The Project Gutenberg EBook of Questionable Amusements and Worthy
Substitutes, by J. M. Judy
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes
Author: J. M. Judy
Commentator: George H. Trever
Release Date: December 22, 2008 [EBook #2603]
Last Updated: February 6, 2013
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUESTIONABLE AMUSEMENTS ***
Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
QUESTIONABLE AMUSEMENTS AND WORTHY SUBSTITUTES
By J. M. Judy
Introduction by George H. Trever, Ph.D., D.D. The manuscript of
This book was not submitted to any publisher, but was put in its
present form by JENNINGS & PYE, for a friend of the author.
Address. Chicago: Western Methodist Book Concern, 1904.
INTRODUCTION.
By George H. Trever, PH.D., D.D.
Author of Comparative Theology, etc.
A BOOK on "Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes" is timely
to-day. Such a grouping of subject matter is in itself a commendation.
Possibly we have been saying "Don't" quite enough without offering the
positive substitute. The "expulsive power of a new affection" is, after
all, the mightiest agency in reform. "Thou shalt not" is quite easy to
say; but though the house be emptied, swept, and garnished, unless pure
angels hasten to occupy the vacated chambers, other spirits worse than the
first will soon rush in to befoul them again.
The author of these papers, the Rev. J.M. Judy, writes out of a full, warm
heart. We know him to be a correct, able preacher of the gospel, and an
efficient fisher of men. Having thoroughly prepared himself for his work
by courses in Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical Institute, by
travel in the South and West of our own country, and by a visitation of
the Old World, he has served on the rugged frontier of his Conference, and
among foreign populations grappling successfully with some of the most
difficult problems in modern Church work.
The following articles aroused much interest when delivered to his own
people, and must do good wherever read. In style they are clear and vivid;
in logical arrangement excellent; glow with sacred fervor, and pulse with
honest, eager conviction. We bespeak for them a wide reading, and would
especially commend them to the young people of our Epworth Leagues.
WHITEWATER, WIS., March 2, 1904.
PREFACE.
"QUESTIONABLE Amusements and Worthy Substitutes" is a consideration of the
"so-called questionable amusements," and an outlook for those forms of
social, domestic, and personal practices which charm the life, secure the
present, and build for the future. To take away the bad is good; to give
the good is better; but to take away the bad and to give the good in its
stead is best of all. This we have tried to do, not in our own strength,
but with the conscious presence of the Spirit of God.
The spiritual indifference of Christendom to-day as one meets with it in
all forms of Christian work has led us to send out this message.
"Questionable Amusements," form both a cause and a result of this
widespread indifference. An underlying cause of this indifference among
those who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, is lack of conviction
for sin, want of positive faith in the fundamental truths of the
Scriptures, too little and superficial prayer, and lack of personal,
soul-saving work. Is the class-meeting becoming extinct? Is the
prayer-meeting lifeless? Is the revival spirit decaying? Is family worship
formal, or has it ceased? However some may answer these questions, still
we believe that the Church has a warm heart, and that signs of her
vigorous life are expressed in her tenacious hold for high moral
standards, and in her generous GIVING of money and of men.
Our point of view has been that of the person, old or young, regardless of
sect, race, party, occupation, or circumstances, who has a life to live,
and who wants to make the most out of it for himself and for his
fellow-men, and who believes that he will find this life disclosed in
nature, in history, and in the Word of God. J.M.J.
ORFORDVILLE, WIS., March, 1904.
Contents
PART I. QUESTIONABLE AMUSEMENTS.
"The excesses of our youth are drafts on our old age,
payable about one hundred years after date without
interest."—JOHN RUSKIN.
I. TOBACCO.
Tobacco wastes the body. It is used for the nicotine that is in it. This
peculiar ingredient is a poisonous, oily, colorless liquid, and gives to
tobacco its odor. This odor and the flavor of tobacco are developed by
fermentation in the process of preparation for use. "Poison" is commonly
defined as "any substance that when taken into the system acts in an
injurious manner, tending to cause death or serious detriment to health."
And different poisons are defined as those which act differently upon the
human organism. For example, one class, such as nicotine in tobacco, is
defined as that which acts as a stimulant or an irritant; while another
class, such as opium, acts with a quieting, soothing influence. But the
fact is that poison does not act at all upon the human system, but the
human system acts upon the poison. In one class of poisons, such as opium,
the reason why the system does not arouse itself and try to cast off the
poison, is that the nerves become paralyzed so that it can not. And in the
case of nicotine in tobacco the nerves are not thus paralyzed, so that
they try in every way to cast off the poison. Let the human body represent
the house, and the sensitive nerves and the delicate blood vessels the
sleeping inmates of that house. Let the Foe Opium come to invade that
house and to destroy the inmates, for every poison is a deadly Foe. At the
first appearance of this subtle Foe terror is struck into the heart of the
inmates, so that they fall back helpless, paralyzed with fear. When the
Intruder Tobacco comes, he comes boisterously, rattling the windows and
jostling the furniture, so that the inmates of the house set up a
life-and-death conflict against him.
This is just what happens when tobacco is taken into the human system.
Every nerve cries out against it, and every effort is made to resist it.
You ask, Will one's body be healthier and live longer without tobacco than
with it? We answer, by asking, Will one's home be happier and more
prosperous without some deadly Foe continually invading it, or with such a
Foe? When the membranes and tissues of the body, with their host of nerves
and blood vessels, have to be fighting against some deadly poison in
connection with their ordinary work, will they not wear out sooner than if
they could be left to do their ordinary work quietly? To illustrate: A
particle of tobacco dust no sooner comes into contact with the lining
membrane of the nose, than violent sneezing is produced. This is the
effort of the besieged nerves and blood vessels to protect themselves. A
bit of tobacco taken into the mouth causes salivation because the salivary
glands recognize the enemy and yield an increased flow of their precious
fluid to wash him away. Taken into the stomach unaccustomed to its
presence, and it produces violent vomiting. The whole lining membrane of
that much-abused organ rebels against such an Intruder, and tries to eject
him. Tobacco dust and smoke taken into the lungs at once excretes a
mucous-like fluid in the mouth, throat, windpipe, bronchial tubes, and in
the lungs themselves. Excretions such as this mean a violent wasting away
of vitality and power. Taken in large quantities into the stomach, tobacco
not only causes an excretion of mucus from the mouth, throat, and
breathing organs, but it produces an overtaxing of the liver; that is,
this organ overworks in order to counteract the presence of the poison.
But one asks, If tobacco is so injurious, why is it used with such
apparent pleasure? A small quantity of tobacco received into the system by
smoking, chewing, or snuffing is carried through the circulation to the
skin, lungs, liver, kidneys, and to all the organs of the body, by which
it is moderately resisted. The result is a gentle excitement of all these
organs. They are in a state of morbid activity. And as sensibility depends
upon vital action of the bodily organisms, there is necessarily produced a
degree of sense gratification or pleasure. The reason why these sensations
are pleasurable instead of painful is, in this state of moderate
excitement the circulation is materially increased without being
materially unbalanced. But as with every sense indulgence, when the
craving for increased doses becomes satisfied, when larger doses are taken
the circulation becomes unbalanced, vital resistance centers in one point,
congestion occurs, then the sensation becomes one of pain instead of one
of pleasure. This disturbance or excitement caused by tobacco is nothing
more nor less than disease. For it is abnormal action, and abnormal action
is fever, and fever is disease. It is state on good authority,﹃that no
one who smokes tobacco before the bodily powers are developed ever makes a
strong, vigorous man.﹄Dr. H. Gibbons says:﹃Tobacco impairs digestion,
poisons the blood, depresses the vital powers, causes the limbs to
tremble, and weakens and otherwise disorders the heart.﹄It is conceded by
the medical profession that tobacco causes cancer of the tongue and lips,
dimness of vision, deafness, dyspepsia, bronchitis, consumption, heart
palpitation, spinal weakness, chronic tonsillitis, paralysis, impotency,
apoplexy, and insanity. It is held by some men that tobacco aids
digestion. Dr. McAllister, of Utica, New York, says that it "weakens the
organs of Digestion and assimilation, and at length plunges one into all
the horrors of dyspepsia."
*Tobacco dulls the mind.* It does this not only by wasting the body, the
physical basis of the mind, but it does it through habits of intellectual
idleness, which the user of tobacco naturally forms. Whoever heard of a
first-class loafer who did not e-a-t the weed or burn it, or both? On the
rail train recently we were compelled to ride for an hour in the
smoking-car, which Dr. Talmage has called﹃the nastiest place in
Christendom.﹄In front of me sat a young man, drawing and puffing away at
a cigar, polluting the entire region about him. In the short hour enough
time was lost by that young man to have carefully read ten pages of the
best standard literature. All this we observed by an occasional glance
from the delightful volume in our own hands. The ordinary user of tobacco
has little taste for reading, little passion for knowledge, and
superficial habits of continued reasoning. His leisure moments are
absorbed in the sense-gratification of the weed. But if as much attention
had been given in acquiring the habit of reading as had been given in
learning the use of tobacco, the most valuable of all habits would take
the place of one of the most useless of all habits. When we see a person
trying to read with a cigar or a pipe in his mouth, Knowing that
nine-tenths of his real consciousness is given to his smoking, and
one-tenth to what he is reading, we are reminded of the commercial
traveler who "wanted to make the show of a library at home, so he wrote to
a book merchant in London, saying: 'Send me six feet of theology, and
about as much metaphysics, and near a yard of civil law in old folio.'"
Not a sentimentalist, a reformer, nor a crank, but Dr. James Copeland
says:﹃Tobacco weakens the nervous powers, favors a dreamy, imaginative,
and imbecile state of mind, produces indolence and incapacity for manly or
continuous exertion, and sinks its votary into a state of careless
inactivity and selfish enjoyment of vice.﹄Professor L. H. Gause writes:
﹃The intellect becomes duller and duller, until at last it is painful to
make any intellectual effort, and we sink into a sensuous or sensual
animal. Any one who would retain a clear mind, sound lungs, undisturbed
heart, or healthy stomach, must not smoke or chew the poisonous plant.﹄It
is commonly known that in a number of American and foreign colleges, by
actual testing, the non-user of tobacco is superior in mental vigor and
scholarship to the user of it. In view of this fact, our Government will
not allow the use of tobacco at West Point or at Annapolis. And in the
examinations in the naval academy a large percentage of those who fail to
pass, fail because of the evil effects of smoking.
Tobacco drains the pocketbook.﹃Will you please look through my mouth and
nose?﹄asked a young man once of a New York physician. The man of medicine
did so, and reported nothing there.﹃Strange! Look again. Why, sir, I have
blown ten thousand dollars—a great tobacco plantation and a score of
slaves—through that nose.﹄The Partido cigar regularly retails at
from twenty-five to thirty cents each. An ordinary smoker will smoke four
cigars a day. Three hundred and sixty-five dollars a year, besides his
treating. A small fortune every ten years! A neighbor of ours on the farm
used to go to town in the spring and buy enough chewing tobacco to last
him until after harvest, and flour to last the family for two weeks. Among
all classes of people this useless drain of the pocketbook is increasing.
In our country last year more money was spent for tobacco than was spent
for foreign missions, for the Churches, and for public education, all
combined. Our tobacco bill in one year costs our Nation more than our
furniture and our boots and shoes; more than our flour and our silk goods;
one hundred and forty-five million dollars more than all our printing and
publishing; one hundred and thirty-five million dollars more than the
sawed lumber of the Nation. Each year France buys of us twenty-nine
million pounds of tobacco, Great Britain fifty millions, and Germany
sixty-nine million pounds, to say nothing of how much these nations import
from other countries. Never before has the use of tobacco been so
widespread as to-day.﹃The Turks and Persians are the greatest smokers in
the world. In India all classes and both sexes smoke; in China the
practice—perhaps there more ancient—is universal, and girls
from the age of eight or nine wear as an appendage to their dress a small
silken pocket to hold tobacco and a pipe.﹄Nor can the expense and
widespread use of tobacco be defended on the ground that it is a luxury,
for the abstainer from tobacco counts it the greater luxury not to use it.
The only explanation for its use is, that it is a habit which binds one
hand and foot, and from which no person with ordinary will power in his
own strength can free himself.
Tobacco blunts the moral nature. It is not certain how long tobacco has
been used as a narcotic. Some authorities hold that the smoking of tobacco
was an ancient custom among the Chinese. But if this is true, we know that
it did not spread among the neighboring nations. When Columbus came to
America he found the natives of the West Indies and the American Indian
smoking the weed. With the Indian its use has always had a religious and
legal significance. Early in the sixteenth century tobacco was introduced
into England, later into Spain, and still later, in 1560, into Italy. Used
for its medicinal properties at first, soon it came to be used as a
luxury. The popes of Italy saw its harm and thundered against it. The
priests and sultans of Turkey declared smoking a crime. One sultan made it
punishable with death. The pipes of smokers were thrust through their
noses in Turkey, and in Russia the noses of smokers were cut off in the
earlier part of the seventeenth century.﹃King James I of England issued a
counterblast to tobacco, in which he described its use as a 'custom
loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous
to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fumes thereof nearest resembling
the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.'﹄As one
contrasts this sentiment with the practice of the present sovereign of
England, his breath is almost taken away in his great fall from the
sublime to the ridiculous!
While we do not believe a moderate use of tobacco for a mature person is
necessarily a sin, yet we do believe that it does blunt the moral sense,
and soon leads to spiritual weakness and indifference, which are sins. To
love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength, and one's
neighbor as himself, means not only a denial of that which is questionable
in morals, but a practice of that which is positively good. However noble
or worthy in character may be some who use tobacco, yet by common consent
it is a "tool of the devil." Every den of gamblers, every low-down
grogshop, every smoking-car, every public resort and waiting-room
departments for men, every rendezvous of rogues, loafers, villains, and
tramps is thoroughly saturated with the vile stench of the cuspidor and
the poisonous odors of the pipe and cigar.﹃Rev. Dr. Cox abandoned tobacco
after a drunken loafer asked him for a light.﹄Not until then had he seen
and felt the disreputable fraternity that existed between the users of
tobacco.
Owen Meredith gives us a standard of strength and freedom, which is an
inspiration to every lover of rounded, perfected manhood and womanhood:
"Strong is that man, he only strong,
To whose well-ordered will belong,
For service and delight,
All powers that in the face of wrong
Establish right.
And free is he, and only he,
Who, from his tyrant passions free,
By fortune undismayed,
Has power within himself to be,
By self obeyed.
If such a man there be, where'er
Beneath the sun and moon he fare,
He can not fare amiss;
Great nature hath him in her care.
Her cause is his."
Only let the "will," the "powers," the "freedom," and the "self" of which
the writer speaks become the "Christ will," the "Christ powers," the
"Christ freedom," and the "Christ self." Then the strongest chains of
bondage must fly into flinters. For﹃if the Son make you free, ye are free
indeed.﹄(John viii, 36.)
II. DRUNKENNESS.
I. A TEMPERANCE PLATFORM.
WE bring to you three words of counsel with respect to this subject.
First, Beware of the Social Glass; second, Study the Drink Evil; third,
Openly oppose it. This is a Temperance Platform upon which every sober,
informed, and conscientious person may stand. Would it be narrow or
uncharitable to assert that not to stand upon this platform argues that
one is not sober, or not informed, or not conscientious? The crying need
of to-day is, that men and women shall be urged into positions of
conviction and activity against this most colossal evil of our time. In
our country the responsibility for drunkenness rests not with the
illiterate, blasphemous, ex-prison convicts who operate the 250,000
saloons of our Nation, nor yet with the 250,000 finished products of the
saloon who go down into drunkards' graves every year, but with the sober,
respectable, hard-working, voting citizens of our country. Nor does this
exempt women, whose opportunity to shape the moral and political
convictions of the home is far greater than that of the men. When the
women of America say to the saloon, You go! the saloon will have to go.
The moral and political measures of any people are easily traceable to the
sisters and wives and mothers of that people. You and I and every ordinary
citizen of our country had as well try to escape our own shadow, as to try
to escape the responsibility that rests upon us for the drunkenness of our
people. To help us to do our whole duty in our day and generation in this
matter is the purpose of our message.
II. BEWARE OF THE SOCIAL GLASS.
The first and least thing that one can do to destroy drunkenness, is to be
a total abstainer. Beware of the social glass! But quickly one replies,
"Why should there be any social glass?"﹃Why allow sparkling, attractive
springs of refreshing poison to issue forth in all of our social centers,
and then cry to our sons and daughters, to our brothers and sisters,
Beware?﹄My friend, we must deal with facts as they are. There should not
be a social glass; but what has that to do with the fact that the social
glass is here? You answer, "Why allow these fountains of death to exist?"
while we cry to our loved ones, "Beware!" We do not advocate the presence
of these fountains; but while we seek to destroy them beseechingly we cry,
"Beware!" The social factor in the liquor traffic is its Gibraltar of
defense. Rare is the young man who has the intellectual stamina and moral
courage to resist the invitations to take a social drink. And in our
frontier and foreign towns many of our bright and respected girls use the
social glass. But in its use is the beginning of a fateful end. The
subtlest thing in this world is sin. Listen!
"Sin is a monster of so frightful mien;
To be hated needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with the face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
The subtle thing about it is, that the first embracing of any sin seems to
be but a trifling, an occasional affair. For one who lives in an ordinary
city of a thousand inhabitants or upwards, unless he is an "out-and-out"
Christian and selects only associates like himself, it becomes a real
Embarrassment not to indulge in a social drink. It seems polite, clever,
the kindly thing to do. And the sad fact is, that the majority of
unchristian young people and many older ones do not decline. To prove this
we have but to look at the human wrecks along the shore. Two young men
lived near our home. Their parents were well-to-do. The family grew tired
of the farm and moved to town. The boys fell in with bad company. They did
not decline the social glass. Soon they furnished other young men with
drink from their own pocket. This was fifteen years ago. To-day one of
them is a hardened sinner, violent in his passions and blasphemous against
God. The other one, having spent a term in our Illinois State University
at Champaign, married a beautiful neighbor girl and moved to Missouri.
Here he lived off the money of his father's estate, practicing his
early-learned habits of drinking, gambling, and loafing. He moved from
State to State until, finally left in poverty, he tended bar in a saloon.
While visiting with relatives in his old neighborhood a few years ago he
stole a watch and some money from his own nephew, and was tried in the
courts, and sentenced to the penitentiary for one year. His wife, having
carried the burden of disgrace and want through all these years, with the
seven unfortunate children were released from him to struggle alone. All
this we have seen with our own eyes as the years have come and gone. The
downfall and ruin of this young man, and the unsaved fate of his brother,
easily may be traceable to the "social glass" and the boon companions of
the social glass—tobacco and playing-cards. Last year I met a man
who had prided himself in the fact that he could drink or let it alone,
and thought that it was all right to take a "social glass" occasionally.
Election time came around; he fell in with his friends, and, as one always
will do sooner or later who tampers with it at all, went too far. Before
he knew it he was as low in the gutter as a beast. It was three days
before he was a sober man again. He work had ceased, he had disgusted his
fellow-workmen, disgraced his Christian family, and had humiliated himself
so that he was ashamed to look any man in the face until he had repented
of his sins before God, and had promised Him, by His help, that he would
never drink another glass. What a pleasure it was to hear that old man, as
he is close to sixty years of age, to hear him tell in a spirited
religious service of how he had strayed from his path and had got lost in
the woods, but thanked God that he was out of the woods, and by His help
would remain out. When we become undone in Christ He lifts us up and
starts us on our new way rejoicing in His love. If Christ Himself were
here in body, do you know what He would advise on this point? He would
say: "As it is written;"﹃Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when
it giveth its color in the cup, when it goeth down smoothly: at the last
it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.﹄Beware of the social
glass, my friend, for though it promises pleasure, it gives but pain; it
promises joy, it gives but sorrow; it promises deliverance, it gives but
eternal death!
