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■ ■-.•■-4*4<jfiv*te»' V I

UMttMiMAMtaM

DANGER SIGNALS.

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH,
FROM THE BUSINESS MAN'S STANDPOINT.

(OontaiHing Advice to the Tmng m the Krif» efthe Dag
from ilann Merchauts of Moaton.)

.^y

BY REV. F. E. C;LARK,

Pastor of the PlUllips Chnroh, Boston. Autho- of "Tlie
Children and the Church "; " Our Business Boyd," etc.

BOSTON:

tMm * BHRrARD, PUBLISIUBa.

NEW YORK :

CMABLB8 T. DILUNQBAK.

1885

?*n

CuPTRIGilTBD, 1885, RT ¥, G. GuutK.

B. THtJRBTON tC Co.,

Printeri and Stereotypes,

FOBTLAMD, ME.

I .1
i '

TO THE TODNO PBOPLB OP PHILUP8 ORDBCH

AND CONOREOATION,

WHO HAVE EVKH STAYED UP THEIB PABTOB'g BAUDS.

'fffl^ -:

PREFACE.

TnK following chapters were delivered as Sunday
evening addresses in one of the churches of Boston,
to an audience embracing hundreds of young people,
among ^hoin was a ^rge proportion of young men.

They are now presented to a larger audience with
the same hope that first led to their preparation,
namely, that some of those who are about leaving
the home port on life's voyage may be warned by the
"Danger Signals" flying in these pages, of storm
centers which would otherwise wreck manhood and
womanhood.

The direct form of address, originally used, is con-
tinned in these pages, and the personal pronouns have
not been blotted, in order that the young people who
read these chapters may know, as well as those who
were spoken to, that they are individually addressed.

F. B. C.

CONTKNTS.

CHAPTER I.

INTKODUCTORY. 9

The Red Flag with a Black Ckntkb. What is
THE Use op it. The Object or this Book, The
Babrieb between the Cleboyhen and the Young
Men, An Attempt to Ovebcoub it. Letteb to
the Business Men. Theib Response. " Fob the
Sake of the Boys." Thk Pool-Room and the
Pbatbo-Room. An Appeal to Sblf-Intebest.

CHAPTER II.

KING ALCOHOL. 16

Intempebance a Witheuino Simoon. What the
Business Men Say. The Stoby ok a Mobal
Wheck. The Revenues of King Alcohol. The
Numbeb of his Retainebs. His Absolute Poweb
cvEB HIS Subjects. One Stbonoeb than Kino
Alcohol.

CHAPTER III. .

THE HENCHMEN OF KING ALCOHOL. 38

King Alcohol, too Wise to Come fob his Victims
Himself, Sends his Bettbb Looking Henchmen.
PaasoNAL Expbbienoe of SncqEssFUL Business

.-rn'miAitrSihUu.., ._^

CONTENTS.

Mbx. Bad CoMPAxrosrs. Few Boys Eitteb the
EiTM Shops fob the First Time Alone. The Bos-
ton Boys' Solemn Compact. Weak Will— the
Tbaitor. Idleness. Why Some op Boston's Busi-
ness Men ABE Rich. Busyness that is not
Business. Hope fob All.

CHAPTEn IV.
dikt in ink. 65

Why Many Business Men Place Bad Litebatube
FiBST among the Enemies op Youth. The Tbee
WITH THE Rotten Heabt. The Insidiousness of
THisEvii„ The Gypsy Boy's Vengeance. Indict-
ment of the Bad Book. It Gives a Stbained.
Unnatural View of Life. It Glorifies Evil.
It Leaves no Room fob th^: Good. The Jelly-
Bag Reader. The Corrupt Litkeatobe op
Fbance. Tbee-Fboo Minds. What the I aw can
Do.

CHAPTER V.

TRASHININK. 78

Infant Indian Exterminators. Fubtheb Wise
Words fbom the Business Men. Juvenile Burg-
laries AND Flash Papers. One Hundred Thou-
sand People of Boston Keep Company with
Trajn Wreckers and Highwaymen. The Cause
OF THIS Trash in Ink. Cheap Imitation op Bub-

DETTE AND MABK TwAIN. A WASTE OF TiMB. A

CONTENTS.

