hand. There is not a priest on our wide missionary field all over the North American continent, who does not know many such homes as we are here describing in a few faint outlines. One, in particular, we shall sketch briefly, throwing over the picture such a veil as may cover the sensitive, shrinking modesty of the model husband and wife.

The Man who Drank of the Waters of his own Well

He had been forced to seek a refuge in America, by political troubles in his native land, in which his family had been seriously implicated,—though he had himself taken no active part. Still the indiscriminating passion, which usurped the place of public justice, having marked him also out for punishment, left him no alternative but flight and exile. Landing at New Orleans, he met with alternate success and ill fortune, and at length his failing health as well as the desire of joining his wife and children lately arrived in New York, led him to go North. He arrived in the great city almost as penniless as when he first landed in New Orleans. But his steady temperate habits, his trust in God, his quiet, persevering industry, and the indomitable will to succeed, raised him, step by step, to the front rank of business men. All this while, he with his wife and three children lived most modestly, giving without stint the money he earned to every need, and remaining almost unknown to the very clergymen who were the recipients or the distributers of his most liberal charities.

The village near which he had located the factory to which he owed his great fortune, did not contain a single person professing his faith or belonging to his own nationality; yet he was not the less respected by the very highest in the place, and none the less popular among the laborers whom he employed. His word was his bond in commercial circles, his gentle firmness gave him authority over his workmen, and his intelligent liberality in encouraging the best talent, together with his generous care of the sick and suffering, won him the hearts of all. So, the silent, mild-mannered, simply dressed man moved about in his own little world of labor, the personification of true authority, creating happiness and love by continual beneficence.

To the priest of the distant city to whom he periodically went to confession, he never made his name known during the first period of his prosperity, although he invariably left with him large alms for his poor, or liberal donations for his parochial institutions.

He had labored seriously and successfully to educate himself during all these years, teaching himself all the branches necessary and useful to him in his calling; but his quick intelligence, his wide experience of men, and his sound practical judgment enabled him to go far beyond the mere letter of what he learned. While giving his children (two girls and a boy) a solid common-school and business education, he was careful to make his wife,—his own twin-soul in disposition and ability,—study with him during his after-business hours. Not even his own children were allowed to suspect the occupation of their dear parents during the long night-hours devoted year after year to self-improvement. Nor, when grown up to manhood and womanhood, they found both father and mother able to converse with the most intelligent and accomplished, giving as well as receiving information on the topics introduced, did they for a moment imagine that there had been in the early training of both a defect which nothing but the most persistent labor in after-life enabled them to remedy. The husband’s first effort in that direction had been to speak and write the English language in its purity, without much caring to correct his native accent. And this he also made the first object of his wife’s private studies. We have read letters from both, not only free from grammatical errors of any kind, but perfect models of simplicity, sound sense, and good taste. And, for hours together, we have conversed with them without being able to remark a single flaw in their conversation. And all this was the result of private study, after the first period of youth had been passed, and when both were engrossed with the management of a large and growing business, and the cares of a family!

What was most admirable, however, was their quiet and comfortable home, in which furniture and servants seemed to reflect the quiet, gentle, modest character of the master and mistress, and in which the children were evidently the natural growth of the parental tree,—the daughters bright, intelligent, handsome, healthy, and radiant like their mother,—and the son what one would think his father must have been at the same age,—self-possessed, courteous without affectation, cordial in word and manner, low-voiced in conversation, and warming gradually into real eloquence on subjects that interested his convictions.

It was evident, even to the casual visitor, that the members of this family were all in all to each other. The father never would accept invitations from the most distinguished men in the community, who entertained a deep respect for the man’s upright character and uncommon sagacity, and were anxious to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance with a household, a glimpse of whose interior resembled a view from the dusty and sun-broiled thoroughfare of a green, shady resting-place beneath the high trees, where wild flowers scent the cool air and the song of birds make the stillness vocal.

No one who had ever enjoyed the hospitality of that abode of unaffected simplicity and true self-respect, but wished to return again. None of that family ever spent a single day or night away from that true home in which their whole heart dwelt, but longed to be back again in its atmosphere of love and peace and sunshine.

