"XXX:" What does that mark mean? XXX on the beer-barrel: XXX on the brewer's dray: XXX on the door of the gin-shop: XXX on the side of the bottle. Not being able to find any one who could tell me what this mark means, I have had to guess that the whole thing was an allegory: XXX--that is, thirty heartbreaks. Thirty agonies. Thirty desolated homes. Thirty chances for a drunkard's grave. Thirty ways to perdition. "XXX." If I were going to write a story, the first chapter would be XXX.; the last--"A pawnbroker's shop." Be watchful! At this season all the allurements to dissipation will be especially busy. Let not your flight to hell be in the winter. I also remark that the winter evenings, through their very length, allow great swing for indulgences. Few young men would have the taste to go to their room at seven o'clock, and sit until eleven, reading _Motley's Dutch Republic_ or _John Foster's Essays_. The young men who have been confined to the store all day want fresh air and sight-seeing; and they must go somewhere. The most of them have, of a winter's evening, three or four hours of leisure. After the evening repast, the young man puts on his hat and coat and goes out. "Come in here," cries one form of allurement. "Come in here," cries another. "Go;" says Satan. "You ought to see for yourself." "Why don't you go?" says a comrade. "It is a shame for a young man to be as _green_ as you are. By this time you ought to have seen everything." Especially is temptation strong in such times as this, when business is dull. I have noticed that men spend more money when they have little to spend. The tremendous question to be settled by our great populace, day by day, is how to get a livelihood. Many of our young men, just starting for themselves, are very much discouraged. They had hoped before this to have set up a household of their own. But their gains have been slow, and their discouragements many. The young man can hardly take care of himself. How can he take care of another? And, to the curse of modern society, before a young man is able to set up a home of his own, he is expected to have enough to support in idleness somebody else; when God intended that they should begin together, and jointly earn a livelihood. So, many of our young men are utterly discouraged, and utterly unfit to resist temptation. The time the pirate bears down upon the ship is when its sails are down and it is making no headway. People wish they had more time to think. The trouble is now, that people have too much time to think. Give to many of our commercial men the four hours of these winter nights, with nothing to divert them, and before spring they will have lodgings in an insane asylum.