III. STUDY THE DRINK EVIL.
We hear it said,﹃No use to picture the horrors of the drink evil; every
one knows them already.﹄In part, this is true. All of us know more than
we wish it were possible to be true; and yet no one can ever realize its
horrors until caught, and torn, and mangled in its pinching, jagged,
griping meshes. It is one thing to know by a distant glance, it is another
thing to know by the pangs of a broken heart and of a wrecked life. For
those who are not thus caught in its meshes to realize its horrors so as
to seek its destruction but one course is possible; namely, To study the
evil. Let the teacher tell of its ravages; let the minister proclaim its
curses; let the poet sing it; the painter paint it; the editor report it;
the novelist portray it; the scientist describe it; the philosopher decry
it; the sisters and wives and mothers denounce it—until all shall
unite in smiting it to its death!
We should study the drink evil in its relation to disease. That strong
drink tends to produce disease is no longer questioned.﹃During the
cholera in New York City in 1832, of two hundred and four cases in the
Park Hospital only six were temperate, and all of these recovered; while
one hundred and twenty-two of the others died. In Great Britain in the
same year five-sixths of all who perished were intemperate. In one or two
villages every drunkard died, while not a single member of a temperance
society lost his life.﹄"In Paisley, England, in 1848, there were three
hundred and thirty-seven cases of cholera, and every case except one was a
dram-drinker. The cases of cholera were one for every one hundred and
eighty-one inhabitants; but among the temperate portion there was only one
case to each two thousand."﹃Of three hundred and eighty-six persons
connected with the total abstinence societies only one died, and he was a
reformed drunkard﹄of three months' standing.﹃In New Orleans during the
last epidemic the order of the Sons of Temperance appointed a committee to
ascertain the number of deaths from cholera among their members. It was
found that there were twelve hundred and forty-three members in the city
and suburbs, and among these only three deaths had occurred, being only
one-sixth the average death-rate.﹄"In New York, in 1832, only two out of
five thousand members of temperance societies died." The Northwestern Life
Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of the oldest and most
successful Companies in the Northwest, has lived for nearly forty years
next neighbor to lager beer interests. The shrewd men of this company have
studied the influence of the beer industry upon those who engage in it.
The result is, that they will no longer grant an insurance policy to a
beer-brewer, nor to any one in any way engaged in the business. In their
own words their reason is this: "Our statistics show that our business has
been injured by the short lives of those men who drink lager beer."
Then, we need to study the drink evil in its relation to society.﹃A
recent report of the chaplain of the Madalen Society of New York shows
that of eight-nine fallen women in the asylum at one time, all but two
ascribed their fall to the effect of the drink habit.﹄"A lady missionary
makes the statement that of two thousand sinful women known personally to
her, there were only ten cases in which intoxicating liquors were not
largely responsible for their fall."﹃A leading worker for reform in New
York says that the suppression of the curse of strong drink would include
the destruction of ninety-nine of every one hundred of the houses of
ill-fame.﹄"A missionary on going at the written request of one of these
lost women to rescue her from a den of infamy remonstrated with her for
being even then slightly under the influence of drink." "Why," was her
indignant reply as tears filled her eyes, "do you suppose we girls are so
dead that we have lost our memories of mother, home, and everything good?
No, indeed; and if it were not for liquor and opium, we would all have to
run away from our present life or go mad by pleadings of our own hearts
and home memories."
Only by a study of the drink evil shall we know its ravages in the home.
Those of us who have lived in the pure air of free, country home-life can
not easily realize the moral plague of drunkenness as it blights the home
in the crowded districts of city slum life. Nor is the home of the city
alone cursed by the drink evil. Three years ago this last holiday season
we were doing some evangelistic work in a neighboring town, a mere village
of a couple hundred inhabitants. I shall never forget how the mother of a
dejected home cried and pleaded for help from the ravages of her drunken
husband. She said that he had spent all of his wages, and had made no
provision for the home, in furniture, in books for the children, nor in
clothing for them nor for her. She had come almost to despair, and was
blaming God for allowing her little ones to suffer because of a worthless
man. O, the world is full of this sort of thing to-day, if we only knew
the sighs and heartaches and blasted hopes of those who suffer! In a
smoking-car one day a commercial traveler refused to drink with his old
comrades, by saying:﹃No, I won't drink with you to-day, boys. The fact
is, boys, I have sworn off.﹄He was taunted and laughed at, and urged to
tell what had happened to him. They said:﹃If you've quit drinking,
something's up; tell us what it is.﹄"Well, boys," he said,﹃I will,
though I know you will laugh at me; but I will tell you all the same. I
have been a drinking man all my life, and have kept it up since I was
married, as you all know. I love whisky; it's as sweet in my mouth as
sugar, and God only knows how I'll quit it. For seven years not a day has
passed over my head that I didn't have at least one drink. But I am done.
Yesterday I was in Chicago. Down on South Clark Street a customer of mine
keeps a pawnshop in connection with his business. I called on him, and
while I was there a young man of not more than twenty-five, wearing
thread-bare clothes, and looking as hard as if he had not seen a sober day
for a month, came in with a little package in his hand. Tremblingly he
unwrapped it, and handed the articles to the pawnbroker, saying, 'Give me
ten cents.' And, boys, what do you suppose that package was? A pair of
baby's shoes; little things with the buttons only a trifle soiled, as if
they had been worn once or twice. 'Where did you get them?' asked the
pawnbroker. 'Got 'em at home,' replied the man, who had an intelligent
face and the manner of a gentleman, despite his sad condition. 'My wife
bought 'em for our baby. Give me ten cents for 'em. I want a drink.' 'You
had better take those back to your wife; the baby will need them,' said
the pawnbroker. 'No, she won't..She's lying at home now; she died last
night.' As he said this the poor fellow broke down, bowed his head on the
showcase, and cried like a child. 'Boys,' said the drummer, 'you can laugh
if you want to, but I have a baby of my own at home, and by the help of
God I'll never drink another drop.'﹄The man went into another car, the
bottle had disappeared, and the boys pretended to read some papers that
lay scattered about the car. Ah, this is only one out of hundreds of such
scenes that are being enacted every day in our saloon-cursed cities.
We should study the drink evil to see how it makes people poor and keeps
them poor. A story is told of a drinking man who related to his family a
dream that he had had the night before. He dreamed that he saw three cats,
a fat one, a lean one, and a blind one; and he was anxious to know what it
meant that he should have such a strange dream. Quickly his little boy
answered,﹃I can tell what it means. The fat cat is the saloon-keeper who
sells you drink, the lean cat is mother and me, and the blind cat is
yourself.﹄"In one of our large cities," one day,﹃a laboring man, leaving
a saloon, saw a costly carriage and pair of horses standing in front,
occupied by two ladies elegantly dressed, conversing with the proprietor.
'Whose establishment is that?' he said to the saloon-keeper, as the
carriage rolled away. 'It is mine,' replied the dealer, proudly. 'It cost
thirty-five hundred dollars. My wife and daughter couldn't do without
that.' The mechanic bowed his head a moment in deep thought; then, looking
up, said with the energy of a man suddenly aroused by some startling
flash, 'I see it!' 'I see it!' 'See what?' asked the saloonkeeper. 'See
where for years my wages have gone. I helped to pay for that carriage, for
those horses and gold-mounted harnesses, and for the silks and laces for
your family. The money I have earned, that should have given my wife and
children a home of their own and good clothing, I have spent at your bar.
By the help of God I will never spend another dime for drink.'﹄South
Milwaukee has five thousand inhabitants. Three large mills operate there.
A reliable business man, foreman in one of the mills, told me that the
laboring people of South Milwaukee put $25,000 each month into the tills
of the saloons. Dr. J.O. Peck, one of the most successful pastor
evangelists of recent years, tells of a man who crossed Chelsea Ferry to
Boston one morning, and turned into Commercial Street for his usual glass.
As he poured out the poison, the saloonkeeper's wife came in, and
confidently asked for $500 to purchase an elegant shawl she had seen at
the store of Jordan, March & Co.. He drew from his pocket a
well-filled pocketbook, and counted out the money. The man outside the
counter pushed aside his glass untouched, and laying down ten cents
departed in silence. That very morning his devoted Christian wife had
asked him for ten dollars to buy a cloak, so that she might look
presentable at church. He had crossly told her he had not the money. As he
left the saloon he thought, 'Here I am helping to pay for
five-hundred-dollar cashmeres for that man's wife, but my wife asks in
vain for a ten-dollar cloak. I can't stand this. I have spent my last dime
for drink.' When the next pay-day came that meek, loving wife was
surprised with a beautiful cloak from her reformed husband. She could
scarcely believe her own eyes as he laid it on the table. 'There, Emma, is
a present for you. I have been a fool long enough; forgive me for the
past, and I will never touch liquor again.' She threw her arms around his
neck, and the hot tears told her heartfelt joy as she sobbed out:
'Charley, I thank you a thousand times. I never expected so nice a cloak.
This seems like other days. You are so good, and I am so happy.'" The
drink bill of our Nation for last year was over a billion of dollars, more
money than was spent for missions—home and foreign—for all of
our Churches, for public education, for all the operations of courts of
justice and of public officers, and at least for two of the staple
products of use in our country, such as furniture and flour. More than for
all these was the money that our Nation paid for drink last year. When the
people of our country get their eyes open to the cost and degradation of
the drink evil, something definite will be done by every one against it.
The drink evil in its relation to lawlessness and crime, and to political
corruption, reveal still more ghastly aspects of it than we have yet
mentioned. The saloon strikes at the very heart, not only of law and
order, but at personal liberty and justice in securing law and order. It
was in a police court in Cincinnati on Monday morning. Before the judge
stood two stalwart policeman and a woman. She was charged with disorderly
conduct on the street and with disturbing the peace. The policemen were
sworn, and one of them told this story, to which the other one agreed. He
said:﹃I arrested the woman in front of a saloon on Broadway on Saturday
night. She had raised a great disturbance, was fighting and brawling with
men in the saloon, and the saloonkeeper put her out. She used the foulest
language, and with an awful threat struck at the saloonkeeper with all her
force. I then arrested her, took her to the detention house, and locked
her up.﹄The saloonkeeper was called to the witness stand, and said:﹃I
know dis voman's vas making disturbance by my saloon. She comes and she
makes troubles, und she fights mit me, und I put her de door oud. I know
her all along. She vas pad vomans.﹄The judge turned to the trembling
woman and said:﹃This is a pretty clear case, madam; have you anything to
say in your defense?﹄"Yes, Judge," she answered, in a strangely calm,
though trembling, voice:﹃I am not guilty of the charge, and these men
standing before you have perjured their souls to prevent me from telling
the truth. It was they, not I, who violated the law. I was in the saloon
last Saturday night, and I will tell you how it happened. My husband did
not come home from work that evening, and I feared he had gone to the
saloon. I knew he must have drawn his week's wages, and we needed it all
so badly. I put the little ones to bed, and then waited all alone through
the weary hours until after the city clock struck twelve. Then I thought
the saloons will be closed, and he will be put out on to the street.
Probably he will not be able to get home, and the police will arrest him
and lock him up. I must go and find him, and bring him home. I wrapped a
shawl about me and started out, leaving the little ones asleep in bed.
And, Judge, I have not seen them since.﹄She did not give way to tears,
for the worst grief can not weep. She continued: "I went to the saloon,
where I thought most like he would be. It was about twenty minutes after
twelve; but the saloon, that man's saloon"—pointing to the
saloonkeeper, who now wanted to crouch out of sight—"was still open,
and my husband and these two policemen were standing at the bar drinking
together. I stepped up to my husband and asked him to go home with me; but
the men laughed at him, and the saloonkeeper ordered me out. I said, 'No,
I want my husband to go home with me.' Then I tried to tell him how badly
we were needing the money that he was spending; and then the saloon-keeper
cursed me, and told me to leave. Then I confess I could stand no more, and
said, 'You ought to be prosecuted for violating the midnight closing law.'
At this the saloonkeeper and policemen rushed upon me and put me into the
street; and one of the policemen, grasping my arm like a vice, hissed in
my ear, 'I'll get you a thirty days' sentence in the workhouse, and then
we'll see what you think about suing people.' He called a patrol wagon,
pushed me in, and drove to jail; and, Judge, you know the rest. All day
yesterday I was locked up, my children at home alone, with no fire, no
food, no mother." The judge dismissed the woman; but the saloonkeeper, the
perjured policemen, nor the corrupt judge were ever prosecuted for their
unlawfulness. The whole affair was dropped because the saloon power in
Cincinnati reigns supreme.﹃This case is a matter of record in the
Cincinnati courts.﹄It is a disgraceful fact that the liquor-traffic rules
in politics to-day. A saloonkeeper in Richmond, Virginia, overheard some
one talking of reform in municipal politics, when he scornfully said: "Any
bar-room in Richmond is a bigger man in politics than all the Churches in
Richmond put together."
IV. THE PRACTICAL QUESTION FOR US HERE AND NOW IS, How may we openly
oppose this drink evil?
The Churches need not expect a widespread revival of religion until
professing Christians do their duty with respect to the saloon. Mothers
and fathers need not expect their sons to remain sober while the saloon
opens to them day and night. Wives need not expect their husbands to
remain devoted and loyal until the saloon is abolished. What is our duty?
How shall we oppose the evil? How do the American people deal with evils
when they deal with them at all? When Great Britain went a little too far
in "taxation without representation," what course did the American
Colonies adopt in remedying the evil? Their chief men said,﹃These
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.﹄The
popular voice of the people decided it. When the British Government unduly
impressed American seamen, how was the difficulty settled? The
representatives of the people, their lawmakers, declared war against the
opposing nation, and forced her to cease her oppression. The popular vote
decided it. When Negro slavery darkened the entire sky of our country, and
caused our leading men to realize that we could not long exist half-slave
and half-free, how was the dark cloud dispelled? The representatives of
our people, the lawmakers of the land, in letters of blood wrote the
immortal Thirteenth Amendment to the American Constitution:﹃Neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime,
whereof the person shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.﹄When we wanted
to increase our territory in 1803, and in 1845, and in 1867, how did we go
about it? The representatives of the people, the lawmakers of the land,
voted to make the purchases, and they were made. When a Territory is
organized, or a State comes into the Union, what is done? The
representatives of the people, the lawmakers of the land, vote upon it,
and it is done. When treaties are to be made with foreign countries; when
immigration of foreigners is to be regulated; when money is to be borrowed
or coined; when post-offices and post-roads are to be established; when
counterfeiting is to be punished, and public abuses are to be reformed,
whose business is it? The Constitution of the United States says the
representatives of the people, the lawmakers of the land, have this power.
When will the drink evil cease in our country? When our representatives in
Congress, or lawmakers, stand for the abolition of the American saloon,
and vote it out of existence; then, and not until then, will drunkenness
cease. When will we have representatives in Congress, lawmakers who will
stand for the abolition of the saloon, and who will vote it out of
existence? Not until you and I have select them, and place them there with
our vote. To expect Christian temperance in our country from any other
source is absolute folly.
The abolition of drunkenness by local option is selfish, unpractical, and
unscriptural. You vote the liquor-traffic out of your town; we vote it in
ours. Remember every saloon exists only by vote of the people. Your young
people come over to our town for drink. We have the curse of God upon us.
"Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink." (Hab. Ii, 15.) It is
unpractical, for so long as intoxicants are made they will be sold. It is
selfish, for to vote against the saloon in your town election, and to vote
for it in your State or National election, is to drive the mad-dog on past
your door to the door of your neighbor, when you might have killed him.
The abolition of drunkenness by regulating the traffic through license is
the most gigantic delusion that Satan ever worked upon an intelligent
people. It is a well-known truth that "limitation is the secret of power."
The best way to provoke an early marriage between devoted lovers is
bitterly to oppose them. The stream whose water spreads over its low banks
is without depth and current and power. But confine the waters between
high, narrow banks, the bed of the stream is deepened, and its mighty
current supports animal life and turns the wheels of mill and factory. The
regulation of the liquor-traffic by license makes it a financial and
political power second to none in America to-day. To vote for any party or
man who advocates liquor license, is to give a loyal support to the
American saloon.
To expect the abolition of drunkenness solely through processes of
education is to preach one thing and to practice another. It is to
perpetuate an evil that costs two hundred and fifty thousand precious
lives every year. It is to leave to the next generation a work that God
expects us to do here and now. Dr. Banks relates an incident witnessed by
Major Hilton on the coast of Scotland. "Just at the break of day the
people of a little hamlet on the coast were awakened by the boom of a
cannon over the stormy waves. They knew what it meant, for frequently they
had heard before the same signal of distress. Some poor souls were out
beyond the breakers perishing on a wrecked vessel, and in their last
extremity calling wildly for help. The people hastened from their houses
to the shore. Out there in the distance was a dismantled vessel pounding
itself to pieces. Perishing fellow-beings were clinging to the rigging,
and every now and then some one was swept off into the sea by the furious
waves. The life-saving crew was soon gathered. 'Man the life-boat!' cried
the man. "Where is Hardy?" But the foreman of the crew was not there, and
the danger was imminent. Aid must be immediate, or all would be lost. The
next in command sprang into the frail boat, followed by the rest, all
taking their lives in their hands in the hope of saving others. O, how
those on the shore watched their brave loved ones as they dashed on, now
over, now almost under the waves! They reached the wreck. Like angels of
deliverance they filled their craft with almost dying men—men lost
but for them. Back again they toiled, pulling for the shore, bearing their
precious freight. The first man to help them land was Hardy, whose words
rang above the roar of the breakers:﹃Are you all here? Did you save them
all?﹄With saddened faces the reply came: "All but one. He couldn't help
himself at all. We had all we could carry. We couldn't save the last one."
"Man the life-boat again!" shouted Hardy.﹃I will go. What! leave one
there to die alone? A fellow-creature there, and we on shore? Man the
life-boat now! We'll save him yet.﹄But who is this aged woman with worn
garments and disheveled hair, with agonized entreaty falling upon her
knees beside this brave, strong man? It is his mother!﹃O, my son! your
father was drowned in a storm like this. Your brother Will left me eight
years ago, and I have never seen his face since the day he sailed. No
doubt he, too, has found a watery grave. And now you will be lost, and I
am old and poor. O, stay with me!﹄"Mother," cried the man, "where one is
in peril, there is my place. If I am lost, God surely will care for you."
The plea of earnest faith prevailed. With a "God bless you, my boy!" she
released him, and speeded him on his way. Once more they watched and
prayed and waited—those on the shore—while every muscle was
strained toward the fast-sinking ship by those in the life-saving boat. At
last it reached the vessel. The clinging figure was lifted and helped to
its place. Back came the boat. How eagerly they looked and called in
encouragement, and cheered as it came nearer! "Did you get him?" was the
cry from the shore. Lifting his hands to his mouth to trumpet the words on
in advance of their landing, Hardy called back above the roar of the
storm, "Tell mother it is brother Will!"