We hold up a mirror to many a true-hearted man, to husbands and fathers dazzled by the glare of a false and dangerous respectability, misled by a wrong estimate of the real nature of home-life and domestic happiness. We pray that theirs may be the unspeakable enjoyment which crowned the life of a husband, who felt that he had in himself and the virtues of his loved companion too rich a store of goodness, greatness, and self-content, to seek outside of his own home-life for any one satisfaction necessary to himself and his dear ones.

Men who seek the Bitter Waters of the Desert

From this home,—like the skylark’s lowly nest hidden far away from the roadside, amid the hay and fragrant clover, or like that of the nightingale buried in the soft mosses and undergrowth of the deep forest,—we turn to the desolate home of the man of fashion or dissipation, resembling the heaps of sand on some river-bank, in which the Australian bird²2The TALLEGALLA, or Australian BRUSH-TURKEY. deposits her eggs, leaving them to be hatched by the burning tropical sun, while the young brood are deprived of a mother’s tender and watchful care or of a father’s protection.

When,—as we have shown in the last example,—it is within a husband’s power to create himself a paradise, in which body and soul may find repose, refreshment, and all true contentment after labor and at the end of life, what folly and what guilt are not the man’s who throws his money, his time, his health, and his heart away on outside pursuits,—like waters poured out on the barren desert where tree or shrub or flower will never grow!

For,—after all,—wealth inherited or acquired, a social position obtained from one’s family or conquered by one’s own merit, talents, time, health, and opportunity,—everything which enables a man to be conspicuous, influential, to be a living power for the common weal or the good of his own dear ones,—is heaven-given, and may be wasted like water poured out on the barren sands. You have wealth, a home that may be honored, a family that may be happy, health and strength and fruitful years before you;—will you be the steady light of that home? the very heart of that family’s happiness? Will you make what remains of life, like the crown of the palm tree when loaded down with its ripe, delicious fruit? Then seek within your home, in the company of your wife and children, the sole satisfaction which can secure your own felicity and contribute to theirs.

Look around you, and see, in this great city, in every city throughout the land, in the great centers of population, wealth, and industry that you are acquainted with from personal observation or the reliable report of others,—how many families are made wretched or utterly ruined, how many lives are degraded, how many hearts broken, how many reputations are blasted, and how many honorable careers are brought to the most shameful ending,—by the fascinations of the club-room or the gambling-house!

We have known, through their results,—just as one learns to judge the pitiless might of the angry ocean from the wrecks and the corpses cast up on the beach,—the terrible consequences of club-life in Paris and London, as well as in New York. We know that the tide of custom which carries men away from the quiet and duties of home-life to the club-room and the gambling-table, is daily gaining volume and velocity. Can no warning voice be raised? Modern science has invented a most admirable system of storm-signals, warning vessels setting out to sea of the danger which threatens them on the waves, and these signals are only the result of a still more admirable system of weather observations.

Can the sacred science of the theologian and moralist, or the zeal of a priestly heart, not invent and apply some such warnings to the souls that are still on the firm ground of domestic duty faithfully discharged, but who are sadly tempted to try the ventures and enjoy the excitement of these currents of social life so full of shipwreck and sorrow?

The wrecks themselves and the sight of their victims may serve to warn the unwary, the venturesome, or the tempted.

A Young Mechanic’s Fearful Example

Here is a young artisan who has been all his life a model of filial devotion to his parents, absolutely irreproachable in his morals, most esteemed as a tradesman, and handsomely remunerated for his labor, at the moment his parents induce him to marry a girl of his own class, in every way suited to him by her education, practical tastes, unsullied innocence, and true piety. The marriage and the very comfortable establishment made for the young people, are the joint work of their two excellent families, as much as their union is the result of real mutual affection.

All the relations and friends who have seen them in their new home have pronounced them most happy, and their handsome little dwelling a picture of comfort. A few months of unalloyed bliss have passed over them, disclosing to each the solid and lovable qualities of the other, and thus drawing closer the sacred bond between them. Till that hour the young husband, though possessing many warm friends and admiring acquaintances, has never belonged to any club or association,—never, indeed, been inside a club-house. Not so his companions in the workshop. The foremost among them and one of the junior partners of the firm, belong to a very influential club of tradesmen, unmarried men for the most part,—on whose roll of membership are the names of very many distinguished mechanics in the city. Our young husband is made to believe, now that his independent position as a married man opens to him new prospects of fortune and advancement,—that, in their business, a man cannot hope to reach any high degree of eminence, unless he belongs to a club like theirs. This is the chief reason which prevails on the inexperienced youth to join them.

