r lost.
They become forever fixed in the character. Like Rip Van Winkle, the
youth may say to himself, I will do this just once "just to see what it
is like," no one will ever know it, and "I won't count this time." The
country youth says it when he goes to the city. The young man says it
when he drinks "just to be social." Americans, who are good church
people at home, say it when in Paris and Vienna. Yes, "just to see
what it is like" has ruined many a noble life. Many a man has lost his
balance and fallen over the precipice into the sink of iniquity while
just attempting "to see what it was like." "If you have been pilot on
these waters twenty-five years," said a young man to the captain of a
steamer, "you must know every rock and sandbank in the river." "No, I
don't, but I know where the deep water is."

Just one little lie to help me out of this difficulty; "I won't count
this." Just one little embezzlement; no one will know it, and I can
return the money before it will be needed. Just one little indulgence;
I won't count it, and a good night's sleep will make me all right
again. Just one small part of my work slighted; it won't make any
great difference, and, besides, I am usually so careful that a little
thing like this ought not to be counted.

But, my young friend, it will be counted, whether you will or not; the
deed has been recorded with an iron pen, even to the smallest detail.
The Recording Angel is no myth; it is found in ourselves. Its name is
Memory, and it holds everything. We think we have forgotten thousands
of things until mortal danger, fever, or some other great stimulus
reproduces them to the consciousness with all the fidelity of
photographs. Sometimes all one's past life will seem to pass before
him in an instant; but at all times it is really, although
unconsciously, passing before him in the sentiments he feels, in the
thoughts he thinks, in the impulses that move him apparently without
cause.

"Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

In a fable one of the Fates spun filaments so fine that they were
invisible, and she became a victim of her cunning, for she was bound to
the spot by these very threads.

Father Schoenmaker, missionary to the Indians, tried for years to
implant civilization among the wild tribes. After fifteen years' labor
he induced a chief to lay aside his blanket, the token of savagery; but
he goes on to