THE ABOMINATIONS OF MODERN SOCIETY.<\/p>\n
BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE,<\/p>\n
AUTHOR OF “CRUMBS SWEPT UP”<\/p>\n
1872.<\/p>\n
PREFACE.<\/p>\n
This is a buoy swung over the rocks. If it shall keep ship, bark,
\nfore-and-aft schooner, or hermaphrodite brig from driving on a lee
\nshore, “all’s well.”<\/p>\n
The book is not more for young men than old. The Calabria was wrecked
\n“the last day out.”<\/p>\n
Nor is the book more for men than women. The best being that God ever
\nmade is a good woman, and the worst that the devil ever made is a bad
\none. If anything herein shall be a warning either to man or woman, I
\nwill be glad that the manuscript was caught up between the sharp teeth
\nof the type.<\/p>\n
T.D.W.T.<\/p>\n
BROOKLYN, January 1st, 1872.<\/p>\n
CONTENTS.<\/p>\n
The Curtain Lifted<\/p>\n
Winter Nights<\/p>\n
The Power of Clothes<\/p>\n
After Midnight<\/p>\n
The Indiscriminate Dance<\/p>\n
The Massacre by Needle and Sewing-Machine<\/p>\n
Pictures in the Stock Gallery<\/p>\n
Leprous Newspapers<\/p>\n
The Fatal Ten-Strike<\/p>\n
Some of the Club-Houses<\/p>\n
Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn<\/p>\n
House of Blackness of Darkness<\/p>\n
The Gun that Kicks over the Man who Shoots it off<\/p>\n
Lies: White and Black<\/p>\n
The Good Time Coming<\/p>\n
THE ABOMINATIONS.<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/p>\n
THE CURTAIN LIFTED.<\/p>\n
Pride of city is natural to men, in all times, if they live or have
\nlived in a metropolis noted for dignity or prowess. C?sar boasted of
\nhis native Rome; Lycurgus of Sparta; Virgil of Andes; Demosthenes of
\nAthens; Archimedes of Syracuse; and Paul of Tarsus. I should suspect
\na man of base-heartedness who carried about with him no feeling of
\ncomplacency in regard to the place of his residence; who gloried not
\nin its arts, or arms, or behavior; who looked with no exultation upon
\nits evidences of prosperity, its artistic embellishments, and its
\nscientific attainments.<\/p>\n
I have noticed that men never like a place where they have not behaved
\nwell. Swarthout did not like New York; nor Dr. Webster, Boston. Men
\nwho have free rides in prison-vans never like the city that furnishes
\nthe vehicle.<\/p>\n
When I see in history Argos, Rhodes, Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, and
\nseveral other cities claiming Homer, I conclude that Homer behaved
\nwell.<\/p>\n
Let us not war against this pride of city, nor expect to build up
\nourselves by pulling others down. Let Boston have its _Common_,
\nits _Faneuil Hall_, its _Coliseum_, and its _Atlantic Monthly_. Let
\nPhiladelphia talk about its _Mint_, and _Independence Hall_, and
\n_Girard College_. When I find a man living in either of those places,
\nwho has nothing to say in favor of them, I feel like asking him, “What
\nmean thing did you do, that you do not like your native city?”<\/p>\n
New York is a goodly city. It is one city on both sides of the river.
\nThe East River is only the main artery of its great throbbing life.
\nAfter a while four or five bridges will span the water, and we shall
\nbe still more emphatically one than now. When, therefore, I say “New
\nYork city,” I mean more than a million of people, including everything
\nbetween Spuyten Duyvil Creek and Gowanus. That which tends to elevate
\na part, elevates all. That which blasts part, blasts all. Sin is a
\ngiant; and he comes to the Hudson or Connecticut River, and passes it,
\nas easily as we step across a figure in the carpet. The blessing of
\nGod is an angel; and when it stretches out its two wings, one of them
\nhovers over that, and the other over this.<\/p>\n
In infancy, the great metropolis was laid down by the banks of the
\nHudson. Its infancy was as feeble as that of Moses, sleeping in the
\nbulrushes by the Nile; and like Miriam, there our fathers stood and
\nwatched it. The royal spirit of American commerce came down to the
\nwater to bathe; and there she found it. She took it in her arms,
\nand the child grew and waxed strong; and the ships of foreign lands
\nbrought gold and spices to its feet; and, stretching itself up into
\nthe proportions of a metropolis, it has looked up to the mountains,
\nand off upon the sea,–one of the mightiest of the energies of
\nAmerican civilization.<\/p>\n
The character of the founder of a city will be seen for many years in
\nits inhabitants. Romulus impressed his life upon Rome. The Pilgrims
\nrelax not their hold upon the cities of New England. William Penn has
\nleft Philadelphia an inheritance of integrity and fair dealing; and
\non any day in that city you may see in the manners, customs, and
\nprinciples of its people, his tastes, his coat, his hat, his wife’s
\nbonnet, and his plain meeting-house. The Hollanders still wield an
\ninfluence over New York.<\/p>\n
Grand Old New York! What southern thoroughfare was ever smitten by
\npestilence, when our physicians did not throw themselves upon the
\nsacrifice! What distant land has cried out in the agony of famine, and
\nour ships have not put out with bread-stuffs! What street of Damascus,
\nor Beyrout, or Madras that has not heard the step of our missionaries!
\nWhat struggle for national life, in which our citizens have not poured
\ntheir blood into the trenches! What gallery of exquisite art, in
\nwhich our painters have not hung their pictures! What department of
\nliterature or science to which our scholars have not contributed!
\nI need not speak of our public schools, where the children of the
\ncordwainer, and milkman, and glass-blower stand by the side of the
\nflattered sons of millionnaires and merchant princes; or of the
\ninsane asylums on all these islands, where they who came out cutting
\nthemselves, among the tombs, now sit, clothed and in their right mind;
\nor of the Magdalen asylums, where the lost one of the street comes to
\nbathe the Saviour’s feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hairs
\nof her head,–confiding in the pardon of Him who said–“Let him who
\nis without sin cast the first stone at her.” I need not speak of the
\ninstitutions for the blind, the lame, the deaf and the dumb, for the
\nincurables, for the widow, the orphan, and the outcast; or of the
\nthousand-armed machinery that sends streaming down from the reservoir
\nthe clear, bright, sparkling, God-given water that rushes through
\nour aqueducts, and dashes out of the hydrants, and tosses up in
\nour fountains, and hisses in our steam-engines, and showers out the
\nconflagration, and sprinkles from the baptismal font of our churches;
\nand with silver note, and golden sparkle, and crystalline chime, says
\nto hundreds of thousands of our population, in the authentic words of
\nHim who made it–“I WILL: BE THOU CLEAN!”<\/p>\n
They who live in any of the American cities have a goodly heritage;
\nand it is in no depreciation of our advantages that I speak, but
\nbecause, in the very contrast with our opportunities and mission, THE
\nABOMINATIONS are tenfold more abominable.<\/p>\n
The sources from which I will bring the array of facts will be police,
\ndetective, and alms-house reports; city missionaries’ explorations,
\nand the testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, who, about to take
\nthe final plunge, have staggered back just for a moment, to utter the
\nwild shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail of their despair.<\/p>\n
I shall call upon you to consider the drunkenness, the stock-gambling,
\nthe rampant dishonesties, the club-houses so far as they are
\nnefarious, the excess of fashion, the horrors of unchastity, the
\nbad books and unclean newspapers, and the whole range of sinful
\namusements; and with the plough-share of truth turn up the whole
\nfield.<\/p>\n
If we could call up the victims themselves, they would give the most
\nimpressive story. People knew not how Turner, the painter, got such
\nvivid conceptions of a storm at sea, until they heard the story that
\noftentimes he had been lashed to the deck in the midst of the tempest,
\nin order that he might study the wrath of the sea.<\/p>\n
Those who have themselves been tossed on the wave of infamous
\ntransgressions could give us the most vivid picture of what it is
\nto sin and to die. With hand tremulous with exhausting disease, and
\nhardly able to get the accursed bowl to his lips–put into such a hand
\nthe pencil, and it can sketch, as can no one else, the darkness, the
\nfire, the wild terror, the headlong pitch, and the hell of those who
\nhave surrendered themselves to iniquity. While we dare only come near
\nthe edge, and, balancing ourselves a while, look off, and our head
\nswims, and our breath catches,–those can tell the story best who have
\nfallen to the depths with wilder dash than glacier from the top of a
\nSwiss cliff, and stand, in their agony, looking up for a relief
\nthat comes not, and straining their eyes for a hope that never
\ndawns–crying, “O God!” “O God!”<\/p>\n
It is terrible to see a lion dashing for escape against the sides of
\nhis cage; but a more awful thing it is to behold a man, caged in bad
\nhabit, trying to break out,–blood on the soul, blood on the cage.<\/p>\n
Others may throw garlands upon Sin, picturing the overhanging fruits
\nwhich drop in her pathway, and make every step graceful as the dance;
\nbut we cannot be honest without presenting it as a giant, black with
\nthe soot of the forges where eternal chains are made, and feet rotting
\nwith disease, and breath foul with plagues, and eyes glaring with woe,
\nand locks flowing in serpent fangs, and voice from which shall rumble
\nforth the blasphemies of the damned.<\/p>\n
I open to you a door, through which you see–what? Pictures and
\nfountains, and mirrors and flowers? No: it is a lazar-house of
\ndisease. The walls drip, drip, drip with the damps of sepulchres. The
\nvictims, strewn over the floor, writhe and twist among each other in
\ncontortions indescribable, holding up their ulcerous wounds,
\ntearing their matted hair, weeping tears of blood: some hooting with
\nrevengeful cry; some howling with a maniac’s fear; some chattering
\nwith idiot’s stare; some calling upon God; some calling upon fiends;
\nwasting away; thrusting each other back; mocking each other’s pains;
\ntearing open each other’s ulcers; dropping with the ichor of death!
\nThe wider I open the door, the ghastlier the scene.–Worse the
\nhorrors. More desperate recoils. Deeper curses. More blood. I can no
\nlonger endure the vision, and I shut the door, and cover my eyes, and
\nturn my back, and cry, “God pity them!”<\/p>\n
Some one may say, “What is the use of such an exposure as you propose
\nto make? Our families are all respectable.” I answer, that no family,
\nhowever elevated and exclusive, can be independent of the state of
\npublic morals.<\/p>\n
However pleasant the block of houses in which you dwell, the
\nwretchedness, the temptation, and the outrage of municipal crime will
\nput its hand on your door-knob, and dash its awful surge against the
\nmarble of your door-steps, as the stormy sea drives on a rocky beach.<\/p>\n
That condition of morals is now being formed, amid which our children
\nmust walk. Do you tell me it is none of my business what street
\nprofanity shall curse my boy’s ear, on his way to school? Think you it
\nis no concern of yours what infamous advertisements, placarded on
\nthe walls, or in the public newspaper, shall smite the vision of your
\ninnocent little ones? Shall I be nervous about a stagnant pool of
\nwater, lest it breed malaria, and be careless when there are in the
\nvery heart of our city thousands of houses, devoted to various forms
\nof dissipation, which day and night steam with miasma, and pour out
\nthe fiery lava of pollution, and darken the air with their horrors,
\nand fill the skies with the smoke of their torment, that ascendeth up
\nforever and ever? If a slaughter-house be opened in the midst of the
\ntown, we hasten down to the Mayor to have the nuisance abated. But
\nnow I make complaint, not to the Mayor or Common Council, but to the
\nmasses of the people, who have the power to lift men up to office, and
\nto cast them down, against a hundred thousand slaughter-houses in
\nour American cities. In the name of our happy homes, of our refined
\ncircles, of our schools, of our churches,–in the name of all that is
\ndear and beautiful and valuable and holy,–I enter the complaint. If
\nyou now sit unconcerned, and leave to professed philanthropists
\nthe work, and care not who are in authority or what laws remain
\nunexecuted, you may live to see the time when you will curse the day
\nin which your children were born.<\/p>\n
My belief is that such an exposition of public immoralities will
\ndo good, by exciting pity for the victims and wholesale indignation
\nagainst the abettors and perpetrators.<\/p>\n
Who is that man fallen against the curbstone, covered with bruises and
\nbeastliness? He was as bright-faced a lad as ever looked up from your
\nnursery. His mother rocked him, prayed for him, fondled him, would
\nnot let the night air touch his cheek, and held him up and looked down
\ninto his loving eyes, and wondered for what high position he was being
\nfitted. He entered life with bright hopes. The world beckoned him,
\nfriends cheered him, but the archers shot at him; vile men set traps
\nfor him, bad habits hooked fast to him with their iron grapples; his
\nfeet slipped on the way; and there he lies. Who would think that that
\nuncombed hair was once toyed with by a father’s fingers? Who would
\nthink that those bloated cheeks were ever kissed by a mother’s lips?
\nWould you guess that that thick tongue once made a household glad with
\nits innocent prattle? Utter no harsh words in his ear. Help him up.
\nPut the hat over that once manly brow. Brush the dust from that coat
\nthat once covered a generous heart. Show him the way to the home that
\nonce rejoiced at the sound of his footstep, and with gentle words tell
\nhis children to stand back as you help him through the hall.<\/p>\n
That was a kind husband once and an indulgent father. He will kneel
\nwith them no more as once he did at family prayers–the little ones
\nwith clasped hands looking up into the heavens with thanksgiving for
\ntheir happy home. But now at midnight he will drive them from their
\npillows and curse them down the steps, and howl after them as, unclad,
\nthey fly down the street, in night-garments, under the calm starlight.<\/p>\n
Who slew that man? Who blasted that home? Who plunged those children
\ninto worse than orphanage–until the hands are blue with cold, and the
\ncheeks are blanched with fear, and the brow is scarred with bruises,
\nand the eyes are hollow with grief? Who made that life a wreck, and
\nfilled eternity with the uproar of a doomed spirit?<\/p>\n
There are those whose regular business it is to work this death. They
\nmix a cup that glows and flashes and foams with enchantment. They
\ncall it Cognac, or Hock, or Heidsick, or Schnapps, or Old Bourbon, or
\nBrandy, or Champagne; but they tell not that in the ruddy glow there
\nis the blood of sacrifice, and in its flash the eye of uncoiled
\nadders, and in the foam the mouth-froth of eternal death. Not knowing
\nwhat a horrible mixture it is, men take it up and drink it down–the
\nsacrificial blood, the adder’s venom, the death-froth–and smack their
\nlips and call it a delightful beverage.<\/p>\n
Oh! if I had some art by which I could break the charm of the
\ntempter’s bowl, and with mailed hand lift out the long serpent of
\neternal despair, and shake out its coils, and cast it down, and crush
\nit to death!<\/p>\n
But the enchantment cannot thus be broken. It hides in the bottom of
\nthe bowl; and not until a man is entirely fallen does the monster
\nlift itself up, and strike with its terrific fangs, and answer all
\nhis implorations for mercy with fiendish hiss. We must arouse public
\nopinion, until city, State, and national officials shall no longer
\ndare to neglect the execution of the law. We have enough enactments
\nnow to revolutionize our cities and strike terror through the
\ndrinking-houses and gambling-dens and houses of sin. Tracts
\ndistributed will not do it; Bibles printed will not accomplish it;
\ncity missionaries have not power for the work.<\/p>\n
_Will_ tracts do it? As well try with three or four snow-flakes to put
\nout Cotapaxi!<\/p>\n
We want police officers, common councilmen, aldermen, sheriffs,
\nmayors, who will execute the law. Give us for two weeks in our cities
\nan honest city hall, and public pollution would fall like lightning
\nfrom heaven!<\/p>\n
If you republicans, and you democrats, do not do your duty in this
\nregard, we will, after a while, form a party of our own, and put
\nmen in position pledged to anti-rum, anti-dirt, anti-nuisances,
\nanti-monopolies, anti-abominations, and will give to those of you who
\nhave been so long feeding on public spoils, careless of public morals,
\nnot so much as the wages of a street sweeper.<\/p>\n
We are not discouraged. It may seem to many that all of our battling
\nagainst these evils will come to naught. But if the coral insects can
\nlift an island, our feeble efforts, under God, may raise a break-water
\nthat will dash back the surges of municipal abomination. Beside, we
\ntoil not in our own strength.<\/p>\n
It seemed insignificant for Moses to stretch his hand over the Red
\nSea. What power could that have over the waters? But the east wind
\nblew all night; the waters gathered into two glittering palisades on
\neither side. The billows reared as God’s hand pulled back upon their
\ncrystal bits. Wheel into line, O Israel! March! March! Pearls crash
\nunder the feet. The flying spray springs a rainbow arch over the
\nvictors. The shout of hosts mounting the beach answers the shout of
\nhosts mid-sea; until, as the last line of the Israelites have gained
\nthe beach, the shields clang, and the cymbals clap; and as the waters
\nwhelm the pursuing foe, the swift-fingered winds on the white keys of
\nthe foam play the grand march of Israel delivered, and the awful dirge
\nof Egyptian overthrow.<\/p>\n
So we go forth; and stretch out the hand of prayer and Christian
\neffort over these dark, boiling waters of crime and suffering. “Aha!
\nAha!” say the deriding world. But wait. The winds of divine help will
\nbegin to blow; the way will clear for the great army of Christian
\nphilanthropists; the glittering treasures of the world’s beneficence
\nwill line the path of our feet; and to the other shore we will be
\ngreeted with the clash of all heaven’s cymbals; while those who resist
\nand deride and pursue us will fall under the sea, and there will be
\nnothing left of them but here and there, cast high and dry upon the
\nbeach, the splintered wheel of a chariot, and, thrust out from the
\nsurf, the breathless nostril of a riderless charger.<\/p>\n
WINTER NIGHTS.<\/p>\n
The inhabitants of one of the old cities were told that they would
\nhave to fly for their lives. Such flight would be painful, even in
\nthe flush of spring-time, but superlatively aggravating if in cold
\nweather; and therefore they were told to pray that their flight be not
\nin the winter.<\/p>\n
There is something in the winter season that not only tests our
\nphysical endurance, but, especially in the city, tries our moral
\ncharacter. It is the winter months that ruin, morally, and forever,
\nmany of our young men. We sit in the house on a winter’s night, and
\nhear the storm raging on the outside, and imagine the helpless crafts
\ndriven on the coast; but if our ears were only good enough, we could,
\non any winter night, hear the crash of a hundred moral shipwrecks.<\/p>\n
Many who came last September to town, by the first of March will have
\nbeen blasted. It only takes one winter to ruin a young man. When the
\nlong winter evenings have come, many of our young men will improve
\nthem in forming a more intimate acquaintance with books, contracting
\nhigher social friendships, and strengthening and ennobling their
\ncharacters. But not so with all. I will show you before I get through
\nthat, at this season of the year, temptations are especially rampant:
\nand my counsel is, _Look out how you spend your winter nights!_<\/p>\n
I remark, first, that there is no season of the year in which vicious
\nallurements are so active.<\/p>\n
In warm weather, places of dissipation win their tamest triumphs.
\nPeople do not feel like going, in the hot nights of summer, among the
\nblazing gas-lights, or breathing the fetid air of assemblages. The
\nreceipts of the grog-shops in a December night are three times what
\nthey are in any night in July or August. I doubt not there are
\nlarger audiences in the casinos in winter than in the summer weather.
\nIniquity plies a more profitable trade. December, January, and
\nFebruary are harvest-months for the devil. The play-bills of the low
\nentertainments then are more charming, the acting is more exquisite,
\nthe enthusiasm of the spectators more bewitching. Many a young man who
\nmakes out to keep right the rest of the year, capsizes now. When he
\ncame to town in the autumn, his eye was bright, his cheek rosy, his
\nstep elastic; but, before spring, as you pass him you will say to your
\nfriend, “What is the matter with that young man?” The fact is that one
\nwinter of dissipation has done the work of ruin.<\/p>\n
This is the season for parties; and, if they are of the right kind,
\nour social nature is improved, and our spirits cheered up. But many
\nof them are not of the right kind; and our young people, night after
\nnight, are kept in the whirl of unhealthy excitement until their
\nstrength fails, and their spirits are broken down, and their taste for
\nordinary life corrupted; and, by the time the spring weather comes,
\nthey are in the doctor’s hands, or sleeping in the cemetery. The
\ncertificate of their death is made out, and the physician, out of
\nregard for the family, calls the disease by some Latin name, when the
\ntruth is that they died of too many parties.<\/p>\n
Away with these wine-drinking convivialities! How dare you, the
\nfather of a household, trifle with the appetites of our young people?
\nPerhaps, out of regard for the minister, or some other weak temperance
\nman, you have the decanter in a side-room, where, after refreshments,
\nonly a select few are invited; and you come back with a glare in your
\neye, and a stench in your breath, that shows that you have been out
\nserving the devil.<\/p>\n
Some one asks, “For what purpose are these people gone into that
\nside-room?”<\/p>\n
“O,” replies one who has just come out, smacking his lips, “they have
\ngone in to see the white dog!”<\/p>\n
The excuse which Christian men often give for this is, that it is
\nnecessary, after such late eating, by some sort of stimulant to help
\ndigestion. My plain opinion is, that if a man have no more control
\nover his appetite than to stuff himself until his digestive organs
\nrefuse to do their office, he ought not to call himself a man, but
\nrather to class himself among the beasts that perish. I take the words
\nof the Lord Almighty, and cry, “Woe to him that putteth the bottle to
\nhis neighbor’s lips!”<\/p>\n
Young man, take it as the counsel of a friend, when I bid you _be
\ncautious where you spend your winter evenings_. Thank God that you
\nhave lived to see the glad winter days in which your childhood was
\nmade cheerful by the faces of fathers and mothers, brothers and
\nsisters, some of whom, alas! will never again wish you a “happy New
\nYear,” or a “Merry Christmas.”<\/p>\n
Let no one tempt you out of your sobriety. I have seen respectable
\nyoung men of the best families drunk on New Year’s day. The excuse
\nthey gave for the inebriation was that the _ladies_ insisted on their
\ntaking it. There have been instances where the delicate hand of woman
\nhath kindled a young man’s taste for strong drink, who after many
\nyears, when the attractions of that holiday scene were all forgotten,
\ncrouched in her rags, and her desolation, and her woe under the
\nuplifted hand of the drunken monster who, on that Christmas morning
\nso long ago, took the glass from her hand. And so, the woman stands on
\nthe abutment of the bridge, on the moon-lit night, wondering if, down
\nunder the water, there is not some quiet place for a broken heart. She
\ntakes one wild leap,–and all is over!<\/p>\n
Ah! mingle not with the harmless beverage of your festive scene this
\npoison of adders! Mix not with the white sugar of the cup the snow
\nof this awful leprosy! Mar not the clatter of cutlery at the holiday
\nfeast with the clank of a madman’s chain!<\/p>\n
Stop and look into the window of that pawnbroker’s shop. Elegant furs.
\nElegant watches. Elegant scarfs. Elegant flutes. People stand with a
\npleased look gazing at these things; but I look in with a shudder, as
\nthough I had seen into a window of hell.<\/p>\n
Whose elegant watch was that? It was a drunkard’s watch!<\/p>\n
Whose furs? They belonged to a drunkard’s wife!<\/p>\n
Whose flute? Whose shoes? Whose scarf? They belonged to a drunkard’s
\nchild!<\/p>\n
If I could, I would take the three brazen balls hanging at the
\ndoor-way, and clang them together until they tolled the awful knell
\nof the drunkard’s soul. The pawnbroker’s shop is only one eddy of the
\ngreat stream of municipal drunkenness.<\/p>\n
Stand back, young man! Take not the first step in the path that leads
\nhere. Let not the flame of strong drink ever scorch your tongue. You
\nmay tamper with these things and escape, but your influence will be
\nwrong. Can you not make a sacrifice for the good of others?<\/p>\n
When the good ship _London_ went down, the captain was told that there
\nwas a way of escape in one of the life-boats. He said–“No; I will go
\ndown with the rest of the passengers!” All the world acknowledged that
\nheroism.<\/p>\n
Can you not deny yourself insignificant indulgences for the good of
\nothers? Be not allured by the fact that you drink only the moderate
\nbeverages. You take only ale; and a man has to drink a large amount of
\nit to become intoxicated. Yes; but there is not in all the city to-day
\nan inebriate that did not _begin_ with ale.<\/p>\n
“XXX:” What does that mark mean? XXX on the beer-barrel: XXX on the
\nbrewer’s dray: XXX on the door of the gin-shop: XXX on the side of
\nthe bottle. Not being able to find any one who could tell me what this
\nmark means, I have had to guess that the whole thing was an allegory:
\nXXX–that is, thirty heartbreaks. Thirty agonies. Thirty desolated
\nhomes. Thirty chances for a drunkard’s grave. Thirty ways to
\nperdition.<\/p>\n
“XXX.” If I were going to write a story, the first chapter would be
\nXXX.; the last–“A pawnbroker’s shop.”<\/p>\n
Be watchful! At this season all the allurements to dissipation will be
\nespecially busy. Let not your flight to hell be in the winter.<\/p>\n
I also remark that the winter evenings, through their very length,
\nallow great swing for indulgences. Few young men would have the taste
\nto go to their room at seven o’clock, and sit until eleven, reading
\n_Motley’s Dutch Republic_ or _John Foster’s Essays_. The young men
\nwho have been confined to the store all day want fresh air and
\nsight-seeing; and they must go somewhere. The most of them have, of
\na winter’s evening, three or four hours of leisure. After the evening
\nrepast, the young man puts on his hat and coat and goes out.<\/p>\n
“Come in here,” cries one form of allurement.<\/p>\n
“Come in here,” cries another.<\/p>\n
“Go;” says Satan. “You ought to see for yourself.”<\/p>\n
“Why don’t you go?” says a comrade. “It is a shame for a young man
\nto be as _green_ as you are. By this time you ought to have seen
\neverything.”<\/p>\n
Especially is temptation strong in such times as this, when business
\nis dull. I have noticed that men spend more money when they have
\nlittle to spend.<\/p>\n
The tremendous question to be settled by our great populace, day by
\nday, is how to get a livelihood. Many of our young men, just starting
\nfor themselves, are very much discouraged. They had hoped before this
\nto have set up a household of their own. But their gains have been
\nslow, and their discouragements many. The young man can hardly take
\ncare of himself. How can he take care of another? And, to the curse
\nof modern society, before a young man is able to set up a home of his
\nown, he is expected to have enough to support in idleness somebody
\nelse; when God intended that they should begin together, and jointly
\nearn a livelihood. So, many of our young men are utterly discouraged,
\nand utterly unfit to resist temptation.<\/p>\n
The time the pirate bears down upon the ship is when its sails are
\ndown and it is making no headway.<\/p>\n
People wish they had more time to think. The trouble is now, that
\npeople have too much time to think. Give to many of our commercial men
\nthe four hours of these winter nights, with nothing to divert them,
\nand before spring they will have lodgings in an insane asylum.<\/p>\n
I remark further, that the winter is especially trying to the moral
\ncharacter of our young men, because some of their homes in winter are
\nespecially unattractive. In summer they can sit on the steps, or have
\na bouquet in the vase on the mantel; and the evenings are so short
\nthat soon after gas-light they feel like retiring. Parents do not take
\nenough pains to make these long winter nights attractive.<\/p>\n
It is strange that old people know so little about young people. One
\nwould think that they had never been young themselves, but had been
\nborn with their spectacles on. It is dolorous for young people to
\nspend the three or four hours of a winter’s evening with parents
\nwho sit talking over their own ailments and misfortunes, and the
\nnothingness of this world. How dare you talk such blasphemy? God was
\nbusy six days in making the world, and has allowed it to hang six
\nthousand years on his holy heart; and that world hath fed you, and
\nclothed you, and shone on you for fifty years: and yet you talk about
\nthe nothingness of this world! Do you expect the young people in
\nyour family to sit a whole evening and hear you groan about this
\nmagnificent, star-lighted, sun-warmed, shower-baptized, flower-strewn,
\nangel-watched, God-inhabited planet? From such homes young men make a
\nwild plunge into dissipation. Many of you have the means: why do you
\nnot buy them a violin or a picture? or have your daughter cultured in
\nmusic until she can help to make home attractive?<\/p>\n
There are ten thousand ways of lighting up the domestic circle. It
\nrequires no large income, no big house, no rich wardrobe, no chased
\nsilver, no gorgeous upholstery, but a parental heart awake to its
\nduty.<\/p>\n
Have a doleful home and your children will not stay in it, though
\nyou block up the door with Bibles, and tie fast to them a million
\nHeidelberg catechisms.<\/p>\n
I said to a man, “This is a beautiful tree in front of your house.”<\/p>\n
He answered, with a whine, “Yes; but it will fade.”<\/p>\n
I said to him, “You have a beautiful garden.”<\/p>\n
He replied, “Yes; but it will perish.”<\/p>\n
I found out afterward that his son was a vagabond, and I was not
\nsurprised at it.<\/p>\n
You cannot groan men into decency, but you can groan them out.<\/p>\n
Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter! Devote these December,
\nJanuary and February evenings to high pursuits, innocent amusements,
\nintelligent socialities, and Christian attainments. Do not waste this
\nwinter. We shall soon have seen the last snow-shower, and have passed
\nup into the companionship of Him whose raiment is exceeding white as
\nsnow–as no fuller on earth can whiten it.<\/p>\n
To the right-hearted, the winter nights of earth will soon end in the
\nJune morning of heaven.<\/p>\n
The River of God, from under the Throne, never freezes over. The
\nfoliage of Life’s fair tree is never frost-bitten. The festivals, and
\nhilarities, and family gatherings of Christmas times on earth, will
\ngive way to the larger reunions, and the brighter lights, and the
\ngladder scenes, and the sweeter garlands, and the richer feastings of
\nthe great holiday of Heaven.<\/p>\n
THE POWER OF CLOTHES.<\/p>\n
One cannot always tell by a man’s coat what kind of a heart he has
\nunder it; still, his dress is apt to be the out-blossoming of his
\ncharacter, and is not to be disregarded.<\/p>\n
We make no indiscriminate onslaught upon customs of dress. Why did
\nGod put spots on the pansy, or etch the fern leaf? And what are
\nchina-asters good for if style and color are of no importance?<\/p>\n
The realm is as wide as the world, and as far-reaching as all the
\ngenerations, over which fashion hath extended her sceptre. For
\nthousands of years she hath sat queen over all the earth, and the
\nrevolutions that rock down all other thrones have not in the slighest
\naffected her domination. Other constitutions have been torn, and other
\nlaws trampled; but to her decrees conquerors have bowed their plumes,
\nand kings have uncovered. Victoria is not Queen of England; Napoleon
\nwas not Emperor of France; Isabella was not Queen of Spain. _Fashion_
\nhas been regnant over all the earth; and lords and dukes, kings and
\nqueens, have been the subjects of her realm.<\/p>\n
She arranged the mantle of the patriarch, and the toga of the Roman;
\nthe small shoe of the Chinese women, and the turban of the Turk;
\nthe furs of the Laplander, and the calumet of the Indian chieftain.
\nHottentot and Siberian obey the mandate, as well as Englishman and
\nAmerican. Her laws are written on parchment and palm-leaf, on broken
\narch and cathedral tracery. She arranged how the Egyptian mummy should
\nbe wound, and how C?sar should ride, and how the Athenians should
\nspeak, and how through the Venetian canals the gondoliers should row
\ntheir pleasure-boat. Her hand hath hung the pillars with embroidery,
\nand strewn the floor with plush. Her loom hath woven fabrics graceful
\nas the snow and pure as the light. Her voice is heard in the gold
\nmart, in the roar of the street, in the shuffle of the crowded
\nbazaars, in the rattle of the steam-presses, and in the songs of the
\nchurches.<\/p>\n
You have limited your observation of the sway of fashion if you have
\nconsidered it only as it decides individual and national costumes.
\nIt makes the rules of behavior. It wields an influence in artistic
\nspheres–often deciding what pictures shall hang in the house, what
\nmusic shall be played, what ornaments shall stand upon the mantle.
\nThe poor man will not have on his wall the cheap wood-cut that he can
\nafford, because he cannot have a great daub like that which hangs on
\nthe rich man’s wall, and costing three hundred dollars.<\/p>\n
Fashion helps to make up religious belief. It often decides to what
\nchurch we shall go, and what religious tenets we shall adopt. It goes
\ninto the pulpit, and decides the gown, and the surplice, and the style
\nof rhetoric.<\/p>\n
It goes into literature and arranges the binding, the type, the
\nillustrations of the book, and oftentimes the sentiments expressed and
\nthe theories evolved.<\/p>\n
Men the most independent in feeling are by it compelled to submit to
\nsocial customs. And before I stop I want to show you that fashion has
\nbeen one of the most potent of reformers, and one of the vilest of
\nusurpers. Sometimes it has been an angel from heaven, and at others it
\nhas been the mother of harlots.<\/p>\n
As the world grows better there will be as much fashion as now, but
\nit will be a different fashion. In the future life white robes always
\nhave been and always will be in the fashion.<\/p>\n
There is a great outcry against this submission to social custom,
\nas though any consultation of the tastes and feelings of others were
\ndeplorable; but without it the world would have neither law, order,
\ncivilization, nor common decency.<\/p>\n
There has been a canonization of bluntness. There are men and women
\nwho boast that they can tell you all they know and hear about you,
\nespecially if it be unpleasant. Some have mistaken rough behavior for
\nfrankness, when the two qualities do not belong to the same family.
\nYou have no right, with your eccentricities, to crash in upon the
\nsensitiveness of others. There is no virtue in walking with hoofs over
\nfine carpets. The most jagged rock is covered with blossoming moss.
