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THE PEARL AMONG THE VIRTUES
Picture to yourself a youth, whose shameless eyes rest upon everything, even upon the vilest, with concupiscence; who devours with the eyes, now an immodest picture, now an enticing figure; who frequents those balls and theatres which are, even in our day, snares to virtue and to innocence, and let me ask you, is it not as difficult for such a youth to continue pure, as for an earthen vessel, dropped from the top of a tower, to remain uninjured?
The saints understood these dangers, when they left the great cities, when they exercised a watchfulness over their eyes, and all their other senses, that might well seem carried to excess—or that, at least, we would
