stained with vice, memories of vile debaucheries which had wasted his youth and broken his constitution. Wretched was he indeed. Notwithstanding his vileness he was not lost to shame, for his greatest fear was that his friends might ascertain the real cause of his sufferings, to conceal which he was obliged to resort to all sorts of subterfuges. As soon as he was able to travel he left us, being obliged to report to his superior officers, and we have heard nothing of him since. Scores of similar cases we might recount in detail, but we have not here the space. These will suffice to give to the young reader an idea of the terrible results of this awful vice which are suffered by its victims. We have not dared to portray on these pages one-half the misery and wretchedness which we have seen as the results of self-abuse and the vices to which it leads. The picture is too terrible for young eyes to behold. We most sincerely hope that none of our readers will ever have to suffer as we have seen boys and young men do, languishing in misery as the result of their own transgressions of the laws of chastity. We will now devote the remaining pages of this chapter to the consideration of some of the causes of the vice, the avenues that lead to the awful sin which we are considering, and the terrible consequences which attend it. Bad Company.--The influence of evil companionship is one of the most powerful agents for evil against which those who love purity and are seeking to elevate and benefit their fellow-men have to contend. A bad boy can do more harm in a community than can be counteracted by all the clergymen, Sabbath-school teachers, tract-distributers, and other Christian workers combined. An evil boy is a pest compared with which the cholera, small-pox, and even the plague, are nothing. The damage which would be done by a terrific hurricane sweeping with destructive force through a thickly settled district is insignificant compared with the evil work which may be accomplished by one vicious lad. No community is free from these vipers, these agents of the arch-fiend. Every school, no matter how select it may be, contains a greater or less number of these young moral lepers. Often they pursue their work unsuspected by the good and pure, who do not dream of the vileness pent up in the young brains which have not yet learned the multiplication table and scarcely learned to read. We have known instances in which a boy of seven or eight years of age has implanted the venom of vice in the hearts and minds of half a score of pure-minded lads within a few days of his first association with them. This vice spreads like wild-fire. It is more "catching" than the most contagious disease, and more tenacious, when once implanted, than the leprosy.