he gambling house, until led on step by step
they ventured down those avenues which lead to the chambers of death,
from which few ever return, and none uninjured;--could the multitudes
of such beings, which in the United States alone, (though admitted to
be the paradise of the world,) have gone down to infamy through
licentiousness, be presented to our view, at once, how would it strike
us with horror! Their very numbers would astonish us, but how much more
their appearance! I am supposing them to appear as they went to the
graves, in their bloated and disfigured faces, their emaciated and
tottering frames, bending at thirty years of age under the appearance
of three or four score; diseased externally and internally; and
positively disgusting,--not only to the eye, but to some of the other
senses.

One such monster is enough to fill the soul of those who are but
moderately virtuous with horror; what then would be the effect of
beholding thousands? In view of such a scene, is there a young man in
the world, who would not form the strongest resolution not to enter
upon a road which ends in wo so remediless?

But it should be remembered that these thousands were once the
friends--the children, the brothers,--yes, sometimes the _nearer_
relatives of _other_ thousands. They had parents, sisters, brothers;
sometimes (would it were not true) wives and infants. Suppose the young
man whom temptation solicits, were not only to behold the wretched
thousands already mentioned, but the many more thousands of dear
relatives mourning their loss;--not by death, for that were
tolerable--but by an everlasting destruction from the presence of all
purity or excellence. Would he not shrink back from the door which he
was about to enter, ashamed and aghast, and resolve in the strength of
his Creator, never more to indulge a thought of a crime so disastrous
in its consequences?

And let every one remember that the army of ruined immortals which have
been here presented to the imagination, is by no means a mere fancy
sketch. There is a day to come which will disclose a scene of which I
have given but a faint picture. For though the thousands who have thus
destroyed their own bodies and souls, with their agonized friends and
relatives, are scattered among several millions of their fellow
citizens, and, for a time, not a few of them elude the public gaze, yet
their existence is much a reality, as if they were assembled in one
place.

'All