Sum m ABiTHMEnc. The Scbappt Mutd of thb
Meke Nbwspapsb Readeb. The Yodno Hioh-

WATUEN NEAB BOSTON. ThE STORT OF THE JDDOE'S
80s.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LOW THEATER. 108

The Geitebai. "Theateb Question" not Discussbd.
Warninos fbou the Business Men. The Mub-
derer's Stahting-Point. The Pebil tc Pubitt
OF Chabacter. The Low Theater Always Ca-
ters to Lust. Three Theater Bili.s. The Rum

. Shop Next Door. Jesse jAMha Plats, and their
"Strong Situations." The Low Theater At-
tempts to Makb Black Appear White, and
Confuses Moral Distinctions. Thb Tbub Pio-
tube of Vice.

CHAPTER Vir.

THE GAMBLING DEN. 126

The Little Houses of Interlaken. Base-Ball
Pool-Rooms. From the Prize Candy Bag to the
Roulette Table. The Beans in a Bottle. The
Soap Lottery. What the Boston Merchants
Have to Say. The Butcher Bird of the Commu-
nity. How a Million Dollars a Tear Change
Hands. Revelations of an Old Gambler. The
Gambler's Prevailing Traits. Cupidity and
liAziKESs. Midas' Ears. Good Things always
Cost. The Devil's Private Way.

;

® CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LSPER OP IMPURTTT. 148

The Dheaded Lepeb of Ancient Times. The more
Loathsome Lepek of Moderu Times. What the
Mebchakts Think of Him. Insanity or Suicide.
The Three Doors by which tuis Leper Enters
THE Heart. Imagination-Door. Dr. Holland's
Words of Wisdom. Eye-Doob and Eab-Doob. A
Word to Youno Women. Keep Safe the Jewel.
Balls and Skating Rinks, a Dancing-Master's
Opinion. Out-Door Sports. The Unspeakable
Turk. The Leper s End.

CHAPTER IX.
SAPPERS AND MINERS OP CHARACTER:
PEIVOLITY, SELFISHNESS, DISHONESTY. 172
At Petersburg in 1864. The Enemies that Work
Underground and IN THE Dark. Frivolity The
Wrong Names it Assumes. The Laughter of
Fools. Portrait of the Frivolous Young Man
and Woman. A Business Man's View. Selfish-
ness. Cultivate the Generous Nature The
Moth Miller of Character. Thomas Canfield
Dishonesty. More Warnings from tue MerI
chants. Honest George Washington and Honest
Abraham Lincoln. A Last WhToper w the Ears
OF THE Boys and Girls.

^■ii

fc2*n

148

:hb

DB.
SRS

d's
A

EL.

k's

172

CHAPTER I.

INTRODITCTOBT.

The Red Flag wirn a Black Centeb. What is thb
Use op it? The Object op this Book. The Babri-

BR BETWEEN TUB CLEKOYHEX AND THE YOUNQ MEN.

An Attempt to Ovebcoue it. Letter to the Busi-
ness Men. Their Response. "Fob the Sake 09
THE BoTS." The Pool-Room and the Pbatbb-Rooh.
An Appeal to Self-Intebest.

Sometimes in stormy weather I look oflf toward
our Signal Station, and there see a red flag with
a black center fluttering in the breeze and I know
that a beneficent government has ordered that
flag to be flung out as a danger signal to warn the
sailor of an approaching storm. "What is the
use of doing anything of that sort?" ihe objector
might say. " That red flag won't saye the sailor's
life. Provide a safe harbor and a breakwater to .
keep off the force of the sea, and a lighthouse to
maijc the rocks, and a good dock for the vessel,
and never mind about that red rag fluttering
1* 9

DANGER SIGNALS.

from the Sigual Station." " No," says the govern-
ment; "we will dredge out the harbor and pro-
vide the breakwater and lighthouse and dock,
and we will also run up the red flag to tell the
mariner of his need of refuge." The chief office
of every church and minister of the gospel is to
present the constructive, building truths, to lift
up the Cross and the great Sufferer upon it, as
the only Redemption of a lost race, to tell of the
safe haven, and to point out the good roadstead
where tempest-tost vessels on life's ocean may
ride out the storm, but it is also the duty of every
church and preacher of the gospel to warn the
mariner of approaching gales. The red flag saves
life as well as the breakwater and the lighthouse.

