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 will want pleasure and relaxation and knowing also that he ought to have it. But the day furnishes time enough for class work and study and recreation and sleep if the twenty-four hours are intelligently utilized, and there is plenty of healthful recreation for the body and the mind if one will look for it.

The temptation to waste time in gambling is an everpresent danger. There is a fascination in risking your judgment in a bet with another fellow or in a game of chance, which many a young man finds it hard to resist. It is so easy to argue that one must have some recreation, and, that if the time spent in playing games of chance is not intemperate or in excess of what one can afford, there should be no objection to the practice on the part of any sensible people. As to the money lost or won (for some one usually wins) it is often a negligible quantity, and in most cases not more perhaps than you might spend on a first class show or entertainment of any sort.

"What is the harm to me?" a young man asked me not long ago. "I can afford the time and the money it costs me. Why should I not play poker for money?"

I should answer that it is a dangerous habit, because it almost invariably leads to excesses. The gambler learns to take risks which he can not afford, to waste time that should be given to something else, to bet and to lose money which was not intended for this purpose, and he develops at once a reputation for unreliability. No business man, even if he himself gambles, cares to em-


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 ploy a young fellow who has, or has had the habit, simply because he knows the dangers which surround it. I have known few men who began the habit in college who found it easy to break, and I have known none who, even though he played for small stakes and won or lost very little money, was not injured by it. If the habit is nothing more, it is a time waster and leads into associations which it were usually better not to have formed.

As to drinking, perhaps, now that prohibition has become nation wide, we shall have little or none of that in college. Many fellows say to me that they learned to drink at home with their fathers and mothers about the dinner table. If it must be done, I know of no better place to do it. The drinking habit as I have seen it practiced in a college community has never been a help nor an advantage to any student, and it has usually been a distinct injury. The only excuse for it is that it is supposed to encourage sociability and to promote good fellowship; but the sort of good fellowship which it encourages is not of very high order. The men and women whom you are likely to meet at drinking places are not the kind that a college student will be benefited by knowing, and the time spent in their society is not usually spent in such a way as to make him a better citizen. It is a fact, also, that practically all the young fellows I have known who speak of the harmlessness of "taking a glass of beer occasionally" at one time or another take more than they can carry and are the worse for it. The safest plan if you

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 are going to college with the idea of doing honest, satisfactory work is to leave the drinking of intoxicating liquors to those who have no real interest in the development of their moral and intellectual powers, for the drinking habit will invaribly play havoc with your college work, not to speak of your morals.

Smoking, too, although it can scarcely be called an immoral habit, has upon nervous and growing young fellows a bad effect. It is likely to develop restlessness and indigestion with the result that your power of concentration is weakened, your brain dulled, and the likelihood of your doing good work very much lessened. The habit of using tobacco is in these days so common among young men that it seems almost a waste of time to speak against it. I have, however, seen too many nervous systems weakened by its use, and the work of too many students injured irreparably, not to utter a word of warning against it. Though the number of young fellows in college who smoke is regrettably large, you will gain nothing either in prestige or dignity by doing so. The ability to hold a pipe between the teeth or to puff at a cigarette does not make you more of a man even in a college community, and the fact that you do not smoke brings you into no discredit. No one need to say that he was forced into smoking in college or that he was made uncomfortable by refusing to do so. If you find, therefore, that smoking is injuring your temper and your pocketbook and your studies, give


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 it up; you will be quite as popular as you were before, and maybe more of a man.

If you have come from a healthy home where you have been taught by a good mother to live a clean life, and to respect all women, you may be shocked at first by some of the views which are presented to you, and later you may even come to the point of asking yourself if you have not been a trifle prudish in your ideas, and if the other fellow may not be right in his views. There will be those who will try to teach you that it is not only not necessary for you to lead a chaste clean life, but that it is positively not a healthy thing for you to do so. They will teach you that if you desire to gain your highest physical development you must gratify your physical desires, and such men are only too willing to show you how this may be done. The statements of thousands of reputable physicians are to the effect that no young man suffers physically by living a life of chastity, but on the contrary he gains in strength and endurance by such a course. The young man who allows himself to be led into the associations of lewd women either through curiosity or the desire to know something of "real life" is running the gravest sort of danger. Most men who submit themselves to such temptations fall a prey to them, and the result in most cases is a weakened will, a lowered moral tone, disease, a wrecked body, and eternal regret.

Only a few months ago I stood beside the operating


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 table where a young college student was about to submit to a critical operation to alleviate a disease which he had contracted from a prostitute. He was thinking, I know, of the pain which he must endure and of the danger to his life, and looking up into my face he said, having in mind the many fellows to whom I talk every year, "Tell them they always have to pay for it; they always have to pay for it." Through many years of observation on thousands of students I have come to know that the boy's words are true. The clean, continent life is the only safe one, and those young men who think other wise and who gratify their physical passions "pay for it" ultimately in ruined health, and ruined characters, and ruined studies. The student with a clean mind and clean morals has the best chance of winning high scholastic standing. One other thing that you should well keep in mind—some day you are going to have a home of your own; and to take to it the girl whom you have chosen to be your wife. If at that time you can come to her with a body free from the effects of disease and a past life clean and wholesome, you may count the sacrifices of self-control as nothing compared with the satisfaction you will then feel.

In going to college most young fellows find themselves away from the restraints of home for the first time. Fathers and mothers often feel that this sending the boy away from home and putting him in the way of temptation and upon his own responsibility is a danger which they