My friend, simply talking and praying will not save our loved ones from
drunkards' graves. We must man the life-boat of municipal, State, and
National reform, and vote for principle and Christian temperance until we
save the last man. He may be "brother Will."
III. GAMBLING, CARD-PLAYING
GAMBLING has become a moral plague of modern society. In one form or
another it has entered the rank and file of every department of life—in
private parlor over cards; in hotel drawing-room over election reports; in
college athletic grounds over brains and brawn; in the counting-room over
the price of stocks; in the racing tournament over jockeying and speed; in
the Board of Trade hall over future prices of the necessaries of life; in
the den of iniquity at dice; in the drinking saloon at the slot-machine;
in the people's fair at the wheel of fortune; in the gambling den itself
at every conceivable form of swindling trick and game. Gambling has come
to be almost an omnipresent evil. In treating this subject, it is our
purpose to point out something of the nature of its evil, not only that we
may be kept from it but that we may save others whom it threatens to
destroy.
Gambling grows out of a misuse of the natural tendency to take risks. A
social vice is some social right misused. Men have the social right to
congregate to talk over measures of social and economic welfare. But if
they discuss measures which oppose the principles of free Government,
their meeting together becomes a crime against the State. A personal vice
is some personal right misused. As some one has put it,﹃Vice is virtue
gone mad.﹄It is a personal right and a personal virtue to be charitable,
even beneficent. But since justice comes before mercy, if one uses for
charity that which should be used in payment of debt, his virtue of
beneficence becomes a vice of theft. So it is with gambling. It is giving
the natural tendency to chance, to risk an illegitimate play. The person
who is afraid to risk anything accomplishes but little in any way, is
seldom a speculator, and never a gambler. Usually the gambler is the man
who is naturally full of hazard, who loves to run risks, to take chances.
Nor will one find a more practical and useful tendency in one's make-up
than this. See the discoverer of America and his brave crew for days and
days sailing across an unknown sea toward an unknown land. But that was
the price of a New World. Note the hazard and risk of our Pilgrim Fathers.
But they gave to the world a new colonization. See the Second greatest
American on his knees before Almighty God, promising him that he would
free four million of slaves, providing General Lee should be driven back
out of Maryland. General Lee was driven back, and that immortal though
most hazardous of all documents, from man's point of view, was read to his
Cabinet and signed by Abraham Lincoln. All great men have taken great
risks. Not a section of the United States has been settled without some
risk. No business enterprise is launched without some risk. To secure an
education, to learn a trade, to marry a wife, all involve some risk, much
risk. The tendency to risk, to hazard, to chance it is a practical and
useful tendency. Only let this tendency be governed always by wisdom and
justice. No person ever became a gambler until consciously or
unconsciously he forfeited wisdom and justice in his chances and risks.
Gambling takes a variety of forms. First of all is the professional
gambler. He has no other business. His investment is a "pack of cards" and
a box of "dice. See him with his long, slender fingers; with his shaggy,
unkempt hair; with keen eyes, and a sordid countenance. He is prepared to
"rake in" a thousand dollars a night, and would not hesitate to strip any
man of his fortune. The professional is found at county fairs, on railway
trains, in gilded dens, and at public resorts. Being a professional
outlaw, and subject at any time to arrest and imprisonment, usually he has
an accomplice. Sometimes a gang work together, so that it is with perfect
ease they may relieve any unwary novice of his money. They know human
nature on its low, mercenary side, and soon can find their man in a crowd.
But few persons have started out in life having it for their aim to get
something for nothing who, sooner or later, have not been "taken in" by
this gang of swindlers. They know their kind. The end of the professional
gambler is final loss and ruin. He will make $100, he will make $500, he
will make $1,000, he will make $2,000; then he will lose all. Then he will
borrow some money and start anew. And again he will make $200, he will
make $600, he will make $1,200, and he will lose all. Like the winebibber
and the professional murderer, the professional gambler has his den. Not a
large city in the world is without these haunts of vice. Who is it that
feeds and supports them? The novice at cards and dice, husbands and sons
of respectable families, just as the occasional dram-taker supports the
saloon. As one has asked:
"Could fools to keep their own contrive,
On whom, on what could gamesters thrive?"
—GAY.
The penny novice seeks the penny gambling den. The aristocratic speculator
seeks the gilded gambling den. The expert trickster of large luck and
large fortune makes his way to Monte Carlo, the gambling Mecca of the
world. Monte Carlo is a famous resort situated in the northwest part of
Italy. It is notorious for its gambling saloon. This city of nearly four
thousand inhabitants is located in Monaco, the smallest independent
country in the world. Monaco is about eight miles square, and lies on a
﹃barren, rocky ridge between the sea and lofty, almost inaccessible
rocks.﹄The soil is barren, except in small tracts which are used for
fruit-gardens. For centuries the inhabitants, the Monagasques, lived by
marauding expeditions, both by sea and land, and by slight commerce with
Genoa, Marseilles, and Nice. But in the last century the people have
converted their country and city into a world-wide resort. In 1860, M.
Blanc, a famous gambler and saloon proprietor of two German cities, went
to Monaco, and for an immense sum of money received sole privilege to
convert their province into a gambler's paradise. Soon immense marble
buildings arose in the midst of such beauty as to make it a modern rival
of the gardens of ancient Babylon. Costly statues, gorgeous vases,
graceful fountains, elegant basins, and beautiful terraces, all of which
are made alluring by blooming plants, by light illuminations, and by free
concerts of music day and night,—these are the attractions in this
gambler's paradise. Here fortunes are won and lost in a night. For, as has
been sung,
"Dice will run the contrary way,
As well is known to all who play,
And cards will conspire as in treason."
—HOOD.
Then we have the speculator in commerce. He is the denizen of the Board of
Trade hall. He speculates on the prices of next week's, of next month's
meat and breadstuffs. And still this sort of gambler may be a book-keeper
in a bank, a farm hand, or a clerk in a grocery store. It ha become so
simple and so common a practice for persons to speculate on the markets
that any person with ten dollars, or twenty-five dollars, or a hundred
dollars may take his chances. Tens of thousands of dollars to-day are
being swept into this silent whirlpool, the gambler's commerce.
Also we have the pool gambler. He is actuated by love of excitement. He is
found at the race course, at the baseball diamond, and at all sorts of
contests, where he may find opportunity to be on the outcome. It is a
common thing for young men to steal their employers' money, for young
girls to take their hard-earned wages to stake on games and races.
Recently $175,000 were paid for the exclusive gambling right for one year
at the Washington Park races in Chicago.
Last of all, we have the society gambler. He is growing numerous to-day.
He is the same person, whether clad in full dress in the drawing-room of
the worldling, or in common dress around the fireside of the unchristian
Church member. Like the professional gambler his instrument is "cards,"
and he can shake the "dice." His games are whist, progressive euchre, and
sometimes poker. The stakes now are not money, but the gratification of
excitement and the indulgence of passion. One, two, four hours go by
almost unnoticed. Prizes are offered for the best player. As a Catholic
priest told me after he had won a small sum with cards. Said he:﹃We just
put up a few dollars, you know, to lend devotions to the game.﹄So prizes
are offered in the social gambling "to lend devotions to the game." It is
under such circumstances as these that young men and young women receive
their first lessons in card-playing. A passion for card-playing is called
forth, developed, and must be satisfied, even though it takes one in low
places among vile associates. "A Christian gentleman came from England to
this country. He brought with him $70,000 in money. He proposed to invest
the money. Part of it was his own; part of it was his mother's. He went
into a Christian Church; was coldly received, and said to himself: 'Well,
if that is the kind of Christian people they have in America, I don't want
to associate with them much.' So he joined a card-playing party. He went
with them from time to time. He went a little further on, and after a
while he was in games of chance, and lost all of the $70,000. Worse than
that, he lost all of his good morals; and on the night that he blew his
brains out he wrote to the lady to whom he was affianced an apology for
the crime he was about to commit, and saying in so many words, 'My first
step to ruin was the joining of that card party.'"
In all of its forms gambling is loaded down with evil. In the first place
it destroys the incentive to honest work. Let the average young man win a
hundred dollars at the races, it will so turn his head against slow and
honorable ways of getting money that he will watch for every opportunity
to get it easily and abundantly. The young girl who risks fifty cents and
gets back fifty dollars will no longer be of service as a quiet, contented
worker. The spirit of speculation, the passion to get something for
nothing, is calculated to destroy the incentive to honest toil and to
honorable methods of gain. As one values his character, as he values his
peace of mind, so should he zealously guard himself against
overfascinating games of chance. Once we had a family in our Church who
played cards, and who taught their children to play cards. Of course these
families had no time for prayer-meeting, nor for Christian work.
Card-playing for amusement or for money will create a passion that must be
satisfied, although one must give up home and business and pleasure. In a
town where we once lived a young man and his wife attended our Church. In
every way the husband was kind, and attentive to business. But he had
fallen a victim to playing cards for money. When that passion would seize
him he would leave his business, his hired help, his home and wife and
little one, and would lose himself for days at a time seeking to satisfy
that passion. An enviable husband, father, citizen, and neighbor but for
that evil; but how wretchedly that ruined all! Dr. Holland, of
Springfield, Massachusetts, says:﹃I have all my days had a card-playing
community open to my observation, and yet I am unable to believe that that
which is the universal resort of starved soul and intellect, which has
never in any way linked to itself tender, elevating, or beautiful
associations, but, the tendency of which is to unduly absorb the attention
from more weighty matters, can recommend itself to the favor of Christ's
disciples. I have this moment,﹄says he, "ringing in my ears the dying
injunction of my father's early friend: 'Keep your son from cards. Over
them I have murdered time and lost heaven.'"
Gambling is dishonest. It seeks something for nothing. Man possesses no
money, that he might risk giving it to some rogue to waste in sin. All the
property one possesses, he possesses it by stewardship to be used wisely
and honestly for good. Every age has needed a revival of the Golden Rule
in business. Much of the business of to-day is attended to on the
dishonest principle that characterizes gambling,﹃Get as much as possible
for as little as possible.﹄This spirit is first cousin to the spirit of
gambling. The only difference is, one is called wrong and is wrong; the
other is wrong and is called right. Tell the gambler he is a thief; he
will acknowledge it, and will beat you, if he can, while he is talking to
you. Tell the other man he is a thief, and he will sue you at court and
win his case, although it is just as wrong to steal $100 from an
unbalanced mind, as it is to steal $100 from an unlocked safe or off of an
untrained football team. It will be an easy matter to produce professional
gamblers so long as society upholds dishonest dealers by another name.
What men need in this matter is moral and spiritual vision, spiritual
discernment. Some persons live by taking advantage of those who are down.
In all of its forms gambling leads to a long train of crimes. In addition
to his crime of theft the professional gambler, through passion or drink,
becomes a murderer. I knew a professional gambler who killed a man, with
whom he had been playing cards for money, for fifty cents. After it was
all over the man was sorry he had done it, for he had committed the crime
in a passion while he was intoxicated. The one who speculates on the
markets is not counted dishonest by the world, but how often and how
quickly it leads one into crime! In our neighboring town in Illinois a man
of a good family and of good standing in the community began to speculate
on the Chicago Board of Trade. He was as honest a person, perhaps, as you
or I. He thought he was. For years he had been a trusted, Christian
worker, and treasurer of the Sunday-school. But he made just one venture
too many. He had lost all; could not even replace the Sunday-school fund
that he had simply used, no doubt expecting to replace it with usury; but
the loss and disgrace were too much for him to face, so he deserted home
and friends and honor and all, and secretly ran away. The speculating
gambler became a deserting embezzler. The person who has acquired a
passion for betting on races and games is on a fair way to professional
gambling and to speculating on the markets. And rarely does one ever
escape these, if once he gets a start in them.
The evil of society gambling is most dangerous of all, because it is most
subtle of all. Ah first no one would suspect an innocent game of cards,
played just for fun. You may be the fourth one to make up a game; you may
not know how to play, but you are told you can quickly learn. You brave
it, and go in for a game. The next time a similar circumstance arises, you
can not easily decline, for you must confess you have played, and so you
go in as an old player. This may be as far as the matter ever goes with
you. But here is one who is more impulsive than you; his surroundings are
entirely different. He learns to play, and comes to revel in it. A passion
is created for the game. He is shrewd; soon learns the tricks, and one
evening—purely by chance, as it seems to him—he wins his first
five dollars. Strange possibilities with cards lay hold upon him. He is
consumed by that passion. He plays for business, for keeps; he has become
a professional gambler. Ah! this is no finespun tale; it is being worked
out every year in our country, all over the world. Among many things for
which I have to thank my father and mother not the least is, that they
would allow no gamblers, nor gambling, nor the instruments of gambling
about our home. Better keep a pet rattlesnake for your child than a deck
of cards; for if he gets poisoned by the snake he may be cured; but if the
passion for card-playing should happen to seize him, there is little
chance of a cure. The inmates of our penitentiaries to-day, almost to a
man, testify that﹃card-playing threw them into bad company, led them into
sin, and was one of the causes of their downfall.﹄Dr. Talmage was asked
if there could be any harm in a pack of cards. He Said:﹃Instead of
directly answering your question, I will give you as My opinion that there
are thousands of men with as strong a brain as you have, who have gone
through card-playing into games of chance, and have dropped down into the
gambler's life and into the gambler's hell.﹄A prisoner in a jail in
Michigan wrote a letter to a temperance paper, in which he gives this
advice for young men:﹃Let cards and liquor alone, and you will never be
behind the gates.﹄Friends, not every one who touches liquor is a
drunkard, but every drunkard touches liquor; so not every one who plays
cards is a professional gambler, but every professional gambler plays
cards. Is there nothing significant about these facts.﹃A word to the wise
is sufficient.﹄"In a railway train sat four men playing cards. One was a
judge, and two of the others were lawyers. Near them sat a poor mother, a
widow in black. The sight of the men at their game made her nervous. She
kept quiet as long as she could; but finally rising came to them, and
addressing the judge, asked: 'Do you know me?' 'No, madam, I do not,' said
he. 'Well, said the mother, 'you sentenced my son to State's prison for
life.' Turning to one of the lawyers, she said: 'And you, sir, pleaded
against him. He was all I had. He worked hard on the farm, was a good boy,
and took care of me until he began to play cards, when he took to gambling
and was lost.'" Dr. Guthrie writes: "In regard to the lawfulness of
certain pursuits, pleasures, and amusements, it is impossible to lay down
any fixed and general rule; but we may confidently say that whatever is
found to unfit you for religious duties, or to interfere with the
performance of them; whatever dissipates your mind or cools the fervor of
your devotions; whatever indisposes you to read your Bibles or to engage
in prayer, wherever the thought of a bleeding Savior, or of a holy God, or
of the day of judgment falls like a cold shadow on your enjoyment, the
pleasures you can not thank God for, on which you can not ask His
blessing, whose recollections will haunt a dying bed and plant sharp
thorns in its uneasy pillow,—these are not for you..Never go where
you can not ask God to go with you; never be found where you would not
like death to find you. Never indulge in any pleasure that will not bear
the morning's reflection. Keep yourselves unspotted from the world, not
from its spots only, but even from its suspicions."
IV. DANCING.
DANCING is the expression of inward feelings by means of rhythmical
movements of the body. Usually these movements are in measured step, and
are accompanied by music.
In some form or another dancing is as old as the world, and has been
practiced by rude as well as by civilized peoples. The passion for amateur
dancing always has been strongest among savage nations, who have made
equal use of it in religious rites and in war. With the savages the
dancers work themselves into a perfect frenzy, into a kind of mental
intoxication. But as civilization has advanced dancing has modified its
form, becoming more orderly and rhythmical. The early Greeks made the art
of dancing into a system, expressive of all the different passions. For
example, the dance of the Furies, so represented, would create complete
terror among those who witnessed them. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle,
ranked dancing with poetry, and said that certain dancers, with rhythm
applied to gesture, could express manners, passions, and actions. The most
eminent Greek sculptors studied the attitude of the dancers for their art
of imitating the passions. In a classical Greek song, Apollo, one of the
twelve greater gods, the son of Zeus the chief god, and the god of
medicine, music, and poetry, was called The Dancer. In a Greek line Zeus
himself is represented as dancing. In Sparta, a province of ancient
Greece, the law compelled parents to exercise their children in dancing
from the age of five years. They were led by grown men, and sang hymns and
songs as they danced. In very early times a Greek chorus, consisting of
the whole population of the city, would meet in the market-place to offer
up thanksgivings to the god of the country. Their jubilees were always
attended with hymn-singing and dancing. The Jewish records make frequent
mention of dancing, but always﹃as a religious ceremony, or as an
expression of gratitude and praise.﹄As a means of entertainment in
private society, dancing was practiced in ancient times, but by
professional dancers, and not by the company themselves. It is true that
the Bible has sanctioned dancing, but let us remember, first, that it was
always a religious rite; second, that it was practiced only on joyful
occasions, at national feasts, and after great victories; third, that
usually it was﹃performed by maidens in the daytime, in open air, in
highways, fields, or groves;﹄fourth, that﹃there are no instances of
dancing sanctioned in the Bible, in which both sexes united in the
exercise, either as an act of worship or as an amusement;﹄fifth, that any
who perverted the dance from a sacred use to purposes of amusement were
called infamous. The only records in Scripture of dancing as a social
amusement were those of the ungodly families described by Job xxi, 11-13,
who spent their time in luxury and gayety, and who came to a sudden
destruction; and the dancing of Herodias, Matt. Xiv, 6, which led to the
rash vow of King Herod and to the murder of John the Baptist. So much for
the history of dancing.
The modern dance in which both sexes freely mingle, irrespective of
character, purely for amusement, at late hours, at which intoxicants, in
some form, are generally used, is, essentially, an institution of vice.
The modern dance is as different from the dancing of ancient times, and
from the dancing sanctioned in the Bible, as daylight is from dark, as
good is from bad. The modern dance imperils health, it poisons the social
nature; it destroys intellectual growth; and it robs men and women of
their virtue. Let us understand one another. To attend one dance may not
accomplish all of this in any person. One may attend many dances, and he
himself not see these results marked in his character, but some one else
will see them. For in the nature of the institution the modern dance
affects in all these particulars those whom it reaches. The tendencies in
a single dance are in these directions. In a way peculiar to itself the
modern dance imperils health. Though detestable and out of date, as are
the modern kissing games, yet no one ever heard of one of those
performances continuing until three and five o'clock in the morning. Young
people do not stay up all night, ride five, ten, and twenty miles to play
authors, or to snap caroms, or to play charades, as interesting in a
social way as these innocent amusements may be. The fact that one will go
to this extreme in keeping late hours to attend the dance, and will not
keep such late hours for any other form of amusement, proves that the
dance, as an institution, is at fault in producing such irregularities.
And then who ever heard of one having to dress in a certain way to attend
a purely social gathering. But let a young lady attend a fashionable ball
or a regular round dance of any note, whatever, and if she wears the civil
gown she will be thought tame and snubbed. She must dress for this
occasion, and thus, from a health point of view, so expose her body that
after the excitement and heat of a prolonged round she takes her place in
a slight draught of air, and a severe cold is contracted. And this
exposure is further increased by the sudden change from a close, hot room
to the damp, chilly air of the early morning, on her journey home. It is
possible to guard against all of this, but are those persons who attend
such exercises likely to be cautious in such practical matters. At least,
this risk of exposure for men and women is peculiar to the dance, and it
is certain that many are physically injured in this way. The modern dance
poisons the social nature. The chief exercise at the modern dance is
dancing. Those who have attended dances, as a social recreation, have
complained that they never have an opportunity to get acquainted with one
another. Such a luxury as a complete conversation on any theme is out of
the question. It is a form of amusement that stultifies the communicative
faculties, and fosters social seclusion. Some one might say this may be a
good thing, since every grade in moral and social standing are
represented. Yes, but this only acknowledges the lack of opportunity for
social fellowship. It is not true that the dance, as an institution, is
not patronized by the most capable in conversation and companionship?
