nhappy; and their offspring--when they
are cursed with any--poor, miserable, weak fledgelings, with aged,
wasted faces, water on the brain, with rickets and softening of the
bones--idiots or imbeciles--dying early and scarcely regretted even
by the parent whose progeny they are, for every wail of the little
suffering voice pierced his heart and reminded him of his lustful sin,
and passionate, inexcusable indulgence that caused all this misery.

"And the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children,
even to the third and fourth generations."

Alas, how true! how indisputable! The imperative Laws of Nature once
broken, the consequences are _inevitable_.

Of late years it has become the fashion amongst certain men to scoff
at this terrible vice of secret indulgence, and to claim that its
evil effects are overrated, are portrayed too vividly. Ask some poor
unfortunate whose confidence you may succeed in gaining, and listen to
the pitiful tale of lost health and vitality he will tell you. Mark well
the wasted hand, the putty-like skin, the black-ringed, lack-lustre
eyes, the heavy lip, the labored breath--read the consequences of his
sin and crime in his shame-faced way, his shambling gait, his nerveless
hands, his fluttering heart, his weakened muscles, and his tottering
memory and mind.

Must he needs lie dead at our feet before these skeptics can be
convinced? Is not such a state a living death? Must these men visit
him in the cell of the asylum, watch him as a raving maniac, gaze upon
him as a hopeless idiot or a driveling imbecile, before they will be
convinced? Such proof is at hand. Not an asylum in any country but has
its score of such; not an asylum record-book but chronicles the sad
histories of thousands of these poor, lost creatures--male and female;
not an asylum nurse or doctor but will sadly point out these creatures
to you, bereft of every trace of reason, all sense of shame, still
practicing the horrible vice that has driven every semblance of humanity
from their faces and the very light of reason from their eyes.

True, every boy or man who practices this vice does not come to this
end. But who shall discriminate? There are thousands such, and who shall
say which it shall be, or at what moment it shall occur? Ah! happy,
rosy-cheeked boy, so gay and thoughtless now, so free from misery,
disease and care, beware! It may be your turn next. A little thoughtless
indulgence, the imitation of fri