They drain the cup of
voluptuous pleasure to its dregs, and flee from home as jejune and supine.
The husband leaves his wife, and seeks his company in fashionable saloons,
at the card table or in halls of revelry. The wife leaves the society of
her children, and in company with a bosom companion, seeks to throw off
the tedium of home, at masquerade meetings, at the theater or in the
ball-room, where
"Vice, once by modest Nature chained,
And legal ties, expatiates unrestrained;
Without thin decency held up to view,
Naked she stalks o'er law and gospel too!"
The children follow their example; become disgusted with each other's
company, and sacrifice their time and talents to a thousand little trifles
and absurdities. Taste becomes depraved, and loses all relish for rational
enjoyment. The heart teems with idle fancies and vain imaginations.
Sentimentalism takes the place of religion; filthy literature and
fashionable cards shove the Family Bible in some obscure nook of their
parlor and their hearts. The hours devoted to family prayer are now spent
in a giddy whirl of amusement and intoxicating pleasure, in the study of
the latest fashions and of the newly-published love adventures of some
nabob in the world of refined scoundrelism. The parental solicitude, once
directed to the eternal welfare of the child, is now expended in
match-making and setting out in the world.
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