Certainly this is true in the so-called higher society, among those whose
sole ambition is to excel in formal manners and in personal appearance at
the gay function, and at the social ball. To be communicative one must
have something to communicate, and this means a cultivation of the mind
and heart. True social fellowship is one of the sweetest pleasures of life
and always has its source in the culture of the soul. Whatever may be said
for or against the modern dance, it is true that because of the mixed
characters of its attendants, and for want of opportunity to communicate,
the social nature becomes neglected and abused, and may be fatally
poisoned.
The modern dance destroys intellectual growth. The person who has the
dance-craze cares no more for mental improvement and growth than a
starving man cares for splendid recipes for fine cooking. The thought of a
problem to be solved, of a book to be read, of an organ exercise to be
practiced, of all things, are most tame to the one who is filled with
dreams of the last dance, and with visions of the one that is to come. To
grow, the mind must be free from excitement. The fault with the dance in
this respect is that it has in it a fascination that does not exist in the
ordinary social amusement. Some persons complain that they can not get an
evening to go off well without dancing. But this is only an open
confession to mental vacuity, to intellectual poverty. For one need know
but little to flourish at the dance. And always, where little is required,
intellectually, little is given. It is the rule that those who are in the
greatest need of mental cultivation and growth are those who make up the
dancing crowd. And the fact that the dance, as an institution, in no way
stimulates intellectual thought, destines those who dance to remain on the
lower intellectual plane.
Last, and worst of all, the dance robs men and women of their virtue, and
this often at the first unconsciously. If it is not for health and
physical vigor that one follows up dancing; if it is not the peculiar
social tie that binds dancers together; if it is not the incentive to
intellectual growth and equipment, what is it? A secret lies hid away
somewhere in the institution of the modern dance, that makes it the
chiefest attraction of worldly-minded and often of base-hearted people.
What is that secret? Ah, my friend, it is the appeal to the most sacred
instincts and passions of a man and of a woman! This appeal is peculiar to
the modern dance by the accident of physical contact that men and women
assume in dancing, and also by the circumstances that attend it, namely,
mixed society, late hours, and the customary use of strong drink. No
honest, normally passionate person, who has made it a practice of
attending dances, will deny the truth of this charge. One may never have
thought of it in this way, but when he stops to think he knows that it is
true. It is through ignorance of these circumstances, and of their bad
effects, that many a well-meaning person, presumably to have a good time,
or to acquire heel-grace, goes into the dance, secures a passion for
dancing, and through its seductive influences are led into sin and shame.
The following is an incident out of his own experience related by
Professor T. A. Faulkner, an ex-dancing master. Professor Faulkner is the
author of the little book entitled "From the Ball Room to Hell." A book
which every person who sees no harm in dancing should read.
﹃Here is a girl. The one remaining child of wealthy parents, their idol
and joy. A dancing-school having opened near their home, the daughter, for
accomplishment, was sent to it. She came from her home, modest, and her
innate spirit of purity rebelled against the liberties taken by the
dancing-master, and the men he introduced to her. She became indignant at
the indecent attitudes she was called upon to assume, but noticing a score
of young women, many of them from the best homes in the town, all yielding
to the vulgar embrace, she cast aside that spirit of modesty which had
been the development of years of home-training, and setting her face
against nature's protective warnings, gave herself, as did the others, to
this prolonged embrace set to music. Having learned to dance, its
fascinations led her an enthusiastic captive. Modesty was crucified,
decency outraged, virtue lost its power over her soul, and she spent her
days dreaming of the delights of the sensual whirl of the evening. Hardly
conscious of the change she had now become as bold as any of the women,
and loved the embrace of the charmer. The graduation of the class was, of
course, the occasion of a waltzing reception. To that reception she went,
attended by her father, who looked with a proud heart on the fulsome
greeting his dear one received. After a little the father retired, leaving
his daughter to the care of the many handsome gallants who danced
attendance upon her. The reception did not close until the small hours of
the morning. Each waltz became more voluptuous; intoxicated by sensuality,
the dancers became more bold, and lust was aroused in every breast. How
many sins that reception occasioned, I do not know; this, at least, is
sure, that this girl who entered that dancing-hall three months before, as
pure as an angel, was that night.robbed of her honor and returned to her
home deprived forever of that most precious jewel of womanhood—virtue.
Her first impulse the next morning was self-destruction; then she deluded
herself with the thought of marriage with her dancing companion, but he
still further insulted her by declaring that he wanted a pure woman for
his wife. What was her end? Shunned by the very society which egged her on
to ruin, her self-respect was gone with her lost purity, she went to her
own kind, and in shame is closing her days.﹄"Of two hundred brothel
inmates to whom Professor Faulkner talked, and who were frank enough to
answer his question as to the direct cause of their shame, seven said
poverty and abuse; ten, willful choice; twenty, drink given them by their
parents; and one hundred and sixty-three, dancing and the ball-room."﹃A
former chief of police of New York City says that three-fourths of the
abandoned girls of this city were ruined by dancing.﹄Of the dance, one
says: "It lays its lecherous hand upon the fair character of innocence,
and converts it into a putrid corrupting thing. It enters the domain of
virtue, and with silent, steady blows takes the foundation from underneath
the pedestal on which it sits enthroned. It lists the gate and lets in a
flood of vice and impurity that sweeps away modesty, chastity, and all
sense of shame. It keeps company with the low, the degraded, and the vile.
It feeds upon the passion it inflames, and fattens on the holiest
sentiments, turned by its touch to filth and rottenness. It loves the
haunts of vice, and is at home in the company of harlots and debauchees."
George T. Lemon says:﹃No Church in Christendom commends or even excuses
the dance. All unite to condemn it.﹄The late Episcopal bishop of Vermont,
writes:﹃Dancing is chargeable with waste of time, interruption of useful
study, the indulgence of personal vanity and display, and the premature
incitement of the passions. At the age of maturity it adds to these no
small danger to health by late hours, flimsy dress, heated rooms, and
exposed persons.﹄Episcopal Bishop Meade, of Virginia, declares: "Social
dancing is not among the neutral things which, within certain limits, we
may do at pleasure, and it is not among the things lawful, but not
expedient, but it is in itself wrong, improper, and of bad effect."
Episcopal Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio, putting the dance and the theater
together, writes: "The only line that I would draw in regard to these is
that of entire exclusion..The question is not what we can imagine them to
be, but what they always have been, will be, and must be, in such a world
as this, to render them pleasurable to those who patronize them. Strip
them bare until they stand in the simple innocence to which their
defenders' arguments would reduce them and the world would not have them."
A Roman Catholic priest testifies that "the confessional revealed the fact
that nineteen out of every twenty women who fall can trace the beginning
of their state to the modern dance."
V. THEATER-GOING.
WITH drunkenness, gambling, and dancing, theater-going dates from the
beginning of history, and with these it is not only questionable in
morals, but it is positively bad. Every one who knows any thing about the
institution of the theater, as such, knows that it always has been
corrupting in its influence. Not only those who attend the theater
pronounce it bad, as a whole, but it is frowned upon by play-writers, and
by actors and actresses themselves. Five hundred years before Christ, Jew,
Pagan, and Christian spoke against the theater. It is stated on good
authority that the dissipations of the theater were the chief cause of the
decadence of ancient Greece. At one time, Augustus, the emperor of Rome,
was asked as a means of public safety, to suppress the theater. The early
Christians held the theater in such bad repute as to rank it with the
heathen temple. And to these two places they would not go, even to preach
the Good News of Jesus Christ. Nor has the moral tone and character of the
theater improved, even in our day. Dr. Theodore Cuyler, for many years an
experienced pastor in Brooklyn, Says:﹃The American theater is a concrete
institution, to be judged as a totality. It is responsible for what it
tolerates and shelters. We, therefore, hold it responsible for whatever of
sensual impurity and whatever of irreligion, as well as for whatever of
occasional and sporadic benefit there may be bound up in its organic life.
Instead of helping Christ's kingdom, it hinders; instead of saving souls,
it corrupts and destroys.﹄Dr. Buckley gives this testimony: "Being aware
of the fact that the drama, like every thing else which caters to the
taste, has its fashions—rising and falling and undergoing various
changes—now improving, and then degenerating, I have thought it
desirable to institute a careful inquiry into the plays which have been
performed in the principal theaters of New York during the past three
years. Accordingly, I procured the copies used by the performers in
preparing for their parts, and took pains to ascertain wherein, in actual
use, the actors diverged from the printed copies. They number over sixty,
and, with the exception of a few unprinted plays, include all that have
been produced in the prominent theaters of New York during the three years
now about closing..It is a singular fact, that, with three or four
exceptions, those dramatic compositions, among the sixty or more under
discussion, which are morally objectionable, are of a comparatively low
order of literary execution. But if language and sentiments, which would
not be tolerated among respectable people, and would excite indignation if
addressed to the most uncultivated and coarse servant girl, not openly
vicious, by an ordinary young man, and profaneness which would brand him
who uttered it as irreligious, are improper amusements for the young and
for Christians of every age, then at least fifty of these plays are to be
condemned."
In the first place the theater leads one into bad company. As a class, the
performers are licentious. How can one be in their company, be moved to
laughter and to tears and not be contaminated by them? One who has studied
the theater tells us that the﹃fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the
stage exhibit as pointed a contrast as the human imagination can
conceive.﹄The famous Macready, as he retired from the stage, wrote:﹃None
of my children, with my consent under any pretense, shall ever enter the
theater, nor shall they have any visiting connection with play actors or
actresses.﹄Dr. Johnson asks the question:﹃How can they mingle together
as they do, men and women, and make public exhibitions of themselves as
they do, in such circumstances, with such surroundings, with such speech
as much often be on their lips to play the plays that are written, in such
positions as they must sometimes take, affecting such sentiment and
passions—how can they do this without moral contamination?﹄And we
would ask, how can persons live enrapt with this sort of thing for hours
and hours each week, the year around, and not become equally contaminated,
for to the onlooker all this comes as a reality, while to those who are
performing, it is hired shamming? Therefore, as the pupil becomes the
teacher, so the attendant at the theater becomes like the one who
performs. So that to go to the theater is to﹃sit in the seat of the
scornful or to stand in the way of sinners.﹄"There you find the man,"
says one,﹃who has lost all love for his home, the careless, the profane,
the spendthrift, the drunkard, and the lowest prostitute of the street.
They are found in all parts of the house; they crowd the gallery, and
together should aloud the applause, greeting that which caricatures
religion, sneers at virtue, or hints at indecency.﹄Not only the actors
and the onlookers of the average theater are vile, but all of the
immediate associations of the playhouse must correspond with it. If not in
the same building with the theater, in adjoining ones, at least, are found
the wine-parlor and the brothel. It is generally conceded that no theater
can be prosperous if it is wholly separated from these adjuncts of evil.
The theater, therefore, kills spiritually and degrades the moral life of
the one who attends it. The theater deals with the spectacular. This
appeals to the eye, to the ear, and to all of the outer senses.
Spirituality depends upon a cultivation of the spiritual senses that Grace
has opened up within the soul. Hence, the spectacular is directly opposed
to the spiritual. The deep, contemplative, spiritual soul could find
little or no food in the false, clap-trap representations of the modern
stage. And to find an increased interest here is evidence that one lacks
spiritual life, at least deep-seated spiritual life. This is why so many
professing Christians are so eager to go to the card-party, to the
dancing-party, and to the theater. The inner-sense life of the soul is
dead, and one must have something upon which to feed, hence he feeds upon
the husks of "imprudent and un-Christian amusements." And let one who has
a measure of spiritual life, instead of increasing it, seek to satisfy his
soul-longing by means of the spectacular, of false representations in any
form, soon he will lose the spiritual life that he has. And this loss will
be marked by an increased demand for the spectacular. The surest proof
to-day that the spiritual life of the Church is waning in certain
sections, is not so much that her membership-roll is not on the increase,
but that professing Christian people are running wild after cards and
dancing and the theater. Evangelist Sayles declares:﹃The people of our
so-called best society, and Christian people, many that have been looked
upon as active workers, sit now and gaze upon scenes in our theaters,
without a blush, that twenty-five years ago would not have been
countenanced..The moral and spiritual life of many a Christian has been
weakened by the eyes gazing upon the scenes of the theater.﹄Says he, "The
Christian, through attendance upon the playhouse, creates a relish for
worldly things, and so spiritual things become distasteful."
Then, to go to one theater, sanctions all. To have heard and to have seen
Joe Jefferson in "Rip Van Winkle," Richard Mansfield in﹃The Merchant of
Venice,﹄or Edwin Booth or Sir Henry Irving, or Maude Adams, or Julia
Marlowe in their best plays, is to have received a deeper insight into
human nature, and a stronger purpose to become sympathetic and true, but
who can afford to sanction all that is base and villainous is the
institution of the modern theater for the sake of learning sympathy and
truth and human nature from a few worthy actors, when he may find all of
this as truthfully, if not as artistically, set forth by the orator, by
the musician, by the painter, and by the author? It is not cant, it is not
pharisaism, it is not a weak claim of Christianity, but it is common
honesty, mighty truth, a cardinal and beautiful teaching of Jesus Christ
to deny one's self for the welfare of the weaker brother. Let one go to
hear Mansfield in Shakespeare, and his neighbor boy will take his friend
and go to the vaudeville, and his only excuse to his parents and to his
half-taught mind and heart will be,﹃Well, Mr. So-and-So goes to the
theater, he is a member of the Church and superintendent of the
Sunday-school; surely there is no harm for me to go.﹄To the immature mind
what seems right for one person seems lawful for another. This is because
such a person has not learned to discriminate between what is bad and what
is good. Therefore, if the theater as an institution has more in it that
is bad than It has in it that is good, rather if the general tendency of
the theater, as an institution, is bad, the safe thing for one's self and
for those who read one's life as an example, is to discard it entirely.
In view of these facts, no person can attend the theater at all without
hurting his influence. The ideal life is that one which gives offense of
stumbling to no one. A successful preacher who had an aversion toward
speaking on the subject of questionable amusements, when asked what he
believed concerning a certain form of amusement, replied:﹃See what I do,
and know what I believe.﹄It is a glorious life whose actions are an open
epistle of righteousness and peace, read and believed and honored by all
men.
"Some time ago a gentleman teaching a large class of young men in a
Chicago Sunday-school, desired to attend a theater for the purpose of
seeing a celebrated actor. He was not a theater-goer, and thought that no
harm could come from it. He had no sooner taken his seat, however, than he
saw in the opposite gallery some of the members of his class. They also
saw him and began commenting on the fact that their teacher was at the
theater. They thought it inconsistent in him, lost their interest in the
class, and he lost his influence over the young men. That teacher tied his
hands by this one act, so that he could not speak out against the gross
sins of the theater."
Those who defend theater-going say that if Christian people would
patronize the theater that it would be made more respectable. But over a
thousand years of history proves that this principle fails here as it does
elsewhere. A Christian woman marries an unchristian man with the hope that
he will become a Christian; a steady, sensible woman in all other matters
marries a man who drinks, with the thought of reforming him; one
associates with worldly and sensual companions, expecting to make them
better; but, alas, what blasted hopes, what wretched failures in all of
these instances, at least in the most of them! You can not reform vice;
you may whitewash a sin, but it will be sin, still. To purify a character
or an institution one must not become a part of it by sympathy, nor by
association. This is what the psalmist meant when he said,﹃Blessed is the
man that walketh not in the counsels of the ungodly, nor standeth in the
way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.﹄And so it is,
that every effort at reforming the theater, thus far has failed. The Rev.
C.W. Winchester says concerning the reforming of the theater: "The facts
are, (1) that the theater in this city and country never had the support
and encouragement of moral and religious people it has now; (2) that the
theater here was never so bad. Clearly, if Christian patronage is going to
reform the theater, the reform ought to begin. But the grade is downward.
The theater is growing worse and worse." Dr. Wilkinson makes this
statement on the question of reforming the theater:﹃Now the Protestant
Christians of New York number, by recent computation, less than
seventy-five thousand souls, in a population of a million. Supposing a
general agreement among them all that a regular attendance at the theater
was at this juncture the most pressing and most promising method of
evangelical effort, they would not then constitute even one-tenth of the
numerical patronage which the management would study to please.﹄Dr.
Herrick Johnson says:﹃The ideal stage is out of the question. It is out
of the question just as pure, chaste, human nudity is out of the
question..The nature of theatrical performances, the essential demands of
the stage, the character of the plays, and the constitution of human
nature, make it impossible that the theater should exist, save under a law
of degeneracy. Its trend is downward; its centuries of history tell just
this one story. The actual stage of to-day..is a moral abomination. In
Chicago, at least, it is trampling on the Sabbath with defiant scoff. It
is defiling our youth. It is making crowds familiar with the play of
criminal passions. It is exhibiting women with such approaches to
nakedness as can have no other design than to breed lust behind the
onlooking eyes. It is furnishing candidates for the brothel. It is getting
us used to scenes that rival the voluptuousness and licentious ages of the
past.﹄As never before to-day, has the theater asked for the support of
Church members. And the ideal stage, with virtuous performers, and with
pure dramas, are held up as a sample of what Christian people are invited
to attend. Dr. Cuyler says:﹃Every person of common sense knows that the
actual average theater is no more an ideal playhouse than the average pope
is like St. Peter, or the average politician is like Abraham Lincoln. A
Puritanic theater would become bankrupt in a twelvemonth. The great mass
of those who frequent the playhouse go there for strong, passionate
excitements..I do not affirm,﹄says Dr. Cuyler, "that every popular play
is immoral, and every attendant is on a scent for sensualities. But the
theater is a concrete institution, it must be judged in the gross and to a
tremendous extent it is only a gilded nastiness. It unsexes womanhood by
putting her publicly in male attire—too often in no attire at all."
"So competent an authority as the famous actress, Olga Nethersole,
recently declared that the only kind of play which may hope for success
with English-speaking audiences at the present day is the play which is
sufficiently indicated by calling it immoral. There is no doubt about it
that the theater, as at present conducted, is pulling the stones from the
foundations of public morality, and weakening, and in many quarters
endangering, the whole structure of society. The atmosphere of the modern
theater is lustful and irreverent. It is a good place for Christians to
keep away from. It is a good opportunity for the strong man to deny
himself for the sake of his younger or weaker brother."
PART II. WORTHY SUBSTITUTES.
"Get the spindle and thy distaff ready, and God will send
thee flax."
VI. BOOKS AND READING.
MANY BOOKS, MUCH READING.
TO-DAY every one reads. Go where you may, you will find the paper, the
magazine, the journal; printed letters, official reports, exhaustive
cyclopedias, universal histories; the ingenuous advertisement, the
voluminous calendar, the decorated symphony; printed ideals, elaborate
gaming rules, flaming bulletins; and latest of all, we have begun to
publish our communications on the waves of the air. In this hurly-burly of
many books and much reading, it is no mean problem to know why one should
read; and what, and how, and when. Especially does this problem of general
reading confront the student, the lover of books, and those of the
professions. Essays are to be read, the historical, the philosophical, and
the scientific; novels, the historical and the religious; books of
devotion, books of biography, of travel, of criticism, and of art. What
principles are to guide one in his choice of reading, that he may select
only the wisest, purest, and helpfulest from all these classes of books?
