e it is
a Sunday-school book. As far as possible know _who_ wrote it, who
illustrated it, who published it, who sold it.

Young man, as you value Heaven, never buy a book from one of those men
who meet you in the square, and, after looking both ways, to see
if the police are watching, shows you a book--very cheap. Have
him arrested as you would kill a rattle-snake. Grab him, and shout
"Police! police!"

But there is more danger, I think, from many of the family papers,
published once a week; in those stories of vice and shame, full
of infamous suggestions, going as far as they can without exposing
themselves to the clutch of the law. I name none of them; but say that
on some fashionable tables there lie "family newspapers" that are the
very vomit of the pit.

The way to ruin is cheap. It costs three dollars to go to
Philadelphia; six dollars to Boston; thirty-three dollars to Savannah;
but, by the purchase of a bad paper for ten cents, you may get a
through ticket to hell, by express, with few stopping-places, and
the final halting like the tumbling of the lightning train down the
draw-bridge at Norwalk--sudden, terrific, deathful, never to rise.

O, the power of an iniquitous pen! If a needle puncture the body at a
certain point, life is destroyed; but the pen is a sharper instrument,
for with its puncture you may kill the soul. And that very thing many
of our acutest minds are to-day doing. Do not think that this which
you drain from the glass, because it is sweet, is therefore healthful:
some of the worst poisons are pleasant to the taste. The pen which
for the time fascinates you may be dipped in the slime of unclean
literature.

Look out for the books that come from France. It has sent us some
grand histories, poems, and pure novels, but they are few in number
compared with the nastiness that it has spewed out upon our shore.

Do we not read in our Bibles that the ancient flood covered all the
earth? I would have thought that France had escaped, for it does not
seem as if it had ever had a thorough washing.

In the next place, if you would shun an impure life, avoid those who
indulge in impure conversation. There are many people whose chief
mirthfulness is in that line. They are full of innuendo, and phrases
of double meaning, and are always picking out of the conversation of
decent men something vilely significant. It is astonishing in company,
how many, professing to be _Christians_, will tell vile stori