Part 4

"XXX." If I were going to write a story, the first chapter would be XXX.; the last--"A pawnbroker's shop."

Be watchful! At this season all the allurements to dissipation will be especially busy. Let not your flight to hell be in the winter.

I also remark that the winter evenings, through their very length, allow great swing for indulgences. Few young men would have the taste to go to their room at seven o'clock, and sit until eleven, reading Motley's Dutch Republic or John Foster's Essays. The young men who have been confined to the store all day want fresh air and sight-seeing; and they must go somewhere. The most of them have, of a winter's evening, three or four hours of leisure. After the evening repast, the young man puts on his hat and coat and goes out.

"Come in here," cries one form of allurement.

"Come in here," cries another.

"Go;" says Satan. "You ought to see for yourself."

"Why don't you go?" says a comrade. "It is a shame for a young man to be as green as you are. By this time you ought to have seen everything."

Especially is temptation strong in such times as this, when business is dull. I have noticed that men spend more money when they have little to spend.

The tremendous question to be settled by our great populace, day by day, is how to get a livelihood. Many of our young men, just starting for themselves, are very much discouraged. They had hoped before this to have set up a household of their own. But their gains have been slow, and their discouragements many. The young man can hardly take care of himself. How can he take care of another? And, to the curse of modern society, before a young man is able to set up a home of his own, he is expected to have enough to support in idleness somebody else; when God intended that they should begin together, and jointly earn a livelihood. So, many of our young men are utterly discouraged, and utterly unfit to resist temptation.

The time the pirate bears down upon the ship is when its sails are down and it is making no headway.

People wish they had more time to think. The trouble is now, that people have too much time to think. Give to many of our commercial men the four hours of these winter nights, with nothing to divert them, and before spring they will have lodgings in an insane asylum.

I remark further, that the winter is especially trying to the moral character of our young men, because some of their homes in winter are especially unattractive. In summer they can sit on the steps, or have a bouquet in the vase on the mantel; and the evenings are so short that soon after gas-light they feel like retiring. Parents do not take enough pains to make these long winter nights attractive.

It is strange that old people know so little about young people. One would think that they had never been young themselves, but had been born with their spectacles on. It is dolorous for young people to spend the three or four hours of a winter's evening with parents who sit talking over their own ailments and misfortunes, and the nothingness of this world. How dare you talk such blasphemy? God was busy six days in making the world, and has allowed it to hang six thousand years on his holy heart; and that world hath fed you, and clothed you, and shone on you for fifty years: and yet you talk about the nothingness of this world! Do you expect the young people in your family to sit a whole evening and hear you groan about this magnificent, star-lighted, sun-warmed, shower-baptized, flower-strewn, angel-watched, God-inhabited planet? From such homes young men make a wild plunge into dissipation. Many of you have the means: why do you not buy them a violin or a picture? or have your daughter cultured in music until she can help to make home attractive?

There are ten thousand ways of lighting up the domestic circle. It requires no large income, no big house, no rich wardrobe, no chased silver, no gorgeous upholstery, but a parental heart awake to its duty.

Have a doleful home and your children will not stay in it, though you block up the door with Bibles, and tie fast to them a million Heidelberg catechisms.

I said to a man, "This is a beautiful tree in front of your house."

He answered, with a whine, "Yes; but it will fade."

I said to him, "You have a beautiful garden."

He replied, "Yes; but it will perish."

I found out afterward that his son was a vagabond, and I was not surprised at it.

You cannot groan men into decency, but you can groan them out.

Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter! Devote these December, January and February evenings to high pursuits, innocent amusements, intelligent socialities, and Christian attainments. Do not waste this winter. We shall soon have seen the last snow-shower, and have passed up into the companionship of Him whose raiment is exceeding white as snow--as no fuller on earth can whiten it.

To the right-hearted, the winter nights of earth will soon end in the June morning of heaven.

The River of God, from under the Throne, never freezes over. The foliage of Life's fair tree is never frost-bitten. The festivals, and hilarities, and family gatherings of Christmas times on earth, will give way to the larger reunions, and the brighter lights, and the gladder scenes, and the sweeter garlands, and the richer feastings of the great holiday of Heaven.

THE POWER OF CLOTHES.

One cannot always tell by a man's coat what kind of a heart he has under it; still, his dress is apt to be the out-blossoming of his character, and is not to be disregarded.

We make no indiscriminate onslaught upon customs of dress. Why did God put spots on the pansy, or etch the fern leaf? And what are china-asters good for if style and color are of no importance?

The realm is as wide as the world, and as far-reaching as all the generations, over which fashion hath extended her sceptre. For thousands of years she hath sat queen over all the earth, and the revolutions that rock down all other thrones have not in the slighest affected her domination. Other constitutions have been torn, and other laws trampled; but to her decrees conquerors have bowed their plumes, and kings have uncovered. Victoria is not Queen of England; Napoleon was not Emperor of France; Isabella was not Queen of Spain. Fashion has been regnant over all the earth; and lords and dukes, kings and queens, have been the subjects of her realm.