BAD HABITS.

Waikato Times, Volume V, Issue 300, 14 April 1874, Page 2

BAD HABITS.

(From " Letters to Young People," by Timothy Titcomb.) It is entirely natural for people to form habits, so that if bad habits be avoided, the good ones will generally take care of themselves. I had no intention when I commenced th«ae letters of saying anything upon dogmatic theology, but I take the liberty of suggesting to tbeie who are interested in this kind of thing that if there be anything that demonstrates total depravity, it is the readiness with which young men imbibe bad habits. I have seen sin in the shape of u cigar sticking out of the month of a lad of ten years. It is strange what particular pains boys and young men n ill take to learn to do that which will make them miserable, ruin their health, render them disgusting to their friendß, and datnnge their reputation. Some of the fashionable habit 3 of the day are connected with the use of tobacco. Here is a drug that a young man is obliged to become accustomed to before he can tolerate either the taste or the affect of it. It is a rank vegetable poison ; and in the unaccustomed animal produces vertigo, faintness, and horrible sickness. Yet young men persevere in the use of it until they can endure it, and then until they love it. They go about the streets with cigar in their msuths, or into society with breath sufficiently offensivo to drivejall unperrerted nostrils before jthem. They chew tobacco — roll up huge wadi of the vile drug and stuff their cheeks with them. They ejaculate their saliva upon the sidewalk, in the store, in spittoons, which become incorporate stenchei, in dark corners of railroad cars to stain the white skirts of unsuspecting women, in lecture-rooms and churches, upon fences, nnd into stoves that hiss with anger at the insul l ". And the quids after they are ejected ! They are to be found in odd corners, in out-of-the-way places — great boulders, boluses, bulbs ! Horses stumble over them, dogs bark at them ; they po son young shade trees, and break down the constitution of sweepers. Tins may be an exaggeration of the facts, but not of the disgUßt with which one writes of them. Now, young men, just think of this thing ! You are born into the world with a sweet bieath. At a proper age, you acquire a good set of teeth. Why will you make of one a putreecent exhalution, and of the other a set of yellow pegs P A proper description of tho habit of chewing tobacco would exhaust the filthy adjectives of the language, and spoil the adjectives themselves for further use; and yet >ou will acquire the habit, and persist in it after it is acquired ! It is very singular that a young man will adopt a habit of which every man who is its victim is ashamed. There is, probably, no tobacco-chewor in the world who would ndvi?p a young man to commence this habit. I have never seen a slave of tobacco who did not regret his bondage j yet, against all advice, against nausea and disgust, ngairut cleanliness, against every consideration of health and comfort, thousands every year bow tho neck to this drug, and consent to wear tho repulsive yoke. They will chow it ; they will smoke it in pipes until their bedrooms and shops cannot be breathed in, and until their breath is ai rank as the breath of a foul benst, and their clothes have the odour of the sewer. Somo of them take snuff; cram the fiery weed up their nostrils to irritate that subtle sense which rarest flower* were made to feed — in all this working against God, abusing nature, perverting seme, injuring health, planting the seeds of disease, and intuiting the decencies of life and tho noses of tho world. So much for the nature of the habit; and I would stop hero, but for the fatt that I am in earnest, and wisli to prelent every motive in my powor to prevent young men from forming tho habit, or persuade them to abandon it. The habit of using tobacco is expensive. A clerk on a modest •alary hai no right to be seen with a cigar in his mouth. Three cigars a day, at threepence upirce, amount to mrr: than thirteen guineas a year. Can you afford it ? You know you cannot. You know that to do this you have cither to run in debt or steal Therefore I say that you have no business to be seen with a cigar in your mouth. It is presumptive evidence against your moral character. Did it ever occur to you what you are, what you aro made for, whither you aro going? That beautiful body of yours, in whose construction infinite wisdom exhausted the resources of its ingenuity, is tho temple of a soul thnt shall live for evrr, a companion of angels, a searcher into the deep things of G-od, a being allied in essence to the divine. I say tho body is tho temple, or the tabernacle, of such a being as this; and what do you think of stuffing tho front door of •uch a building full af the most disgusting weeds that you can find, or setting a slow match to it, or filling the chimneys with snuff? It Jooks to me much like an endeavour to smoke out the tenant, or to insult him in tuoh a manner as to induce him to quit the premises. You really ought to bo ashamed of such behaviour. A clenn mouth, a sweet bieathe unstained teeth, and unoffensive clothing — are not theso (r 'aiurei worth preserving ? Then throw away tobacco, and all thoughts of it, at once and for ever. Be a man. Be decent, and ba thankful to me for talking so plainly to you. But theie are other bad habits besides the use of tobacco. There is the babit of using strong drink,— not the habit of ge ting drunk, with most young men, but the habit of taking drink occadonally in its milder forma— of playing with a

■mull appotits that only needs sulEoionL ploying with t<> make you a demon or ft dolt. You think you are s&fa, if you drink at all ; and when you get offended with the good frierdi who warn you of your danger, I know you are a fool. I know that the grave swallows dmlj, by scores, drunkards, every one of whom thought ho was safe while he was forming his appetito. But this is old talk. A young man in this age who forms this habit of drinking, or puts hunselt in danger of forming this habit, ia usually «o weak that it doesn't pay to ?ave him. I pass by profanity. That is too offensive nnd vulgar a habit for any man who reads a respectable book to indulge in. I pass by this, I say, to come to a habit more destructn » than any I have contemplated. Young man ! j'ou are so modest in the presence of women, — so polite and amiable ; you who are m\ited into families where there pure and virtuous girls ; you who go to church, and seem to be such a pattern young man ; you who very possibly neither smoke, nor chew, nor snuff, nor swear, nor — you have one habit ten times worse than all these put together — a habit that makes you & white sopulchre, fair* without, but within full of dead Iran's bones and all uncleanness. You have a habit of impure thought, that poisons the very springs of your life. It may lead you into lawless indulgence*, or it may not. So far as your character is concerned, it makes little difference. A yong man who cherishes impure images, and indulges in impure conversations with his associntes, is pononed. Thero is rottenness in him. Hundreds of thousands of men are living in unhappiness and degradation to-day who owe bheir unhappy lives to an early habit of impure thought. To a young man who has become poisoned in this way, women all appear to be vicious or weak ; and when a young man loses his respect for the sex made sac rod by the relations of mother and sister, ho stands upon the crumbiing edge of ruin. His sensibilities are killed, and his moral nature almost beyond the reach of regeneration. I believe it to be true that a man who has lost his belief in | woman has, as a general thing, lost his faith in God. The only proper -way to ticat such a habit as this is to fly from it— discard it — expel it — fight it to the death. Impure thought is a moral drug quite as seductive and poisonous to tho soul m tobacco is to the body. It perverts the tone of every fibre of the soul. One should have more respect for his body than to make it the abode of toads and lizards nnd unclean reptiles of all aorta. The whole matter resolves itself into this : A young man is not fit for tho life until ho is clean — clean and healthy, body and soul, with no tobacco in hisinouth, no liquor in his stomach, no oath on Ins tongue, no snuff iv his nose, and no thought in his heart which if exposed would tend him sneaking into darkness from the presence of good women. I know a man who believoAthat the regeneration of the world 19 to be bi ought about%y & change of diet. If he will add the policy of utter cleanlinessto his scheme, I will agree not to quarrel u ltb. him.