\nThe storm that comes jarring down in thunder strews rainbow colors
\nupon the sky, and silvery drops on orchard and meadow.<\/p>\n
There are men who pride themselves on their capacity to “stick”
\nothers. They say “I have brought him down: Didn’t I make him squirm!”<\/p>\n
Others pride themselves on their outlandish apparel. They boast of
\nbeing out of the fashion. They wear a queer hat. They ride in an odd
\ncarriage. By dint of perpetual application they would persuade the
\nworld that they are perfectly indifferent to public opinion. They are
\nmore proud of being “out of fashion” than others are of being in. They
\nare utterly and universally disagreeable. Their rough corners have
\nnever been worn off. They prefer a hedge-hog to a lamb.<\/p>\n
The accomplishments of life are in nowise productive of effeminacy
\nor enervation. Good manners and a respect for the tastes of others
\nis indispensable. The Good Book speaks favorably of those who are
\na “_peculiar_” people; but that does not sanction the behavior of
\n_queer_ people. There is no excuse, under any circumstances, for not
\nbeing and acting the lady or gentleman. Rudeness is sin. We have no
\nwords too ardent to express our admiration for the refinements of
\nsociety. There is no law, moral or divine, to forbid elegance of
\ndemeanor, ornaments of gold or gems for the person, artistic display
\nin the dwelling, gracefulness of gait and bearing, polite salutation,
\nor honest compliments; and he who is shocked or offended by these had
\nbetter, like the old Scythians, wear tiger-skins, and take one wild
\nleap back into midnight barbarism.<\/p>\n
As Christianity advances there will be better apparel, higher styles
\nof architecture, more exquisite adornments, sweeter music, grander
\npictures, more correct behavior, and more thorough ladies and
\ngentlemen.<\/p>\n
But there is another story to be told. Excessive fashion is to be
\ncharged with many of the worst evils of society, and its path has
\noften been strewn with the bodies of the slain.<\/p>\n
It has often set up a false standard by which people are to be
\njudged. Our common sense, as well as all the divine intimations on the
\nsubject, teach us that people ought to be esteemed according to their
\nindividual and moral attainments. The man who has the most nobility
\nof soul should be first, and he who has the least of such qualities
\nshould stand last. No crest, or shield, or escutcheon, can indicate
\none’s moral peerage. Titles of duke, lord, esquire, earl, viscount,
\nor patrician, ought not to raise one into the first rank. Some of
\nthe meanest men I have ever known had at the end of their name D.D.,
\nLL.D., and F.R.S. Truth, honor, charity, heroism, self-sacrifice,
\nshould win highest favor; but inordinate fashion says–“Count not a
\nwoman’s virtues; count her rings;” “Look not at the contour of the
\nhead, but see the way she combs her hair;” “Ask not what noble deeds
\nhave been accomplished by that man’s hand; but is it white and soft?”
\nAsk not what good sense was in her conversation, but “in what was she
\ndressed.” Ask not whether there was hospitality and cheerfulness in
\nthe house, but “in what style do they live.”<\/p>\n
As a consequence, some of the most ignorant and vicious men are at
\nthe top, and some of the most virtuous and intelligent at the bottom.
\nDuring the late war we suddenly saw men hurled up into the highest
\nsocial positions. Had they suddenly reformed from evil habits? or
\ngraduated in a science? or achieved some good work for society? No!
\nThey simply had obtained a government contract!<\/p>\n
This accounts for the utter chagrin which men feel at the treatment
\nthey receive when they lose their property. Hold up your head amid
\nfinancial disaster, like a Christian! Fifty thousand subtracted from a
\ngood man leaves how much? Honor; Truth; Faith in God; Triumphant Hope;
\nand a kingdom of ineffable glory, over which he is to reign forever
\nand ever.<\/p>\n
If a millionnaire should lose a penny out of his pocket, would he sit
\ndown on a curb-stone and cry? And shall a man possessed of everlasting
\nfortunes wear himself out with grief because he has lost worldly
\ntreasure? You have only lost that in which hundreds of wretched
\nmisers surpass you; and you have saved that which the C?sars, and the
\nPharaohs, and the Alexanders could never afford.<\/p>\n
And yet society thinks differently; and you see the most intimate
\nfriendships broken up as the consequence of financial embarrassments.
\nYou say to some one–“How is your friend —-?” The man looks bewildered,
\nand says, “I do not know.” You reply, “Why; you used to be intimate.”
\n“Well,” says the man, “our friendship has been dropped: the man has
\nfailed.”<\/p>\n
Proclamation has gone forth: “Velvets must go up, and homespun must
\ncome down;” and the question is “How does the coat fit?”–not, “Who
\nwears it?” The power that bears the tides of excited population up
\nand down our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, and thrills all
\nnations, Transatlantic and Cisatlantic, is–_clothes_. It decides
\nthe last offices of respect; and how long the dress shall be totally
\nblack; and when it may subside into spots of grief on silk, calico, or
\ngingham. Men die in good circumstances, but by reason of extravagant
\nfuneral expenses are well nigh insolvent before they get buried. Many
\nmen would not die at all, if they had to wait until they could afford
\nit.<\/p>\n
Excessive fashion is productive of a most ruinous strife. The
\nexpenditure of many households is adjusted by what their neighbors
\nhave, not by what they themselves can afford to have; and the great
\nanxiety is as to who shall have the finest house and the most costly
\nequipage. The weapons used in the warfare of social life are not
\nMini? rifles, and Dahlgren guns, and Hotchkiss shells, but chairs
\nand mirrors, and vases, and Gobelins, and Axminsters. Many household
\nestablishments are like racing steamboats, propelled at the utmost
\nstrain and risk, and just coming to a terrific explosion. “Who cares,”
\nsay they, “if we only come out ahead?”<\/p>\n
There is no one cause to-day of more financial embarrassment, and of
\nmore dishonesties, than this determination, at all hazards, to live as
\nwell as or better than other people. There are persons who will risk
\ntheir eternity upon one fine looking-glass, or who will dash out the
\nsplendors of heaven to get another trinket.<\/p>\n
“My house is too small.” “But,” says some one, “you cannot pay for a
\nlarger.” “Never mind that; my friends have a better residence, and so
\nwill I.” “A dress of that pattern I must have. I cannot afford it by
\na great deal; but who cares for that? My neighbor had one from that
\npattern, and I must have one.” There are scores of men in the dungeons
\nof the penitentiary, who risked honor, business,–everything, in the
\neffort to shine like others. Though the heavens fall, they must be “in
\nthe fashion.”<\/p>\n
The most famous frauds of the day have resulted from this feeling. It
\nkeeps hundreds of men struggling for their commercial existence. The
\ntrouble is that some are caught and incarcerated, if their larceny
\nbe small. If it be great, they escape, and build their castle on the
\nRhine. Men go into jail, not because they steal, but because they did
\nnot steal enough.<\/p>\n
Again: excessive fashion makes people unnatural and untrue. It is a
\nfactory from which has come forth more hollow pretences, and unmeaning
\nflatteries, and hypocrisies, than the Lowell Mills ever turned out
\nshawls and garments.<\/p>\n
Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It has made society insincere.
\nYou know not what to believe. When people ask you to come, you do
\nnot know whether or not they want you to come. When they send their
\nregards, you do not know whether it is an expression of their heart,
\nor an external civility. We have learned to take almost everything at
\na discount. Word is sent, “Not at home,” when they are only too lazy
\nto dress themselves. They say, “The furnace has just gone out,” when
\nin truth they have had no fire in it all winter. They apologize
\nfor the unusual barrenness of their table, when they never live any
\nbetter. They decry their most luxurious entertainments, to win a
\nshower of approval. They apologize for their appearance, as though it
\nwere unusual, when always at home they look just so. They would make
\nyou believe that some nice sketch on the wall was the work of a master
\npainter. “It was an heir-loom, and once hung on the walls of a castle;
\nand a duke gave it to their grandfather.” People who will lie about
\nnothing else, will lie about a picture. On a small income we must make
\nthe world believe that we are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat,
\na counterfeit, and a sham.<\/p>\n
Few persons are really natural. When I say this, I do not mean to slur
\ncultured manners. It is right that we should have more admiration for
\nthe sculptured marble than for the unhewn block of the quarry. From
\nmany circles in life fashion has driven out vivacity and enthusiasm.
\nA frozen dignity instead floats about the room, and iceberg grinds
\nagainst iceberg. You must not laugh outright: it is vulgar. You must
\n_smile_. You must not dash rapidly across the room: you must _glide_.
\nThere is a round of bows, and grins, and flatteries, and oh’s! and
\nah’s! and simperings, and namby-pambyism–a world of which is not
\nworth one good, round, honest peal of laughter. From such a hollow
\nround the tortured guest retires at the close of the evening, and
\nassures his host that he has enjoyed himself.<\/p>\n
Thus social life has been contorted, and deformed, until, in
\nsome mountain cabin, where rustics gather to the quilting or the
\napple-paring, there is more good cheer than in all the frescoed
\nice-houses of the metropolis.<\/p>\n
We want, in all the higher circles of society, more warmth of heart
\nand naturalness of behavior, and not so many refrigerators.<\/p>\n
Again: inordinate fashion is incompatible with happiness. Those who
\ndepend for their comfort upon the admiration of others are subject to
\nfrequent disappointment. Somebody will criticise their appearance, or
\nsurpass them in brilliancy, or will receive more attention. Oh! the
\njealousy, and detraction, and heart-burnings of those who move in this
\nbewildered maze!<\/p>\n
The clock strikes _one_, and the company begins to disperse. The host
\nhas done everything to make all his guests happy; but now that they
\nare on the street, hear their criticisms of everybody and everything.
\n“Did you see her in such and such apparel?” “Wasn’t she a perfect
\nfright!” “What a pity that such an one is so awkward and uncouth!”
\n“Well, really,–I would rather never be spoken to than be seen with
\nsuch a man as that!”<\/p>\n
Poor butterflies! Bright wings do not always bring happiness. “She
\nthat liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” The revelations
\nof high life that come to the challenge and the fight are only the
\noccasional croppings out of disquietudes that are, underneath, like
\nthe stars of heaven for multitude, but like the demons of the pit for
\nhate. The misery that to-night in the cellar cuddles up in the straw
\nis not so utter as the princely disquietude which stalks through
\nsplendid drawing-rooms, brooding over the slights and offences of high
\nlife. The bitterness of trouble seems not so unfitting, when drunk
\nout of a pewter mug, as when it pours from the chased lips of a golden
\nchalice. In the sharp crack of the voluptuary’s pistol, putting an
\nend to his earthly misery, I hear the confirmation that in a hollow,
\nfastidious life there is no peace.<\/p>\n
Again: Excessive devotion to fashion is productive of physical
\ndisease, mental imbecility, and spiritual withering.<\/p>\n
Apparel insufficient to keep out the cold and the rain, or so fitted
\nupon the person that the functions of life are restrained; late hours,
\nfilled with excitement and feasting; free draughts of wine, that make
\none not beastly intoxicated, but only fashionably drunk; and luxurious
\nindolence–are the instruments by which this unreal life pushes its
\ndisciples into valetudinarianism and the grave. Along the walks
\nof high life Death goes a mowing–and such harvests as are reaped!
\n_Materia medica_ has been exhausted to find curatives for these
\nphysiological devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, gout, and
\nalmost every infirmity in all the realm of pathology, have been the
\npenalty paid. To counteract the damage, pharmacy has gone forth with
\nmedicament, panacea, elixir, embrocation, salve, and cataplasm.<\/p>\n
To-night, with swollen feet, upon cushioned ottoman, and groaning
\nwith aches innumerable, is the votary of luxurious living, not half so
\nhappy as his groom or coal-heaver.<\/p>\n
Fashion is the world’s undertaker, and drives thousands of hearses to
\nLaurel Hill and Greenwood.<\/p>\n
But, worse than that, this folly is an intellectual depletion. This
\nendless study of proprieties and etiquette, patterns and styles, is
\nbedwarfing to the intellect. I never knew a man or a woman of extreme
\nfashion that knew much. How belittling the study of the cut of a coat,
\nor the tie of a cravat, or the wrinkle in a shoe, or the color of a
\nribbon! How they are worried if something gets untied, or hangs awry,
\nor is not nicely adjusted! With a mind capable of measuring the
\nheight and depth of great subjects; able to unravel mysteries; to
\nwalk through the universe; to soar up into the infinity of God’s
\nattributes,–hovering perpetually over a new style of mantilla! I have
\nknown men, reckless as to their character, and regardless of interests
\nmomentous and eternal, exasperated by the shape of a vest-button!<\/p>\n
What is the matter with that woman–wrought up into the agony of
\ndespair? O, her muff is out of fashion!<\/p>\n
Worse than all–this folly is not satisfied until it has extirpated
\nevery moral sentiment, and blasted the soul. A wardrobe is the rock
\nupon which many a soul has been riven. The excitement of a luxurious
\nlife has been the vortex that has swallowed up more souls than the
\nMaelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships. What room for elevating
\nthemes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal? Who can wonder
\nthat in this haste for sun-gilded bawbles and winged thistle-down,
\nmen should tumble into ruin? The travellers to destruction are not
\nall clothed in rags. On that road chariot jostles against chariot; and
\nbehind steeds in harness golden-plated and glittering, they go down,
\ncoach and four, herald and postilion, racketing on the hot pavements
\nof hell. Clear the track! Bazaars hang out their colors over the road;
\nand trees of tropical fruitfulness overbranch the way. No sound of
\nwoe disturbs the air; but all is light and song, and wine and
\ngorgeousness. The world comes out to greet the dazzling procession
\nwith Hurrah! and Hurrah! But, suddenly, there is a halt and an outcry
\nof dismay, and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea tumbling upon the
\nEgyptians. Shadow of grave-stones upon finest silk! Wormwood squeezed
\ninto impearled goblets! Death, with one cold breath, withering the
\nleaves and freezing the fountains.<\/p>\n
In the wild tumult of the last day–the mountains falling, the heavens
\nflying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom
\nof the last great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a burning
\nworld–what will become of the fop and the dandy?<\/p>\n
He who is genuinely refined will be useful and happy. There is no gate
\nthat a gentleman’s hand cannot open. During his last sickness there
\nwill be a timid knock at the basement door by those who have come to
\nsee how he is.<\/p>\n
But watch the career of one thoroughly artificial. Through
\ninheritance, or perhaps his own skill, having obtained enough for
\npurposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He sits
\naloof from the common herd, and looks out of his window upon the poor
\nman, and says–“Put that dirty wretch off my steps immediately!” On
\nSabbath days he finds the church, but mourns the fact that he must
\nworship with so many of the inelegant, and says, “They are perfectly
\nawful!” “That man that you put in my pew had a coat on his back that
\ndid not cost five dollars.” He struts through life unsympathetic with
\ntrouble, and says, “I cannot be bothered.” Is delighted with some
\ndoubtful story of Parisian life, but thinks that there are some very
\nindecent things in the Bible. Walks arm in arm with a millionnaire,
\nbut does not know his own brother. Loves to be praised for his
\nsplendid house; and when told that he looks younger than ten years
\nago, says–“Well, really; do you think so!”<\/p>\n
But the brief strut of his life is about over. Up-stairs–he dies.
\nNo angel wings hovering about him. No gospel promises kindling up the
\ndarkness;–but exquisite embroidery, elegant pictures, and a bust of
\nShakespeare on the mantel. The pulses stop. The minister comes in to
\nread of the Resurrection, that day when the dead shall come up–both
\nhe that died on the floor, and he that expired under princely
\nupholstery. He is carried out to burial. Only a few mourners, but
\na great array of carriages. Not one common man at the funeral. No
\nbefriended orphan to weep a tear upon his grave. No child of want
\npressing through the ranks of the weeping, saying–“He is the last
\nfriend I have; and I must see him.”<\/p>\n
What now? He was a great man: Shall not chariots of salvation come
\ndown to the other side of the Jordan, and escort him up to the palace?
\nShall not the angels exclaim–“Turn out! a prince is coming.” Will the
\nbells chime? Will there be harpers with their harps, and trumpeters
\nwith their trumpets?<\/p>\n
No! No! No! There will be a shudder, as though a calamity had
\nhappened. Standing on heaven’s battlement, a watchman will see
\nsomething shoot past, with fiery downfall, and shriek: “Wandering
\nstar–for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever!”<\/p>\n
With the funeral pageant the brilliant career terminated. There was a
\ngreat array of carriages.<\/p>\n
AFTER MIDNIGHT.<\/p>\n
When night came down on Babylon, Nineveh, and Jerusalem, they needed
\ncareful watching, otherwise the incendiary’s torch might have been
\nthrust into the very heart of the metropolitan splendor; or enemies,
\nmarching from the hills, might have forced the gates. All night long,
\non top of the wall and in front of the gates, might be heard the
\nmeasured step of the watchman on his solitary beat; silence hung in
\nair, save as some passer-by raised the question: “Watchman, what of
\nthe night?”<\/p>\n
It is to me a deeply suggestive and solemn thing to see a man standing
\nguard by night. It thrilled through me, as at the gate of an arsenal
\nin Charleston, the question once smote me, “Who comes there?” followed
\nby the sharp command: “Advance and give the countersign.” Every moral
\nteacher stands on picket, or patrols the wall as watchman. His work
\nis to sound the alarm; and whether it be in the first watch, in
\nthe second watch, in the third watch, or in the fourth watch, to be
\nvigilant until the daybreak flings its “morning glories” of blooming
\ncloud across the arching trellis of the sky.<\/p>\n
The ancients divided their night into four parts–the first watch,
\nfrom six to nine; the second, from nine to twelve; the third, from
\ntwelve to three; and the fourth, from three to six.<\/p>\n
I speak now of the city in the third watch, or from twelve to three
\no’clock.<\/p>\n
I never weary of looking upon the life and brilliancy of the city in
\nthe _first_ watch. That is the hour when the stores are closing. The
\nlaboring men, having quitted the scaffolding and the shop, are on
\ntheir way home. It rejoices me to give them my seat in the city car.
\nThey have stood and hammered away all day. Their feet are weary. They
\nare exhausted with the tug of work. They are mostly cheerful. With
\nappetites sharpened on the swift turner’s wheel and the carpenter’s
\nwhetstone, they seek the evening meal. The clerks, too, have broken
\naway from the counter, and with brain weary of the long line of
\nfigures, and the whims of those who go a-shopping, seek the face of
\nmother, or wife and child. The merchants are unharnessing themselves
\nfrom their anxieties, on their way up the street. The boys that lock
\nup are heaving away at the shutters, shoving the heavy bolts, and
\ntaking a last look at the fire to see that all is safe. The streets
\nare thronged with young men, setting out from the great centres of
\nbargain-making.<\/p>\n
Let idlers clear the street, and give right of way to the besweated
\nartisans and merchants! They have _earned_ their bread, and are now on
\ntheir way home to get it.<\/p>\n
The lights in full jet hang over ten thousand evening repasts–the
\nparents at either end of the table, the children between. Thank God!
\n“who setteth the solitary in families!”<\/p>\n
A few hours later, and all the places of amusement, good and bad, are
\nin full tide. Lovers of art, catalogue in hand, stroll through the
\ngalleries and discuss the pictures. The ball-room is resplendent with
\nthe rich apparel of those who, on either side of the white, glistening
\nboards, await the signal from the orchestra. The footlights of the
\ntheatre flash up; the bell rings, and the curtain rises; and out from
\nthe gorgeous scenery glide the actors, greeted with the vociferation
\nof the expectant multitudes. Concert-halls are lifted into enchantment
\nwith the warble of one songstress, or swept out on a sea of tumultuous
\nfeeling by the blast of brazen instruments. Drawing-rooms are filled
\nwith all gracefulness of apparel, with all sweetness of sound, with
\nall splendor of manner; mirrors are catching up and multiplying the
\nscene, until it seems as if in infinite corridors there were garlanded
\ngroups advancing and retreating.<\/p>\n
The out-door air rings with laughter, and with the moving to and fro
\nof thousands on the great promenades. The dashing span, adrip with
\nthe foam of the long country ride, rushes past as you halt at the
\ncurb-stone.<\/p>\n
Mirth, revelry, beauty, fashion, magnificence mingle in the great
\nmetropolitan picture, until the thinking man goes home to think more
\nseriously, and the praying man to pray more earnestly.<\/p>\n
A beautiful and overwhelming thing is the city in the first and second
\nwatches of the night.<\/p>\n
But the clock strikes twelve, and the third watch begins. The thunder
\nof the city has rolled from the air. Slight sounds now cut the night
\nwith a distinctness that excites your attention. You hear the tinkling
\nof the bell of the street-car in the far distance; the baying of the
\ndog; the stamp of the horse in the adjoining street; the slamming of
\na saloon door; the hiccoughing of the inebriate; and the shriek of
\nthe steam-whistle five miles away. Solemn and stupendous is this third
\nwatch. There are respectable men abroad. The city missionary is
\ngoing up that court, to take a scuttle of coal to a poor family. The
\nundertaker goes up the steps of that house, from which there comes a
\nbitter cry, as though the destroying angel had smitten the first-born.
\nThe minister of Jesus passes along; he has been giving the sacrament
\nto a dying Christian. The physician hastens past, the excited
\nmessenger a few steps ahead, impatient to reach the threshold. Men who
\nare forced to toil into the midnight are hastening to their pillow.
\nBut the great multitudes are asleep. The lights are out in the
\ndwellings, save here and there one. That is the light of the watcher,
\nfor the remedies must be administered, and the fever guarded, and the
\nrestless tossing of the coverlet resisted, and the ice kept upon the
\ntemples, and the perpetual prayer offered by hearts soon to be broken.
\nThe street-lamps, standing in long line, reveal the silence and the
\nslumber of the town.<\/p>\n
Stupendous thought: a great city asleep! Weary arm gathering strength
\nfor to-morrow’s toil. Hot brain getting cooled off. Rigid muscles
\nrelaxing. Excited nerves being soothed. White locks of the
\noctogenarian in thin drifts across the white pillow–fresh fall of
\nflakes on snow already fallen. Children with dimpled hands thrown put
\nover the pillow, with every breath inhaling a new store of fun and
\nfrolic.<\/p>\n
Let the great hosts sleep! A slumberless Eye will watch them. Silent
\nbe the alarm-bells and merciful the elements! Let one great wave of
\nrefreshing slumber roll across the heart of the great town, submerging
\ntrouble and weariness and pain. It is the third watch of the night,
\nand time for the city to sleep.<\/p>\n
But be not deceived. There are thousands of people in the great
\ntown who will not sleep a moment to-night. Go up that dark court. Be
\ncareful, or you will fall over the prostrate form of a drunkard lying
\non his own worn step. Look about you, or you will feel the garroter’s
\nhug. Try to look in through that broken pane! What do you see?
\nNothing. But listen. What is it? “God help us!” No footlights, but
\ntragedy–mightier, ghastlier than Ristori or Edwin Booth ever acted.
\nNo bread. No light. No fire. No cover. They lie strewn upon the
\nfloor–two whole families in one room. They shiver in the darkness.
\nThey have had no food to-day. You say: “Why don’t they beg?” They did
\nbeg, but got nothing. You say: “Hand them over to the almshouse.”<\/p>\n
Ah! they had rather die than go to the almshouse. Have you never heard
\nthe bitter cry of the man or of the child when told that he must go to
\nthe almshouse?<\/p>\n
You say that these are vicious poor, and have brought their own
\nmisfortune on themselves.<\/p>\n
So much the more to be pitied. The Christian poor–God helps them!
\nThrough their night there twinkles the round, merry star of hope, and
\nthrough the cracked window-pane of their hovel they see the crystals
\nof heaven. But the vicious are the more to be pitied. They have no
\nhope. They are in hell now. They have put out their last light. People
\nexcuse themselves from charity by saying they do not deserve to be
\nhelped. If I have ten prayers for the innocent, I shall have twenty
\nfor the guilty. If a ship be dashed upon the rocks, the fisherman, in
\nhis hut on the beach, will wrap the warmest flannels around those who
\nare the most chilled and battered. The vicious poor have suffered
\ntwo awful wrecks, the wreck of the body, and the wreck of the soul; a
\nwreck for time and a wreck for eternity.<\/p>\n
Go up that alley! Open the door. It is not locked. They have nothing
\nto lose. No burglar would want anything that is there. There is only a
\nbroken chair set against the door. Strike a match and look around you.
\nBeastliness and rags! A shock of hair hanging over the scarred visage.
\nEyes glaring upon you. Offer no insult. Be careful what you say. Your
\nlife is not worth much in such a place. See that red mark on the wall.
\nThat is the mark of a murderer’s hand. From the corner a wild face
\nstarts out of the straw and moves toward you, just as your light goes
\nout.<\/p>\n
Strike another match. Here is a little babe. It does not laugh. It
\nnever will laugh. A sea-flower flung on an awfully barren beach: O
\nthat the Shepherd would fold that lamb! Wrap your shawl about you,
\nfor the January wind sweeps in. Strike another match. The face of that
\nyoung woman is bruised and gashed now, but a mother once gazed upon it
\nin ecstasy of fondness. Awful stare of two eyes that seem looking up
\nfrom the bottom of woe. Stand back. No hope has dawned on that soul
\nfor years. Hope never will dawn upon it. Utter no scorn. The match has
\ngone out. Light it not again, for it would seem to be a mockery.<\/p>\n
Pass out! Pass on! Know that there are thousands of such abodes in our
\ncities. An awful, gloomy, and overwhelming picture is the city in the
\nthird watch.<\/p>\n
After midnight the crime of the city does its chief work. At eight
\nand a half o’clock in the evening the criminals of the city are at
\nleisure. They are mostly in the drinking saloons. It needs courage to
\ndo what they propose to do. Rum makes men reckless. They are getting
\ntheir brain and hand just right. Toward midnight they go to their
\ngarrets. They gather their tools. Soon after the third watch they
\nstalk forth, silently, looking out for the police, through the alleys
\nto their appointed work. This is a burglar; and the door-lock will fly
\nopen at the touch of the false keys. That is an incendiary; and before
\nmorning there will be a light on the sky, and a cry of “Fire! Fire!”
\nThat is an assassin; and a lifeless body will be found to-morrow in
\nsome of the vacant lots.<\/p>\n
During all the day there are hundreds of villains to be found lounging
\nabout, a part of the time asleep, apart of the time awake; but at
\ntwelve to-night they will rouse up, and their eyes will be keen, and
\ntheir minds acute, and their arms strong, and their foot fleet to fly
\nor pursue. Many of them have been brought up to the work. They were
\nborn in a thief’s garret. Their childish plaything was a burglar’s
\ndark lantern. As long ago as they can remember, they saw, toward
\nmorning, the mother binding up the father’s head, wounded by a
\nwatchman’s billet. They began by picking boys’ pockets, and now they
\ncan dig an underground passage to the cellar of the bank, or will
\nblast open the door of the gold vault. So long as the children of the
\nstreet are neglected there will be no lack of desperadoes.<\/p>\n
In the third watch of the night the gambling-houses are in full blast.
\nWhat though the hours of the night are slipping away, and the wife
\nsits waiting in the cheerless home! Stir up the fires! Bring on the
\ndrinks! Put up the stakes! A whole fortune may be made before morning!
\nSome of the firms that two years ago first put out their sign of
\ncopartnership have already foundered on the gambler’s table. The
\nmoney-drawer in many a mercantile house will this year mysteriously
\nspring a leak. Gaming is a portentous vice, and is making great efforts
\nto become respectable. Recently a member of Congress played with a
\nmember elect, carrying off a trophy of one hundred and twenty thousand
\ndollars. The old-fashioned way of getting a fortune is too slow! Let
\nus toss up and see who shall have it!<\/p>\n
And so it goes, from the wheezing wretches who pitch pennies in a rum
\ngrocery, to the millionnaire gamblers in the gold-market.<\/p>\n
After midnight the eye of God will look down and see uncounted
\ngambling-saloons plying their destruction. Passing down the street
\nto-night, you may hear the wrangling of the gamblers mingling with
\nthe rattle of the dice, and the clear, sharp crack of the balls on the
\nbilliard-table.<\/p>\n
The finest rooms in the city are gambling dens. In gilded parlor, amid
\ncostly tapestry, you may behold these dens of death. These houses have
\nwalls attractive with elaborate fresco and gems of painting–no sham
\nartist’s daub, but a masterpiece. Mantel and table glitter with vases
\nand statuettes. Divans and lounges with deep cushions, the perfection
\nof upholstery, invite to rest and repose. Aquaria alive with fins and
\nstrewn with tinged shells and zoophytes. Tufts of geranium, from bead
\nbaskets, suspended mid-room, drop their witching perfume. Fountains
\ngushing up, sprinkling the air with sparkles, or gushing through the
\nmouth of the marble lion. Long mirrors, mounted with scrolls and wings
\nand exquisite carvings, catching and reflecting back the magnificence.
\nAt their doors merchant-princes dismount from their carriages;
\nofficial dignitaries enter; legislators, tired of making laws, here
\ntake a respite in breaking them.<\/p>\n
From all classes this crime is gathering its victims: the importer of
\nforeign silks, and the Chatham street dealer in pocket-handkerchiefs;
\nclerks taking a game in the store after the shutters are put up; and
\nofficers of the court whiling away the time while the jury are out. In
\nthe woods around Baden Baden, in the morning, it is no rare thing to
\nfind the suspended bodies of suicides. No splendor of surroundings can
\nhide the dreadful nature of this sin. In the third watch of this very
\nnight, the tears of thousands of orphans and widows will dash up in
\nthose fountains. The thunders of eternal destruction roll in the deep
\nrumble of that ten-pin alley. And as from respectable circles young
\nmen and old are falling in line of procession, all the drums of woe
\nbegin to beat the dead march of ten thousand souls.<\/p>\n
Seven millions of dollars are annually lost in New York city at the
\ngaming-table. Some of your own friends may be at it. The agents of
\nthese gaming-houses around our hotels are well dressed. They meet a
\nstranger in the city; they ask him if he would like to see the city;
\nhe says, “Yes;” they ask him if he has seen that splendid building up
\ntown, and he says “No.” “Then,” says the villain to the greenhorn, “I
\nwill show you the lions and the elephants.” After seeing the lions
\nand the elephants, I would not give much for a young man’s chance for
\ndecency or heaven. He looks in, and sees nothing objectionable; but
\nlet him beware, for he is on enchanted ground. Look out for the men
\nwho have such sleek hats–always sleek hats–and such a patronizing
\nair, and who are so unaccountably interested in your welfare and
\nentertainment. All that they want of you is your money. A young man
\non Chestnut street, Philadelphia, lost in a night all his money at the
\ngaming-table, and, before he left the table, blew his brains out; but
\nbefore the maid had cleaned up the blood the players were again at the
\ntable, shuffling away. A wolf has more compassion for the lamb whose
\nblood it licks up; a highwayman more love for the belated traveller
\nupon whose carcass he piles the stone; the frost more feeling for
\nthe flower it kills; the fire more tenderness for the tree-branch it
\nconsumes; the storm more pity for the ship that it shivers on Long
\nIsland coast, than a gambler’s heart has mercy for his victim.<\/p>\n
Deed of darkness unfit for sunlight, or early evening hour! Let it
\ncome forth only when most of the city lights are out, in the third
\nwatch of the night!<\/p>\n
Again, it is after twelve o’clock that drunkenness shows its worst
\ndeformity! At eight or nine o’clock the low saloons are not so
\nghastly. At nine o’clock the victims are only talkative. At ten
\no’clock they are much flushed. At eleven o’clock their tongue is
\nthick, and their hat occasionally falls from the head. At twelve they
\nare nauseated and blasphemous, and not able to rise. At one they fall
\nto the floor, asking for more drink. At two o’clock, unconscious and
\nbreathing hard. They would not fly though the house took fire. Soaked,
\nimbruted, dead drunk! They are strewn all over the city, in the
\ndrinking saloons,–fathers, brothers, and sons; men as good as you,
\nnaturally–perhaps better.<\/p>\n
Not so with the higher circles of intoxication. The “gentlemen” coax
\ntheir fellow-reveller to bed, or start with him for home, one at each
\narm, holding him up; the night air is filled with his hooting and
\ncursing. He will be helped into his own door. He will fall into the
\nentry. Hush it up! Let not the children of the house be awakened to
\nhear the shame. He is one of the merchant princes.<\/p>\n
But you cannot always hush it up.<\/p>\n
Drink makes men mad. One of its victims came home and found that his
\nwife had died during his absence; and he went into the room where she
\nhad been prepared for the grave, and shook her from the shroud, and
\ntossed her body out of the window. Where sin is loud and loathsome and
\nfrenzied, it is hard to keep it still. This whole land is soaked with
\nthe abomination. It became so bad in Massachusetts, that the State
\narose in indignation; and having appointed agents for the sale of
\nalcohol for mechanical and medicinal purposes, prohibited the
\ngeneral traffic under a penalty of five hundred dollars. The popular
\nproprietors of the Revere, Tremont, and Parker Houses were arrested.
\nThe grog-shops diminished in number from six thousand to six hundred.
\nGod grant that the time may speed on when all the cities and States
\nshall rouse up, and put their foot upon this abomination.<\/p>\n
As you pass along the streets, night by night, you will see the awful
\nneed that something radical be done. But you do not see the worst.
\nThat will come to pass long after you are sleeping–in the third watch
\nof the night.<\/p>\n
Oh! ye who have been longing for fields of work, here they are
\nbefore you. At the London midnight meetings, thirteen thousand of the
\ndaughters of sin were reformed; and uncounted numbers of men, who were
\ndrunken and debauched, have been redeemed. If from our highest circles
\na few score of men and women would go forth among the wandering and
\nthe destitute, they might yet make the darkest alley of the town
\nkindle with the gladness of heaven. Do not go in your warm furs, and
\nfrom your well-laden tables, thinking that pious counsel will stop the
\ngnawing of empty stomachs or warm their stockingless feet. Take
\nfood and medicine, and raiment, as well as a prayer. When the city
\nmissionary told the destitute woman she ought to love God, she said:
\n“Ah! if you were as cold and hungry as I am, you could think of
\nnothing else.”<\/p>\n
I am glad to know that not one earnest prayer, not one heartfelt
\nalms-giving, not one kind word, ever goes unblessed. Among the
\nmountains of Switzerland there is a place where, if your voice be
\nuttered, there will come back a score of echoes. But utter a kind,
\nsympathetic, and saving word in the dark places of the town, and there
\nwill come back ten thousand echoes from all the thrones of heaven.<\/p>\n
There may be some one reading this who knows by experience of the
\ntragedies enacted in the third watch of the night. I am not the man
\nto thrust you back with one harsh word. Take off the bandage from your
\nsoul, and put on it the salve of the Saviour’s compassion. There
\nis rest in God for your tired soul. Many have come back from their
\nwanderings. I see them coming now. Cry up the news to heaven! Set
\nall the bells a-ringing! Under the high arch spread the banquet of
\nrejoicing. Let all the crowned heads of heaven come in and keep the
\njubilee. I tell you there is more joy in heaven over one man who
\nreforms than over ninety-and-nine who never got off the track.<\/p>\n
But there is a man who will never return from his evil ways. How many
\nacts are there in a tragedy? Five, I believe:<\/p>\n
ACT I.–_Young man starting from home. Parents and sisters weeping to
\nhave him go. Wagon passing over the hills. Farewell kiss thrown back.
\nRing the bell and let the curtain drop_.<\/p>\n
ACT II.–_Marriage altar. Bright lights. Full organ. White
\nveil trailing through the aisle. Prayer and congratulation, and
\nexclamations of “How well she looks!” Ring the bell, and let the
\ncurtain drop_.<\/p>\n
ACT III.–_Midnight. Woman waiting for staggering steps. Old garments
\nstuck into the broken window-pane. Many marks of hardship on the face.
