GENTEEL BUSINESS.

It is a very sad thing when a wife is not suited unless her husband

has what is called a "genteel business." So far as I understand a

"genteel business," it is something to which a man goes at ten o'clock

in the morning, and from which he comes home at two or three o'clock

in the afternoon, and gets a large amount of money for doing nothing.

That is, I believe, a "genteel business;" and there has been many a

wife who has made the mistake of not being satisfied until the husband

has given up the tanning of the hides, or the turning of the

banisters, or the building of the walls, and put himself in circles

where he has nothing to do but smoke cigars and drink wine, and get

himself into habits that upset him, going down in the maelstrom,

taking his wife and children with him.

There are a good many trains running from earth to destruction. They

start all the hours of the day, and all the hours of the night. There

are the freight trains; they go very slowly and very heavily; and

there are the accommodation trains going on toward destruction, and

they stop very often and let a man get out when he wants to. But

genteel idleness is an express train; Satan is the stoker, and Death

is the engineer; and though one may come out in front of it and swing

the red flag of "danger," or the lantern of God's Word, it makes just

one shot into perdition, coming down the embankment with a shout and a

wail and a shriek--crash, crash! There are two classes of people sure

of destruction: First, those who have nothing to do; secondly, those

who have something to do, but are too lazy or too proud to do it.