he could assume, to warning and suggestion touching the dangers that
beset the feet of those who go out into this wicked world, and
become subject to its legion of temptations. All these warnings and
suggestions he considered as so many words wasted when offered to
himself.

"I'm in no danger," he would sometimes answer to relative or friend,
who ventured a remonstrance against certain associations, or
cautioned him about visiting certain places.

"If I wish to play a game of billiards, I will go to a billiard
saloon," was the firm position he assumed. "Is there any harm in
billiards? I can't help it if bad men play at billiards, and
congregate in billiard saloons. Bad men may be found anywhere and
everywhere; on the street, in stores, at all public places, even in
church. Shall I stay away from church because bad men are there?"

This last argument Martin Green considered unanswerable. Then he
would say,--

"If I want a plate of oysters, I'll go to a refectory, and I'll take
a glass of ale with my oysters, if it so pleases me. What harm, I
would like to know? Danger of getting into bad company, you say?
Hum-m! Complimentary to your humble servant! But I'm not the kind to
which dirt sticks."

So, confident of his own power to stand safely in the midst of
temptation, and ignorant of its thousand insidious approaches,
Martin Green, at the age of twenty-one, came and went as he pleased,
mingling with the evil and the good, and seeing life under