After the close of the exercises, a young gentleman ap proached him, and addressing him by name, said, "You probably do not recollect me, but I am the person who accompanied you on your visit to the parents of Jonas King; I date my first serious religious impressions from that day." That young man was the Rev. Henry Lyman, who was afterwards missionary to India; and whose prospects of usefulness and whose life, were terminated by the melancholy death of himself and associate, by the cannibals of the Island of Sumatra. The good old man has gone to his rest, and by his will left to the friend of his son, the old family Bible.

Dangers of the Theatre.

It is a well known fact, that a large number of all the young men employed in business in the city of N w York, and other large places, come from the country. Here, far from the restraints of home, they are exposed to the strongest temptations. Ardent, susceptible, and inexperienced, they fall an easy pray to the destroyer A large proportion of them are much injured, if not entirely ruined. This is a fact so well attested, that it is almost unnecessary to adduce any proof of it. But it is a fact equally well attested, that the theatre is one of the principal means of accomplishing this result. "At a place of confinement," says the late Professor Knowles in the "Christian Review," "for Juvenile offenders, in one of our American cities, it was found, on examination, that a large proportion of the boys began their course of crime by stealing money, that they might buy tickets for the theatre!" Of fifteen young men from the country, who had been in the employment of a printer in New York for a few years, thirteen of them were ruined by going to the theatre. A distinguished attorney in the same city has been known to affirm, that of the young men from the country who have studied law in his office, a very few only escaped the general contagion. Ah! who can tell how many hearts have been wrung with unutterable anguish by the wreck of their brightest hopes respecting their children, seduced by the theatre from their allegi

ance to piety and virtue! Yes! of that insiatous place,

"Such a tale we could tell,

As would chill the warm heart."

We might depicture the simple, warm-hearted boy, the pride of his father, the hope of his mother, drawn gradually and insensibly into the vortex of gay and fashionable amusement, then ingulfed, and finally cast out a hideous wreck upon the desert shore of poverty and shame. We might represent him with a broken constitution, and perhaps a broken heart, returning to his miserable parents to give them the melancholy satisfaction of closing his dying eyes, and following his body with slow and mournful steps, to the grave. Or we might represent him, debased and desperate, wandering in poverty and shame, far away from the home of his early days, and at last lying down to die in the presence of strangers. Is this fancy? Would to God it were nothing more! But no! stern and too frequently recurring facts prove it a melancholy reality. Dr. Jewel, of Philadelphia, gives the following account of a death-bed scene of one "ruined by the theatre."

"In his youth he was the gayest of the gay-the favored child of favored parents; he was indulged to a fault; his every desire was gratified. He grew a handsome boy, polite and easy in his manners, gentle and amiable in his disposition; at school we all loved him, and in the innocent sports of the play ground he was the ringleader; he was always our choice. When the time came for his leaving school and engaging in mercantile business, he mingled with new associates. Early in life he centred his affections upon a lovely girl of his own age; they were united in matrimony, and for a time, never was there a happier couple. But, alas! the allurements of company, the theatre, the ball-room, and the tavern, proved temptations too powerful for his unsuspecting heart— the consequences are soon told. Driven from business, excluded from virtuous society, divorced from his brokenhearted wife, deserted by all his friends, he became an outcast and a beggar. O! methought, while I stood over his dying body, if he had the ability to speak, and the inelination to communicate, he would address me in some such language as this

"Beware of the theatre! it first led me in youth, and I was easily led, into immoral indulgences. It is no dif ficult task to trace the primary step of my destruction to the lobbies of the theatre, and its infatuating connexions, the bar and the coffee room. There I spent my evenings; 'Shakspeare' and 'the British Theatre' became my only reading actors and actresses my only associates. The tavern, the oyster house, and houses of pleasure, finally drew me into their destructive labyrinths. I strove to avoid the earthly hell I saw myself plunging into; but its fatal chains were riveted too fast, and too strong upon my poor soul. I attempted to plead with myself the innocency of my indulged pleasures. It was the gratification of a harmless desire that induced me for the first time to cross the threshhold of the theatre. It would not do. I could not allay the pangs of an already wounded conscience. Well do I remember, when the curtain rose for the first time to my astonished view, how my heart bounded for joy as I viewed the rich and dazzling scenery, and drank in the deceitful representations of the actors. The play was the 'Road to Ruin,' a true semblance of my future destiny; but little did I then think that I had taken the first step towards consequences fraught with my eternal destruction. The glittering attractions of the stage soon drew me there again, and too soon did 1 become infatuated with its seductive charms. One fatal step led on to another, until I found myself sliding rapidly down the steep abyss of ruin.

