It is much easier to start right and keep right, than to start wrong, and then endeavor to get right. Although those who take the wrong path at the commencement, should afterwards seek to obtain the right one, and persevere until they find it, still the labor to retrieve the early error will be difficult. It is painful to walk in the way of wickedness--it is painful to break away from it, when once there. It is painful to continue on--it is painful to turn back. This is in consequence of the _nature_ of sin. It is a path all evil, all pain, all darkness--everything connected with it is fruitful of wretchedness. Those who stray therein, find themselves beset with perils and troubles on all sides. Avoid it, as you love happiness! "Ne'er till to-morrow's light delay What may as well be done to-day; Ne'er do to-day, what on the morrow Will wring your heart with sighs and sorrow." A young man may, in early life, fall into vicious habits, and afterwards turn from them. Some have done so. But they declare that the struggles they were compelled to make--the conflicts and trials, the buffeting of evil passions, and the mental agony they endured, in breaking away, were terrible beyond description. Where one, who has fallen into bad habits in youth, has afterwards abandoned them, there are a score who have continued their victims, until ruin, and a premature death, closed their career. How much safer, how much easier and pleasanter, how much more promising and hopeful, to commence life with good habits well established, with high principles, sound maxims, enlightened rules of conduct, deeply fixed in the soul. This is a plain, pleasant, prosperous path--readily found, and easily followed. In no other can you secure true enjoyment. "We cannot live too slowly to be good And happy, nor too much by line and square. But youth is burning to forestall its nature, And will not wait for time to ferry it Over the stream; but flings itself into The flood and perishes. ******* The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat Oneself. **************" There is nothing more essential to the young than to accustom themselves to mature reflection, and practical observation, in regard to the duties of life, and the sources of human enjoyment. This is a task, however, which but few of the youthful are inclined to undertake. The most of them are averse to giving up their thoughts to sober meditation on the consequences which accrue from different courses of conduct, or to practical observation on the lessons taught by the experience of others. The Present!--the Present!--its amusements, its gayeties, its fashions, absorbs nearly all their thoughts. They have little relish to look towards the future, except to anticipate the continuance of the novelty and joyousness of the spring-time of life. The poet utters a most salutary admonition in his beautiful lines: