Dangers.

The progress of sin.

Efforts to reclaim a wanderer.

The lines between the enemies and the friends of God are thus drawn in college more distinctly than in almost any other community:- and the young and inexperienced in every new class, are marked out by the idle, dissipated, and abandoned, for their prey. The victim first listens to language and sentiments which undermine his regard for the principles of duty, and weaken those cords which Christian parents had bound around his heart, when he left his early home, and he soon falls more and more under the influence of these ungodly companions. Half allured by their persuasions and half compelled by their rude intrusions into his room, he spends the hours which college laws allot to study, in idle reading, or in games of chance or skill. He first listens to ridicule of religious persons, and then joins in it, and next begins to ridicule and despise religion itself. The officers of college do all in their power to arrest his progress. They see the first indications of his beginning to go astray, in the neglect of his studies, and in the irregularity of his attendance upon college duties; and again and again appoint one of their number to warn him, and expostulate with him, and kindly to put him on his guard. How many such efforts have I made! As I write these paragraphs, I can recall these interviews to mind with almost the distinctness of actual vision. A short-time after sending the messenger for the one who was to receive the friendly admonition, I would hear his timid rap at the door. He would enter with a look of mingled guilt, fear, and shame, or sometimes with a step and countenance of assumed assurance. How many times in such circumstances, have I tried in vain to gain access to the heart! I have endeavored to draw him into conversation about his father and mother, and the scenes of home and childhood, that I might insensibly awaken recollections of the past, and bring back long lost feelings, and reunite broken ties. I have tried to

Daily college life.

Morning.

The prayer bell.

lead him to anticipate the future, and see the dangers of idleness, dissipation, and vice. I have endeavored to draw forth and encourage the feeble resolution, and by sympathy, and kindness, and promises of aid, to bring back the wanderer to duty and to happiness. He would listen in cold and respectful silence, and go away unchanged; perhaps, to make a few feeble resolutions, soon to be forgotten; but more probably to turn into ridicule the moral lecture, as he would call it, which he had received; and to go on, with a little more caution and secrecy perhaps, but with increased hardihood and rapidity, in the course of sin.

In many cases, college censures and punishments. frequently follow, until expulsion closes the story. In other cases, the individuals conceal their guilt, while they become more and more deeply involved in it, and more and more hardened. They associate with one another, and at length, in some cases, form a little community where ungodliness, infidelity, and open sin, have confirmed an unquestioned sway.

I must say a word or two now in regard to the ordinary routine of daily life at college, in order that the description which is to follow, may be better understood. Very early in the morning, the observer may see lights at a few of the windows of the buildings inhabited by the students. They mark the rooms occupied by the more industrious or more resolute, who rise and devote an hour or two to their books by lamp-light on the winter mornings. About day, the bell awakens the multitude of sleepers in all the rooms, and in a short time they are to be seen issuing from the various doors, with sleepy looks, and with books under their arms, and some adjusting their hurried dress. The first who come down, go slowly, others with quicker and quicker step, as the tolling of the bell proceeds: and the last few stragglers run with all speed, to secure their places before the bell

Morning prayers.

ceases to toll.

When the last stroke is sounded, it usually finds one or two too late, who stop short suddenly, and return slowly to their rooms.

The President or one of the Professors reads a portion of Scripture by the mingled light of the pulpit lamps, and the beams which come in from the reddening eastern sky. He then offers the morning prayer. The hundreds of young men before him exhibit the appearance of respectful attention, except that four or five, appointed for the purpose, in different parts of the chapel, are looking carefully around to observe and note upon their bills, the absentees. A few also, not fearing God or regarding their duty, conceal under their cloaks, or behind a pillar or a partition between the pews, the book which contains their morning lesson:- and attempt to make up, as well as the faint but increasing light will enable them, for the time wasted in idleness or dissipation on the evening before. When prayers are over the several classes repair immediately to the rooms assigned respectively to them, and recite the first lesson of the day.

During the short period which elapses between the recitation and the breakfast bell, college is a busy scene. Fires are kindling in every room. Groups are standing in every corner, or hovering around the newly-made fires: parties are running up and down the stairs two steps at a time, with the ardor and activity of youth:and now and then, a fresh crowd is seen issuing from the door of some one of the buildings, where a class has finished its recitation, and comes forth to disperse to their rooms;-followed by their instructer, who walks away to his house in the village. The breakfast bell brings out the whole throng again, and gathers them around the long tables in the Common's Hall, or else scatters them among the private families in the neighborhood.

Study hours. The idle and negligent. The afternoon.

Evening.

An hour after breakfast the bell rings, to mark the commencement of study-hours:- when the students are required by college laws to repair to their respective rooms, which answer the three-fold purpose of parlor, bed-room, and study, to prepare for their recitation at eleven o'clock. They, however, who choose to evade this law, can do it without much danger of detection. The great majority comply, but some go into their neighbors' rooms to receive assistance in their studies, some lay aside the dull text-book, and read a tale, or play a game: and others, farther gone in the road of idleness and dissipation, steal secretly away from college, and ramble in the woods, or skate upon the ice, or find some rendezvous of dissipation in the village, evading their tasks like truant boys. They, of course, are marked as absent; but pretended sickness will answer for an excuse, they think, once or twice, and they go on, blind to the certainty of the disgrace and ruin, which must soon

come.

The afternoon is spent like the forenoon, and the last recitation of the winter's day, is just before the sun goes down. An hour is allotted to it, and then follow evening prayers, at the close of which the students issue from the chapel, and walk in long procession to supper.

It is in the evening, however, that the most striking peculiarities of college life, exhibit themselves. Sometimes literary societies assemble, organized and managed by the students, where they hold debates, or entertain each other with declamations, essays, and dialogues. Sometimes a religious meeting is held, attended by a portion of the professors of religion, and conducted by an officer; at other times the students remain in their rooms, some quietly seated by their fire, one on each side, reading, writing, or preparing the lessons for the following morning:- others assemble for mirth and dissipation, or prowl around the entries and

College mischief.

Frequent consequences.

Efforts of the officers.

halls, to perpetrate petty mischief, breaking the windows of some hapless Freshman,— or burning nauseous drugs at the keyhole of his door,- or rolling logs down stairs, and running instantly into a neighboring room so as to escape detection;-or watching at an upper window to pour water unobserved upon some fellow student passing in or out below;- or plugging up the keyhole of the chapel door, to prevent access to it for morning prayers;

or gaining access to the bell by false keys, and cutting the rope, or filling it with water to freeze during the night:- or some other of the thousand modes of doing mischief to which the idle and flexible Sophomore is instigated by some calculating, and malicious mischiefmaker in a higher class. After becoming tired of this, they gather together in the room of some dissolute companion, and there prepare themselves a supper, with food they have plundered from a neighboring poultry yard, and utensils obtained in some similar mode. Ardent spirit sometimes makes them noisy;- and a college officer, at half past nine, breaks in upon them, and exposure and punishment are the consequences;— disgrace, suspension, and expulsion for themselves, and bleeding hearts for parents and sisters at home. At other times, with controlled and restrained indulgence, they sit till midnight, sowing the bitter seeds of vice; undermining health, destroying all moral sensibility, and making almost sure the ruin of their souls.

In the meantime, the officers of the institution, with a fidelity and an anxious interest, which is seldom equalled by any solicitude except that which is felt by parents for their children, struggle to resist the tide. They watch, they observe, they have constant records kept, and in fact, they go as far as it is possible to go, in obtaining information about the character and history of each individual, without adopting a system of espionage, which the nature of the institution, and the age of a