Читать книгу Young Men; In Business онлайн

8 страница из 18

Would that my descriptions might cease here; but the tale of failure has not run out. There are young men with the pathway of honor open before them, but who turn from it, and in pompous dash care for none of the things that would make for their peace. Like dogs kept hungry, that their scent after the game may be keener and more impelling, they slip the leash of what they term their “mother’s apron-string,” and burst upon life with a dare-devil spirit that defies control. The shades of evening find them prowling under the mask of darkness after every pernicious gratification. Their imaginations have been polluted with the vile literature secretly circulated. From the dice or billiard-table they go to the lighted hall, where prostitutes decked in fine apparel mingle in the waltz and ply their miserable arts, and thence to the house where I will not follow, and of which the Scriptures say, that “is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”

A young man in a London warehouse was solicited to spend such a night as I have glanced at. He refused. “What a fool you are to be so dull,” said the tempter. “We’ll wait a while and see who is the fool,” said the young man. In ten years’ time the tempter was in a dishonored grave, and the other was rising to affluence.