Birmingham age-herald., 1895-03-10
A PLAIN TALK TO BOYS.
Fatherly A Advice from the Ripe Fix
 perience of Sam Jones.
Warnings Against Swearing. Drinking. Ly- Ing. Stealing and Bad Associates One Standard Of Morals-Appeal
 to Surrender tho Life to God.
loopYRIeHr. iss5.l

lCoPYRIGHT, 1865
 Having been boy once myself and now the father of two boys, I claim that this qualities me for the task of talking to. you plainly and candidly. The scenes and memories of my boy hood days live with me; they are part of me. My mothers face; my moth- er's voice; my mothers counsel; my fathers example; my fathers instruc- tions, like mothers, will abide as long as memory holds it's place. You boys to whom address myself carry with you the same memories largely that 1 carry with me. The incidents and in noccnce of your young lives are liv- ing fragrance about your life to-day. If it had always been as it is to-day with you boys, would life be worth liv- ing? There was a time, boys, when your downsittings and uprisings wGre known and watched over by mother, no sun by day or moon by night ever witnessed deed on your part which brought regrets and remorse to your tender conscience. But how now? That day when you uttered your first profane oath, 1t shocked you and con- fused you; it was violence to your own nature; but repeated oaths have come from your once pure lips until now you swear by note without re- morse. The day when you took your first drink of intoxicants, while every fiber of your being felt its vivifying in- fuence your conscience rang the bell of warming and told you that was the ~lc and you felt that it's pleasure was Q poison and that in its sweetness there was a snare, and with the conscious ness that you had taken the first wrong step, you could see then as you can not see now that it "biteth like serpent and stingeth like an adder" The drink habit, boys, once fastened upon you will become the instigator of all other habits of vice and sin. Whisky will make an honest man steal, a truth ful man lie, and will transform gen. tleman into vagabond. The greatest crime you can commit against yourself, your family and your country, IS to be- come a drunlkard, for when man is once drunk then he is fully equipped and qualified for any'crime known to the decalogue. Every murdered wife and butchsred mother; every child that has fallen under the cruel strokes of a drunken father, the crimes of arson, of rape and burglary, they all point their fingers alike to the criminal who when filled with booze did the dced. It is not only ruinous to health but moral manhood, and character falls before the r- "a 1-.s- !, able to withstand its power. If you have never drank, say that you never will drink and stick to it. If the drink habit is more or less fixed upon you, run for your life; quit or die; no delay ing or parleying; but quit now, this very moment, and quit forever Then, boys let me say to you that another fruitful source of your ruin is bad com pany. That boy does not live who can have vile associations and run with evil companions without damage to his moral character and ruin to his upright life. Boys do not go to destruction one by one; they go in groups, in schools and squads. When you get your con sent to loiter about billiard halls, gam bling hells and saloons with their hordes of evil doers, then you have al- ready got your consent to go to destruc- tion. An angel from Heaven could not long consort with that gang and be anything else but devil. say to you, boys, take care of yourselves at night; where you go and what you do after the sun goes down in the evening will tell on your character; darkness may hide your deeds, and the fond mother may be sleeping quietly on her pillow unconscious of her boys midnight rev ell, but it will tell on your character tomorrow.
 Another fruitful source of harm to you, boys, is that you always erect one standard of morals for your sister and another for yourself, when God means they shall be the same; let every boy force himself to conform to the same standard of morals that he erects for his own sister. You are out of place, young man, if you are. where your sister cannot maintain her purity and preserve her character. Again, boys, let, me say to you the houses where shameless women revel-God tells us in His, own words that her house is the way to hell going down to the chambers of, death. A house cannot stand with its foundations disrupted; no man can stand long and stand erect, whose life is not pure. Whatever tends to inn purity in the life of our young men is one of the most potent factors in the disruption of home life and will sooner or later overthrow the altars of our God around which the family circle gathers. Whatever differentiates the standard of men and women, of the boy, and his sister, is false and fatal; remember this, boys, and guide your life, by the same standard of morals and purity that you erect for your sister. To you, boys, 1 would say again.