With the first temptation, then, contend; for it may be a fight for life or death. I know there is a maxim very common that “a young fellow must sow his wild oats.” They shall not be my words that reply to that saying. They shall be those of a man who knows the world, and an ardent lover of the pure pleasures of the world. “In all the range of accepted British maxims,” says Mr. Thomas Hughes, M. P., “there is none, take it all in all, more thoroughly abominable than this one as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on which side you will, and I will defy you to make any thing but a devil’s maxim of it. What a man, be he young, old, or middle-aged, sows, _that_, and nothing else, shall he reap. The one only thing to do with wild oats, is to put them carefully into the hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground, up they will come, with long tough roots like couch-grass, and luxuriant stalks and leaves, as sure as there is a sun in heaven—a crop which it turns one’s heart cold to think of. The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them; and no common reaping will get them out of the soul, which must be dug down deep again and again. Well for you if with all your care you can make the ground sweet again by your dying day. ‘Boys will be boys’ is not much better, but that has a true side to it; but this encouragement to the sowing of wild oats is simply devilish, for it means that a young man is to give way to the temptations and follow the lusts of his age.”