Tlaging storms and fierce are abroad. Before
we know it our children may be involved and
eternally wrecked. For their sakes I have felt it
my duty to run up these Danger Signals.

When this conclusion was reached the next
question to decide was how may this best be
done.

Young men are apt to feel that a clergyman is
more or hss of a recluse, who shuts himself up

THE ENEMIES OF YOXTTH.

with his books, and knows little of the temptations
and struggles of real life. A false idea I believe,
for the most part, for the wind howls and the
storms beat against the study window as well as
against the counting-house window; and if any
one has a chance to know something of every phase
of life and human nature it is the pastor of a mod-
ern parish. However, I recognize that feeling,
and know that many half unconsciously say to
themselves whenever a preacher presents a truth,
or utters a warning, " Oh yes, that 's a minister's
vievw , that 's his businesiL. He is expected to say
such things."

Realizing this barrier which some of you would
lialf unconsciously set up, I have requested a large
number of the business men of Boston to assist
me in running up these danger signals, and ac-
cordingly sent out the following circular letter :

"Dkab Sib. For the sake of the boys and young
men will you help me point out to them some of the
dangers which lie in their pathway? I propose to give
a short series of addresses upon the "Enemies of
Youth " in which I wish to set before them not only r
minister's views, but the opinions of practical and sac-

!?!|

DAKGEB 8IGNALJ.

cessful business men such as most of them aspire to be.
Such opinions will have the greatest weight with them.

"So will you please tell them, through mo, what, in
your view, are their greatest enemies, e.g. rim, bad
literature, gambling devices, low theaters ; these, or any
other evils of like nature.

" I would be very glad of your reasons for these views,
and of any incidents or illustrations which have come
under your notice, which serve to corroborate them ; but
if in asking for this I am trespassing too much upon your
time, may I ask yr- to indicate in a word or two the evils
which appear to you most dangerous and seductive.
Yours in behalf of the boys, "

Most of these men to whom I wrote thought it
worth their while to answer my letter. More
than that, many took great pains in answering it,
sending me frequently ten or a dozen or fifteen
pages of good advice.

Many of these men are well known, and have
been well known for years in commercial circles
of Boston. Some of them count their wealth by
millions, and all of them have obtained what they
have, be it much or little, by honest, straight-
forward, manly dealing. Their success has been
true success, not the glittering success of prosper-

mmt

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

ous roguery, which is worse than failure. They
are men for whom you work, young men ; men
who watch some of you from day to day behind
the counter, men who know thoroughly your
temptations and diffieulties, men who have been
where you are now, climbing up the ladder, men
whose places you aspire to fill one of these days.

I haye been particularly pleased with the gener-
ous response I have received from these busy men,
because it shows the intense interest that these
merchants of Boston take in your welfare. Many
of them speak hearty words of approval of this
attempt which I am making to hoist these danger
signals, and thank me for the opportunity I give
them of aiding you by a word of advice.

These letters show me, too, that the shrewd bus-
iness men of Boston have their eyes upon you.
They take far more notice of the young men than
the young men are apt to think. They know a
church from a saloon and they know when you
frequent the one and avoid the other. A pool-
room and a prayer-room dO not particularly
resemble one another, and you cannot hoodwink
those men very long as to the place of your pref-

ft:

DAKOEB SIGNALS.

erence. You may think that in a large city you
are lost in the crowd, and that nobody knows or
cares what you do with your time or your money,
but let me tell you that is a great mistake. Said
a very prominent and wealthy man of business to
me: "A young man's calibre and habits are soon
known in a business community. His employers
are reading him while he thinks they are reading
the morning paper; and he very soon takes his
own place as reliable, honest, and worthy of pro-
motion, or the reverse."

Says another merchant prominent and honored
in many circles of Boston: "An employer can
quickly tell whether his clerks find their happi-
ness in late hours aad dissipation, or in manly and
rational and healthy and Christ-like exercise of
mind and body."

