in breaking away, were terrible beyond description. Where one, who
has fallen into bad habits in youth, has afterwards abandoned them,
there are a score who have continued their victims, until ruin, and
a premature death, closed their career. How much safer, how much
easier and pleasanter, how much more promising and hopeful, to
commence life with good habits well established, with high
principles, sound maxims, enlightened rules of conduct, deeply fixed
in the soul. This is a plain, pleasant, prosperous path--readily
found, and easily followed. In no other can you secure true
enjoyment.

"We cannot live too slowly to be good
And happy, nor too much by line and square.
But youth is burning to forestall its nature,
And will not wait for time to ferry it
Over the stream; but flings itself into
The flood and perishes. *******
The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat
Oneself. **************"

There is nothing more essential to the young than to accustom
themselves to mature reflection, and practical observation, in
regard to the duties of life, and the sources of human enjoyment.
This is a task, however, which but few of the youthful are inclined
to undertake. The most of them are averse to giving up their
thoughts to sober meditation on the consequences which accrue from
different courses of conduct, or to practical observation on the
lessons taught by the experience of others. The Present!--the
Present!--its amusements, its gayeties, its fashions, absorbs nearly
all their thoughts. They have little relish to look towards the