Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects

Having watched the courses of those who seduce the young — their arts, their blandishments, their pretenses; having witnessed the beginning and consummation of ruin, almost in the same year, of many young men, naturally well disposed, whose downfall began with the appearances of innocence; I felt an earnest desire, if I could, to warn the young, and to direct their reason to the arts by which they are, with such facility, destroyed!
I ask every young man who may read this book, not to submit his judgment to mine, not to hate because I denounce, nor blindly to follow me; but to weigh my reasons, that he may form his own judgment. I only claim the place of a friend; and that I may gain his ear, I have sought to present truth in those forms which best please the young. And though I am not without hope of satisfying the aged and the wise — my whole thought has been to carry with me the intelligent sympathy of young men.