ACT V.--_A destroyed soul's eternity. No light; no music; no hope!

Despair coiling around the heart with unutterable anguish. Blackness

of darkness forever_.

Woe! Woe! Woe! I cannot bear longer to look. I close my eyes at this

last act of the tragedy. Quick! Quick! Ring the bell and let the

curtain drop.

THE INDISCRIMINATE DANCE.

It is the anniversary of Herod's birthday. The palace is lighted. The

highways leading thereto are ablaze with the pomp of invited guests.

Lords, captains, merchant princes, and the mightiest men of the realm

are on the way to mingle in the festivities. The tables are filled

with all the luxuries that the royal purveyors can gather,--spiced

wines, and fruits, and rare meats. The guests, white-robed, anointed

and perfumed, take their places. Music! The jests evoke roars of

laughter. Riddles are propounded. Repartees indulged. Toasts drunk.

The brain befogged. Wit gives place to uproar and blasphemy. And yet

they are not satisfied. Turn on more light. Give us more music. Sound

the trumpet. Clear the floor for the dance. Bring in Salome, the

graceful and accomplished princess.

The doors are opened and in bounds the dancer. Stand back and give

plenty of room for the gyrations. The lords are enchanted. They never

saw such poetry of motion. Their souls whirl in the reel, and bound

with the bounding feet. Herod forgets crown and throne,--everything

but the fascinations of Salome. The magnificence of his realm is as

nothing compared with that which now whirls before him on tiptoe. His

heart is in transport with Salome as her arms are now tossed in

the air, and now placed akimbo. He sways with every motion of the

enchantress. He thrills with the quick pulsations of her feet, and is

bewitched with the posturing and attitudes that he never saw before,

in a moment exchanged for others just as amazing. He sits in silence

before the whirling, bounding, leaping, flashing wonder. And when

the dance stops, and the tinkling cymbals pause, and the long, loud

plaudits that shook the palace with their thunders had abated, the

entranced monarch swears unto the princely performer: "Whatsoever thou

shalt ask of me I will give it to thee, to the half of my kingdom."

Now there was in prison a minister by the name of John the Baptist,

who had made much trouble by his honest preaching. He had denounced

the sins of the king, and brought down upon himself the wrath of the

females in the royal family. At the instigation of her mother, Salome

takes advantage of the king's extravagant promise and demands the head

of John the Baptist on a dinner-plate.

There is a sound of heavy feet, and the clatter of swords outside of

the palace. Swing back the door. The executioners are returning, from

their awful errand. They hand a platter to Salome. What is that on the

platter? A new tankard of wine to rekindle the mirth of the lords? No!

It is redder than wine, and costlier. It is the ghastly, bleeding head

of John the Baptist! Its locks dabbled in gore. Its eyes set in the

death-stare. The distress of the last agony in the features. That

fascinating form, that just now swayed so gracefully in the dance,

bends over the horrid burden without a shudder. She gloats over the

blood; and just as the maid of your household goes, bearing out on a

tray the empty glasses of the evening's entertainment, so she carried

out on a platter the dissevered head of that good man, while all the

banqueters shouted, and thought it a grand joke, that, in such a brief

and easy way, they had freed themselves from such a plain-spoken,

troublesome minister.

What could be more innocent than a birthday festival? All the kings

from the time of Pharaoh had celebrated such days; and why not Herod?

It was right that the palace should be lighted, and that the cymbals

should clap, and that the royal guests should go to a banquet; but,

before the rioting and wassail that closed the scene of that day,

every pure nature revolts.

Behold the work, the influence, and the end of an infamous dancer!

I am, by natural temperament and religious theory, utterly opposed

to the position of those who are horrified at every demonstration

of mirth and playfulness in social life, and who seem to think that

everything, decent and immortal, depends upon the style in which

people carry their feet. On the other hand, I can see nothing but

ruin, moral and physical, in the dissipations of the ball-room, which

have despoiled thousands of young men and women of all that gives

dignity to character, or usefulness to life.

Dancing has been styled "the graceful movement of the body adjusted

by art, to the measures or tune of instruments, or of the voice." All

nations have danced. The ancients thought that Pollux and Castor at

first taught the practice to the Lacedæmonians; but, whatever be its

origin, all climes have adopted it.

In other days there were festal dances, and funeral dances, and

military dances, and "mediatorial" dances, and bacchanalian dances.

Queens and lords have swayed to and fro in their gardens; and the

rough men of the backwoods in this way have roused up the echo of the

forest. There seems to be something in lively and coherent sounds to

evoke the movement of hand and foot, whether cultured or uncultured.

Men passing the street unconsciously keep step to the music of the

band; and Christians in church unconsciously find themselves keeping

time with their feet, while their soul is uplifted by some great

harmony. Not only is this true in cultured life, but the red men of

Oregon have their scalp dances, and green-corn dances, and war dances.

It is, therefore, no abstract question that you ask me--Is it right to

dance?

The ancient fathers, aroused by the indecent dances of those days,

gave emphatic evidence against any participation in the dance. St.

Chrysostom says:--"The feet were not given for dancing, but to walk

modestly; not to leap impudently like camels."

One of the dogmas of the ancient church reads: "A dance is the devil's

possession; and he that entereth into a dance, entereth into his

possession. The devil is the gate to the middle and to the end of the

dance. As many passes as a man makes in dancing, so many passes doth

he make to hell." Elsewhere, these old dogmas declare--"The woman

that singeth in the dance is the princess of the devil; and those

that answer are his clerks; and the beholders are his friends, and

the music are his bellows, and the fiddlers are the ministers of the

devil; for, as when hogs are strayed, if the hogs'-herd call one,

all assemble together, so the devil calleth one woman to sing in the

dance, or to play on some instrument, and presently all the dancers

gather together."

This wholesale and indiscriminate denunciation grew out of the utter

dissoluteness of those ancient plays. So great at one time was the

offence to all decency, that the Roman Senate decreed the expulsion of

all dancers and dancing-masters from Rome.

Yet we are not to discuss the customs of that day, but the customs of

the present. We cannot let the fathers decide the question for us.

Our reason, enlightened by the Bible, shall be the standard. I am not

ready to excommunicate all those who lift their feet beyond a certain

height. I would not visit our youth with a rigor of criticism that

would put out all their ardor of soul. I do not believe that all the

inhabitants of Wales, who used to step to the sound of the rustic

pibcorn, went down to ruin. I would give to all of our youth the right

to romp and play. God meant it, or he would not have surcharged

our natures with such exuberance. If a mother join hands with her

children, and while the eldest strikes the keys, fill all the house

with the sound of agile feet, I see no harm. If a few friends,

gathered in happy circle, conclude to cross and recross the room to

the sound of the piano well played, I see no harm. I for a long while

tried to see in it a harm, but I never could, and I probably never

will. I would to God men kept young for a greater length of time.

Never since my school-boy days have I loved so well as now the

hilarities of life. What if we have felt heavy burdens, and suffered a

multitude of hard knocks, is it any reason why we should stand in the

path of those who, unstung by life's misfortunes, are exhilarated and

full of glee?

God bless the young! They will have to live many a day if they want to

hear me say one word to dampen their ardor or clip their wings, or

to throw a cloud upon their life by telling them that it is hard,

and dark, and doleful. It is no such thing. You will meet with many a

trial; but, speaking from my own experience, let me tell you that you

will be treated a great deal better than you deserve.

Let us not grudge to the young their joy. As we go further on in life,

let us go with the remembrance that we have had our gleeful days. When

old age frosts our locks, and stiffens our limbs, let us not block up

the way, but say, "We had our good times: now let others have theirs."

As our children come on, let us cheerfully give them our places. How

glad will I be to let them have everything,--my house, my books, my

place in society, my heritage! By the time we get old we will have had

our way long enough. Then let our children come on and we'll have it

their way. For thirty, forty, or fifty years, we have been drinking

from the cup of life; and we ought not to complain if called to pass

the cup along and let others take a drink.

But, while we have a right to the enjoyments of life, we never will

countenance sinful indulgences. I here set forth a group of what

might be called the dissipations of the ball-room. They swing an awful

scythe of death. Are we to stand idly by, and let the work go on, lest

in the rebuke we tread upon the long trail of some popular vanity? The

whirlpool of the ball-room drags down the life, the beauty, and the

moral worth of the city. In this whirlwind of imported silks goes out

the life of many of our best families. Bodies and souls innumerable

are annually consumed in this conflagration of ribbons.

This style of dissipation is the abettor of pride, the instigator of

jealousy, the sacrificial altar of health, the defiler of the soul,

the avenue of lust, and the curse of the town. The tread of this wild,

intoxicating, heated midnight dance jars all the moral hearthstones of

the city. The physical ruin is evident. What will become of those

who work all day and dance all night? A few years will turn them out

nervous, exhausted imbeciles. Those who have given up their midnights

to spiced wines, and hot suppers, and ride home through winter's cold,

unwrapped from the elements, will at last be recorded suicides.

There is but a short step from the ball-room to the grave-yard. There

are consumptions and fierce neuralgias close on the track. Amid that

glittering maze of ball-room splendors, diseases stand right and left,

and balance and chain. A sepulchral breath floats up amid the perfume,

and the froth of death's lip bubbles up in the champagne.

Many of our brightest homes are being sacrificed. There are families

that have actually quit keeping house, and gone to boarding, that

they may give themselves more exclusively to the higher duties of

the ball-room. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, finding

their highest enjoyment in the dance, bid farewell to books, to quiet

culture, to all the amenities of home. The father will, after a while,

go down into lower dissipations. The son will be tossed about

in society, a nonentity. The daughter will elope with a French

dancing-master. The mother, still trying to stay in the glitter,

and by every art attempting to keep the color in her cheek, and the

wrinkles off her brow, attempting, without any success, all the arts

of the belle,--an old flirt, a poor, miserable butterfly without any

wings.

If anything on the earth is beautiful to my eye, it is an aged woman;

her hair floating back over the wrinkled brow, not frosted, but white

with the blossoms of the tree of life; her voice tender with

past memories, and her face a benediction. The children pull at

grandmother's dress as she passes through the room, and almost pull

her down in her weakness; yet she has nothing but a cake, or a candy,

or a kind word for the little darlings. When she goes away from us

there is a shadow on the table, a shadow on the hearth, and a shadow

in the dwelling.

But if anything on earth is distressful to look at, it is an old woman

ashamed of being old. What with paint and false hair, she is too much

for my gravity. I laugh, even in church, when I see her coming. One of

the worst looking birds I know of is a peacock after it has lost its

feathers. I would not give one lock of my mother's gray hair for fifty

thousand such caricatures of old age. The first time you find these

faithful disciples of the ball-room diligently engaged and happy in

the duties of the home circle, send me word, for I would go a great

way to see such a phenomenon. These creatures have no home. Their

children unwashed. Their furniture undusted. Their china closets

disordered. The house a scene of confusion, misrule, cheerlessness,

and dirt. One would think you might discover even amid the witcheries

of the ball-room the sickening odors of the unswept, unventilated, and

unclean domestic apartments.

These dissipations extinguish all love of usefulness. How could you

expect one to be interested in the alleviations of the world's misery,

while there is a question to be decided about the size of a glove

or the shade of a pongee? How many of these men and women of the

ball-room visit the poor, or help dress the wounds of a returned

soldier in the hospital? When did the world ever see a perpetual

dancer distributing tracts? Such persons are turned in upon

themselves. And it is very poor pasture!

