382 PLAIN FACTS FOE OLD AND YOUNG 



this vile habit; for it is exceedingly common, and its 

 dreadful effects in shriveling and dwarfing and de- 

 stroying the human form are too plainly perceptible 

 to be mistaken. Oh, this dreadful curse ! Why will so 

 many of our bright, innocent boys pollute themselves 

 with it? 



"What Makes Idiots?— Eeader, have you ever seen 

 an idiot? If you have, the hideous picture will never 

 be dissipated from your memory. The vacant stare, 

 the drooping, drooling mouth, the unsteady gait, the 

 sensual look, the emptiness of mind,— all these you 

 well remember. Did you ever stop to think how idiots 

 are made? It is by this very vice that the ranks of 

 these poor daft mortals are being recruited every day. 

 Every visitor to an insane asylum sees scores of them ; 

 ruined in mind and body, only the semblance of a hu- 

 man being, bereft of sense, lower than a beast in many 

 respects, a human being hopelessly lost to himself and 

 to the world,— oh, most terrible thought!— yet once 

 pure, intelligent, active, perhaps the hope of a fond 

 mother, the pride of a doting father, and possibly pos- 

 sessed of natural ability to become greatly distin- 

 guished in some of the many noble and useful walks of 

 life ; now sunk below the brute through the degrading, 

 destroying influence of a lustful gratification. 



Boys, are you guilty of this terrible sin? have you 

 even once in this way yielded to the tempter's voice? 

 Stop, consider, think of the awful results, repent, con- 

 fess to God, reform. Another step in that direction, 

 and you may be lost, soul and body. You cannot dally 

 with the tempter. You must escape now or never. 

 Don't delay. 



Young Dyspeptics.— There is, in our estimation, 

 no other cause so active as this in occasioning the early 



