Why Did You Do It A Personal Narrative Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Why Did You Do It?: A Personal Narrative

While in my prison cell, I had plenty of time for meditation, the fruit of which you see in this simple work before you. It seems but a day since I Was a boy, kneeling at my mother's knee, in the calm of every twilight, saying my little prayer; yet I have experienced much, yes, much that I sincerely regret. Now I will give young men and bbys, who peruse these pages, warning of the course they are pursuing; and there will be some things that will not hurt some older men to read, if they do rub a little close on their easy mode of life, but, on the contrary, I hope will do them good. Ladies will find, I sincerely hope, something to in terest them. I shall show you how I prospered when I pursued the honest, upright, and virtuous course. You will also see how dishonesty first commenced with me and is commencing with many others this day. Now I often think of what the Rev. D. M. Stuart said to me, when I was a boy, seventeen years of age, while living with him and attending school at the seminary of which he was pr1n01pal. Lonnie, you have some very good principles and, some very bad ones; (the good will not be a match for, the bad, but. The bad will overcome the good, and, finally, all bad, just as one or two unsound apples will spoil a Whole barrel. Of sound ones, if you do 'ngt remove them. Now when you-see where I Wasp-five years later, you will think (as I do) he was' right. My friends, receive this little story in the Spirit in which -it is told; give it good. Words wherever you will; and hope with me, that it may, be the in strument, under God, of savmg some from sin and misery. Yours.= Trulyh.

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