and most thorough education.  Had he been thoughtful and wise to have improved his opportunities, the way was open for him to the highest advancement.  He might have been blessed with respectability, wealth, and honors.  He could have risen to the most dignified positions in life.  His voice might have been heard in strains of persuasive eloquence, from the sacred pulpit, or in the halls of justice, or in the senate chamber of our state or national councils.  He might have occupied a seat on the bench of the highest courts, or have aspired to the executive chair of the nation.  But where is he now, and what are his circumstances and his position in the world?  See issuing from the door of yonder filthy groggery; a wretched specimen of humanity—­the distorted caricature of a man!  His garments are thread-bare and patched—­his eyes are inflamed, sunken and watery—­his countenance bloated and livid—­his limbs swelled and tottering.  Although but in the morning of his manhood, yet the lines of premature old age and decrepitude are deeply carved upon his pale, dejected face; and in his whole aspect, there is that forlorn, broken-spirited, anguished look of despair, which shows he himself feels that he has sunken, beyond earthly redemption, into the awful pit of the confirmed drunkard!  This is the young man whose early opportunities were so favorable, and whose prospects were so bright and flattering.  He has become a curse to himself, he has brought disgrace and wretchedness on his connections, and is an outcast and vagabond, with whom no young man who now hears me would associate for a single hour!

What has brought him to this pitiable condition—­this state of utter wretchedness?  It was a want of forethought.  He totally neglected the considerations I have endeavored to impress upon the young.  He was careless and indifferent in regard to his associates.  He would not be admonished to turn from the company of the vicious, and seek the society of those of good habits and upright character.  Despite the counsel of parents and friends, he would associate with companions of corrupt habits—­with the profane, the drinking, the Sabbath-breaking—­those whose chief delight was to visit oyster-cellars and grog-shops—­whose highest ambition was to excel in cards, and dice, and sleight-of-hand tricks—­and who sought for no better employment than to range the streets and alleys, to engage in midnight adventures and Bacchanalian revelries.  Mingling with such as his associates, and falling unavoidably into their habits, he is now reaping the bitter—­BITTER fruits of his folly.  His time misspent—­character destroyed—­health ruined—­every source of happiness obliterated—­his life wasted and literally thrown away—­his days, a blank—­ah! worse than that—­filled with the terrific visions, the horrid dreams, the flames of the unquenchable fire, which float and burn in the veins of the confirmed inebriate!