LECTURE TO BOYS AND YOUNG MEN. 199 



After the first wrong step the next is so much more natural. It does 

 not seem so bad after all. There is no use in mamma being so strict 

 anyhow. Well you are on the glassy still water just above the rapids 

 now. How long will it be till your boat strikes the rapids? That no 

 one can say. It may be years, it may be months, it may be only days. 

 But when you are caught, God pity you. 



BITTER TOILS OF FALLEN LIFE. 



The writer once knew a beautiful woman when he first met her she 

 accidentally ran against him on a lonely walk on the river bank of a 

 Missouri town. She was beautitul, in face and form, but an oath 

 escaped her lips in reply to the "pardon me" she was only 23. A 

 year later in a tent on the banks of the same river he saw her die in 

 pain from the effects of a loathsome disease contracted amid the shame 

 that our cities license and permit. He had tried before, in vain, tc 

 help her forsake her fallen course. Now she was thankful to receive 

 one kind word. She had been the petted favorite of the haunts of vice, 

 now forsaken by all, and to me, a stranger, on her deathbed she told 

 what a hell had been in her heart during all the time. Scarcely a 

 moment's animal pleasure, but what was haunted by a mental woe 

 within. And oh the heartaches when by herself alone. "And then" 

 she said, her voice broken by sobs, ' 'it was torture all the way. As a 

 girl I was a little wayward I liked to have a good time I went with 

 him some he was such a nice boy, so were some of the others and we 

 were only having a good time of course, mother tried to stop it all 

 and finally I ran away I can't I can't tell it I'm too weak it 

 didn't come out as I expected it's all misery. " And with the cry 

 "I'm lost" she died. 



It is fortunate for the world that the maker of us all has put in oui 

 hearts a little monitor whom we can never escape. We can sometimes 

 escape from foes and run to friends, but our own consciousness be- 

 comes a foe when we have done wrong and we cannot escape from it. 



LECTURE TO BOYS AND YOUNG MEN. 



BY J. G. HOLLAND 



Many years ago P. T. Barnum, the noted showman, traveled through- 

 out the United States giving lectures on < Success in Life and How to 

 Make Money. " In the course of these lectures he emphasized the three 

 great essentials to a young man starting in life as vocation, location 

 and honesty. Ability was an advantage, but he declared, and the 

 declaration is proven by experience, that boys lacking any marked, abil- 

 ity but following along the lines suggested, won far greater success, 

 than brilliant, smart boys who followed their inclinations^ or were in- 

 duced to go in paths contrary to the teachings of experience. 



REWARDS OF HONESTY. 



A ragged newsboy in Chicago whose route lay along -Wabash avenue, 

 was handed a dime one evening for Me paper. He had no change, but 