WHY READ.
Read to acquire knowledge. Knowledge is the perception of truth. One
arrives at knowledge by the assimilation of facts and principles, or by
the assimilation of truth itself. Three sources of knowledge are
experience, conversation, and reading. Experience leads one slowly to
knowledge, is limited entirely to the path over which one has passed, and
is a "dear teacher." To acquire knowledge by conversation is to put one at
the mercy of his associates, making him dependent upon their good favor,
truthfulness, and learning. But reading places one in direct communication
with the wisest and best persons of all time. To acquire knowledge by
reading is to defy time and space, persons and circumstances, at least, in
our day of many and inexpensive books. Through books facts live,
principles operate, justice acts, the light of philosophy gleams, wit
flashes, God speaks. Every book-lover agrees with Channing:﹃No matter how
poor I am..if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under
my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and
Shakespeare to open to me the words of imagination and the workings of the
human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall
not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a
cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in
the place where I live.﹄Kingsley says:﹃Except a living man, there is
nothing more wonderful Than a book!—a message to us from the dead,—from
human souls whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles
away; and yet these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse
us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as
brothers..If they are good and true, whether they are about religion or
politics, farming, trade, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the
Maker of all things, the Teacher of all truth.﹄The wide range of truth
secured through reading acts in two ways upon the reader. It spiritualizes
his character, and it makes him mighty in action. Knowledge on almost any
subject has a marked tendency to sharpen one's wits, to refine his tastes,
to ennoble his spirit, to improve his judgement, to strengthen his will,
to subdue his baser passions, and to fill his soul with the breath of
life. It is only upon truth that the soul feeds, and by means of knowledge
that the character grows. "It cannot be that people should grow in grace,"
writes John Wesley,﹃unless they give themselves to reading. A reading
people will always be a knowing people.﹄Reading makes one mighty in
action when it gives one knowledge, since "knowledge is power," and since
power has but one way of showing itself, and that is, in action. Knowledge
takes no note of hardships, ignores fatigue, laughs at disappointment, and
frowns upon despair. It delves into the earth, rides upon the air, defies
the cold of the north, the heat of the south; it stands upon the brink of
the spitting volcano, circumnavigates the globe, examines the heavens, and
tries to understand God. With but few exceptions, master-minds and men of
affairs have been incessant readers. Cicero, chief of Roman orators,
whether at home or abroad, in town or in the country, by day or by night,
in youth or in old age, in sorrow or in joy, was not without his books.
﹃Petrarch, when his friend the bishop, thinking that he was overworked,
took away the key of his library, was restless and miserable the first
day, had a bad headache the second, and was so ill by the third day that
the bishop, in alarm, returned the key and let his friend read as much as
he liked.﹄Writes Frederick the Great,﹃My latest passion will be for
literature.﹄The poet, Milton, while a child, read and studied until
midnight. John Ruskin read at four years of age, was a book-worm at five,
and wrote numerous poems and dramas before he was ten. Lord Macaulay read
at three and began a compendium of universal history at seven. Although
not a lover of books, George Washington early read Matthew Hale and became
a master in thought. Benjamin Franklin would sit up all night at his
books. Thomas Jefferson read fifteen hour a day. Patrick Henry read for
employment, and kept store for pastime. Daniel Webster was a devouring
reader, and retained all that he read. At the age of fourteen he could
repeat from memory all of Watt's Hymns and Pope's "Essay on Man." When but
a youth, Henry Clay read books of history and science and practiced giving
their contents before the trees, birds, and horses. Says a biographer of
Lincoln, "A book was almost always his inseparable companion."
Then, read for enjoyment. Fortunately, a habit so valuable as reading may
grow to become a pleasure. So that as one is gathering useful information
and increasing in knowledge, he may have the keenest enjoyment. Such an
one sings as he works. He has learned to convert drudgery into joy; duty
has become delight. But even for such an one a portion of his reading
should be purely for rest and recreation. If one has taught school all
day, or set type, or managed a home, or read history, or labored in the
field, or been shopping, heavy, solid reading may be out of the question,
while under such circumstances one would really enjoy a striking allegory
or a well-written novel. Or, if one is limited in knowledge, or deficient
in literary taste so that he may find no interest in history, science,
philosophy, or religion, still he may enjoy thrilling books of travel, of
biography, or of entertaining story. In this way all may enjoy reading.
﹃Of all the amusements which can possibly be imagined for a hard-working
man, after his daily toil, or in its intervals, there is nothing,﹄says
Herschel, "like reading an interesting book. It calls for no bodily
exercise, of which he has had enough or too much. It relieves his home of
its dullness and sameness, which, in nine cases out of ten, is what drives
him out to the alehouse, to his own ruin and his family's. It accompanies
him to his next day's work, and, if the book he has been reading be any
thing above the very idlest and lightest, gives him something to think of
besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation,
something he can enjoy while absent, and look forward with pleasure to
return to."
WHAT TO READ.
First of all read something. "Southey tells us that, in his walk one
stormy day, he met an old woman, to whom, by way of greeting, he made the
rather obvious remark that it was dreadful weather. She answered,
philosophically, that in her opinion, 'any weather was better than none.'"
And so we would say, excluding corrupt literature, any reading is better
than none! In this day of multiplicity of books who who never reads may
not be an ignoramus nor a fool, but certainly he robs the world of much
that is useful in character, and deprives himself of much that enriches
his own soul. Then one should select his books, as he does his associates,
and not attempt to read everything that comes in his way. No longer may
one know even a little about every thing. It might be a mark of credit
rather than an embarrassment for one to answer, "No," to the question,
"Have you read the latest book?" when the fact is recalled that 30,000
novels have been published within the past eighty years, and that five new
ones are added to the list daily.
READ HISTORY.
One has characterized history as both the background and the key to all
knowledge. No other class of reading so much as this helps one to
appreciate his own country, his own age, his own surroundings. Extensive
reading of history is a sure remedy for pessimism, prejudice, and
fanaticism. In so far as history is an accurate account of the past, it is
a true prophecy of the future for the nation and for the individual. Who
reads history knows that men always have displayed folly, Weakness, and
cruelty, and that they always will, even to their own obvious ruin. Also
he knows that every time and place have had their few good men and women
who have honored God, and whom God has honored. Nothing so teaches a
person his own insignificance and the small part that he plays in the
world as does the reading of history. Nor is history to be found only in
the book called history. If you want to know the life of the ancients, as
you know the life of your own community, read Josephus. Do you want a
glimpse of early apostolic times, read "The Life and Times of Jesus," by
Edersheim. Do you want to see the battlefield of Waterloo, visit Paris in
the beginning of the nineteenth century, stop over night with Louis
Philippe, see the English through French spectacles, and the Frenchman
through his own; do you want a glimpse of the political despotism, court
intrigue, and ecclesiastical tyranny in France a hundred years ago; do you
want to hear the crash of the bastile, and see Notre Dame converted into a
horse-stable; do you want a picture of the "bread riots" and mob violence
that terminated in the French revolution of 1848; in short do you want a
tale of French life and character in its brightest, gloomiest, and
intensest period, read "Les Miserables," by Victor Hugo. To-day one must
read current history. It is not enough to plan, work, and economize, one
must make and seize opportunities. And this he can do only as he is alive
to passing events. In a few years one may outgrow his usefulness through
losing touch with advancing ideas and methods of work. To keep abreast of
the times one must read the newspaper and the magazine. The newspaper is
the history of the hour, the magazine is the history of the day. The
magazine corrects the newspaper, and﹃sums up in clear and noble phrase
those fundamental facts which are only dimly seen in the newspaper.﹄A
serious and growing tendency is that the newspaper and magazine shall take
the place of the best books. A few minutes a day is enough for any
newspaper, and a few hours a month is enough for any magazine. The
greatest part of one's reading should be that of books. Who gormandizes on
current events will pay the price with a morbid mind and with false
conclusions in his reasoning.
READ BIOGRAPHY.
The life of a great man is a continual inspiration. No other exercise so
fires a soul with noble ambition as the study of a great life. Real life
is not only stranger than fiction, but it is more interesting than
fiction. No boy should be without the life of Washington, of Lincoln, of
Webster, of Franklin. Every girl should know by heart brave Pocahontas,
sympathetic Mrs. Stowe, queenly Frances Willard, and kind-hearted
Victoria. No private library is complete without Plutarch's "Lives," the
"Life of Alfred the Great," of Napoleon, Grant, and Gladstone.
READ SCIENCE.
The fourteen-year-old child may master the practical principles of natural
philosophy, and yet how many intelligent persons remain ignorant of the
most commonplace truths in this branch of learning! With a little
attention to the natural and mechanical sciences, a new world of beauty
and truth opens up before one. He sees objects that once were hid to him;
he hears sounds that once were silent; he enjoys odors that once retained
their fragrance. His whole being becomes a part of the living musical
world about him, when he has his senses opened to appreciate it and to
become attuned to it. One should read some science throughout his life, in
order to remain at the source of all true knowledge. Here he learns to
appreciate the language of nature. When expressed by man, this is poetry.
THEREFORE, READ POETRY.
Ten minutes a day with Tennyson, Browning, Emerson, or Lowell, will teach
one a new language, by which he may converse with the wind, talk with the
birds, chat with the brook, speak with the flowers, and hold discourse
with the sun, moon, and stars. The deepest and mightiest thoughts of all
ages have been expressed in poetry, the language of nature. "Poetry," says
Coleridge, "is the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human
thoughts, passions, emotions, languages."
READ BOOKS OF RELIGION.
"Religion," says Lyman Abbott, "is the life of God in the soul." Every
truly religious book treats of this life. The only purely religious book
is the Bible. It is the source and inspiration of every other religious
book. The Bible is a﹃letter from God to man, handed down from heaven and
written by inspired men.﹄Its message is free salvation for all men
through Jesus Christ; its spirit is divine love. No wise person is without
this letter, and every thoughtful and devout person reads it daily. One
may never find time to follow a course of study, nor to pursue a plan of
daily reading; he may never know the wealth of Dante, the grandeur of
Milton, nor the genius of Shakespeare, but every one may make the Bible
his daily companion and guide.
HOW TO READ.
Enter into what you read. No book can thrill and move one unless he gives
himself up to it. Lack of fixed attention is the cause of the
half-informed mind, the faulty reason, and the ever-failing memory. The
cause of this lack of attention may be an historical allusion of which one
is ignorant, or a new word that he fails to look up, or an overtaxed mind,
or unfavorable surroundings. Whatever may be this hindrance it must be
removed or overcome before one can enter into what he reads. A thought is
of no value until it registers itself and takes a room in the mind. This
is why we are told on every hand, that a few books well read are worth
more than many books poorly read. The secret of Abraham Lincoln's power as
a public speaker lay in his clear reasoning, simple statement, and apt
illustration. This secret was secured by Lincoln through his habit of
mastering whatever he heard in conversation or reading.﹃When a mere
child,﹄says Lincoln,﹃I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me
in a way I could not understand. I don't think I ever got angry at
anything else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper, and has
ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the
neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of
the night walking up and down, trying to make out what was the exact
meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, though I
often tried to, when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had
caught it, and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I
had repeated it over and over; until I had put it in language plain
enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of
passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now when I am
handling a thought until I have bounded it north, and bounded it south,
and bounded it east, and bounded it west.﹄And so to enter into what one
reads, means that he will master the thought. The most that a university
can do for one is to teach him to read. Who has learned how to read has
secured a liberal education, however or wherever he may have learned it.
Then, one should learn to scan an author. This means to take a rapid
observation of his thoughts. Much of one's common reading matter should be
scanned. All local news, much magazine literature, and many books should
be used in this way. It is mental sloth and waste of time to pore over a
newspaper or a book of light fiction, as one would a philosophy of history
or a work of science. As Bacon aptly puts it,﹃Some books are to be
tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested;
that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but
not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and
attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of
them by others.﹄One's mind is like a horse, it soon learns its master.
Feed it well, groom it well, treat it gently, you may expect much from it.
It is reported of Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis that he has read a book a day
for over twenty years. He has learned to squeeze the thought out of a book
at a grasp, as one of us would squeeze the juice from an orange. Take a
glimpse into his library. Five hundred volumes of sociological literature,
four hundred volumes of history, two hundred of cyclopedias, gazetteers,
books of reference; four hundred volumes of pure science, one hundred
volumes of travels, two hundred and fifty volumes of biography; one
hundred volumes of art and art history; a section on psychology, ethics,
philosophy, and the relation between science and religion, and a thousand
volumes of literature, pure and simple.
WHEN TO READ.
First, read at regular hours. This is for those who follow literary
pursuits. No professional person should respect himself in his work who
has no special time for reading and study, and who does not
conscientiously adhere to it. The pulpit, the law-office, the doctor's
office, the teacher, and the editor's desk, each clamors for the man, the
woman, who can think. To appreciate God and to sympathize with the human
heart; to know law and the intricate special case; to understand disease
and relief for the suffering patient; to have something to teach and to
know how to teach it even to the dullest pupil; to know human character
and to be able to enlighten the public mind and the public conscience; all
this requires in the one who serves a deep and growing knowledge and
experience which may be realized only in the grasp of truth contained in
the up-to-date and best authorized books. The use of books with this class
of persons is not optional. They must buy and master them, or a few years
at longest will relegate them with their old books and ideas to the dusty
garret where they belong.
Then, many must read on economized time. The farmer, the mechanic, the
merchant, the shopkeeper, each may find a little time for daily reading.
Ten minutes saved in the morning, ten minutes in the afternoon, and ten
minutes in the evening, this is half hour a day. In a week this gives one
three hours and a half, in a month fourteen hours of solid reading, and in
a year one will have read seven days of twenty-four hours each. Think of
what may be accomplished in an average lifetime in common reading by the
busiest person, who really wants to read. "Schliemann," the noted German
scholar and author,﹃as a boy, standing in line at the post-office waiting
his turn for the mail, utilized the time by studying Greek from a little
pocket grammar.﹄"Mary Somerfield, the astronomer, while busy with her
children in the nursery, wrote her 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' without
neglecting her duties as a mother."﹃Julius Caesar, while a military
officer and politician found time to write his Commentaries known
throughout the world.﹄William Cobbett says:﹃I learned grammar when I was
a private soldier on a six-pence a day. The edge of my guard-bed was my
seat to study in, my knapsack was my bookcase, and a board lying on my lap
was my desk. I had no moment at that time that I could call my own; and I
had to read and write among the talking, singing, whistling, and bawling
of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men.﹄Among those whom
we all know who have risen out of obscurity to eminence through a wise
economy of time which they have used in reading and study, are, Patrick
Henry, Benjamin West, Eli Whitney, James Watt, Richard Baxter, Roger
Sherman, Sir Isaac Newton, and Benjamin Franklin.
VII. SOCIAL RECREATION.
DEFINED.
The normal young person who does not dissipate is bursting with life. The
natural child is activity embodied. The healthful old person craves
exercise. Life, activity, exercise, each must have some method of spending
itself. Some normal method, some right method, some attractive method must
be chosen. By normal method we mean that which calls into use the varied
faculties and powers of the entire being, body, mind, and heart. By right
method we mean that which does not crush out a part of one's being, while
another part is being developed. By attractive method in the use of life,
activity, exercise, we mean that which appeals to one's peculiar desires,
tastes, and circumstances, so long as these are normal and right. Some
chosen profession, trade, or work is the rightful heritage of every
person. Each man, woman, and child should know when he gets up of a
morning, what his work is for that day. Consciously, or unconsciously, he
should have some outline of work, some end in view, some goal toward which
he is stretching himself. Dr. J. M. Buckley asks:﹃Have you a purpose and
a plan?﹄And answers, "Life is worth nothing till then." The child is in
the hands of his parent, his teacher, his guardian. These must answer to
Destiny for his beginning and growth.﹃Satan finds something for idle
hands to do.﹄Hence the necessity of vigilance on the part of those who
hold the young. But "all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy." This
rule is good whether "Jack" be a puny girl, a feeble grandfather, a
hustling, responsible father, a busy mother, or even a mischievous lad.
Every person who rises each morning, dresses himself and goes about his
work as if he knew what he were about; who has some useful work to do, and
does it, sooner or later, needs rest. True, night comes and one may rest.
And sweet is the rest of sleep; a third of one's life is passed in this
way. Sancho Panza has it right when he says:
﹃Now blessing light on him that first invented sleep! It covers a man all
over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for
the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot.﹄But one craves a
recreation, a rest which work nor sleep can give. Man has a social nature,
a longing to mingle with his acquaintances and friends. Let one be shut in
with work, or sickness, or weather, for whole days at a time, and see how
hungry he gets to see some one. A recreation at a social gathering
literally makes a new being out of him. He is recreated. It is this form
of recreation that we consider here, social recreation.
A NECESSITY.
Social recreation is a necessity in a well-ordered life. As with many
other common blessings we forget its benefits. Nor are these benefits so
evident until we see the blighting result in the life of the one who, for
any reason whatsoever, has become a social recluse. We have known a few
persons who have once been in society, but who have allowed themselves to
remain away from all sorts of gatherings, for a number of years. In every
case, the result has been openly noticeable. They have become boorish in
manners, unsympathetic in nature, and suspicious in spirit. Thus they have
grown out of harmony with the ideas and ways of those about them, have
come to take distorted and erroneous views of affairs and of men. Man is a
composite being. Many factors enter into his make-up. He lives not only in
the physical and intellectual, in the religious and social, in a local and
limited sense, but his life expands until it touches and molds many other
characters and communities besides his own. In all of these spheres of his
influence and work on needs to be sobered down, corrected, stimulated. In
no other way is this better accomplished than through one's very contact
with his fellows in the religious gathering, among his workmen, in the
political meeting, at the assembly, in the social gathering whenever and
wherever persons may see one another and talk over common interests.
A SPECIFIC SENSE.
In a specific sense, by social recreation, we mean those pastimes and
pleasures which all persons, except the social recluse, enjoy as they meet
to spend an afternoon or an evening together. Now, how may we get the
largest amount of pleasure, of rest, of recreation from such gatherings?
How may we best benefit ourselves, inspire one another, and in it all,
honor God? It is no small task to accomplish these three ends in all
things, in one's life. We have agreed that some social practices are
positively bad. And we have tried to show why the "tobacco club," the
"social glass," the "card-party," the "dancing-party," and the play-house
reveries should be avoided. We have left these forms of so-called
"questionable amusements" out of our practice and let our of our lives. To
what may we turn? Where may we go? We turn to the social gathering.
BUT IT MUST BE PLANNED.
No social gathering can successfully run itself. See what forethought and
expenditure are given to make successful the "smoking-club," the
"wine-social," the "card and dancing parties," and the "theater." Not one
of these institutions thrive without thought and cost in their management.
Put the same thought and expense into the gathering for social recreation,
and you will find all of the merits of the questionable institution and
none of its demerits. No company has larger capabilities than the mixed
company at the social gathering. Nor may any purpose be more perfectly
served than the purpose of true social recreation. Here we find those
skilled in music, versed in literature, adept at conversation; we find the
practical joker, the proficient at games, and last, but not least, those
"born to serve" tables. This variety of genius, of wit, of skill, of
willingness to serve, is laid at the altar of pleasure for the worthy
purpose of making new again the weary body, the languishing spirit, the
lonely heart. Let the right management and stimulus be given to this
resourceful company, and the hours will pass as moments, the surest sign
of a good time.
