al air. You do not feel the aroma that steals along
loaded with poison, or wafts a blessing through the sick man's window.
You do not hear the electric pulse that beats in the summer light and in
the drop of dew. Neither can you estimate the mysterious attraction that
plays all through this network of social relations, nor the energy of
good or of evil with which it is charged not merely from your words and
deeds, but from the still reservoir of your example.

When I look around at the prevalent vices of the city, then, and at its
various forms of corruption, I am not willing to rest with the mere
assertion, that all this is the fruit of personal sin and folly on the
part of those who have yielded to temptation. It _is_ the fruit of
personal sin and folly. And we, perhaps, in our serene respectabilities,
shrink back and wonder at it. It _is_ strange--is it not?--that the
young, the fair, the gifted, should yield themselves to that arch-deceit
which has allured and ruined men for six thousand years? Is it not the
same old guilt, the same sophistry and foolishness, here in New York,
that it always has been? Did it not bear the same Circean cup through
the halls of Nineveh and Babylon, and fling Caesars and Alexanders to the
ground? Did it not wear the same seductive smile and harlot tinsel when
it walked the streets of Tyre, and reclined in the decorated chambers of
Egypt? And will not its votaries find now, as then, that it entices with
the embrace of death and the fascination of hell? Why should they thus
float upon the very rim of this great whirlpool, and not notice the
groans that come up from its depths; and see that its phosphoric
illusion is mixed with fiery flakes of torment and the foam of despair?
It is indeed wonderful that so many should be thus deluded over and
over again; so many noble energies thrown away, so many sanctions
trampled upon, so many bright hopes quenched for ever. It is wonderful
that any being made in the form of man, should cast down his
prerogatives and wallow like the beast. Sufficient evidence of sin and
folly in those who do this, to be sure; but in what way do these
allurements present themselves? What are the resources and entrenchments
of these vices, by which they act upon human appetite and passion? You
point me to brilliant windows and gay apartments; to sparkling glasses,
and shining heaps, and shapes of painted shame. "These," you say, "are
the forms which the Tempter assumes. Un