How to Get on in the World | Page 7

one bad boy on a
whole school, but he cannot so readily point to the schoolmate, whose
example and influence were for good; because goodness, though more
potent, never makes itself so conspicuous as vice.
Criminals, preparing for the scaffold, have confessed that their entrance
into a life of crime began in early youth, when the audacity of some

unprincipled associate tempted them from the ways of innocence.
Through all the years of life, even to old age, the life and character are
influenced by association. If this be true in the case of the more mature
and experienced, its force is intensified where the young, imaginative
and susceptible, are concerned.
Man is said to be "an imitative animal." This is certainly true as to early
education, and the tendency to imitate remains to a greater or less
extent throughout life. Imitation is responsible for all the queer changes
of fashion; and the desire to be "in the swim," as it is called, is entirely
due to association.
In school days, the influence of a good home may counteract the effect
of evil associates, whom the boy meets occasionally, but when the boy
has grown to manhood, and finds himself battling with the world, away
from home and well-tried friends, it is then that he is in the greatest
danger from pernicious associates.
The young man who comes to the city to seek his fortune is more apt to
be the victim of vile associates than the city raised youth whose
experience of men is larger, and who is fortunate in his companionship.
The farmer's son, who finds himself for the first time in a great
city--alone and comparatively friendless, appears to himself to have
entered a new world, as in truth he has. The crowds of hurrying,
well-dressed people impress him forcibly as compared with his own
clumsy gait, and roughly clad figure. The noise confuses him. The
bustle of commerce amazes him; and for the time he is as desolate in
feeling as if he were in the centre of a desert, instead of in the throbbing
heart of a great city.
No matter how blessed with physical and mental strength the young
man may be, under these circumstances he is very apt, for the time at
least, to underestimate his own strength. He is powerfully impressed by
what he deems the smartness or the superior manners of those whom he
meets in his boarding house, or with whom he is associated in his
business, say in a great mercantile establishment. It requires a great
deal of moral courage for him to bear in a manly way the ridicule,
covert or open, of the companions who regard him as a "hay-seed" or a

"greenhorn." His Sunday clothes, which he wore with pride when he
attended meeting with his mother, he is apt to regard with a feeling of
mortification; and, perhaps, he secretly determines to dress as well as
do his companions when he has saved enough money.
This is a crucial period in the life of every young man who is entering
on a business career, and particularly so to him coming from the rural
regions. He finds, perhaps, that his associates smoke or drink, or both;
things which he has hitherto regarded with horror. He finds, too, they
are in the habit of resorting to places of amusement, the splendor and
mysteries of which arouse his curiosity, if not envy, as he hears them
discussed.
Before leaving home, and while his mother's arms were still about him,
he promised her to be moral and industrious, to write regularly, and to
do nothing which she would not approve. If he had the right stuff in
him, he would adhere manfully to the resolution made at the beginning;
but, if he be weak or is tempted by false pride, or a prurient curiosity to
"see the town," he is tottering on the edge of a precipice and his failure,
if not sudden, is sure to come in time.
Cities are represented to be centres of vice, and it cannot be denied that
the temptations in such places are much greater than on a farm or in a
quiet country village, but at the same time, cities are centres of wealth
and cultivation, places where philanthropy is alive and where organized
effort has provided places of instruction and amusement for all young
men, but particularly for that large class of youths who come from the
country to seek their fortunes. Churches abound, and in connection
with them there are societies of young people, organized for good work,
which are ever ready, with open arms, to welcome the young stranger.
Then, in all our cities and towns, there are to be found, branches of that
most admirable institution, the Young Men's Christian