He does so reluctantly and with many strong misgivings. But he does so because the support he is promised from his fellow-members, will, he thinks, enable him to reach that point of success and prosperity, which will contribute so materially to his wife’s happiness. From her, however, he keeps his membership a secret. The single evening spent at the club, has been that on which he was elected and received the warm congratulations of his associates. So, he hopes,—indeed, he is sure,—that his duties toward them will not take him away from the company of his young wife, or interfere with his domestic duties.

The First Cup

To be sure,—once the election was over, and the new member had made his neat little speech, and shaken hands with all present,—refreshments were partaken of in the adjoining restaurant, and he had to drink a health or two. This was an innovation in his hitherto orderly and strictly abstemious life. For he was the son of a man who had gained in youth a great and rare victory over habitual intemperance, and who had been most careful to preserve his children from the curse which had blighted his own most precious years. It so happened, too, that his reception into the club took place a few days only before the Fourth of July, and he was invited to make one of the addresses customary on the occasion. Then he was charged with proposing a toast at a public banquet to take place in the evening under the auspices of the club.

All this filled his young wife with secret forebodings of evil. His life-long habits of sobriety had been one of her husband’s chief recommendations to her parents, one of the solid reasons on which her own esteem for him was founded. She noticed his excited and strange manner on his return home the night of his election, but forebore from either question, remark, or reproach. On the Fourth of July he came in very late after the banquet, and came in intoxicated, noisy, and violent! She had spent the day in agony; she feared she knew not what, as the birds and brute beasts feel instinctively the approach of an earthquake, as sea-birds divine the coming of a tidal wave and fly promptly to the shore and the highlands.

So did the gentle and pious girl take refuge from her own unexplained fears in prayer, lifting up her heart to God in the highest. Indeed, she was still on her knees, when the hurried ringing of the door-bell startled her, making her heart beat violently. She could not stir from the spot on which she had been kneeling, endeavoring to overcome the faintness and the sudden heartache she felt, as they bore in her husband, swearing, struggling with his companions, and uttering threats of vengeance against some real or imaginary foe. His rage increased on seeing his young wife pale, silent, riveted to the spot on which she stood, and staring at the scene before her with frightened and fixed eyes. She soon recovered herself, thanking in a few words the two worthies who were only a little less intoxicated than her husband. After much exertion she succeeded in pacifying him, and inducing him to undress and take the rest he needed.

The next morning found him sick in heart and head. Not one word of reproach was uttered by the little wife; nor did she so much as allude to the scene of the preceding night. This ought to have touched the husband more than anything else. But in truth his brain had not yet recovered from the effects of the last day’s excitement and of the deep debauch with which it had closed. So, although he vowed interiorly that he should never again be seen in such a state, he did not express to his wife by word or look the sorrow he really felt. On the contrary, he put a bold face on it, saying that “men were men; that he had to do a man’s part in public and on great occasions; that his speeches had been well received, that many had highly complimented him, and that he had to comply with the custom of gentlemen on such public occasions, to drink toasts to his friends and admirers;”... and much more to the same purpose.

To all this the wife made no reply, save by the tears which fell silently down her cheeks. The husband observed them with a keen pang of anguish; but, with that perversity of judgment and feeling which many men, “honorable” and educated and high-born men,—mistake or feign to mistake for manliness and independence,—the culprit only blustered and bungled the more as he went on justifying his own moral cowardice. He was yet speaking when one of his associate workmen came in according to appointment, and both sallied out together, leaving the young wife to her grief and her sad forebodings.

They sallied out, breakfasted together at a neighboring restaurant, seasoning their breakfast with some needed stimulant, and then went to the factory.

