224 PLAIN FACTS FOB OLD AND YOUNG 



Idleness.— This evil is usually combined with the 

 preceding. To maintain purity, the mind must be 

 occupied. If left without occupation, the vacuity is 

 quickly filled with unchaste thoughts. Nothing can be 

 worse for a child than to be reared in idleness. His 

 morals will be certain to suffer. Incessant mental occu- 

 pation is the only safeguard against unchastity. Those 

 worthless fops who spend their lives in ''killing time" 

 by lounging about bar-rooms, loafing on street corners 

 or strutting up and down the boulevard, are anything 

 but chaste. Those equally worthless young women who 

 waste their lives on sofas or in easy chairs, occupied 

 only with some silly novel, or idling away life's pre- 

 cious hours in reverie,— such creatures are seldom the 

 models of purity one would wish to think them. If 

 born with a natural propensity toward sin, such a life 

 would soon engender a diseased, impure imagination, 

 if nothing worse^ 



Dress and Sensuality.— There are two ways in 

 which fashionable dress leads to unchastity; viz., (1) 

 by its extravagance; (2) by its abuse of the body. 



How does extravagance lead to unchastity?— By 

 creating the temptation to sin. It affects not those 

 gorgeously attired ladies who ride in fine carriages, 

 and live in brown-stone fronts, who are surrounded 

 with all the luxuries that wealth can purchase— fine 

 apparel is no temptation to such. But to less favored, 

 though not less worthy ones, these magnificent displays 

 of millinery goods and fine trappings are most power- 

 ful temptations. The poor seamstress, who can earn 

 by diligent toil hardly enough to pay her board bill, 

 has no legitimate way by which to deck herself with 

 the finery she admires. Plainly dressed as she must 

 be if she remains honest and retains her virtue, she is 



