There is another, over whom my heart’s affections linger with a longing solicitude: I mean the clever and facetious young man. He has quick parts, can sing well, or give recitations; ever on the look-out for fun, he heaps up accumulating stores of witticisms and repartee; and can repeat in character, Mrs. Caudle, Mrs. Brown, or the newest offering of this literary school. No circle of his friends is complete without him; the evening party must be delayed if he is engaged; every body likes him—young men and ladies alike call him “such a good fellow.” And there is much that is good in him—his readiness and ability to make hours of recreation brighter are not to be despised; but his kind-heartedness and endowments fit him for something grander than to be a man who merely amuses society. He himself suffers loss; neglect of solid reading and of elevated thoughts lowers his own tone; the moral which he tacks on to the end of his recitation fails to clear the balance-sheet of his conscience in better hours; the very friends that he has charmed will seek another than him in the important moments of their life. He will find himself set aside ere long; his influence will die with the vivacity of youth; he has no acquirements that are cared for to carry into riper manhood; and then nothing is more revolting than the merely farcical and comic old man. This is all _he_ has made of life; he has been the butterfly for sunny hours, and has gone out when sterner days came. Would that my descriptions might cease here; but the tale of failure has not run out. There are young men with the pathway of honor open before them, but who turn from it, and in pompous dash care for none of the things that would make for their peace. Like dogs kept hungry, that their scent after the game may be keener and more impelling, they slip the leash of what they term their “mother’s apron-string,” and burst upon life with a dare-devil spirit that defies control. The shades of evening find them prowling under the mask of darkness after every pernicious gratification. Their imaginations have been polluted with the vile literature secretly circulated. From the dice or billiard-table they go to the lighted hall, where prostitutes decked in fine apparel mingle in the waltz and ply their miserable arts, and thence to the house where I will not follow, and of which the Scriptures say, that “is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.” A young man in a London warehouse was solicited to spend such a night as I have glanced at. He refused. “What a fool you are to be so dull,” said the tempter. “We’ll wait a while and see who is the fool,” said the young man. In ten years’ time the tempter was in a dishonored grave, and the other was rising to affluence.