Another time, as I and a smaller boy were hunting, he walked over a creek upon a log, which he saw was just able to bear his weight, through rottenness. "You had better not venture," said he to me. But I said, I had always heard, _example was better than precept_, and following him, was soused by the breaking of the log, in six feet water. Being a good swimmer, I escaped with a ducking, (it was near Christmas,) and with wetting my gun, lock, priming, and all: so that it cost me a full hour to refit for sport. It is not, however, commonly, either _immediate_ or _bodily_ harm that we incur by means of this Jack-o'lantern proverb. Our faith in it is not sufficient to lead us into instant and obvious danger: it is in general the opiate with which we lull ourselves, only when the evil we are warned against is of the _moral_ kind, or likely to occur at a remote period. In my youth, I read novels to a pernicious excess. They enfeebled my memory; unfixed my power of attention and my habits of thought; blunted my zest for history; dimmed my perception of reasoning; gave me the most illusory ideas of human life and character; and filled my brain with fantastic visions. A passion for learning, and the timely counsels of a sensible friend, subsequently won me so far from this career of dissipation, that I surmounted in some degree its evil effects, and acquired a moderate stock of solid knowledge: but to my dying day I shall feel its cloying, _unhinging_, debilitating influence upon my mental constitution. Still, even latterly, I have continued to indulge myself with the best novels, as they appeared. My weakness in this respect unluckily became known to a young girl, who seemed to be exactly treading in my footsteps; and whom I earnestly warned of the dangers besetting that path. "Now, cousin L., how can you talk so, when I have seen you _devouring_ the _Antiquary_, and _Guy Mannering_, and _Patronage_, and I don't know how many besides! You need not preach to me: _example is better than precept._" _Therefore_--for the reasoning seemed to her as conclusive as Euclids--_therefore_ she went on, with undistinguishing voracity, through all the spawn of the novel press: and there is not now a sadder instance of the effects of novel-reading. After rejecting with {40} disdain three suitors every way her equals, (and in real merit her superiors,) because they were so unlike her favorite novel heroes--did not woo on their knees or in blank verse--and had 'such shocking, vulgar names'--she, at three and twenty, married a coxcomb, formed precisely after the model upon which her 'mind's eye' had so long dwelt. He was gaudy, flippant, and specious; knew a dozen of Moore's Melodies by rote; could softly discourse of _the heart_ and its _affections_, as if he really possessed the one, and had actually felt the other; and, most irresistible of all, his name was EDWIN MORTIMER FITZGERALD. The result may be imagined. The society of such a being could not long please.