I have tried it. You work nine hours a day and get spoken to like a dog. For this you get three meals a day and a bunk to sleep in at night. Your first meal you haven’t time to eat, the second is cold and tastes of the tin pail in which it is carried, and the third is a mess made up of what was left by your boardin’-house missus and her youngsters at their last meal. I tell you I may not get my meals reg’lar, but they’re daisies when I do.” It was hard to decide what to say to talk like this. It was suggested, however, that in one plan of existence there was a prospect of long life and the respect of your fellowmen; in the other there was simply death and disgrace. “Respect be d⸺d. The kind of respect a man gets who has no money is not worth much. If I cracked a bank safe, and snaked a million dollars out of it, I’d get all the respect from my neighbors that any man gets. As for long life, I wouldn’t want to live long if I had to work 60 hours a week for the pleasure of eating three poor meals a day.” This, or something similar, is the philosophy of the hawks. It is summed up in the phrase “a short life and a merry one.” It is a rule of life which makes a man, presumably civilized, more dangerous than a savage. He has the instincts of the savage combined with more knowledge and power for evil. It is a philosophy which every right-thinking man should do his little all to combat. It aims at the foundations of society, and if its falsity could be made apparent in words of fire, the human family would be a gainer thereby. It is surely not making too bold an assertion to say that the most hardened enemy of society was ONCE A GUILELESS CHILD. He or she must have at some particular time taken his or her first step on the road to infamy. Some particular form of allurement must have caught the youthful eye and dazzled the foolish brain. What are these allurements? Can our youth be made to recognize them and see whereunto they lead? We think they can. It would be well to show that the roses of sin bear fearful thorns, that the fruits of mere worldly pleasure turn to bitter ashes on the lips. The series of articles which are being published in these columns have this end in view. By showing how the vicious live we expect to show that the person who chooses to tread the way of vice will find it broad enough in all conscience with a-plenty of wayfarers in it, but he will also find that the thorns and cruel stones increase with each mile, until its final pages are trodden with bleeding feet and washed with unavailing tears. It can be shown, we think, that all the vicious classes simmer down at last to the same shuffling, shambling level. The young gambler, his tailor’s pride, degenerates into the sniveling aged tramp, who in fluttering rags begs for a crust of bread at the poorhouse door, or else his elegant limbs wear penitential uniform behind the prison bars. The descent of the wicked woman is still more awful, still more shocking.