This gilded sphere is utterly bedwarfing to intellect and soul. This

constant study of little things; this harassing anxiety about

dress; this talk of fashionable infinitesimals; this shoe-pinched,

hair-frizzled, fringe-spattered group--that simper and look askance

at the mirrors and wonder, with infinity of interest, "how that one

geranium leaf does look;" this shrivelling up of man's moral dignity,

until it is no more observable with the naked eye; this taking of a

woman's heart, that God meant should be filled with all amenities,

and compressing it until all the fragrance, and simplicity, and

artlessness are squeezed out of it; this inquisition of a small shoe;

this agony of tight lacing; this wrapping up of mind and heart in

a ruffle; this tumbling down of a soul that God meant for great

upliftings!

I prophesy the spiritual ruin of all participators in this rivalry.

Have the white, polished, glistening boards ever been the road to

heaven? Who at the flash of those chandeliers hath kindled a torch

for eternity? From the table spread at the close of that excited and

besweated scene, who went home to say his prayers?

To many, alas! this life is a masquerade ball. As, at such

entertainments, gentlemen and ladies appear in the dress of kings

or queens, mountain bandits or clowns, and at the close of the dance

throw off their disguises, so, in this dissipated life, all unclean

passions move in mask. Across the floor they trip merrily. The lights

sparkle along the wall, or drop from the ceiling--a very cohort of

fire! The music charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. Gemmed

hands, stretched out, clasp gemmed hands. Dancing feet respond to

dancing feet. Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On with the

dance! Flash, and rustle, and laughter, and immeasurable merry-making!

But the languor of death comes over the limbs, and blurs the sight.

_Lights lower!_ Floor hollow with sepulchral echo. Music saddens into

a wail. _Lights lower!_ The maskers can hardly now be seen. Flowers

exchange their fragrance for a sickening odor, such as comes from

garlands that have lain in vaults of cemeteries. _Lights lower!_ Mists

fill the room. Glasses rattle as though shaken by sullen thunder.

Sighs seem caught among the curtains. Scarf falls from the shoulder of

beauty,--a shroud! _Lights lower!_ Over the slippery boards, in dance

of death, glide jealousies, disappointments, lust, despair. Torn

leaves and withered garlands only half hide the ulcered feet.

The stench of smoking lamp-wicks almost quenched. Choking damps.

Chilliness. Feet still. Hands folded. Eyes shut. Voices hushed.

LIGHTS OUT!

THE MASSACRE BY NEEDLE AND SEWING-MACHINE.

Very long ago the needle was busy. It was considered honorable for

women to toil in olden time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace

showing garments made by his own mother. The finest tapestries at

Bayeux were made by the Queen of William the Conqueror. Augustus the

Emperor would not wear any garments except those that were fashioned

by some member of his royal family. So let the toiler everywhere be

respected!

The greatest blessing that could have happened to our first parents

was being turned out of Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and Eve,

in their perfect state, might have got along without work, or only

such slight employment as a perfect garden, with no weeds in it,

demanded. But, as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them

was to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a

withering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel

Green, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said,

"I do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a man who has a

large amount of money to start with has no chance. Of the thousand

prosperous and honorable men that you know, nine hundred and

ninety-nine had to work vigorously at the beginning.

But I am now to tell you that industry is just as important for

a woman's safety and happiness. The most unhappy women in our

communities to-day are those who have no engagements to call them up

in the morning; who, once having risen and breakfasted, lounge through

the dull forenoon in slippers down at the heel and with dishevelled

hair, reading George Sand's last novel; and who, having dragged

through a wretched forenoon and taken their afternoon sleep, and

having spent an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their

card-case and go out to make calls; and who pass their evenings

waiting for somebody to come in and break up the monotony. Arabella

Stuart never was imprisoned in so dark a dungeon as that.

There is no happiness in an idle woman. It may be with hand, it may

be with brain, it may be with foot; but work she must, or be wretched

forever. The little girls of our families must be started with that

idea. The curse of our American society is that our young women are

taught that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh,

tenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing in their life is to get somebody to

take care of them. Instead of that, the first lesson should be, how,

under God, they may take care of themselves. The simple fact is that

a majority of them do have to take care of themselves, and that, too,

after having, through the false notions of their parents, wasted the

years in which they ought to have learned how successfully to maintain

themselves. We now and here declare the inhumanity, cruelty, and

outrage of that father and mother, who pass their daughters into

womanhood, having given them no facility for earning their livelihood.

Madame de Staël said: "It is not these writings that I am proud of,

but the fact that I have facility in ten occupations, in any one of

which I could make a livelihood."

You say you have a fortune to leave them. O man and woman! have you

not learned that, like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches

have wings and fly away? Though you should be successful in leaving

a competency behind you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in

a night; or some elders or deacons of our churches may get up an

oil company, or some sort of religious enterprise sanctioned by the

church, and induce your orphans to put their money into a hole in

Venango County; and if, by the most skilful derricks, the sunken money

cannot be pumped up again, prove to them that it was eternally decreed

that that was the way they were to lose it, and that it went in the

most orthodox and heavenly style.

O the damnable schemes that professed Christians will engage in--until

God puts his fingers into the collar of the hypocrite's robe and rips

it clear down to the bottom!

You have no right, because you are well off, to conclude that your

children are going to be as well off. A man died, leaving a large

fortune. His son, a few months ago, fell dead in a Philadelphia

grog-shop. His old comrades came in and said, as they bent over his

corpse: "What is the matter with you, Boggsey?" The surgeon standing

over him said: "Hush up! he is dead!"--"Ah, he is dead!" they said.

"Come, boys, let us go and take a drink in memory of poor Boggsey!"

Have you nothing better than money to leave your children? If you

have not, but send your daughters into the world with empty brain and

unskilled hand, you are guilty of assassination, homicide, regicide,

infanticide--compared with which that of poor Hester Vaughan was

innocence. There are women toiling in our cities for three and four

dollars per week, who were the daughters of merchant princes. These

suffering ones now would be glad to have the crumbs that once fell

from their father's table. That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears

is the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which

her mother walked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of

magnificent brocade, that swept Broadway clean without any expense to

the street commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence, and

fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace

to them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea, prevalent in

society, that though our young women may embroider slippers, and

crochet, and make mats for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the

idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame

for a young woman, belonging to a large family, to be inefficient when

the father toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a

daughter to be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as

honorable to sweep house, make beds, or trim hats, as it is to twist a

watch-chain.

As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between

that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which

is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it

is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing

dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the

back of an armchair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy

the chair. You may, with delicate brush, beautify a mantel-ornament,

but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may

learn artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing

"Ortonville" or "Old Hundred." Do nothing practical, if you would, in

the eyes of refined society, preserve your respectability.

I scout these finical notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man,

has a right to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for

it.

In the course of a lifetime you consume whole harvests, and droves of

cattle, and every day you live breathe forty hogsheads of good pure

air. You must, by some kind of usefulness, _pay_ for all this. Our

race was the last thing created,--the birds and fishes on the fourth

day, the cattle and lizards on the fifth day, and man on the sixth

day. If geologists are right, the earth was a million of years in the

possession of the insects, beasts, and birds, before our race came

upon it. In one sense, we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards,

and the hawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are

to do with the lizards and summer insects, but what the lizards and

summer insects are to do with us.

If we want a place in this world we must _earn_ it. The partridge

makes its own nest before it occupies it. The lark, by its morning

song, earns its breakfast before it eats it; and the Bible gives an

intimation that the first duty of an idler is to starve, when it

says if he "will not work, neither shall he eat." Idleness ruins the

health; and very soon Nature says, "This man has refused to pay his

rent; out with him!"

Society is to be reconstructed on the subject of woman's toil. A vast

majority of those who would have woman industrious shut her up to a

few kinds of work. My judgment in this matter is, that a woman has a

right to do anything she can do well. There should be no department

of merchandise, mechanism, art, or science barred against her. If Miss

Hosmer has genius for sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa Bonheur

has a fondness for delineating animals, let her make "The Horse

Fair." If Miss Mitchell will study astronomy, let her mount the starry

ladder. If Lydia will be a merchant, let her sell purple. If Lucretia

Mott will preach the Gospel, let her thrill with her womanly eloquence

the Quaker meeting-house.

It is said, if woman is given such opportunities, she will occupy

places that might be taken by men. I say, if she have more skill and

adaptedness for any position than a man has, let her have it! She has

as much right to her bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as men

have.

But it is said that her nature is so delicate that she is unfitted for

exhausting toil. I ask, in the name of all past history, what toil on

earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremendous than that toil of the

needle to which for ages she has been subjected? The battering-ram,

the sword, the carbine, the battle-axe have made no such havoc as the

needle. I would that these living sepulchres in which women have for

ages been buried might be opened, and that some resurrection trumpet

might bring up these living corpses to the fresh air and sunlight.

Go with me, and I will show you a woman who, by hardest toil, supports

her children, her drunken husband, her old father and mother, pays her

house-rent, always has wholesome food on her table, and, when she

can get some neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take care of

her family, appears in church, with hat and cloak that are far from

indicating the toil to which she is subjected.

Such a woman as that has body and soul enough to fit her for _any_

position. She could stand beside the majority of your salesmen and

dispose of more goods. She could go into your wheelwright shops and

beat one-half of your workmen at making carriages. We talk about woman

as though we had resigned to her all the light work, and ourselves had

shouldered the heavier. But the day of judgment, which will reveal

the sufferings of the stake and inquisition, will marshal before the

throne of God and the hierarchs of heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and

needle.

Now, I say, if there be any preference in occupation, let woman have

it. God knows her trials are the severest. By her acuter sensitiveness

to misfortune, by her hour of anguish, I demand that no one hedge up

her pathway to a livelihood. O the meanness, the despicability of

men who begrudge a woman the right to work anywhere, in any honorable

calling!

I go still further, and say that women should have equal compensation

with men. By what principle of justice is it that women in many of our

cities get only two-thirds as much pay as men, and in many cases only

half? Here is the gigantic injustice--that for work equally well, if

not better done, woman receives far less compensation than man. Start

with the National Government: women clerks in Washington get nine

hundred dollars for doing that for which men receive eighteen hundred.

To thousands of young women of New York to-day there is only this

alternative: starvation or dishonor. Many of the largest mercantile

establishments of our cities are accessory to these abominations;

and from their large establishments there are scores of souls being

pitched off into death; _and their employers know it!_

Is there a God? Will there be a judgment? I tell you, if God rises up

to redress woman's wrongs, many of our large establishments will be

swallowed up quicker than a South-American earthquake ever took down

a city. God will catch these oppressors between the two mill-stones of

his wrath, and grind them to powder!

Why is it that a female principal in a school gets only eight hundred

and twenty-five dollars for doing work for which a male principal gets

sixteen hundred and fifty?

I hear from all this land the wail of woman-hood. Man has nothing to

answer to that wail but flatteries. He says she is an angel. She is

not. She knows she is not. She is a human being, who gets hungry

when she has no food, and cold when she has no fire. Give her no more

flatteries: give her _justice!_

There are thirty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York and Brooklyn.

