Let a young man, however upright and pure, associate habitually with
those who are profane, Sabbath-breaking, intemperate, and
unprincipled--who are given to gambling, licentiousness, and every
low, brutal and wicked practice--and but a brief space of time will
elapse before he will fall into like habits himself, and become as
great an adept in iniquitous proceedings as the most thorough-paced
profligate among them. When a young woman associates with girls who
are idle, disrespectful and disobedient to parents--who are vulgar,
brazen-faced, loud talkers and laughers--whose chief occupation and
delight is to spin street-yarn, to run from house to house and store
to store, and walk the streets in the evening, instead of being at
home engaged in some useful occupation--whose whole conversation,
and thoughts, and dreams, relate to dress, and fashion, and gewgaws,
and trinkets, to adorn the person, utterly negligent of the
ornaments of the mind and heart--whose reading never extends to
instructive and useful books, but is confined exclusively to sickly
novels and silly love-stories;--how long will it be before she will
become as careless and good-for-nothing as they?

This predisposition of the young to imitate the characteristics of
those with whom they associate, has been so well and so long known,
that it has given rise to the old proverb--"Show me your company,
and I will show you your character." So perfectly did Solomon
understand this, that he uttered the wise maxim--"Make no friendship
with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go; lest
thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul."

The young should remember, that people will judge them by the
company they keep. This principle is perfectly correct. In selecting
their associates, they act _voluntarily_. They choose such as they