In general, the sinner is not the man who sets out in life to be wicked. Few men are born wicked; many are born weak. False ideas of manliness; false conceptions of good fellowship, which false ideas of the relationship of men and women give, wreck many a young man of otherwise good intentions. The sinner is the man who cannot say no. The fall through vice to sin is a matter of slow transition. One virtue after another is yielded up as the strain on the will becomes too great. In Kipling's fable of Parenness, the demon appears before the clerk in the Indian service, who has been too long a good fellow among the boys. It asks him to surrender three things in succession: his trust in man, his faith in woman, then the hopes and ambitions of his childhood. When these are given up, as they must be in the life of dissipation, the demon leaves him in exchange a little crust of dry bread. Bare existence without joy or hope is all that the demon can give when the forces of life are burned out.
In our colleges, the one ethical principle kept before the athlete by his associates is this: Never break training rules. The pitcher who smokes a cigarette throws away his game. The punter who spends the night at a dance loses his one chance of making a goal. The sprinter who takes the glass of convivial beer breaks no record. His record breaks him. Some day we shall realize that the game of life is more than the game of foot-ball. We have work every day more intricate than pitching curves, more strenuous than punting the ball. We must keep in trim for it. We must hold ourselves in repair. We must remember training rules. When this is done, we shall win not only games and races, but the great prizes of life. Almost half the strength of the men of America is now wasted in dissipation, gross or petty, in drink or smoke. This strength would be saved could we remember training rules. Through the training rules of our fathers we have come to consider as part of our inheritance the Puritan Conscience. As the success of our nation is built upon this conscience, so in like fashion depends upon it the success of our daily life.
I had a friend once, a mining man of some education, who made his fortune in bonanza days in Nevada, and who drank up what he had made with the boys who have long since passed away. As a hopeless sot he visited the gold cure at Los Gatos. Not finding much relief, he walked over to Palo Alto to borrow of me his fare to San Francisco. He said that he was going to pawn his goods for a fare to Nevada, where he meant to kill himself. Whether he did so or not, I do not know; for ten years have gone by and I have never heard of him again.