Across the darkness of this night I hear their death-groan. It is not

such a cry as comes from those who are suddenly hurled out of life,

but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting away. Gather them before you

and look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, hunger-struck! Look at

their fingers, needle-picked and blood-tipped! See that premature

stoop in the shoulders! Hear that dry, hacking, merciless cough!

At a large meeting of these women, held in a hall in Philadelphia,

grand speeches were delivered, but a needle-woman took the stand,

threw aside her faded shawl, and, with her shrivelled arm, hurled a

very thunder-bolt of eloquence, speaking out of the horrors of her own

experience.

Stand at the corner of a street in New York at half-past five or six

o'clock in the morning, as the women go to their work. Many of them

had no breakfast except the crumbs that were left over from the night

before, or a crust they chew on their way through the street. Here

they come! the working girls of New York and Brooklyn! These engaged

in bead-work, these in flower-making, in millinery, enamelling, cigar

making, book-binding, labelling, feather-picking, print-coloring,

paper-box making, but, most overworked of all, and least compensated,

the sewing-women. Why do they not take the city-cars on their way

up? They cannot afford the five cents! If, concluding to deny herself

something else, she get into the car, give her a seat! You want to see

how Latimer and Ridley appeared in the fire: look at that woman and

behold a more horrible martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing

death! Ask that woman how much she gets for her work, and she will

tell you six cents for making coarse shirts, and finds her own thread!

Last Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my church, after service, a

woman fell in convulsions. The doctor said she needed medicine not so

much as something to eat. As she began to revive in her delirium,

she said, gaspingly: "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight cents! I wish I

could get it done! I am so tired! I wish I could get some sleep, but I

must get it done! Eight cents! Eight cents!" We found afterwards that

she was making garments for eight cents apiece, and that she could

make but three of them in a day! Hear it! Three times eight are

twenty-four! Hear it, men and women who have comfortable homes!

Some of the worst villains of the city are the employers of these

women. They beat them down to the last penny, and try to cheat them

out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar or two before she

gets the garments to work on. When the work is done it is sharply

inspected, the most insignificant flaws picked out, and the wages

refused, and sometimes the dollar deposited not given back. The

Women's Protective Union reports a case where one of these poor souls,

finding a place where she could get more wages, resolved to change

employers, and went to get her pay for work done. The employer says:

"I hear you are going to leave me?"--"Yes," she said, "and I have come

to get what you owe me." He made no answer. She said: "Are you not

going to pay me?"--"Yes," he said, "I will pay you;" and _he kicked

her down the stairs_.

How are these evils to be eradicated? What have you to answer, you

who sell coats, and have shoes made, and contract for the Southern and

Western markets? What help is there, what panacea, what redemption?

Some say: "Give women the ballot." What effect such ballot might have

on other questions I am not here to discuss; but what would be the

effect of female suffrage upon woman's wages? I do not believe that

woman will ever get justice by woman's ballot.

Indeed, women oppress women as much as men do. Do not women, as much

as men, beat down to the lowest figure the woman who sews for them?

Are not women as sharp as men on washerwomen, and milliners, and

mantua-makers? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, does not her

female employer ask her if she will not take ninety cents? You say

"only ten cents difference;" but that is sometimes the difference

between heaven and hell. Women often have less commiseration for women

than men. If a woman steps aside from the path of virtue, man may

forgive,--woman never! Woman will never get justice done her from

woman's ballot.

Neither will she get it from man's ballot. How, then? God will rise

up for her. God has more resources than we know of. The flaming sword

that hung at Eden's gate when woman was driven out will cleave with

its terrible edge her oppressors.

But there is something for our women to do. Let our young people

prepare to excel in spheres of work, and they will be able, after

a while, to get larger wages. If it be shown that a woman can, in a

store, sell more goods in a year than a man, she will soon be able

not only to ask but to _demand_ more wages, and to demand them

successfully. Unskilled and incompetent labor must take what is given;

skilled and competent labor will eventually make its own standard.

Admitting that the law of supply and demand regulates these things,

I contend that the demand for skilled labor is very great, and the

supply very small.

Start with the idea that work is _honorable_, and that you can do some

one thing better than any one else. Resolve that, God helping, you

will take care of yourself. If you are, after a while, called into

another relation, you will all the better be qualified for it by your

spirit of self-reliance; or if you are called to stay as you are, you

can be happy and self-supporting.

Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak, and woman the vine that

climbs it; but I have seen many a tree fall that not only went down

itself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell you of something

stronger than an oak for an ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of

the great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leans

on God and does her best. The needle may break; the factory-band may

slip; the wages may fail; but, over every good woman's head there are

spread the two great, gentle, stupendous wings of the Almighty.

Many of you will go single-handed through life, and you will have to

choose between two characters. Young woman, I am sure you will turn

your back upon the useless, giggling, painted nonentity which society

ignominiously acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to make you an

humble, active, earnest Christian.

What will become of this godless disciple of fashion? What an insult

to her sex! Her manners are an outrage upon decency. She is more

thoughtful of the attitude she strikes upon the carpet than how she

will look in the judgment; more worried about her freckles than her

sins; more interested in her bonnet-strings than in her redemption.

Her apparel is the poorest part of a Christian woman, however

magnificently dressed, and no one has so much right to dress well as

a Christian. Not so with the godless disciple of fashion. Take her

robes, and you take everything. Death will come down on her some day,

and rub the bistre off her eyelids, and the rouge off her cheeks, and

with two rough, bony hands, scatter spangles and glass beads and rings

and ribbons and lace and brooches and buckles and sashes and frisettes

and golden clasps.

The dying actress whose life had been vicious said: "The scene closes.

Draw the curtain." Generally the tragedy comes first, and the farce

afterward; but in her life it was first the farce of a useless life,

and then the tragedy of a wretched eternity.

Compare the life and death of such an one with that of some Christian

aunt that was once a blessing to your household. I do not know that

she was ever offered the hand in marriage. She lived single, that

untrammelled she might be everybody's blessing. Whenever the sick were

to be visited, or the poor to be provided with bread, she went with a

blessing. She could pray, or sing "Rock of Ages," for any sick pauper

who asked her. As she got older, there were days when she was a little

sharp, but for the most part Auntie was a sunbeam--just the one for

Christmas-eve. She knew better than any one else how to fix things.

Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of everybody who had

trouble. The brightest things in all the house dropped from her

fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion she ever

had was to make you happy. She dressed well--Auntie always dressed

well; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quiet spirit,

which, in the sight of God, is of great price. When she died, you all

gathered lovingly about her; and as you carried her out to rest, the

Sunday-school class almost covered the coffin with japonicas; and the

poor people stood at the end of the alley, with their aprons to their

eyes, sobbing bitterly; and the man of the world said, with Solomon,

"Her price was above rubies;" and Jesus, as unto the maiden in Judea,

commanded: "I SAY UNTO THEE, ARISE!"

PICTURES IN THE STOCK GALLERY.

[NOTE.--This chapter, though largely devoted to "Oil," is to be

construed as reaching any other "Kite" that the stock gambler

flies--any other scheme which his unprincipled ideas of right and

wrong will permit him to work to his own gain and others' loss.

The oil mania was only a more popular or attractive _vice_ of the

stock-boards, which is reproduced, in spirit and motive, almost every

month of the year.]

At my entrance upon this discussion, I must deplore the indiscriminate

terms of condemnation employed by many well-meaning persons in regard

to stock operations. The business of the stock-broker is just as

legitimate and necessary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or

hardware; and a man may be as pure-minded and holy a Christian at the

Board of Brokers as in a prayer-meeting. The broker is, in the sight

of God, as much entitled to his commissions as any hard-working

mechanic is entitled to his day's wages. Any man has as much right

to make money by the going up of stocks as by the going up of sugar,

rice, or tea. The inevitable board-book that the operator carries in

his hand may be as pure as the clothing merchant's ledger. It is

the work of the brokers to facilitate business; to make transfer of

investment; to watch and report the tides of business; to assist the

merchant in lawful enterprises.

Because there are men in this department of business, sharp,

deceitful, and totally iniquitous, you have no right to denounce the

entire class. Importers, shoe-dealers, lumbermen, do not want to be

held responsible for the moral deficits of their comrades in business.

Neither have you a right to excoriate those who are conscientiously

operating through the channels spoken of. If they take a risk, so do

all business men. The merchant who buys silk at five dollars per yard

takes his chances; he expects it to go up to six dollars; it may fall

to four dollars. If a man, by straightforward operations in stocks,

meets with disaster and fails, he deserves sympathy just as much as he

who sold spices or calicoes, and through some miscalculation is struck

down bankrupt.

We have no right to impose restrictions upon this class of men that

we impose upon no other. What right have you to denounce the operation

"buyer--ten days" or "buyer--twenty days," when you take a house,

"buyer--three hundred and sixty-five days?" Perhaps the entire payment

is to be made at the end of a year, when you do not know but that, by

that time, you will be penniless. Give all men their due, if you would

hold beneficent influence over them. Do not be too rough in pulling

out the weeds, lest you uproot also the marigolds and verbenas. In

the Board of Brokers there are some of the most conscientious,

upright Christian men of our cities--men who would scorn a lie, or a

subterfuge. Indeed, there are men in these boards who might, in some

respects, teach a lesson of morality to other commercial circles.

I will not deny that there are special temptations connected with this

business even when carried on legitimately. So there are dangers to

the engineer on a railroad. He does not know what night he may dash

into the coal-train. But engines must be run, and stocks must be sold.

A nervous, excitable man ought to be very slow to undertake either the

engine or the Stock Exchange.

A clever young man, of twenty-five years of age, bought ten shares in

the Pennsylvania Central Railroad. The stock went up five dollars per

share, and he made fifty dollars by the operation. His mother,

knowing his temperament, said to him, "I wish you had lost it." But,

encouraged, he entered another operation, and took ten shares in

another railroad and made two hundred dollars. By this time he was

ready for the wildest scheme. He lost, in three years, forty thousand

dollars, ruined his health, and broke his wife's heart. Her father

supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate has a shingle up, in a

small court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this

commercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for

military command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, cool

brain, and well-balanced temperament.

But, while there is a legitimate sphere for the broker and operator,

there are transactions every day undertaken in our cities that can

only be characterized as superb outrage and villany; and there are

members of Christian churches who have been guilty of speculations

that, in the last day, will blanch their cheek, and thunder them

down to everlasting companionship with the lowest gamblers that ever

pitched pennies for a drink.

It is not necessary that I should draw the difficult line between

honorable and dishonorable speculation. God has drawn it through every

man's conscience. The broker guilty of "cornering" as well knows that

he is sinning against God and man, as though the flame of Mount Sinai

singed his eyebrows. He hears that a brother broker has sold "short,"

and immediately goes about with a wise look, saying: "Erie is going

down--Erie is going down; prepare for it." Immediately the people

begin to sell; he buys up the stock; monopolizes the whole affair;

drags down the man who sold short; makes largely, pockets the gain,

and thanks the Lord for great prosperity in business. You call it

"cornering." I call it gambling, theft, highway robbery, villany

accursed.

