character and countenance (click for full-size image)
This is an image from a series of educational textbooks published in London in the 1890's. It warns readers of the fate that will befall them if they follow the trickgnostic path. Consider:
In the one case, you see him pass into the higher and more polite circles of the educated classes, yielding himself to all the softening, subduing, refining elements of pure female society ; and in the other you see him entirely lost to all sense of decency and self-respect, rushing headlong into the scenes of dissipation, and surrendering himself to all the worst agencies of a wicked world. In the one instance you see him choosing his profession, and contemplating a settlement in life--wedding himself to a virtuous, loving, and devoted woman, and in course of time becoming surrounded by a loving family; in the other you see the man emerging from the scenes of brutal intoxication to plunge into deeper, darker vices, till his conscience is oppressed with guilt and misery, and life becomes a burden. from which he perhaps seeks relief in suicide; or it may be that his conduct renders him obnoxious to law, and he comes to a premature death. If he be spared this fate, he comes to beggary, and goes down to the grave unlamented and unwept.It's funny, I started on the upper track and got through school and most of the way through study, but never made it to honorable success. I took a wrong turn into the street, I think it was Flat Shoals Avenue, and now I'm drunken and idle. Woe is tricky--he shall never know the refining elements of pure female society.
