ends,
admiration of large circles; who had, in short, everything to make life
desirable, and who, from mortified pride, founded on false pretensions,
_have put an end to their own existence_!

24. As to DRUNKENNESS and GLUTTONY, generally so called, these are vices
so nasty and beastly that I deem any one capable of indulging in them to
be wholly unworthy of my advice; and, if any youth unhappily initiated
in these odious and debasing vices should happen to read what I am now
writing, I refer him to the command of God, conveyed to the Israelites
by Moses, in Deuteronomy, chap. xxi. The father and mother are to take
the bad son 'and bring him to the elders of the city; and they shall say
to the elders, This our son will not obey our voice: he is a _glutton_
and a _drunkard_. And all the men of the city shall stone him with
stones, that he die.' I refer downright beastly gluttons and drunkards
to this; but indulgence short, _far short_, of this gross and really
nasty drunkenness and gluttony is to be deprecated, and that, too, with
the more earnestness because it is too often looked upon as being no
crime at all, and as having nothing blameable in it; nay, there are many
persons who _pride_ themselves on their refined taste in matters
connected with eating and drinking: so far from being ashamed of
employing their thoughts on the subject, it is their boast that they do
it. St. Gregory, one of the Christian fathers, says: 'It is not the
_quantity_ or the _quality_ of the meat, or drink, but the _love of it_
that is condemned;' that is to say, the indulgence beyond the absolute
demands of nature; the hankering after it; the neglect of some duty or
other for the sake of the enjoyments of the table.

25. This _love_ of what are called 'good eating and drinking,' if very
unamiable in grown-up persons, is perfectly hateful in _a youth_; and,
if he indulge in the propensity, he is already half ruined. To warn you
against acts of fraud, robbery, and violence, is not my province; that
is the business of those who make and administer _the law_. I am not
talking to you against acts which the jailor and the hangman punish; nor
against those moral offences which all men condemn; but against
indulgences, which, by men in general, are deemed not only harmless, but
meritorious; but which the observation of my whole life has taught me to
regard as destructive to human happiness, and against which all ought to
be cautioned even in their b