And now to come back to the miserable sinner.  As schoolboy, as bank-clerk, as teacher, as worker in many ways, he has unemployed leisure in the hours of daylight,—­not so many as he should have, perhaps, but still many hours in the course of the month.  Shall he go to the livery-stable, the bowling-alley, or the billiard-saloon?  Not being a saint, of course he can plead no high-toned sense of need of physical culture, to warrant these indulgences.  He goes because he likes it, gets enjoyment, exercise, rest for a mind tasked to the full with the day’s work.  This he ought to have; and if butting little ivory balls about or propelling big wooden ones will give it him, let him have it, if so be that it cannot be got otherwise.  There is no contamination in the cue or the ten-pin; but there is in the habits and associations of the places where they are found.  Let us not be maw-wormish about it, but tell the truth as it is.  The quasi-gambling principle upon which all such places are conducted stimulates the love of hazard and makes way for the betting propensity to become full-blown.  Of course, one can bet, if one have money; two lumps of sugar and a few flies will enable a man to lose the fortune of the Rothschilds, if he will.  That is not the question.  The billiard-saloons do educate men for the gambling-house, simply because they cannot go to them without either losing their money or winning their games.  Beside that, the gaseous, dusty, confined, and tobacco-scented air of those places is not to be compared with our free, open, out-doors hills and meadows, for any hygienic purposes.

But, argument apart, there is a sad New England story, so often repeated as to be almost wearisome, were it not so sad.  It is of the fresh, frank, honest-hearted boy, who may be seen behind many a bank-counter.  At first, so active, trustworthy, and trusted,—­yet with the constant temptation of unemployed time and energies demanding supply of action.  Little by little these are supplied,—­supplied by the billiard-table and its concomitants.  It is the same story,—­first, rumors, then equivocation, then exposure.  Perhaps a petty sum is all; but, to the austere justice of banking, this is as bad, nay, worse than millions.  And then a brief paragraph in the newspaper, and one more ruined young man, sulking beside the family-hearthstone, his father’s shame, his mother’s unextinguishable sorrow,—­a candidate for crime, if he have power of mind and spirit to feel, or an imbecile dependant, if he have not.

Now preaching, whether lay or clerical, will not do much to prevent this, especially if it be pitched (as it commonly is) upon too high a key. Preventing means, or used to mean, when words had a meaning, getting beforehand with anything. And if young Homespun have from the outset something he likes better, he will not take to the ivory balls in pleasant weather, and in rainy weather will be apt to prefer even quite a stupid book to the board of green cloth.  Therefore,