\nBiting of the nails of bloodless fingers. Neglect, cruelty, disgrace.
\nRing the bell, and let the curtain drop_.<\/p>\n
ACT IV.–_Three graves in a very dark place. Grave of child who died
\nfrom lack of medicine. Grave of wife who died of a broken heart. Grave
\nof husband and father who died of dissipation. Plenty of weeds, but no
\nflowers. O what a blasted heath with three graves! Ring the bell, and
\nlet the curtain drop_.<\/p>\n
ACT V.–_A destroyed soul’s eternity. No light; no music; no hope!
\nDespair coiling around the heart with unutterable anguish. Blackness
\nof darkness forever_.<\/p>\n
Woe! Woe! Woe! I cannot bear longer to look. I close my eyes at this
\nlast act of the tragedy. Quick! Quick! Ring the bell and let the
\ncurtain drop.<\/p>\n
THE INDISCRIMINATE DANCE.<\/p>\n
It is the anniversary of Herod’s birthday. The palace is lighted. The
\nhighways leading thereto are ablaze with the pomp of invited guests.
\nLords, captains, merchant princes, and the mightiest men of the realm
\nare on the way to mingle in the festivities. The tables are filled
\nwith all the luxuries that the royal purveyors can gather,–spiced
\nwines, and fruits, and rare meats. The guests, white-robed, anointed
\nand perfumed, take their places. Music! The jests evoke roars of
\nlaughter. Riddles are propounded. Repartees indulged. Toasts drunk.
\nThe brain befogged. Wit gives place to uproar and blasphemy. And yet
\nthey are not satisfied. Turn on more light. Give us more music. Sound
\nthe trumpet. Clear the floor for the dance. Bring in Salome, the
\ngraceful and accomplished princess.<\/p>\n
The doors are opened and in bounds the dancer. Stand back and give
\nplenty of room for the gyrations. The lords are enchanted. They never
\nsaw such poetry of motion. Their souls whirl in the reel, and bound
\nwith the bounding feet. Herod forgets crown and throne,–everything
\nbut the fascinations of Salome. The magnificence of his realm is as
\nnothing compared with that which now whirls before him on tiptoe. His
\nheart is in transport with Salome as her arms are now tossed in
\nthe air, and now placed akimbo. He sways with every motion of the
\nenchantress. He thrills with the quick pulsations of her feet, and is
\nbewitched with the posturing and attitudes that he never saw before,
\nin a moment exchanged for others just as amazing. He sits in silence
\nbefore the whirling, bounding, leaping, flashing wonder. And when
\nthe dance stops, and the tinkling cymbals pause, and the long, loud
\nplaudits that shook the palace with their thunders had abated, the
\nentranced monarch swears unto the princely performer: “Whatsoever thou
\nshalt ask of me I will give it to thee, to the half of my kingdom.”<\/p>\n
Now there was in prison a minister by the name of John the Baptist,
\nwho had made much trouble by his honest preaching. He had denounced
\nthe sins of the king, and brought down upon himself the wrath of the
\nfemales in the royal family. At the instigation of her mother, Salome
\ntakes advantage of the king’s extravagant promise and demands the head
\nof John the Baptist on a dinner-plate.<\/p>\n
There is a sound of heavy feet, and the clatter of swords outside of
\nthe palace. Swing back the door. The executioners are returning, from
\ntheir awful errand. They hand a platter to Salome. What is that on the
\nplatter? A new tankard of wine to rekindle the mirth of the lords? No!
\nIt is redder than wine, and costlier. It is the ghastly, bleeding head
\nof John the Baptist! Its locks dabbled in gore. Its eyes set in the
\ndeath-stare. The distress of the last agony in the features. That
\nfascinating form, that just now swayed so gracefully in the dance,
\nbends over the horrid burden without a shudder. She gloats over the
\nblood; and just as the maid of your household goes, bearing out on a
\ntray the empty glasses of the evening’s entertainment, so she carried
\nout on a platter the dissevered head of that good man, while all the
\nbanqueters shouted, and thought it a grand joke, that, in such a brief
\nand easy way, they had freed themselves from such a plain-spoken,
\ntroublesome minister.<\/p>\n
What could be more innocent than a birthday festival? All the kings
\nfrom the time of Pharaoh had celebrated such days; and why not Herod?
\nIt was right that the palace should be lighted, and that the cymbals
\nshould clap, and that the royal guests should go to a banquet; but,
\nbefore the rioting and wassail that closed the scene of that day,
\nevery pure nature revolts.<\/p>\n
Behold the work, the influence, and the end of an infamous dancer!<\/p>\n
I am, by natural temperament and religious theory, utterly opposed
\nto the position of those who are horrified at every demonstration
\nof mirth and playfulness in social life, and who seem to think that
\neverything, decent and immortal, depends upon the style in which
\npeople carry their feet. On the other hand, I can see nothing but
\nruin, moral and physical, in the dissipations of the ball-room, which
\nhave despoiled thousands of young men and women of all that gives
\ndignity to character, or usefulness to life.<\/p>\n
Dancing has been styled “the graceful movement of the body adjusted
\nby art, to the measures or tune of instruments, or of the voice.” All
\nnations have danced. The ancients thought that Pollux and Castor at
\nfirst taught the practice to the Laced?monians; but, whatever be its
\norigin, all climes have adopted it.<\/p>\n
In other days there were festal dances, and funeral dances, and
\nmilitary dances, and “mediatorial” dances, and bacchanalian dances.
\nQueens and lords have swayed to and fro in their gardens; and the
\nrough men of the backwoods in this way have roused up the echo of the
\nforest. There seems to be something in lively and coherent sounds to
\nevoke the movement of hand and foot, whether cultured or uncultured.
\nMen passing the street unconsciously keep step to the music of the
\nband; and Christians in church unconsciously find themselves keeping
\ntime with their feet, while their soul is uplifted by some great
\nharmony. Not only is this true in cultured life, but the red men of
\nOregon have their scalp dances, and green-corn dances, and war dances.
\nIt is, therefore, no abstract question that you ask me–Is it right to
\ndance?<\/p>\n
The ancient fathers, aroused by the indecent dances of those days,
\ngave emphatic evidence against any participation in the dance. St.
\nChrysostom says:–“The feet were not given for dancing, but to walk
\nmodestly; not to leap impudently like camels.”<\/p>\n
One of the dogmas of the ancient church reads: “A dance is the devil’s
\npossession; and he that entereth into a dance, entereth into his
\npossession. The devil is the gate to the middle and to the end of the
\ndance. As many passes as a man makes in dancing, so many passes doth
\nhe make to hell.” Elsewhere, these old dogmas declare–“The woman
\nthat singeth in the dance is the princess of the devil; and those
\nthat answer are his clerks; and the beholders are his friends, and
\nthe music are his bellows, and the fiddlers are the ministers of the
\ndevil; for, as when hogs are strayed, if the hogs’-herd call one,
\nall assemble together, so the devil calleth one woman to sing in the
\ndance, or to play on some instrument, and presently all the dancers
\ngather together.”<\/p>\n
This wholesale and indiscriminate denunciation grew out of the utter
\ndissoluteness of those ancient plays. So great at one time was the
\noffence to all decency, that the Roman Senate decreed the expulsion of
\nall dancers and dancing-masters from Rome.<\/p>\n
Yet we are not to discuss the customs of that day, but the customs of
\nthe present. We cannot let the fathers decide the question for us.
\nOur reason, enlightened by the Bible, shall be the standard. I am not
\nready to excommunicate all those who lift their feet beyond a certain
\nheight. I would not visit our youth with a rigor of criticism that
\nwould put out all their ardor of soul. I do not believe that all the
\ninhabitants of Wales, who used to step to the sound of the rustic
\npibcorn, went down to ruin. I would give to all of our youth the right
\nto romp and play. God meant it, or he would not have surcharged
\nour natures with such exuberance. If a mother join hands with her
\nchildren, and while the eldest strikes the keys, fill all the house
\nwith the sound of agile feet, I see no harm. If a few friends,
\ngathered in happy circle, conclude to cross and recross the room to
\nthe sound of the piano well played, I see no harm. I for a long while
\ntried to see in it a harm, but I never could, and I probably never
\nwill. I would to God men kept young for a greater length of time.
\nNever since my school-boy days have I loved so well as now the
\nhilarities of life. What if we have felt heavy burdens, and suffered a
\nmultitude of hard knocks, is it any reason why we should stand in the
\npath of those who, unstung by life’s misfortunes, are exhilarated and
\nfull of glee?<\/p>\n
God bless the young! They will have to live many a day if they want to
\nhear me say one word to dampen their ardor or clip their wings, or
\nto throw a cloud upon their life by telling them that it is hard,
\nand dark, and doleful. It is no such thing. You will meet with many a
\ntrial; but, speaking from my own experience, let me tell you that you
\nwill be treated a great deal better than you deserve.<\/p>\n
Let us not grudge to the young their joy. As we go further on in life,
\nlet us go with the remembrance that we have had our gleeful days. When
\nold age frosts our locks, and stiffens our limbs, let us not block up
\nthe way, but say, “We had our good times: now let others have theirs.”
\nAs our children come on, let us cheerfully give them our places. How
\nglad will I be to let them have everything,–my house, my books, my
\nplace in society, my heritage! By the time we get old we will have had
\nour way long enough. Then let our children come on and we’ll have it
\ntheir way. For thirty, forty, or fifty years, we have been drinking
\nfrom the cup of life; and we ought not to complain if called to pass
\nthe cup along and let others take a drink.<\/p>\n
But, while we have a right to the enjoyments of life, we never will
\ncountenance sinful indulgences. I here set forth a group of what
\nmight be called the dissipations of the ball-room. They swing an awful
\nscythe of death. Are we to stand idly by, and let the work go on, lest
\nin the rebuke we tread upon the long trail of some popular vanity? The
\nwhirlpool of the ball-room drags down the life, the beauty, and the
\nmoral worth of the city. In this whirlwind of imported silks goes out
\nthe life of many of our best families. Bodies and souls innumerable
\nare annually consumed in this conflagration of ribbons.<\/p>\n
This style of dissipation is the abettor of pride, the instigator of
\njealousy, the sacrificial altar of health, the defiler of the soul,
\nthe avenue of lust, and the curse of the town. The tread of this wild,
\nintoxicating, heated midnight dance jars all the moral hearthstones of
\nthe city. The physical ruin is evident. What will become of those
\nwho work all day and dance all night? A few years will turn them out
\nnervous, exhausted imbeciles. Those who have given up their midnights
\nto spiced wines, and hot suppers, and ride home through winter’s cold,
\nunwrapped from the elements, will at last be recorded suicides.<\/p>\n
There is but a short step from the ball-room to the grave-yard. There
\nare consumptions and fierce neuralgias close on the track. Amid that
\nglittering maze of ball-room splendors, diseases stand right and left,
\nand balance and chain. A sepulchral breath floats up amid the perfume,
\nand the froth of death’s lip bubbles up in the champagne.<\/p>\n
Many of our brightest homes are being sacrificed. There are families
\nthat have actually quit keeping house, and gone to boarding, that
\nthey may give themselves more exclusively to the higher duties of
\nthe ball-room. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, finding
\ntheir highest enjoyment in the dance, bid farewell to books, to quiet
\nculture, to all the amenities of home. The father will, after a while,
\ngo down into lower dissipations. The son will be tossed about
\nin society, a nonentity. The daughter will elope with a French
\ndancing-master. The mother, still trying to stay in the glitter,
\nand by every art attempting to keep the color in her cheek, and the
\nwrinkles off her brow, attempting, without any success, all the arts
\nof the belle,–an old flirt, a poor, miserable butterfly without any
\nwings.<\/p>\n
If anything on the earth is beautiful to my eye, it is an aged woman;
\nher hair floating back over the wrinkled brow, not frosted, but white
\nwith the blossoms of the tree of life; her voice tender with
\npast memories, and her face a benediction. The children pull at
\ngrandmother’s dress as she passes through the room, and almost pull
\nher down in her weakness; yet she has nothing but a cake, or a candy,
\nor a kind word for the little darlings. When she goes away from us
\nthere is a shadow on the table, a shadow on the hearth, and a shadow
\nin the dwelling.<\/p>\n
But if anything on earth is distressful to look at, it is an old woman
\nashamed of being old. What with paint and false hair, she is too much
\nfor my gravity. I laugh, even in church, when I see her coming. One of
\nthe worst looking birds I know of is a peacock after it has lost its
\nfeathers. I would not give one lock of my mother’s gray hair for fifty
\nthousand such caricatures of old age. The first time you find these
\nfaithful disciples of the ball-room diligently engaged and happy in
\nthe duties of the home circle, send me word, for I would go a great
\nway to see such a phenomenon. These creatures have no home. Their
\nchildren unwashed. Their furniture undusted. Their china closets
\ndisordered. The house a scene of confusion, misrule, cheerlessness,
\nand dirt. One would think you might discover even amid the witcheries
\nof the ball-room the sickening odors of the unswept, unventilated, and
\nunclean domestic apartments.<\/p>\n
These dissipations extinguish all love of usefulness. How could you
\nexpect one to be interested in the alleviations of the world’s misery,
\nwhile there is a question to be decided about the size of a glove
\nor the shade of a pongee? How many of these men and women of the
\nball-room visit the poor, or help dress the wounds of a returned
\nsoldier in the hospital? When did the world ever see a perpetual
\ndancer distributing tracts? Such persons are turned in upon
\nthemselves. And it is very poor pasture!<\/p>\n
This gilded sphere is utterly bedwarfing to intellect and soul. This
\nconstant study of little things; this harassing anxiety about
\ndress; this talk of fashionable infinitesimals; this shoe-pinched,
\nhair-frizzled, fringe-spattered group–that simper and look askance
\nat the mirrors and wonder, with infinity of interest, “how that one
\ngeranium leaf does look;” this shrivelling up of man’s moral dignity,
\nuntil it is no more observable with the naked eye; this taking of a
\nwoman’s heart, that God meant should be filled with all amenities,
\nand compressing it until all the fragrance, and simplicity, and
\nartlessness are squeezed out of it; this inquisition of a small shoe;
\nthis agony of tight lacing; this wrapping up of mind and heart in
\na ruffle; this tumbling down of a soul that God meant for great
\nupliftings!<\/p>\n
I prophesy the spiritual ruin of all participators in this rivalry.
\nHave the white, polished, glistening boards ever been the road to
\nheaven? Who at the flash of those chandeliers hath kindled a torch
\nfor eternity? From the table spread at the close of that excited and
\nbesweated scene, who went home to say his prayers?<\/p>\n
To many, alas! this life is a masquerade ball. As, at such
\nentertainments, gentlemen and ladies appear in the dress of kings
\nor queens, mountain bandits or clowns, and at the close of the dance
\nthrow off their disguises, so, in this dissipated life, all unclean
\npassions move in mask. Across the floor they trip merrily. The lights
\nsparkle along the wall, or drop from the ceiling–a very cohort of
\nfire! The music charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. Gemmed
\nhands, stretched out, clasp gemmed hands. Dancing feet respond to
\ndancing feet. Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On with the
\ndance! Flash, and rustle, and laughter, and immeasurable merry-making!
\nBut the languor of death comes over the limbs, and blurs the sight.
\n_Lights lower!_ Floor hollow with sepulchral echo. Music saddens into
\na wail. _Lights lower!_ The maskers can hardly now be seen. Flowers
\nexchange their fragrance for a sickening odor, such as comes from
\ngarlands that have lain in vaults of cemeteries. _Lights lower!_ Mists
\nfill the room. Glasses rattle as though shaken by sullen thunder.
\nSighs seem caught among the curtains. Scarf falls from the shoulder of
\nbeauty,–a shroud! _Lights lower!_ Over the slippery boards, in dance
\nof death, glide jealousies, disappointments, lust, despair. Torn
\nleaves and withered garlands only half hide the ulcered feet.
\nThe stench of smoking lamp-wicks almost quenched. Choking damps.
\nChilliness. Feet still. Hands folded. Eyes shut. Voices hushed.<\/p>\n
LIGHTS OUT!<\/p>\n
THE MASSACRE BY NEEDLE AND SEWING-MACHINE.<\/p>\n
Very long ago the needle was busy. It was considered honorable for
\nwomen to toil in olden time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace
\nshowing garments made by his own mother. The finest tapestries at
\nBayeux were made by the Queen of William the Conqueror. Augustus the
\nEmperor would not wear any garments except those that were fashioned
\nby some member of his royal family. So let the toiler everywhere be
\nrespected!<\/p>\n
The greatest blessing that could have happened to our first parents
\nwas being turned out of Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and Eve,
\nin their perfect state, might have got along without work, or only
\nsuch slight employment as a perfect garden, with no weeds in it,
\ndemanded. But, as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them
\nwas to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a
\nwithering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel
\nGreen, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said,
\n“I do so to keep out of mischief.” We see that a man who has a
\nlarge amount of money to start with has no chance. Of the thousand
\nprosperous and honorable men that you know, nine hundred and
\nninety-nine had to work vigorously at the beginning.<\/p>\n
But I am now to tell you that industry is just as important for
\na woman’s safety and happiness. The most unhappy women in our
\ncommunities to-day are those who have no engagements to call them up
\nin the morning; who, once having risen and breakfasted, lounge through
\nthe dull forenoon in slippers down at the heel and with dishevelled
\nhair, reading George Sand’s last novel; and who, having dragged
\nthrough a wretched forenoon and taken their afternoon sleep, and
\nhaving spent an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their
\ncard-case and go out to make calls; and who pass their evenings
\nwaiting for somebody to come in and break up the monotony. Arabella
\nStuart never was imprisoned in so dark a dungeon as that.<\/p>\n
There is no happiness in an idle woman. It may be with hand, it may
\nbe with brain, it may be with foot; but work she must, or be wretched
\nforever. The little girls of our families must be started with that
\nidea. The curse of our American society is that our young women are
\ntaught that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh,
\ntenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing in their life is to get somebody to
\ntake care of them. Instead of that, the first lesson should be, how,
\nunder God, they may take care of themselves. The simple fact is that
\na majority of them do have to take care of themselves, and that, too,
\nafter having, through the false notions of their parents, wasted the
\nyears in which they ought to have learned how successfully to maintain
\nthemselves. We now and here declare the inhumanity, cruelty, and
\noutrage of that father and mother, who pass their daughters into
\nwomanhood, having given them no facility for earning their livelihood.
\nMadame de Sta?l said: “It is not these writings that I am proud of,
\nbut the fact that I have facility in ten occupations, in any one of
\nwhich I could make a livelihood.”<\/p>\n
You say you have a fortune to leave them. O man and woman! have you
\nnot learned that, like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches
\nhave wings and fly away? Though you should be successful in leaving
\na competency behind you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in
\na night; or some elders or deacons of our churches may get up an
\noil company, or some sort of religious enterprise sanctioned by the
\nchurch, and induce your orphans to put their money into a hole in
\nVenango County; and if, by the most skilful derricks, the sunken money
\ncannot be pumped up again, prove to them that it was eternally decreed
\nthat that was the way they were to lose it, and that it went in the
\nmost orthodox and heavenly style.<\/p>\n
O the damnable schemes that professed Christians will engage in–until
\nGod puts his fingers into the collar of the hypocrite’s robe and rips
\nit clear down to the bottom!<\/p>\n
You have no right, because you are well off, to conclude that your
\nchildren are going to be as well off. A man died, leaving a large
\nfortune. His son, a few months ago, fell dead in a Philadelphia
\ngrog-shop. His old comrades came in and said, as they bent over his
\ncorpse: “What is the matter with you, Boggsey?” The surgeon standing
\nover him said: “Hush up! he is dead!”–“Ah, he is dead!” they said.
\n“Come, boys, let us go and take a drink in memory of poor Boggsey!”<\/p>\n
Have you nothing better than money to leave your children? If you
\nhave not, but send your daughters into the world with empty brain and
\nunskilled hand, you are guilty of assassination, homicide, regicide,
\ninfanticide–compared with which that of poor Hester Vaughan was
\ninnocence. There are women toiling in our cities for three and four
\ndollars per week, who were the daughters of merchant princes. These
\nsuffering ones now would be glad to have the crumbs that once fell
\nfrom their father’s table. That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears
\nis the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which
\nher mother walked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of
\nmagnificent brocade, that swept Broadway clean without any expense to
\nthe street commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence, and
\nfare sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace
\nto them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea, prevalent in
\nsociety, that though our young women may embroider slippers, and
\ncrochet, and make mats for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the
\nidea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame
\nfor a young woman, belonging to a large family, to be inefficient when
\nthe father toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a
\ndaughter to be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as
\nhonorable to sweep house, make beds, or trim hats, as it is to twist a
\nwatch-chain.<\/p>\n
As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between
\nthat which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which
\nis of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it
\nis dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing
\ndishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the
\nback of an armchair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy
\nthe chair. You may, with delicate brush, beautify a mantel-ornament,
\nbut die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may
\nlearn artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing
\n“Ortonville” or “Old Hundred.” Do nothing practical, if you would, in
\nthe eyes of refined society, preserve your respectability.<\/p>\n
I scout these finical notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man,
\nhas a right to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for
\nit.<\/p>\n
In the course of a lifetime you consume whole harvests, and droves of
\ncattle, and every day you live breathe forty hogsheads of good pure
\nair. You must, by some kind of usefulness, _pay_ for all this. Our
\nrace was the last thing created,–the birds and fishes on the fourth
\nday, the cattle and lizards on the fifth day, and man on the sixth
\nday. If geologists are right, the earth was a million of years in the
\npossession of the insects, beasts, and birds, before our race came
\nupon it. In one sense, we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards,
\nand the hawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are
\nto do with the lizards and summer insects, but what the lizards and
\nsummer insects are to do with us.<\/p>\n
If we want a place in this world we must _earn_ it. The partridge
\nmakes its own nest before it occupies it. The lark, by its morning
\nsong, earns its breakfast before it eats it; and the Bible gives an
\nintimation that the first duty of an idler is to starve, when it
\nsays if he “will not work, neither shall he eat.” Idleness ruins the
\nhealth; and very soon Nature says, “This man has refused to pay his
\nrent; out with him!”<\/p>\n
Society is to be reconstructed on the subject of woman’s toil. A vast
\nmajority of those who would have woman industrious shut her up to a
\nfew kinds of work. My judgment in this matter is, that a woman has a
\nright to do anything she can do well. There should be no department
\nof merchandise, mechanism, art, or science barred against her. If Miss
\nHosmer has genius for sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa Bonheur
\nhas a fondness for delineating animals, let her make “The Horse
\nFair.” If Miss Mitchell will study astronomy, let her mount the starry
\nladder. If Lydia will be a merchant, let her sell purple. If Lucretia
\nMott will preach the Gospel, let her thrill with her womanly eloquence
\nthe Quaker meeting-house.<\/p>\n
It is said, if woman is given such opportunities, she will occupy
\nplaces that might be taken by men. I say, if she have more skill and
\nadaptedness for any position than a man has, let her have it! She has
\nas much right to her bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as men
\nhave.<\/p>\n
But it is said that her nature is so delicate that she is unfitted for
\nexhausting toil. I ask, in the name of all past history, what toil on
\nearth is more severe, exhausting, and tremendous than that toil of the
\nneedle to which for ages she has been subjected? The battering-ram,
\nthe sword, the carbine, the battle-axe have made no such havoc as the
\nneedle. I would that these living sepulchres in which women have for
\nages been buried might be opened, and that some resurrection trumpet
\nmight bring up these living corpses to the fresh air and sunlight.<\/p>\n
Go with me, and I will show you a woman who, by hardest toil, supports
\nher children, her drunken husband, her old father and mother, pays her
\nhouse-rent, always has wholesome food on her table, and, when she
\ncan get some neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take care of
\nher family, appears in church, with hat and cloak that are far from
\nindicating the toil to which she is subjected.<\/p>\n
Such a woman as that has body and soul enough to fit her for _any_
\nposition. She could stand beside the majority of your salesmen and
\ndispose of more goods. She could go into your wheelwright shops and
\nbeat one-half of your workmen at making carriages. We talk about woman
\nas though we had resigned to her all the light work, and ourselves had
\nshouldered the heavier. But the day of judgment, which will reveal
\nthe sufferings of the stake and inquisition, will marshal before the
\nthrone of God and the hierarchs of heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and
\nneedle.<\/p>\n
Now, I say, if there be any preference in occupation, let woman have
\nit. God knows her trials are the severest. By her acuter sensitiveness
\nto misfortune, by her hour of anguish, I demand that no one hedge up
\nher pathway to a livelihood. O the meanness, the despicability of
\nmen who begrudge a woman the right to work anywhere, in any honorable
\ncalling!<\/p>\n
I go still further, and say that women should have equal compensation
\nwith men. By what principle of justice is it that women in many of our
\ncities get only two-thirds as much pay as men, and in many cases only
\nhalf? Here is the gigantic injustice–that for work equally well, if
\nnot better done, woman receives far less compensation than man. Start
\nwith the National Government: women clerks in Washington get nine
\nhundred dollars for doing that for which men receive eighteen hundred.<\/p>\n
To thousands of young women of New York to-day there is only this
\nalternative: starvation or dishonor. Many of the largest mercantile
\nestablishments of our cities are accessory to these abominations;
\nand from their large establishments there are scores of souls being
\npitched off into death; _and their employers know it!_<\/p>\n
Is there a God? Will there be a judgment? I tell you, if God rises up
\nto redress woman’s wrongs, many of our large establishments will be
\nswallowed up quicker than a South-American earthquake ever took down
\na city. God will catch these oppressors between the two mill-stones of
\nhis wrath, and grind them to powder!<\/p>\n
Why is it that a female principal in a school gets only eight hundred
\nand twenty-five dollars for doing work for which a male principal gets
\nsixteen hundred and fifty?<\/p>\n
I hear from all this land the wail of woman-hood. Man has nothing to
\nanswer to that wail but flatteries. He says she is an angel. She is
\nnot. She knows she is not. She is a human being, who gets hungry
\nwhen she has no food, and cold when she has no fire. Give her no more
\nflatteries: give her _justice!_<\/p>\n
There are thirty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn.
\nAcross the darkness of this night I hear their death-groan. It is not
\nsuch a cry as comes from those who are suddenly hurled out of life,
\nbut a slow, grinding, horrible wasting away. Gather them before you
\nand look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at
\ntheir fingers, needle-picked and blood-tipped! See that premature
\nstoop in the shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough!<\/p>\n
At a large meeting of these women, held in a hall in Philadelphia,
\ngrand speeches were delivered, but a needle-woman took the stand,
\nthrew aside her faded shawl, and, with her shrivelled arm, hurled a
\nvery thunder-bolt of eloquence, speaking out of the horrors of her own
\nexperience.<\/p>\n
Stand at the corner of a street in New York at half-past five or six
\no’clock in the morning, as the women go to their work. Many of them
\nhad no breakfast except the crumbs that were left over from the night
\nbefore, or a crust they chew on their way through the street. Here
\nthey come! the working girls of New York and Brooklyn! These engaged
\nin bead-work, these in flower-making, in millinery, enamelling, cigar
\nmaking, book-binding, labelling, feather-picking, print-coloring,
\npaper-box making, but, most overworked of all, and least compensated,
\nthe sewing-women. Why do they not take the city-cars on their way
\nup? They cannot afford the five cents! If, concluding to deny herself
\nsomething else, she get into the car, give her a seat! You want to see
\nhow Latimer and Ridley appeared in the fire: look at that woman and
\nbehold a more horrible martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing
\ndeath! Ask that woman how much she gets for her work, and she will
\ntell you six cents for making coarse shirts, and finds her own thread!<\/p>\n
Last Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my church, after service, a
\nwoman fell in convulsions. The doctor said she needed medicine not so
\nmuch as something to eat. As she began to revive in her delirium,
\nshe said, gaspingly: “Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight cents! I wish I
\ncould get it done! I am so tired! I wish I could get some sleep, but I
\nmust get it done! Eight cents! Eight cents!” We found afterwards that
\nshe was making garments for eight cents apiece, and that she could
\nmake but three of them in a day! Hear it! Three times eight are
\ntwenty-four! Hear it, men and women who have comfortable homes!<\/p>\n
Some of the worst villains of the city are the employers of these
\nwomen. They beat them down to the last penny, and try to cheat them
\nout of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she
\ngets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is sharply
\ninspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the wages
\nrefused, and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back. The
\nWomen’s Protective Union reports a case where one of these poor souls,
\nfinding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to change
\nemployers, and went to get her pay for work done. The employer says:
\n“I hear you are going to leave me?”–“Yes,” she said, “and I have come
\nto get what you owe me.” He made no answer. She said: “Are you not
\ngoing to pay me?”–“Yes,” he said, “I will pay you;” and _he kicked
\nher down the stairs_.<\/p>\n
How are these evils to be eradicated? What have you to answer, you
\nwho sell coats, and have shoes made, and contract for the Southern and
\nWestern markets? What help is there, what panacea, what redemption?
\nSome say: “Give women the ballot.” What effect such ballot might have
\non other questions I am not here to discuss; but what would be the
\neffect of female suffrage upon woman’s wages? I do not believe that
\nwoman will ever get justice by woman’s ballot.<\/p>\n
Indeed, women oppress women as much as men do. Do not women, as much
\nas men, beat down to the lowest figure the woman who sews for them?
\nAre not women as sharp as men on washerwomen, and milliners, and
\nmantua-makers? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, does not her
\nfemale employer ask her if she will not take ninety cents? You say
\n“only ten cents difference;” but that is sometimes the difference
\nbetween heaven and hell. Women often have less commiseration for women
\nthan men. If a woman steps aside from the path of virtue, man may
\nforgive,–woman never! Woman will never get justice done her from
\nwoman’s ballot.<\/p>\n
Neither will she get it from man’s ballot. How, then? God will rise
\nup for her. God has more resources than we know of. The flaming sword
\nthat hung at Eden’s gate when woman was driven out will cleave with
\nits terrible edge her oppressors.<\/p>\n
But there is something for our women to do. Let our young people
\nprepare to excel in spheres of work, and they will be able, after
\na while, to get larger wages. If it be shown that a woman can, in a
\nstore, sell more goods in a year than a man, she will soon be able
\nnot only to ask but to _demand_ more wages, and to demand them
\nsuccessfully. Unskilled and incompetent labor must take what is given;
\nskilled and competent labor will eventually make its own standard.
\nAdmitting that the law of supply and demand regulates these things,
\nI contend that the demand for skilled labor is very great, and the
\nsupply very small.<\/p>\n
Start with the idea that work is _honorable_, and that you can do some
\none thing better than any one else. Resolve that, God helping, you
\nwill take care of yourself. If you are, after a while, called into
\nanother relation, you will all the better be qualified for it by your
\nspirit of self-reliance; or if you are called to stay as you are, you
\ncan be happy and self-supporting.<\/p>\n
Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak, and woman the vine that
\nclimbs it; but I have seen many a tree fall that not only went down
\nitself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell you of something
\nstronger than an oak for an ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of
\nthe great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leans
\non God and does her best. The needle may break; the factory-band may
\nslip; the wages may fail; but, over every good woman’s head there are
\nspread the two great, gentle, stupendous wings of the Almighty.<\/p>\n
Many of you will go single-handed through life, and you will have to
\nchoose between two characters. Young woman, I am sure you will turn
\nyour back upon the useless, giggling, painted nonentity which society
\nignominiously acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to make you an
\nhumble, active, earnest Christian.<\/p>\n
What will become of this godless disciple of fashion? What an insult
\nto her sex! Her manners are an outrage upon decency. She is more
\nthoughtful of the attitude she strikes upon the carpet than how she
\nwill look in the judgment; more worried about her freckles than her
\nsins; more interested in her bonnet-strings than in her redemption.
\nHer apparel is the poorest part of a Christian woman, however
\nmagnificently dressed, and no one has so much right to dress well as
\na Christian. Not so with the godless disciple of fashion. Take her
\nrobes, and you take everything. Death will come down on her some day,
\nand rub the bistre off her eyelids, and the rouge off her cheeks, and
\nwith two rough, bony hands, scatter spangles and glass beads and rings
\nand ribbons and lace and brooches and buckles and sashes and frisettes
\nand golden clasps.<\/p>\n
The dying actress whose life had been vicious said: “The scene closes.
\nDraw the curtain.” Generally the tragedy comes first, and the farce
\nafterward; but in her life it was first the farce of a useless life,
\nand then the tragedy of a wretched eternity.<\/p>\n
Compare the life and death of such an one with that of some Christian
\naunt that was once a blessing to your household. I do not know that
\nshe was ever offered the hand in marriage. She lived single, that
\nuntrammelled she might be everybody’s blessing. Whenever the sick were
\nto be visited, or the poor to be provided with bread, she went with a
\nblessing. She could pray, or sing “Rock of Ages,” for any sick pauper
\nwho asked her. As she got older, there were days when she was a little
\nsharp, but for the most part Auntie was a sunbeam–just the one for
\nChristmas-eve. She knew better than any one else how to fix things.
\nHer every prayer, as God heard it, was full of everybody who had
\ntrouble. The brightest things in all the house dropped from her
\nfingers. She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion she ever
\nhad was to make you happy. She dressed well–Auntie always dressed
\nwell; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quiet spirit,
\nwhich, in the sight of God, is of great price. When she died, you all
\ngathered lovingly about her; and as you carried her out to rest, the
\nSunday-school class almost covered the coffin with japonicas; and the
\npoor people stood at the end of the alley, with their aprons to their
\neyes, sobbing bitterly; and the man of the world said, with Solomon,
\n“Her price was above rubies;” and Jesus, as unto the maiden in Judea,
\ncommanded: “I SAY UNTO THEE, ARISE!”<\/p>\n
PICTURES IN THE STOCK GALLERY.<\/p>\n
[NOTE.–This chapter, though largely devoted to “Oil,” is to be
\nconstrued as reaching any other “Kite” that the stock gambler
\nflies–any other scheme which his unprincipled ideas of right and
\nwrong will permit him to work to his own gain and others’ loss.
