New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-03-21
ErEnLNG Tile LINES.

If is one of our most welcome duties TO call
attention from time to time to the work OF
the Young Mems Christian Association IN TINS
CITY. because nowhere do we find work done
in a more clcarsighted, practical, and religious
shirt. While different sects carry on their
separate work of evangelizatiOn, these gentle
men. united out Of all sects, by influencing
the Young men about them at home, lay their
hands at once on the lever by which the
whole social structure is raised. New-York IS
crowded to suffocatiOn with young men from
all parts of the country; it is the arena to
which every ambitious boy brings his
shrewdness, or skill, or strength, for final
success or defeat. He hls cut loose
from home, old acquaintance, old habits;
he is morbid to-day with vanity in his hot young
blood and strength; morbid tomorrow with
anger at his own insigniiiCance in the crowd :;
homeSick, perhaps, and ashamed of it; shut
in by the Indifferent hurrying multitude on
himself, his petty failures or petty successes.
No boy will be compelled into isolation; that
we all know; least of all the genial hearty
fellow, eager for sympathy and cOmradeshlp,
whose power and promise are worth the most.
He cannot cross the street that vice does not
open n dozen avenues for him to society,
friends, pleasure; avenues where every aesthetic
taste he has is cunningly gratilied, while
sure hold is laid on his animal nature to drag
him down.
What shall he do7 Gle that lives in sOli-
"tude," says La Rochefoucauld, " is either a
brute or a god" The ordinary young
man is neither. True, the churches are
open, but Sunday schools and prayer
oil mi ont
certain amount of active piety which it is
most likely he has never felt. He enters the
only pleasant doors accessible to him; whisky
or worse evils lay their hands upon him, and
he goes down, with that endless, woful cara
van that have gone before. Now it is for this
boy and his fellows that the Association are
doing their work. They prof'er him help from
the hour he arrives in New.York, stranger
and alone; hold ont their hands with hearty
good will, giving him chance at once for
what he will probably most feel the need-an
entrance into the society Of cultured and we'll
bred people. Religion is not thrust often
sivey upon him; their building, as
costly and complete as the most ex-
pensve clubhouse in the city, offers
him the means for the strengthening and
amusement of both body and mind at the
tritling outlay of a few dollars per annum.
lie finds music, art, scientific and popular
lectures, Il gymnasium, parlors fitted up with
elegance, billiard and chess rooms: no means
have been LETT unused to turn the bright and
cordial side of an honorable life to the gallant
young fellow who is fighting his way man
fully alone.
The institution, yet in its infancy, has been
eminently successful. 1t is the focus of at
traction to hundreds of young men, furnishing
them with recreation, culture and social inter
course with their fellows, thus aiding in
making them better citizens and better Chris
tans. Let us hope that it will receive from
all classes eycr-increasing encouragement, that
its hands may be strengthened in the good
work, and its sphere of usefulness greatly
enlarged.