It is astonishing how some men, who are kind in their families, useful

in the church, charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed of the

devil as soon as they enter the Stock Exchange. A respectable member

of one of the churches of the city went into a broker's office and

said: "Get me one hundred shares of Reading, and carry it; I will

leave a margin of five hundred dollars." Instead of going up,

according to anticipation, the stock fell. Every few days the operator

called to ask the broker what success. The stock still declined. The

operator was so terribly excited that the broker asked him what was

the matter. He replied: "To tell you the truth, I borrowed that five

hundred dollars that I lost, and, in anticipation of what I was sure I

was going to get by the operation, I made a very large subscription to

the Missionary Society."

The nation has become so accustomed to frauds that no astonishment is

excited thereby. The public conscience has for many years been utterly

debauched by what were called fancy stocks, morus multicaulis, Western

city enterprises, and New England developments.

If a man find on his farm something as large as the head of a pin,

that, in a strong sunlight, sparkles a little, a gold company is

formed; books are opened; working capital declared; a select number

go in on the "ground floor;" and the estates of widows and orphans

are swept into the vortex. Very little discredit is connected with any

such transaction, if it is only on a large scale. We cannot bear small

and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our hats and bow almost

to the ground in the presence of the man who has made one hundred

thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman was arrested in the streets

of one of our cities for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She was

tried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming out of prison, she went into

the same business and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she was

arrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On coming out--showing the total

depravity of a woman's heart--she again went into the same business,

and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Whereupon the police, the mayor and

the public sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, though

the heavens fell, no woman should be allowed to sell molasses candy on

Sunday. Yet the law puts its hands behind its back, and walks up and

down in the presence of a thousand abominations and dares not whisper.

There are scores of men to-day on the streets, whose costly family

wardrobes, whose rosewood furniture, whose splendid turn-outs, whose

stately mansions, are made out of the distresses of sewing-women,

whose money they gathered up in a stock swindle. There is human sweat

in the golden tankards. There is human blood in the crimson plush.

There are the bones of unrequited toil in the pearly keys of the

piano. There is the curse of an incensed God hovering over all their

magnificence. Some night the man will not be able to rest. He will

rise up in bewilderment and look about him, crying: "Who is there?"

Those whom he has wronged will thrust their skinny arms under the

tapestry, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, and blow their

sepulchral breath into his face, crying: "Come to judgment!"

For the warning of young men, I shall specify but two of the world's

most gigantic swindles--one English, and the other American.

In England, in the early part of the last century, reports were

circulated of the fabulous wealth of South America. A company was

formed, with a stock of what would be equal to thirty millions of our

dollars. The government guaranteed to the company the control of all

the trade to the South Sea, and the company was to assume the entire

debt of England, then amounting to one hundred and forty millions of

dollars. Magnificent project! The English nation talked and dreamed

of nothing but Peruvian gold and Mexican silver, the national debt

liquidated, and Eldorados numberless and illimitable! When five

million pounds of new stock was offered at three hundred pounds per

share, it was all snatched up with avidity. Thirty million dollars

of the stock was subscribed for, when there were but five millions

offered. South Sea went up, until in the midsummer month the stock

stood at one thousand per cent. The whole nation was intoxicated.

Around about this scheme, as might have been expected, others just as

wild arose. A company was formed with ten million dollars of capital

for importing walnut trees from Virginia. A company for developing

a wheel to go by perpetual motion, with a capital of four million

dollars. A company for developing a new kind of soap. A company for

insuring against losses by servants, with fifteen million dollars

capital. One scheme was entitled: "A company for carrying on an

undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is--capital

two million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares of five hundred

each. Further information to be given in a month."

The books were opened at nine o'clock in the morning. Before night

a thousand shares were taken, and two thousand pounds paid in. So

successful was the day's work, that that night the projector of the

enterprise went out of the business, and forever vanished from the

public. But it was not a perfect loss. The subscribers had their

ornamented certificates of stock to comfort them. Hunt's Merchant's

Magazine, speaking of those times, says "that from morning until

evening 'Change Alley was filled to overflowing with one dense mass of

living beings composed of the most incongruous materials, and, in

all things save the mad pursuit in which they were employed, the very

opposite in habits and conditions."

What was the end of this chapter of English enterprise? Suddenly

the ruin came. Down went the whole nation--members of Parliament,

tradesmen, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, royal ladies, and poor

needle-women--in one stupendous calamity. The whole earth, and all the

ages, heard that bubble burst.

But I am not through. Our young men shall hear more startling things.

We surpass England in having higher mountains, deeper rivers, greater

cataracts, and larger armies. Yea, we have surpassed it in magnitude

of swindles. I wish to unfold before the young men of the country,

and before those in whose hands may now be the price of blood, the

wide-spread, ghastly, and almost infinitely greater wickedness of the

gamblers in oil stock. Now, the obtaining of lands, the transporting

of machinery, and the forming of companies for the production of oil,

is just as honorable as any organization for the obtaining of coal,

iron, copper, or zinc. God poured out before this nation a river of

oil, and intended us to gather it up, transport it, and use it;

and there were companies formed that have withstood all commercial

changes, and continued, year after year, in the prosecution of an

honorable business. I have just as much respect for the man who has

made fifty thousand dollars by oil as I have for him who has made it

by spices.

Out of twelve hundred petroleum companies, how many do you suppose

were honestly formed and rightfully conducted? Do you say six hundred?

You make large demands upon one's credulity; but let us be generous,

and suppose that six hundred companies bought land, issued honest

circulars, sent out machinery, and plunged into the earth for the

rightful development of resources. To form the other six hundred

companies, only three or four things were necessary: First, an

attractive circular, regardless of expense. It must have all the

colors and hues of earth, and sea, and heaven. Let the letters flame

with all the beauty of gold, and jasper, and amethyst. It must state

the date of incorporation, and the fact that "all subscribers shall

get the benefit of the original undertaking. While it does not make

so much pretension as some other companies, it must be distinctly

announced that this is a safe and permanent investment." The circular

must state that "there are a goodly number of flowing wells, and

others which the company are happy to say have a very good smell of

oil." "The books will be open only five days, as there are only a few

shares yet to be taken." Connected with this circular is an elaborate

map, drawn by the artist of the company. Never mind the geography of

the country. Our map must have a creek running through it, so crooked

as to traverse as much of the land as possible, and make it all

water-front. "Ah!" said one man to his artist, "you make only one

creek."--"Well," said the artist, "if you want three creeks you can

have them at very little expense. There--you have them now--three

creeks!"

Then the circular must have good names attached to it. How to get

them? The president and directors must be prominent men. If celebrated

for piety, all the better. The estimable man approached says: "I know

nothing about this company."--"Well," says the committee waiting

on him, "we will give you five hundred dollars' worth of shares."

Immediately the estimable man begins to "know about it," and accepts

the position of president. Three or four directors are obtained in

the same way. Now the thing is easy. After this you can get anybody.

Ordinary Christians and sinners feel it a joy to be in such celebrated

society.

Another thing important is that the company purchase three or four

vials of oil to stand in the window--some in the crude state, the rest

clarified. Genuine specimens from Venango County.

Another important thing: there must be a large working capital,

for the company do not mean to be idle. They have derricks already

building; and there will be large monthly dividends. Let it be known

that there were companies in some cities who, claiming to have

a capital of four hundred thousand dollars, yet had that capital

exhausted when they had sunk one well costing five thousand dollars.

But never mind. The thing must be right, for some of the directors

are eminent for respectability. You say it is certainly important that

there be some land out of which the oil is to be obtained. Oh! no. Why

be troubled with any land at all? It is an expense for nothing. You

have the circular, and the glowing map, with the creeks and three

vials of oil in the window, and a flaming advertisement in the

newspapers. Now let the books be opened! Better if you can have a

half-dozen offices in one room; then the agent can accommodate you

with anything you desire. If you want to take a "flyer" in this and a

"flyer" in that, you shall have it.

Coming in from the country are farmers, dairymen, day-laborers. Great

chances now for speedy emoluments. Pour in the hard-earned treasures.

Sure enough, a dividend of one per cent. per month! Forthwith, another

multitude are convinced of the safety of the investment. The second

month another dividend. The third month another. Whence do these

dividends come? From the product of the wells? Oh! no. It is your own

money they are paying you back. How generous of this company to give

you five dollars back, when you might have lost it all!

But the dividends stop. What is the matter? Instead of the

advertisement which covered a whole column of the newspapers,

there comes a modest little notice that "a special meeting of the

stockholders will be held for the purpose of transacting business

of importance." Perhaps it may be to assess the stockholders for the

purpose of keeping the little land they have, if they have any. Or it

may be for the election of a new group of officers, for the present

incumbents do not want to be always before the public. They are modest

men. They believe in rotation of office. They cannot consent any

longer to serve. Where have they gone to? They are busy putting up

a princely mansion at Long Branch, Germantown, or Chelsea. They have

served their day and generation, and have gone to their flocks and

herds. Where is the Church of God, that she allows in her membership

such gigantic abominations? Were the thirty pieces of silver that

Judas received denounced as unfit, and shall the Church of God have

nothing to say about this price of blood? Is sin to be excused because

it is as high as heaven, or deep as hell? The man who allows his name

to be used as president or director in connection with an enterprise

that he knows is to result in the sale of twenty thousand shares of an

undeveloped nothing--God will tear off the cloak of his hypocrisy, and

in the last day show him to all the universe--a brazen-faced gambler.

His house will be accursed. God's anathemas will flash in the

chandelier, and rattle in the swift hoofs of his silver-bitted grays;

and the day of fire will see him willing to leap into a burning

oil-well to hide himself from the face of the Lamb. The hundred

thousand dollars gotten in unrighteousness will not be enough to build

a barricade against the advance of the divine judgments.

Think of the elder in a church who, from the oil regions, sends an

exciting telegram, so that one man buys a large amount of stock at

twelve, on Wednesday. The next day it is put on the stock-board at

six. The enterprising man, who sold it at twelve, goes out to buy

one of the grandest estates within ten miles of the city. The man

who bought it goes into the dust; and the secret gets out that the

exciting telegram sent by the elder arose, not from any oil actually

discovered, but because in boring they had found a magnificent odor of

oil.

If he who steals a dollar from a money-drawer is a thief, then he

who by dishonesty gets five hundred thousand dollars is five hundred

thousand times more a thief. And so the last day will declare him.

Did not the law right the injured man? No! The poor who were wronged

would not undertake a suit against a company that could bring fifty

thousand dollars to the enlightenment of judge, jury, and lawyer;

while, on the other hand, the affluent who had been gouged would not

go to the courts for justice. Why! how would it sound, if it got out,

that Mr. So and So, one of the first merchants on Wall, or Third, or

State street, had got swindled? They will keep it still.

The guilty range to-day undisturbed through society, and will

continue to do so until the Lord God shall bring them to an unerring

settlement, and proclaim to an astonished universe how many lies they

told about the land, about the derricks, about the yield, about the

dividends. What shall such an one say, when God shall, in the great

day of account, hold up before him the circular, and the map, and the

newspaper advertisement? Speechless!

Before that day shall come I warn you--Disgorge! you infamous stock

gamblers! Gather together so many of your company as have any honesty

left, and join in the following circular:--"_We the undersigned, do

hereby repent of our villainies, and beg pardon of the public for

all the wrongs that we have done them; and hereby ask the widows and

orphans whom we have made penniless to come next Saturday, between ten

and three o'clock, and receive back what we stole from them. We hereby

confess that the wells spoken of in our circular never yielded any

oil; and that the creeks running through our ornamented map were an

entire fiction; and that the elder who piously rolled up his eyes and

said it was a safe investment, was not as devout as he looked to be.