Fast in the Folds of the Serpent

Shall we continue the details of this sad story? Here was a young man about to contract one of these dreadful habits which bind the soul with chains as firm as those which hold down the inhabitants of the City of the Eternal Death. A friendly hand might have led him away from the fatal downward path, which to him was a path almost untrodden, and certainly unloved. His wife, young as she was, could and should, with that deep, clear-sighted wisdom that is one of the gifts of woman, have been this friend, had he turned to her. But the Tempter was at hand in the fellow-workman who had called for him, and who had remarked the young wife’s tears that morning, and hastened, when they were alone in the street, to twit his companion on his being “hen-pecked,” and tied to his wife’s apron-strings.

A well-seasoned tippler himself, and a man who had already broken one wife’s heart, he related to more than one in the workshop that his young friend had been severely lectured by his bride for returning home jolly on the Fourth of July. So, after laboring hours, the young husband,—who had now sobered down and had been making very serious resolutions of amendment, was surrounded by a group of inveterate drinkers, who bantered him mercilessly about his meek subjection to his wife.

From that hour he fell, like a forsaken ship, into the hands and under the direction of these unprincipled men. Vainly did he struggle to escape from the thraldom they exercised. Week after week he followed them to the club and the tavern, at first only “to assert his manhood and his independence,” as was the slang of his fellows; and soon, to gratify the craving for alcoholic excitement, which had now become his ruling passion.

Dragged down to Perdition

To his poor young wife he manifested, alternately, the most touching sentiments of tenderness and repentance, or those of downright brutality,—of brutality when crazed by drink,—of repentance and love, when thoroughly awakened from the temporary insanity produced by alcohol. She never permitted herself one word of reproach. When her husband returned to her weekly, body and soul deformed by the evil spirit that entered into him with alcohol, she only sought to soothe him and hide him away from every eye. God alone saw the tears she shed unceasingly, as she besought Him to accept her life as a sacrifice of atonement for her husband’s guilt, and to grant in return the grace of final repentance to her lost one.

The heart-rending agony of grief and shame which the poor wretch underwent in the intervals between his relapses, was something most pitiful to behold. The good priest who had married them also added his fatherly advice to the promptings of remorse; and there followed a few spasmodic efforts of amendment. But the examples, the jests and sneers of his bottle-companions, were too powerful for a will naturally infirm, and growing weaker by every new resolution violated, and every additional sin of intoxication.

And thus the young inebriate continued his downward course with accelerated speed,—till he lost his position of foreman in the workshop, lost at length all opportunity for work, which his health and habits rendered him unfit to perform, and lost to his creditors of the tavern the very roof above him, the handsome and comfortable home bestowed on him by his good father.

Ruin, Death, Insanity

The latter took the young and heart-broken wife to his own home, lavishing on her the warmest and most tender care. She survived only by a few hours the birth of her first babe, and the babe itself had no sooner been regenerated by baptism, than its spirit rejoined its mother on high. They laid them both to rest together, the little blossom on the parent stem; while the husband and father sought a refuge against his grief and despair in furious and continual intoxication,—till at length reason gave way forever, and his parents had to place the madman in an insane asylum.

The Scandal Spreads from Above Downward

This young mechanic was only one of the tens of thousands who in any one of our States, daily travel down the road to ruin, following in the footsteps of their betters. The Mechanics’ Club and the connected tavern are only a copy of so many aristocratic resorts of the same nature, with their restaurants, their unlimited facilities for gambling and dissipation, and their hordes of wealthy and fashionable husbands and fathers, who learn there to forget and violate all their most sacred home-duties,—wasting the often hard-won wealth and the golden opportunities of mature life, in ruining soul and body, and bringing as well, ruin and desolation to the home they were made to gladden and glorify.

How many well-born men, who were on their way to honors higher than birth or gold can ever purchase in a free country, and who are at this moment the inmates of the public prison or of the insane asylum, because they preferred to the charities, the duties, the repose and delight of home-life, the glitter, the excitement, the manifold fascinations of club-life, and betrayed their conscience, their honor, and their trust to gratify the habits of criminal extravagance and dissipation contracted there!

