But seen too oft, familiar with the face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

The subtle thing about it is, that the first embracing of any sin seems to be
but a trifling, an occasional affair. For one who lives in an ordinary city
of a thousand inhabitants or upwards, unless he is an "out-and-out"
Christian and selects only associates like himself, it becomes a real
Embarrassment not to indulge in a social drink. It seems polite, clever,
the kindly thing to do. And the sad fact is, that the majority of unchristian
young people and many older ones do not decline. To prove this we have
but to look at the human wrecks along the shore. Two young men lived
near our home. Their parents were well-to-do. The family grew tired of
the farm and moved to town. The boys fell in with bad company. They
did not decline the social glass. Soon they furnished other young men with
drink from their own pocket. This was fifteen years ago. To-day one of
them is a hardened sinner, violent in his passions and blasphemous against
God. The other one, having spent a term in our Illinois State University at
Champaign, married a beautiful neighbor girl and moved to Missouri. Here
he lived off the money of his father's estate, practicing his early-learned
habits of drinking, gambling, and loafing. He moved from State to State
until, finally left in poverty, he tended bar in a saloon. While visiting with
relatives in his old neighborhood a few years ago he stole a watch and some
money from his own nephew, and was tried in the courts, and sentenced to
the penitentiary for one year. His wife, having carried the burden of
disgrace and want through all these years, with the seven unfortunate
children were released from him to struggle alone. All this we have seen
with our own eyes as the years have come and gone. The downfall and
ruin of this young man, and the unsaved fate of his brother, easily may be
traceable to the "social glass" and the boon companions of the social
glass--tobacco and playing-cards. Last year I met a man who had prided