Young man, what sort of soil are you preparing for the growth of the next generation, when you allow, for a _little_ time even, looseness of morals and wayward habits? Late hours, tippling, mingling with the unclean, the coarse jest and the coarser practice following, are not good soil for the implantation later on of the higher virtues; the danger is, the desire for such implantation will be lost, or if it in a measure remains, the roots of the old weeds are there, and the soil is cursed with the noisome seeds which will spring up and choke the wheat. Mayhap both may grow together, and a harvest of wheat and tares be gathered, but at what a cost of time and strength, that might have been used in better things. The use of alcoholics and tobacco enfeeble the mind and constitution, and this enfeeblement accentuated is transmitted to the next generations. Many wives are struggling along in ill health that is directly traceable to the inhaling, night after night, of the breath of the husband, poisoned with nicotine. Many a little one is wailing through its infancy, and if it have strength sufficient, inherited from its remote ancestors, to pull it through, yet will it all its life suffer from its antenatal and postnatal poisoning; and the chances are that as soon as it is old enough it will take up the habit which is already acquired, to pass down along the line a more and more enfeebled heritage. But the young are not all to blame, they have not been instructed. They have floated along, many times unmindful of the rapids they were nearing, and have not awakened until they were engulfed. And our daughters are not guiltless in _this_ thing even. How many times when the escort asks, “Is tobacco offensive to you?” have our thoughtless girls answered, “Oh, no,” when at heart it was repulsive and sickening. By and by, after months of endurance it becomes bearable, and they can make the reply with a degree of truthfulness; for tobacco, like sin, “Is a monster of such frightful mien, That to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft familiar with its face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” When our dear girls have strength of character sufficient to say in response to such a query, while lifting frank honest eyes: “Shall I answer your question honestly? then I must say, it is very offensive to me; for I know it does you harm, and I know as well that I cannot breathe the fumes of it _even_ for an hour without physical harm to myself.” There is not one young man in a hundred, who would not rejoice in the courage of such a girl, and ten chances to one, he would be telling his companions of the brave stand she had made, and exulting in it.