How many men once most happy and most honored,—favored public officers, successful merchants or manufacturers, lawyers and physicians trusted with the honor and health of families,—men blessed with accomplished and devoted wives, with doating and most virtuous children, who have allowed themselves to be fascinated by the sounds and sights and amusements of the club-house, and of what the club-house leads to,—and are now gone before their time to a dishonored grave, after bequeathing to wife and children a name which all the waters of the Hudson could not wash clean! And how many others are left, after making a wreck of fortune, reputation and home, to drag on a wretched existence, unhonored, and unloved, despised alike by their fellow-citizens and themselves!

To be sure, it is in the power of the rich man to neglect his wife and family, and to make his home of the tavern, without bringing poverty on those who call him husband and father, or without having his offenses laid bare to the public eye or visited by the reproof of the magistrate or so much as a notice from the officers of the law. We happen to hear of many of these so-called “Cottages,” or pet taverns, patronized exclusively by the wealthy, where the recreant head of a family, because he happens to be blessed or cursed with a superabundance of money,—can hide himself away for weeks and months, every one of his vicious appetites pandered to, and the consequences of his debauch most carefully screened from all but his boon companions.

And when wealth and station, when culture and the most responsible professions are thus made to teach the laboring classes the very worst lessons of example,—is God going to perform a miracle by saving society from the destroying hands and corrupting examples of the governing and leading classes?

How the Leading Classes must Lead

The leading classes,—if they would lead at all to any purpose under a republican form of government,—must lead by the ascendency of virtuous example. It is agreed on all hands by the men most competent to forecast our future weal or woe from a scientific survey of the present, that on the purity of home-life in every class of the community, depends the longevity of the nation as well as its prosperity. Leading classes there are, of course, among us, as elsewhere,—and the home of the mechanic and the laborer will be evermore modeled on that of the man above him in wealth, office, station, or profession. The life of the clergyman, the lawyer, the physician, the magistrate, the merchant, or the manufacturer, will be instinctively studied by all who look up to them for teaching and guidance, for direction, support, and employment. Your servants, your daily laborers, all who depend on you or come in any way within the reach of your influence and example,—will copy you so far as they can in their way of living, their amusements and recreations.

Hence it behooves every home among the governing and leading classes,—that the example it sets, like the radiance of a light-house near a dangerous coast,—should be steady and guide surely amid darkness and storm.

We have seen the baneful influences of the club-house and the aristocratic tavern copied by the naturally ambitious classes of mechanics and skilled laborers. We see,—to our grief and dismay,—that the young people of both sexes belonging to the poorest of the working classes, are zealously copying the worst forms of fashionable amusement, in their cheap theaters, cheap dances, Saturday night free balls,—and such like.

They swarm to them from the crowded down-town districts like flies in midsummer to a putrid carcass or a heap of fermenting vegetable matter; and, on Sunday mornings more especially, as we can testify, they are to be seen issuing in noisy swarms from these hotbeds of corruption, intoxicated with alcohol, sensual excitement, and passion, crowding the street-cars,—young girls and young boys utterly forgetful and regardless of modesty, decency, and self-respect,—returning to their homes as a blight and a curse, or prowling through the streets ready for every lawless deed of violence and murder!

No preaching can avail to stop the festering of this mighty mass of corruption,—no doctoring can avail to stop this gangrene which has fixed itself on the young of both sexes, the twin-roots of the society of the future,—unless the men of the leading classes, by the shining morality of their own lives, and the beautiful teachings of homes made attractive and blissful, shall encourage and enable the poor man,—the laborers from whose hearths these swarms of pleasure-seekers issue,—to make their homes so bright and delightful that young maidens and young boys shall never leave them,—but to join pure hands and virgin hearts at the matrimonial altar before building up blessed homes of their own.

Oh! let no one, who knows how lightly we have, in these last pages, passed over an evil that chaste minds would not care to fathom, blame the writer for saying thus much and no more. Let all, on the contrary, who have at heart the preservation and perfection of home-life in our midst, bethink them only of contributing each his best endeavor toward thus making our homes, in every class, the nurseries of true men and true women,—innocent before marriage, chaste and stainless after marriage, God-fearing, self-respecting, and self-denying.

With this not unnecessary digression, we close this first part of the present subject-matter, reserving what remains for another chapter.