“He could look no longer; he hid his eyes, a flood of hot tears streamed forth and were lost in the snow.  And he sighed, now more gently, and despairing, ’Return but again, O youth, come once again!’

“And youth did return; for he had but dreamed thus fearfully in the new-year’s night.  He was still young; but his sinful wanderings, they had been no dream; and he thanked God that he could yet turn from the miry ways of vice, and again choose the sunny path which leadeth unto the pure land of the harvest of righteousness.

“Turn thou with him, young man, if thou standest upon his path of error.  This fearful dream will in a future be thy judge; but shouldst thou ever exclaim, in the bitterness of remorse, ’Return, fair time of youth!’—­youth will not come when thou dost call for her.”

It is much easier to start right and keep right, than to start wrong, and then endeavor to get right.  Although those who take the wrong path at the commencement, should afterwards seek to obtain the right one, and persevere until they find it, still the labor to retrieve the early error will be difficult.  It is painful to walk in the way of wickedness—­it is painful to break away from it, when once there.  It is painful to continue on—­it is painful to turn back.  This is in consequence of the nature of sin.  It is a path all evil, all pain, all darkness—­everything connected with it is fruitful of wretchedness.  Those who stray therein, find themselves beset with perils and troubles on all sides.  Avoid it, as you love happiness!

    “Ne’er till to-morrow’s light delay
     What may as well be done to-day;
     Ne’er do to-day, what on the morrow
     Will wring your heart with sighs and sorrow.”

A young man may, in early life, fall into vicious habits, and afterwards turn from them.  Some have done so.  But they declare that the struggles they were compelled to make—­the conflicts and trials, the buffeting of evil passions, and the mental agony they endured, in breaking away, were terrible beyond description.  Where one, who has fallen into bad habits in youth, has afterwards abandoned them, there are a score who have continued their victims, until ruin, and a premature death, closed their career.  How much safer, how much easier and pleasanter, how much more promising and hopeful, to commence life with good habits well established, with high principles, sound maxims, enlightened rules of conduct, deeply fixed in the soul.  This is a plain, pleasant, prosperous path—­readily found, and easily followed.  In no other can you secure true enjoyment.

    “We cannot live too slowly to be good
     And happy, nor too much by line and square. 
     But youth is burning to forestall its nature,
     And will not wait for time to ferry it
     Over the stream; but flings itself into
     The flood and perishes. *******
     The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat
     Oneself. **************”