\nThe oil mania was only a more popular or attractive _vice_ of the
\nstock-boards, which is reproduced, in spirit and motive, almost every
\nmonth of the year.]<\/p>\n
At my entrance upon this discussion, I must deplore the indiscriminate
\nterms of condemnation employed by many well-meaning persons in regard
\nto stock operations. The business of the stock-broker is just as
\nlegitimate and necessary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or
\nhardware; and a man may be as pure-minded and holy a Christian at the
\nBoard of Brokers as in a prayer-meeting. The broker is, in the sight
\nof God, as much entitled to his commissions as any hard-working
\nmechanic is entitled to his day’s wages. Any man has as much right
\nto make money by the going up of stocks as by the going up of sugar,
\nrice, or tea. The inevitable board-book that the operator carries in
\nhis hand may be as pure as the clothing merchant’s ledger. It is
\nthe work of the brokers to facilitate business; to make transfer of
\ninvestment; to watch and report the tides of business; to assist the
\nmerchant in lawful enterprises.<\/p>\n
Because there are men in this department of business, sharp,
\ndeceitful, and totally iniquitous, you have no right to denounce the
\nentire class. Importers, shoe-dealers, lumbermen, do not want to be
\nheld responsible for the moral deficits of their comrades in business.
\nNeither have you a right to excoriate those who are conscientiously
\noperating through the channels spoken of. If they take a risk, so do
\nall business men. The merchant who buys silk at five dollars per yard
\ntakes his chances; he expects it to go up to six dollars; it may fall
\nto four dollars. If a man, by straightforward operations in stocks,
\nmeets with disaster and fails, he deserves sympathy just as much as he
\nwho sold spices or calicoes, and through some miscalculation is struck
\ndown bankrupt.<\/p>\n
We have no right to impose restrictions upon this class of men that
\nwe impose upon no other. What right have you to denounce the operation
\n“buyer–ten days” or “buyer–twenty days,” when you take a house,
\n“buyer–three hundred and sixty-five days?” Perhaps the entire payment
\nis to be made at the end of a year, when you do not know but that, by
\nthat time, you will be penniless. Give all men their due, if you would
\nhold beneficent influence over them. Do not be too rough in pulling
\nout the weeds, lest you uproot also the marigolds and verbenas. In
\nthe Board of Brokers there are some of the most conscientious,
\nupright Christian men of our cities–men who would scorn a lie, or a
\nsubterfuge. Indeed, there are men in these boards who might, in some
\nrespects, teach a lesson of morality to other commercial circles.<\/p>\n
I will not deny that there are special temptations connected with this
\nbusiness even when carried on legitimately. So there are dangers to
\nthe engineer on a railroad. He does not know what night he may dash
\ninto the coal-train. But engines must be run, and stocks must be sold.
\nA nervous, excitable man ought to be very slow to undertake either the
\nengine or the Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n
A clever young man, of twenty-five years of age, bought ten shares in
\nthe Pennsylvania Central Railroad. The stock went up five dollars per
\nshare, and he made fifty dollars by the operation. His mother,
\nknowing his temperament, said to him, “I wish you had lost it.” But,
\nencouraged, he entered another operation, and took ten shares in
\nanother railroad and made two hundred dollars. By this time he was
\nready for the wildest scheme. He lost, in three years, forty thousand
\ndollars, ruined his health, and broke his wife’s heart. Her father
\nsupports them chiefly now. The unfortunate has a shingle up, in a
\nsmall court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this
\ncommercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for
\nmilitary command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, cool
\nbrain, and well-balanced temperament.<\/p>\n
But, while there is a legitimate sphere for the broker and operator,
\nthere are transactions every day undertaken in our cities that can
\nonly be characterized as superb outrage and villany; and there are
\nmembers of Christian churches who have been guilty of speculations
\nthat, in the last day, will blanch their cheek, and thunder them
\ndown to everlasting companionship with the lowest gamblers that ever
\npitched pennies for a drink.<\/p>\n
It is not necessary that I should draw the difficult line between
\nhonorable and dishonorable speculation. God has drawn it through every
\nman’s conscience. The broker guilty of “cornering” as well knows that
\nhe is sinning against God and man, as though the flame of Mount Sinai
\nsinged his eyebrows. He hears that a brother broker has sold “short,”
\nand immediately goes about with a wise look, saying: “Erie is going
\ndown–Erie is going down; prepare for it.” Immediately the people
\nbegin to sell; he buys up the stock; monopolizes the whole affair;
\ndrags down the man who sold short; makes largely, pockets the gain,
\nand thanks the Lord for great prosperity in business. You call it
\n“cornering.” I call it gambling, theft, highway robbery, villany
\naccursed.<\/p>\n
It is astonishing how some men, who are kind in their families, useful
\nin the church, charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed of the
\ndevil as soon as they enter the Stock Exchange. A respectable member
\nof one of the churches of the city went into a broker’s office and
\nsaid: “Get me one hundred shares of Reading, and carry it; I will
\nleave a margin of five hundred dollars.” Instead of going up,
\naccording to anticipation, the stock fell. Every few days the operator
\ncalled to ask the broker what success. The stock still declined. The
\noperator was so terribly excited that the broker asked him what was
\nthe matter. He replied: “To tell you the truth, I borrowed that five
\nhundred dollars that I lost, and, in anticipation of what I was sure I
\nwas going to get by the operation, I made a very large subscription to
\nthe Missionary Society.”<\/p>\n
The nation has become so accustomed to frauds that no astonishment is
\nexcited thereby. The public conscience has for many years been utterly
\ndebauched by what were called fancy stocks, morus multicaulis, Western
\ncity enterprises, and New England developments.<\/p>\n
If a man find on his farm something as large as the head of a pin,
\nthat, in a strong sunlight, sparkles a little, a gold company is
\nformed; books are opened; working capital declared; a select number
\ngo in on the “ground floor;” and the estates of widows and orphans
\nare swept into the vortex. Very little discredit is connected with any
\nsuch transaction, if it is only on a large scale. We cannot bear small
\nand insignificant dishonesties, but take off our hats and bow almost
\nto the ground in the presence of the man who has made one hundred
\nthousand dollars by one swindle. A woman was arrested in the streets
\nof one of our cities for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She was
\ntried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming out of prison, she went into
\nthe same business and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she was
\narrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On coming out–showing the total
\ndepravity of a woman’s heart–she again went into the same business,
\nand sold molasses candy on Sunday. Whereupon the police, the mayor and
\nthe public sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, though
\nthe heavens fell, no woman should be allowed to sell molasses candy on
\nSunday. Yet the law puts its hands behind its back, and walks up and
\ndown in the presence of a thousand abominations and dares not whisper.<\/p>\n
There are scores of men to-day on the streets, whose costly family
\nwardrobes, whose rosewood furniture, whose splendid turn-outs, whose
\nstately mansions, are made out of the distresses of sewing-women,
\nwhose money they gathered up in a stock swindle. There is human sweat
\nin the golden tankards. There is human blood in the crimson plush.
\nThere are the bones of unrequited toil in the pearly keys of the
\npiano. There is the curse of an incensed God hovering over all their
\nmagnificence. Some night the man will not be able to rest. He will
\nrise up in bewilderment and look about him, crying: “Who is there?”
\nThose whom he has wronged will thrust their skinny arms under the
\ntapestry, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, and blow their
\nsepulchral breath into his face, crying: “Come to judgment!”<\/p>\n
For the warning of young men, I shall specify but two of the world’s
\nmost gigantic swindles–one English, and the other American.
\nIn England, in the early part of the last century, reports were
\ncirculated of the fabulous wealth of South America. A company was
\nformed, with a stock of what would be equal to thirty millions of our
\ndollars. The government guaranteed to the company the control of all
\nthe trade to the South Sea, and the company was to assume the entire
\ndebt of England, then amounting to one hundred and forty millions of
\ndollars. Magnificent project! The English nation talked and dreamed
\nof nothing but Peruvian gold and Mexican silver, the national debt
\nliquidated, and Eldorados numberless and illimitable! When five
\nmillion pounds of new stock was offered at three hundred pounds per
\nshare, it was all snatched up with avidity. Thirty million dollars
\nof the stock was subscribed for, when there were but five millions
\noffered. South Sea went up, until in the midsummer month the stock
\nstood at one thousand per cent. The whole nation was intoxicated.
\nAround about this scheme, as might have been expected, others just as
\nwild arose. A company was formed with ten million dollars of capital
\nfor importing walnut trees from Virginia. A company for developing
\na wheel to go by perpetual motion, with a capital of four million
\ndollars. A company for developing a new kind of soap. A company for
\ninsuring against losses by servants, with fifteen million dollars
\ncapital. One scheme was entitled: “A company for carrying on an
\nundertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is–capital
\ntwo million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares of five hundred
\neach. Further information to be given in a month.”<\/p>\n
The books were opened at nine o’clock in the morning. Before night
\na thousand shares were taken, and two thousand pounds paid in. So
\nsuccessful was the day’s work, that that night the projector of the
\nenterprise went out of the business, and forever vanished from the
\npublic. But it was not a perfect loss. The subscribers had their
\nornamented certificates of stock to comfort them. Hunt’s Merchant’s
\nMagazine, speaking of those times, says “that from morning until
\nevening ‘Change Alley was filled to overflowing with one dense mass of
\nliving beings composed of the most incongruous materials, and, in
\nall things save the mad pursuit in which they were employed, the very
\nopposite in habits and conditions.”<\/p>\n
What was the end of this chapter of English enterprise? Suddenly
\nthe ruin came. Down went the whole nation–members of Parliament,
\ntradesmen, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, royal ladies, and poor
\nneedle-women–in one stupendous calamity. The whole earth, and all the
\nages, heard that bubble burst.<\/p>\n
But I am not through. Our young men shall hear more startling things.
\nWe surpass England in having higher mountains, deeper rivers, greater
\ncataracts, and larger armies. Yea, we have surpassed it in magnitude
\nof swindles. I wish to unfold before the young men of the country,
\nand before those in whose hands may now be the price of blood, the
\nwide-spread, ghastly, and almost infinitely greater wickedness of the
\ngamblers in oil stock. Now, the obtaining of lands, the transporting
\nof machinery, and the forming of companies for the production of oil,
\nis just as honorable as any organization for the obtaining of coal,
\niron, copper, or zinc. God poured out before this nation a river of
\noil, and intended us to gather it up, transport it, and use it;
\nand there were companies formed that have withstood all commercial
\nchanges, and continued, year after year, in the prosecution of an
\nhonorable business. I have just as much respect for the man who has
\nmade fifty thousand dollars by oil as I have for him who has made it
\nby spices.<\/p>\n
Out of twelve hundred petroleum companies, how many do you suppose
\nwere honestly formed and rightfully conducted? Do you say six hundred?
\nYou make large demands upon one’s credulity; but let us be generous,
\nand suppose that six hundred companies bought land, issued honest
\ncirculars, sent out machinery, and plunged into the earth for the
\nrightful development of resources. To form the other six hundred
\ncompanies, only three or four things were necessary: First, an
\nattractive circular, regardless of expense. It must have all the
\ncolors and hues of earth, and sea, and heaven. Let the letters flame
\nwith all the beauty of gold, and jasper, and amethyst. It must state
\nthe date of incorporation, and the fact that “all subscribers shall
\nget the benefit of the original undertaking. While it does not make
\nso much pretension as some other companies, it must be distinctly
\nannounced that this is a safe and permanent investment.” The circular
\nmust state that “there are a goodly number of flowing wells, and
\nothers which the company are happy to say have a very good smell of
\noil.” “The books will be open only five days, as there are only a few
\nshares yet to be taken.” Connected with this circular is an elaborate
\nmap, drawn by the artist of the company. Never mind the geography of
\nthe country. Our map must have a creek running through it, so crooked
\nas to traverse as much of the land as possible, and make it all
\nwater-front. “Ah!” said one man to his artist, “you make only one
\ncreek.”–“Well,” said the artist, “if you want three creeks you can
\nhave them at very little expense. There–you have them now–three
\ncreeks!”<\/p>\n
Then the circular must have good names attached to it. How to get
\nthem? The president and directors must be prominent men. If celebrated
\nfor piety, all the better. The estimable man approached says: “I know
\nnothing about this company.”–“Well,” says the committee waiting
\non him, “we will give you five hundred dollars’ worth of shares.”
\nImmediately the estimable man begins to “know about it,” and accepts
\nthe position of president. Three or four directors are obtained in
\nthe same way. Now the thing is easy. After this you can get anybody.
\nOrdinary Christians and sinners feel it a joy to be in such celebrated
\nsociety.<\/p>\n
Another thing important is that the company purchase three or four
\nvials of oil to stand in the window–some in the crude state, the rest
\nclarified. Genuine specimens from Venango County.<\/p>\n
Another important thing: there must be a large working capital,
\nfor the company do not mean to be idle. They have derricks already
\nbuilding; and there will be large monthly dividends. Let it be known
\nthat there were companies in some cities who, claiming to have
\na capital of four hundred thousand dollars, yet had that capital
\nexhausted when they had sunk one well costing five thousand dollars.
\nBut never mind. The thing must be right, for some of the directors
\nare eminent for respectability. You say it is certainly important that
\nthere be some land out of which the oil is to be obtained. Oh! no. Why
\nbe troubled with any land at all? It is an expense for nothing. You
\nhave the circular, and the glowing map, with the creeks and three
\nvials of oil in the window, and a flaming advertisement in the
\nnewspapers. Now let the books be opened! Better if you can have a
\nhalf-dozen offices in one room; then the agent can accommodate you
\nwith anything you desire. If you want to take a “flyer” in this and a
\n“flyer” in that, you shall have it.<\/p>\n
Coming in from the country are farmers, dairymen, day-laborers. Great
\nchances now for speedy emoluments. Pour in the hard-earned treasures.
\nSure enough, a dividend of one per cent. per month! Forthwith, another
\nmultitude are convinced of the safety of the investment. The second
\nmonth another dividend. The third month another. Whence do these
\ndividends come? From the product of the wells? Oh! no. It is your own
\nmoney they are paying you back. How generous of this company to give
\nyou five dollars back, when you might have lost it all!<\/p>\n
But the dividends stop. What is the matter? Instead of the
\nadvertisement which covered a whole column of the newspapers,
\nthere comes a modest little notice that “a special meeting of the
\nstockholders will be held for the purpose of transacting business
\nof importance.” Perhaps it may be to assess the stockholders for the
\npurpose of keeping the little land they have, if they have any. Or it
\nmay be for the election of a new group of officers, for the present
\nincumbents do not want to be always before the public. They are modest
\nmen. They believe in rotation of office. They cannot consent any
\nlonger to serve. Where have they gone to? They are busy putting up
\na princely mansion at Long Branch, Germantown, or Chelsea. They have
\nserved their day and generation, and have gone to their flocks and
\nherds. Where is the Church of God, that she allows in her membership
\nsuch gigantic abominations? Were the thirty pieces of silver that
\nJudas received denounced as unfit, and shall the Church of God have
\nnothing to say about this price of blood? Is sin to be excused because
\nit is as high as heaven, or deep as hell? The man who allows his name
\nto be used as president or director in connection with an enterprise
\nthat he knows is to result in the sale of twenty thousand shares of an
\nundeveloped nothing–God will tear off the cloak of his hypocrisy, and
\nin the last day show him to all the universe–a brazen-faced gambler.
\nHis house will be accursed. God’s anathemas will flash in the
\nchandelier, and rattle in the swift hoofs of his silver-bitted grays;
\nand the day of fire will see him willing to leap into a burning
\noil-well to hide himself from the face of the Lamb. The hundred
\nthousand dollars gotten in unrighteousness will not be enough to build
\na barricade against the advance of the divine judgments.<\/p>\n
Think of the elder in a church who, from the oil regions, sends an
\nexciting telegram, so that one man buys a large amount of stock at
\ntwelve, on Wednesday. The next day it is put on the stock-board at
\nsix. The enterprising man, who sold it at twelve, goes out to buy
\none of the grandest estates within ten miles of the city. The man
\nwho bought it goes into the dust; and the secret gets out that the
\nexciting telegram sent by the elder arose, not from any oil actually
\ndiscovered, but because in boring they had found a magnificent odor of
\noil.<\/p>\n
If he who steals a dollar from a money-drawer is a thief, then he
\nwho by dishonesty gets five hundred thousand dollars is five hundred
\nthousand times more a thief. And so the last day will declare him.<\/p>\n
Did not the law right the injured man? No! The poor who were wronged
\nwould not undertake a suit against a company that could bring fifty
\nthousand dollars to the enlightenment of judge, jury, and lawyer;
\nwhile, on the other hand, the affluent who had been gouged would not
\ngo to the courts for justice. Why! how would it sound, if it got out,
\nthat Mr. So and So, one of the first merchants on Wall, or Third, or
\nState street, had got swindled? They will keep it still.<\/p>\n
The guilty range to-day undisturbed through society, and will
\ncontinue to do so until the Lord God shall bring them to an unerring
\nsettlement, and proclaim to an astonished universe how many lies they
\ntold about the land, about the derricks, about the yield, about the
\ndividends. What shall such an one say, when God shall, in the great
\nday of account, hold up before him the circular, and the map, and the
\nnewspaper advertisement? Speechless!<\/p>\n
Before that day shall come I warn you–Disgorge! you infamous stock
\ngamblers! Gather together so many of your company as have any honesty
\nleft, and join in the following circular:–“_We the undersigned, do
\nhereby repent of our villainies, and beg pardon of the public for
\nall the wrongs that we have done them; and hereby ask the widows and
\norphans whom we have made penniless to come next Saturday, between ten
\nand three o’clock, and receive back what we stole from them. We hereby
\nconfess that the wells spoken of in our circular never yielded any
\noil; and that the creeks running through our ornamented map were an
\nentire fiction; and that the elder who piously rolled up his eyes and
\nsaid it was a safe investment, was not as devout as he looked to be.
\nSigned by the subscribers at their office, in the year of our Lord_
\n1871.”<\/p>\n
Then your conscience will be clear, and you can die in peace. But I
\nhave no faith in such a reformation. When the devil gets such a fair
\nhold of a man he hardly ever lets go.<\/p>\n
To the young I turn and utter a word of warning. While you are
\ndetermined to be acute business men, resolve at the very threshold
\nthat you will have nothing to do with stock-_gambling_. This country
\ncan richly afford to lose the eight hundred millions of dollars
\nswindled out of honest people, if our young men, by it, will be warned
\nfor all the future. Think you such enterprises are forever passed
\naway? No! they begin already to clamor for public attention and
\npatronage. There are now hundreds of printing-presses busy in making
\npamphlets and circulars for schemes as hollow and nefarious as those I
\nhave mentioned. There are silver-mining companies, founded upon nobody
\nknows what–to accomplish what, nobody cares. There will be other
\nCanada gold companies; there will be other copper-mining companies;
\nthere will be more mutual consumers’ coal companies, who, not
\nsatisfied with the price of ordinary coal-dealers, will resolve
\nthemselves into consumers’ associations, where the thing consumed
\nis not the coal, but themselves–the companies that were to be
\nimmaculate, setting the whole community to playing the game of “Who’s
\ngot the money?”<\/p>\n
Stand off from all _doubtful_ enterprises! Resolve that if, in a
\nlawful way, you cannot earn a living, then you will die an honest man,
\nand be buried in an honest sepulchre.<\/p>\n
There are two or three reasons why you should have nothing to do with
\nsuch operations. Mentioning the lowest motive first, it will desolate
\nyou financially. I asked a man of large observation and undoubted
\nintegrity, how many of the professed stock-gamblers made a _permanent_
\nfortune. He answered, “Not one! not one of those who made this their
\nonly business.” For a little while you may plunge in a round of
\nseeming prosperity; but your money is put into a bag with holes. You
\ncannot successfully bury a dishonest dollar. You may put it down into
\nthe very heart of the earth; you may heave rocks upon the top of it;
\non top of the rocks you may put banks and all moneyed institutions,
\nbut that dishonest dollar beneath will begin to heave and toss and
\nupturn itself, and keep on until it comes to the resurrection of
\ndamnation.<\/p>\n
Then this stock-gambling life is wretchedly unhappy. It makes the
\nnerves shake, and the brain hot, and the heart sad, and the life
\ndisquieted.<\/p>\n
A man in Philadelphia, who seems to be an exception to the rule–that
\nsuch men do not permanently prosper–who has well on towards a million
\nof dollars, and is nearly seventy years of age, may be seen, every
\nday, going in and out, eaten up of stocks, torn in an inquisition of
\nstocks, rode by a nightmare of stocks; and, with the earnestness of a
\ndrowning man, he rushes into a broker’s shop, crying out: “Did you get
\nme those shares?” In such an anxious, exciting life there are griefs,
\ndisappointments, anguish, but there is no happiness.<\/p>\n
Worse than all, it destroys the soul. The day must come when the
\nworthless scrip will fall out of the clutches of the stock-gambler.
\nSatan will play upon him the “cornering” game which, down on Wall
\nstreet, he played upon a fellow-operator. Now he would be glad to
\nexchange all his interest in Venango County for one share in the
\nChristian’s prospect of heaven. Hopeless, he falls back in his
\nlast sickness. His delirium is filled with senseless talk about
\n“percentages” and “commissions” and “buyer, sixty days,” and “stocks
\nup,” and “stocks down.” He thinks that the physician who feels his
\npulse is trying to steal his “board book.” He starts up at midnight,
\nsaying: “One thousand shares of Reading at 116-1\/2. Take it!” _Falls
\nback dead. No more dividends…. Swindled out of heaven_. STOCKS DOWN!<\/p>\n
LEPROUS NEWSPAPERS.<\/p>\n
The newspaper is the great educator of the nineteenth century. There
\nis no force compared with it. It is book, pulpit, platform, forum, all
\nin one. And there is not an interest–religious, literary, commercial,
\nscientific, agricultural, or mechanical–that is not within its
\ngrasp. All our churches, and schools, and colleges, and asylums, and
\nart-galleries feel the quaking of the printing-press. I shall try to
\nbring to your parlor-tables the periodicals that are worthy of the
\nChristian fireside, and try to pitch into the gutter of scorn and
\ncontempt those newspapers that are not fit for the hand of your child
\nor the vision of your wife.<\/p>\n
The institution of newspapers arose in Italy. In Venice the first
\nnewspaper was published, and monthly, during the time that Venice was
\nwarring against Solyman the Second in Dalmatia. It was printed for
\nthe purpose of giving military and commercial information to the
\nVenetians. The first newspaper published in England was in 1588,
\nand called the _English Mercury_. Others were styled the _Weekly
\nDiscoverer_, the _Secret Owl_, _Heraclitus Ridens_, etc.<\/p>\n
Who can estimate the political, scientific, commercial, and religious
\nrevolutions roused up in England for many years past by _Bell’s Weekly
\nDispatch_, the _Standard_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Post_, and
\nthe _London Times_?<\/p>\n
The first attempt at this institution in France was in 1631, by a
\nphysician, who published the _News_, for the amusement and health of
\nhis patients. The French nation understood fully how to appreciate
\nthis power. Napoleon, with his own hand, wrote articles for the press,
\nand so early as in 1829 there were in Paris 169 journals. But in the
\nUnited States the newspaper has come to unlimited sway. Though in
\n1775 there were but thirty-seven in the whole country, the number of
\npublished journals is now counted by thousands; and to-day–we may as
\nwell acknowledge it as not–the religious and secular newspapers are
\nthe great _educators of the country_.<\/p>\n
In our pulpits we preach to a few hundreds or thousands of people; the
\nnewspaper addresses an audience of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, or
\ntwo hundred thousand. We preach three or four times a week; they every
\nmorning or evening of the year. If they are right, they are gloriously
\nright; if they are wrong, they are awfully wrong.<\/p>\n
I find no difficulty in accounting for the world’s advance. Four
\ncenturies ago, in Germany, in courts of justice, men fought with their
\nfists to see who should have the decision of the court; and if the
\njudge’s decision was unsatisfactory, then the judge fought with the
\ncounsel. Many of the lords could not read the deeds of their own
\nestates. What has made the change?<\/p>\n
“Books,” you say.<\/p>\n
No, sir! The vast majority of citizens do not read books. Take this
\naudience, or any other promiscuous assemblage, and how many histories
\nhave they read? How many treatises on constitutional law, or political
\neconomy, or works of science? How many elaborate poems or books of
\ntravel? How much of Boyle, or De Tocqueville, Xenophon, or Herodotus,
\nor Percival? Not many!<\/p>\n
In the United States, the people would not average one such book a
\nyear for each individual!<\/p>\n
Whence, then, this intelligence–this capacity to talk about all
\nthemes, secular and religious–this acquaintance with science and
\nart–this power to appreciate the beautiful and grand? Next to the
\nBible, the _newspaper_,–swift-winged, and everywhere present,
\nflying over the fences, shoved under the door, tossed into the
\ncounting-house, laid on the work-bench, hawked through the cars! All
\nread it: white and black, German, Irishman, Swiss, Spaniard, American,
\nold and young, good and bad, sick and well, before breakfast and after
\ntea, Monday morning, Saturday night, Sunday and week day!<\/p>\n
I now declare that I consider the newspaper to be the grand agency
\nby which the Gospel is to be preached, ignorance cast out, oppression
\ndethroned, crime extirpated, the world raised, heaven rejoiced, and
\nGod glorified.<\/p>\n
In the clanking of the printing-press, as the sheets fly out, I hear
\nthe voice of the Lord Almighty proclaiming to all the dead nations
\nof the earth,–“Lazarus, come forth!” And to the retreating surges
\nof darkness,–“Let there be light!” In many of our city newspapers,
\nprofessing no more than secular information, there have appeared
\nduring the past ten years some of the grandest appeals in behalf of
\nreligion, and some of the most effective interpretations of God’s
\ngovernment among the nations.<\/p>\n
That man has a shrivelled heart who begrudges the five pennies he
\npays to the newsboy who brings the world to his feet. There are
\nto-day connected with the editorial and reportorial corps of newspaper
\nestablishments men of the highest culture and most unimpeachable
\nmorality, who are living on the most limited stipends, martyrs to
\nthe work to which they feel themselves called. While you sleep in the
\nmidnight hours, their pens fly, and their brains ache in preparing
\nthe morning intelligence. Many of them go, unrested and unappreciated,
\ntheir cheeks blanched and their eyes half quenched with midnight
\nwork, toward premature graves, to have the “proof-sheet” of their
\nlife corrected by Divine mercy, glad at last to escape the perpetual
\nannoyances of a fault-finding public, and the restless, impatient cry
\nfor “more copy.”<\/p>\n
“Nations are to be born in a day.” Will this great inrush come from
\npersonal presence of missionary or philanthropist? No. When the time
\ncomes for that grand demonstration I think the press in all the earth
\nwill make the announcement, and give the call to the nations. As at
\nsome telegraphic centre, an operator will send the messages, north and
\nsouth, and east and west, San Francisco and Heart’s Content catching
\nthe flash at the same instant; so, standing at some centre to which
\nshall reach all the electric wires that cross the continent and
\nundergird the sea, some one shall, with the forefinger of the right
\nhand, click the instrument that shall thrill through all lands, across
\nall islands, under all seas, through all palaces, into all dungeons,
\nand startle both hemispheres with the news, that in a few
\nmoments shall rush out from the ten thousand times ten thousand
\nprinting-presses of the earth: “Glory to God in the highest, and on
\nearth peace, good-will toward men!”<\/p>\n
You see, therefore, that, in the plain words to be written, I have no
\ngrudges to gratify against the newspaper press. Professional men are
\naccustomed to complain of injustice done them, but I take the censure
\nI have sometimes received and place it on one side the scales, and the
\nexcessive praise, and place it on the other side, and they balance,
\nand so I consider I have had simple justice. But we are all aware that
\nthere is a class of men in towns and cities who send forth a baleful
\ninfluence from their editorial pens. There are enough bad newspapers
\nweekly poured out into the homes of our country to poison a vast
\npopulation. In addition to the home manufacture of iniquitous sheets,
\nthe mail-bags of other cities come in gorged with abominations. New
\nYork scoops up from the sewers of other cities, and adds to its own
\nnewspaper filth. And to-night, lying on the tables of this city, or
\nlaid away on the shelf, or in the trunk, for more private perusal, are
\npapers the mere mention of the names of which would send a blush to
\nthe cheek, and make the decent and Christian world cry out: “God save
\nthe city!”<\/p>\n
There is a paper published in Boston of outrageous character, and yet
\nthere are seven thousand copies of that paper coming weekly to New
\nYork for circulation. I will not mention the name, lest some of you
\nshould go right away and get it. It is wonderful how quick the fingers
\nof the printer-boy fly, but the fingers of sin and pollution can set
\nup fifty thousand types in an instant. The supply of bad newspapers
\nin New York does not meet the insatiable appetite of our people for
\nrefuse, and garbage, and moral swill. We must, therefore, import
\ncorrupt weeklies published elsewhere, that make our newspaper stands
\ngroan under the burden.<\/p>\n
But we need not go abroad. There are papers in New York that long ago
\ncame to perfection of shamelessness, and there is no more power
\nin venom and mud and slime to pollute them. They have dashed their
\niniquities into the face of everything decent and holy. And their work
\nwill be seen in the crime and debauchery and the hell of innumerable
\nvictims. Their columns are not long and broad enough to record the
\ntragedies of their horrible undoing of immortal men and women.<\/p>\n
God, after a while, will hold up these reeking, stenchful, accursed
\nsheets, upon which they spread out their guilt, and the whole universe
\nwill cry out for their damnation. See the work of bad newspapers
\nin the false tidings they bring! There are hundreds of men to-day
\npenniless, who were, during the war, hurled from their affluent
\npositions by incorrect accounts of battles that shook the
\nmoney-market, and the gold gamblers, with their hoofs, trampled these
\nhonest men into the mire. And many a window was hoisted at the hour of
\nmidnight as the boy shouted: “Extra! Extra!” And the father and mother
\nwho had an only son at the front, with trembling hand, and blanched
\ncheek, and sinking heart, read of battles that had never occurred.
\nGod pity the father and mother who have a boy at the front when evil
\ntidings come! If an individual makes a false statement, one or twenty
\npersons may be damaged; but a newspaper of large circulation that
\nwilfully makes a misstatement in one day tells fifty thousand
\nfalsehoods.<\/p>\n
The most stupendous of all lies is a newspaper lie.<\/p>\n
A bad newspaper scruples not at any slander. It may be that, to escape
\nthe grip of the law, the paragraphs will be nicely worded, so that the
\nsuspicion is thrown out and the damage done without any exposure to
\nthe law. Year by year, thousands of men are crushed by the ink-roller.
\nAn unscrupulous man in the editorial chair may smite as with the
\nwing of a destroying angel. What to him is commercial integrity, or
\nprofessional reputation, or woman’s honor, or home’s sanctity? It
\nseems as if he held in his hand a hose with which, while all the
\nharpies of sin were working at the pumps, he splashed the waters of
\ndeath upon the best interests of society.<\/p>\n
The express-train in England halts not to take in water, but between
\nthe tracks there is a trough, one-fourth of a mile in length, filled
\nwith water; and the engine drops a hose that catches up the water
\nwhile the train flies. So with bad newspapers that fly along the track
\nof death without pausing a moment, yet scooping up into themselves the
\npollution of society, and in the awful rush making the earth tremble.<\/p>\n
The most abandoned man of the city may go to the bad newspaper and get
\na slander inserted about the best man. If he cannot do it in any other
\nway, he can by means of an anonymous communication. Now, a man who,
\nto injure another, will write an anonymous letter, is, in the first
\nplace, a coward, and, in the second place, a villain. Many of these
\noffensive anonymous letters you see in the bad newspaper have been
\nfound to be _written in the editorial chair_.<\/p>\n
The bad newspaper stops not at any political outrage. It would arouse
\na revolution, and empty the hearts of a million brave men in the
\ntrenches, rather than not have its own circulation multiply.
\nWhat to it are the hard-earned laurels of the soldier or the exalted
\nreputation of the statesman? Its editors would, if they dared, blow
\nup the Capitol of the nation if they could only successfully carry off
\nthe frieze of one of the corridors. There are enough falsehoods told
\nat any one of our autumnal elections to make the “Father of Lies”
\ndisown his monstrous progeny. Now it is the Mayor, then the Governor,
\nnow the Secretary of State, and then the President, until the air is
\nso full of misrepresentation that truth is hidden from the view, as
\nbeautiful landscapes by the clouds of summer insects blown up from the
\nmarshes.<\/p>\n
The immoral newspaper stops not at the unclean advertisement. It is
\nso much for so many words, and in such a sheet it will cost no more
\nto advertise the most impure book than the new edition of Pilgrim’s
\nProgress. A book such as no decent man would touch was a few months
\nago advertised in a New York paper, and the getter-up of the book,
\npassing down one of our streets the other day, acknowledged to one of
\nmy friends that he had made $18,000 out of the enterprise.<\/p>\n
In one column of a paper we see a grand ethical discussion, and in
\nanother the droppings of most accursed nastiness. Oh! you cannot by
\nall your religion, in one column, atone for one of your abominations
\nin another! I am rejoiced that some of our papers have addressed those
\nwho have proposed to compensate them for bad use of their columns, in
\nthe words of Peter to Simon Magus: “Thy money perish with thee!” But I
\narraign the newspapers that give their columns to corrupt advertising
\nfor the nefarious work they are doing. The most polluted plays that
\never oozed from the poisonous pen of leprous dramatist have won
\ntheir deathful power through the medium of newspapers; the evil is
\nstupendous!<\/p>\n
O ye reckless souls! get money–though morality dies, and society is
\ndishonored, and God defied, and the doom of the destroyed opens before
\nyou–get money! Though the melted gold be poured upon your naked,
\nblistered, and consuming soul–get money! Get money! It will do you
\ngood when it begins to eat like a canker! It will solace the pillow
\nof death, and soothe the pangs of an agonized eternity! Though in the
\ngame thou dost stake thy soul, and lose it forever–get money!<\/p>\n
The bad newspaper hesitates not to assault Christianity and its
\ndisciples. With what exhilaration it puts in capitals, that fill
\none-fourth of a column, the defalcation of some agent of a benevolent
\nsociety! There is enough meat in such a carcass of reputation to gorge
\nall the carrion-crows of an iniquitous printing-press. They put upon
\nthe back of the Church all the inconsistencies of hypocrites–as
\nthough a banker were responsible for all the counterfeits upon his
\ninstitution! They jeer at religion, and lift up their voices until all
\nthe caverns of the lost resound with the howl of their derision. They
\nforget that Christianity is the only hope for the world, and that, but
\nfor its enlightenment, they would now be like the Hottentots, living
\nin mud hovels, or like the Chinese, eating rats.<\/p>\n
What would you think of a wretch who, during a great storm, while the
\nship was being tossed to and fro on the angry waves, should climb up
\ninto the light-house and blow out the light? And what do you think of
\nthese men, who, while all the Christian and the glorious institutions
\nof the world are being tossed and driven hither and thither, are
\ntrying to climb up and put out the only light of a lost world?<\/p>\n
The bad newspaper stops not at publishing the most damaging and
\nunclean story. The only question is: “Will it pay?” And there are
\nscores of men who, day by day, bring into the newspaper offices
\nmanuscripts for publication which unite all that is pernicious; and,
\nbefore the ink is fairly dry, tens of thousands are devouring with
\navidity the impure issue. Their sensibilities deadened, their sense
\nof right perverted, their purity of thought tarnished, their taste
\nfor plain life despoiled–the printing-press, with its iron foot, hath
\ndashed their life out! While I speak, there are many people, with
\nfeet on the ottoman, and the gas turned on, looking down on the
\npage, submerged, mind and soul, in the perusal of this God-forsaken
\nperiodical literature; and the last Christian mother will have put
\nthe hands of the little child under the coverlet for the night, before
\nthey will rouse up, as the city clock strikes the hour of midnight, to
\ngo death-struck to their prayerless pillows.<\/p>\n
One of the proprietors of a great paper in this country gave his
\nadvice to a young man then about to start a paper: “If you want to
\nsucceed,” said he, “make your paper trashy, intensely trashy,–make it
\nall trash!”<\/p>\n
Brilliant advice to a young man just entering business!<\/p>\n
It is very often that, as a paper purifies itself, its circulation
\ndecreases, and sometimes when a paper becomes positively religious, it
\nbecomes bankrupt, unless some benevolent and Christian men come up
\nto sustain it by contributions of money and means. But few religious
\nnewspapers in this country are self-supporting. The reason urged
\nis–the country cannot stand so much religion! Hear it! Christian men
\nand philanthropists!<\/p>\n
Many papers that are most rapidly increasing to-day are unscrupulous.
