Alexandria Gazette

A VICIOUS BOY NOW A MURDERER!

We have a short history of Abner Rogers, Jr., now about to be tried in Boston for murdering the keeper of the prison, from which we learn that, while a boy, his parents neglected his education, and permitted him to roam about with a number of idle boys who infested the town of Newbury, Mass. He commenced his career with idleness; next he left the school and despised the instruction it afforded, then he scoffed at the admonitions of those who tried to guide him in the path to future happiness and honor as a man and a citizen; he despised all their counsels, spent his time with lazy boys like himself, who swore, smoked, chewed, drank rum, congregated in idle squads, and laughed at the wise boys of the village as they passed to school or to industrious employments. At the age of nineteen he was sent to prison for passing bad money, and, from one step to another, he soon ascended the ladder of crime where he now stands, on the topmost rung, about to step off on the gallows, there to end his career at the early age of thirty. This is only one among a thousand instances of the danger of commencing to do wrong. When a boy once begins, no matter how small the beginning may be, he steps into a rail car on the top of a steep hill, down which he will run with fearful rapidity, and be dashed into destruction in an abyss of crime below!—N. Y. Sun.