New-York tribune., 1871-01-02
KILLING KINDNESS.
pcndcncc.

lDlS uhy 1ndDl tnOHSduuS VI III eh'i
prettiest dresses and their most charming man
ners, will receive the visits of many thousands
of young men. Neither visitors nor visited
are faultleSs, as we have often had occasion
to show But while we remain upon this
planet we Will probably find nothing better.
There does not exist anywhere else on the
face of the world, at this hour, so high an av-
erage of beauty, of wit and of intelligence as
you will find in the parlors of this city to-
day, in toilets which would make the lilies
of the field look shabby. Among the
young pilgrims to these thousands of
shrines you will find more sense, more
courage, more of that persistent heat or
energy that moves the world, and above all
more hearty and hopeful outlook toward the
future, than among any equal number of men
in any society of modern civilization.
From the intercourse between such young
people there should proceed nothing but good.
The young ladies created by Our American
! life have a more commanding influence III
| society than has ever been seen IN previous
history. They have fully shaken off the tram
mels of convention that reduce unmarried
women on the continent of Europe to posi-
| ton of mcrefxpectancy before marriage. The
course of our social life is to Il great extent
guided and controlled by these lovely and del
icate young women, with their faces of wax
and characters OF steel. 1t would be unjust to
suppose that their intentions were anything
but pure and noble. The freedom of their
lives, whatever it may lead to in the course of
wears, has az yet not resulted in any laxity of
principle They would be shocked and indig-
nant if they were accused of exerting any in
| 4 ~. t,,.,4
reCttude.
Yet with this ability and this will to do great
cood-unless the conduct of the last few years
! is completely reversed to-day-they will do in
these opening hours of the New Year more
harm than they can undo in all its course.
I'm at least half the houses that are to-day
| thrown open to visitors, every guest will be
asked and Hospitality urged to drink wine.
! Unless he possesses sufficient strength of char
acter TO refuse with an almost churlish rigidity,
he will be taken home at night with his mind
in an eclipse that will leave him for the time
nothing but the brutes instincts and powers
of suffering 1t is a simple sum III addition.
If young man with ordinary masculine
strength and consequent weakness IS con-
frontcd by fifty merry challenges from fifty
! smiling mouths, and dcfied to be wise by
half-hundred glances from the brightest of eyes,
he will be wofully apt to abdcate his reason
for the day. The first half-dozen invitations
are accepted with the intention of stopping
there, and the power of resistance il weakened
with every concession. If the day could be
reversed, and the callers of the evening be ex-
hibitcd in the morning, every door would be
closed at noon, and the custom be at once
abolished.
All women are instnctyely opposed 10 in
temperance, for it is upon them that the curse
falls heaviest. II is not the dIunkard, ocped
in the stupefying fumes of his poison, but his
wife and children. that suffer most-the inno-
cent for the guilty. And let not our fair
readers shrug their white shoulders at this sug-
geston, as if they were above the contingency
of such wretchedness. There is no station in
life free from the misery and the madness that
begins with reasonable drinking. Among the
seven thousand patients that have carried
their disease and their despair of their own
| efforts to BinghamtOn, there were 80 clergy
men, judges, 197 lawyers, 22G physicians, $40
merchants, and 240 gentlemen-a word of de-
rision and warning. There are sleeping in the
| constitutions of many young men of correct
| lives the hereditary germs of this destroying
passion, which, with proper associations and
firm principles, would lie dormant forever.
But who can tell in how many cases these
germs have been walked into fierce and impe
rious activity by days indulgence induced
by the voice aud the eyes of a kindly and
fascinating woplan, who never dreamed what
serpents from the nethermOst pit she was
warming into life
Ina b,
to receive company to-day could look below
the surface of things one instant. and see
what social drinking leads to every hour, the
young gallants whom thirst torments in their
promenade would certainly have to carry their
whisky in their carriages. To many women
the word drunkenness conveys nothing but
the idea of young men little confused in
metaphor, little uncertain as to the position
of the door, little vague as 10 smile, a little
uncertain as to the axis OF vision-somcthing
to laugh at and pardon-something that gives
them a sort of pleasant feeling of superiority
to masculine folly. But if they could see that
it meant yesterday, in every county in all this
land, the hunger and nakedness of children,
the shrek of the trampled wife, the
red knife of murder, tho infamy Of
nameless crimes, and once every week
or so the CHASTITY horrors of parricide and
child Staying, that curdle the blood of the
decent world, they would surely shrink from
the awful responsibility of offering their friends
what il at best useless and burdensome, and
at worst perdition.
The sO-called hospitality OF New-Year's Day
is becoming an evident abuse. The custom
has passed in Europe into a formal inter
change of cards There is much that is pleas