learned how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how to convert it into money, and he has learned to resist all temptations to throw either money or time away. He has learned to say no. To say no at the right time, and then to stand by it, is the first element of success. I heard once of a university (it may be in Tartary, or it may be in Dreamland) where the students were placed in a row, and each one knocked down every morning, to teach him self-control. By this means he was made slow to anger. To resist wrath helps one to resist other impulses. There is a great value in the habit of self-restraint, even when self gratification is harmless in itself. Some day self-denial will be systematically taught to children. It ought to be part of the training of men, not through statutes and regulations, but through the growth of severer habits. Whenever we say no to ourselves, we gain strength to say no, if need be, to others.

The Puritans were strong in their day, and their strength has been the backbone of our republic. Their power lay not in the narrowness of their creed, but in the severity of their practices. Much that they condemned was innocent in itself. Some things which they permitted were injurious. But they were ready to resist whatever they thought was wrong. In this resistance they found strength, and they found happiness, too, and somewhat of this strength and this happiness has fallen to our inheritance.

We may wander far from the creeds of our fathers; we may adopt far different clothing, and far other customs and practices. But if we would have the Puritan's strength, we must hold the Puritan's hatred of evil. Our course of life must be as narrow as his; for the way that leads to power in life must ever be straight and stony. It is still true and will be true forever that the broad roads and flowery paths lead to weakness and misery, not to happiness and strength. There is no real happiness that does not involve self-denial.

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In general, the sinner is not the man who sets out in life to be wicked. It is the man who cannot resist temptation. It is the man who cannot say "no." For sin to become wickedness is a matter of slow transition. virtue after another is yielded up as vice calls for its sacrifice. In Kipling's fable of Parenness, the slave of vice is asked to surrender, one after another, his trust in man, his faith in woman, and the hopes and conscience of his boyhood. In exchange for all this the demon left him just a little crust of dry bread. That is all the demon had to give. If he is to be the slave of sin, there will be nothing else left for him at the last.

It is because decay goes on step by step that bad men are not all bad, as good men are not wholly good. In the stories of Bret Harte, the gamblers and sots are capable of pure impulses and of noble self-devotion. The pathos of Dickens rests largely on the same kindly fact. It is indeed a fact, and those who would save such people should keep it constantly in mind.

I number among my friends, if he be living yet, which I doubt, an old miner, who has had a hard, wild life. He was a victim of drink and the hysterical Keeley cure did not save him from delirium tremens. He walked from Los Gatos to Palo Alto for such help as might be found there. As he

sat waiting in my house, a little child who had never known sin, came into the room and fearlessly offered him his hand. This a grown man would not do without shrinking, but the child had not learned to be a respector of persons. The scarred face lightened; the visions of demons vanished for a moment, and the poor man repeated almost to himself these words of Dickens:

I know now how Jesus likened the kingdom of God to a child."

It is not usually the great temptations but the small ones that destroy. Most vice comes through corrosion. Corrosion is the constant pressure of petty temptations, each one easily resisted if it stood alone, but the culmulative force being beyond the strength of those not already trained in habits of self-denial. Evil communications corrupt good manners." However unlovely they may be at first, yet if they are constantly with us, it is the way of human nature to "first endure, then pity, then embrace.'

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We may divide sin into two classes: Evil to others and evil to ourselves. Evil to others is wickedness or crime. Relatively speaking, there is not so much pure wickedness in the world. All men have hidden tendencies to greed and trickery and selfishness and cruelty. But these for the most part remain hidden except as the weakness of vice lets them forth. There are great criminals who have no vices, as monsters of every sort, headless and heartless, one time or another are born. But the greater part of what we call crime is the work of weaklings, men or women who have lost the strength to resist evil, and who yield to the temptations to harm others as they do to the temptations to harm themselves. The habit of drink, for example, does not cause theft and murder. It makes its slave too weak to resist even small temptations, and small temptations may lead one into great crimes.

It is of evil toward one's self that I wish chiefly to speak of today, not of hereditary vice, nor the sins that grow out of oppression-these may serve for some other time-but of the crimes to one's self that grow out of our social relations. Evil to one's self is the yielding to one' sown temptations to great temptations or to small; this last I have called corrosion. The primal motive of most forms of sin is to make a short cut to happiness. The reason why we yield to temptation is that it promises pleasure without the effort of earning it. This promise is one that has never been fulfilled in all the history of all the ages, and it is time that men were coming to realize that fact.

