may drink to the extinction of life without the risk of impoverishment: but look at your neighbor, his bloated face, and inflamed eye, and blistered lip, and trembling hand: he too is a man of wealth, and may die of intemperance without the fear of poverty.

Do you demand, "What have I to do with such examples?" Nothing - if you take warning by them. But if you too should cleave to the morning bitter, and the noon-tide dram, and the evening beverage, you have in these signals of ruin the memorials of your own miserable end; for the same causes, in the same circumstances, will produce the same effects.

To the affectionate husband I would say, Behold the wife of thy bosom, young and beautiful as the morning; and yet her day may be overcast with clouds, and all thy early hopes be blasted. Upon her the fell destroyer may lay his hand, and plant in that healthful frame the seeds of disease, and transmit to successive generations the inheritance of crime and woe. Will you not watch over her with everwakeful affection, and keep far from your abode the occasions of temptation and ruin? Call around you the circle of your healthful and beautiful children. Will you bring contagion into such a circle as this? Shall those sparkling eyes become inflamed, those rosy cheeks purpled and bloated, that sweet breath be tainted, those ruby lips blistered, and that vital tone of unceasing cheerfulness be turned into tremor and melancholy? Shall those joints, so compact, be unstrung, that dawning intellect be clouded, those affectionate sensibilities benumbed, and those capacities for holiness and heaven be filled with sin, and "fitted for destruction"? O thou father, was it for this that the Son of God shed his blood for thy precious offspring — that, abandoned and even tempted by thee, they should destroy themselves, and pierce thy heart with many sorrows? Wouldst thou let the wolf into thy sheep-fold among the tender lambs? Wouldst thou send thy flock to graze about a

den of lions? Close, then, thy doors against a more ferocious destroyer, and withhold the footsteps of thy immortal progeny from places of resort more dangerous than the lion's den. Should a serpent of vast dimensions surprise, in the field, one of your little group, and wreath about his body his cold, elastic folds, - tightening with every yielding breath his deadly gripe, - how would his cries pierce your soul, and his strained eyeballs, and convulsive agonies, and imploring hands, add wings to your feet, and supernatural strength to your arms! But in this case you could approach with hope to his rescue. The keen edge of steel might sunder the elastic fold, and rescue the victim, who, the moment he is released, breathes freely, and is well again. But the serpent Intemperance twines about the body of your child a deadlier gripe, and extorts a keener cry of distress, and mocks your effort to relieve him by a fibre which no steel can sunder. Like Laocoön, you can only look on while bone after bone of your child is crushed, till his agonies are over, and his cries are hushed in death.

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