single fact that she was intemperate, and that her religion was confined
to her fits of drunkenness, would explain it all. Of course, the
education of her son was utterly neglected. No pains were taken to
impress his mind with the maxims of truth and piety. He was never warned
against the power of temptation, but was suffered to mingle with the
profane and the profligate, without any guard against the unhallowed
influences to which he was exposed. This, of itself, would be enough to
account for his forming a habit of vice--even for his growing up a
profligate;--for such are the tendencies of human nature, that the mere
absence of counsel and guidance and restraint, is generally sufficient
to insure a vicious character. But in the case to which I refer, there
was more than the absence of a good example--there was the presence of a
positively bad one--and that in the form of one of the most degrading of
all vices. The boy saw his mother a drunkard, and why should he not
become a drunkard too? The boy saw that his mother's religious
professions were all identified with her fits of intoxication, and why
should he not grow up as he did, without any counteracting influence?
why should he not settle down with the conviction that religion is a
matter of no moment? nay, why should he not become what he actually did
become,--a scoffer and an atheist? Whenever I meet him, I see in his
face, not only a reproduction of his mother's features, but that which
tells of the reproduction of his mother's character. I pity him that he
should have had such a mother, while I loathe the qualities which he has
inherited from her, or which have been formed through the influence of
her example.

The other case forms a delightful contrast to the one already stated,
and is as full of encouragement as _that_ is full of warning. Another of
my playmates was a boy who was always noticed for being
perfectly-correct and unexceptionable in all his conduct. I never heard