Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/139

Rh of the metropolis have got to inhale their existence, and with it the pestileutial infection of example. But they are inured to the sight from their earliest years, and some few of them go miraculously through the ordeal; the far greater part, however, plunge into the fiery furnace of debauchery, and get seared in immoral ideas, and immoral practices. These, repetition cannot harm, for the seat of fine, feelings is become callous. But, it is the countryman or new comer, whom we would exhort to guard against the pestilence, and the snares, that every where await him, both without and within. Internally, he feels the want of confidence in himself; externally he exhibits the gait and habiliments of the novice, and is eyed by the crafty, the wicked, and designing. He must, then, at going forth, steel his mind against the allurements that will be every where thrown in his way; his eyes must be dim to the rainbow colours that scarcely cover, but do not conceal, the alabaster forms that move beneath; he must resolve to eschew the evil that will be offered to his ear; and to resist, with all his force, the tact of pollution, that would endeavour to excite the mere animal passions.

A practice used to prevail, for women to sit at a window which had a good aspect, from which