They who frequent taverns and gaming-houses, and keep bad company,
should not wonder if they are reduced in a very short time to penury
and want. The wretched young fellows who once addict themselves to
such a scandalous course of life, scarcely think of or attend to any
thing besides: they seem to have nothing else in their heads but how
they may squander what they have got, and where they may get more when
that is gone. They do not make the same use of their reason as other
people, but like the jaundiced eye, view every thing in a false light,
and having turned a deaf ear to all advice, and pursued their unaltered
course until all their property is irrecoverably lost, when at length
misery forces upon them a sense of their situation, they still lay the
blame upon any cause but the right one--their own extravagance and
folly; like the Prodigal in the fable, who would not have considered a
solitary occurrence as a general indication of the season, had not his
own wicked desires blinded his understanding.
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