It may be worth while for those sober minded and, otherwise, judicious Christians, who are in the habit of attending fashionable parties at late hours, and taking their 'refreshments,' to consider whether they may not be a means of keeping up, by their example, those more vulgar assemblies, with all their grossness, which I have been describing. Is it not obvious that what the _wine_, and the fruit, and the oysters, are to the more refined and Christian circles, wine and fermented liquors may be to the more blunt sensibilities of body and mind, in youthful circles of another description? But if so, where rests the guilt? Or shall we bless the fountains, while we curse the stream they form? SECTION III. _Diseases of Licentiousness_. The importance of this and the foregoing section will be differently estimated by different individuals. They were not inserted, however, without consideration, nor without the approbation of persons who enjoy a large measure of public confidence. The young ought at least to know, briefly, to what a formidable host of maladies secret vice is exposed. 1. _Insanity._ The records of hospitals show that insanity, from solitary indulgence, is common. Tissot, Esquirol, Eberle, and others, give ample testimony on this point. The latter, from a careful examination of the facts, assures us that in Paris the proportion of insane persons whose diseases may be traced to the source in question, is _one_ in from _fifty-one_ to _fifty-eight_, in the _lower classes_. In the higher classes it is _one_ in _twenty-three_. In the insane Hospital of Massachusetts--I have it from authority which I cannot question,--the proportion is at least one in three or four. At present there are about twenty cases of the kind alluded to. 2. _Chorea Sancti Viti_; or _St. Vitus's dance_. This strange disease, in which the muscles of the body are not always at the command of the patient, and in which the head, the arms, the legs, and indeed every part which is made for muscular motion often jerks about in a very singular manner, is sometimes produced in the same way. Insanity and this disease are occasionally combined. I have known one young man in this terrible condition, and have read authentic accounts of others. 3. _Epilepsy._ Epileptic or _falling sickness fits_, as they are sometimes denominated, are another very common scourge of secret vice. How much they are to be dreaded almost every one can judge; for there are few who have not seen those who are afflicted with them. They usually weaken the mind, and sometimes entirely destroy it. I knew one epileptic individual who used to dread them more than death; and would gladly have preferred the latter. 4. _Idiotism._ Epilepsy, as I have already intimated, often runs on to idiotism; but sometimes the miserable young man becomes an idiot, without the intervention of any other obvious disease.