\nThe facts are momentous and appalling. And I put young men and women
\nand Christian parents and guardians on the look-out. This stuff cannot
\nbe handled without pollution. Away with it from parlor, and shop,
\nand store! There is so much newspaper literature that _is_ pure, and
\ncheap, and elegant; shove back this leprosy from your door.<\/p>\n
Mark it well: _a man is no better than the newspaper he habitually
\nreads_.<\/p>\n
You may think it a bold thing thus to arraign an unprincipled
\nprinting-press, but I know there are those reading this who will take
\nmy counsel; and, in the discharge of my duty to God and man, I defy
\nall the hostilities of earth and hell!<\/p>\n
Representatives of the secular and religious press! I thank you, in
\nthe name of Christianity and civilization, for the enlightenment of
\nignorance, the overthrow of iniquity, and the words you have uttered
\nin the cause of God and your country. But I charge you in the name
\nof God, before whom you must account for the tremendous influence you
\nhold in this country, to consecrate yourselves to higher endeavors.
\nYou are the men to fight back this invasion of corrupt literature.
\nLift up your right hand and swear new allegiance to the cause of
\nphilanthropy and religion. And when, at last, standing on the plains
\nof judgment, you look out upon the unnumbered throngs over whom you
\nhave had influence, may it be found that you were among the mightiest
\nenergies that lifted men upon the exalted pathway that leads to the
\nrenown of heaven. Better than to have sat in editorial chair, from
\nwhich, with the finger of type, you decided the destinies of empires,
\nbut decided them wrong, that you had been some dungeoned exile, who,
\nby the light of window iron-grated, on scraps of a New Testament leaf,
\npicked up from the hearth, spelled out the story of Him who taketh
\naway the sins of the world.<\/p>\n
IN ETERNITY, DIVES IS THE BEGGAR!<\/p>\n
THE FATAL TEN-STRIKE.<\/p>\n
While among my readers are those who have passed on into the afternoon
\nof life, and the shadows are lengthening, and the sky crimsons with
\nthe glow of the setting sun, a large number of them are in early life,
\nand the morning is coming down out of the clear sky upon them, and the
\nbright air is redolent with spring blossoms, and the stream of life,
\ngleaming and glancing, rushes on between flowery banks, making music
\nas it goes. Some of you are engaged in mercantile establishments, as
\nclerks and book-keepers; and your whole life is to be passed in the
\nexciting world of traffic. The sound of busy life stirs you as the
\ndrum stirs the fiery war-horse. Others are in the mechanical arts, to
\nhammer and chisel your way through life; and success awaits you.
\nSome are preparing for professional life, and grand opportunities are
\nbefore you; nay, some of you already have buckled on the armor.<\/p>\n
But, whatever your age or calling, the subject of gambling, about
\nwhich I speak in this chapter, is pertinent.<\/p>\n
Some years ago, when an association for the suppression of gambling
\nwas organized, an agent of the association came to a prominent citizen
\nand asked him to patronize the society. He said, “No, I can have no
\ninterest in such an organization. I am in no wise affected by that
\nevil.”<\/p>\n
At that very time his son, who was his partner in business, was one of
\nthe heaviest players in “Herne’s” famous gaming establishment. Another
\nrefused his patronage on the same ground, not knowing that his first
\nbook-keeper, though receiving a salary of only a thousand dollars, was
\nlosing from fifty to one hundred dollars per night. The president of
\na railroad company refused to patronize the institution, saying–“That
\nsociety is good for the defence of merchants, but we railroad people
\nare not injured by this evil;” not knowing that, at that very time,
\ntwo of his conductors were spending three nights of each week at faro
\ntables in New York. Directly or indirectly, this evil strikes at the
\nwhole world.<\/p>\n
Gambling is the risking of something more or less valuable in the hope
\nof winning more than you hazard. The instruments of gaming may differ,
\nbut the principle is the same. The shuffling and dealing of cards,
\nhowever full of temptation, is not gambling, unless stakes are put up;
\nwhile, on the other hand, gambling may be carried on without cards, or
\ndice, or billiards, or a ten-pin alley. The man who bets on horses,
\non elections, on battles–the man who deals in “fancy” stocks,
\nor conducts a business which extra hazards capital, or goes into
\ntransactions without foundation, but dependent upon what men call
\n“luck,” is a gambler.<\/p>\n
It is estimated that one-fourth of the business in London is done
\ndishonestly. Whatever you expect to get from your neighbor without
\noffering an equivalent in money or time or skill, is either the
\nproduct of theft or gaming. Lottery tickets and lottery policies come
\ninto the same category. Fairs for the founding of hospitals, schools
\nand churches, conducted on the raffling system, come under the same
\ndenomination. Do not, therefore, associate gambling necessarily with
\nany instrument, or game, or time, or place, or think the principle
\ndepends upon whether you play for a glass of wine, or one hundred
\nshares in _Camden and Amboy_. Whether you employ faro or billiards,
\nrondo and keno, cards, or bagatelle, the very _idea_ of the thing is
\ndishonest; for it professes to bestow upon you a good for which you
\n_give no equivalent_.<\/p>\n
This crime is no newborn sprite, but a haggard transgression that
\ncomes staggering down under a mantle of curses through many centuries.
\nAll nations, barbarous and civilized, have been addicted to it. Before
\n1838, the French government received revenue from gaming houses.
\nIn 1567, England, for the improvement of her harbors, instituted a
\nlottery, to be held at the front door of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Four
\nhundred thousand tickets were sold, at ten shillings each. The
\nBritish Museum and Westminster Bridge were partially built by similar
\nprocedures. The ancient Germans would sometimes put up themselves and
\nfamilies as prizes, and suffer themselves to be bound, though stronger
\nthan the persons who won them.<\/p>\n
But now the laws of the whole civilized world denounce the system.
\nEnactments have been passed, but only partially enforced. The men
\ninterested in gaming houses wield such influence, by their numbers and
\naffluence, that the judge, the jury, and the police officer must
\nbe bold indeed who would array themselves against these infamous
\nestablishments. Within ten years the House of Commons of England has
\nadjourned on “Derby Day” to go out to bet on the races; and in the
\nbest circles of society in this country to-day are many hundreds of
\nprofessedly respectable men who are acknowledged gamblers.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in this land are every day being won
\nand lost through sheer gambling. Says a traveller through the West–“I
\nhave travelled a thousand miles at a time upon the Western waters
\nand seen gambling at every waking moment from the commencement to the
\ntermination of the journey.” The South-west of this country reeks with
\nthis abomination. In New Orleans every third or fourth house in many
\nof the streets is a gaming place, and it may be truthfully averred
\nthat each and all of our cities are cursed with this evil.<\/p>\n
In themselves most of the games employed in gambling are without harm.
\nBilliard-tables are as harmless as tea-tables, and a pack of cards as
\na pack of letter envelopes, unless stakes be put up. But by their use
\nfor gambling purposes they have become significant of an infinity
\nof wretchedness. In New York city there are said to be six thousand
\nhouses devoted to this sin; in Philadelphia about four thousand; in
\nCincinnati about one thousand; at Washington the amount of gaming is
\nbeyond calculation. There have been seasons when, by night, Senators,
\nRepresentatives, and Ministers of Foreign Governments were found
\nengaged in this practice.<\/p>\n
Men wishing to gamble will find places just suited to their capacity,
\nnot only in the underground oyster-cellar, or at the table back of the
\ncurtain, covered with greasy cards, or in the steamboat smoking cabin,
\nwhere the bloated wretch with rings in his ears deals out his pack,
\nand winks in the unsuspecting traveller,–providing free drinks all
\naround,–but in gilded parlors and amid gorgeous surroundings.<\/p>\n
This sin works ruin, first, by unhealthful stimulants. Excitement is
\npleasurable. Under every sky, and in every age, men have sought it.
\nThe Chinaman gets it by smoking his opium; the Persian by chewing
\nhashish; the trapper in a buffalo hunt; the sailor in a squall; the
\ninebriate in the bottle, and the avaricious at the gaming-table.<\/p>\n
We must at times have excitement. A thousand voices in our nature
\ndemand it. It is right. It is healthful. It is inspiriting. It is a
\ndesire God-given. But anything that first gratifies this appetite and
\nhurls it back in a terrific reaction is deplorable and wicked. Look
\nout for the agitation that, like a rough musician, in bringing out the
\ntune, plays so hard he breaks down the instrument!<\/p>\n
God never made man strong enough to endure the wear and tear of
\ngambling excitement. No wonder if, after having failed in the game,
\nmen have begun to sweep off imaginary gold from the side of the table.
\nThe man was sharp enough when he started at the game, but a maniac at
\nthe close. At every gaming-table sit on one side Ecstasy, Enthusiasm,
\nRomance–the frenzy of joy; on the other side, Fierceness, Rage,
\nand Tumult. The professional gamester schools himself into apparent
\nquietness. The keepers of gambling rooms are generally fat,
\nrollicking, and obese; but thorough and professional gamblers, in nine
\ncases out of ten, are pale, thin, wheezing, tremulous, and exhausted.<\/p>\n
A young man, having suddenly heired a large property, sits at the
\nhazard-table, and takes up in a dice-box the estate won by a father’s
\nlifetime sweat, and shakes it, and tosses it away.<\/p>\n
Intemperance soon stigmatizes its victim–kicking him out, a slavering
\nfool, into the ditch, or sending him, with the drunkard’s hiccough,
\nstaggering up the street where his family lives. But gambling does
\nnot, in that way, expose its victims. The gambler may be eaten up by
\nthe gambler’s passion, yet only discover it by the greed in his eyes,
\nthe hardness of his features, the nervous restlessness, the threadbare
\ncoat, and his embarrassed business. Yet he is on the road to hell,
\nand no preacher’s voice, or startling warning, or wife’s entreaty, can
\nmake him stay for a moment his headlong career. The infernal spell
\nis on him; a giant is aroused within; and though you bind him with
\ncables, they would part like thread; and though you fasten him seven
\ntimes round with chains, they would snap like rusted wire; and though
\nyou piled up in his path, heaven-high, Bibles, tracts and sermons, and
\non the top should set the cross of the Son of God, over them all the
\ngambler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on his way to perdition.<\/p>\n
Again, this sin works ruin by killing industry.<\/p>\n
A man used to reaping scores or hundreds of dollars from the
\ngaming-table will not be content with slow work. He will say, “What is
\nthe use of trying to make these fifty dollars in my store when I can
\nget five times that in half an hour down at ‘Billy’s’?” You never knew
\na confirmed gambler who was industrious. The men given to this vice
\nspend their time not actively employed in the game in idleness, or
\nintoxication, or sleep, or in corrupting new victims. This sin has
\ndulled the carpenter’s saw, and cut the band of the factory wheel,
\nsunk the cargo, broken the teeth of the farmer’s harrow, and sent a
\nstrange lightning to shatter the battery of the philosopher.<\/p>\n
The very first idea in gaming is at war with all the industries of
\nsociety. Any trade or occupation that is of use is ennobling. The
\nstreet sweeper advances the interests of society by the cleanliness
\neffected. The cat pays for the fragments it eats by clearing the house
\nof vermin. The fly that takes the sweetness from the dregs of the cup
\ncompensates by purifying the air and keeping back the pestilence. But
\nthe gambler gives not anything for that which he takes.<\/p>\n
I recall that sentence. He _does_ make a return; but it is disgrace to
\nthe man that he fleeces, despair to his heart, ruin to his business,
\nanguish to his wife, shame to his children, and eternal wasting away
\nto his soul. He pays in tears and blood, and agony, and darkness, and
\nwoe.<\/p>\n
What dull work is ploughing to the farmer, when in the village saloon,
\nin one night, he makes and loses the value of a summer harvest? Who
\nwill want to sell tape, and measure nankeen, and cut garments, and
\nweigh sugars, when in a night’s game he makes and loses, and makes
\nagain, and loses again, the profits of a season?<\/p>\n
John Borack was sent as mercantile agent from Bremen to England and
\nthis country. After two years his employers mistrusted that all was
\nnot right. He was a defaulter for eighty-seven thousand dollars. It
\nwas found that he had lost in Lombard street, London, twenty-nine
\nthousand dollars; in Fulton street, New York, ten thousand dollars;
\nand in New Orleans, three thousand dollars. He was imprisoned, but
\nafterwards escaped and went into the gambling profession. He died in a
\nlunatic asylum.<\/p>\n
This crime is getting its pry under many a mercantile house in our
\ncities, and before long down will come the great establishment,
\ncrushing reputation, home, comfort, and immortal souls. How it diverts
\nand sinks capital may be inferred from some authentic statements
\nbefore us. The ten gaming-houses that once were authorized in Paris
\npassed through the banks, yearly, three hundred and twenty-five
\nmillions of francs! The houses of this kind in Germany yield vast sums
\nto the government. The Hamburg establishment pays to the government
\ntreasury forty thousand florins; and Baden Baden one hundred
\nand twenty thousand florins. Each one of the banks in the large
\ngaming-houses of Germany has forty or fifty croupiers standing in its
\nservice.<\/p>\n
Where does all the money come from? _The whole world is robbed!_ What
\nis most sad, there are no consolations for the loss and suffering
\nentailed by gaming. If men fail in lawful business, God pities, and
\nsociety commiserates; but where in the Bible, or in society, is there
\nany consolation for the gambler? From what tree of the forest oozes
\nthere a balm that can soothe the gamester’s heart? In that bottle
\nwhere God keeps the tears of his children, are there any tears of the
\ngambler? Do the winds that come to kiss the faded cheek of sickness,
\nand to cool the heated brow of the laborer, whisper hope and cheer to
\nthe emaciated victim of the game of hazard? When an honest man is in
\ntrouble, he has sympathy. “Poor fellow!” they say. But do gamblers
\ncome to weep at the agonies of the gambler? In Northumberland was one
\nof the finest estates in England. Mr. Porter owned it, and in a year
\ngambled it all away. Having lost the last acre of the estate, he came
\ndown from the saloon and got into his carriage; went back; put up his
\nhorses, and carriage, and town house, and played. He threw and
\nlost. He started home, and on a side alley met a friend from whom
\nhe borrowed ten guineas; went back to the saloon, and before a great
\nwhile had won twenty thousand pounds. He died at last a beggar in St.
\nGiles. How many gamblers felt sorry for Mr. Porter? Who consoled him
\non the loss of his estate? What gambler subscribed to put a stone over
\nthe poor man’s grave? Not one!<\/p>\n
Furthermore, this sin is the source of uncounted dishonesties. The
\ngame of hazard itself is often a cheat. How many tricks and deceptions
\nin the dealing of the cards! The opponent’s hand is ofttimes found
\nout by fraud. Cards are marked so that they may be designated from the
\nback. Expert gamesters have their accomplices, and one wink may
\ndecide the game. The dice have been found loaded with platina, so
\nthat “doublets” come up every time. These dice are introduced by the
\ngamblers unobserved by the honest men who have come into the play;
\nand this accounts for the fact that ninety-nine out of a hundred who
\ngamble, however wealthy they began, at the end are found to be poor,
\nmiserable, ragged wretches, that would not now be allowed to sit on
\nthe door-step of the house that they once owned.<\/p>\n
In a gaming-house in San Francisco, a young man having just come
\nfrom the mines deposited a large sum upon the ace, and won twenty-two
\nthousand dollars. But the tide turns. Intense anxiety comes upon the
\ncountenances of all. Slowly the cards went forth. Every eye is fixed.
\nNot a sound is heard, until the ace is revealed favorable to the bank.
\nThere are shouts of “Foul! Foul!” but the keepers of the table
\nproduce their pistols and the uproar is silenced, and the bank has won
\nninety-five thousand dollars. Do you call this a game of chance? There
\nis no chance about it.<\/p>\n
But these dishonesties in the carrying on of the game are nothing when
\ncompared with the frauds which are committed in order to get money
\nto go on with the nefarious work. Gambling, with its greedy hand, has
\nsnatched away the widow’s mite and the portion of the orphans; has
\nsold the daughter’s virtue to get means to continue the game; has
\nwritten the counterfeit signature, emptied the banker’s money vault,
\nand wielded the assassin’s dagger. There is no depth of meanness to
\nwhich it will not stoop. There is no cruelty at which it is appalled.
\nThere is no warning of God that it will not dare. Merciless,
\nunappeasable, fiercer and wilder it blinds, it hardens, it rends, it
\nblasts, it crushes, it damns. It has peopled Moyamensing, and Auburn,
\nand Sing Sing.<\/p>\n
How many railroad agents, and cashiers, and trustees of funds, it has
\ndriven to disgrace, incarceration, and suicide! Witness a cashier of
\nthe Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia, who stole one
\nhundred and three thousand dollars to carry on his gaming practices.
\nWitness the forty thousand dollars stolen from a Brooklyn bank; and
\nthe one hundred and eighty thousand dollars taken from a Wall Street
\nInsurance Company for the same purpose! These are only illustrations
\non a large scale of the robberies _every day_ committed for the
\npurpose of carrying out the designs of gamblers. Hundreds of thousands
\nof dollars every year leak out without observation from the merchant’s
\ntill into the gambling hell.<\/p>\n
A man in London keeping one of these gambling houses boasted that he
\nhad ruined a nobleman a day; but if all the saloons of this land were
\nto speak out, they might utter a more infamous boast, for they have
\ndestroyed a thousand noblemen a year.<\/p>\n
Notice also the effect of this crime upon domestic happiness. It hath
\nsent its ruthless ploughshare through hundreds of families, until the
\nwife sat in rags, and the daughters were disgraced, and the sons grew
\nup to the same infamous practices, or took a short cut to destruction
\nacross the murderer’s scaffold. Home has lost all charms for the
\ngambler. How tame are the children’s caresses and a wife’s devotion to
\nthe gambler! How drearily the fire burns on the domestic hearth! There
\nmust be louder laughter, and something to win and something to lose;
\nan excitement to drive the heart faster and fillip the blood and fire
\nthe imagination. No home, however bright, can keep back the gamester.
\nThe sweet call of love bounds back from his iron soul, and all
\nendearments are consumed in the flame of his passion. The family Bible
\nwill go after all other treasures are lost, and if his everlasting
\ncrown in heaven were put into his hand he would cry: “Here goes, one
\nmore game, my boys! On this one throw I stake my crown of heaven.”<\/p>\n
A young man in London, on coming of age, received a fortune of one
\nhundred and twenty thousand dollars, and through gambling in three
\nyears was thrown on his mother for support.<\/p>\n
An only son went to New Orleans. He was rich, intellectual, and
\nelegant in manners. His parents gave him, on his departure from home,
\ntheir last blessing. The sharpers got hold of him. They flattered him.
\nThey lured him to the gaming-table and let him win almost every time
\nfor a good while, and patted him on the back and said, “First-rate
\nplayer.” But, fully in their grasp, they fleeced him; and his thirty
\nthousand dollars were lost. Last of all he put up his watch and lost
\nthat. Then he began to think of home and of his old father and mother,
\nand wrote thus:–<\/p>\n
“MY BELOVED PARENTS:–You will doubtless feel a momentary joy
\n at the reception of this letter from the child of your bosom,
\n on whom you have lavished all the favors of your declining
\n years. But should a feeling of joy for a moment spring up
\n in your hearts when you shall have received this from, me,
\n cherish it not. I have fallen deep–never to rise. Those gray
\n hairs that I should have honored and protected I shall bring
\n down with sorrow to the grave. I will not curse my destroyer,
\n but oh! may God avenge the wrongs and impositions practised
\n upon the unwary in a way that shall best please Him. This, my
\n dear parents, is the last letter you will ever receive from
\n me. I humbly pray your forgiveness. It is my dying prayer.
\n Long before you shall have received this letter from me the
\n cold grave will have closed upon me forever. Life is to me
\n insupportable. I cannot, nay, I will not suffer the shame of
\n having ruined you. Forget and forgive is the dying prayer of
\n your unfortunate son.”<\/p>\n
The old father came to the post-office, got the letter, and fell to
\nthe floor. They thought he was dead at first; but they brushed back
\nthe white hair from his brow and fanned him. He had only fainted. I
\nwish he had been dead; for what is life worth to a father after his
\nson is destroyed?<\/p>\n
When things go wrong at a gaming-table, they shout “Foul! foul!” Over
\nall the gaming-tables of the world I cry out “Foul! foul! Infinitely
\nfoul!”<\/p>\n
In modern days, in addition to the other forms of gambling, have
\ncome up the thoroughly organized and, in some States, _legalized_
\ninstitution of lotteries. There are hundreds of citizens on the way to
\nruin through the lottery system. Some of the finest establishments in
\ntown are by this process being demolished, and the whole land feels
\nthe exhaustion of this accumulating evil. The wheel of Fortune is the
\nJuggernaut that is crushing out the life of this nation. The records
\nof the Insolvent Court of one city show that, in five years, two
\nhundred thousand dollars were lost by dealing in lottery tickets. All
\nthe officers of the celebrated Bank of the United States who failed
\nwere found to have expended the money embezzled for lottery tickets.<\/p>\n
A man drew in a lottery fifty thousand dollars, sold his ticket for
\nforty-two thousand five hundred dollars, and yet did not have enough
\nto pay the charges against him for lottery tickets. He owed the
\nbrokers forty-five thousand dollars.<\/p>\n
An editor writes–“A man who, a few years ago, was blest with about
\ntwenty thousand dollars (lottery money), yesterday applied to us for
\nninepence to pay for a night’s lodging.”<\/p>\n
A highly respectable gentleman drew twenty thousand dollars in a
\nlottery; bought more tickets, and drew again; bought more–drew more
\nlargely; then rushed down headlong until he was pronounced by the
\nselect men of the village a vagabond, and his children were picked up
\nfrom the street half starved and almost naked.<\/p>\n
A hard-working machinist draws a thousand dollars; thenceforth he is
\ndisgusted with work, opens a rum grocery, is utterly debauched, and
\npeople go in his store to find him dead, close beside his rum-cask.<\/p>\n
It would take a pen plucked from the wing of the destroying angel and
\ndipped in blood to describe this lottery business.<\/p>\n
A man committed suicide in New York, and upon his person was found a
\ncard of address giving a grog-shop as his boarding house, three blank
\nlottery tickets, and a leaf from _Seneca’s Morals_, containing an
\napology for self-murder.<\/p>\n
One lottery in London was followed by the suicide of fifty persons who
\nheld unlucky numbers.<\/p>\n
There are men now, with lottery tickets in their pocket, which, if
\nthey have not sense enough to tear up or throw into the fire, will be
\ntheir admission ticket at the door of the damned. As the brazen gates
\nswing open they will show their tickets, and pass in and pass down. As
\nthe wheel of eternal Fortune turns slowly round, they will find that
\nthe doom of those who have despised God and imperilled their souls
\nwill be their awful prize.<\/p>\n
God forbid that you, my reader, should ever take to yourself the
\nlamentation of the Boston clerk, who, in eight months, had embezzled
\neighteen thousand dollars from his employer and expended it all in
\nlottery tickets. “I have for the last seven months gone fast down the
\nbroad road. There was a time, and that but a few months since, when
\nI was happy, because I was free from debt and care. The moment of the
\nfirst steps in my downfall was about the middle of last June, when
\nI took a share in a company, bought lottery tickets whereby I was
\nsuccessful in obtaining a share of one-half of the capital prize,
\nsince which I have gone for myself. I have lived and dragged out a
\nmiserable existence for two or three months past. Oh, that the seven
\nor eight months past of my existence could be blotted out; but I must
\ngo, and, ere this paper is read, my spirit has gone to my Maker,
\nto give an account of my misdeeds here, and to receive the eternal
\nsentence for self-destruction and abused confidence. Relatives
\nand friends I have, from whom I do not wish to part under such
\ncircumstances, but necessity compels. Oh, wretch! lottery tickets have
\nbeen thy ruin. But I cannot add more.”<\/p>\n
There are multitudes of people who disapprove of ordinary lotteries,
\nyet have been thoroughly deceived by iniquity under a more attractive
\nnomenclature. The lottery in which our most highly respectable and
\nChristian people invest is some “Art Association,” or some benevolent
\n“Gift Enterprise,” in which they fondly believe there can be no harm
\nin drawing Bierstadt’s _Yosemite Valley_, or Cropsey’s _American
\nAutumn_!<\/p>\n
At no time have lottery tickets been sown so broadcast as to-day,
\nnotwithstanding the law forbids the old-style lottery.<\/p>\n
A few years ago our newspapers flamed with the advertisements of the
\nCrosby Opera House scheme. A citizen of Chicago, finding on his hands
\nan unprofitable building, calls upon the whole country to help him
\nout. Rooms are opened in all the great cities. In rush, not the
\nabandoned and the reprobate (for _they_ like the old styles of
\nswindling better), but the educated and refined and polished, until a
\nhost of people are in imminent peril of having thrown upon their hands
\na splendid Opera House. Philadelphia buys thirty thousand dollars
\nworth of tickets. The portentous day approaches. The rail trains from
\nmany of the prominent cities bring in dignified “Committees” who
\ncome to see that the great abomination is conducted in a decent and
\nChristian manner. The throng presses in. Hold fast your tickets, all
\nyou respectable New Yorkers, Philadelphians, and Bostonians, for the
\nwheel begins to move. The long agony is over. Hundreds of thousands
\nof people have made a narrow escape from being ruined by sudden
\naffluence. Swift horses are despatched, that, foam-lathered, dash up
\nto the house of him who owns the successful ticket. The lightnings
\ntell it to the four winds of heaven, and our weekly pictorials hasten
\nforward the photographers to take the picture of the famous man who
\nowned the ticket numbered 58,600. Multitudes think that there has been
\nfoul play, and that, after all, they themselves, if the truth were
\nknown, did draw the Opera House. Ten years from now there will stand
\non the scaffold, or behind the prison door, or in the lonely room in
\nwhich the suicide writes his farewell to wife or parents, men who will
\nsay that the first misstep of their life that put them on the wrong
\nroad was the ticket they bought in the Crosby Opera House.<\/p>\n
The man who won that prize is already dead of his dissipations, and,
\nstrange to say, the beautiful building thus raffled away was found to
\nbe owned by its original possessor when all the excitement in regard
\nto the matter had died away.<\/p>\n
I care not on what street the office was, nor who were the abettors
\nof the undertaking, nor who bought the tickets. I pronounce the whole
\nscheme to have been a swindle, a crime, and an insult to God and the
\nnation.<\/p>\n
In this class of gambler-makers I also put the “gift stores,” which
\nare becoming abundant throughout the country. With a book, or knife,
\nor sewing machine, or coat, or carriage there goes a _prize_. At those
\nstores people get something thrown in with their purchase. It may be a
\ngold watch or a set of silver, a ring or a farm. Sharp way to get off
\nunsalable goods. It has filled the land with fictitious articles and
\ncovered up our population with brass finger-rings, and despoiled
\nthe moral sense of the community, and is fast making us a nation of
\ngamblers.<\/p>\n
The Church of God has not seemed willing to allow the world to have
\nall the advantage of these games of chance. A church fair opens, and
\ntowards the close it is found that some of the more valuable articles
\nare unsalable. Forthwith the conductors of the enterprise conclude
\nthat they will _raffle_ for some of the valuable articles, and, under
\npretence of anxiety to make their minister a present, or please some
\npopular member of the church, fascinating persons are despatched
\nthrough the room, pencil in hand, to “solicit” shares; or perhaps each
\ndraws for his own advantage, and scores of people go home with their
\ntrophies, thinking that all is right, for Christian ladies did the
\nembroidery, and Christian men did the raffling, and the proceeds went
\ntowards a new communion set. But you may depend on it that, as far as
\nmorality is concerned, you might as well have won by the crack of the
\nbilliard-ball or the turn of the dice-box.<\/p>\n
Some good people cannot stand this raffling, and so, at fairs, they go
\nto “voting,” sometimes for editors, and sometimes for ministers, at
\na dollar a vote. Now the Methodist minister is ahead; now the
\nPresbyterian leads, and now the Baptist. But, just at the last moment,
\nwhen one of the ministers of the more popular sect seems sure to get
\nthe prize, the members from some obscure denomination, that do not
\ndeserve the prize, come in, and by a large contribution carry off for
\n_their_ minister the silver tea-set.<\/p>\n
Do you wonder that churches built, lighted, or upholstered by such
\nprocesses as that come to great financial and spiritual decrepitude?
\nThe devil says: “_I_ helped build that house of worship, and I have as
\nmuch right there as you have;” and for once the devil is right.<\/p>\n
We do not read that they had a lottery for building the church at
\nCorinth or Antioch, or for getting up a gold-headed cane or for an
\nembroidered surplice for Saint Paul. All this I style ecclesiastical
\ngambling. More than one man who is destroyed can say that his first
\nstep on the wrong road was when he won something at a church fair.<\/p>\n
The gambling spirit has not stopped for any indecency. There lately
\ntranspired, in Maryland, a lottery in which people drew for lots in
\na burying-ground! The modern habit of betting about everything is
\nproductive of immense mischief. The most healthful and innocent
\namusements of yachting and base-ball playing have been the occasion of
\nputting up excited and extravagant wagers. That which to many has
\nbeen advantageous to body and mind has been to others the means of
\nfinancial and moral loss. The custom is pernicious in the extreme
\nwhere scores of men in respectable life give themselves up to betting,
\nnow on this boat now on that–now on the Atlantics and now on the
\nAthletics.<\/p>\n
Betting, that once was chiefly the accompaniment of the race-course,
\nis fast becoming a national habit, and in some circles any
\nopinion advanced on finance or politics is accosted with the
\ninterrogatory–“How much will you bet on _that_, sir?”<\/p>\n
This custom may make no appeal to slow, lethargic temperaments,
\nbut there are in the country tens of thousands of quick, nervous,
\nsanguine, excitable temperaments ready to be acted upon, and their
\nfeet will soon take hold on death. For some months and perhaps for
\nyears they will linger in the more polite and elegant circle of
\ngamesters, but, after a while, their pathway will come to the fatal
\nplunge. Finding themselves in the rapids, they will try to back out,
\nand, hurled over the brink, they will clutch the side of the boat
\nuntil their finger-nails, blood-tipped, will pierce the wood, and
\nthen, with white cheek and agonized stare, and the horrors of the lost
\nsoul lifting the very hair from the scalp, they will plunge down where
\nno grappling hooks can drag them out.<\/p>\n
Young man! stand back from all styles of gambling! The end thereof
\nis death. The gamblers enter the ten-pin alley where are husbands,
\nbrothers, and fathers. “Put down your thousand dollars all in gold
\neagles! Let the boy set up the pins at the other end of the alley! Now
\nstand back, and give the gamester full sweep! Roll the first–there!
\nit strikes! and down goes his respectability. Try it again. Roll the
\nsecond–there! it strikes! and down goes the last feeling of humanity.
\nTry it again. Roll the third–there! it strikes! and down goes his
\nsoul forever. It was not so much the pins that fell as the soul! the
\nsoul! FATAL TEN-STRIKE FOR ETERNITY!”<\/p>\n
Shall I sketch the history of the gambler? Lured by bad company, he
\nfinds his way into a place where honest men ought never to go. He
\nsits down to his first game only for pastime and the desire of being
\nthought sociable. The players deal out the cards. They unconsciously
\nplay into Satan’s hands, who takes all the tricks, and both the
\nplayers’ souls for trumps–he being a sharper at any game. A slight
\nstake is put up just to add interest to the play. Game after game is
\nplayed. Larger stakes and still larger. They begin to move nervously
\non their chairs. Their brows lower and eyes flash, until now they who
\nwin and they who lose, fired alike with passion, sit with set jaws,
\nand compressed lips, and clenched fists, and eyes like fire-balls
\nthat seem starting from their sockets, to see the final turn before
\nit comes; if losing, pale with envy and tremulous with unuttered
\noaths cast back red-hot upon the heart–or, winning, with hysteric
\nlaugh–“Ha! Ha! I have it! I have it!”<\/p>\n
A few years have passed, and he is only the wreck of a man. Seating
\nhimself at the game ere he throws the first card, he stakes the last
\nrelic of his wife, and the marriage-ring which sealed the solemn vows
\nbetween them. The game is lost, and, staggering back in exhaustion,
\nhe dreams. The bright hours of the past mock his agony, and in his
\ndreams, fiends, with eyes of fire and tongues of flame, circle about
\nhim with joined hands, to dance and sing their orgies with hellish
\nchorus, chanting–“Hail! brother!” kissing his clammy forehead until
\ntheir loathsome locks, flowing with serpents, crawl into his bosom
\nand sink their sharp fangs and suck up his life’s blood, and coiling
\naround his heart pinch it with chills and shudders unutterable.<\/p>\n
Take warning! You are no stronger than tens of thousands who have, by
\nthis practice, been overthrown. No young man in our cities can escape
\nbeing tempted. _Beware of the first beginnings!_ This road is a
\ndown-grade, and every instant increases the momentum. Launch not upon
\nthis treacherous sea. Split hulks strew the beach. Everlasting storms
\nhowl up and down, tossing the unwary crafts into the Hell-gate. I
\nspeak of what I have seen with my own eyes. I have looked off into the
\nabyss and have seen the foaming, and the hissing, and the whirling
\nof the horrid deep in which the mangled victims writhed, one
\nupon another, and struggled, strangled, blasphemed, and died–the
\ndeath-stare of eternal despair upon their countenances as the waters
\ngurgled over them.<\/p>\n
To a gambler’s death-bed there comes no hope. He will probably die
\nalone. His former associates come not nigh his dwelling. When the
\nhour comes, his miserable soul will go out of a miserable life into
\na miserable eternity. As his poor remains pass the house where he was
\nruined, old companions may look out a moment and say–“There goes the
\nold carcass–dead at last,” but they will not get up from the table.
