storm; the salacious day-dreams of indolent men, rosy at first and distant, deepen every day, darker and darker, to the color of actual evil. Then follows the blight of every habit. Indolence promises without redeeming the pledge; a mist of forgetfulness rises up and obscures the memory of vows and oaths. The negligence of laziness breeds more falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. As poverty waits upon the steps of Indolence, so, upon such poverty, brood equivocations, subterfuges, lying denials. Falsehood becomes the instrument of every plan. Negligence of truth, next occasional falsehood, then wanton mendacity, these three strides traverse the whole road of lies.

Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty, as to lying. Indeed, they are but different parts of the same road, and not far apart. In directing the conduct of the Ephesian converts, Paul says, Let him that stole, steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good. The men who were thieves, were those who had ceased to work. Industry was the road back to honesty. When stores are broken open, the idle are first suspected. The desperate forgeries and swindlings of past years have taught men, 'upon their occurrence, to ferret their authors among the unemployed, or among those vainly occupied in vicious pleasures.

The terrible passion for stealing rarely grows upon the young, except through the necessities of their idle pleasures. Business is first neglected for amusement, and amusement soon becomes the only business. The appetite for vicious pleasure outruns the means of procuring it. The theatre, the circus, the card table, the midnight carouse, demand money. When scanty earnings are gone, the young man pilfers from the till. First, because he hopes to repay, and next, because he despairs of payingfor the disgrace of stealing ten dollars or a thousand will be the same, but not their respective pleasures. Next, he will gamble, since it is only another form of stealing. Gradually excluded from reputable society, the vagrant takes all the badges of vice, and is familiar with her paths; and, through them, enters the broad road of crime. Society precipitates its lazy members, as water does its filth; and they form at the bottom, a pestilent sediment, stirred up by every breeze of evil, into riots, robberies and murders. Into it drains all the filth, and out of it, as from a morass, flow all the streams of pollution. Brutal wretches, desperately haunted by the law, crawling in human filth, brood here their villain schemes, and plot mischief to man. Hither resorts the truculent demagogue, to stir up the fœtid filth against his advesaries, or to bring up mobs out

of this sea, which cannot rest, but casts up mire and dirt.

The results of Indolence upon communities, are as marked as upon individuals. In a town of industrious people, the streets would be clean; houses neat and comfortable; fences in repair; school houses swarming with rosy-faced children, decently clad, and well behaved. The laws would be respected, because justly administered. The church would be thronged with devout worshippers. The tavern would be silent, and for the most part empty, or a welcome retreat for weary travellers. Grog-sellers would fail, and mechanics grow rich; labor would be honorable, and loafing a disgrace. For music, the people would have the blacksmith's anvil, and the carpenter's hammer; and at home, the spinning-wheel, and girls cheerfully singing at their work. Debts would be seldom paid, because seldom made; but if contracted, no grim officer would be invited to the settlement. Town-officers would be respectable men, taking office reluctantly, and only for the public good. Public days would be full of sports, without fighting; and elections would be as orderly as weddings or funerals.

In a town of lazy-men, I should expect to find crazy houses, shingles and weather-boards knocked off; doors hingeless, and all a-creak; windows stuff

ed with rags, hats, or pillows. Instead of flowers in summer, and warmth in winter, every side of the house would swarm with vermin in hot weatherand with starveling pigs in cold; fences would be curiosities of lazy contrivance, and gates hung with ropes, or lying flat in the mud. Lank cattle would follow every loaded wagon, supplieating a morsel, with famine in their looks. Children would be ragged, dirty, saucy; the school house empty; the jail full; the church silent; the grog-shops noisy; and the carpenter, the saddler, and the blacksmith, would do their principal work at taverns. Lawyers would reign; constables flourish, and hunt sneaking criminals; burly justices (as their interests might dictate) would. connive a compromise, or make a commitment. The peace-officers would wink at tumults, arrest rioters in fun, and drink with them in good earnest. Good men would be obliged to keep dark, and bad men would swear, fight, and rule the town. Public days would be scenes of confusion, and end in rows; elections would be drunken, illegal, boisterous and brutal.

The young abhor the last results of Idleness; but they do not perceive that the first steps, lead to the last. They are in the opening of this career; but with them it is genteel leisure, not laziness; it is relaxation, not sloth; amusement, not indolence.

But leisure, relaxation, and amusement, when men ought to be usefully engaged, are Indolence. A specious Industry is the worst Idleness. A young man perceives that the first steps lead to the last, with every body but himself. He sees others become drunkards by social tippling-he sips socially, as if he could not be a drunkard. He sees others become dishonest, by petty habits of fraud; but will indulge slight aberrations, as if he could not become knavish. Though others, by lying, lose all character, he does not imagine that his little dalliances with falsehood will make him a liar. He knows that salacious imaginations, villainous pictures, harlot snuff-boxes, and illicit familiarities, have led thousands to her door, whose house is the way to hell; yet he never sighs or trembles lest these things should take him to this inevitable way of damnation!

In reading these strictures upon Indolence, you will abhor it in others, without suspecting it in yourself. While you read, I fear you are excusing yourself; you are supposing that your leisure has not been laziness; or that, with your disposition, and in your circumstances, Indolence is harmless. Be not deceived: if you are idle, you are on the road to ruin and there are few stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice, than a road. While