This caution is also peculiarly applicable to those who have the direction of the numerous village libraries, that have latterly arisen in our favoured land. On these men, an awful responsibility rests. They have, in their hands, the future characters of the people, who may live in their respective neighbourhoods. They have, under their care, _the destinies of an unborn race_! The _seeds_, which are now sown in the hearts of the young, will, when they shall become parents, be transmitted to other soils. What an incalculable magnitude and importance invest this subject! Let them beware, therefore, as they shall answer at a high tribunal. "Take care,"--said a monitor to the celebrated statuary, BACON, as he tapped him on the shoulder,--"remember, you are working for posterity!"--and the caution was reciprocated to the divine. _Take care_, says the Plough-Boy, to the directors of village libraries, _what you sow_!
Many a lovely damsel, whose rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes once indicated the sweetness and the purity of innocence, has had her heart tarnished, corrupted, ruined, by the insidious poison of books,--books read in secret, remote from the vigilant eye of a tender parent or kind friend. Into the recesses of the solitude of these; yes, even at the hour when the remainder of the family is reposing in peace, and when the rays of the midnight lamp are thrown on the idle, the romantic, or vicious page, let the warning voice of the Plough-Boy enter. May his accents thunder in their ears, _Take care how you sow_!
The vast increase of _taverns_, in our country and villages, calls us to beware of _men_, as well as of books. There is a great difference, my father tells me, between the simplicity of manners, which characterized the times when he was a boy, and the idleness and dissipation which have now spread over the country. Then it was considered a _disgrace_, to a young farmer, to be seen at a tavern, excepting when absolute necessity called him thither. Now, visit one of these seductive inns, in an afternoon, and we can see a band of hardy striplings, smoking their segars, drinking their cans of beer, or tossing off their glasses of "real Holland," and permitting their minds to be agitated by the evanescent politics of the day, while their families are either ignorant of their habits, or mourning over the tares, which the enemy is sowing in a fruitful field. Alas! even in his time, the Plough-Boy has witnessed the robust young husbandman, graced with an athletic form, adorned with vivid health and manly beauty, and blessed with a lovely wife and innocent prattlers, sink into an early grave, opened by Infamy and closed by Despair, solely in consequence,--first, of suffering his mind to be led aside from his business by the solicitations of idle men, and losing his precious time at the tavern; and then, of "just taking a social glass," which they have told him it would be unmanly to refuse.