Very much of the crime that is committed every day (and you cannot open a paper without seeing an account of some one who has gone wrong) is because people will live beyond their means; will spend more than they earn. They hope for an increase of pay, or that they will make money in some way or other, and then when that good time does not come, and as they can’t afford to wait for it, they take something, only borrowing it as they say, but they take it and spend it, or pay some pressing debt with it, and then, and then――they are caught, and sent to court, and tried and sent to――well, you know without my telling you. As to the mind. You have fine opportunities for education here, but they will soon be over, and if you leave this college without having a good knowledge of the practical branches of study pursued here, and which Mr. Girard especially enjoined should be taught, you will be at a great disadvantage with other boys who are well educated. I had a letter in my pocket a few days ago written by a Girard boy, and dated in the Moyamensing Prison, full of bad spelling and bad grammar; and next to the horror of knowing he was in prison, I felt ashamed, that a boy so ignorant of the very commonest branches of English education should have ever been within the walls of this college. I think I have told you before of a man who employs a large number of men, whose business amounts to perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in a year, who is entirely ignorant of accounts, and who a few years ago was robbed and almost ruined by his book-keeper, and who would now give half of what he is worth, and that is a good deal, if he could understand book-keeping; for he is entirely dependent upon other people to keep his accounts. As to books, be careful what you read. How it grieves me to see errand boys in street-cars, and sometimes as they walk in the streets, reading such stuff as is found in the dime novels. Not merely a waste of time, though that is bad enough, but a positive injury to the mind, filling it with the most improbable stories, and often, also, with that which is positively vicious. Read something better than this. Do not confine yourselves to newspapers, and do not read police reports. Attractive as this class of reading is, it is for the most part hurtful to the young mind. There is an abundance of cheap and good reading, magazines and periodicals; and books and books, good, bad, indifferent; and you will hardly know which to choose unless you ask others who are older than you, and who know books. Most boys read little but novels; and there are many thoroughly good novels, humorous, and pathetic, and historical. Don’t buy books unless you have plenty of money; for you can get everything you want out of the public libraries; and this was not so, or at least to this extent, when I was a boy. As to work or business.