"A little restorative which I procured from the distant nurse of the ward aroused for a moment, in the struggling effort to swallow, the dying man from what appeared to be his sleep of death. I again called him by his own familiar name, he again, and for the last time in this world, looked at me; but, O! it was a fearful look! Heaving a deep drawn deathly sigh, he put out his emaciated and cold hand, and attempted to speak; his voice failed him, he recovered himself, and made a second effort, it was a desperate one-O, W————————, calling me by name, the theatre,' the first fruits of my transgression, is sending my poor lost soul to hell; O! admonish the, the, the "---young he would have said, but his utterance and his breath were simultaneously interrupted by the death

gurgle. After several ineffectual attempts to breathe freely, during which he firmly, yet insensibly grasped my hand, he gave one long gasp, and was no more-his unfettered spirit had forsaken its earthly tenement, and fled to regions beyond the grave."

Late hours, which prevent all evening devotion, expose to strong temptations, and shroud in darkness "deeds without a name," seem intimately connected with the amusements of the stage. Every theatre has a splendid and well furnished bar, or saloon, as it is called, where the friends of the drama quench their thirst and inflame their passions. Almost every establishment of this kind is flanked by taverns, recesses and houses of bad fame, which, from their vicinity to the theatre, bring enormous rents to their mercenary proprietors. That habits of intemperance are often acquired as a consequence of attending the theatre, is a fact but too well attested in melancholy history of thousands. Thus late hours, intemperance and licentiousness, dark and melancholy trio appear naturally and necessarily to associate themselves with the amusements of the theatre. And why is it, we may well inquire, that this institution comes so directly into competition with the claims of religion, temperance and chastity? Why should it, like some great centre of moral evil, draw towards it so many influences of an immoral tendency? Why should the blood of the ruined be found upon its walls? Why, in one word, should it be so intimately connected, not only in the minds of good men, but also, in fact, with all that we hate-with all that we dread?

Temptations of Young Men.

I CAN hardly name a temptation so great, so fearful to a young man, as that of handling money which is not his own and if I were to offer a special prayer for my son, it would be that he might not be tempted in this way. Few, very few can withstand it. And at the present time it has become so common, I had almost said so fashionable, for men and boys to spend what is not their own, that the moral sense of the community has received a

shock from which, I am afraid, it will not soon recover. If you steal an overcoat, to shield you from the blast, the watchman's rattle will soon make you sensible that you have disgraced yourself, and you are a thief. But if you have taken and used tens of thousands of money not your own, you are not a thief!-you are only a-defaulter! And so common has it become, that the sense of shame is almost gone-and the sense of guilt seems entirely gone. I can now carry back my mind to my college days. There was a youth in the next class, remarkable for his simplicity and economy of dress, and for his republican habits. You would suppose that gold and copper would be alike in his eye. He grows up, enters upon his profession as a lawyer, marries into a very respectable family, and is accounted an honest man! He becomes an officer in a money corporation. You meet him at the Springs, and in the best of society. I take up a paper this very week, and read that Esq., is a defaulter for several times ten thousand dollars! The pure-minded youth, the stern lawyer, who has probably prosecuted many a poor wretch for stealing a few dollars-has been tempted, and who is surprised that he yielded? Who is surprised that he is denominated only a-defaulter! We have almost come to this, that places of trust and of handling money, mean little more than places where those may help themselves who can obtain the posts! and it is almost thought to be cowardly, and hardly worth a paragraph in the daily paper, to be a defalter for a moderate sun! We shall be told that there are high-minded and honorable men at these posts still. We have no doubt of it. That there are honest poor men who daily handle thousands of money. We do not doubt it. But who does not know that confidence is so shaken between man and man, that the whole community are in unutterable anguish !

Oh! that these young men, just coming upon the stage of action, might take warning from the fearful disclosure now so common! I would have them remember that no man becomes a monster, in any crime, at once-that there is hardly such a thing as the first crime in dishonesty that he who allows himself to borrow a shilling out of his master's drawer, with the secret determination