SOME ESSENTIALS. DINING, SOCIAL HOUR, GAMES.
No social recreation is complete without dining. And yet the least
important part of this meal should be the taking of food. It is a serious
fault with the modern social that too much attention is given to the
variety and quantity of food, and not enough to merriment in taking it. To
be successful, the social company should gather as early as possible; the
first hour-and-a-half should be given to greetings and to social levity of
the brightest and wittiest sort. If one has an ache or a pain, a care or a
loss, let it be forgotten now. It is weakness and folly continually to be
under any burden. Here every one should take a genuine release from
seriousness and earnestness in weighty and responsible affairs. Let all,
except the serving committee for this evening, take part in this strictly
social hour-and-a-half. When the late-comers have arrived and have been
introduced, and the people have moved about and met one another, almost
before the company are aware of it they are invited by the serving
committee to dine. Usually all may not be served at once. Now that the
company has been thinned out, the older persons having gone to the tables,
short, spirited games should be introduced in which every person not at
luncheon, should be given a place and a part. At this juncture it is not
best to introduce sitting-games, such as checkers, authors, caroms, or
flinch, for the contestants might be called to take refreshments at a
critical moment in the contest. With a little attention to it, appropriate
games may be introduced here that need not interfere with luncheon. Fully
half an hour should be spent at each set of tables, where at the close of
the meal, some humorous subject or subjects should be introduced and
responded to be those best fitted for such a task. Almost any person can
say something bright as well as sensible, if he will give a little
attention to it beforehand. While the second and third tables are being
served, let those retiring contest at games of skill, converse, or take up
other appropriate entertainment directed by the everywhere present
entertainment committee. By this time half-past ten or eleven o'clock,
some who are old, or who have pressing duties on the next day may want to
retire. If the serving committee have been skillful in adjusting the time
spent at each table to the number of tables, etc., by eleven o'clock the
serving shall have been completed. Now, the young in spirit, whether old
or young, expect, and should have an hour at the newest, liveliest, and
most recreative games. No part of the evening entertainment should be
allowed to drag. To insure this a frequent change of social games is
needed.
AVOID LATE HOURS.
As late hours tend to produce irregularity in sleep, in meals, and in
work; and since the object of the social is recreation, the company should
retire about midnight. Oftentimes people stay and stay at such a
gathering, until the hostess, the entertaining committee, and the people
themselves are worn out. And yet, who is at fault? This is a critical
point in the modern popular social. How shall the company disband in due
season? In his "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Oliver Wendell Holmes
gives a suggestion on this point for the private visitor, who does not
know how to go. Says Holmes:﹃Do n't you know how hard it is for some
people to get out of a room when their visit is really over? They want to
be off, and you want to have them off, but they do n't know how to manage
it. One would think they had been built in your parlor or study and were
waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined
plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth
phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into
their 'native element,' the great ocean of outdoors.﹄There are social
companies as hard to get rid of as this. They want to go, and every one
wants them to go, but just how to make the start, no one seems to know.
Dr. Holmes and his "inclined plane" may have been successful with the
private caller, but who will be the "contriver of a ceremonial," one
sufficient to land the social company into its﹃native element, the great
ocean of outdoors?﹄No, this most delicate of the problems involved in a
successful modern social must be left to a tactful hint from the
entertainment committee, and to the wise choice of a few recognized
leaders in the company.
NEW COMMITTEES.
Special committees should have charge of the serving and of the
entertainment. As far as possible these should vary with each successive
social. It is an erroneous notion, prevalent in nearly every community,
that only "certain ones" can do this or that; the consequence is that
these "certain ones" do all the work, are deprived of the true rest and
relief which the social is meant to give, while others who should take
their turn, grow unappreciative, and weak in their serving and
entertaining ability.
THE AVERAGE SOCIAL A FAILURE.
As it is conducted to-day, the average social is a failure. Late at
arriving, want of introductions, lack of arranged entertainment, late
hours,—all go to weaken and to dull the average young person in
place of to cultivate his wits, his special genius at music, reading, and
conversation, and to recreate him in body, mind, and spirit. To make a
success of the social gathering some one must keep in mind the personal
convenience and happiness of every person present. When this is done and
the social gathering becomes notable for the real pleasure that it gives,
then we shall be able to drive out the "questionable amusements," because
we have taken nothing from the person, and have given him new life and
interest.
VIII. FRIENDSHIP.
BONDS OF ATTACHMENT.
Each person is connected with every other person by some bond of
attachment. It may be by the steel bond of brotherhood, by the silvern
chain of religious fellowship, by the golden band of conjugal affection,
by the flaxen cord of parental or filial love, or by the silken tie of
friendship. One or more of these bonds of attachment may encircle each
person, and each bond has its varying strength, and is capable of endless
lengthening and contracting. Brotherhood is a general term, and as it is
used here, comprises the fellow-feeling that one human being has for
another, this is universal brotherhood. Brotherhood comprises the
fellow-feeling that attracts persons of the same race, nation, or
community, this is racial, national, or community brotherhood; also, it
comprises the fellow-feeling that exists between persons of the same
avocation, calling, or work, this is the brotherhood of profession; it
comprises the fellow-feeling that joins persons of the same order or
party, this is the brotherhood of order; it comprises the fellow-feeling
that joins brothers and sisters of the same home, this is the brotherhood
of family. Religious fellowship includes that spiritual intercourse which
is held between persons of the same religious faith and practice. Conjugal
affection comprises that feeling of mind and heart which unites husband
and wife. Filial and parental love exists between parent and child. While
friendship comprises that soul union which exists between persons because
of similar desires, tastes, and sentiments. Each of these bonds of
attachment has its characteristic mark, its essential feature. The
essential feature of universal brotherhood is common origin, present
struggle, and future hope; the essential feature of racial, national, or
community brotherhood is patriotism; the essential feature of brotherhood
of the order is mutual helpfulness; the essential feature in brotherhood
of the profession is common pursuit; in brotherhood of the family, common
parentage; in conjugal affection, attraction for opposite sex; in parental
and filial love, love of offspring and love of parent; while in friendship
the essential feature is harmony of natures.
WHAT IS FRIENDSHIP?
No human relationship can be more beautiful, nor more abiding than true
friendship. It is a spiritual thing, a communion of souls, virtuously
exercised. How one is impressed and pleased to see another horse just like
his own, to see another dog exactly resembling his own, to meet a person
who speaks, looks, and acts like some one he has known. It is a surprise,
mingled with mystery and delight. But with what increased surprise and
delight does one meet with a "person after his own heart." All men have
recognized the strength and beauty of right self-love. The second great
law of Christ's kingdom is declared in terms of true self-love.﹃Love thy
neighbor as thyself.﹄Every one loves himself, because one's self is the
truest and best of other lives filtered through his own soul. When one
finds in another that which perfectly answers to his own soul-likings and
longings, he has found another self, he has found a friend. Friendship is
the communion of such souls, although they may be absent from one another.
The highest friendship may grow more perfectly when friends are separated,
then it is unmixed with the alloy of imperfect thought and action. Then it
is nourished by the past, for only the past buries all faults; it is
encouraged by the future, for only the future veils the awkwardness and
shortcomings of the present. The character of friendship is determined by
the character of friends. Negative personalities wanting in taste,
conviction, and virtue produce only a negative friendship. Intense
personalities produce intense friendships; noble personalities, noble
friendships, and spiritual personalities, spiritual friendship. In the
true, spiritual sense, before one can become a friend, he must become an
individual. He must stand for something in thought and purpose. If this is
not true, friendship becomes a flimsy affair. For souls to commune with
one another there must be harmony; unity, agreement of desires,
sentiments, and tastes. Not the harmony of indifference, nor a forced
agreement, but a beautiful and natural response of soul to soul. Such
equipment for friendship finds its basis only in individual character.
Character is conduct become habitual. If one spurns reason, and follows
his impulse and passion, he becomes unreliable, and does not know the
issues of his own heart and life. Who knows what such an one will do next?
To make it soar well or sail well, friendship must have ballast. This
ballast is worthy, individual character. It would be more exact to say
there can be no true friendship without individual character. Although
many elements constitute the character of the true friend, yet two
elements are essential—sincerity and tenderness. Sincerity is the
soul of every virtue, while true words, simple manners, and right actions
make up the body. If the soul of virtue is present one does not always
demand the presence of the body, but if the body of virtue is absent, one
had better take a search after the soul. If sincerity is unquestioned,
words, manners, actions have great liberty; but if words, manners and
actions are lacking in straight-forwardness, it is time to question
sincerity. This is true in all human affairs involving motive and conduct.
Especially is it true in friendship. Sincerity knows its own. By a glance
it penetrates the very heart of its true friend, and leaves translucent
and transparent its own. Sincerity gives steadfastness and constancy to
friendship. Insincerity mars and breaks friendship. Who has not seen a
soul spring into life through the love of a radiant friendship; and then
following a series of hollow pretenses, insincerities, that friendship
fails, and the beautiful creature stifles and dies. As one tells us,﹃such
a death is frightful, it is the asphyxia of the soul!﹄Then, tenderness is
an essential element in the character of a friend. Says Emerson:
﹃Notwithstanding all the selfishness that chills like east winds the
world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love, like a
fine ether.﹄With Emerson, we believe that every person carries about with
him a certain circle of sympathy within which he, and at least one friend,
may temper and sweeten life. Much of the kindness of the world is simply
breathed, and yet what an aroma of good cheer it sheds in grateful lives.
Tenderness possesses a sensitiveness of sympathy to an extreme degree. It
shrinks from the sight of suffering. It treats others with﹃gentleness,
delicacy, thought-fulness, and care. It enters into feelings, anticipates
wants, supplies the smallest pleasure, and studies every comfort.﹄Says
one:﹃It belongs to natures, refined as well as loving, and possesses that
consideration of which finer dispositions only are capable.﹄Tenderness is
a heart quality. It is the luxury of a pure and intense friendship. It
tempers one's entire nature, making his whole being sympathetic with grace
and favor. It is manifest in the relaxing feature, in the penetrating
glance, in the mellowing voice, in the engracing manners, and in the
complete obliteration of time and distance, while with one's friend. We
recall the friendly visits spend with our friend, Lawrence W. Rowell,
during his medical course in Rush College, Chicago, while we were in
attendance at the Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. Rowell
was intellectual, spirited, gifted in conversation, highly sympathetic,
informed, critical, yet charitable, a close student of human nature, a
love of philosophy, of musical temperament, of noble heart, of exalted
purpose. Our visits were kept up bimonthly throughout one year. We would
spent Saturday evening and Sunday together. Those visits revealed to me
the magnetism, intensity, and tenderness of a friend. Truly, with us time
and distance were almost completely obliterated from our consciousness. I
say distance, for we would walk together. Tenderness suits the amiable and
gentle in disposition, but it comes with a peculiar charm from the austere
nature. It is one of the stalwart virtues, and is often concealed behind a
crusty exterior. Severity and tenderness adorn the greatest lives.
THE TEST OF FRIENDSHIP.
What is the uncertain mark of a friend? Have I a friend? How many friends
have I? I can invoice my stock, my goods, my land, my money, can I invoice
my friends? One may not always know the actual worth of a friend, but he
knows who are his friends, quite as well as he knows who are his nephews
and cousins. "A friend is one whom you need and who needs you." Has one a
bit of good news, he flies to his friend, he wants to share it. Has one a
sorrow, he seeks his friend who will gladly share that. Does one meet with
a defeat or victory, instantly he thinks of his friend and of how it will
effect him. Friends need one another, as truly as the child needs its
mother, or the mother her child. Is one tempted to commit a wrong in
thought or action, his friend, though absent, appears at his side and begs
him not to do it. If one is in doubt or uncertainty, he summons his
friend, who become a patient reasoner, and an impartial judge. Who does
not find himself, daily, looking through other people's glasses, weighing
on other people's scales, sounding other people's voices? It is a habit
that friends have with one another. You can not deprive friends of one
another, any more than you can lovers. Ah, true friends are lovers of the
heaven-born sort; for their agreement is grounded in nature. They are not
chosen, they are discovered. Or, as Emerson says, they are "self-elected."
"Friendship's an abstract of love's noble flame,
'Tis love refined, and purged from all its dross,
'Tis next to angel's love, if not the same,
As strong as passion in, though not so gross."
Thus writes Catherine Phillips.
FRUITS OF FRIENDSHIP.
True friendship gives ease to the heart, light to the mind, and aid to the
carrying out of one's life-purposes. First, ease to the heart. The
presence of a friend is a beam of genial sunshine which lights up the
house by his very appearance. He warms the atmosphere and dispels the
gloom. The presence of a true friend for a day, a night, a week, lifts one
out of himself, links him with new purposes, and immerses him in new joys.
Friends breathe free with one another. They inspire sighs of relief.
Embarrassment disappears; liberty reigns supreme. Hearts are like steam
boilers, occasionally, they must give vent to what is in them, or they
will burst. This is the true mission of friends, to become to one another
reserve reservoirs of﹃griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels,
and whatever lieth upon the heart to oppress it,﹄or elate it. You recall
those familiar lines of Bacon:﹃This communicating of a man's self to his
friends works two contrary effects; for it redoubles joys and cutteth
griefs in halves; for there is no man that imparteth his joys to his
friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to
his friends, but he grieveth the less.﹄The following selected lines,
slightly changed, set forth this first fruit of friendship.
"A true friend is an atmosphere
Warm with all inspirations dear,
Wherein we breathe the large free breath
Of life that hath no taint of death.
A true friend's an unconscious part
Of every true beat of our heart;
A strength, a growth, whence we derive
Soul-rest, that keeps the world alive."
Then, friendship sheds light in the mind.﹃He who has made the acquisition
of a judicious and sympathetic friend,﹄says Robert Hall,﹃may be said to
have doubled his mental resources.﹄No man is wise enough to be his own
counselor, for he inclineth too much to leniency toward himself.﹃It is a
well-known rule that flattery is food for the fool.﹄Therefore no man
should be his own counselor since no one is so apt to flatter another as
he is himself. A wise man never flatters himself, neither does a friend
flatter. As a wise man sees his own faults and seeks to correct them, so a
true friend sees the faults of his friend and labors faithfully to banish
them. The one who flatters you despises you, and degrades both you and
himself. An enemy will tell you the whole truth about yourself, especially
your faults, and at times that both weaken and hurt you. A friend will
tell you the whole truth about yourself, especially your neglected
virtues, but at a time to both strengthen and help you. The highest
service a friend can render is that of giving counsel. The highest honor
one can bestow upon his friend is to make him his counselor. It is no mark
of weakness to rely upon counsel. God, Himself, needed a counselor, so he
chose His Son.﹃His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty
God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.﹄Isa. ix, 6. Counsel,
says Solomon, is the key to stability.﹃Every purpose is established by
Counsel.﹄Prov. Xx, 18. Who despiseth counsel shall reap the reward of
folly. A friend is safe in counsel, according to his wisdom, for he never
seeks his own good, but the good of his friend. It is a saying,﹃If some
one asks you for advice, if you would be followed, first find out what
kind of advice is wanted, then give that.﹄But this is not the way of a
friend. He has in mind the welfare of the friend and the cause his friend
serves. Honor does not require that one shall follow the advise of his
friend, rather liberty in this is a mark of freedom and trust between
friends.
A friend aids one in the carrying out of his life purposes. Who is it that
helps one to places of honor and usefulness? It is his friend. Who is it
that recognizes one's true worth, extols his virtues, and gives tone and
quality to the diligent services of months and years? It is his friend.
Who is it, when one ends his life in the midst of an unfinished book, or
with loose ends of continued research in philosophy or science all about
him; who is it that gathers up these loose ends and puts in order the
unfinished work? It is his friend. Who is it that stands by the open tomb
of that fallen saint or hero and relates to the world his deeds of
sacrifice and courage which spurn others on to nobler living and thereby
perpetuates his goodness and valor? Who does this, if it is done? It is
his friend. A friend thus becomes not only a completion of one's soul as
he is by virtue of being a friend, but also he becomes a completion of
one's life. Then, one's relation to his fellowmen is a limited
relationship. He may speak, but upon certain subjects, on certain
occasions, and to certain persons. As Francis Bacon says,﹃A man can not
speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his
enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and
not as it sorteth with the person....I have given the rule,﹄says he,
"where a man can not fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend, he
may quit the stage."
HOW TO GET AND KEEP A FRIEND.
A real friend is discovered, or made. First, discovered. Two persons
notice an attraction for one another. They see that their desires are
similar, they have the same sentiments, they agree in tastes. A feeling of
attachment becomes conscious with each of them, slight association fosters
this feeling, it increases. New associations but reveal a broader
agreement, a closer union, a perfecter harmony. The signs of friendship
appear. Heart and mind of each respond to the other, they are friends.
This is the noblest friendship. It has its origin in nature. It is, as H.
Clay Trumbull says: "Love without compact or condition; it never pivots on
an equivalent return of service or of affection. Its whole sweep is away
from self and toward the loved one. Its desire is for the friend's
welfare; its joy is in the friend's prosperity; its sorrows and trials are
in the friend's misfortunes and griefs; its pride is in the friend's
attainments and successes; its constant purpose is in doing and enduring
for the friend."
Then, friends are made. Two persons do not especially attract one another.
But, through growth of character, modification of nature, or change in
desires, sentiments, and tastes, they become attracted to each other. Or
in spite of natural disagreements or differences, through the force of
circumstances they become welded together in friendship. Montaigne
describes such an attachment, in which the souls mix and work themselves
into one piece with so perfect a mixture that there is no more sign of a
seam by which they were first conjoined. Says Euripedes:
"A friend
Wedded into our life is more to us
Than twice five thousand kinsman one in blood."
Such was the friendship of Ruth and Naomi. Orpha loved Naomi, kissed her,
and returned satisfied to her early home; but Ruth cleaved unto her,
saying:
"Entreat me not to leave thee,
And to return from following after thee:
For whither thou goest, I will go;
Where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
Thy people shall be my people,
And thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die,
And there will I be buried:
The Lord do so to me, and more also,
If aught but death part thee and me."
The keeping of a friend like the keeping of a fortune, lies in the
getting, although in friendship much depends upon circumstances of
association. However subtle may be the circumstances which bring friends
together, or whatever natural agreement may exist between their natures,
still there is always a conscious choosing of friends. In this choosing
lies the secret of abiding friendship. Young says:
"First on thy friend deliberate with thyself;
Pause, ponder, sift: not eager in the choice,
Nor jealous of the chosen; fixing fix;
Judge before friendship, then confide till death."
Steadfastness and constancy such as this seldom loses a friend.
Last of all, abiding friendship is grounded in virtue. Says a famed writer
on Friendship:﹃There is a pernicious error in those who think that a free
indulgence in all lusts and sins is extended in friendship. Friendship was
given us by nature as the handmaid of virtues and not as the companion of
our vices. It is virtue, virtue I say... that both wins friendship and
preserves it.﹄And closing his remarks on this immortal subject, Cicero
causes Laelius to say: "I exhort you to lay the foundations of virtue,
without which friendship can not exist, in such a manner, that with this
one exception, you may consider that nothing in the world is more
excellent than friendship."
