Oh, that the duties, the responsibilities, the self-sacrifices of wedded life were better understood, their sacred character more fully appreciated, how would each home become a temple of love, each fireside an altar, on which was daily laid an offering of all the amenities, all the sweet charities of social life. How would the child who, in his early home, had heard none save kind words, had seen none other than heart-warm deeds, who had been trained to habits of submission, and taught to yield the gratification of his own wishes for the good or the pleasure of others, taught to do this even as a child may be taught, in the meek spirit of the gospel—how would such an one grow up a crown of glory to the hoary hairs of his parents, and a blessing to society. But, alas! the spirit of insubordination is rife in the world. The child spurns the yoke of domestic discipline, sets at naught the counsels of his father, and hearkens not to the voice of his mother—and the man disregards the voice of conscience, sets the laws of his country at defiance, and becomes an outcast and a felon! It was a cold winter evening, and the heavy clouds were looming up in broad masses over the troubled sky, while the wind howled through every cranny, and sent the snow-mist, which began rapidly to descend, into the faces of the stray pedestrians who were either hardy enough to venture abroad in search of pleasure, or wretched enough to be obliged from dire necessity to leave their homes. Mr. Tremaine was among the few who were braving the fury of the storm. He had left his elegant but cheerless mansion in the upper part of the city, and sped onward, regardless alike of wind and snow, to the place of his destination. It was the haunt of vice, but in no dark alley nor out-of-the-way nook did it seek to hide itself from public contempt. No—it reared its front unblushingly in the public thoroughfare—within sound of the church-going bell—it was fitted up with every luxury; silver and gold, polished marble, and costly hangings, in lavish profusion, adorned the place which fostered every malignant and evil passion, and made human beings, endowed with immortal souls, ripe for deeds of desperation. The man who robbed his employer, the defaulter, the forger, the destroyer of female virtue, the murderer, the suicide, each and all of these had been within its walls—each and all of these had taken their first lessons in iniquity in that place, so truly and emphatically called a _hell_. And it was to this place of pollution that Tremaine was hastening. Here he had staked, and lost, and cursed his ill luck; yet, with the desperate infatuation of a confirmed gamester, he had staked again and again, until all was gone. On entering he looked round with a furtive and eager glance, and, evidently disappointed, sauntered toward a roulette table round which a crowd was standing.