\nLet him down now into his grave. Plant no tree to cast its shade
\nthere, for the long, deep, eternal gloom that settles there is shadow
\nenough. Plant no “forget-me-nots” or eglantines around the spot, for
\nflowers were not made to grow on such a blasted heath. Visit it not in
\nthe sunshine, for that would be mockery, but in the dismal night, when
\nno stars are out, and the spirits of darkness come down horsed on the
\nwind, _then_ visit the grave of the gambler!<\/p>\n
SOME OF THE CLUB-HOUSES.<\/p>\n
Iniquity never gives a fair fight. It springs out from ambush upon
\nthe unsuspecting. Of the tens of thousands who have fallen into bad
\nhabits, not one deliberately leaped off, but all were caught in some
\nsly trap. You may have watched a panther or a cat about to take its
\nprey. It crouches down, puts its mouth between its paws, and is hardly
\nto be seen in the long grass. So iniquity always crouches down in
\nunexpected shapes, takes aim with unerring eye, and then springs
\nupon you with sudden and terrific leap. In secret places and in
\nunlooked-for shapes it murders the innocent.<\/p>\n
Men are gregarious. Cattle in herds. Fish in schools. Birds in flocks.
\nMen in social circles. You may, by the discharge of a gun, scatter
\na flock of quails, or by the plunge of the anchor send apart the
\ndenizens of the sea; but they will gather themselves together again.
\nIf you, by some new power, could break the associations in which men
\nnow stand, they would again adhere. God meant it so. He has gathered
\nall the flowers and shrubs into associations. You may plant one
\n“forget-me-not” or “hearts-ease” alone, away off upon the hillside,
\nbut it will soon hunt up some other “forget-me-not” or “hearts-ease.”
\nPlants love company; you will find them talking to each other in the
\ndew. A galaxy of stars is only a mutual life-insurance company. You
\nsometimes see a man with no out-branchings of sympathy. His nature is
\ncold and hard, like a ship’s mast, ice-glazed, which the most agile
\nsailor could never climb. Others have a thousand roots and a thousand
\nbranches. Innumerable tendrils climb their hearts, and blossom all the
\nway up; and the fowls of heaven sing in the branches.<\/p>\n
In consequence of this tendency, we find men coming together in
\ntribes, in communities, in churches, in societies. Some gather
\ntogether to cultivate the arts; some to plan for the welfare of the
\nState; some to discuss religious themes; some to kindle their mirth;
\nsome to advance their craft. So every active community is divided into
\nassociations of artists, of merchants, of bookbinders, of carpenters,
\nof masons, of plasterers, of shipwrights, of plumbers. Do you cry out
\nagainst it? Then you cry out against a tendency divinely implanted.
\nYour tirades will accomplish no more than if you should preach to a
\nbusy ant-hill or bee-hive a long sermon against secret societies.<\/p>\n
Here we find in our path the oft-discussed question, whether
\nassociations that do their work with closed doors, and admit their
\nmembers by pass-words, and greet each other with a secret grip, are
\nright or wrong. I answer that it depends entirely upon the nature of
\nthe object for which they meet. Is it to pass the hours in revelry,
\nwassail, blasphemy, and obscene talk, or to plot trouble to the State,
\nor to debauch the innocent? Then I say, with an emphasis that no man
\ncan mistake, “NO.” But is the object the improvement of the mind,
\nor the enlargement of the heart, or the advancement of art, or
\nthe defence of the government, or the extirpation of crime, or the
\nkindling of a pure-hearted sociality? Then I say, with just as much
\nemphasis, “YES.”<\/p>\n
There is no need that we who plan for the conquest of right over wrong
\nshould publish to all the world our intentions. The general of an
\narmy never sends to the opposing troops information as to the coming
\nattack. Shall we who have enlisted in the cause of God and humanity
\nexpose our plans to the enemy? No! We will in secret plot the ruin of
\nall the enterprises of Satan and his cohorts. When they expect us by
\nday, we will fall upon them by night. While they are strengthening
\ntheir left wing, we will double up their right. By a plan of battle
\nformed in secret conclave, we will come suddenly upon them, crying:
\n“The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”<\/p>\n
Secrecy of plot and execution are wrong only when the object and
\ninfluence are nefarious. Every family is a secret society; every
\nbusiness firm, and every banking and insurance institution. Those men
\nwho have no capacity to keep a secret are unfit for positions of trust
\nanywhere. There are thousands of men whose vital need is culturing in
\ncapacity to keep a secret. Men talk too much–and women too. There
\nis a time to keep silence, as well as a time to speak. Although not
\nbelonging to any of the great secret societies about which there has
\nbeen so much violent discussion, I have only words of praise for
\nthose associations which have for their object the reclamation of
\ninebriates, or like the score of mutual benefit societies, called by
\ndifferent names, that provide temporary relief for widows and orphans,
\nand for men incapacitated by sickness or accident for earning a
\nlivelihood.<\/p>\n
I suppose there are club-houses in our cities to which men go with
\nclear consciences, and from which they come after an hour or two
\nof intellectual talk, and cheerful interview, to enjoy the domestic
\ncircle. But that this is not the character of scores and hundreds of
\nclub-houses we all know. Can I, then, pass this subject by without
\nexposition of the monstrous evil? There are multitudes who are
\nunconsciously having their physical, moral, and eternal well-being
\nendangered by club-room dissipation. Was it right to expose the plot
\nof Guy Fawkes, by which he would have destroyed the Parliament of
\nEngland? And am I wrong in disclosing a peril which threatens not only
\nyour well-being here, but your throne in heaven?<\/p>\n
I deplore this ruin the more because this style of dissipation is
\ntaking down our finest men. The admission-fee sifts out the penurious
\nand takes only those who are called the best fellows. Oh! how changed
\nyou are! Not so kind to your wife as you used to be; not so patient
\nwith your children. Your conscience is not so much at rest. You laugh
\nmore now, and sing louder than once, but are not half so happy. It is
\nnot the public drinking-saloon that is taking you down, nor theatrical
\namusements, nor the houses of sin that have cost thousands of other
\nmen their eternity: but it is simply and undeniably your club-room.
\nYou do not make yourself as agreeable in your family as once. You go
\nhome at twelve o’clock with an unnatural flush upon your cheek and
\na strange color in your eye that you got at the club. You merely
\nacknowledge that you feel queer. You say that champagne never
\nintoxicates; that it only exhilarates, makes the conversation fluent,
\nshakes up the humor, and has no bad effect except a headache next day.
\nBe not deceived. Champagne may not, like whiskey, throw a man under
\nthe table; but if, through anything you drink, you gain an unnatural
\nfluency of speech and glow of feeling, you are simply drunk.<\/p>\n
If those imperilled were heartless young men, stingy young men, I
\nwould not be so sorry as I am; but there are many of them generous to
\na fault, frank, honest, cheerful, talented. I begrudge the devil such
\na prize. After a while these persons will lose all the frankness and
\nhonor for which they are now distinguished. Their countenances will
\nget haggard, and instead of looking one in the eye when they talk,
\nthey will look down. After a while, when the mother kindly asks, “What
\nkept you out so late?” they will make no answer, or will say “That is
\nmy business!” They will come cross and befogged to the store and
\nbank, and ever and anon neglect some duty, and after a while will be
\ndismissed: and then, with nothing to do, will rise in the morning at
\nten o’clock, cursing the servant because the breakfast is cold, and
\nthen go down town and stand on the steps of a fashionable hotel, and
\ncriticise the passers-by. While the young man who was a clerk in a
\ncellar has come up to be the first clerk, and he who a few years ago
\nran errands for the bank has got to be cashier, and thousands of other
\nyoung men of the city have gone up to higher and more responsible
\npositions, he has been going down, until there he passes through the
\nstreet with bloated lip, and bloodshot eye, and staggering step, and
\nhat mud-spattered and set sidewise on a shock of greasy hair, the
\nashes of his cigar dashed upon his cravat. Here he goes! Look at him,
\nall ye pure-hearted young men, and see the work of the fashionable
\nclub-room. I knew one such who, after the contaminations of his
\nclub-house, leaped out of the third-story window to put an end to his
\nwretchedness.<\/p>\n
Many who would not be seen drinking at the bar of a restaurant, think
\nthere is no dishonor and no peril connected with sitting down at a
\nmarble stand in an elegantly furnished parlor, to which they go with a
\nprivate key, and where none are present except gentlemen as elegant
\nas themselves. Everything so chaste in the surroundings! Soft carpets,
\nbeautiful pictures, cut glass, Italian top tables, frescoed walls. In
\njust such places there are thousands of young men, middle-aged men,
\nand old men, preparing themselves for overthrow.<\/p>\n
In many of these club-rooms the talk is not as pure and elevated as
\nit might be. How is it, men and brothers, at half-past eleven o’clock,
\nwhen the tankards are well emptied, and the smoke curls up from every
\nlip? Do they ever swear? Are there stories told unworthy a man who
\nvenerates the name of his mother? Does God, whose presence cannot be
\nhindered by bolt, and who comes in without a pass-word, and is making
\nup His record for the judgment-day, approve of the blasphemies you
\nutter?<\/p>\n
You think that there is no special danger, yet acknowledge that you
\nhave felt _queer_ sometimes. Your head was not right, and your stomach
\nwas disturbed. I will tell you what was the matter. _You were drunk_.
\nYou understood not that protracted hiccough; it was the drunkard’s
\nhiccough. You could not explain that nausea; it was the drunkard’s
\nvomit. The fact is that some of you, who have never in your own eyes
\nor in the eyes of others fully sacrificed your respectability, have
\nfor six months been written down in God’s book as drunkards.<\/p>\n
How far down need a man go before he becomes an inebriate? Must he
\nfall into the ditch? No! Must he get into a porter-house fight? No!
\nMust he be senseless in the street? Must he have the delirium
\ntremens? No! He may wear satin and fine linen; he may walk with hat
\nscrupulously brushed; may swing a gold-headed cane, and step in boots
\nof French leather, dismount from a carriage, or draw tight rein over
\na swift, sleek, high-mettled, full-blooded Arabian span, but yet be
\nso thoroughly under the power of strong drink that he is utterly
\noffensive to his Maker and rotten as a heap of compost.<\/p>\n
The fact that this whole land to-day swelters with drunkenness I
\ncharge upon the drinking club houses. They wield an influence that
\nmakes it respectable, and I will not put my head to the pillow
\nto-night until I have written against them one burning anathema
\nmaranatha! When I see them dragging down scores of our young men, and
\nslaying professed Christians at the very altar, and snatching off
\nthe garlands of life from those who would otherwise reign forever and
\nforever, I tell you I hate them with a perfect hatred, and pray for
\nmore height, and depth, and length, and breadth of capacity with which
\nto hate them.<\/p>\n
Along this blossoming and over-arched pathway, and through this long
\nline of temptations that throw their garlands upon the brow, and ring
\ntheir music into the ear, go a great host.<\/p>\n
No one can estimate the homes that have been shattered by the
\ndissipations of the club-house. There are weak women who would never
\nconsent to a husband’s absence in the evening, however important the
\nduty that takes him away. Any man who wishes to take his share of the
\npublic burdens and is willing to work for the political, educational,
\nand social advancement of the community must of necessity spend some
\nof his evenings away from home. There are associations and churches
\nthat have a right to demand a share of a man’s presence and means, and
\nthat is a weak woman who always looks offended when her husband goes
\nout in the evening.<\/p>\n
But club-houses become a pest when they demand all a man’s evenings;
\nand that is a result we are called to deplore. Every head of a
\nhousehold is called to be its educator, its companion, its religious
\ninstructor and exemplar; not only to furnish the wardrobe and to make
\nthe money to pay the bills when they come in, but to give his
\nhighest intellectual energies and social faculties to the amusement,
\ninstruction, and improvement of the household.<\/p>\n
But I describe the history of thousands of households when I say that
\nthe tea is rapidly taken, and while yet the family linger the father
\nshoves back his chair, has “an engagement,” lights his cigar and
\nstarts out, not returning until after midnight. That is the history of
\nthree hundred and sixty-five days in the year, except when he is sick
\nand cannot get out.<\/p>\n
How about home duties? Have you fulfilled all your vows? Would your
\nwife ever have married you with such a prospect? Wait until your sons
\nget to be sixteen or seventeen years of age, and they too will shove
\nback from the tea-table, have an “engagement,” light their cigars, go
\nover to their club-houses, their night-key rattling in your door after
\nmidnight–the effect of your example. And as your son’s constitution
\nmay not be as strong as yours, and the liquor he drinks more terribly
\ndrugged, he will catch up with you on the road to death although you
\ngot the start of him. And so you will both go to hell together! A
\nrevolving Drummond-light on the front of a locomotive casts its gleam
\nthrough the darkness as it is turned around; so I catch up the lamp of
\nGod’s truth and turn it round until its tremendous glare flashes into
\nall the club-houses of our cities.<\/p>\n
Flee the presence of the dissipating club-houses. “Paid your money?”
\nSacrifice that rather than your soul. “Good fellows,” are they? They
\ncannot stay what they are under such influences. Mollusca live two
\nhundred fathoms down in the Norwegian seas. The Siberian stag grows
\nfat on the stunted growth of Altaian peaks. The Hedysarium thrives
\namid the desolation of Sahara. Tufts of osier and birch grow on the
\nhot lips of volcanic Schneehalten. But good character and a useful
\nlife thrive amid club-room dissipations–_Never!_<\/p>\n
The best way to make a wild beast cower is to look him in the eye, but
\nthe best way to treat the temptations I have described is to turn your
\nback and fly! O! my heart aches! I see men struggling to get out of
\nthe serfdom of bad habits, and I want to help them. I have knelt with
\nthem and heard their cry for help. I have had them put one hand
\non each of my shoulders, and look me in the eye, with an agony of
\nearnestness that the judgment shall have no power to make me forget,
\nand from their lips, scorched with the fires of ruin, have heard
\nthem cry “God help me!” There is no rescue for such, save in the Lord
\nAlmighty.<\/p>\n
Well, what we do, we had better do right away. The clock ticks now and
\nwe hear it. After a while the clock will tick and we shall not hear
\nit. Seated by a country fireside, I saw the fire kindle, blaze, and go
\nout. I gathered up from the hearth enough for profitable reflections.
\nOur life is just like the fire on that hearth. We put on fresh fagots,
\nand the fire bursts through and up, and out, gay of flash, gay of
\ncrackle–emblem of boyhood. Then the fire reddens into coals. The
\nheat is fiercer; and the more it is stirred, the more it reddens. With
\nsweep of flame it cleaves its way, until all the hearth glows with
\nthe intensity–emblem of full manhood. Then comes a whiteness to the
\ncoals. The heat lessens. The flickering shadows have died along the
\nwall. The fagots drop apart. The household hover over the expiring
\nembers. The last breath of smoke has been lost in the chimney. Fire is
\nout. Shovel up the white remains. ASHES!<\/p>\n
FLASK, BOTTLE, AND DEMIJOHN.<\/p>\n
[NOTE.–This chapter, in its first shape, was given some currency
\nunder the title of “The Evil Beast.” I have, however, so revised and
\nadded to that Lecture, that, as here given, it is essentially a new
\npresentation of the dreadful Abomination of Rum, and it is in
\nthis present shape that I wish the public to receive it as a full
\nexpression of my views thereon. T.D.W.T.]<\/p>\n
There has in all ages and climes been a tendency to the improper use
\nof stimulants. Noah, as if disgusted with the prevalence of water in
\nhis time, took to strong drink. By this vice Alexander the Conqueror
\nwas conquered. The Romans, at their feasts, fell off their seats with
\nintoxication. Four hundred millions of our race are opium-eaters.
\nIndia, Turkey, and China have groaned with the desolation; and by it
\nhave been quenched such lights as Haller and De Quincey. One hundred
\nmillions are the victims of the betel-nut, which has specially
\naccursed the East Indies. Three hundred millions chew hashish, and
\nPersia, Brazil, and Africa suffer the delirium. The Tartars employ
\nmurowa; the Mexicans the agave; the people of Guarapo an intoxicating
\nquality taken from sugar-cane; while a great multitude, that no man
\ncan number, are the disciples of alcohol. To it they bow. In its
\ntrenches they fall. In its awful prison they are incarcerated. On its
\nghastly holocaust they burn.<\/p>\n
Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and they could
\ncome up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering
\nputrefaction and beastliness! What heart could endure the groans of
\nagony!<\/p>\n
Drunkenness: Does it not jingle the burglar’s key? Does it not whet
\nthe assassin’s knife? Does it not cock the highwayman’s pistol? Does
\nit not wave the incendiary’s torch? Has it not sent the physician
\nreeling into the sick-room; and the minister, with his tongue thick,
\ninto the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very height of
\nreputation, fall, a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way to be
\nmarried to one of the fairest daughters of New England, and at the
\nvery hour when the bride was decking herself for the altar; and did he
\nnot die of delirium tremens, almost unattended, in a New York hotel?
\nTamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand skulls, with which
\nto build a pyramid to his own honor. He got the skulls, and built the
\npyramid. But if the bones of all those who have fallen as a prey to
\ndissipation could be piled up, it would make a monster pyramid. Talk
\nnot of Waterloo and Austerlitz, for they were not fields of blood
\ncompared with this great Golgotha.<\/p>\n
Who will gird himself for the journey, and try with me to scale this
\nmountain of the dead–going up miles high on human carcasses, to find
\nstill other peaks far above, mountain above mountain, white with the
\nbleached bones of drunkards!<\/p>\n
Hang not your head or shut your eyes until we have seen it. We must
\nget a sight at the monster before we can shoot him.<\/p>\n
I will begin at our national and State capitals. Like government,
\nlike people. Henry VIII. blasts all England with his example of
\nuncleanness. Catharine of Russia drags down a whole empire with her
\nnefarious behavior. No Christian man can be indifferent to what
\nevery hour of every day goes on at Washington. While the Presidential
\nImpeachment trial advanced, some of the men who were to render their
\nsolemn verdict on the subject were reeling in and out of the Senate
\nchamber,–the intoxicated representatives of a free Christian people.
\nIt was a great question whether several members of that high court
\ncould be got sober in time to vote.<\/p>\n
Only recently a Senator from New England rises up with tongue so
\nthick, and with utterance so nonsensical, that he is led into the
\nanteroom. He was a good “Republican.”<\/p>\n
One of the Middle States has a representative who very rarely appears
\nin his seat, for the reason that he is so great an inebriate that he
\ncan neither walk nor ride. He is a good Democrat.<\/p>\n
As God looks down on our State and national legislatures, he holds us
\nresponsible. We cast the votes. We lift up the legislators.<\/p>\n
Will the time never come when this nation shall rise up higher than
\npartisanship, and cast its suffrage for sober men?<\/p>\n
The fact is that the two millions of dollars which the liquor dealers
\nraised for the purpose of swaying State and national legislation has
\ndone its work, and the nation is debauched. Higher than legislatures
\nor the Congress of the United States is the Whiskey Ring!<\/p>\n
The Sabbath has been sacrificed to the rum traffic. To many of our
\npeople the best day of the week is the worst. Bakers must keep their
\nshops closed on the Sabbath. It is dangerous to have loaves of bread
\ngoing out on Sunday. The shoe-store is closed; severe penalty will
\nattack the man who sells boots on the Sabbath. But down with the
\nwindow-shutters of the grog shops. Our laws shall confer particular
\nhonors upon the rum traffickers. All other traders must stand aside
\nfor these. Let our citizens who have disgraced themselves by trading
\nin clothing, and hosiery, and hardware, and lumber, and coal, take
\noff their hats to the rum-seller, elected to particular honor. It is
\nunsafe for any other class of men to be allowed license for Sunday
\nwork. But swing out your signs, oh ye traffickers in the peace of
\nfamilies, and in the souls of immortal men! Let the corks fly, and the
\nbeer foam, and the rum go tearing down the half-consumed throat of the
\ninebriate. God does not see, does he? Judgment will never come, will
\nit?<\/p>\n
People say–“Let us have some law to correct this evil.” We have more
\nlaw now than we execute. In what city is there a mayoralty that dare
\ndo it? There is no advantage in having the law higher than public
\nopinion. What would be the use of the Maine Law in New York? Neal Dow,
\nthe Mayor of Portland, came out with a _posse_ and threw the rum of
\nthe city into the street. From the alms-house a woman came out and
\nsaid, “Oh! if this had only been done ten years ago, my husband would
\nnot have died a drunkard, and I would not have been a widow in the
\nalmshouse.”<\/p>\n
But there are not enough police in the city of New York to stand by
\nits Mayor in such an undertaking; public opinion is not educated.<\/p>\n
I do not know but that God is determined to let drunkards triumph; and
\nthe husbands and sons of thousands of our best families be destroyed
\nby this vice, in order that our people, amazed and indignant, may rise
\nup and demand the extermination of this municipal crime.<\/p>\n
There is a way of driving down the hoops of a barrel until the hoops
\nbreak.<\/p>\n
We are in this country, at this time, trying to regulate this evil
\nby a tax on whiskey. You might as well try to regulate the Asiatic
\ncholera, or the small-pox, by taxation. The men who distil liquors
\nare, for the most part, unscrupulous; and the higher the tax, the more
\ninducement to illicit distillation. New York produces forty thousand
\ngallons of whiskey every twenty-four hours; and the most of it escapes
\nthe tax. The most vigilant officials fail to discover the cellars, and
\nvaults, and sheds where this work is done.<\/p>\n
Oh, the folly of trying to restrain an evil by government tariffs! If
\nevery gallon of whiskey made, if every flask of wine produced, should
\nbe taxed a thousand dollars, it would not be enough to pay for the
\ntears it has wrung out of the eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the
\nblood it has dashed on the altars of the Christian Church, nor for the
\ncatastrophe of the millions it has destroyed forever.<\/p>\n
Oh! we are a Christian people! From Boston a ship sailed for
\nAfrica, with three missionaries, and twenty-two thousand gallons
\nof New-England rum on board. Which will have the most effect: the
\nmissionaries, or the rum?<\/p>\n
Rum is victor. Some time when you have leisure, just go down any
\nof our streets, and count the number of drinking places. Here they
\nare–first-class hotels. Marble floors. Counter polished. Fine picture
\nhanging over the decanters. Cut glass. Silver water-coolers. Pictured
\npunch-bowls. High-priced liquors. Customers pull off their gloves,
\nand take up the glasses, and click them, and with immaculate
\npocket handkerchief wipe their mouth, and go up-stairs, or into the
\nreading-room, and complete extensive bargains.<\/p>\n
Here it is–the restaurant. All sorts of viands, but chiefly all
\nstyles of beverage. They who frequent this place have fairly started
\non the down grade. Having drunk once, they lounge at the corner of the
\nbar until a friend comes up, and then the beverage is repeated. After
\na while they sit at the little table by the wall and order a rarer
\nwine; for they feel richer now, and able to get almost anything.
\nTowards bed-time they take out their watch and say they must go home.
\nThey start, but cannot stand straight. With a gentleman at each arm,
\nthey start up the street. More and more overcome, the man begins to
\nwhoop, and shout, and swear, and refuse to go any farther. Hat falls
\noff. Hair gets over his eyes. Door-bell of fine house rings. Wife
\ncomes down the stairs. Daughters look over the banisters. Sobbing in
\nthe dark hall. Quick–shut the front door, for I do not want to look
\nin. God help them!<\/p>\n
Here it is–a wine-cellar. Going into the door are depraved men and
\nlost women. Some stagger. All blaspheme. Men with rings in their ears
\ninstead of their nose; and blotches of breast-pin. Pictures on the
\nwall cut out of the _Police Gazette_. A slush of beer on floor and
\ncounter. A pistol falls out of a ruffian’s pocket. By the gas-light a
\nknife flashes. Low songs. They banter, and jeer, and howl, and vomit.
\nAn awful goal, to which hundreds of people better than you have come.<\/p>\n
All these different styles of drinking-places are multiplying. They
\nsmite a young man’s vision at every turn. They pour the stench of
\ntheir abomination on every wave of air.<\/p>\n
I sketch two houses in this street. The first is bright as home can
\nbe. The father comes at nightfall, and the children run out to meet
\nhim. Luxuriant evening meal, gratulation, and sympathy, and laughter.
\nMusic in the parlor. Fine pictures on the wall. Costly books on the
\nstand. Well-clad household. Plenty of everything to make home happy.<\/p>\n
House the second. Piano sold yesterday by the sheriff. Wife’s furs at
\npawnbroker’s shop. Clock gone. Daughter’s jewelry sold to get flour.
\nCarpets gone off the floor. Daughters in faded and patched dresses.
\nWife sewing for the stores. Little child with an ugly wound on her
\nface, struck in an angry blow. Deep shadow of wretchedness falling in
\nevery room. Doorbell rings. Little children hide. Daughters turn
\npale. Wife holds her breath. Blundering steps in the hall. Door opens.
\nFiend, brandishing his fist, cries–“Out! Out! What are you doing
\nhere!”<\/p>\n
Did I call this house the second? No; it is the same house. Rum
\ntransformed it. Rum imbruted the man. Rum sold the shawl. Rum tore
\nup the carpets. Rum shook its fist. Rum desolated the hearth. _Rum_
\nchanged that paradise into a hell!<\/p>\n
I sketch two men that you know very well. The first graduated from one
\nof our literary institutions. His father, mother, brothers and sisters
\nwere present to see him graduate. They heard the applauding thunders
\nthat greeted his speech. They saw the bouquets tossed to his feet.
\nThey saw the degree conferred and the diploma given. He never looked
\nso well. Everybody said, “What a noble brow! What a fine eye! What
\ngraceful manners! What brilliant prospects!” All the world opens
\nbefore him and cries, “Hurrah! Hurrah!”<\/p>\n
Man the second. Lies in the station-house to-night. The doctor has
\njust been sent for to bind up the gashes received in a fight. His hair
\nis matted, and makes him look like a wild beast. His lip is bloody and
\ncut.<\/p>\n
Who is the battered and bruised wretch that was picked up by the
\npolice and carried in drunk, and foul, and bleeding? Did I call
\nhim man the second? He is man the _first_! Rum transformed him. Rum
\ndestroyed his prospects. Rum disappointed parental expectation. Rum
\nwithered those garlands of commencement-day. Rum cut his lip. Rum
\ndashed out his manhood. RUM, accursed RUM!<\/p>\n
This foul thing gives one swing to its scythe, and our best merchants
\nfall; their stores are sold, and they slink into dishonored graves.<\/p>\n
Again it swings its scythe, and some of our best physicians fall into
\nsufferings that their wisest prescriptions cannot cure.<\/p>\n
Again it swings its scythe, and ministers of the gospel fall from the
\nheights of Zion with long-resounding crash of ruin and shame.<\/p>\n
Some of your own household have already been shaken. Perhaps you
\ncan hardly admit it; but where was your son last night? Where was he
\nFriday night? Where was he Thursday night? Wednesday night? Tuesday
\nnight? Monday night?<\/p>\n
Nay, have not some of you, in your own bodies, felt the power of this
\nhabit? You think that you could stop? Are you sure you could? Go on
\na little further, and I am sure you cannot. I think, if some of you
\nshould try to break away, you would find a chain on the right wrist,
\nand one on the left; one on the right foot, and another on the left.
\nThis serpent does not begin to hurt until it has wound around and
\nround. Then it begins to tighten, and strangle, and crush until the
\nbones crack, and the blood trickles, and the eyes start from their
\nsockets, and the mangled wretch cries “O God! O God! Help! Help!” But
\nit is too late; and nothing but the fires of woe can melt the chain
\nwhen once it is fully fastened.<\/p>\n
The child of a drunkard died. My friend, a minister of the Gospel, sat
\nin a carriage with the drunkard, and the coffin of the little child.
\nOn the way to the grave, the drunkard put his hand on the lid of his
\nchild’s coffin and swore that he never would drink again. Before the
\nnext morning had come he was dead drunk!<\/p>\n
I spread out before you the starvation, the cruelty, the ghastliness,
\nthe woes, the terror, the anguish, the perdition of this evil, and
\nthen ask, Are you ready, fully and forever, to surrender our churches,
\nour homes, our civilization, our glorious Christianity? One or the
\nother must surrender. It can be no “drawn battle.”<\/p>\n
But how are we to contend?<\/p>\n
First, by getting our children right on this subject. Let them grow up
\nwith an utter aversion to strong drink. Take care how you administer
\nit even as medicine. If you find that they have a natural love for
\nit, as some have, put in a glass of it some horrid stuff and make it
\nutterly nauseous. Teach them as faithfully as you do the catechism,
\nthat rum is a fiend. Take them to the alms-house and show them the
\nwreck and ruin it works. Walk with them into the homes that have been
\nscourged by it. If a drunkard hath fallen into a ditch, take them
\nright up where they can see his face, bruised, savage and swollen, and
\nsay, “Look, my son: Rum did that!”<\/p>\n
Looking out of your window at some one who, intoxicated to madness,
\ngoes through the street, brandishing his fist, blaspheming God,–a
\nhowling, defying, shouting, reeling, raving and foaming maniac,–say
\nto your son, “Look; that man was once a child like you.” As you go by
\nthe grog-shop, let your boy know that that is the place where men are
\nslain, and their wives made paupers, and their children slaves. Hold
\nout to your children all warnings, all rewards, all counsels, lest in
\nafter days they break your heart, and curse your gray hairs.<\/p>\n
A man laughed at my father for his scrupulous temperance principles,
\nand said–“I am more liberal than you. I always give my children the
\nsugar in the glass after we have been taking a drink.”<\/p>\n
Three of his sons have died drunkards; and the fourth is imbecile
\nthrough intemperate habits.<\/p>\n
Again, we will battle this evil at the ballot-box. How many men are
\nthere who can rise above the feelings of partisanship, and demand that
\nour officials shall be sober men?<\/p>\n
I maintain that the question of sobriety is higher than the question
\nof availability; and that however eminent a man’s services may be, if
\nhe have habits of intoxication, he is unfit for any office in the gift
\nof a Christian people. Our laws will be no better than the men who
\nmake them.<\/p>\n
Spend a few days at Harrisburg, or Albany, or Washington, and you will
\nfind out why, upon these subjects, it is impossible to get righteous
\nenactments.<\/p>\n
Again, we will war upon this evil by organized societies. The
\nfriends of the rum traffic have banded together; annually issue their
\ncirculars; raise fabulous sums of money to advance their interests;
\nand by grips, pass-words, signs, and stratagems set at defiance public
\nmorals. Let us confront them with organizations just as secret,
\nand, if need be, with grips, and pass-words, and signs maintain our
\nposition. There is no need that our philanthropic societies tell all
\ntheir plans.<\/p>\n
I am in favor of all lawful strategy in the carrying on of this
\nconflict. I wish to God we could lay under the wine-casks a train,
\nwhich, once ignited, would shake the earth with the explosion of this
\nmonstrous iniquity.<\/p>\n
Again: we will try the power of the pledge. There are thousands of men
\nwho have been saved by putting their names to such a document. I know
\nit is laughed at; but there are men who, having once promised a thing,
\ndo it. “Some have broken the pledge.” Yes; they were liars. But all
\nmen are not liars. I do not say that it is the duty of all persons
\nto make such signature; but I do say that it will be the salvation of
\nmany of you.<\/p>\n
The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can never be estimated. At
\nhis hand four millions of people took the pledge, including eight
\nprelates, and seven hundred of the Roman Catholic clergy. A multitude
\nof them were faithful.<\/p>\n
Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand drunkards had been
\npermanently reformed in five years.<\/p>\n
Through the great Washingtonian movement in Ohio, sixty thousand took
\nthe pledge. In Pennsylvania, twenty-nine thousand. In Kentucky, thirty
\nthousand, and multitudes in all parts of the land. Many of these had
\nbeen habitual drunkards. One hundred and fifty thousand of them, it is
\nestimated, were permanently reclaimed. Two of these men became foreign
\nministers; one a governor of a State; several were sent to
\nCongress. Hartford reported six hundred reformed drunkards; Norwich,
\nseventy-two; Fairfield, fifty; Sheffield, seventy-five. All over the
\nland reformed men were received back into the churches that they had
\nbefore disgraced; and households were re-established. All up and
\ndown the land there were gratulations, and praise to God. The pledge
\nsigned, to thousands has been the proclamation of emancipation.<\/p>\n
I think that we are coming at last to treat inebriation as it ought to
\nbe treated, namely, as an awful disease, self-inflicted, to be sure,
\nbut nevertheless a disease. Once fastened upon a man, sermons will not
\ncure him; temperance lectures will not eradicate the taste; religious
\ntracts will not remove it; the Gospel of Christ will not arrest it.
\nOnce under the power of this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on;
\nand if the foaming glass were on the other side of perdition, he would
\nwade through the fires of hell to get it. A young man in prison had
\nsuch a strong thirst for intoxicating liquors, that he cut off his
\nhand at the wrist, called for a bowl of brandy in order to stop the
\nbleeding, thrust his wrist into the bowl, and then drank the contents.<\/p>\n
Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between a man and his cups!
