If you have learned to be serious in youth, you shall enjoy an
agreeable old age; but if the former be stamped with levity and
frivolity, the latter shall be fraught with sorrow and desolation. Do
not count on the charms of youth, it is a flower that shall very soon
fade, and like a bird on the wing, shall leave no trace behind it.
The lustre of your eyes now beaming delight shall soon grow dull; the
bloom shall depart from your cheek; the bright hopes that now fill
your soul shall give place to sad souvenirs; and your heart which is
now the abode of delight shall then be harrowed with sorrow and woe.
To-day you are flattered and praised, then you shall be a castaway,
abandoned. All that will remain to you is God and your soul, with
whom you had never learned to converse or commune. Oh, sad, indeed,
is the old age of a frivolous youth!
CHAPTER XIV.
CHOICE OP COMPANIONS.
Since a predisposition to good and evil is found among persons of
all classes and ages; and as this predisposition is especially strong
at your age, when the sympathies are most tender, when the heart so
candid and open is ready to receive and reciprocate those secret
emanations that escape from the souls of loved ones; you require to
take more than ordinary precautions, since the danger to which these
circumstances expose you is indeed very great, and requires a
prudence superior to your years,--you must therefore look for it in
the advice of others, but more especially in that of your mother who
should be your first adviser in all things.
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