It is to be feared that many of our young men do not know what recreation means. They confound it with riot. Fierce driving, hard drinking, violence, and vice they understand; but with quiet, refining, soothing, and strengthening diversions they have small acquaintance. This is very largely the fault of the community in which they live. Do Christian families in our large cities feel the obligations which they are under towards the young men who come among them? I believe that a very large part of the immorality, the irreligion, the skepticism and crime into which young men fall is due to their being so coldly and cruelly let alone by Christian families. A boy comes up from the country, where every one knows him and greets him, into the solitude of the great city. He has left home behind him, and finds no new home to receive him. When he is released from his work in shop or counting-room, nothing more inviting awaits him than the silent room in the dreary boarding-house. He misses suddenly, and at a most sensitive age, the graces and unthinking kindnesses of home, the thousand little teasings and pettings, the common interests, and tendernesses, that he never thought of till he lost them. He is surrounded by men and boys all bent on their several ways. He must have amusement. It is as necessary to him as daily food. What wonder, then, if he accepts the first that offers? And if Satan, as usual, is beforehand with his invitations, what shall hinder him from following Satan? The saloon, warmed and lighted, and enlivened with music or merry talk, is more attractive than the dingy, solitary room; and if his feet do slip now and then, who is the worse for it? He will never write it home, and there is nobody in the city who will discover it; provided he is prompt at his business, no one will meddle with his leisure hours. And if full-grown men are found to need the restraining influences of wife and child and neighbor, and to plunge into brutality whenever they form a community by themselves, what can prevent boys, when cast adrift, from drifting into sin? Genius is supreme, but genius is the heritage of but few; while passion and appetite, love of society and amusement, need of watchfulness and susceptibility to temptation, belong to all. "I don't like wine," said a young man,--"I hate the taste of it; but what am I to do? A lot of fellows carousing isn't the best thing in the world; but I can't stay moping in my room alone all the time. There's my violin. Well, I took it out once or twice, but it was no go. When I could go into the parlor after supper, and mother round, and Bess to sing, it was worth while; but there is no fun in fiddling to yourself by wholesale. Besides, I suppose it bores the rest to have a fellow sawing away." And this was a fine, handsome, healthy young man, all ready to be made a warm friend, a patriotic citizen, a pure and happy man, and just as ready to become a reckless, dissipated, sorrow-bringing failure.