IX. TRAVEL. A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
We have set in order some facts, incidents, and lessons gathered from a
hasty trip to the old country during the summer of 1899. The journey was
made in company with Rev. C.F. Juvinall, for four years my room-mate and
fellow-student, and my estimable friend. On Wednesday, June 21st, we
sailed from Boston Harbor; reached Liverpool, England, Saturday morning
the 1st of July; visited this second town in the British kingdom; stopped
over at the old town of Chester; took a run out to Hawarden Estate, the
home of Gladstone; changed cars at Stratford-on-Avon and visited the tomb
of Shakespeare; staid a half day and a night in the old university town of
Oxford, and reached London on the evening of July 4th. Having spent a week
in London, we crossed the English Channel to Paris; remained there two
days, then made brief visits to the battlefield of Waterloo, to Brussels,
Amsterdam, Hull, Sheffield, Dublin, and back to Liverpool. We sailed to
Boston and returned to Chicago by way of Montreal and Detroit, having
spent forty-nine days—the intensest and delightfullest of our lives.
At first, we hesitated to treat this subject from a point of view of
personal experience, but since it is our purpose to incite in others the
love for and the right us of all helpful resources of happiness and power,
it seemed to us that we could no better accomplish our purpose with
respect to this subject than to recount our own observations from this one
limited, imperfect journey.
AN EYE-OPEN AND EAR-OPEN EXPERIENCE.
One is always at a disadvantage in relating the faults of others, for he
seems to himself and to his friends to be telling his own experience. We
were about to speak of the superficial way in which Americans travel. One
who has traveled much says that﹃the average company of American tourists
goes through the Art Galleries of Europe like a drove of cattle through
the lanes of a stock-market.﹄Nor is it the art gallery and museum alone
that is done superficially. How many persons before entering grand old
Notre Dame, or the British Houses of Parliament, pause to admire the
elaborate and expansive beauty of the great archways and outer walls? It
is possible to live in this world, to travel around it, to touch at every
great port and city, and yet fail to see what is of value or of interest.
A man on our boat going to Liverpool, said that he had traveled over the
world, had been in London many a time, but had not taken the pains to go
into St. Paul's, nor to visit the Tower of London. A wise man, a seer, is
one who sees. It is possible to live in this world, and not to leave one's
own dooryard, and yet to possess the knowledge of the world, and to tell
others how to see. Louis Agassiz, the scientist, was invited by a friend
to spend the summer with him abroad. Mr. Agassiz declined the gracious
offer on the ground that he had just Planned a summer's tour through his
own back yard. What did Agassiz find on that tour? Instruction for the
children of many generations, a treatise on animal life, and later a
text-book of Zoology. Kant, the philosopher, the greatest mind since
Socrates, was never forty miles from his birthplace. On the other hand,
Grant Allen, author, scholar, and traveler, says:﹃One year in the great
university we call Europe, will teach one more than three at Yale or
Columbia. And what it teaches one will be real, vivid, practical,
abiding... ingrained in the very fiber of one's brain and thought.... He
will read deeper meaning thenceforward in every picture, every building,
every book, every newspaper.... If you want to know the origin of the art
of building, the art of painting, the art of sculpture, as you find them
to-day in contemporary America, you must look them up in the churches, and
the galleries of early Europe. If you want to know the origin of American
institutions, American law, American thought, and American language, you
must go to England; you must go farther still to France, Italy, Hellas,
and the Orient. Our whole life is bound up with Greece and Rome, with
Egypt and Assyria.﹄But whatever advantage travel may afford for broad and
intense study, whatever be its superior processes of refinement and
learning, yet it is well to remember this, that at any place and at any
time one may open his eyes and his ears, his heart and his reason, and
find more than he is able to understand and a heart to feel! You can not
limit God to the land nor to the sea, to one country nor to one
hemisphere. Thus the kind of travel of which we speak is the eye-open and
ear-open sort.
Let us note first, then, that travel is a study of history at the spot
where the event took place. The history of a nation is a record of its
great men. You tell a faithful story of Columbus, John Cabot, and Henry
Hudson; of Winthrop, John Smith, and Melendez; of General Wolfe, General
Washington, Patrick Henry, and Franklin; of Jefferson, Adams, Jackson, and
Webster; of Abraham Lincoln, Wendell Phillips, John Brown, and General
Grant; of John Sherman, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley, and you an
up-to-date history of the young American Republic, acknowledged by every
country to have the greatest future of all nations. So, if one reads with
understanding the inscriptions on the monuments of Gough, O'Connell, and
Parnell, he will get the story of the struggles of the Irish. Enter London
Tower, "the most historical spot in England," and recount the bloody
tragedies of the English people since the time of William the Conqueror,
1066 A.D. Here we have a﹃series of equestrian figures in full equipment,
as well as many figures on foot, affording a faithful picture, in
approximate chronological order, of English war-array from the time of
Edward I, 1272, down to that of James II, 1688.﹄In glass cases, and in
forms of trophies on the walls, we find arms and armor of the old Romans,
of the early Greeks, and Britons, and of the Anglo-Saxons. Maces and axes,
long and cross bows and leaden missile weapons and shields, highly adorned
with metal figures, all tend to make more vivid the word-pictures of the
historian. Of the small burial-ground in this Tower, Macaulay writes:﹃In
truth there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. Death is
there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius
and virtue, with public veneration, and with imperishable renown; not, as
in our humblest churches and church-yards, with every thing that is most
endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest
in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of
implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice
of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted
fame.﹄We note a few names chiseled here: Sir Thomas More, beheaded 1535;
Anne Boleyn, beheaded in this tower, 1536; Thomas Cromwell, beheaded,
1540; Margaret Pole, beheaded here, 1541; Queen Catharine Howard,
beheaded, 1542; Lady Jane Grey and her husband, beheaded here, 1544; Sir
Thomas Overbudy, poisoned in this tower, 1613. Since travel is a study of
history at the spot where the event took place, let us cross the rough and
famed English Channel to visit one of the many noted spots of France. We
select the site of the Hotel de Ville or the town-hall of Paris.﹃The
construction of the old hall was begun in 1533, and was over seventy years
in its completion. Additions were made, and the building was reconstructed
in 1841. This has been the usual rallying site of the Democratic party for
centuries. Here occurred the tragedy of St. Bartholomew in 1572; here
mob-posts, gallows, and guillotines did the work of a despotic misrule
until 1789. (As we left for Brussels on the evening of the 13th of July,
all Paris was gayly decorated with red, white, and blue bunting, ready to
celebrate the event of July 14, 1789, the fall of the Bastile.) On this
date, 110 years ago, the captors of the Bastile marched into this noted
hall. Three days later Louis XVI came here in procession from Versailles,
followed by a dense mob.﹄Here Robespierre attempted suicide to avoid
arrest, when five battalions under Barras forced entrance to assault the
Commune party, of which Robespierre was head. Here, in 1848, Louis Blanc
proclaimed the institution of the Republic of France. This was a central
spot during the revolution of 1871. The leaders of the Commune party place
in this building barrels of gunpowder, and heaps of combustibles steeped
in petroleum, and on May 25th they succeeded in destroying with it 600
human lives. A new Hotel de Ville, one of the most magnificent buildings
in Europe, has replaced the old hall. This is open to visitors at all
hours. To study history at the spot where the event took place means work
as well as pleasure, so we took our luncheon and sleep in our car while
the train carried us to Brussels, and out to Braine-l'Alleud, where, on
the beautiful rolling plain of Belgium, June 18, 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte
met his Waterloo, and Wellington became England's idol.
A railway baggageman was on our train returning to his home in Cleveland,
Ohio. In conversation, he said:﹃I have been with this company for
twenty-two years; have drawn two dollars a day, 365 days in the year for
that time, and I haven't a dollar in the world, but one, and I gave it
yesterday for a dog. But,﹄said he,﹃I have a good woman and the greatest
little girl in the world, so I am happy.﹄This is one of a large class of
persons who receive fair wages all their lives, and yet die paupers,
because they plan to spend all they make as they go along. In conversation
with a gruff, old Dutch conductor between Albany and New York City, I
ventured to ask him if he had ever crossed the ocean. "No," he said,
"nopody eber crosses de ocean, bud emigrants, and beoble vat hab more
muney dan prains."
Travel is a study of religious institutions. Among the most interesting in
Europe, that we visited, are Wesley's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, St.
Paul's Cathedral, and Notre Dame. The Church of Notre Dame, situated in
the heart of Paris on the bank of the Seine, was founded 1163 on the site
of a church of the fourth century. The building has been altered a number
of times. In 1793 it was converted into a temple of reason. The statue of
the Virgin Mary was replaced by one of Liberty. Busts of Robespierre,
Voltaire, and Rosseau were erected. This church was closed to worship
1794, but was reopened by Napoleon 1802. It was desecrated by the
Communards 1811, when the building was used as a military depot. The large
nave, 417 feet long, 156 feet wide, and 110 feet high, is the most
interesting portion of this massive structure. The vaulting of this great
nave is supported by seventy-five huge pillars. The pulpit is a
masterpiece of modern wood-carving. The choir and sanctuary are set off by
costly railings, and are beautifully adorned by reliefs in wood and stone.
The organ, with 6,000 pipes, is one of the finest in Europe.﹃The choir
has a reputation for plain song.﹄On a small elevation, in the center of
London, stand the Cathedral of St. Paul's, the most prominent building in
the city. From remains found here it is believed that a Christian Church
occupied this spot in the times of the Romans, and that it was rebuilt by
King Ethelbert, 610 A.D. Three hundred years later this building was
burned, but soon it was rebuilt. Again it was destroyed by fire, 1087, and
a new edifice begun which was 200 years in completion. This church, old
St. Paul's, was 590 feet long, and had a leaden-covered, timber spire, 460
feet high. In 1445 this spire was injured by lightning, and in 1561 the
building was again burned. Says Mr. Baedeker, whose guidebook is
indispensable in the hands of a traveler,﹃Near the cathedral stood the
celebrated Cross of St. Paul, where sermons were preached, papal bulls
promulgated, heretics made to recant, and witches to confess, and where
the pope's condemnation of Luther was proclaimed in the presence of
Woolsey.﹄Here is the burial place of a long list of noted persons. Here
occurred Wyckiff's citation for heresy, 1337; and here Tyndale's New
Testament was burned, 1527. It was opened for divine services, 1697, and
was completed after thirteen years of steady work, at a cost of three and
a half millions of dollars. This sum was raised by a tax on coal. The
church is in the form of a Latin cross, 500 feet long, with the transept
250 feet in length.﹃The inner dome is 225 feet high, the outer, from the
pavement to the top of the cross, is 364 feet. The dome is 102 feet in
diameter, thirty-seven feet less than St. Peter's. St. Paul's is the third
largest church in Christendom, being surpassed only by St. Peter's at
Rome.﹄Three services are held here daily. The religion of Notre Dame is
Roman Catholic, but that of St. Paul's and Westminster is of the Church of
England. What shall we say of Westminster Abbey, the most impressive place
of all our travel! As my friend and I entered here and took our seats for
divine worship, preparatory to visiting her halls, and chapels, and tombs,
I think I was never more deeply impressed. I said to myself,﹃What does
God mean to allow me to worship here?﹄and I seemed to realize how little
my past life had been. I felt that circumstances and not I myself had
thrust this new privilege, and thereby new responsibility, upon me.
Westminster Abbey! A church for the living, a burial-place for the honored
dead; a monument to genius, labor, and virtue; England's "temple of fame;"
the most solemn spot in Europe, if not in the world! Here lie authors,
benefactors, and poets; statesmen, heroes, and rulers, the best of English
blood since Edward the Confessor, 1049 A.D. We must now leave this sacred
spot to visit, if possible for us, a more sacred one, the birthplace of
Methodism, or more accurately speaking, in the words of Bishop Warren, the
"cradle of Methodism."
On City Road, London, near Liverpool Street Station, is located the house,
chapel, burial-grounds, and tomb of John Wesley. Across the street, in an
old Nonconformist cemetery, are the graves of James Watt, Daniel Defoe,
and John Bunyan. Across the narrow street to the north is the tabernacle
of Whitefield. We learned that Friday, July 7th, was reopening day for
Wesley's Chapel. What a distinguished body of persons we found at this
meeting! Dr. Joseph Parker was the speaker of the day. The Rev. Hugh Price
Hughes, president of the Conference, presided at the memorial services.
Rev. Westerdale, present pastor, successfully managed the program of the
day, especially the collections, for he met the expense of the rebuilding
and past indebtedness with the sum of over fifteen thousand dollars. He
told those discouraged ministers with big audiences to go and take courage
from what the mother-church, with her small number of poor parishioners,
had done. In the evening, Bishop Warren, on his return to America, called
in and gave an interesting talk. He was followed by Fletcher Moulton,
member of Parliament. You may not realize the feeling of gratitude with
which we took part in this eventful service of praise, prayer, and
rededication! On the next day we returned to see the books, furniture, and
apartments of Wesley, himself. We sat at his writing desk, stood in his
death-chamber, and lingered in the little room where he used to retire at
four in the morning for secret prayer. From here he would go directly to
his preaching service at five. Wesley put God first in his life, this is
why men honor him so much now that he is gone. We took a farewell view of
the audience-room from the very pulpit into which Wesley ascended to
preach his Good News of Christ. From the several inscriptions on Wesley's
tomb, we copied the following one: "After having languished a few days, he
at length finished his course and life together. Gloriously triumphing
over death, March the 2nd, Anno Domine, 1791, in the eighty-eight year of
his age."
In Liverpool, on the day of our arrival, July 1st, an old, gray-haired man
was shining my shoes. He observed that I was from across the water, and
that an Englishman can readily tell a Yankee. He began to praise America.
He said that Uncle Sam was only a child yet, that America was destined to
be the greatest country in the world; that her trouble with Spain was only
a bickering; that the present engagement was only his maiden warfare, and
that he "walked along like a streak of lightning."
Saturday evening, July 8th, witnessed the greatest military parade in
London for thirty years. The Prince of Wales reviewed twenty-seven
thousand London volunteers. Early in the morning citizens from all over
England began to gather in front of the English barracks, and at the east
end of Hyde Park. By two o'clock in the afternoon hundreds of thousands
had packed the streets and dotted the parks and lawns, until, in every
direction one could witness a sea of faces. After the royal and military
procession began, the patient Johnnies, with their sisters, sweethearts,
wives, mothers, grandmothers, and great-grand-mothers, stood for five
hours to see it go by. The Englishman does not tire when he is honoring
his country. At the close of this parade we dropped into a barbershop for
a shave. The gentleman seemed to understand that I was a long ways from
home. "You fellows," I said, "can tell us as far as you can see us."
"Yes," said he, "by your shoes, your hat, your coat, your tongue, and even
by your face. We can tell you by the way you spit. A spittoon here,
pointing about ten feet away, give a Yankee two trials, he will hit it
every time."
Travel is a study of the genius of man as shown in architecture, in
sculpture, and in painting. Ninety-seven plans were submitted for the
Houses of Parliament, including Westminster Hall. That of Sir Charles
Barry was selected, and the present imposing structure was built, covering
eight acres, at a cost of $15,000,000. The style is perpendicular
(Gothic), with carvings, intricate in detail and highly picturesque. The
building faces the river with a 940 feet front, but her three magnificent
square-shaped towers rise over her street front. The clock tower at the
northwest corner is 318 feet high, the middle tower is 300 feet, and the
southwest, or Victorian tower, is 340 feet high. The large clock with its
four dials, each twenty-three feet in diameter, requires five hours for
winding the striking parts. The striking bell of the clock tower is one of
the largest known; it weighs thirteen tons, and can be heard, in favorable
weather, over the greater portion of London. One never tires in looking at
this noble building. It is appropriately adorned inside and out with
elaborate carvings, statuary, and paintings. Here are located the Chamber
of Peers, the House of Commons, and numerous royal apartments, lavishly
fitted up to be in keeping with the office and dignity of the building.
Crystal Palace, situated about eight miles southeast of St. Paul's,
consists entirely of glass and iron. Its main hall, or nave, is 1,608 feet
long, with great cross sections, two aisles, and numerous lateral
sections. The two water towers at the ends are each 282 feet high. If you
were at the World's Fair in Chicago, and visited the Transportation
Building, you may imagine something of the magnitude and beauty of Crystal
Palace, with her orchestra, concert hall, and opera-house; with her
fountains, library, and school of art; with her museums, gardens, and
arenas; with her parks, panoramas, and her numerous exhibits of nature and
art. Near the center of the palace﹃is the great Handel Orchestra, which
can accommodate 4,000 persons, and has a diameter twice as great as the
dome of St. Paul's. In the middle is the powerful organ with 4,384 pipes,
built at a cost of $30,000, and worked by hydraulic machinery. An
excellent orchestra plays here daily.﹄The concert-hall on the south side
of the stage can accommodate an audience of 4,000. An excellent orchestra
plays here daily.﹃On each side of the great nave are rows of courts,
containing in chronological order, copies of the architecture and
sculpture of the most highly civilized nations, from the earliest period
to the present day.﹄The gardens of Crystal Palace cover two hundred
acres, and are beautifully laid out﹃with flowerbeds, shrubberies,
fountains, cascades, and statuary.﹄"Two of the fountain basins have been
converted into sport arenas, each about eight and one-half acres in
extent." Nine other fountains, with electric light illuminations, play on
fireworks nights and on other special occasions. It is common for 15,000
visitors to attend these Thursday night firework exhibits. Colored
electric light jets deck the fountains, flower-beds, and halls. Crystal
Palace was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, and cost seven and a half
million of dollars. Well may it be called London's Paradise.
Shall we say that the greatest piece of constructive architecture of any
country is that of Eiffel Tower! Situated on the left bank of the Seine
River, it overlooks Paris and the country for fifty miles around.
In its construction, iron caissons were sunk to a depth of forty-six feet
on the river side, and twenty-nine and one-half on the other side. When
the water was forced out of these caissons by means of compressed air,
﹃concrete was poured in to form a bed for four massive foundation piers of
masonry, eighty-five feet thick, arranged in a square of 112 yards. Upon
this base which covers about two and a half acres rises the extraordinary,
yet graceful structure of interlaced ironwork﹄to a height of 984 feet.
Eight hundred persons may be accommodated on the top platform at once. It
was completed within two years' time, and is the highest monument in the
world. Washington monument ranks second, being 555 feet high. From the
summit of Eiffel Tower one may secure a good view of Paris, her public
buildings, chief hills, parks, and boulevards, monuments, and embankments.
An imitation of Trajan's column in Rome, is 142 feet in height, and
thirteen feet in diameter. It is constructed of masonry, encrusted with
plates of bronze, forming a spiral band nearly 300 yards in length, on
which are represented the﹃battle scenes of Napoleon during his campaign
of 1805, and down to the battle of Austerlitz. The figures are three feet
in height and many of them are portraits. The metal was obtained by
melting down 1,200 Russian and Austrian cannons. At the top is a statue of
Napoleon in his Imperial robes. This column reflects the political history
of France.﹄The design sculptor is Bergeret. For their antiquity the
mummies and statues in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum are
very interesting. They embrace the period from 3600 years before Christ to
350 A.D. "The tomb of Napoleon by Visconte," and﹃the twelve colossal
victories surrounding the sarcophagus by Pradier,﹄are among the finest
works of Parisian sculpture. The sarcophagus, thirteen feet long, six and
one-half feet high, consists of a single huge block of reddish-brown granite,
weighing upwards of sixty-seven tons, brought as a gift from Finland at a
cost of $700,000. The Louvre, Paris, contains one of the finest art
galleries in Europe, and with the Tuilleries, covers about eight acres,
"forming one of the most magnificent places in the world."