\nClear the track for him! Away with the children: he would tread their
\nlife out! Away with the wife: he would dash her to death! Away with
\nthe Cross: he would run it down! Away with the Bible: he would tear
\nit up for the winds! Away with heaven: he considers it worthless as a
\nstraw! “Give me the drink! Give it to me! Though hands of blood pass
\nup the bowl, and the soul trembles over the pit,–the drink! give it
\nto me! Though it be pale with tears; though the froth of everlasting
\nanguish float in the foam–give it to me! I drink to my wife’s woe; to
\nmy children’s rags; to my eternal banishment from God, and hope, and
\nheaven! Give it to me! the drink!”<\/p>\n
Again: we will contend against these evils by trying to persuade
\nthe respectable classes of society to the banishment of alcoholic
\nbeverages. You who move in elegant and refined associations; you
\nwho drink the best liquors; you who never drink until you lose
\nyour balance: consider that you have, under God, in your power the
\nredemption of this land from drunkenness. Empty your cellars and
\nwine-closets of the beverage, and then come out and give us your hand,
\nyour vote, your prayers, your sympathies. Do that, and I will promise
\nthree things: First, That you will find unspeakable happiness in
\nhaving done your duty; secondly, you will probably save somebody,
\nperhaps your own child; thirdly, you will not, in your last hour, have
\na regret that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be.<\/p>\n
As long as you make drinking respectable, drinking customs will
\nprevail; and the ploughshare of death, drawn by terrible disasters,
\nwill go on turning up this whole continent, from end to end, with the
\nlong, deep, awful furrow of drunkards’ graves.<\/p>\n
Oh, how this Rum Fiend would like to go and hang up a skeleton in your
\nbeautiful house, so that when you opened the front door to go in you
\nwould see it in the hall; and when you sit at your table you would see
\nit hanging from the wall; and when you open your bed-room you would
\nfind it stretched upon your pillow; and waking at night you would feel
\nits cold hand passing over your face and pinching at your heart!<\/p>\n
There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awful
\ncurse. It throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony. What was it
\nthat silenced Sheridan’s voice and shattered the golden sceptre with
\nwhich he swayed parliaments and courts? What foul sprite turned the
\nsweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless ballad? What brought
\ndown the majestic form of one who awed the American Senate with his
\neloquence, and after a while carried him home dead drunk from the
\noffice of Secretary of State? What was it that crippled the noble
\nspirit of one of the heroes of the last war, until the other night,
\nin a drunken fit, he reeled from the deck of a Western steamer and was
\ndrowned! There was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He was one of
\nthe most classic orators of the century. People wondered why a man
\nof so pure a heart and so excellent a life should have such a sad
\ncountenance always. They knew not that his wife was a sot.<\/p>\n
“Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink!” If this curse was
\nproclaimed about the comparatively harmless drinks of olden times,
\nwhat condemnation must rest upon those who tempt their neighbors
\nwhen intoxicating liquor means copperas, nux vomica, logwood, opium,
\nsulphuric acid, vitriol, turpentine, and strychnine! “Pure liquors:”
\npure destruction! Nearly all the genuine champagne made is taken by
\nthe courts of Europe. What we get is horrible swill!<\/p>\n
I call upon woman for her influence in the matter. Many a man who had
\nreformed and resolved on a life of sobriety has been pitched off into
\nold habits by the delicate hand of her whom he was anxious to please.<\/p>\n
Bishop Potter says that a young man who had been reformed sat at a
\ntable, and when the wine was passed to him refused to take it. A lady
\nsitting at his side said, “Certainly you will not refuse to take a
\nglass with me?” Again he refused. But when she had derided him for
\nlack of manliness he took the glass and drank it. He took another and
\nanother; and putting his fist hard down on the table, said, “Now I
\ndrink until I die.” In a few months his ruin was consummated.<\/p>\n
I call upon those who are guilty of these indulgences to quit the path
\nof death. O what a change it would make in your home! Do you see how
\neverything there is being desolated! Would you not like to bring back
\njoy to your wife’s heart, and have your children come out to meet you
\nwith as much confidence as once they showed? Would you not like to
\nrekindle the home lights that long ago were extinguished? It is not
\ntoo late to change. It may not entirely obliterate from your soul the
\nmemory of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor smooth out from
\nanxious brows the wrinkles which trouble has ploughed. It may not call
\nback unkind words uttered or rough deeds done–for perhaps in those
\nawful moments you struck her! It may not take from your memory the
\nbitter thoughts connected with some little grave: but it is not too
\nlate to save yourself and secure for God and your family the remainder
\nof your fast-going life.<\/p>\n
But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. I may address one who
\nmay not have quite made up his mind. Let your better nature speak out.
\nYou take one side or the other in the war against drunkenness.
\nHave you the courage to put your foot down right, and say to your
\ncompanions and friends: “I will never drink intoxicating liquor in all
\nmy life, nor will I countenance the habit in others.” Have nothing to
\ndo with strong drink. It has turned the earth into a place of skulls,
\nand has stood opening the gate to a lost world to let in its victims,
\nuntil now the door swings no more upon its hinges, but day and night
\nstands wide open to let in the agonized procession of doomed men.<\/p>\n
Do I address one whose regular work in life is to administer to this
\nappetite? I beg you–get out of the business. If a woe be pronounced
\nupon the man who gives his neighbor drink, how many woes must be
\nhanging over the man who does this every day, and every hour of the
\nday!<\/p>\n
A philanthropist, going up to the counter of a grog-shop, as the
\nproprietor was mixing a drink for a toper standing at the counter,
\nsaid to the proprietor, “Can you tell me what your business is good
\nfor?” The proprietor, with an infernal laugh, said, “_It fattens
\ngraveyards!_”<\/p>\n
God knows better than you do yourself the number of drinks you have
\npoured out. You keep a list; but a more accurate list has been kept
\nthan yours. You may call it Burgundy, Bourbon, Cognac, Heidsick, Hock;
\nGod calls it strong drink. Whether you sell it in low oyster cellar or
\nbehind the polished counter of first-class hotel, the divine curse is
\nupon you. I tell you plainly that you will meet your customers one day
\nwhen there will be no counter between you. When your work is done on
\nearth, and you enter the reward of your business, all the souls of
\nthe men whom you have destroyed will crowd around you and pour their
\nbitterness into your cup. They will show you their wounds and say,
\n“You made them;” and point to their unquenchable thirst, and say, “You
\nkindled it;” and rattle their chain and say, “You forged it.” Then
\ntheir united groans will smite your ears; and with the hands out of
\nwhich you once picked the sixpences and the dimes, they will push you
\noff the verge of great precipices; while, rolling up from beneath, and
\nbreaking among the crags of death, will thunder:<\/p>\n
“_Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink!_”<\/p>\n
THE HOUSE OF BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS.<\/p>\n
Men like to hear the frailties and faults of others chastised. With
\nwhat blandness and placidity they sit and hear the religious teacher
\nexcoriate the ambition of Ahab, the treachery of Judas, the treason
\nof Athaliah, and the wickedness of the Amalekites. Indeed, I have
\nsometimes felt sorry for the Amalekites, for in all ages, and on all
\noccasions, they are smitten, denounced, and pursued. They have had
\ntheir full share of censure and excoriation. It is high time that
\nin our addresses in pulpits, and in domestic circles, we turn our
\nattention to the driving out of these worse Amalekites which are
\nswarming in society to-day, thicker than in the olden time. The
\nancient Amalekites lived for one or two hundred years; but these
\nare not weakened after a thousand years. Those traversed only a few
\nleagues of land; these stalk the earth and ford the sea. Those had
\neach a sword or spear; these fight with a million swords, and strike
\nwith a million stings, and smite with a million catastrophes. Those
\nwere conquered with human weapons; but to overcome these we must bring
\nout God’s great fieldpieces, and employ an enginery that can sweep
\nfrom eternity to eternity.<\/p>\n
There is one subject which we are expected, in all our teachings, to
\nshun, or only to hint at: I mean the wickedness of an impure life.
\nThough God thunders against this appalling iniquity from the heavens
\ncurse after curse, anathema after anathema, by our unwillingness to
\nrepeat the divine utterance we seem to say, “Lord, not so loud! Speak
\nabout everything else; but if this keeps on there will be trouble!”
\nMeanwhile the foundations of social life are being slowly undermined;
\nand many of the upper circles of life have putrefied until they have
\nno more power to rot.<\/p>\n
If a fox or a mink come down to the farmyard and carry off a chicken,
\nthe whole family join in the search.<\/p>\n
If a panther come down into the village and carry off a child, the
\nwhole neighborhood go out with clubs and guns to bring it down.<\/p>\n
But this monster-crime goes forth, carrying off body and soul; and
\nyet, if we speak, a thousand voices bid us be silent.<\/p>\n
I shall try to cut to the vitals of the subject, and proceed with the
\n_post-mortem_ of this carcass of death. It is time to speak on this
\nsubject. All the indignation of the community upon this subject is
\nhurled upon woman’s head. If, in an evil hour, she sacrifice her
\nhonor, the whole city goes howling after her. She shall take the whole
\nblame. Out with her from all decent circles! Whip her. Flay her.
\nBar all the doors of society against her return. Set on her all the
\nblood-hounds. Shove her off precipice after precipice. Push her down.
\nKick her out! If you see her struggling on the waves, and with her
\nblood-tipped fingers clinging to the verge of respectability, drop a
\nmill-stone on her head.<\/p>\n
For a woman’s sin, men have no mercy; and the heart of other women is
\nmore cruel than death.<\/p>\n
For her, in the dark hour of her calamity, the women who, with the
\nsame temptation, might have fallen into deeper damnation, have no
\ncommiseration and no prayer.<\/p>\n
The heaviest stroke that comes down upon a fallen woman’s soul is the
\nmerciless indignation of her sisters.<\/p>\n
If the multitudes of the fallen could be placed in a straight line, it
\nwould reach from here to the gates of the lost, and back again.<\/p>\n
But what of the destroyer?<\/p>\n
We take his arm. We flatter his appearance. We take off our hats.
\nHe is admitted to our parlors. For him we cast our votes. For him
\nwe speak our eulogies. And when he has gone we read over the heap of
\ncompost: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from
\ntheir labors and their works do follow them.”<\/p>\n
In the fashionable city to-day there walk a thousand libertines. They
\nare a moving pest. Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their
\nbones have in them the decay of the pit. They have the eye of
\na basilisk. They have been soaked in filth, and steeped in
\nuncleanliness, and consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the
\nloathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of the robe of one of
\nthese elegant gentlemen, and pull it aside, and say, “Behold a Leper!”<\/p>\n
First, if you desire to shun this evil, you will have nothing to do
\nwith bad books and impure newspapers. With such an affluent literature
\nas is coming forth from our swift-revolving printing-presses, there
\nis no excuse for dragging one’s self through sewers of unchastity. Why
\nwalk in the ditch, when right beside the ditch is the solid flagging?
\nIt seems that in the literature of the day the ten plagues of Egypt
\nhave returned, and the frogs and lice have hopped and skipped over our
\nparlor tables.<\/p>\n
Waiting impatiently in the house of some parishioner, for the
\ncompletion of a very protracted toilet, I have picked up a book from
\nthe parlor table, and found that every leaf was a scale of leprosy.<\/p>\n
Parents are delighted to have their children read, but they should be
\nsure as to what they read. You do not have to walk a day or two in an
\ninfected district to get the cholera or typhoid fever; and one wave
\nof moral unhealth will fever and blast an immortal nature. Perhaps,
\nknowing not what you did, you read a bad book. Do you not remember it
\naltogether? Yes; and perhaps you will never get over it.<\/p>\n
However strong and exalted your character, _never read a bad book_. By
\nthe time you get through the first chapter you will see the drift; If
\nyou find the marks of the hoofs of the devil in the pictures, or in
\nthe style, or in the plot, away with it. You may tear your coat, or
\nbreak a vase, and repair them again, but the point where the rip or
\nfracture took place will always be evident. It takes less than an
\nhour to do your heart a damage which no time can entirely repair. Look
\ncarefully over your child’s library; see what book it is that he reads
\nafter he has gone to bed, with the gas turned upon the pillow. Do
\nnot always take it for granted that a book is good because it is
\na Sunday-school book. As far as possible know _who_ wrote it, who
\nillustrated it, who published it, who sold it.<\/p>\n
Young man, as you value Heaven, never buy a book from one of those men
\nwho meet you in the square, and, after looking both ways, to see
\nif the police are watching, shows you a book–very cheap. Have
\nhim arrested as you would kill a rattle-snake. Grab him, and shout
\n“Police! police!”<\/p>\n
But there is more danger, I think, from many of the family papers,
\npublished once a week; in those stories of vice and shame, full
\nof infamous suggestions, going as far as they can without exposing
\nthemselves to the clutch of the law. I name none of them; but say that
\non some fashionable tables there lie “family newspapers” that are the
\nvery vomit of the pit.<\/p>\n
The way to ruin is cheap. It costs three dollars to go to
\nPhiladelphia; six dollars to Boston; thirty-three dollars to Savannah;
\nbut, by the purchase of a bad paper for ten cents, you may get a
\nthrough ticket to hell, by express, with few stopping-places, and
\nthe final halting like the tumbling of the lightning train down the
\ndraw-bridge at Norwalk–sudden, terrific, deathful, never to rise.<\/p>\n
O, the power of an iniquitous pen! If a needle puncture the body at a
\ncertain point, life is destroyed; but the pen is a sharper instrument,
\nfor with its puncture you may kill the soul. And that very thing many
\nof our acutest minds are to-day doing. Do not think that this which
\nyou drain from the glass, because it is sweet, is therefore healthful:
\nsome of the worst poisons are pleasant to the taste. The pen which
\nfor the time fascinates you may be dipped in the slime of unclean
\nliterature.<\/p>\n
Look out for the books that come from France. It has sent us some
\ngrand histories, poems, and pure novels, but they are few in number
\ncompared with the nastiness that it has spewed out upon our shore.<\/p>\n
Do we not read in our Bibles that the ancient flood covered all the
\nearth? I would have thought that France had escaped, for it does not
\nseem as if it had ever had a thorough washing.<\/p>\n
In the next place, if you would shun an impure life, avoid those who
\nindulge in impure conversation. There are many people whose chief
\nmirthfulness is in that line. They are full of innuendo, and phrases
\nof double meaning, and are always picking out of the conversation of
\ndecent men something vilely significant. It is astonishing in company,
\nhow many, professing to be _Christians_, will tell vile stories; and
\nthat some Christian women, in their own circles, have no hesitation at
\nthe same style of talking.<\/p>\n
You take a step down hill, when, without resistance, you allow any one
\nto put into your ear a vile innuendo. If, forgetting who you are,
\nany man attempts to say such things in your presence, let your
\nbetter nature assert itself, look the offender full in the face, and
\nask–“What do you mean by saying such a thing in my presence!” Better
\nallow a man to smite you in the face than to utter such conversation
\nbefore you. I do not care who the men or women are that utter impure
\nthoughts; they are guilty of a mighty wrong; and their influence upon
\nour young people is baleful.<\/p>\n
If in the club where you associate; if in the social circle where you
\nmove, you hear depraved conversation, fly for your life! A man is
\nno better than his talk; and no man can have such interviews without
\nbeing scarred.<\/p>\n
I charge our young men against considering uncleanness more tolerable,
\nbecause it is sanctioned by the customs, habits, and practices of
\nwhat is called high life. If this sin wears kid gloves, and patent
\nleathers, and coat of exquisite fit, and carries an opera-glass of
\ncostliest material, and lives in a big house, and rides in a splendid
\nturn-out, is it to be any the less reprehended? No! No!<\/p>\n
I warn you not so much against the abomination that hides in the lower
\ncourts and alleys of the town, as against the more damnable vice that
\nhides behind the white shutters and brownstone fronts of the upper
\nclasses.<\/p>\n
God, once in a while, hitches up the fiery team of vengeance, and
\nploughs up the splendid libertinism, and we stand aghast.<\/p>\n
Sin, crawling out of the ditch of poverty and shame, has but few
\ntemptations; but, gliding through the glittering drawing-room with
\nmagnificent robe, it draws the stars of heaven after it.<\/p>\n
Poets and painters have represented Satan as horned and hoofed. If I
\nwere a poet I should describe him with manners polished to the
\nlast perfection, hair flowing in graceful ringlets, eye a little
\nblood-shot, but floating in bewitching languor; hands soft and
\ndiamonded; step light and artistic; voice mellow as a flute; boot
\nelegantly shaped; conversation facile, carefully toned, and Frenchy;
\nbreath perfumed until it would seem that nothing had ever touched his
\nlips save balm and myrrh. But his heart I would encase with the scales
\nof a monster, then fill with pride, with beastliness of desire,
\nwith recklessness, with hypocrisy, with death. Then I would have
\nhim touched with some rod of disenchantment until his two eyes would
\nbecome the cold orbs of the adder; and on his lip would come the foam
\nof raging intoxication; and to his feet the spring of the panther;
\nand his soft hand should become the clammy hand of a wasted
\nskeleton; while suddenly from his heart would burst in crackling and
\nall-devouring fury the unquenchable flames; and in the affected lisp
\nof his tongue would come the hiss of the worm that never dies.<\/p>\n
But, until disenchanted, nothing but myrrh, and balm, and ringlet, and
\ndiamond, and flute-like voice, and conversation aromatic, facile, and
\nFrenchy.<\/p>\n
There are practices in respectable circles, I am told by physicians,
\nwhich need public reprehension. Herod’s massacre of the innocents was
\nas nothing compared with that of millions and millions by what I shall
\ncall _ante-natal_ murders. You may escape the grip of the law, because
\nthe existence of such life was not known by society; but I tell
\nyou that at last God will shove down on you the avalanche of his
\nindignation; and though you may not have wielded knife or pistol in
\nyour deeds of darkness, yet, in the day when John Wilkes Booth and
\nAntony Probst come to judgment, you will have on _your_ brow the brand
\nof _murderer_.<\/p>\n
Hear me when I repeat, that the practices of high life ought not to
\nmake sin in your eyes seem tolerable. God is no respecter of persons;
\nand robes and rags will stand on the same platform in the day when the
\narchangel, with one foot on the sea and the other on the land, swears,
\nby Him that liveth forever and ever, that Time shall be no more.<\/p>\n
O, it is beautiful to see a young man living a life of purity,
\nstanding upright where thousands of other young men fall. You will
\nmove in honorable circles all your days; and some old friend of your
\nfather will meet you and say: “My son, how glad I am to see you look
\nso well. Just like your father, for all the world. I thought you would
\nturn out well when I used to hold you on my knee. Do you ever hear
\nfrom the old folks?”<\/p>\n
After a while you yourself will be old, and lean quite heavily on your
\ncane, and take short steps, and hold the book off to the other side
\nof the light. And men will take off their hats in your presence. Your
\nbody, unharmed by early indulgences, will get weaker, only as the
\nsleepy child gets more and more unable to hold up its head, and falls
\nback into its mother’s lap: so you shall lay yourself down into the
\narms of the Christian’s tomb, and on the slab that marks the place
\nwill be chiselled: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
\nGod.”<\/p>\n
But here is a young man who takes the other route. The voices of
\nuncleanness charm him away. He reads bad books. Lives in vicious
\ncircles. Loses the glow from his cheek, the sparkle from his eye, and
\nthe purity from his soul. The good shun him. Down he goes, little by
\nlittle. They who knew him when he came to town, while yet lingering
\non his head was a pure mother’s blessing, and on his lip the dew of a
\npure sister’s kiss, now pass him, and nay, “What an awful wreck!”
\nHis eye bleared with frequent carousals. His cheek bruised in the
\ngrog-shop fight. His lip swollen with evil indulgences. Look out what
\nyou say to him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower down and
\nlower down, until, outcast of God and man, he lies in the alms-house,
\na blotch of loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls out for God;
\nand then for more drink. Now he prays; now curses. Now laughs as
\nfiends laugh. Then bites his nails to the quick. Then runs both hands
\nthrough the shock of hair that hangs about his head–like the mane
\nof a wild beast. Then shivers–until the cot shakes–with unutterable
\nterror. Then, with uplifted fist, fights back the devils, or clutches
\nthe serpents that seem winding him in their coil. Then asks for water,
\nwhich is instantly consumed by his cracked lips. Going his round some
\nmorning, the surgeon finds him dead.<\/p>\n
Straighten the limbs. You need not try to comb out or shove back the
\nmatted locks. Wrap him in a sheet. Put him in a box. Two men will
\ncarry it down to the wagon at the door. With chalk, write on the top
\nof the box the name of the exhausted libertine.<\/p>\n
Do you know who it is?<\/p>\n
That is _you_, O man, if, yielding to the temptations to an impure
\nlife, you go out, and perish.<\/p>\n
There is a way that seemeth bright, and fair, and beautiful; but the
\nend thereof is BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS FOREVER.<\/p>\n
THE GUN THAT KICKS OVER THE MAN WHO SHOOTS IT OFF.<\/p>\n
Blasphemy is a crime that aims at God, but does its chief harm to the
\none that fires it off.<\/p>\n
So I compare it to a piece of imperfect firearms to which the marksman
\nputs his eye, and, pulling the trigger, by the rebound finds himself
\nin the dust.<\/p>\n
I tell you a story, Oriental and marvellous. History speaks of the
\nrichest man in all the East. He had camels, oxen, asses, sheep, and
\nwhat would make any man rich even if he had nothing else–seven sons
\nand three daughters. It was the custom of this man’s children to
\nhave family reunions. One day he is at home, thinking of his darling
\nchildren, who are keeping banquet at their elder brother’s house.
\nYonder comes a messenger in hot haste, evidently, from his looks,
\nbearing evil tidings. Recovering himself sufficiently to speak, he
\nsays: “The oxen and the asses have been captured by a foraging party
\nof Sabeans, and all the servants are butchered except myself.” Another
\nmessenger is coming. He says that the sheep and the shepherds have
\nbeen struck by lightning. Another messenger is coming. He says that
\nthe Chaldeans have come and captured the camels, and killed all but
\nhimself. Another messenger, who says: “While thy sons and daughters
\nwere at the feast, a hurricane struck the corner of the tent, and they
\nare all dead!” But his misfortunes are not yet completed. The old man
\nis smitten with the elephantiasis, or black leprosy. Tumors from head
\nto foot; face distorted; forehead ridged with offensive tubercles;
\neyelashes fall out; nostrils excoriated; voice destroyed; intolerable
\nexhalation from the whole body; until, with none to dress his sores,
\nhe sits down in the ashes, with nothing but broken pieces of pottery
\nto use in the surgery of his wounds. At this point, when he needed
\nall consolation and encouragement, his wife comes to him, and says,
\nvirtually: “This is intolerable! Our property gone, our children
\nslain, and now this loathsome, disgusting disease is upon you. Why
\ndon’t you swear? Curse God and die!”<\/p>\n
But profanity would not have removed one tumor from his agonized body;
\nwould not have brought to his door one of the captured camels; would
\nnot have restored any one of the dead children. Swearing would have
\nmade the pain more unbearable, the pauperism into which he had plunged
\nmore distressing, the bereavement more excruciating.<\/p>\n
And yet, from the swearing and blasphemy with which our land is
\ncursed, one would think there were some great advantage to be reaped
\nfrom the practice. There is to-day in all our land no more prevalent
\ncustom, and no more God-defying abomination, than profane swearing.
\nYou can hardly walk our streets five minutes without having your ears
\nstung and your sensibilities shocked. The drayman swearing at his
\nhorse; the tinman at his solder; the sewing-girl imprecating her
\ntangled thread; the bricklayer cursing at his trowel; the carpenter at
\nhis plane; the sailor at the tackling; the merchant at the customer;
\nthe customer at the merchant; the printer at the miserable proofsheet;
\nthe accountant at the troublesome line of figures;–swearing in the
\ncellar and in the loft, before the counter and behind the counter, in
\nthe shop and on the street, in low saloon and fashionable bar-room.
\nChildren swear, men swear, ladies (!) swear. Profanity from the lowest
\nhaunt calling upon the Almighty, to the fashionable “O Lord!” of the
\nglittering drawing-room.<\/p>\n
This whole country is blasted with the evil. Coming from the West,
\na gentleman sat behind two persons conversing. Profanities were so
\nfrequent in the conversation of the two persons in front, that the
\ngentleman behind took out his pencil and paper and made a record. The
\nprofanities filled several sheets in the course of two days, at the
\nclose of which time the gentleman handed the manuscript to the persons
\nconversing. The men said: “Is it possible that we have uttered so
\nmany profanities in the course of two days?” The gentleman said:
\n“Yes.”–“Then,” said one of the men, “I shall never swear again.”<\/p>\n
I make no abstract discussion. I hate abstractions. I had rather come
\nright out and have a talk with you about a habit that you admit to be
\nwrong. This habit has grown from the fact that the young often think
\nit an evidence of manliness. There are thousands of boys and youth
\nwho indulge in it. I hear children along the street, but just able to
\nwalk, practising this iniquity. They cannot talk straight, but they
\nget enough distinctness to let you know that they are damning their
\nown souls and the souls of others. Oh! it is horrible to see a little
\nchild, the first time it lifts its feet to walk, set them down on
\nthe burning pavement of hell! Between sixteen and twenty years of age
\nthere is apt to come a time when a young man is as much ashamed of
\nnot being able to deliver an oath as he is of the dizziness that comes
\nfrom his first cigar. He has his hat and coat and boots of the
\nright pattern, and there is but one thing more now to bring him into
\n_fashion_, and that is a capacity to swear.<\/p>\n
So there are some of our young men surrounded by an atmosphere of
\nprofanities. Oaths sit on their lips, they roll under their tongues,
\nand nest in the shock of hair. In elegant drawing-rooms they abstain
\nfrom such utterances, but fill club-room and street with their
\nimmoralities of speech. You suggest the wrongfulness of the habit, and
\nthey thrust their finger in the sleeve of their vest, and swagger, and
\nsay: “Who cares!” They have no regard for God, but great respect for
\nthe ladies. Ah! there is no manliness in that.<\/p>\n
The most ungentlemanly thing a man can do is to swear. This habit is
\nbecoming more and more prevalent because of the immorality of parents
\nand employers. There are very many fathers who indulge in this habit.
\nThey feel moved to utter themselves in this way, but first look around
\nto see if their children are present. They have no idea that their
\nchildren know anything about it. The probability is that if you swear,
\nyour children swear. They were in the next room and heard you, or
\nsomebody told them about your habit. Your child is practising to do
\njust as you do. He is laughed at, at first, for his awkwardness, but
\nafter a while he will swear as well as you.<\/p>\n
Then look at the example of master carpenters, masons, roofers, and
\nhatters. You know how some of you go around the building, and, when
\nthe work of your journeyman and subordinates does not please you, what
\ndo you say? It is not praying, is it? Forthwith, your journeymen
\nand subordinates learn the habit. Hence our hat-shops, and
\nhouse-scaffoldings, and side-walks, and wharves, and dockyards, and
\ncellars, and lofts ring with blasphemies.<\/p>\n
Men argue that, if it is right for a man worth fifty or a hundred
\nthousand dollars to swear, it can be overlooked in men who have merely
\ntheir day’s wages. Because they are poor must they be denied this one
\nluxury?<\/p>\n
This habit becomes more prevalent because of the infirmities of
\ntemper. There are many men who, when at peace, are most fastidious
\nof speech, but when aroused into the violence of passion, blaze with
\nimprecation. The Oriental’s wife spoken of would not have liked her
\nhusband to be profane under ordinary circumstances, but now that the
\ncamels are gone, and the sheep are gone, and the property is gone,
\nand the boils have come, she says: “Why don’t you swear? Curse God
\nand die!” Others, all the year round, have not the froth of profanity
\nwiped from their lips, but try to expend all the fury of a twelvemonth
\nin one red-hot paragraph of five minutes. A man apologized for his
\noccasional swearing by saying that, once in a year, in this way
\nhe cleared himself out. There are men who have no control of their
\nblasphemous utterances, who want us to send them to Congress. Others
\nhave blasphemed in senatorial places, pretending afterwards that it
\nwas a mere rhetorical flourish.<\/p>\n
Many fall into this habit through the frequent use of what are called
\nby-words. I suppose that all have favorite phrases of this kind in
\nwhich there is no harm; but a profusion of this style of speech often
\nends in bald profanity. It is, “I declare!” “My stars!” “Mercy on me!”
\n“Good gracious!” “By George!” “By Jove!” and “By heavens!” and no harm
\nis intended; but it is a very easy transition from this kind of
\ntalk to that which is positively obnoxious. The English language is
\nmagnificent, and capable of expressing every shade of feeling and
\nevery degree of energy and zeal; and there is no need that we take
\nto ourselves unlawful words. If you are happy, Noah Webster offers
\nto your tongue ten thousand epithets in which you may express your
\nexhilaration; and if you are righteously indignant, there are in
\nhis dictionary whole armories of denunciation and scorn, sarcasm and
\nirony, caricature and wrath. Utter yourself against some meanness or
\nhypocrisy in all the blasphemies that ever smoked up from perdition,
\nand I will go on to denounce the same meanness and hypocrisy with a
\nhundred-fold more stress and vehemency in words across which no slime
\nhas ever trailed, and through which no infernal fires have shot their
\nforked tongues,–words pure, innocent, all-impressive, God-honored,
\nAnglo-Saxon,–in which Milton sang, and Bunyan dreamed, and
\nShakespeare wrote.<\/p>\n
But whatever be the source of this habit, it is on the increase. At
\nsixteen, boys swear with as much facility as the grandfather did at
\nsixty. Our streets are cursed by it from end to end. Our hotels, from
\nmorning until midnight, resound with it. Men curse on the way to the
\nbar to get their morning dram; curse the news-boy who cries the paper;
\ncurse the breakfast for being cold; curse at the bank, and curse at
\nthe store; curse on the way to bed; curse at the stone against which
\nthey strike their foot; and curse at the splinter that gets under the
\nnail. If you do not know that this is so, it is because your ear has
\nbeen hardened by the perpetual din of profanities that are enough to
\nbring down upon any city the hurricane of fire that consumed Sodom.<\/p>\n
The habit is creeping up into the higher circles. Every woman despises
\nflat and unvarnished imprecations; but in the most elevated circles
\nthere are women who swear without knowing it. They have read Bulwer,
\nand George Sand, and the exaggerated style of some of our imported as
\nwell as home-made periodical literature, until they do not actually
\nknow what is decency of speech. With fairy fan to their lips they
\nutter their oaths, and, under chandeliers which discover not the
\nfaintest blush, recklessly speak the holiest of names. This is helped
\non by the second glass of wine, that is _perfectly harmless_; and
\nthough no one dare charge her, being so finely dressed, with anything
\nlike intoxication, yet there comes a glassiness to the eye, and a glow
\nto the cheek, and a style of speech to the tongue that were not known
\nbefore she took the second glass that was _perfectly harmless_.<\/p>\n
One wild, terrific wave of blasphemy is sweeping over the land. See
\nthe effects of this widespread profanity in the increasing perjury.
\nIf men in ordinary conversation so commonly use the name of God, is it
\nwonderful that in the jury-box, and in the alderman’s office, and
\nin the custom-house so many swear falsely? Notice the way an oath is
\nadministered. They toss the Bible at a man, and in the most trivial
\nway say: “So help you God–kiss the book.” I suppose enough lies are
\nevery day told in the custom-house to sink it. Smuggling, although it
\nbe done against positive oath, is in some circles considered a grand
\njoke; and you say some day to your friend, “How can you sell those
\ngoods so cheaply?” and your friend says with an eye-twinkle, “The
\nCustom-House tariff was not as high on those things as it might have
\nbeen.” Men more easily break their solemn oaths than formerly. What
\nstrange verdicts juries do sometimes render! What peculiar charges
\njudges do sometimes make! What unaccountable slowness sheriffs and
\ntheir deputies sometimes exhibit in the execution of their writs! What
\nerratic railroad enterprises suddenly pass at our State capitals! What
\nwonderful changes Congress makes in the tariff on liquors!<\/p>\n
What is an oath? Anything solemn? Anything appealing to the Almighty?
\nAnything stupendous in man’s history? No! It is “kissing the book!”
\nIn a land where the name of God so often becomes the foot-ball of what
\nare called respectable circles, how can we expect that it can excite
\nany veneration when, in the presence of county clerk, or alderman, or
\njudge, or legislative assembly, it is used in solemn adjuration? This
\nhabit lowers, bedwarfs, and destroys the entire moral nature. You
\nmight as well expect to raise harvests and vineyards on the side of
\nbelching Stromboli as to have any great excellency grow upon your soul
\nwhen it so often overflows with the scori? of this awful propensity.
\nYou will never swear yourself up. You will swear yourself down. The
\nMohammedans, when they find a slip of paper they cannot read, put
\nit aside, for fear the name of God is on it. That, you say, is one
\nextreme. We go to the other.<\/p>\n
You are willing to acknowledge this a miserable habit, and would like
\nto have some recipe for its cure.<\/p>\n
Reflect much upon the uselessness of the habit. Did a volley of oaths
\never start a heavy load? Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein? Did
\nthey ever extirpate the meanness of a customer? Did they ever collect
\na bad debt? Did they ever cure a toothache? Did they ever stop a
\ntwinge of the gout? Did they ever save you a dollar, or put you a step
\nforward in any great enterprise? or enable you to gain a position, or
\nto accomplish anything that you ever wanted to do? How much did
\nyou ever make by swearing? What, in all the round of a lifetime of
\nprofanity, did you ever _gain_ by the habit?<\/p>\n
Reflect, also, upon the fact that it arouses God’s indignation. The
\nBible reiterates, in paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after
\nchapter, the fact that all swearers and blasphemers are accursed now,
\nand are to be forever miserable. There is no iniquity that has been so
\noften visited with the immediate curse of God.<\/p>\n
At New Brunswick, a young man was standing on the railroad track
\nblaspheming. The cars passed, and he was found on the track with his
\ntongue cut out. People could not understand how, with comparatively
\nlittle bruising of the rest of his body, his tongue could have been
\ncut out. Not long ago, in Chicago, a man told a falsehood, and said
\nthat he hoped, if what he said was not true, God would strike him
\ndead. He instantly fell. There was no longer any pulse. There was no
\nreason for his death, except that he asked God to strike him dead,
\nand God did it. In Scotland a club was formed, in which the members
\ncompeted as to which could use the most horrid oaths. The man who
\nsucceeded best in the infamy was made president of the club. His
\ntongue began to swell. It protruded from his mouth. He could not draw
\nit in. He died within three days. Physicians were astounded. There was
\nnothing like it in all the books. What was the matter with him? _He
\ncursed God, and died!_ Near Catskill, N.Y., during a thunder-storm, a
\ngroup of men were standing in a blacksmith-shop. There came a crash
\nof thunder, and the men were startled. One man said that he was not
\nafraid; and he made a wager that he dared go out in front of the shop,
\nwhile the lightnings were flying, and dare the Almighty. He went
\nout; shook his fist at the heavens, crying, “Strike, if you dare!”