Signed by the subscribers at their office, in the year of our Lord_

1871."

Then your conscience will be clear, and you can die in peace. But I

have no faith in such a reformation. When the devil gets such a fair

hold of a man he hardly ever lets go.

To the young I turn and utter a word of warning. While you are

determined to be acute business men, resolve at the very threshold

that you will have nothing to do with stock-_gambling_. This country

can richly afford to lose the eight hundred millions of dollars

swindled out of honest people, if our young men, by it, will be warned

for all the future. Think you such enterprises are forever passed

away? No! they begin already to clamor for public attention and

patronage. There are now hundreds of printing-presses busy in making

pamphlets and circulars for schemes as hollow and nefarious as those I

have mentioned. There are silver-mining companies, founded upon nobody

knows what--to accomplish what, nobody cares. There will be other

Canada gold companies; there will be other copper-mining companies;

there will be more mutual consumers' coal companies, who, not

satisfied with the price of ordinary coal-dealers, will resolve

themselves into consumers' associations, where the thing consumed

is not the coal, but themselves--the companies that were to be

immaculate, setting the whole community to playing the game of "Who's

got the money?"

Stand off from all _doubtful_ enterprises! Resolve that if, in a

lawful way, you cannot earn a living, then you will die an honest man,

and be buried in an honest sepulchre.

There are two or three reasons why you should have nothing to do with

such operations. Mentioning the lowest motive first, it will desolate

you financially. I asked a man of large observation and undoubted

integrity, how many of the professed stock-gamblers made a _permanent_

fortune. He answered, "Not one! not one of those who made this their

only business." For a little while you may plunge in a round of

seeming prosperity; but your money is put into a bag with holes. You

cannot successfully bury a dishonest dollar. You may put it down into

the very heart of the earth; you may heave rocks upon the top of it;

on top of the rocks you may put banks and all moneyed institutions,

but that dishonest dollar beneath will begin to heave and toss and

upturn itself, and keep on until it comes to the resurrection of

damnation.

Then this stock-gambling life is wretchedly unhappy. It makes the

nerves shake, and the brain hot, and the heart sad, and the life

disquieted.

A man in Philadelphia, who seems to be an exception to the rule--that

such men do not permanently prosper--who has well on towards a million

of dollars, and is nearly seventy years of age, may be seen, every

day, going in and out, eaten up of stocks, torn in an inquisition of

stocks, rode by a nightmare of stocks; and, with the earnestness of a

drowning man, he rushes into a broker's shop, crying out: "Did you get

me those shares?" In such an anxious, exciting life there are griefs,

disappointments, anguish, but there is no happiness.

Worse than all, it destroys the soul. The day must come when the

worthless scrip will fall out of the clutches of the stock-gambler.

Satan will play upon him the "cornering" game which, down on Wall

street, he played upon a fellow-operator. Now he would be glad to

exchange all his interest in Venango County for one share in the

Christian's prospect of heaven. Hopeless, he falls back in his

last sickness. His delirium is filled with senseless talk about

"percentages" and "commissions" and "buyer, sixty days," and "stocks

up," and "stocks down." He thinks that the physician who feels his

pulse is trying to steal his "board book." He starts up at midnight,

saying: "One thousand shares of Reading at 116-1/2. Take it!" _Falls

back dead. No more dividends.... Swindled out of heaven_. STOCKS DOWN!

LEPROUS NEWSPAPERS.

The newspaper is the great educator of the nineteenth century. There

is no force compared with it. It is book, pulpit, platform, forum, all

in one. And there is not an interest--religious, literary, commercial,

scientific, agricultural, or mechanical--that is not within its

grasp. All our churches, and schools, and colleges, and asylums, and

art-galleries feel the quaking of the printing-press. I shall try to

bring to your parlor-tables the periodicals that are worthy of the

Christian fireside, and try to pitch into the gutter of scorn and

contempt those newspapers that are not fit for the hand of your child

or the vision of your wife.

The institution of newspapers arose in Italy. In Venice the first

newspaper was published, and monthly, during the time that Venice was

warring against Solyman the Second in Dalmatia. It was printed for

the purpose of giving military and commercial information to the

Venetians. The first newspaper published in England was in 1588,

and called the _English Mercury_. Others were styled the _Weekly

Discoverer_, the _Secret Owl_, _Heraclitus Ridens_, etc.

Who can estimate the political, scientific, commercial, and religious

revolutions roused up in England for many years past by _Bell's Weekly

Dispatch_, the _Standard_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Post_, and

the _London Times_?

The first attempt at this institution in France was in 1631, by a

physician, who published the _News_, for the amusement and health of

his patients. The French nation understood fully how to appreciate

this power. Napoleon, with his own hand, wrote articles for the press,

and so early as in 1829 there were in Paris 169 journals. But in the

United States the newspaper has come to unlimited sway. Though in

1775 there were but thirty-seven in the whole country, the number of

published journals is now counted by thousands; and to-day--we may as

well acknowledge it as not--the religious and secular newspapers are

the great _educators of the country_.

In our pulpits we preach to a few hundreds or thousands of people; the

newspaper addresses an audience of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, or

two hundred thousand. We preach three or four times a week; they every

morning or evening of the year. If they are right, they are gloriously

right; if they are wrong, they are awfully wrong.

I find no difficulty in accounting for the world's advance. Four

centuries ago, in Germany, in courts of justice, men fought with their

fists to see who should have the decision of the court; and if the

judge's decision was unsatisfactory, then the judge fought with the

counsel. Many of the lords could not read the deeds of their own

estates. What has made the change?

"Books," you say.

No, sir! The vast majority of citizens do not read books. Take this

audience, or any other promiscuous assemblage, and how many histories

have they read? How many treatises on constitutional law, or political

economy, or works of science? How many elaborate poems or books of

travel? How much of Boyle, or De Tocqueville, Xenophon, or Herodotus,

or Percival? Not many!

In the United States, the people would not average one such book a

year for each individual!

Whence, then, this intelligence--this capacity to talk about all

themes, secular and religious--this acquaintance with science and

art--this power to appreciate the beautiful and grand? Next to the

Bible, the _newspaper_,--swift-winged, and everywhere present,

flying over the fences, shoved under the door, tossed into the

counting-house, laid on the work-bench, hawked through the cars! All

read it: white and black, German, Irishman, Swiss, Spaniard, American,

old and young, good and bad, sick and well, before breakfast and after

tea, Monday morning, Saturday night, Sunday and week day!

I now declare that I consider the newspaper to be the grand agency

by which the Gospel is to be preached, ignorance cast out, oppression

dethroned, crime extirpated, the world raised, heaven rejoiced, and

God glorified.

In the clanking of the printing-press, as the sheets fly out, I hear

the voice of the Lord Almighty proclaiming to all the dead nations

of the earth,--"Lazarus, come forth!" And to the retreating surges

of darkness,--"Let there be light!" In many of our city newspapers,

professing no more than secular information, there have appeared

during the past ten years some of the grandest appeals in behalf of

religion, and some of the most effective interpretations of God's

government among the nations.

That man has a shrivelled heart who begrudges the five pennies he

pays to the newsboy who brings the world to his feet. There are

to-day connected with the editorial and reportorial corps of newspaper

establishments men of the highest culture and most unimpeachable

morality, who are living on the most limited stipends, martyrs to

the work to which they feel themselves called. While you sleep in the

midnight hours, their pens fly, and their brains ache in preparing

the morning intelligence. Many of them go, unrested and unappreciated,

their cheeks blanched and their eyes half quenched with midnight

work, toward premature graves, to have the "proof-sheet" of their

life corrected by Divine mercy, glad at last to escape the perpetual

annoyances of a fault-finding public, and the restless, impatient cry

for "more copy."

"Nations are to be born in a day." Will this great inrush come from

personal presence of missionary or philanthropist? No. When the time

comes for that grand demonstration I think the press in all the earth

will make the announcement, and give the call to the nations. As at

some telegraphic centre, an operator will send the messages, north and

south, and east and west, San Francisco and Heart's Content catching

the flash at the same instant; so, standing at some centre to which

shall reach all the electric wires that cross the continent and

undergird the sea, some one shall, with the forefinger of the right

hand, click the instrument that shall thrill through all lands, across

all islands, under all seas, through all palaces, into all dungeons,

and startle both hemispheres with the news, that in a few

moments shall rush out from the ten thousand times ten thousand

printing-presses of the earth: "Glory to God in the highest, and on

earth peace, good-will toward men!"

You see, therefore, that, in the plain words to be written, I have no

grudges to gratify against the newspaper press. Professional men are

accustomed to complain of injustice done them, but I take the censure

I have sometimes received and place it on one side the scales, and the

excessive praise, and place it on the other side, and they balance,

and so I consider I have had simple justice. But we are all aware that

there is a class of men in towns and cities who send forth a baleful

influence from their editorial pens. There are enough bad newspapers

weekly poured out into the homes of our country to poison a vast

population. In addition to the home manufacture of iniquitous sheets,

the mail-bags of other cities come in gorged with abominations. New

York scoops up from the sewers of other cities, and adds to its own

newspaper filth. And to-night, lying on the tables of this city, or

laid away on the shelf, or in the trunk, for more private perusal, are

papers the mere mention of the names of which would send a blush to

the cheek, and make the decent and Christian world cry out: "God save

the city!"

There is a paper published in Boston of outrageous character, and yet

there are seven thousand copies of that paper coming weekly to New

York for circulation. I will not mention the name, lest some of you

should go right away and get it. It is wonderful how quick the fingers

of the printer-boy fly, but the fingers of sin and pollution can set

up fifty thousand types in an instant. The supply of bad newspapers

in New York does not meet the insatiable appetite of our people for

refuse, and garbage, and moral swill. We must, therefore, import

corrupt weeklies published elsewhere, that make our newspaper stands

groan under the burden.

But we need not go abroad. There are papers in New York that long ago

came to perfection of shamelessness, and there is no more power

in venom and mud and slime to pollute them. They have dashed their

iniquities into the face of everything decent and holy. And their work

will be seen in the crime and debauchery and the hell of innumerable

victims. Their columns are not long and broad enough to record the

tragedies of their horrible undoing of immortal men and women.

God, after a while, will hold up these reeking, stenchful, accursed

sheets, upon which they spread out their guilt, and the whole universe

will cry out for their damnation. See the work of bad newspapers

in the false tidings they bring! There are hundreds of men to-day

penniless, who were, during the war, hurled from their affluent

positions by incorrect accounts of battles that shook the

money-market, and the gold gamblers, with their hoofs, trampled these

honest men into the mire. And many a window was hoisted at the hour of

midnight as the boy shouted: "Extra! Extra!" And the father and mother

who had an only son at the front, with trembling hand, and blanched

cheek, and sinking heart, read of battles that had never occurred.

God pity the father and mother who have a boy at the front when evil

tidings come! If an individual makes a false statement, one or twenty

persons may be damaged; but a newspaper of large circulation that

wilfully makes a misstatement in one day tells fifty thousand

falsehoods.

The most stupendous of all lies is a newspaper lie.

