“My father has already discharged a secret debt of fourteen thousand dollars for me, and there cannot be less than thirty thousand remaining.  Uncle, do not let it worry you; I will leave the country, bear the stigma with me, and you can repudiate the obligation,” said he, pleading nervously, as he grasped his uncle’s hand firmer and firmer.

Among the many vices of the south, spreading their corrupting influence through the social body, that of gambling stands first.  Confined to no one grade of society, it may be found working ruin among rich and poor, old and young.  Labour being disreputable, one class of men affect to consider themselves born gentlemen, while the planter is ever ready to indulge his sons with some profession they seldom practise, and which too often results in idleness and its attendants.  This, coupled to a want of proper society with which the young may mix for social elevation, finds gratification in drinking saloons, fashionable billiard rooms, and at the card table.  In the first, gentlemen of all professions meet and revel away the night in suppers and wine.  They must keep up appearances, or fall doubtful visitors of these fashionable stepping-stones to ruin.  Like a furnace to devour its victims, the drinking saloon first opens its gorgeous doors, and when the burning liquid has inflamed the mental and physical man, soon hurries him onward into those fascinating habitations where vice and voluptuousness mingle their degrading powers.  Once in these whirlpools of sin, the young man finds himself borne away by every species of vicious allurement-his feelings become unrestrained, until at length that last spark of filial advice which had hovered round his consciousness dies out.  When this is gone, vice becomes the great charmer, and with its thousand snares and resplendent workers never fails to hold out a hope with each temptation; but while the victim now and then asks hope to be his guardian, he seldom thinks how surely he is sinking faster and faster to an irretrievable depth.

Through this combination of snares-all having their life-springs in slavery-Lorenzo brought ruin upon his father, and involved his uncle.  With an excellent education, a fine person, frank and gentle demeanour, he made his way into the city, and soon attracted the attention of those who affect to grace polished society.  Had society laid its restraints upon character and personal worth, it would have been well for Lorenzo; but the neglect to found this moral conservator only serves to increase the avenues to vice, and to bring men from high places into the lowest moral scale.  This is the lamentable fault of southern society; and through the want of that moral bulwark, so protective of society in the New England States-personal worth-estates are squandered, families brought to poverty, young men degraded, and persons once happy driven from those homes they can only look back upon with pain and regret.  The associations of birth, education, and polished society-so much valued by the southerner-all become as nothing when poverty sets its seal upon the victim.