Let them _think_ a moment. Let them imagine themselves in the place of the injured party. Could this point be gained; could they be induced to reflect long enough to see the enormity of their guilt as it really is, or as the Father in heaven may be supposed to see it, there might be hope in their case. Or if they find it difficult to view themselves as the injured, let them suppose, rather, a sister or a daughter. What seducer is so lost to all natural affection as not to have his whole soul revolt at the bare thought of having a beloved daughter experience the treatment which he has inflicted? Yet the being whom he has ruined had brothers or parents; and those brothers had a sister; and those parents a daughter!
I wish it were in my power to finish my remarks in this place, without feeling that I had made an important omission. But such is the tendency of human nature, especially in the case of the young and ardent, to turn the most valuable blessings conferred on man into curses,--and poison, at their very sources, the purest streams of human felicity,--that it will be necessary to advert briefly but plainly to some of the most frequent forms of youthful irregularity.
Large cities and thinly settled places are the _extremes_ of social life. Here, of course, vice will be found in its worst forms. It is more difficult to say which extreme is worst, among _an equal number of individuals_; but probably the city; for in the country, vice is oftener solitary, and less frequently social; while in the city it is not only _social_ but also _solitary_.
A well informed gentleman from New Orleans, of whose own virtue by the way, I have not the _highest_ confidence, expressed, lately the strongest apprehension that the whole race of young men in our cities, of the present generation, will be ruined. Others have assured me that in the more northern cities, the prospect is little, if any, more favorable.
It is to be regretted that legislators have not found out the means of abolishing those haunts in cities which might be appropriately termed schools of licentiousness, and thus diminishing an aggregate of temptation already sufficiently large. But the vices, like their votaries, go in companies. Until, therefore, the various haunts of intemperance in eating and drinking, and of gambling and stage-playing, can be broken up, it may be considered vain to hope for the disappearance of those sties of pollution which are their almost inevitable results. We might as well think of drying up the channel of a mighty river, while the fountains which feed it continue to flow as usual.