A bad newspaper scruples not at any slander. It may be that, to escape

the grip of the law, the paragraphs will be nicely worded, so that the

suspicion is thrown out and the damage done without any exposure to

the law. Year by year, thousands of men are crushed by the ink-roller.

An unscrupulous man in the editorial chair may smite as with the

wing of a destroying angel. What to him is commercial integrity, or

professional reputation, or woman's honor, or home's sanctity? It

seems as if he held in his hand a hose with which, while all the

harpies of sin were working at the pumps, he splashed the waters of

death upon the best interests of society.

The express-train in England halts not to take in water, but between

the tracks there is a trough, one-fourth of a mile in length, filled

with water; and the engine drops a hose that catches up the water

while the train flies. So with bad newspapers that fly along the track

of death without pausing a moment, yet scooping up into themselves the

pollution of society, and in the awful rush making the earth tremble.

The most abandoned man of the city may go to the bad newspaper and get

a slander inserted about the best man. If he cannot do it in any other

way, he can by means of an anonymous communication. Now, a man who,

to injure another, will write an anonymous letter, is, in the first

place, a coward, and, in the second place, a villain. Many of these

offensive anonymous letters you see in the bad newspaper have been

found to be _written in the editorial chair_.

The bad newspaper stops not at any political outrage. It would arouse

a revolution, and empty the hearts of a million brave men in the

trenches, rather than not have its own circulation multiply.

What to it are the hard-earned laurels of the soldier or the exalted

reputation of the statesman? Its editors would, if they dared, blow

up the Capitol of the nation if they could only successfully carry off

the frieze of one of the corridors. There are enough falsehoods told

at any one of our autumnal elections to make the "Father of Lies"

disown his monstrous progeny. Now it is the Mayor, then the Governor,

now the Secretary of State, and then the President, until the air is

so full of misrepresentation that truth is hidden from the view, as

beautiful landscapes by the clouds of summer insects blown up from the

marshes.

The immoral newspaper stops not at the unclean advertisement. It is

so much for so many words, and in such a sheet it will cost no more

to advertise the most impure book than the new edition of Pilgrim's

Progress. A book such as no decent man would touch was a few months

ago advertised in a New York paper, and the getter-up of the book,

passing down one of our streets the other day, acknowledged to one of

my friends that he had made $18,000 out of the enterprise.

In one column of a paper we see a grand ethical discussion, and in

another the droppings of most accursed nastiness. Oh! you cannot by

all your religion, in one column, atone for one of your abominations

in another! I am rejoiced that some of our papers have addressed those

who have proposed to compensate them for bad use of their columns, in

the words of Peter to Simon Magus: "Thy money perish with thee!" But I

arraign the newspapers that give their columns to corrupt advertising

for the nefarious work they are doing. The most polluted plays that

ever oozed from the poisonous pen of leprous dramatist have won

their deathful power through the medium of newspapers; the evil is

stupendous!

O ye reckless souls! get money--though morality dies, and society is

dishonored, and God defied, and the doom of the destroyed opens before

you--get money! Though the melted gold be poured upon your naked,

blistered, and consuming soul--get money! Get money! It will do you

good when it begins to eat like a canker! It will solace the pillow

of death, and soothe the pangs of an agonized eternity! Though in the

game thou dost stake thy soul, and lose it forever--get money!

The bad newspaper hesitates not to assault Christianity and its

disciples. With what exhilaration it puts in capitals, that fill

one-fourth of a column, the defalcation of some agent of a benevolent

society! There is enough meat in such a carcass of reputation to gorge

all the carrion-crows of an iniquitous printing-press. They put upon

the back of the Church all the inconsistencies of hypocrites--as

though a banker were responsible for all the counterfeits upon his

institution! They jeer at religion, and lift up their voices until all

the caverns of the lost resound with the howl of their derision. They

forget that Christianity is the only hope for the world, and that, but

for its enlightenment, they would now be like the Hottentots, living

in mud hovels, or like the Chinese, eating rats.

What would you think of a wretch who, during a great storm, while the

ship was being tossed to and fro on the angry waves, should climb up

into the light-house and blow out the light? And what do you think of

these men, who, while all the Christian and the glorious institutions

of the world are being tossed and driven hither and thither, are

trying to climb up and put out the only light of a lost world?

The bad newspaper stops not at publishing the most damaging and

unclean story. The only question is: "Will it pay?" And there are

scores of men who, day by day, bring into the newspaper offices

manuscripts for publication which unite all that is pernicious; and,

before the ink is fairly dry, tens of thousands are devouring with

avidity the impure issue. Their sensibilities deadened, their sense

of right perverted, their purity of thought tarnished, their taste

for plain life despoiled--the printing-press, with its iron foot, hath

dashed their life out! While I speak, there are many people, with

feet on the ottoman, and the gas turned on, looking down on the

page, submerged, mind and soul, in the perusal of this God-forsaken

periodical literature; and the last Christian mother will have put

the hands of the little child under the coverlet for the night, before

they will rouse up, as the city clock strikes the hour of midnight, to

go death-struck to their prayerless pillows.

One of the proprietors of a great paper in this country gave his

advice to a young man then about to start a paper: "If you want to

succeed," said he, "make your paper trashy, intensely trashy,--make it

all trash!"

Brilliant advice to a young man just entering business!

It is very often that, as a paper purifies itself, its circulation

decreases, and sometimes when a paper becomes positively religious, it

becomes bankrupt, unless some benevolent and Christian men come up

to sustain it by contributions of money and means. But few religious

newspapers in this country are self-supporting. The reason urged

is--the country cannot stand so much religion! Hear it! Christian men

and philanthropists!

Many papers that are most rapidly increasing to-day are unscrupulous.

The facts are momentous and appalling. And I put young men and women

and Christian parents and guardians on the look-out. This stuff cannot

be handled without pollution. Away with it from parlor, and shop,

and store! There is so much newspaper literature that _is_ pure, and

cheap, and elegant; shove back this leprosy from your door.

Mark it well: _a man is no better than the newspaper he habitually

reads_.

You may think it a bold thing thus to arraign an unprincipled

printing-press, but I know there are those reading this who will take

my counsel; and, in the discharge of my duty to God and man, I defy

all the hostilities of earth and hell!

Representatives of the secular and religious press! I thank you, in

the name of Christianity and civilization, for the enlightenment of

ignorance, the overthrow of iniquity, and the words you have uttered

in the cause of God and your country. But I charge you in the name

of God, before whom you must account for the tremendous influence you

hold in this country, to consecrate yourselves to higher endeavors.

You are the men to fight back this invasion of corrupt literature.

Lift up your right hand and swear new allegiance to the cause of

philanthropy and religion. And when, at last, standing on the plains

of judgment, you look out upon the unnumbered throngs over whom you

have had influence, may it be found that you were among the mightiest

energies that lifted men upon the exalted pathway that leads to the

renown of heaven. Better than to have sat in editorial chair, from

which, with the finger of type, you decided the destinies of empires,

but decided them wrong, that you had been some dungeoned exile, who,

by the light of window iron-grated, on scraps of a New Testament leaf,

picked up from the hearth, spelled out the story of Him who taketh

away the sins of the world.

IN ETERNITY, DIVES IS THE BEGGAR!

THE FATAL TEN-STRIKE.

While among my readers are those who have passed on into the afternoon

of life, and the shadows are lengthening, and the sky crimsons with

the glow of the setting sun, a large number of them are in early life,

and the morning is coming down out of the clear sky upon them, and the

bright air is redolent with spring blossoms, and the stream of life,

gleaming and glancing, rushes on between flowery banks, making music

as it goes. Some of you are engaged in mercantile establishments, as

clerks and book-keepers; and your whole life is to be passed in the

exciting world of traffic. The sound of busy life stirs you as the

drum stirs the fiery war-horse. Others are in the mechanical arts, to

hammer and chisel your way through life; and success awaits you.

Some are preparing for professional life, and grand opportunities are

before you; nay, some of you already have buckled on the armor.

But, whatever your age or calling, the subject of gambling, about

which I speak in this chapter, is pertinent.

Some years ago, when an association for the suppression of gambling

was organized, an agent of the association came to a prominent citizen

and asked him to patronize the society. He said, "No, I can have no

interest in such an organization. I am in no wise affected by that

evil."

At that very time his son, who was his partner in business, was one of

the heaviest players in "Herne's" famous gaming establishment. Another

refused his patronage on the same ground, not knowing that his first

book-keeper, though receiving a salary of only a thousand dollars, was

losing from fifty to one hundred dollars per night. The president of

a railroad company refused to patronize the institution, saying--"That

society is good for the defence of merchants, but we railroad people

are not injured by this evil;" not knowing that, at that very time,

two of his conductors were spending three nights of each week at faro

tables in New York. Directly or indirectly, this evil strikes at the

whole world.

Gambling is the risking of something more or less valuable in the hope

of winning more than you hazard. The instruments of gaming may differ,

but the principle is the same. The shuffling and dealing of cards,

however full of temptation, is not gambling, unless stakes are put up;

while, on the other hand, gambling may be carried on without cards, or

dice, or billiards, or a ten-pin alley. The man who bets on horses,

on elections, on battles--the man who deals in "fancy" stocks,

or conducts a business which extra hazards capital, or goes into

transactions without foundation, but dependent upon what men call

"luck," is a gambler.

It is estimated that one-fourth of the business in London is done

dishonestly. Whatever you expect to get from your neighbor without

offering an equivalent in money or time or skill, is either the

product of theft or gaming. Lottery tickets and lottery policies come

into the same category. Fairs for the founding of hospitals, schools

and churches, conducted on the raffling system, come under the same

denomination. Do not, therefore, associate gambling necessarily with

any instrument, or game, or time, or place, or think the principle

depends upon whether you play for a glass of wine, or one hundred

shares in _Camden and Amboy_. Whether you employ faro or billiards,

rondo and keno, cards, or bagatelle, the very _idea_ of the thing is

dishonest; for it professes to bestow upon you a good for which you

_give no equivalent_.

This crime is no newborn sprite, but a haggard transgression that

comes staggering down under a mantle of curses through many centuries.

All nations, barbarous and civilized, have been addicted to it. Before

1838, the French government received revenue from gaming houses.

In 1567, England, for the improvement of her harbors, instituted a

lottery, to be held at the front door of St. Paul's Cathedral. Four

hundred thousand tickets were sold, at ten shillings each. The

British Museum and Westminster Bridge were partially built by similar

procedures. The ancient Germans would sometimes put up themselves and

families as prizes, and suffer themselves to be bound, though stronger

than the persons who won them.

But now the laws of the whole civilized world denounce the system.

Enactments have been passed, but only partially enforced. The men

interested in gaming houses wield such influence, by their numbers and

affluence, that the judge, the jury, and the police officer must

be bold indeed who would array themselves against these infamous

establishments. Within ten years the House of Commons of England has

adjourned on "Derby Day" to go out to bet on the races; and in the

best circles of society in this country to-day are many hundreds of

professedly respectable men who are acknowledged gamblers.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in this land are every day being won

and lost through sheer gambling. Says a traveller through the West--"I

have travelled a thousand miles at a time upon the Western waters

and seen gambling at every waking moment from the commencement to the

termination of the journey." The South-west of this country reeks with

this abomination. In New Orleans every third or fourth house in many

of the streets is a gaming place, and it may be truthfully averred

that each and all of our cities are cursed with this evil.

