“Inordinate expenditure is the cause of a great share of the crime and consequent misery which devastate the world.  The clerk who spends more than he earns, is fast qualifying himself for a gambler and a thief; the trader or mechanic who overruns his income, is very certain to become in time a trickster and a cheat.  Wherever you see a man spending faster than he earns, there look out for villainy to be developed, though it be the farthest thing possible from his present thought.

“When the world shall have become wiser, and its standard of morality more lofty, it will perceive and affirm that profuse expenditure, even by one who can pecuniarily afford it, is pernicious and unjustifiable—­that a man, however wealthy, has no right to lavish on his own appetites, his tastes, or his ostentation, that which might have raised hundreds from destitution and despair to comfort and usefulness.  But that is an improvement in public sentiment which must be waited for, while the other is more ready and obvious.

“The meanness, the dishonesty, the iniquity, of squandering thousands unearned, and keeping others out of money that is justly theirs, have rarely been urged and enforced as they should be.  They need but to be considered and understood, to be universally loathed and detested."[4]

[Footnote 4:  Horace Greeley.]

Nearly allied with the Habits of the young, are their Amusements.  That the youthful should be allowed a reasonable degree of recreation, is universally admitted.  The laws of health demand relaxation from the labors and cares of life.  The body, the mind, constantly strained to the highest exertion, without repose, and something to cheer, refreshen, and re-invigorate it, will speedily fall into disease and death.  The very word recreation—­(re-creation)—­indicates that to a degree, proper amusement has the power to revive the wearied energies, supply afresh the springs of life, and give a renewed elasticity and endurance to all the capacities of our nature.

Yet there is no subject surrounded with greater difficulties, than the amusements of the youthful.  There is no amusement, however harmless and proper in its nature, but what can be carried to such excess, as to inflict deep injury.  It is while searching for recreations, that the youthful meet the most dangerous temptations, and fall into the most vicious practices.  How important that they should make this a matter of mature reflection and acute discrimination.  Pleasure we all desire.  It is sought for by every human being.  But it is essential to distinguish between true pleasure, which we can enjoy with real benefit, and false pleasure, which deceives, demoralizes, and destroys.  The poet truly describes the nature of this distinction, when he says,

    “Pleasure, or wrong, or rightly understood,
     Our greatest evil, or our greatest good!”