ange.

I reached home very late and very sick. That was my first dissipation,
and, as a lesson, it has been of more practical use to me than all the
good books and sermons in the world could have been. I can remember to
this day standing in the middle of the room in my night-shirt, trying to
catch my bed as it came round.

Next morning I confessed everything to my mother, and, for several months
afterwards, was a reformed character. Indeed, the pendulum of my
conscience swung too far the other way, and I grew exaggeratedly
remorseful and unhealthily moral.

There was published in those days, for the edification of young people, a
singularly pessimistic periodical, entitled _The Children's Band of Hope
Review_. It was a magazine much in favour among grown-up people, and a
bound copy of Vol. IX. had lately been won by my sister as a prize for
punctuality (I fancy she must have exhausted all the virtue she ever
possessed, in that direction, upon the winning of that prize. At all
events, I have noticed no ostentatious display of the quality in her
later life.) I had formerly expressed contempt for this book, but now,
in my regenerate state, I took a morbid pleasure in poring over its
denunciations of sin and sinners. There was one picture in it that
appeared peculiarly applicable to myself. It represented a gaudily
costumed young man, standing on the topmost of three steep steps, smoking
a large cigar. Behind him was a very small church, and below, a bright
and not altogether uninviting looking hell. The picture was headed "The
Three Steps to Ruin," and the three stairs were labelled respectively
"Smoking," "Drinking," "Gambling." I had already travelled two-thirds of
the road! Was I going all the way, or should I be able to retrace those
steps? I used to lie awake at night and think about it till I grew half
crazy. Alas! since then I have completed the descent, so where my future
will be spent I do not care to think.

Another picture in the book that troubled me was the frontispiece. This
was a highly-coloured print, illustrating the broad and narrow ways. The
narrow way led upward past a Sunday-school and a lion to a city in the
clouds. This city was referred to in the accompanying letterpress as a
place of "Rest and Peace," but inasmuch as the town was represented in
the illustration as surrounded by a perfect mob of angels, each one
blowing a trumpet twice his own size, and obviously blowing it for a