y part either of our
business or our pleasure to be about evil things. It is one thing to
be singing _about_ religion, it is another thing to be singing
_against_ it. Saint Peter, I fancy, would not much have approved
your favorite song. He, at least seemed to have another view of the
matter, when he said, _The end of all things is at hand_. Now this
text teaches much the same awful truth with the first line of your
song. But let us see to what different purposes the apostle and the
poet turn the very same thought. Your song says, because life is so
short, let us make it merry. Let us divert ourselves so much on the
road, that we may forget the end. Now what says the apostle,
_Because the end of all things is at hand be ye therefore sober and
watch unto prayer_.

_Will._ Why, master, I like to be sober too, and have left off
drinking. But still I never thought that we were obliged to carry
texts out of the Bible to try the soundness of a song; and to enable
us to judge if we might be both merry and wise in singing it.

_Stock._ Providence has not so stinted our enjoyments, Will, but he
has left us many subjects of harmless merriment; but, for my own
part, I am never certain that any one is quite harmless till I have
tried it by this rule that you seem to think so strict. There is
another favorite catch which I heard you and some of the workmen
humming yesterday.

_Will._ I will prove to you that there is not a word of harm in
_that_; pray listen now. (_sings._)

"Which is the best day to drink--Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday?"

_Stock._ Now, Will, do you really find you unwillingness to drink is
so great that you stand in need of all these incentives to provoke
you to it? Do you not find temptation strong enough without exciting
your inclinations, and whetting your appetites in this manner? Can
any thing be more unchristian than to persuade youth by pleasant
words, set to the most alluring music, that the pleasures of
drinking are so great, that every day in the week, naming them all
successively, by way of fixing and enlarging the idea, is equally
fit, equally proper, and equally delightful, for what?--for the low
and sensual purpose of getting drunk. Tell me, Will, are you so
_very_ averse to pleasure? Are you naturally so cold and dead to all
passion and temptation, that you really find it necessary to inflame
your imagination, and disorder your senses, in order to excit