, with hypocrisy, with death. Then I would have
him touched with some rod of disenchantment until his two eyes would
become the cold orbs of the adder; and on his lip would come the foam
of raging intoxication; and to his feet the spring of the panther;
and his soft hand should become the clammy hand of a wasted
skeleton; while suddenly from his heart would burst in crackling and
all-devouring fury the unquenchable flames; and in the affected lisp
of his tongue would come the hiss of the worm that never dies.

But, until disenchanted, nothing but myrrh, and balm, and ringlet, and
diamond, and flute-like voice, and conversation aromatic, facile, and
Frenchy.

There are practices in respectable circles, I am told by physicians,
which need public reprehension. Herod's massacre of the innocents was
as nothing compared with that of millions and millions by what I shall
call _ante-natal_ murders. You may escape the grip of the law, because
the existence of such life was not known by society; but I tell
you that at last God will shove down on you the avalanche of his
indignation; and though you may not have wielded knife or pistol in
your deeds of darkness, yet, in the day when John Wilkes Booth and
Antony Probst come to judgment, you will have on _your_ brow the brand
of _murderer_.

Hear me when I repeat, that the practices of high life ought not to
make sin in your eyes seem tolerable. God is no respecter of persons;
and robes and rags will stand on the same platform in the day when the
archangel, with one foot on the sea and the other on the land, swears,
by Him that liveth forever and ever, that Time shall be no more.

O, it is beautiful to see a young man living a life of purity,
standing upright where thousands of other young men fall. You will
move in honorable circles all your days; and some old friend of your
father will meet you and say: "My son, how glad I am to see you look
so well. Just like your father, for all the world. I thought you would
turn out well when I used to hold you on my knee. Do you ever hear
from the old folks?"

After a while you yourself will be old, and lean quite heavily on your
cane, and take short steps, and hold the book off to the other side
of the light. And men will take off their hats in your presence. Your
body, unharmed by early indulgences, will get weaker, only as the
sleepy child gets more and more unable to hold up its head, and falls
back into its mother's lap: so you shal