In themselves most of the games employed in gambling are without harm.

Billiard-tables are as harmless as tea-tables, and a pack of cards as

a pack of letter envelopes, unless stakes be put up. But by their use

for gambling purposes they have become significant of an infinity

of wretchedness. In New York city there are said to be six thousand

houses devoted to this sin; in Philadelphia about four thousand; in

Cincinnati about one thousand; at Washington the amount of gaming is

beyond calculation. There have been seasons when, by night, Senators,

Representatives, and Ministers of Foreign Governments were found

engaged in this practice.

Men wishing to gamble will find places just suited to their capacity,

not only in the underground oyster-cellar, or at the table back of the

curtain, covered with greasy cards, or in the steamboat smoking cabin,

where the bloated wretch with rings in his ears deals out his pack,

and winks in the unsuspecting traveller,--providing free drinks all

around,--but in gilded parlors and amid gorgeous surroundings.

This sin works ruin, first, by unhealthful stimulants. Excitement is

pleasurable. Under every sky, and in every age, men have sought it.

The Chinaman gets it by smoking his opium; the Persian by chewing

hashish; the trapper in a buffalo hunt; the sailor in a squall; the

inebriate in the bottle, and the avaricious at the gaming-table.

We must at times have excitement. A thousand voices in our nature

demand it. It is right. It is healthful. It is inspiriting. It is a

desire God-given. But anything that first gratifies this appetite and

hurls it back in a terrific reaction is deplorable and wicked. Look

out for the agitation that, like a rough musician, in bringing out the

tune, plays so hard he breaks down the instrument!

God never made man strong enough to endure the wear and tear of

gambling excitement. No wonder if, after having failed in the game,

men have begun to sweep off imaginary gold from the side of the table.

The man was sharp enough when he started at the game, but a maniac at

the close. At every gaming-table sit on one side Ecstasy, Enthusiasm,

Romance--the frenzy of joy; on the other side, Fierceness, Rage,

and Tumult. The professional gamester schools himself into apparent

quietness. The keepers of gambling rooms are generally fat,

rollicking, and obese; but thorough and professional gamblers, in nine

cases out of ten, are pale, thin, wheezing, tremulous, and exhausted.

A young man, having suddenly heired a large property, sits at the

hazard-table, and takes up in a dice-box the estate won by a father's

lifetime sweat, and shakes it, and tosses it away.

Intemperance soon stigmatizes its victim--kicking him out, a slavering

fool, into the ditch, or sending him, with the drunkard's hiccough,

staggering up the street where his family lives. But gambling does

not, in that way, expose its victims. The gambler may be eaten up by

the gambler's passion, yet only discover it by the greed in his eyes,

the hardness of his features, the nervous restlessness, the threadbare

coat, and his embarrassed business. Yet he is on the road to hell,

and no preacher's voice, or startling warning, or wife's entreaty, can

make him stay for a moment his headlong career. The infernal spell

is on him; a giant is aroused within; and though you bind him with

cables, they would part like thread; and though you fasten him seven

times round with chains, they would snap like rusted wire; and though

you piled up in his path, heaven-high, Bibles, tracts and sermons, and

on the top should set the cross of the Son of God, over them all the

gambler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on his way to perdition.

Again, this sin works ruin by killing industry.

A man used to reaping scores or hundreds of dollars from the

gaming-table will not be content with slow work. He will say, "What is

the use of trying to make these fifty dollars in my store when I can

get five times that in half an hour down at 'Billy's'?" You never knew

a confirmed gambler who was industrious. The men given to this vice

spend their time not actively employed in the game in idleness, or

intoxication, or sleep, or in corrupting new victims. This sin has

dulled the carpenter's saw, and cut the band of the factory wheel,

sunk the cargo, broken the teeth of the farmer's harrow, and sent a

strange lightning to shatter the battery of the philosopher.

The very first idea in gaming is at war with all the industries of

society. Any trade or occupation that is of use is ennobling. The

street sweeper advances the interests of society by the cleanliness

effected. The cat pays for the fragments it eats by clearing the house

of vermin. The fly that takes the sweetness from the dregs of the cup

compensates by purifying the air and keeping back the pestilence. But

the gambler gives not anything for that which he takes.

I recall that sentence. He _does_ make a return; but it is disgrace to

the man that he fleeces, despair to his heart, ruin to his business,

anguish to his wife, shame to his children, and eternal wasting away

to his soul. He pays in tears and blood, and agony, and darkness, and

woe.

What dull work is ploughing to the farmer, when in the village saloon,

in one night, he makes and loses the value of a summer harvest? Who

will want to sell tape, and measure nankeen, and cut garments, and

weigh sugars, when in a night's game he makes and loses, and makes

again, and loses again, the profits of a season?

John Borack was sent as mercantile agent from Bremen to England and

this country. After two years his employers mistrusted that all was

not right. He was a defaulter for eighty-seven thousand dollars. It

was found that he had lost in Lombard street, London, twenty-nine

thousand dollars; in Fulton street, New York, ten thousand dollars;

and in New Orleans, three thousand dollars. He was imprisoned, but

afterwards escaped and went into the gambling profession. He died in a

lunatic asylum.

This crime is getting its pry under many a mercantile house in our

cities, and before long down will come the great establishment,

crushing reputation, home, comfort, and immortal souls. How it diverts

and sinks capital may be inferred from some authentic statements

before us. The ten gaming-houses that once were authorized in Paris

passed through the banks, yearly, three hundred and twenty-five

millions of francs! The houses of this kind in Germany yield vast sums

to the government. The Hamburg establishment pays to the government

treasury forty thousand florins; and Baden Baden one hundred

and twenty thousand florins. Each one of the banks in the large

gaming-houses of Germany has forty or fifty croupiers standing in its

service.

Where does all the money come from? _The whole world is robbed!_ What

is most sad, there are no consolations for the loss and suffering

entailed by gaming. If men fail in lawful business, God pities, and

society commiserates; but where in the Bible, or in society, is there

any consolation for the gambler? From what tree of the forest oozes

there a balm that can soothe the gamester's heart? In that bottle

where God keeps the tears of his children, are there any tears of the

gambler? Do the winds that come to kiss the faded cheek of sickness,

and to cool the heated brow of the laborer, whisper hope and cheer to

the emaciated victim of the game of hazard? When an honest man is in

trouble, he has sympathy. "Poor fellow!" they say. But do gamblers

come to weep at the agonies of the gambler? In Northumberland was one

of the finest estates in England. Mr. Porter owned it, and in a year

gambled it all away. Having lost the last acre of the estate, he came

down from the saloon and got into his carriage; went back; put up his

horses, and carriage, and town house, and played. He threw and

lost. He started home, and on a side alley met a friend from whom

he borrowed ten guineas; went back to the saloon, and before a great

while had won twenty thousand pounds. He died at last a beggar in St.

Giles. How many gamblers felt sorry for Mr. Porter? Who consoled him

on the loss of his estate? What gambler subscribed to put a stone over

the poor man's grave? Not one!

Furthermore, this sin is the source of uncounted dishonesties. The

game of hazard itself is often a cheat. How many tricks and deceptions

in the dealing of the cards! The opponent's hand is ofttimes found

out by fraud. Cards are marked so that they may be designated from the

back. Expert gamesters have their accomplices, and one wink may

decide the game. The dice have been found loaded with platina, so

that "doublets" come up every time. These dice are introduced by the

gamblers unobserved by the honest men who have come into the play;

and this accounts for the fact that ninety-nine out of a hundred who

gamble, however wealthy they began, at the end are found to be poor,

miserable, ragged wretches, that would not now be allowed to sit on

the door-step of the house that they once owned.

In a gaming-house in San Francisco, a young man having just come

from the mines deposited a large sum upon the ace, and won twenty-two

thousand dollars. But the tide turns. Intense anxiety comes upon the

countenances of all. Slowly the cards went forth. Every eye is fixed.

Not a sound is heard, until the ace is revealed favorable to the bank.

There are shouts of "Foul! Foul!" but the keepers of the table

produce their pistols and the uproar is silenced, and the bank has won

ninety-five thousand dollars. Do you call this a game of chance? There

is no chance about it.

But these dishonesties in the carrying on of the game are nothing when

compared with the frauds which are committed in order to get money

to go on with the nefarious work. Gambling, with its greedy hand, has

snatched away the widow's mite and the portion of the orphans; has

sold the daughter's virtue to get means to continue the game; has

written the counterfeit signature, emptied the banker's money vault,

and wielded the assassin's dagger. There is no depth of meanness to

which it will not stoop. There is no cruelty at which it is appalled.

There is no warning of God that it will not dare. Merciless,

unappeasable, fiercer and wilder it blinds, it hardens, it rends, it

blasts, it crushes, it damns. It has peopled Moyamensing, and Auburn,

and Sing Sing.

How many railroad agents, and cashiers, and trustees of funds, it has

driven to disgrace, incarceration, and suicide! Witness a cashier of

the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia, who stole one

hundred and three thousand dollars to carry on his gaming practices.

Witness the forty thousand dollars stolen from a Brooklyn bank; and

the one hundred and eighty thousand dollars taken from a Wall Street

Insurance Company for the same purpose! These are only illustrations

on a large scale of the robberies _every day_ committed for the

purpose of carrying out the designs of gamblers. Hundreds of thousands

of dollars every year leak out without observation from the merchant's

till into the gambling hell.

A man in London keeping one of these gambling houses boasted that he

had ruined a nobleman a day; but if all the saloons of this land were

to speak out, they might utter a more infamous boast, for they have

destroyed a thousand noblemen a year.

Notice also the effect of this crime upon domestic happiness. It hath

sent its ruthless ploughshare through hundreds of families, until the

wife sat in rags, and the daughters were disgraced, and the sons grew

up to the same infamous practices, or took a short cut to destruction

across the murderer's scaffold. Home has lost all charms for the

gambler. How tame are the children's caresses and a wife's devotion to

the gambler! How drearily the fire burns on the domestic hearth! There

must be louder laughter, and something to win and something to lose;

an excitement to drive the heart faster and fillip the blood and fire

the imagination. No home, however bright, can keep back the gamester.

The sweet call of love bounds back from his iron soul, and all

endearments are consumed in the flame of his passion. The family Bible

will go after all other treasures are lost, and if his everlasting

crown in heaven were put into his hand he would cry: "Here goes, one

more game, my boys! On this one throw I stake my crown of heaven."

A young man in London, on coming of age, received a fortune of one

hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and through gambling in three

years was thrown on his mother for support.

An only son went to New Orleans. He was rich, intellectual, and

elegant in manners. His parents gave him, on his departure from home,

their last blessing. The sharpers got hold of him. They flattered him.

They lured him to the gaming-table and let him win almost every time

for a good while, and patted him on the back and said, "First-rate

player." But, fully in their grasp, they fleeced him; and his thirty

thousand dollars were lost. Last of all he put up his watch and lost

that. Then he began to think of home and of his old father and mother,

and wrote thus:--

"MY BELOVED PARENTS:--You will doubtless feel a momentary joy

at the reception of this letter from the child of your bosom,

on whom you have lavished all the favors of your declining

years. But should a feeling of joy for a moment spring up

in your hearts when you shall have received this from, me,

cherish it not. I have fallen deep--never to rise. Those gray

hairs that I should have honored and protected I shall bring

down with sorrow to the grave. I will not curse my destroyer,

but oh! may God avenge the wrongs and impositions practised

upon the unwary in a way that shall best please Him. This, my

dear parents, is the last letter you will ever receive from

me. I humbly pray your forgiveness. It is my dying prayer.

