Nobody ever went to the devil yet by
one big bound, like a tiger out of a jungle or a trout to the fly; it
is an imperceptible passage down an easy slope, and the first step of
all is sometimes taken when a young girl lends her ears to a smutty
story or a questionable jest. Then let me say again, and I wish I
could borrow Fort Sheridan's bugle to blow it far and wide, that every
girl might hear: Close your ears and harden your hearts against the
insidious advance of evil. Have nothing to do with a desk-mate or with
a comrade who seeks to amuse or entertain you with conversation you
would not care to have "mother" hear, and which you would be sorry to
remember, if this night the death angel came knocking at the door and
summoned your soul away upon its lonely journey to find its God.
XLIII.
A FROG MAY DO WHAT A MAN MAY NOT.
A bull-frog in a malarial pond is expected to croak and make all the
protest he can against his surroundings. But a man! Destined for a
crown and sent upon earth to be educated for the court of the King of
kings! Placed in an emerald world with a hither edge of opaline shadow
and a fine spray of diamond-dust to set it sparkling; with ten million
singing birds to form its orchestra; sunset clouds and sunrise mists to
drape it, and countless flowers to make it sweet while the hand of God
himself upholds it on its way among the clustering stars, what right
has a man to find fault with his surroundings, or lament himself that
all things do not go to suit him here below? When it shall be in order
for the glow-worm to call the midday sun to account, or for the
wood-tick to find fault with the century old oak that protects it; or
for the blue-bird to question the haze on a midsummer horizon because,
forsooth! it is a little off color with his own wings, then it will be
time for man to find fault with the ordering of the seasons and the
allotment of the weather in the world he is allowed to inhabit.
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