habit, and
they thrust their finger in the sleeve of their vest, and swagger, and
say: "Who cares!" They have no regard for God, but great respect for
the ladies. Ah! there is no manliness in that.

The most ungentlemanly thing a man can do is to swear. This habit is
becoming more and more prevalent because of the immorality of parents
and employers. There are very many fathers who indulge in this habit.
They feel moved to utter themselves in this way, but first look around
to see if their children are present. They have no idea that their
children know anything about it. The probability is that if you swear,
your children swear. They were in the next room and heard you, or
somebody told them about your habit. Your child is practising to do
just as you do. He is laughed at, at first, for his awkwardness, but
after a while he will swear as well as you.

Then look at the example of master carpenters, masons, roofers, and
hatters. You know how some of you go around the building, and, when
the work of your journeyman and subordinates does not please you, what
do you say? It is not praying, is it? Forthwith, your journeymen
and subordinates learn the habit. Hence our hat-shops, and
house-scaffoldings, and side-walks, and wharves, and dockyards, and
cellars, and lofts ring with blasphemies.

Men argue that, if it is right for a man worth fifty or a hundred
thousand dollars to swear, it can be overlooked in men who have merely
their day's wages. Because they are poor must they be denied this one
luxury?

This habit becomes more prevalent because of the infirmities of
temper. There are many men who, when at peace, are most fastidious
of speech, but when aroused into the violence of passion, blaze with
imprecation. The Oriental's wife spoken of would not have liked her
husband to be profane under ordinary circumstances, but now that the
camels are gone, and the sheep are gone, and the property is gone,
and the boils have come, she says: "Why don't you swear? Curse God
and die!" Others, all the year round, have not the froth of profanity
wiped from their lips, but try to expend all the fury of a twelvemonth
in one red-hot paragraph of five minutes. A man apologized for his
occasional swearing by saying that, once in a year, in this way
he cleared himself out. There are men who have no control of their
blasphemous utterances, who want us to send them to Congress. Others
have blasphemed in senatorial places, pretending afterwa