it. He furnishes his rooms tastefully and comfortably. He provides
food of all kinds prepared to please the most fastidious palate. A small
sum will secure a quiet and cosy retreat where the youth and his friends
may pass an evening. But he furnishes the bar with its tempting array of
liquors. He gathers there his array of well dressed and gentlemanly
confederates who are always ready to challenge to drink, and to sneer at
the principle which refuses. He has his licentious pictures to stimulate
the passions, and abundant facilities for their gratification. And
thousands of youths who went thither at first, only because they could
find no other retreat, have come at last to frequent it for the
gratification of the basest appetites, and have gone from its doors at
last, hopeless, homeless drunkards.

Now suppose a community should say (and no individual with a shadow of
moral sense could say otherwise), the rumseller takes an unfair advantage.
He unites things which may just as well be separated. There is no
necessity that all the light and comfort and retirement should be
associated with liquor and licentiousness. Let us furnish these to the
hundreds of poor young men who have no retreat but their offices and
boarding houses. Let us build a house or hire a large suite of rooms. Let
us have a suitable person employed to dispense proper refreshments at a
reasonable price. Let us have a reading room furnished with the best
papers and periodicals, and with a good library. Let us have a
conversation room, where young men can chat or play their game of chess or
backgammon. Let us have a ten pin alley, and even a smoking room. Would
not this be in the interest of temperance as well as of many other
virtues? Would it not keep scores of young men from the gin palaces? Could
not society, independently of any religious views, easily inaugurate and
carry out such a plan? It has been done, and has worked wonders. The
slight approach towards it made by our Young Men's Christian Association,
saying nothing now of the religious adjuncts, has proved what a strong,
well organized effort might effect in this direction. And yet what has our
communities of this character? What organized appliance have our cities
anywhere to act upon young men? There I know are the Young Men's
Associations, and they are good as far as they go; but they make provision
chiefly for intellectual wants. Their libraries, and reading rooms, and
lecture courses are do