Long before you shall have received this letter from me the

cold grave will have closed upon me forever. Life is to me

insupportable. I cannot, nay, I will not suffer the shame of

having ruined you. Forget and forgive is the dying prayer of

your unfortunate son."

The old father came to the post-office, got the letter, and fell to

the floor. They thought he was dead at first; but they brushed back

the white hair from his brow and fanned him. He had only fainted. I

wish he had been dead; for what is life worth to a father after his

son is destroyed?

When things go wrong at a gaming-table, they shout "Foul! foul!" Over

all the gaming-tables of the world I cry out "Foul! foul! Infinitely

foul!"

In modern days, in addition to the other forms of gambling, have

come up the thoroughly organized and, in some States, _legalized_

institution of lotteries. There are hundreds of citizens on the way to

ruin through the lottery system. Some of the finest establishments in

town are by this process being demolished, and the whole land feels

the exhaustion of this accumulating evil. The wheel of Fortune is the

Juggernaut that is crushing out the life of this nation. The records

of the Insolvent Court of one city show that, in five years, two

hundred thousand dollars were lost by dealing in lottery tickets. All

the officers of the celebrated Bank of the United States who failed

were found to have expended the money embezzled for lottery tickets.

A man drew in a lottery fifty thousand dollars, sold his ticket for

forty-two thousand five hundred dollars, and yet did not have enough

to pay the charges against him for lottery tickets. He owed the

brokers forty-five thousand dollars.

An editor writes--"A man who, a few years ago, was blest with about

twenty thousand dollars (lottery money), yesterday applied to us for

ninepence to pay for a night's lodging."

A highly respectable gentleman drew twenty thousand dollars in a

lottery; bought more tickets, and drew again; bought more--drew more

largely; then rushed down headlong until he was pronounced by the

select men of the village a vagabond, and his children were picked up

from the street half starved and almost naked.

A hard-working machinist draws a thousand dollars; thenceforth he is

disgusted with work, opens a rum grocery, is utterly debauched, and

people go in his store to find him dead, close beside his rum-cask.

It would take a pen plucked from the wing of the destroying angel and

dipped in blood to describe this lottery business.

A man committed suicide in New York, and upon his person was found a

card of address giving a grog-shop as his boarding house, three blank

lottery tickets, and a leaf from _Seneca's Morals_, containing an

apology for self-murder.

One lottery in London was followed by the suicide of fifty persons who

held unlucky numbers.

There are men now, with lottery tickets in their pocket, which, if

they have not sense enough to tear up or throw into the fire, will be

their admission ticket at the door of the damned. As the brazen gates

swing open they will show their tickets, and pass in and pass down. As

the wheel of eternal Fortune turns slowly round, they will find that

the doom of those who have despised God and imperilled their souls

will be their awful prize.

God forbid that you, my reader, should ever take to yourself the

lamentation of the Boston clerk, who, in eight months, had embezzled

eighteen thousand dollars from his employer and expended it all in

lottery tickets. "I have for the last seven months gone fast down the

broad road. There was a time, and that but a few months since, when

I was happy, because I was free from debt and care. The moment of the

first steps in my downfall was about the middle of last June, when

I took a share in a company, bought lottery tickets whereby I was

successful in obtaining a share of one-half of the capital prize,

since which I have gone for myself. I have lived and dragged out a

miserable existence for two or three months past. Oh, that the seven

or eight months past of my existence could be blotted out; but I must

go, and, ere this paper is read, my spirit has gone to my Maker,

to give an account of my misdeeds here, and to receive the eternal

sentence for self-destruction and abused confidence. Relatives

and friends I have, from whom I do not wish to part under such

circumstances, but necessity compels. Oh, wretch! lottery tickets have

been thy ruin. But I cannot add more."

There are multitudes of people who disapprove of ordinary lotteries,

yet have been thoroughly deceived by iniquity under a more attractive

nomenclature. The lottery in which our most highly respectable and

Christian people invest is some "Art Association," or some benevolent

"Gift Enterprise," in which they fondly believe there can be no harm

in drawing Bierstadt's _Yosemite Valley_, or Cropsey's _American

Autumn_!

At no time have lottery tickets been sown so broadcast as to-day,

notwithstanding the law forbids the old-style lottery.

A few years ago our newspapers flamed with the advertisements of the

Crosby Opera House scheme. A citizen of Chicago, finding on his hands

an unprofitable building, calls upon the whole country to help him

out. Rooms are opened in all the great cities. In rush, not the

abandoned and the reprobate (for _they_ like the old styles of

swindling better), but the educated and refined and polished, until a

host of people are in imminent peril of having thrown upon their hands

a splendid Opera House. Philadelphia buys thirty thousand dollars

worth of tickets. The portentous day approaches. The rail trains from

many of the prominent cities bring in dignified "Committees" who

come to see that the great abomination is conducted in a decent and

Christian manner. The throng presses in. Hold fast your tickets, all

you respectable New Yorkers, Philadelphians, and Bostonians, for the

wheel begins to move. The long agony is over. Hundreds of thousands

of people have made a narrow escape from being ruined by sudden

affluence. Swift horses are despatched, that, foam-lathered, dash up

to the house of him who owns the successful ticket. The lightnings

tell it to the four winds of heaven, and our weekly pictorials hasten

forward the photographers to take the picture of the famous man who

owned the ticket numbered 58,600. Multitudes think that there has been

foul play, and that, after all, they themselves, if the truth were

known, did draw the Opera House. Ten years from now there will stand

on the scaffold, or behind the prison door, or in the lonely room in

which the suicide writes his farewell to wife or parents, men who will

say that the first misstep of their life that put them on the wrong

road was the ticket they bought in the Crosby Opera House.

The man who won that prize is already dead of his dissipations, and,

strange to say, the beautiful building thus raffled away was found to

be owned by its original possessor when all the excitement in regard

to the matter had died away.

I care not on what street the office was, nor who were the abettors

of the undertaking, nor who bought the tickets. I pronounce the whole

scheme to have been a swindle, a crime, and an insult to God and the

nation.

In this class of gambler-makers I also put the "gift stores," which

are becoming abundant throughout the country. With a book, or knife,

or sewing machine, or coat, or carriage there goes a _prize_. At those

stores people get something thrown in with their purchase. It may be a

gold watch or a set of silver, a ring or a farm. Sharp way to get off

unsalable goods. It has filled the land with fictitious articles and

covered up our population with brass finger-rings, and despoiled

the moral sense of the community, and is fast making us a nation of

gamblers.

The Church of God has not seemed willing to allow the world to have

all the advantage of these games of chance. A church fair opens, and

towards the close it is found that some of the more valuable articles

are unsalable. Forthwith the conductors of the enterprise conclude

that they will _raffle_ for some of the valuable articles, and, under

pretence of anxiety to make their minister a present, or please some

popular member of the church, fascinating persons are despatched

through the room, pencil in hand, to "solicit" shares; or perhaps each

draws for his own advantage, and scores of people go home with their

trophies, thinking that all is right, for Christian ladies did the

embroidery, and Christian men did the raffling, and the proceeds went

towards a new communion set. But you may depend on it that, as far as

morality is concerned, you might as well have won by the crack of the

billiard-ball or the turn of the dice-box.

Some good people cannot stand this raffling, and so, at fairs, they go

to "voting," sometimes for editors, and sometimes for ministers, at

a dollar a vote. Now the Methodist minister is ahead; now the

Presbyterian leads, and now the Baptist. But, just at the last moment,

when one of the ministers of the more popular sect seems sure to get

the prize, the members from some obscure denomination, that do not

deserve the prize, come in, and by a large contribution carry off for

_their_ minister the silver tea-set.

Do you wonder that churches built, lighted, or upholstered by such

processes as that come to great financial and spiritual decrepitude?

The devil says: "_I_ helped build that house of worship, and I have as

much right there as you have;" and for once the devil is right.

We do not read that they had a lottery for building the church at

Corinth or Antioch, or for getting up a gold-headed cane or for an

embroidered surplice for Saint Paul. All this I style ecclesiastical

gambling. More than one man who is destroyed can say that his first

step on the wrong road was when he won something at a church fair.

The gambling spirit has not stopped for any indecency. There lately

transpired, in Maryland, a lottery in which people drew for lots in

a burying-ground! The modern habit of betting about everything is

productive of immense mischief. The most healthful and innocent

amusements of yachting and base-ball playing have been the occasion of

putting up excited and extravagant wagers. That which to many has

been advantageous to body and mind has been to others the means of

financial and moral loss. The custom is pernicious in the extreme

where scores of men in respectable life give themselves up to betting,

now on this boat now on that--now on the Atlantics and now on the

Athletics.

Betting, that once was chiefly the accompaniment of the race-course,

is fast becoming a national habit, and in some circles any

opinion advanced on finance or politics is accosted with the

interrogatory--"How much will you bet on _that_, sir?"

This custom may make no appeal to slow, lethargic temperaments,

but there are in the country tens of thousands of quick, nervous,

sanguine, excitable temperaments ready to be acted upon, and their

feet will soon take hold on death. For some months and perhaps for

years they will linger in the more polite and elegant circle of

gamesters, but, after a while, their pathway will come to the fatal

plunge. Finding themselves in the rapids, they will try to back out,

and, hurled over the brink, they will clutch the side of the boat

until their finger-nails, blood-tipped, will pierce the wood, and

then, with white cheek and agonized stare, and the horrors of the lost

soul lifting the very hair from the scalp, they will plunge down where

no grappling hooks can drag them out.

Young man! stand back from all styles of gambling! The end thereof

is death. The gamblers enter the ten-pin alley where are husbands,

brothers, and fathers. "Put down your thousand dollars all in gold

eagles! Let the boy set up the pins at the other end of the alley! Now

stand back, and give the gamester full sweep! Roll the first--there!

it strikes! and down goes his respectability. Try it again. Roll the

second--there! it strikes! and down goes the last feeling of humanity.

Try it again. Roll the third--there! it strikes! and down goes his

soul forever. It was not so much the pins that fell as the soul! the

soul! FATAL TEN-STRIKE FOR ETERNITY!"

Shall I sketch the history of the gambler? Lured by bad company, he

finds his way into a place where honest men ought never to go. He

sits down to his first game only for pastime and the desire of being

thought sociable. The players deal out the cards. They unconsciously

play into Satan's hands, who takes all the tricks, and both the

players' souls for trumps--he being a sharper at any game. A slight

stake is put up just to add interest to the play. Game after game is

played. Larger stakes and still larger. They begin to move nervously

on their chairs. Their brows lower and eyes flash, until now they who

win and they who lose, fired alike with passion, sit with set jaws,

and compressed lips, and clenched fists, and eyes like fire-balls

that seem starting from their sockets, to see the final turn before

it comes; if losing, pale with envy and tremulous with unuttered

oaths cast back red-hot upon the heart--or, winning, with hysteric

laugh--"Ha! Ha! I have it! I have it!"