Happiness never came to stay unless it was earned. There are momentary pleasures which are not earned by effort. They are not happiness. They are deceptions or delusions, and like other illusions they soon pass away. We know them to be false pleasures, because their final legacy is pain. They leave a dark brown taste in the mouth." Their recollection is "different in the morning." Such "pleasures are like poppies spread; you seize the flower, its bloom is shed," as Robert Burns, who had tried many of them, truthfully tells us. But true happiness is permanent. The

mind is at rest with itself, and it feels the full joy of living.

Happiness is a positive thing. It comes with action. In doing, striving, fighting, helping, loving, happiness is the encouragement to effort. Even loving without helping cannot bring happiness. Said Christ to Simon Peter, “If thou lovest me, feed my lambs." Whatever feeling is worthy and real will express itself in action, and the glow that surrounds worthy action we call happiness. Happiness is the joy of living, and the joy is felt in proportion to the real abundance of life." The short cuts to happiness which temptation commonly offers to you and to me may be roughly classified as follows:

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1. IDLENESS. This is the attempt to secure the pleasures of rest without the effort which justifies rest and makes it welcome. When a man shuns effort he is in no position to resist. So, through all ages, idleness has been known as the parent of all vices. Life drives him hard" who has noth

ing in the world to do. The dry rot of existence, the vague self-disgust known to the wealthy as ennui and to the poor man as plain misery, is the result of idleness pure and simple. Through the open door of idleness all other temptations enter.

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2. GAMBLING.- In all its forms, gambling is the desire to get something for nothing. It is said that money is the root of all evil." But this is not true. The desire to get money without earning it is the root of all evil. It is the search for unearned happiness through unearned power. To get something for nothing, in whatever way, demoralizes all effort. The man who gets a windfall, spends his days thereafter watching the wind. The man who wins in a lottery, spends all his gains in more lottery tickets. The whole motive for gambling, betting and of all other forms of stakes and hazards, is to get something for nothing. To win is to lose, for the winner's integrity is in jeopardy. To lose is to lose, for the loser gets nothing for something. He has thrown good money after bad, and that too is demoralizing.

I can see that a professional gambler who has averaged all these matters and adjusted his philosophy to them, might be in his way an honest man and a kindly man. I do not personally know any such, and have found him only in the pages of Bret Harte. But whatever charity I might feel for Jack Hamlin or John Oakhurst as I meet them in literature, I cannot extend much sympathy to their victims.

The same motive lies behind stealing as behind gambling. The difference lies in our statutes and in our social prejudices.

3. LICENTIOUSNESS.—There is an ever-present temptation to secure the pleasures of love without love's duties and love's responsibilities.

In whatever form this temptation arises, it must be met and fought to the death by the man who values honor or character or happiness. Open vice brings with a certainty disease and degredation and ruin. Secret vice comes to the same end, but all the more surely, because the sin and folly of lying are added to the other agencies of destruction. The man who tries to lead a double life is either a neurotic freak or else the prince of fools. Gen

erally he is something of both.

That society is so severe in its condemnation of such conduct is an expression of the bitterness of its own experienee. To you who look forward to useful and honored lives, the temptation of lust must be trodden under foot. Love demands singleness of soul. It is a sturdy plant of vigorous growth, with wondrous hope of flower and fruitage, but will not rise from the ashes of lust.

But it is not alone the gross temptations that must be resisted to the end. There is much that passes under other names that is only veiled licentiousness. The word flirtation covers a multitude of sins. The pure woman, if she knows the truth, will turn from the man who touches her hand in wantonness, as she would turn from a rattlesnake. The real heart and soul of a man is measured by the truth he shows to woman. It may be true as men say, "boys will be boys," but if "boys will be boys" in the bad sense, they will never be men.

4. INTEMPERANCE.- Men try to get the feeling of happiness when happiness does not exist. They destroy their nervous system for the tingling pleasure they feel as its organs are torn apart. There are many drugs which cause this pleasure, and in proportion to the delight they seem to give is the real mischief that they work.

