Of late years it has become the fashion amongst certain men to scoff at this terrible vice of secret indulgence, and to claim that its evil effects are overrated, are portrayed too vividly. Ask some poor unfortunate whose confidence you may succeed in gaining, and listen to the pitiful tale of lost health and vitality he will tell you. Mark well the wasted hand, the putty-like skin, the black-ringed, lack-lustre eyes, the heavy lip, the labored breath--read the consequences of his sin and crime in his shame-faced way, his shambling gait, his nerveless hands, his fluttering heart, his weakened muscles, and his tottering memory and mind. Must he needs lie dead at our feet before these skeptics can be convinced? Is not such a state a living death? Must these men visit him in the cell of the asylum, watch him as a raving maniac, gaze upon him as a hopeless idiot or a driveling imbecile, before they will be convinced? Such proof is at hand. Not an asylum in any country but has its score of such; not an asylum record-book but chronicles the sad histories of thousands of these poor, lost creatures--male and female; not an asylum nurse or doctor but will sadly point out these creatures to you, bereft of every trace of reason, all sense of shame, still practicing the horrible vice that has driven every semblance of humanity from their faces and the very light of reason from their eyes. True, every boy or man who practices this vice does not come to this end. But who shall discriminate? There are thousands such, and who shall say which it shall be, or at what moment it shall occur? Ah! happy, rosy-cheeked boy, so gay and thoughtless now, so free from misery, disease and care, beware! It may be your turn next. A little thoughtless indulgence, the imitation of friend or companion, though apparently harmless now, may blanch your rosy cheek, destroy your peace and happiness of mind, and make a life-long, hopeless, suffering invalid of you--may shut the door of all earthly enjoyment in your face, blast your hopes, disease or destroy your offspring, alienate you from friends and family, and cut off from all communion with your race, make you an object of shame and disgust to your fellow-men, sink you into an early grave or entomb you for life in the cold stony walls of a lunatic asylum. The day will come, erstwhile, when you will curse the parents who reared you, the friends who surrounded you and the teachers and ministers who taught you, for not warning you of the terrible nature of this indulgence, so secretly common amongst boys and young men.