In our limited experience at travel we have yet to find a single object of
beauty or utility that is not the product of skill, of genius, of great
labor. Every monument bears testimony of struggle, of bloodshed, of
hard-earned victory; beneath every tomb that honor has erected rests the
body of incarnate intelligence, fidelity, and courage. In the shadow of
every great cathedral lies collected the moth and rust from the coppers of
myriad-handed toilers of five and ten centuries. The towers and domes of
London, and Paris, and Amsterdam, and Dublin are monuments to the genius
of the architect and to the faithfulness of the common toiler. The parks
and gardens tell of centuries of wise and faithful application of the laws
of growth, of symmetry, of design in form and color. The historic chapels
of worship and learning breathe the very incense of devotion and reverence
for truth; while the conservatories of sculpture and painting preserve
what is divinest in human experience. Age alone can produce a great man or
a great nation. Decades for the man and centuries for the nation; these
are the measuring periods for real achievement. But all this is on the
human side. Correggio and Titian in painting; Bacon and Bailey in
sculpture; Raphael and Michael Angelo in sculpture and painting; and Sir
Christopher Wren in architecture,—the works of art of such as these
elevate and purify one's thought and feeling. But the profoundest
impressions that come to one from travel, come alone from the works of
nature. The Crystal Palace in London can not compare in glory with the
crystal ripples of a mid-ocean scene. The botannical gardens of the
Tuilleries in Paris do not stir the soul as does the splendor of the Welsh
mountains. The rockery plants of Phoenix Park, Dublin, are insignificant
compared with growths of ferns and moss On the rock ledges of Bray's Head,
south of Dublin. No panorama that man has painted can equal the scene of
Waterloo battle-field, observed from the earthen mound near the fatal
ravine. So, we shall always find it true, that as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so the thoughts of God are higher than the thoughts of
man, and his ways than man's ways.
X. HOME AND THE HOME-MAKER.
WHAT IS HOME?
"RECENTLY a London magazine sent out 1,000 inquiries on the question,
'What is home?' In selecting the classes to respond to the question it was
particular to see that every one was represented. The poorest and the
richest were given an equal opportunity to express their sentiment. Out of
eight hundred replies received, seven gems were selected as follows:
"Home—A world of strife shut out, a world of love shut in.
"Home—The place where the small are great and the great are
small.
"Home—The father's kingdom, the mother's world, and the
child's paradise.
"Home—The place where we grumble the most and are treated
the best.
"Home—The center of our affection, round which our heart's
best wishes twine.
"Home—The place where our stomachs get three square meals
daily and our hearts a thousand.
"Home—The only place on earth where the faults and failings
of humanity are hidden under the sweet mantle of charity."
Dr. Talmage defines home, as﹃a church within a church, a republic within
a republic, a world within a world.﹄Dr. Banks writes,﹃It is not granite
walls, or gaudy furniture, or splendid books, or soft carpets, or
delicious viands that can make a home. All of these may be present, and
yet it be only a dungeon, if the great simplicities are not there.﹄Sings
one:
"Home's not merely roof and room,
Needs it something to endear it.
Home is where the heart can bloom,
Where there's some kind heart to cheer it.
Home's not merely four square walls,
Though with pictures hung and gilded,
Home is where affection calls,
Filled with charms the heart hath builded.
Home! Go watch the faithful dove
Sailing 'neath the heavens above us,
Home is where there's one to love,
Home is where there's one to love us."
We believe the five sweetest words in the English language to the largest
number of persons—words which carry with them intrinsic meaning and
blessing are these: "Jesus," "Mother," "Music," "Heaven," "Home."﹃Twenty
thousand people gathered in the old Castle Garden, New York, to hear
Jennie Lind sing. After singing some of the old masters, she began to pour
forth 'Home, Sweet Home.' The audience could not stand it. An uproar of
applause stopped the music. Tears gushed from thousands like rain. The
word 'home' touched the fiber of every soul in that immense throng.﹄In an
early spring day, when the warm sun began to invite one to bask in his
rays, my wife, delicate in health, lay drowsing on some boards near the
house. The large garden spot spread out to the rear of her; a beautiful
grassy lawn carpeted round a deserted house, granary, and shop-building in
front of her. She was living over her girlhood days. She thought she was
in the old home orchard, where she used to doze, dream, and play. The
songs of the birds seemed the same; the same gentle breezes played with
her hair; the same passers-by jogged along the roadside; the same family
horse nibbled the tender grass in the barnyard. How sad, and yet how sweet
are the memories of early days! The tender associations of home never
leave one, however roughly the coarse hand of time would tear them away.
It is because home means love that its associations and lessons remain.
ESSENTIALS TO A HAPPY HOME.
Although home means love, yet love alone may not insure happiness. In
addition to love, without which a true home can not exist, we select four
essential requisites to make home life useful and happy. These are
intelligence, unselfishness, attractiveness, and religion.
First, Intelligence. Much of the misery of the world in individual and
family life is due to gross ignorance. Once the father of a family said to
me, "We did not get our mail to-day, I miss my reading." Knowing the man
we were surprised at such a remark, and ventured to ask him what papers he
took. A list of ten or a dozen papers was named. All of them were
newspapers. One was a general daily, two were local dailies, and the rest
were local weekly papers. No intelligent person would have carried over
three of those papers from the post-office. This man spent hours upon a
class of reading that should be finished with a few minutes each day. In
this same family the mother told me that she had never rode on a railway
train, and that she had never been outside of her own county. This is an
exceptional case, but it illustrates how that ignorance makes thrift and
happiness impossible in a home, neither of which belong to this family.
Here every law of health is violated, foresight in providing for the
physical comforts of the home is wanting; little attention is given to the
education of the children; no sacrifices to-day enrich to-morrow; life is
a humdrum, a routine, a dread, with no exuberance, joy, or hope. In time,
such a life leads to failure and gloom, to secret, then to open vice, and
to a final shipwreck of the home and of the individual. In a similar yet
in a less marked way, the career of many a home is ended. No one may be
directly to blame, but want of common knowledge and common wit have set a
limit beyond which such a family may not go. The intelligent family has
some sort of a history which it is their privilege and duty to perpetuate.
Members of the intelligent family are moral sponsors for one another, the
mother for the daughters, the father for the sons, the brothers and
sisters for one another. They find their own best interests in the
interests of one another. The intelligent family is not superstitious.
They act upon the wisdom of the ancient poet,﹃every one is the architect
of his own fortune.﹄They look to cause and condition for results. They
spell "luck" with a "p" before it. The intelligent farmer plants his crop
in the ground, rather than in the moon, and looks for his harvest to the
seed and the toil. The intelligent merchant locates his business on the
street of largest travel and makes the buying of his goods his best
salesman. The intelligent man of letters thrives at first by making
friends of poverty and want, until one day his genius places his name in
the temple of honor. So it is with the artist, the musician, the inventor,
the architect. To be happy and useful in one's lot, one must know
something of the sphere in which he lives and works, of its practical
wisdom, and must be prepared to live, or glad to die for the cause he
serves. No indolent, superstitious, or ignorant family need look for
abiding happiness nor expect to be permanently useful.
Then unselfishness is essential to happy home life. It is a serious matter
for two persons, even when they are naturally mated, to undertake to live
together in peace and harmony. It is a more serious matter when they are
not naturally mated. It is more serious still when children enter the
home, for they bring with them conflicting tendencies, dispositions, and
wills. Often have we wondered how it is that families get on as well
together as they do when we have considered, what natural differences
exist between them, and what little teaching and discipline have been used
to harmonize these differences. An harmonious home is truly begun in the
parental homes of the husband and wife. Two persons may be perfectly
suited to one another, and yet they may be selfish in wanting their own
way. As one grows up, if he is allowed to have his own way regardless of
the rights and privileges of others, he becomes a selfish person, and his
parents are to blame. A selfish person in the home plans for his own
comfort, decides and acts as he wishes, and seeks to satisfy his own
desires. He does not take into consideration the plans, wishes, and
desires of other members of the family. It is understood that his
authority is supreme. Not one member of the family dreams of expressing
dissent to his dominion. A so-called peace of this sort is not uncommon
among families. This supreme authority may be vested in husband, or wife,
or in one or all of the children. A forced peace of this kind is worse
than rebellion and is as bad as open war. How can any persons be so
presumptuous as to think that any person, or a number of persons, exist
solely for his comfort and advantage! Let two such selfish persons get
together, a permanent riot is assured. Unselfishness in the home means
thoughtfulness, discipline, self-control. Each child is taught the rights
and privileges of others as well as his own. When two unselfish persons
join their lives there begins a holy and beautiful rivalry in seeking the
rights and privileges of one another. The very atmosphere of such a home
is deference, respect, and love. As the stranger, the neighbor, the
friend, comes and goes, he catches the spirit of it and carries it with
him into his own and other homes. Children born into such a home early
imbibe its spirit, and, O, the inspiration one receives from going into
that family circle! No home-life can be an inspiration and a blessing
where selfishness is allowed to reign. Nor can it be useful and happy.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox describes a selfish, though a kind and loving husband:
THEIR HOLIDAY.
THE WIFE:
Our house is like a garden—
The children are the flowers,
The gardener should come, methinks,
And walk among his bowers.
So lock the door of worry,
And shut your cares away,
Not time of year, but love and cheer,
Will make a holiday.
THE HUSBAND:
Impossible! You women do not know,
The toil it takes to make a business grow:
I can not join you until very late,
So hurry home, nor let the dinner wait.
THE WIFE:
The feast will be like Hamlet,
Without the Hamlet part;
The home is but a house, dear,
Till you supply the heart.
The Christmas gift I long for
You need not toil to buy;
O, give me back one thing I lack:
The love-light in your eye.
THE HUSBAND:
Of course I love you, and the children, too.
Be sensible, my dear. It is for you
I work so had to make my business pay;
There, now, run home, enjoy your holiday.
THE WIFE, TURNING AWAY:
He does not mean to wound me,
I know his heart is kind,
Alas, that men can love us,
And be so blind—so blind!
A little time for pleasure,
A little time for play,
A word to prove the life of love
And frighten care away—
Though poor my lot, in some small cot,
That were a holiday.
To preserve the family circle, the home must be made attractive. No amount
of practical wisdom, of Puritanic piety, nor mere kindly treatment will
hold a family of children together until they are strong enough to resist
the temptations of the world. The home must be made more attractive than
the street or places of amusement. The average boy or girl who loses
interest in home and uses it chiefly as an eating and sleeping place, does
so with good reasons. Home has lost its charm. No provision is made for
his pastime and pleasure. Not finding this at home he will go elsewhere in
search of it. "An unattractive home," says one,﹃is like the frame of a
harp that stands without strings. In form and outline, it suggests music,
but no melody arises from the empty spaces; and thus it is an unattractive
home, is dreary and dull.﹄How may home be made attractive? We have
presupposed a certain amount of education and culture in the home by
maintaining for it intelligence and unselfishness. Any home that is
intelligent and unselfish is capable of being made attractive. In the
first place, in as far as it is practicable, each member of the family
should have a room of his own and be taught how to make it attractive.
Here, one will hang his first pictures, start his own library, provide a
writing desk, and learn to spend his spare moments. Recently we visited a
home in Chicago. The rooms are few in number and hired. The family
consists of father, mother, and three children, now grown. During our
short stay in the home I was invited into the boys' room. The walls are
literally covered with original pencil designs, queer calendars, odd
pictures; the dresser and stand are lined with books and magazines, with
worn-out musical instruments, art gifts from other members of the family,
and ball-team pictures, while two lines of gorgeous decorations stretch
from wall to wall. This is still these young men's little world, their
interests have centered here. No less than five kinds of musical
instruments were visible in this home. The walls of the living room and
parlor are made beautiful with simple tasteful pictures made by the
daughter, whose natural gift in art was early cultivated. The table,
shelves, and mantelpiece are decorated with china bowls, plates, and
vases, simply, yet elegantly adorned. This work was done by the daughter
and mother. Not a large but a choice collection of flowering plants
relieved the bay window of its emptiness. This is an attractive home. The
children never have cared to spend their evenings on the street nor at
places of amusement. Games of skill, innocent, instructive, and
entertaining, may be used to make home life more attractive. Only let the
amusements of the home be under the direction of father and mother, and be
practiced by them. Here is a chance to teach shrewdness, honor, interest,
and by all means, moderation. To overdo at games and amusements is more
harmful than to overwork.
Religion is essential to happy home life. A family may get on for a time
very smoothly without prayer, Bible study, faith in God, and love for
Jesus Christ; but no family life is completed without a storm, many storms
of some sort. Years may pass as on a quiet sea, but one day at high noon,
or, perhaps, in the silent, early hour, a small cloud is seen in the
distance; it comes nearer; the wind begins to blow, the thunders peal, the
lightnings flash, the old home, for so long an ark of safety, is being
tossed on the billowy waves. A testing time is at hand. Mother is gone, or
father has ventured too far and lost all; or son has disgraced the family
name; or daughter is in shame; or the darling of the home is no more! It
makes a vast difference who is at the helm when the storms of home life
rage. It is a mark of highest wisdom to place the family ship under the
world's best Captain, Jesus Christ. He never lost a life. He alone can
arrest the lightning, quiet the waves, inspire confidence, and restore
peace and good will in any storm. But religion is not only useful in
trouble, it is an ornament in peace and prosperity, in the making and
building of the home. Tempers must be controlled, dispositions cultivated,
conduct improved, hearts softened, and minds purified and disciplined. To
accomplish all of this, no substitute can be made for the spirit and faith
of Jesus Christ.
﹃'Dear Moss,' said the thatch on an old ruin, 'I am so worn, so patched,
so ragged, really I am quite unsightly. I wish you would come and cheer me
up a little. You will hide all my infirmities and defects; and, through
your loving sympathy no finger of contempt or dislike will be pointed at
me.' 'I come,' said the moss; and it crept up and around, and in and out,
till every flaw was hidden, and all was smooth and fair. Presently the sun
shone out, and the old thatch looked bright and fair, a picture of rare
beauty, in the golden rays. 'How beautiful the thatch looks!' cried one
who saw it. 'How beautiful the thatch looks!' said another. 'Ah!' said the
old thatch, 'rather let them say, 'How beautiful is the loving moss!'﹄So
it is with the religion of Christ, it adorns and beautifies the life who
really wears it; so that the plainness of that life is covered, its
ruggedness softened, and its "pain transformed into profit and its loss
into gain."
Charles M. Sheldon gives as an essential for a permanent republic, "A true
home life where father, mother, and children spend much time together;
where family worship is preserved; where honesty, purity, and mutual
affection are developed."
J.R. Miller beautifully sums up the secret of happy home-making in one
word—"'Christ.' Christ at the marriage altar; Christ on the bridal
journey; Christ when the new home is set up; Christ when the baby is born;
Christ when the baby dies; Christ in the pinching times; Christ in the
days of plenty; Christ in the nursery, in the kitchen, in the parlor;
Christ in the toil and in the rest; Christ all along the years; Christ
when the wedded pair walk toward the sunset gates; Christ in the sad hour
when the farewells are spoken, and one goes on before and the other stays,
bearing the unshared grief. Christ is the secret of happy home life."
THE HOME-MAKER.
Just as a surly husband, a dissipated father, or a reckless son may blight
a home and destroy its happiness, so may a thoughtful, virtuous, and kind
man in the home change its very atmosphere and help to make it a heaven.
As a home-maker man has the ruggeder part. It is his to provide. The man
who falls short of this in the home does not do his part. No woman can
respect a man much less love him, who places her, her work, her life, her
home, her world under constant embarrassment by a scant and niggardly
provision. She loses her ambition, ceases to make her self and her home
attractive; disorder, filth, unwholesome food, lack of spirit on her part
is the result. She can not be to him, most of all, what he expects her to
be, a companion, a counselor, a comfort—a home-maker. Also, it is
the part of the man in the home to shield the woman from the heavier
burdens and responsibilities. Let him count the cost of his enterprises,
secure himself against hazardous speculations, and give his wife and
children to realize that his shoulders, and not theirs, are to bear the
load of financial obligation and material support. This leaves the woman
with her finer instincts and sensibilities to make the home the dearest
spot on earth to husband, children, and to all who cross her threshold.
The house is her dominion. There she is queen. What a tender and beautiful
one she may become!
SOME PRACTICAL HINTS.
The true home-maker does not spend all of her time with her ducks,
chickens, pigs, and cows, nor yet with her neighbors, her club, nor her
Church. She finds some time to cultivate her intellectual nature and the
finer feelings of her children. She does not degenerate into a mere
household drudge. She is not the slave of her husband, but his companion.
If she has musical ability, she keeps up the practice of her music; if she
is inclined to literature, she reads some every day. Whether literary or
not, every woman should spend some time each day in reading that she might
keep abreast with the world, at least with her companion, in the movements
and thoughts of every-day life. The true home-maker plans to have a few
minutes each day which she calls her own, in which she may do as she
pleases regardless of call or duty, that she might relax herself, remove
the strain of intense effort, rest, give her nature its free bent and
inclination. It will pay her in every way. She will accomplish more and
better work in the busy hours. A spirit and a force will characterize
every effort. The women of to-day are overworked. They can not do
themselves, their families, not their homes the true spiritual service
that it is their part to do. Plan for a few minutes rest with the daily
routine of care. But how is one to do this with so many demands made upon
her? For she is expected to be seamstress, laundress, maid, cook, hostess,
a companion to her husband, a trainer of her children, a social being, and
a helper in the Church. If it is impossible or impracticable for one to
have a servant, she will find these few minutes for daily recreation and
study only in a wise choice of more important duties, and will allow the
less important ones to go undone. Many housewives could well afford to
keep a helper. It becomes a question which is of greater importance, the
life and health of the wife and mother, or the paltry wages of a servant?
We knew a family in Illinois who were quite able to keep help in the home,
but did not do so. The mother made a slave of herself, in a few years
broke in health, and left a large family of small children to struggle
alone in the world. The stepmother, who soon came into the home, could
afford one servant girl and part of the time two. This is a common
experience in ill-managed homes. Or this question arises, Which is of
greater importance, to make more money or to improve the moral tone of the
home; to seek to gratify the outer senses, or to seek to elevate the
spiritual life of the children and the parents? In pleading for rest and
study for the mother in the home we plead for the highest interests of the
entire family. For how can a wife be a companion to a husband when she is
made irritable and nervous from overwork and worry. How can she be a true
mother to her children and neglect their mental and spiritual growth?
Napoleon once said:﹃What France wants is good mothers, and you may be
sure then that France will have good sons.﹄Thomas McCrie, an eminent
Scotch preacher, used to tell, with great feeling, of how his mother, when
he was starting out for school in the city, accompanied him along the road
a little way, and then leading him into the field where she could be
alone, prayed with him, that he might be kept from sin in the city, and
become a very useful man. That moment was the turning point in his life. A
few minutes a day spent with the eager, susceptible child mind, will bring
everlasting blessing upon the father and mother.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Questionable Amusements and Worthy
Substitutes, by J. M. Judy
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUESTIONABLE AMUSEMENTS ***
***** This file should be named 2603-h.htm or 2603-h.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/0/2603/
Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase『Project
Gutenberg』is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the『Right
of Replacement or Refund』described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
gbnewby@pglaf.org
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.