While all this is true, I do not wish to take an extreme position. I do not care to sit in judgment on the tired woman who finds comfort in a cup of tea, or on the man who finds a bottle of claret or a glass of beer an aid to digestion. A glass of light wine by a trick on the glands of the stomach may spur them to better action. These influences are the white lies of physiology. A cup of coffee may give an apparent strength we greatly need. A good cigar may soothe the nerves. A bottle of cool beer on a hot day be refreshing; a white lie oils the hinges of society,

I make no attack on the use of claret at dinner or beer as medicine. This is a matter of taste, though it is not to my taste. Each of these drugs leaves a scar on the nerves; a small scar, if you please, and we cannot go through the battle of life without many scars of one kind or another. Moderate drinking is not so very bad so long as it stays moderate. It is much like moderate lying-or, to use Beecher's words, like "beefsteak with incidental arsenic." It will weaken your will somewhat, but maybe you are strong enough for that. It was once supposed that intemperance was like gluttony; the excessive use of that which was good. It was not then known that all nerve exciters contain a specific poison, and that in this poison such apparent pleasure as they seem to give must lie.

Use these drugs if you can afford it. There are many worthy gentlemen who use them all in moderation, and who have the strength to abstain from what they call their abuse. You will find among drinkers and smokers some of the best men you know. while some of the greatest scoundrels alive are abstemious to the last degree. They dare not be otherwise, they need all the strength and cunning they have to use in their business. Wine loosens the tongue and lets fly the secrets of guilt. But whatever others may do or seem to do with impunity, you can not afford to imitate them.

You know less of the world than they do and less of yourselves. You are nearer to temptation, and if you are tempted and fall, it will be harder for you to recover. But whatever you do, let it be of your own free choice. Count all the cost. Take your stand whatever it may be, with open eyes, and hold it without regret. There is nothing more hopeless than the ineffective remorse of a man who drinks and wishes that he didn't. If you don't want to do a thing, then don't do it. The only way to reform is to stop, stop, stop! and go at once to doing something else.

But whatever you may think or do as to table drinking and the like, there is no question as to the evil of perpendicular drinking, or drinking for drink's sake. Men who drink in saloons do so for the most part for the wrench on the nervous system. They drink to forget. They drink to be happy. They drink to be drunk. Sometimes it is a periodical attack of madness. Sometimes it is a chronic thirst. Whichever it is, its indulgence destroys the soundness of life; it destroys accuracy of thought and action. It destroys wisdom and virtue. It destroys faith and hope and love. It brings a train of subjective horrors, which the terrified brain cannot interpret and which we call delirium tremens, the tremendous madness. This is mania, indeed, but every act which injures the faithfulness of the nervous system is a step in this terrible direction.

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What a world this would be without coffee," said one old pessimist to another as they sat and growled together at an evening reception, What a world it is with coffee," said the other, for he knew that the only solace coffee could give was that it seemed for the moment to repair the injury its own excessive use had brought.

There was once, I am told, a merchant who came into his office smacking his lips, and said to his clerk, "The world looks very different to the man who has had a good glass of brandy and soda in the morning." "Yes,"

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said the clerk, and the man looks different to the world too."

First of these comes vulgarity. To be vulgar is to do that which is not the best of its kind. It is to do poor things in poor ways, and to be satisfied with that. Vulgarity weakens the mind and thus brings all other weakness in its train. It is vulgar to wear dirty linen when one is not engaged in dirty work. It is vulgar to like poor music, to read weak books, to feed on sensational newspapers, to trust to patent medicines, to be amused by trashy novels, to enjoy vulgar theatres, to tolerate coarseness and looseness in any of their myriad forms. We find the corrosion of vulgarity everywhere, and its poison enters every home. The bill-boards of our cities are covered with its evidence; our newspapers are redolent with it; our story books reek with it; our schools are tainted by it, and we cannot keep it out of our homes or our churches or our colleges.

A form of vulgarity is profanity. It is the sign of a dull, coarse, unrefined nature. There are times, perhaps, when profanity is picturesque and effective. In Arizona sometimes it is so, and I have seen it so in Wyoming. But not indoors nor in the streets nor under normal conditions. It is then simply an insult to the atmosphere which is vulgarized for the purpose. It