The dangers to which a young man is exposed during that part of his
life which he passes in college, are numerous and difficult to oppose with a
firm, unyielding spirit. After he has left the place, where till that time he
has been under the supervision of those, whose duty it was to watch over and
guide his erring steps and to guard well the disposition to contract vices of
every kind; he feels himself at liberty as he thinks to act
for himself, and the consequence in most cases,
is a departure from those principles of moral
conduct, which have been instilled into his mind from early youth. If he could
realize, that the habits contracted at college will follow him through
subsequent life, and perhaps in more aggravated forms; he would more readily
recognise the duty to guard well himself lest he should yield to
temptation.– There is danger of extravagance. This is to be shunned with
diligence as it is of an increasing and insinuating kind. Surrounded with
kindred spirits, each indulgence paves the way for a greater until he quiets
his upbraiding conscience with the soothing argument, that it is necessary to
keep
Page 2
up appearances—There is another danger
to which he should present an invincible front—that which is called in
common parlance "spreeing". this habit from its apparently harmless
character, is readily contracted, and it appears in a short time to be a very
creditable thing, to disturb the faculty and his fellow-students with noise and
annoyances of different kinds—This vice should especially be avoided on
account of its prolific nature, it begets many others, which when expanded
under the fostering care they are likely to recieve, become of as great
importance as the parent vice.– Among its offspring may be enumerated,
idleness, disrespect towards superiors, a general spirit of insubordination and
a neglect of duties, which while they render him more prone to indulge in
aberrations from the path of rectitude, debilitate and enslave the mind, fasten
it upon the common things of the world, and if at any-time, tired of such
groveling occupations,
it would soar above the
sphere in which it has been so long confined, it finds its pinions
shackled—and as the moth flitting around a candle, after a few feeble
flutterings, dies, so the mind after a few vigorous exertions sinks again into
the same supineness and inanity as before; and if it thinks at all of lifting
itself, it is only as one thinks of an impossibility—The mass of evil
habits, which which a long course of indulgence has heaped up
Page 3
around the once noble powers, prevents the jewel
from sparkling with its primitive brilliance.– It is thus that we may
imagine one who though having
recieved the
highest honor of college, is yet a slave to the most pernicious
habits—his fine intellect becoming day by day less bright, and suffering
himself to be led on by the syren voice of temptation, until in the mediocre
man you would fail to recognise the talented scholar to whom all once conceded
the first might.–
2
Profanity too he should put far from him. This vice is often
produced by peculiar circumstances—with some it seems to be one of the
qualifications of a man, there is one other which I am sorry to add is
drunkeness—Oh that anyone should ascribe such qualities to these the
worst of all sins! Vices which is indulged will corrupt the noblest nature, and
which if persisted in by anyone, will draw down
upon him the everlasting burnings of the fire that is not quenched, and the
every gnawing tortures of the worm which dieth not.