lied by the billiard-table
and its concomitants. It is the same story,--first, rumors, then
equivocation, then exposure. Perhaps a petty sum is all; but, to the
austere justice of banking, this is as bad, nay, worse than millions.
And then a brief paragraph in the newspaper, and one more ruined young
man, sulking beside the family-hearthstone, his father's shame, his
mother's unextinguishable sorrow,--a candidate for crime, if he have
power of mind and spirit to feel, or an imbecile dependant, if he have
not.

Now preaching, whether lay or clerical, will not do much to prevent
this, especially if it be pitched (as it commonly is) upon too high a
key. _Preventing_ means, or used to mean, when words had a meaning,
_getting beforehand with anything._ And if young Homespun have from the
outset something he likes better, he will not take to the ivory balls in
pleasant weather, and in rainy weather will be apt to prefer even quite
a stupid book to the board of green cloth. Therefore, boys, go,--and
girls, too, for that matter,--on flower and moss hunts!--and ye, dear
middle-aged people, send them, and go also upon the same! Find something
that will tempt you into the woods,--something neither berries nor
sassafras,--something which cannot be eaten or sold, but which will
simply give you a sense and a love of beauty. These pages have been
written to show that it lies at your very doors,--that nothing but stout
boots, an old coat or jacket, and an observant eye, is needed. When you
come to be saints, or even to be men, there will be plenty of active
work to do, if so be that you will only do it. Then, in careful regard
to your bodies, you may have hard-trotting (not fast-trotting) horses,
pickerel-backed boats, and a billiard-room over the stable,--if your
canonization seem to require it. But the saint, if he be true saint,
needs no such care. He will get work enough, hard, physical work, if
only in trotting up and down the steep stairs of tenant-houses, to keep
his digestion in tolerable order. It is only your pseudo-saint,
who cuddles himself for the pulpit and the platform, and keeps the
safety-valve down with midnight sittings while "rosining up" the
furnaces with strong coffee, that will come to grief by collapse of
flues. If a man, whether sinner or saint, will run races for the honor
of being the fastest boat in the river of popular favor, he must take
the consequences.

But for the poor, benighted, heathen sinner, des