While the ruin of those evil-doers is sometimes caused by club life or dissipated habits, yet, in a large number of cases, the temptation to fraud has been the snare of extravagant living.
In my long experience as a city pastor I have watched the careers of thousands of married pairs.

One class have begun modestly in an unfashionable locality with plain dress and frugal expenditure They have eaten the wholesome bread of independence.

I wish that every young woman would display the good sense of a friend of mine, who received an offer of marriage from a very intelligent and very industrious, but poor young man who said to her: "I hear that you have offers of marriage from young men of wealth; all that I can offer you is a good name, sincere love and plain lodgings at first in a boarding house." She was wise enough to discover the "jewel in the leaden casket" and accept his hand.

He became a prosperous business man and an officer of my church.

As for the other class, who begin their domestic career by a pitiable craze to "get into society" and to keep up with their "set" in the vain show, is their fate not written in the chronicles of haggard and jaded wives, and of husbands drowned in debt or driven perhaps to stock-gambling or some other refuge of desperation?
In another portion of this autobiography I have uttered a prayer for the revival of soul-kindling eloquence in the pulpit.