\nInstantly a thunder-bolt struck him. He was dead. He cursed God, and
\ndied!<\/p>\n
God will not abide this sin. He will not let it escape. There is a
\nkind of manifold paper by which a man may, with a heavy pencil, write
\nupon a dozen sheets at once–the writing going down through all the
\nsheets. So every oath and blasphemy goes through, and is written
\nindelibly on every leaf of God’s remembrance. Ah! how much our Father
\nbears! Can you make an estimate of how many blasphemies will roll up
\nfrom the streets and saloons of our cities to-night? If you go out
\nand look up you cannot see them. There will be no trail of fire on the
\nsky. But the air is full of them. The name of Christ is not so often
\nspoken in worship as in derision. God will be cursed to-night by
\nhundreds of lips. The grog-shops will curse him. The houses of shame
\nwill curse him. Five Points will curse him. Bedford street will curse
\nhim. Chestnut street will curse him. Madison square will curse him.
\nBeacon street will curse him. Every street in all our cities will
\ncurse him.<\/p>\n
This blasphemy is an abomination that no words of mine can describe.
\nAnd God hears it. They curse His name. They curse his Sabbath. They
\ncurse his Bible. They curse his people. They curse his Only Begotten
\nSon. Yes; they swear by the name of Jesus! It makes my hair rise, and
\nmy flesh creep, and my blood chill, and my breath catch, and my foot
\nhalt.<\/p>\n
Dionysius had a cave where men were incarcerated. At the top of the
\ncave was an aperture to which he could put his ear, and could hear
\nevery sigh, every groan, every word of the inmates. This world is so
\narranged that all its voices go up to heaven. God puts down his ear
\nand hears every word of praise offered, and every word of blasphemy
\nspoken.<\/p>\n
Our cities must come to judgment. All these oaths must be answered
\nfor. They die on the air, but they have an eternal echo. Listen
\nfor the echo. It rolls back from the ages to come. Listen:–“_All
\nblasphemers shall have their place in the lake that burneth with fire
\nand brimstone_.” Some have thought that a lost soul in the future
\nworld will do that which it was most prone to do in this world. If so,
\nthen think of a man blaspheming God through all eternity!<\/p>\n
This habit grows upon a man, until at last it pushes him off forever.
\nI saw a man die with an oath between his teeth. Voltaire rose from
\nhis dying pillow, and, supposing that he saw Christ in the room, cried
\nout, “Crush the wretch!” A celebrated officer during the last war fell
\nmortally wounded, and the only word he sent to his wife was: “Tell her
\nI fought like hell!”<\/p>\n
There are thousands of men who are having all their moral nature
\npulled down by the fiery fingers of this habit. At last, pinched,
\nshrivelled, and consumed, they will get down on their beds to die, and
\nat the step of the doctor in the hall, or the shutting of the front
\ndoor, they will start up, thinking they hear the sepulchral gates
\ncreak open.<\/p>\n
Who is this God that you should maltreat his name? Has he been
\nhaunting you, starving you, or freezing you all your life? No! He is
\nyour Father, patient and loving. He rocked your cradle with blessings,
\nfrom the time you were born. He clothes you now, and always has
\nclothed you. You never had a sickness but he was sorry for you. He has
\nbrooded over you with wings of love. He has tried to press you to his
\nheart of kindness and compassion. He wants to forgive you. He wants to
\nhelp you. He wants to make you happy. He watched last night over your
\npillow while you slept. He will watch to-night. He was your father’s
\nGod, and your mother’s. He has housed them safe from the blast, and he
\nwants to shelter you. Do you trifle with his name? Do you smite him in
\nthe face? Do you thrust him back by your imprecations?<\/p>\n
Who is this Jesus Christ that I hear men swearing by? Who is he? Some
\ndestroyer, that they so treat his name? What foul thing hath he done,
\nthat our great cities speak his name in thousand-voiced jeer and
\ncontempt? Who is he? A Lamb, whose blood simmered in the fires of
\nsacrifice, to save you. A Brother, who put down his crown of glory
\nthat you might take it up. For many years he has been striving, night
\nand day, to win your affections. There is nothing in heaven that he
\nis not willing to give you. He came with blistered feet and streaming
\neyes, with aching head and broken heart to relieve you. On the craft
\nof a doomed humanity he pushed out into the sea, to pick you off the
\nrock. Who will ever again malign his name? Is there a hand that will
\never again be lifted to wound him? If so, let that hand, blood-dipped,
\nbe lifted now. Which one of my readers will ever again utter his
\nsacred name in imprecation? If any, now let them speak. Not one! Not
\none!<\/p>\n
One summer among the New England hills there was an evening memorable
\nfor storm and darkness. The clouds, which had been all day gathering,
\nat last unlimbered their batteries. The Housatonic, that flows
\nin silence save as the paddles of pleasure-parties rattle in the
\nrow-lock, was lashed into foam and its waves staggered, not knowing
\nwhere to lay themselves. The hills jarred at the rumbling of God’s
\nchariots. Blinding sheets of rain drove the cattle to the bars, and
\nbeat against the window-pane as if to dash it in. The corn-fields
\ncrouched in the fury, and the ripened grain-fields threw their crowns
\nof gold at the feet of the storm-king. After the night shut in, it
\nwas a double night. Its black mantle was rent with the lightnings, and
\ninto its locks were twisted the leaves of uprooted oaks, and shreds
\nof canvas torn from the masts of the beached shipping. It was such a
\nnight as makes you thank God for shelter, and bids you open the door
\nto let in even the spaniel howling outside with the terror. We went
\nto sleep under the full blast of heaven’s great orchestra, and the
\nforests with uplifted voice, in choiring hosts that filled all the
\nside of the mountains, praising the Lord.<\/p>\n
We waked not until the fingers of the sunny morn touched our eyelids.
\nWe looked out and. Housatonic slept as quiet as a baby’s dream.
\nPillars of white cloud set up along the heavens looked like the
\ncastles of the blest, built for hierarchs of heaven on the beach of
\nthe azure sea. The trees sparkled as though there had been some great
\ngrief in heaven, and each leaf had been God-appointed to catch an angel’s
\ntear. It seemed as if God our Father had looked down upon earth, his
\nwayward child, and stooped to her tear-wet cheek, and kissed it.<\/p>\n
Even so will the darkness of our country’s crime and suffering be
\nlifted. God will roll back the night of storm, and bring in the
\nmorning of joy. Its golden light will gild the city spire, and strike
\nthe forests of Maine, and tinge the masts of Mobile; and with one end
\nresting upon the Atlantic beach and the other on the Pacific coast,
\nGod will spring a great rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting
\ncovenant that the land shall never again be deluged with crime.<\/p>\n
LIES: WHITE AND BLACK.<\/p>\n
There are ten thousand ways of telling a lie. A man’s entire life may
\nbe a falsehood, while with his lips he may not once directly falsify.
\nThere are those who state what is positively untrue, but afterwards
\nsay, “may be,” softly. These departures from the truth are called
\n“white lies;” but there is really no such thing as a white lie. The
\nwhitest lie that was ever told was as black as perdition. No
\ninventory of public crimes will be sufficient that omits this gigantic
\nabomination. There are men, high in Church and State, actually useful,
\nself-denying, and honest in many things, who, upon certain subjects,
\nand in certain spheres, are not at all to be depended upon for
\nveracity. Indeed, there are multitudes of men who have their notions
\nof truthfulness so thoroughly perverted, that they do not know when
\nthey _are_ lying. With many it is a cultivated sin; with some it seems
\na natural infirmity. I have known people who seemed to have been born
\nliars. The falsehoods of their lives extended from cradle to grave.
\nPrevarication, misrepresentation, and dishonesty of speech appeared
\nin their first utterances and was as natural to them as any of
\ntheir infantile diseases, and was a sort of moral croup or spiritual
\nscarlatina. But many have been placed in circumstances where this
\ntendency has day by day, and hour by hour, been called to larger
\ndevelopment. They have gone from attainment to attainment, and from
\nclass to class, until they have become regularly graduated liars.<\/p>\n
The air of the city is filled with falsehoods. They hang pendent from
\nthe chandeliers of our finest residences; they crowd the shelves of
\nsome of our merchant princes; they fill the side-walk from curb-stone
\nto brown-stone facing. They cluster around the mechanic’s hammer,
\nand blossom from the end of the merchant’s yard-stick, and sit in
\nthe doors of churches. Some call them “fiction.” Some style them
\n“fabrication.” You might say that they were subterfuge,
\ndisguise, delusion, romance, evasion, pretence, fable, deception,
\nmisrepresentation; but, as I am ignorant of anything to be gained by
\nthe hiding of a God-defying outrage under a lexicographer’s blanket, I
\nshall chiefly call them what my father taught me to call them–_lies_.<\/p>\n
I shall divide them into agricultural, mercantile, mechanical, and
\necclesiastical lies; leaving those that are professional, social, and
\npolitical for some other chapter.<\/p>\n
First, then, I will speak of those that are more particularly
\n_agricultural_. There is something in the perpetual presence of
\nnatural objects to make a man pure. The trees never issue “false
\nstock.” Wheat-fields are always honest. Rye and oats never move out
\nin the night, not paying for the place they have occupied. Corn shocks
\nnever make false assignments. Mountain brooks are always “current.”
\nThe gold on the grain is never counterfeit. The sunrise never flaunts
\nin false colors. The dew sports only genuine diamonds.<\/p>\n
Taking farmers as a class, I believe they are truthful, and fair in
\ndealing, and kind-hearted. But the regions surrounding our cities
\ndo not always send this sort of men to our markets. Day by day there
\ncreak through our streets, and about the market-houses, farm wagons
\nthat have not an honest spoke in their wheels, or a truthful rivet
\nfrom tongue to tail-board. During the last few years there have been
\ntimes when domestic economy has foundered on the farmer’s firkin.
\nNeither high taxes, nor the high price of dry-goods, nor the
\nexorbitancy of labor, could excuse much that the city has witnessed
\nin the behavior of the yeomanry. By the quiet firesides of Westchester
\nand Bucks counties I hope there may be seasons of deep reflection and
\nhearty repentance.<\/p>\n
Rural districts are accustomed to rail at great cities as given up to
\nfraud and every form of unrighteousness; but our cities do not absorb
\nall the abominations. Our citizens have learned the importance of
\nnot always trusting to the size and style of apples in the top of a
\nfarmer’s barrel, as an indication of what may be found farther down.
\nMany of our people are accustomed to watch to see how correctly a
\nbushel of beets is measured; and there are not many honest milk-cans.
\nDeceptions do not all cluster around city halls. When our cities sit
\ndown and weep over their sins, all the surrounding counties ought to
\ncome in and weep with them.<\/p>\n
There is often hostility on the part of producers against traders,
\nas though the man who raises the corn were necessarily more honorable
\nthan the grain dealer, who pours it into his mammoth bin. There ought
\nto be no such hostility. The occupation of one is as necessary as that
\nof the other. Yet producers often think it no wrong to snatch away
\nfrom the trader; and they say to the bargain-maker, “You get your
\nmoney easy.” Do they get it easy? Let those who in the quiet field and
\nbarn get their living exchange places with those who stand to-day amid
\nthe excitements of commercial life, and see if they find it so very
\neasy. While the farmer goes to sleep with the assurance that his corn
\nand barley will be growing all the night, moment by moment adding to
\nhis revenue, the merchant tries to go to sleep, conscious that that
\nmoment his cargo may be broken on the rocks, or damaged by the wave
\nthat sweeps clear across the hurricane deck; or that the gold gamblers
\nmay, that very hour, be plotting some monetary revolution, or the
\nburglars be prying open his safe, or his debtors fleeing the town, or
\nhis landlord raising the rent, or the fires kindling on the block that
\ncontains all his estate. _Easy!_ is it? God help the merchants! It is
\nhard to have the palms of the hand blistered with out-door work; but a
\nmore dreadful process when, through mercantile anxieties, the brain is
\nconsumed!<\/p>\n
In the next place we notice _mercantile_ lies, those before the
\ncounter and behind the counter. I will not attempt to specify the
\ndifferent forms of commercial falsehood. There are merchants who
\nexcuse themselves for deviation from truthfulness because of what
\nthey call commercial custom. In other words, the multiplication and
\nuniversality of a sin turns it into a virtue. There have been large
\nfortunes gathered where there was not one drop of unrequited toil
\nin the wine; not one spark of bad temper flashing from the bronze
\nbracket; not one drop of needle-woman’s heart-blood in the crimson
\nplush; while there are other great establishments in which there is
\nnot one door-knob, not one brick, not one trinket, not one thread of
\nlace, but has upon it the mark of dishonor. What wonder if, some day,
\na hand of toil that had been wrung, and worn out, and blistered until
\nthe skin came off, should be placed against the elegant wall-paper,
\nleaving its mark of blood,–four fingers and a thumb; or that,
\nsome day, walking the halls, there should be a voice accosting the
\noccupant, saying, _Six cents for making a shirt_; and, flying the
\nroom, another voice should say, _Twelve cents for an army blanket_;
\nand the man should try to sleep at night, but ever and anon be
\naroused, until, getting up on one elbow, he should shriek out, _Who’s
\nthere?_<\/p>\n
There are thousands of fortunes made in commercial spheres that are
\nthroughout righteous. God will let his favor rest upon every scroll,
\nevery pictured wall, every traceried window; and the joy that flashes
\nfrom the lights, and showers from the music, and dances in the
\nchildren’s quick feet, pattering through the hall, will utter the
\ncongratulation of men and the approval of God.<\/p>\n
A merchant can, to the last item, be thoroughly honest. There is never
\nany need of falsehood. Yet how many will, day by day, hour by hour,
\nutter what they _know_ to be wrong. You say that you are selling at
\nless than cost. If so, then it is right to say it. But did that thing
\ncost you less than what you ask for it? If not, then you have lied.
\nYou say that article cost you twenty-five dollars. Did it? If so,
\nthen all right. If it did not, then you have lied. Suppose you are
\na purchaser. You are “beating down” the goods. You say that that
\narticle, for which five dollars is charged, is not worth more than
\nfour. Is it worth no more than four dollars? Then all right. If it be
\nworth more, and, for the sake of getting it for less than its value,
\nyou wilfully depreciate it, you have lied. _You_ may call it a sharp
\ntrade. The recording angel writes it down on the ponderous tomes
\nof eternity–“Mr. So and So, merchant on Water street, or in Eighth
\nstreet, or in State street; or Mrs. So and So, keeping house on Beacon
\nstreet, or on Madison avenue, or Rittenhouse square, told one
\nlie.” You may consider it insignificant, because relating to an
\ninsignificant purchase. You would despise the man who would falsify
\nin regard to some great matter, in which the city or the whole country
\nwas concerned; but this is only a box of buttons, or a row of pins,
\nor a case of needles. Be not deceived. The article purchased may be so
\nsmall you can put it in your vest pocket, but the sin was bigger than
\nthe Pyramids, and the echo of the dishonor will reverberate through
\nall the mountains of eternity.<\/p>\n
You throw out on your counter some specimens of handkerchiefs. Your
\ncustomer asks, “Is that all silk? no cotton in it?” You answer, “It
\nis all silk.” Was it all silk? If so, all right. But was it partly
\ncotton? Then you have lied. Moreover, you lost by the falsehood. The
\ncustomer, though he may live at Lynn, or Doylestown, or Poughkeepsie,
\nwill find out that you defrauded him, and next spring, when he again
\ncomes shopping, he will look at your sign and say: “I will not try
\nthere. That is the place where I got that handkerchief.” So that, by
\nthat one dishonest bargain, you picked your own pocket and insulted
\nthe Almighty.<\/p>\n
Would you dare to make an estimate of how many falsehoods in trade
\nwere yesterday told by hardware men, and clothiers, and fruit-dealers,
\nand dry-goods establishments, and importers, and jewellers, and
\nlumbermen, and coal-merchants, and stationers, and tobacconists? Lies
\nabout saddles, about buckles, about ribbons, about carpets, about
\ngloves, about coats, about shoes, about hats, about watches, about
\ncarriages, about books,–about everything. In the name of the Lord
\nAlmighty, I arraign commercial falsehoods as one of the greatest of
\nabominations in city and town.<\/p>\n
In the next place, I notice _mechanical_ lies. There is no class of
\nmen who administer more to the welfare of the city than artisans. To
\ntheir hand we must look for the building that shelters us, for the
\ngarments that clothe us, for the car that carries us. They wield
\na widespread influence. There is much derision of what is called
\n“_muscular Christianity_;” but in the latter day of the world’s
\nprosperity, I think that the Christian will be muscular. We have the
\nright to expect of those stalwart men of toil the highest possible
\nintegrity. Many of them answer all our expectations, and stand at the
\nfront of religious and philanthropic enterprises. But this class, like
\nthe others that I have named, has in it those who lack in the element
\nof veracity. They cannot all be trusted. In times when the demand for
\nlabor is great, it is impossible to meet the demands of the public, or
\ndo work with that promptness and perfection that would at other times
\nbe possible. But there are mechanics whose word cannot be trusted
\nat any time. No man has a right to promise more work than he can do.
\nThere are mechanics who say that they will come Monday, but they do
\nnot come until Wednesday. You put work in their hands that they tell
\nyou shall be completed in ten days, but it is thirty. There have been
\nhouses built of which it might be said that every nail driven, every
\nfoot of plastering put on, every yard of pipe laid, every shingle
\nhammered, every brick mortared, could tell of falsehood connected
\ntherewith. There are men attempting to do ten or fifteen pieces of
\nwork who have not the time or strength to do more than five or six
\npieces; but by promises never fulfilled keep all the undertakings
\nwithin their own grasp. This is what they call _”nursing” the job_.<\/p>\n
How much wrong to his soul and insult to God a mechanic would save, if
\nhe promised only so much as he expected to be able to do. Society has
\nno right to ask of you impossibilities.<\/p>\n
You cannot always calculate correctly, and you may fail because you
\ncannot get the help that you anticipate. But now I am speaking of the
\nwilful making of promises that you know you cannot keep. Did you say
\nthat that shoe should be mended, that coat repaired, those brick
\nlaid, that harness sewed, that door grained, that spout fixed, or that
\nwindow glazed, by Saturday, knowing that you would neither be able
\nto do it yourself nor get any one else to do it? Then, before God
\nand man, you are a liar. You may say that it makes no particular
\ndifference, and that if you had told the truth you would have lost the
\njob, and that people expect to be disappointed. But that excuse will
\nnot answer. There is a voice of thunder rolling among the drills, and
\nplanes, and shoe-lasts, and shears, which says: “All liars shall have
\ntheir place in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.”<\/p>\n
I next notice _ecclesiastical_ lies; that is, falsehoods told for
\nthe purpose of advancing churches and sects, or for the purpose of
\ndepleting them. There is no use in asking many a Calvinist what an
\nArminian believes, for he will be apt to tell you that the Arminian
\nbelieves that a man can convert himself; or to ask the Arminian
\nwhat the Calvinist believes, for he will tell you that the Calvinist
\nbelieves that God made some men just to damn them. There is no need of
\nasking a pedo-Baptist what a Baptist believes, for he will be apt to
\nsay that the Baptist believes immersion to be positively necessary to
\nsalvation. It is almost impossible for one denomination of Christians,
\nwithout prejudice or misrepresentation, to state the sentiment of
\nan opposing sect. If a man hates Presbyterians, and you ask him what
\nPresbyterians believe, he will tell you that they believe that there
\nare infants in hell a span long.<\/p>\n
It is strange also how individual churches will sometimes make
\nmisstatements about other individual churches. It is especially so in
\nregard to falsehoods told with reference to prosperous enterprises.
\nAs long as a church is feeble, and the singing is discordant, and the
\nminister, through the poverty of the church, must go with threadbare
\ncoat, and here and there a worshipper sits in the end of a pew having
\nall the seat to himself, religious sympathizers of other churches will
\nsay, “What a pity!” But, let a great day of prosperity come, and even
\nministers of the gospel, who ought to be rejoiced at the largeness and
\nextent of the work, denounce, and misrepresent, and falsify,–starting
\nthe suspicion, in regard to themselves, that the reason they do not
\nlike the corn is because it is not ground in their own mill.<\/p>\n
How long before we shall learn to be fair in our religious criticisms!
\nThe keenest jealousies on earth are church jealousies. The field of
\nChristian work is so large that there is no need that our hoe-handles
\nhit.<\/p>\n
May God extirpate from the world ecclesiastical lies, commercial lies,
\nmechanical lies, and agricultural lies, and make every man, the world
\nover, to speak truth with his neighbor!<\/p>\n
A GOOD TIME COMING.<\/p>\n
As on some bitter cold night, while threshing our hands about to keep
\nour thumbs from freezing, we have looked up and seen the northern
\nlights blazing along the sky, the windows of heaven illumined at
\nthe news of some great victory, so from beyond this bitter night of
\nabomination a brightness strikes through from the other side.<\/p>\n
I have thought that it would be well, in these chapters on the sins of
\nthe times, to lift before you a vision of what our cities will be
\nwhen the work of good men shall have been concluded and our population
\nredeemed. I doubt not that sometimes men have shut this book, thinking
\nthat the gigantic wrongs we depict may never be discomfited. Lest you
\nbe utterly disheartened, I will show you that we fight in a war in
\nwhich we will be completely victorious. This is to be no drawn battle;
\nfor, when it is done, the result will not be disputed by a man on
\nearth, or an angel in heaven, or a devil in hell. We shall have
\ncaptured every one of the strongholds of darkness. You and I will
\nlive to see the day when gambling-hells will be changed into places of
\nChristian merchandise, and houses of sin swept and garnished for the
\nresidence of the purest home circles.<\/p>\n
Beethoven was deaf, and could not hear the airs he composed; but when
\nthe song of universal disenthralment arises, and white Circassian
\nstands up by the side of black Ethiopian, and tropical groves wave to
\nthe Lebanon cedars, we shall, standing somewhere, know it and see it,
\nand hear it. If gone from earth, we will be allowed to come out on the
\nhills and look.<\/p>\n
We do not talk about impossibilities. We do not propose a medicine
\nabout which we have to say that it will “kill or cure.” For this balm
\nthat oozes from the tree of heaven will inevitably cure.<\/p>\n
I remark that this coming time of municipal elevation will be a time
\nof financial prosperity. Many seem to suppose that when the world’s
\nbetter days come, the people will forsake their industries, and give
\nthemselves to perpetual psalm-singing, and, being all absorbed in
\nspiritual things, will become reckless as to dress and dwelling; and
\nvery rigid laws then governing the commercial world, all enterprise
\nand speculation will cease, and all hilarity be stricken out of the
\nsocial circle. There is no warrant for such an absurd anticipation. I
\nsuppose that when society is reconstructed, where there is now, in the
\ncourse of a year, one fortune made, there will be a hundred fortunes
\nmade. Every one knows that the commercial world thrives in proportion
\nas there is confidence between man and man; and the extirpation of all
\ndouble-dealing and fraud from society will increase this confidence,
\nand hence greater prosperity. The heavy commercial disasters that have
\nsmitten this land were the work of godless speculators and infamous
\nstock-gamblers. It is crime that is the mightiest foe to business;
\nbut when the right shall hurl back into ruin the plots of bad men,
\nand purify the commercial code, and thunder down fraudulent
\nestablishments, and put into the hands of honest men the keys of
\ncommercial prosperity, blessed will be the bargain-makers of the city.<\/p>\n
That will be a prosperous time, for taxes will be a mere nothing.
\nEvery style of business is taxed now to the utmost. City taxes, county
\ntaxes, State taxes, United States taxes, license taxes, manufacturing
\ntaxes, stamp taxes,–taxes! taxes! taxes! Our citizens must make a
\nsmall fortune every year to meet these exactions. What hand fastens
\nto all of our great industries this tremendous load? Crime! We have
\nto pay the board of every man and woman who, by intemperance, is
\ncast into the alms-house. We have to support the orphans of those who
\nplunge themselves into their graves by beastly indulgences. We support
\nfrom our pockets the large machinery of municipal government, which is
\nvast just in proportion as the criminal proclivities of the city
\nare great. What makes necessary hospitals, houses of refuge,
\npolice-stations, and alms-houses, the Tombs, Sing Sing, and
\nMoyamensing?<\/p>\n
In that good time coming there shall be no exhaustive taxation; no
\norphans homeless, for parents will be able to leave their children
\na competency; no prisons, for crime will have given place to virtue.
\nThen the vast swindles which now, from time to time, disgrace our
\ncities, will be unheard of. No voting of public money that, on its way
\nto some city improvement, falls into the pockets of those who voted
\nit. No courts of Oyer and Terminer, at vast expense to the people. No
\nempanelling of juries to inquire into theft, arson, murder, slander,
\nand black-mail. In that day of redemption there will be better
\nfactories, grander architecture, finer equipages, larger estates,
\nricher opulence.<\/p>\n
Again: when our cities are purified the churches will be multiplied,
\npurified, and strengthened. Now, denominations, and the individuals of
\nthe different sects, are often jealous of each other. Christians are
\nnot always kindly disposed toward each other; and ministers of the
\ngospel sometimes forget the bond of brotherhood. In that day they will
\nbe sympathetic and helpful. There may be differences of opinion and
\nsentiment, but no acerbity, no hypercriticism, and no exclusiveness.
\nIn that day all the churches will be filled with worshippers. We
\nhave not to-day, in the cities, church-room for one-fourth of our
\npopulation; and yet there is a great deal more room than the people
\noccupy. The churches do not average an attendance of five hundred
\npeople. The vast majority do not attend public worship. But in the
\nday of which I speak there will be enough church-room to hold all the
\npeople, and the room will be occupied. In that time what rousing songs
\nwill be sung! What earnest sermons will be preached! What fervent
\nprayers will be offered! In these days a _fashionable_ church is a
\nplace where, after a careful toilet, a few people come in, sit down,
\nand what time they can get their minds off their stores, or away from
\nthe new style of hat in the seat before them, listen in silence to the
\nminister–warranted to hit no man’s sins–and to the choir, who are
\nagreed to sing tunes that nobody knows; and, having passed away an
\nhour in dreamy lounging, go home refreshed.<\/p>\n
I pronounce much of what is called “church music,” in our day, a
\nmockery and a farce. Though I have neither a cultured voice nor a
\ncultured ear, no man shall do my singing. When the storms, and the
\ntrees, and the dragons are called on to praise the Lord, I feel that
\nI must sing, for I know more about music than do the dragons. Nothing
\ncan take the place of artistic music. The dollar that I pay to hear
\nParepa or Nilsson sing is far from being wasted. But, when the hymn
\nis read, and the angels of God stoop from their thrones to bear up
\non their wings the praise of the great congregation, let us not drive
\nthem away with our indifference. I have preached in churches where
\nfabulous sums of money were paid to performers, and the harmony was
\nexquisite as any harmony that ever went up from an Academy of Music;
\nand yet, for all the purposes of devotion, I would prefer the hearty,
\nout-breaking song of a backwoods Methodist camp-meeting. When these
\nfancy starveling songs get up to the gate of heaven, how do you
\nsuppose they look, standing beside the great doxologies of the
\nglorified? Let an operatic performance, floating upward, get many
\nhours the start, and it shall be caught and passed by the shout of the
\nSailors’ Bethel, or the hosanna of the Sabbath-school children.<\/p>\n
I know a church where there was no singing except that done by the
\nchoir, save one old Christian man; and they waited upon him by
\na committee, and asked him if he would not stop singing, for he
\ndisturbed the choir!<\/p>\n
The day cometh when all the churches will rejoice in this department
\nof service, rightly conducted, and when from all the great audiences
\nof attentive worshippers will rise a multitudinous anthem.<\/p>\n
“O God! let all the people praise thee!” Again: when the city is
\nredeemed, the low haunts of vice and pollution will be extinguished.
\nMr. Etzler, of England, proposes, by the forces of tide, and wind,
\nand wave, and sunshine, to reconstruct the world. In a book of
\nmuch genius, which rushed rapidly from edition to edition, he
\nsays:–“Fellow-men: I promised to show the means of creating a
\nparadise within ten years, where everything desirable for human life
\nmay be had by every man in superabundance, without labor and without
\npay; where the whole face of nature shall be changed into the most
\nbeautiful forms, and man may live in the most magnificent palaces,
\nin all imaginable refinements of luxury, and in the most delightful
\ngardens; where he may accomplish without labor, in one year, more than
\nhitherto could be done in thousands of years; may level continents;
\nsink valleys; create lakes; drain lakes and swamps, and intersect the
\nland everywhere with beautiful canals and roads for transporting heavy
\nloads of many thousand tons, and for travelling a thousand miles in
\ntwenty-four hours; may cover the ocean with floating islands, movable
\nin any desired direction, with an immense power and celerity, in
\nperfect security, and with all the comforts and luxuries; bearing
\ngardens and palaces, with thousands of families, and provided with
\nrivulets of sweet water; may explore the interior of the globe, and
\ntravel from pole to pole in a fortnight; provide himself with means
\nyet unheard of for increasing his knowledge of the world, and so his
\nintelligence; leading a life of continual happiness, of enjoyment yet
\nunknown; free himself from almost all the evils that afflict mankind
\nexcept death, and even put death far beyond the common period of human
\nlife, and, finally, render it less afflicting. From the houses to be
\nbuilt will be afforded the most enrapturing views to be fancied;
\nfrom the galleries, from the roof, and from its turrets may be seen
\ngardens, as far as the eye can see, full of fruits and flowers,
\narranged in the most beautiful order, with walks, colonnades,
\naqueducts, canals, ponds, plains, amphitheatres, terraces, fountains,
\nsculptured works, pavilions, gondolas, places for public amusement,
\nto delight the eye and fancy. All this to be done by urging the water,
\nthe wind, and the sunshine to their full development.” Mr. Etzler
\ngives plates of the machinery by which all this is to be done. He
\nproposes the organization of a company; and says small shares of
\ntwenty dollars will be sufficient–in all from two hundred thousand to
\nthree hundred thousand dollars–to create the first establishment for
\na whole community, of from three to four thousand individuals. “At the
\nend of five years we shall have a principal of two hundred millions
\nof dollars; and so paradise will be wholly regained at the end of the
\ntenth year.”<\/p>\n
There is more reason in this than in many of the plans proposed; but
\nmechanical forces can never recreate the world. I shall take no shares
\nin the large company that is proposed; my faith is that Christianity
\nwill yet make the worst street of our cities better than the best
\nstreet now is.<\/p>\n
Archimedes consumed the enemies of Syracuse by a great sun-glass. As
\nthe ships came up the harbor, the sun’s rays were concentrated upon
\nthem: now the sails are wings of fire; the masts fall, and the vessels
\nsink. So, by the great sun-glass of the Gospel, the rays of heaven
\nwill be concentred upon all the filth and unchastity and crime of our
\ngreat towns, and under the heat they will blaze and expire. When the
\nday comes that I have shown will come, suppose you that there will
\nbe any midnight brawls? any shivering mendicants, kicked off from the
\nmarble steps? any droves of unwashed, uncombed, unfed children? any
\nblasphemers in the street? any staggering past of inebriates? No! No
\nwine-cellars. No lager-beer saloons. No distilleries where they make
\nthe XXX. No bloated cheeks. No blood-shot eyes. No fist-battered
\nforeheads. The grandchildren of that woman who now walks up the street
\nwith a curse, as the boys stone her, will be philanthropists, and heal
\nthe sick, and manage great commercial enterprises.<\/p>\n
When our cities are so raised, we shall have a different style of
\nmunicipal government. The great question, in regard to the execution
\nof the law, now is: “What is popular?” Our city governments
\nslumber–great carcasses of insufficiency, sending up their stench
\ninto the nostrils of high heaven, while there are thousands of
\ngambling-houses, and drinking-saloons, and more places of damnable
\nlust than the decency of the country has time to count. Do you tell me
\nthat the authorities do not know it? They do know it. All the police
\nknow it. The sheriff and his deputies know it. The aldermen know it.
\nThe mayors know it. Everybody who keeps his eyes and ears open knows
\nit. In the name of God I impeach the municipal authorities of many of
\nour cities, that they neglect to execute the law. You cannot charge
\nit upon any one party. Within the past few years both parties, and
\nall kinds of parties, have been in power; but the work has never been
\ndone. You have but to pass the City Hall, or look in upon the rooms of
\nsome of our city officials, to see to what sort of men our cities have
\nbeen abandoned. Look at the swearing, bloated, sensual wretches who
\nstand on the outside of the New York City Hall, picking their teeth,
\nwaiting for some crumbs of emolument to fall at their feet; and then
\ntell me how far it is from New York to Sodom. Who are those wretched
\nwomen sent up in the city van to the police-court, apprehended for
\ndrunkenness? They will be locked up in jail; but what will be done
\nwith the groggeries that made them drunk? Who are these men in the
\ncity-prison? That man stole a pair of shoes; that boy, one dollar from
\nthe counter; that girl snatched a purse–all villanies of less than
\ntwenty or thirty dollars’ damage to the community; but for
\nthat gambler, who last night took that young man’s thousand
\ndollars–nothing! For that man who broke in upon the purity of a
\nChristian household, and by a perfidy and adroitness that beat the
\nstrategy of hell, flung that girl into the chasm of earthly
\ndespair, from which her lost soul goes shrieking to the bottomless
\npit–nothing! For those who “fleeced” a young man, and induced him to
\nfilch from his employers vast sums of money, until, in his agony, he
\ncame to an officer of the church, and frantically asked what he should
\ndo–nothing!<\/p>\n
Verily, small crimes ought to be punished; but it were more just if
\nour authorities would turn out from our jails and penitentiaries the
\nsmall villains, the petty criminals, the infantile offenders, the
\nten-dollar desperadoes, and fill their places with some of these
\nmonsters of abomination, who drive their roan span through our fine
\nstreets until honest men have to fly to escape being run over; and
\nif they would turn out from their incarceration the poor girls of
\nthe town, and put in some of the magnificent ladies who cover up the
\nsidewalk with their unpaid-for fineries, and with scornful look, in
\nthe church-aisle, pass the daughters of poverty, who with their
\nfaded dress and plain hat _dare_ to come to worship God in the same
\nsanctuary.<\/p>\n
But all these wrongs shall be righted. Our streets shall hear the
\ntramp of a regenerated multitude. Three hundred and sixty bells were
\nrung in Moscow when the prince was married; but when righteousness
\nand peace shall “kiss each other” in all the earth, ten thousand bells
\nwill strike the jubilee. Poverty enriched. Hunger fed. Disease cured.
\nCrime purified. The cities saved.<\/p>\n
THE END.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE ABOMINATIONS OF MODERN SOCIETY. BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, AUTHOR OF “CRUMBS SWEPT UP” 1872. PREFACE. This is a buoy swung over the rocks. If it shall keep ship, bark, fore-and-aft schooner, or hermaphrodite brig from driving on a lee shore, “all’s well.” The book is not more for young men than old….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}