BORDER LINES 

IN THE FIELD OF DOUBTFUL PRACTICES

YOUNG people usually have different views from old people as to popular amusements and recreations, and as to the better use of both time and money. Each class is likely to feel that the other class is mistaken, and is entertaining an erroneous view of such matters in question. An old saying is that "young people think old ones are fools, and old folks know young ones are." While this is not wholly true, it may truly be said that old persons are prone to forget how life and its occupations looked to them while they were young, and that young persons are unpleasantly conscious of this fact in all discussions with their seniors concerning debatable customs and practice.
This state of things is in the mind of the writer of these pages, as he gives his views on such mooted customs as wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, card-playing, theatre going, and social dancing. In every instance he puts himself back, for a standpoint, to the position which he occupied while a mere youth in a community where the laxer view as to all these practices generally prevailed. While young, he was never restrained in such matters by parental prohibitions, nor was he brought up in any surroundings of over-strictness, approaching asceticism or puritanical rigidity. Hence there has been no rebound of his nature from one extreme to the other.
The stand which he now takes, and in these pages defends as wisest and best, was the one which he chose as a young man, not only before he had any thought of ever being a clergyman, but before he was even a member of any Christian church. The fact that some of these views have been confirmed by an exceptionally wide and varied experience of more than half a century of subsequent life and thought and observation, may not in itself be supposed to invalidate the correctness of the view thus early decided on.
In discussing these matters, the author recognizes the fact that many persons whose opinion he values, and to whose character he looks up, take a different view from himself of the subject in question, and that he has no right to say that they are wholly wrong and he alone is right. Therefore, approaching the subject from this standpoint and in this spirit, he may appeal more strongly to some who are not influenced by the ordinary arguments put forth by those who will not admit that there is more than one side to the subject.
Indeed, it is because some such presentation of the matter has before now influenced favorably quite a number of young persons, that the writer has put into this permanent form the extended statements of his views, at the urgent request of a number of the young persons thus influenced. He will be glad if other persons are similarly led to a final and satisfactory conclusion.