of food, should be carefully avoided
by young persons. They are not wholesome for either old or young; but
for the young they are absolutely dangerous.

The use of beer, wine, hard cider, and tobacco, is especially damaging
to boys on this account. These stimulants excite the passions and
produce a clamoring for sensual gratification which few boys or young
men have the will power or moral courage to resist. Tobacco is an
especially detrimental agent. The early age at which boys now begin
the use of tobacco may be one of the reasons why the practice of secret
vice is becoming so terribly common among boys and young men. We never
think a boy or young man who uses tobacco safe from the commission of
some vile act.

The use of tea and coffee by boys is also a practice which should be
interdicted. All wise physicians forbid the use of these narcotic
drinks, together with that of tobacco, and always with benefit to those
who abstain. In France the government has made a law forbidding the
use of tobacco by students in the public schools. In Germany a still
more stringent law has been made, which forbids the use of tobacco by
boys and young men. These laws have been made on account of the serious
injury which was evidently resulting from the use of the filthy weed
to both the health and the morals of the young men of those countries.
There is certainly an equal need for such a law in this country.

Closing Advice to Boys and Young Men.--One word more and we must close
this chapter, which we hope has been read with care by those for whom
it is especially written. Let every boy who peruses these pages remember
that the facts here stated are true. Every word we have verified, and
we have not written one-half that might be said upon this subject. Let
the boy who is still pure, who has never defiled himself with vice,
firmly resolve that with the help of God he will maintain a pure and
virtuous character. It is much easier to preserve purity than to get
free from the taint of sin after having been once defiled. Let the boy
who has already fallen into evil ways, who has been taught the vile
practice the consequences of which we have endeavored to describe, and
who is already in the downward road,--let him resolve now to break the
chain of sin, to reform at once, and to renounce his evil practice
forever. The least hesitancy, the slightest dalliance with the demon
vice, and the poor victim will be lost. Now, this moment, is the tim