This road is easily found out, without a guide or a direction-post: it
is a broad highway, in which the traveller may amuse himself with many
pleasing prospects, without considering that he is exposed to many
dangers. The Road to Ruin is so infested with robbers, that it is next
to impossible to escape their depredations. In other avenues, the usual
loss sustained is a purse of money; but in these paths, treasures
inestimable are purloined from the unwary. The loss of cash may often be
repaired, but what are we to do when our innocence, our health, our
integrity, our honour, are basely pilfered from us? And such calamities
will inevitably be our lot, if we continue long in the alluring road to
Ruin.
But notwithstanding the certainty of destruction upon this road, it is
the most frequented of any highway. Numbers of unthinking mortals are
daily seen turning into it with impetuosity and glee, without
considering the difficulty, and almost the impossibility of getting out
of it.
When we see a man, possessed of a fortune of five hundred pounds a year,
living at the rate of two thousand pounds a year, our veracity would not
be called in question if we ventured to declare that he was on the Road
to Ruin.
The spendthrift who frequently makes application to usurers, and
purchases the use of money by extravagant douceurs, premiums, or
discounts, may justly be said to be a traveller on the same high-way.
When any one becomes an abject slave to his bottle; we need not scruple
to pronounce, that he is staggering into this much frequented road.
If a young girl, innocent in herself, should too credulously hearken to
the enamoured tale of the deceiver, it is more than probable that she
may be seen tripping upon this too general high-way.
When a lady has private recourse to ardent liquor, whether affliction or
any other cause may have induced her to become acquainted with it, she
seldom fails to be a passenger in this thronged avenue.
When a person, afflicted with disease, seeks relief in quackery, he may
truly be said to be galloping upon this road.
It is seldom indeed that any advantages or emoluments are derived by
travellers in the Road to Ruin. Holcroft and Harris, as toll-gatherers
on that road, have doubtless been benefited by it.
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_For the +New-York Weekly Magazine+._
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