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Show UNDER THE CITY'S LIGHTS Timely and Kindly Advice to the Young Men and Women, Irrespective of Race or Creed, Who Are Beginning Life's Battle. Bat-tle. (Written for The Intermountain Catholic.) "Vearning for the large excitement thatjhc coming years would wield. Eager-hearted as a boy when first be b-avis his father's field And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn. Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like -a dreary dawn. And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him there Underneath the light he looks at in among the throngs of men." Since Tennyson wrote the above lines many a boy everywhere throughout the world has journeyed jour-neyed over the highways on to the city. Fired with laudable ambition, with the eager desire of winning win-ning for themselves a place in the race of life, they left their father's home, bid goodbye to the old roof tree and all the calm, simplicity and beauty of country life. They are about to be, in a new career, to meet new scenes and new faces, and oh! how different all is to the old. As Ave look upon those boys with the pulse of life so strong within them, with hearts as yet so free from guile, and who know the temptations, tempta-tions, the sin that lurk there beneath the city's light; we, 1 say, feel inclined to take those boys by the arm and pointing the way iTsck again to their father's home and say to each: "My dear boy. return re-turn to the old roof tree; for how much better is poverty there with virtue safe, than probable riches and fame in-he eity yonder with all its temptations and sin around you!" And many boys have trod over the highway on and on to the city, noble, manly, man-ly, virtuous boys they were then, but one week there in the city, and their manliness was gone ami their virtuous life lost forever. Temptations in all shapes and forms surrounded them. They fell; bad habits assumed a complete mastery over them, and those young lives, so full of noble hopes and aspirations, aspira-tions, became blighted in their very springtime, and now it is forever for them a winter. And many young girls, too, have trod over the highway on to the city. Pure as the lily they were then, with the same hopes. t!ie same laudable ambitions as the boys had. With a heavy heart and scalding tears they bade goodbye to the fond old mother with these words upon their lips: "Oh, mother! don't cry; I will write often to you, and you won't feel the time passing until I see you again." And oh! the future of many such girls! Many of them have said their last goodbye to their mother, for down into the pit abyssmal they fell, in the heart of the city they lost their virtue, and now, though thear hearts are breaking for just one word from mother's lips, for just one fond, soft caress of the olden times, that one word they shall never hear, that one caress they shall never obtain, for between them and mother is the barrier of shame. Oh! is there. I ask you. anywhere any-where on this wide world a sadder picture? Looking Look-ing at the sinful life of cities, this fact is forced strongly on our minds, namely: it requires a great fortitude, a great grace for a boy or girl to escape this contamination. Just take your stand for a few minutes in the heart of a city. Over there at the street corner is a. group of boys gathered outside out-side a beer shop; note the impudent and brazen way they stand there; the swagger of the cad is, writ in large letters all over them. See the insolent glances they bestow upon the passers-by, especially the young girls. And yes, here a young' girl, one of their own sort, comes along. She is not yet 20; mark that bold.smirking glance she bestows upon that group; see how she jerks her head and looks over her shoulder while her body assumes a jaunty, immodest attitude. Those boys nudge one another as she. passes and call out after her some low pet name. Approach a little nearer and listen to the conversation of that group. Oh! don't, for God's sake, for their conversation is about what think you: "They are boasting about the sins they have committed." Look at that group of young men and women. They are entering a drinking saloon. Follow them in and what wiH you see ('ambling, blasphemy, and every form of immodest conversation! See that music hall, that theatre there with a blazin"- front of light. What is inside those' Half dressed Avom-en Avom-en on a stage, playing the part of heroines, and those heroines are heroic for whaH They were unfaithful un-faithful to their husbands and have polluted the pute springs of marriage. Look at those middle-aged middle-aged men and women who walk' the streets on the prowl. Human vultures they are, and they are on the watch for what? for innocent victims to destroy de-stroy body and soul. All this is but the outside; all this is but the eternal badness of the city. There are dens of vice, dens of infamy there, that the pen of man cannot do.-criho their foulness and their filth. Yes. many young men and women who today figure amongst the sinful number, oh! once they traveled over the highway on to the city full of great hopes for the future, their hearts fired with noble aspirations, pure ;is the snows that today glisten in the sunshine sun-shine on the peaks of Utah. They fell in with bad companions, gone are all their high hopes, dead forever are their noble aspirations, and their end-oh. end-oh. sickening thought! If any poor young fellow reading these lines with me thus far recognizes himself in them, to him I say this: "There 'is none who falls ever so low but can rise again. Be a man; shake off the shackles which bad companions have woven around you. Be a slave no longer. You live in a liberty-loving, a free America. Take your stand again as an honorable member of society beneath the grand old banner of tle Stars and Stripes, and be a worthy son of the church to which you belong. Augustine in his young days sowed his wild oats and he reaped tears. He rooted out the wild oats and he sowed the good grain, and today be is a Saint with Cod. Imitate him rise, rise. I say ! And young women, you who have fallen, my dear sisters whisper. In a far-off old Jewish city there once dwelt a woman. Men called her Magdalen the sinful, the profligate. Wherever her shadow fell, there was sin. From the awful depths of her degradation deg-radation she rose up and went to the Great Master's Mas-ter's feet with a repentant heart, and sinful Magdalen Magda-len of the old Jewish city is today St. Mary Magdalen Mag-dalen of the City of God. Dear sisters, imitate her; leave the glare, the sin or the pavements, jje a !ave no longer, lie-pent lie-pent of the past; look forward to the future. It is the weakness of your poor human nature, the temptations temp-tations that caused your fall; it is the strength of a noble woman to rise again. Young America wants all her good women. And my dear young boys and girls of every creed and every class, you who are about to set out on the highway for the city's lights, grave this upon your minds: In the glare of the city's lights the human vultures are waiting, are watching for yon. Be on your guard; shun them as you would the plague. Be virtuous. Be industrious, and then you will be using well the talent which God h:is given you. I will conclude Avith the words of Scipio, that, great old Roman of the far-off Pagan days of Marinissa: "But of all those virtues, on account of which I seemed to you Avorthy of your regard, there is not one in Avhich I gloried so much as temperance and the control of my passions. There is not so much to be apprehended by persons of our tinle from armed foes as from the pleasures Avhich surround us on all sides. The man who by temperance has curbed and subdued his appetite for them has acquired ac-quired for himself much greater honor, and a much more important victory, than avo now enjoy in the conquest of Syphan. Subdue your passions. Beware Be-ware how you deform many good qualities by one vice, and mar the credit of so many meritorious deeds by a degree of guilt more than. proportioned to the value of its object." |