The Average Life of the Dissolute.
By Sel.
An eminent physician, whose experience and practice has been very extensive, has said that “the average life of the dissolute does not exceed four years!” The remark startled us when we first met with it; and it has often occurred to us when gazing upon a large company of fine, healthy young men, and we have thought, is it possible for a life of dissipation, in so short a period, to bring all these to the grave? And knowing for a certainty that it would, which of them all, we asked, could be tempted to enter upon it? Which of them all would take his first glass of wine; enter upon his first debauch; take his first night steeped in sin? And yet, alas! there are hundreds and thousands in every stage—some in their first year, some in their second, some in their third, and some just taking their last look at this beautiful world, through sunken, glassy eyes, with curses on their lips and hell in their hearts. From such a frightful and early termination of the wonderful and beautiful being which God has given them, we would save all. Not one that comes to the end of the dissolute, comes there intentionally; comes there in the least suspicious, in the first or often in the second year of his downward course, of his exposedness to danger. How shall we reach, how prevent them! What can we say but “Touch not the FIRST GLASS! Death is there!—The first is father to the second; the second to the third. So thousands have found it. May you never. O, beware, beware!”—Sel.