No doubt every position in life has its own peculiar temptations. The
ill-favoured lad, who is the butt at school and the scapegoat at home,
is in serious danger of becoming bitter and revengeful, and of growing
crooked in character, like a plant in a dark vault, which will have no
beauty because it enjoys no sunshine. But, on the other hand, physical
beauty, which attracts attention and wins admiration, especially if it
is associated with brilliant conversational gifts, and great charm of
manner, has befooled both men and women into sin and misery. Many a
girl has been entrapped into an unhappy marriage; and many a lad, moved
by a vaunting ambition which overleaped itself, has fallen never to
rise: like Icarus, when his waxen wings melted in the sun.

There must have been sad laxity of discipline in the home of David. It
is said of Adonijah that "_his father had not displeased him at any
time in saying, Why hast thou done so_?" In other words, Adonijah had
never been checked and rebuked as he ought to have been, and this
foolish indulgence was as fatal to him as it had been to the sons of
Eli. There are still such homes as David's, although their inmates do
well to draw down the veil of secrecy over them with loyal hands, and
never blazon abroad the grief and anxiety which rend their hearts. In
one home a fair, bright girl mars the beauty of her early womanhood by
a flippant disregard of her mother's wishes, and by an exaltation of
her own pleasure-loving disposition as the one law of her life. In
another, a mere child, hasty and uncontrolled in temper, is the dread
of the whole household, and at last becomes its tyrant, because every
wish is gratified rather than that a scene should be provoked. In yet
another a grown-up son is callous about his mother's anxiety and his
father's counsels; and gladly ignores his home associations as he
drifts away upon the sea of vice, and there becomes a miserable wreck.
With each of these it might have been otherwise. If authority had been