Vermont Telegraph

MORAL REFORM.

Warning to the Dishonest and Licentious.

Mr. -- was one of the early settlers of Michigan, a man of good education, of a highly respectable family, and in independent circumstances as to property. A respectable and accomplished lady gave him her hand in marriage, but she knew not that she had taken a libertine to her bosom, and that her health, and life, were to become a sacrifice to a disgraceful, loathsome disease. In those days there was no "Advocate of Moral Reform," to warn innocent unsuspecting females of the danger of associating with, and giving themselves in marriage, to unprincipled, licentious men. Ministers of the gospel and religious periodicals raised no warning voice, because it was a "delicate subject." Fiends in the form of gentlemen, were allowed to destroy the innocent in the country, or to decoy them to the cities to be immured, like nuns, in the sinks of pollution. And all this must be suffered in silence, for fear of offending gentlemen libertines, or wounding a false modesty, that permits such gentlemen to go without exposure.

But I have digressed. Mr. -- had a respectable neighbor who came to Michigan without money to buy land, and had settled on government land with the hope, that by unremitting industry he might be able to support his family, and make money to buy the land he was improving. After making improvement so as to begin to live comfortably, Mr. -- became offended with him, and went to Detroit and bought the land, and took his improvements from him.

While at Detroit, for the dishonest purpose of legally robbing his neighbor, "there met him a woman with the attire of a harlot" after whom he went "straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life: she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death."

While there, that loathsome disease which may be termed a living death, which is the seal of God's anger on the violators of the seventh commandment, fastened its fangs upon him, poisoned his blood, rioted in his flesh, and consumed his bones.

The disease finally settled in the hip joint. After being confined about four years, suffering the most excruciating pain, and losing a considerable part of the hip bone, he has so far recovered, as to be able to get about with crutches.

His property has been spent on physicians and strong drink. He still lives, a monument of his own folly, and the anger of God against transgressors of his righteous law.

All that is necessary to say of the history of such a man's wife is that she has long been in her grave.

A Farmer.