st of them have, of
a winter's evening, three or four hours of leisure. After the evening
repast, the young man puts on his hat and coat and goes out.

"Come in here," cries one form of allurement.

"Come in here," cries another.

"Go;" says Satan. "You ought to see for yourself."

"Why don't you go?" says a comrade. "It is a shame for a young man
to be as _green_ as you are. By this time you ought to have seen
everything."

Especially is temptation strong in such times as this, when business
is dull. I have noticed that men spend more money when they have
little to spend.

The tremendous question to be settled by our great populace, day by
day, is how to get a livelihood. Many of our young men, just starting
for themselves, are very much discouraged. They had hoped before this
to have set up a household of their own. But their gains have been
slow, and their discouragements many. The young man can hardly take
care of himself. How can he take care of another? And, to the curse
of modern society, before a young man is able to set up a home of his
own, he is expected to have enough to support in idleness somebody
else; when God intended that they should begin together, and jointly
earn a livelihood. So, many of our young men are utterly discouraged,
and utterly unfit to resist temptation.

The time the pirate bears down upon the ship is when its sails are
down and it is making no headway.

People wish they had more time to think. The trouble is now, that
people have too much time to think. Give to many of our commercial men
the four hours of these winter nights, with nothing to divert them,
and before spring they will have lodgings in an insane asylum.

I remark further, that the winter is especially trying to the moral
character of our young men, because some of their homes in winter are
especially unattractive. In summer they can sit on the steps, or have
a bouquet in the vase on the mantel; and the evenings are so short
that soon after gas-light they feel like retiring. Parents do not take
enough pains to make these long winter nights attractive.

It is strange that old people know so little about young people. One
would think that they had never been young themselves, but had been
born with their spectacles on. It is dolorous for young people to
spend the three or four hours of a winter's evening with parents
who sit talking over their own ailments and misfortunes, and the
nothingness of this world. How d