Says another merchant of Boston whose name
is as widely known as any between the covers of
the Boston Directory : " The men who seek clerks
or employees for any work seek those who avoid
dissipation of any description and now as never
before."
This same idea I find in many letters. So, my

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

young friend, if I cannot appeal as yet to a noble
Christian principle within you, if I cannot argue
with you on the highest plain of morality, let me
appeal to this lower motive of self-in rest while I
ask you to give heed to these " Danger Signals."

i!
4

CHAPTER II.

KING ALCOHOL.

Intkmpkrancb a WiTHKBrao Simoon. What the Busi-
NKss Men Say. The Story of a Moral Wreck.
The Revenues of King Alcohol. The Xcmbeb of
HIS Retainers. His Absolute Power over his Sub-
jects. One Stronger than Kino Alcohol.

First on the black center of the blood-red flag
which I would hoist before you I read the word
"Intemperance." I raise this signal, not because
this evil comes first, necessarily, in order of time,
not because it is always the most dangerous, for
it is too hideous to be seductive to many of you,
but because, like a hot-breathed, withering simoon,
this storm wind is always blowing, blasting
everything strong and fair that comes within
its influence. There are twenty-nine hundred
saloons in the city of Boston, I understand, and
a thousand more unlicensed, and every one of
them is a horrible storm center in which the Evil
One takes the place of fabled Eolus of old, and
16

THE ENEMIES OP YODTH.

seeks to wreck every fair bark upon the ocean of
life. When we see at the signal office a white
flf\g with a black center raised over a red flag
with a black center we know that it means an off
shore cautionary signsll; that is, t^at while tlie
storm has not passed, the prevailing winds are
blowing off shore, and hence not so dangerous.
But in the Simoon of Intemperance the winds
never blow off shore. They are always <lriving
their hapless victim upon the rocks of destruction
and upon the wreck-lined shore of eternal misery.

Mo^t of the business men to whom 1 applied,
have placed this evil at the head of their list,
declaring it the gigantic curse of curses. One of
them speaks to you in this way : " The good
fellowship of friends is pleasant, the politeness,
freedom, desire not to be considered green, are all
natural, but no business man wants a clerk in his
employ, who is a visitor at bar rooms or has asso-
ciates who are frequenters of the same."

Says another : " Intemperance being the leader,
none of the other vices can be successfully assail-
ed unless this is first controlled. The man who
bows to this leadership, though he may be called

-iC

1^ I

■■ m
m

DANQKB SIGNALS.

a man, has not in my judgment the moral attri-
butes in exercise which give the quality of man-
hood, having neither instinct nor reason."

Says still another: "I am decidedly of the
opinion that intemneiance is by far the greatest
enemy that boys have to contend with. At vari-
ous times I h.ive had six apprentices, and nearly
all of them have turned out badly and this in
spite of ray best endeavors to have it otherwise.
It would be doing the boys a great service if you
can in any way make them see what the result
will be of such a course. The difficulty is to
make them believe there is any danger in their
case."

Says yet. another: "As I look back over the list
of my friends and acquaintances of the past thirty
years I am pained to recall the number of those
who liave died or been badly injured by this curse
of mankind.

"The approaches of the evil are so winsome
that the young cannot be too constantly on their
guard. Some one has well said that A-le, B-eer,
C-ider are the beginning of the drunkard's alpha-
bet. It was Christian reasoning which led a gen-

TH£ BNUMIBS OF YOUTH.

tleraan daily dining with a score of business
friends, when asked by one of the number why he
was the only one of the party who never took
even a glass of lager beer, to reply, that he was
often tempted to do so. as the flavor was appetiz-
ing to him, and an occasional glass might do him
no harm, but that he realized somewhat the evil of
intemperance and so was willing to deny himself
what might be a harmless indulgence that he
might help by his example others who were strug-
gling to overcome the tendency toward strong
and ruinous drink."

I wish I could give you the many sad and
touching incidents which have come to me from
these men of affairs who wish to save you from
the misery which they have witnessed.

Says one whom many young men in Boston
have occasion to revere and love : '• I know a
young man who formed the habit of using the
social glass while in college, which habit he has
never been able to fully overcome, and though he
has fine talents, has many friends, and has held
important public office, is occasionally overcome
for a few days at a time, to his own sorrow and.

!■ i

DANGER SIGNALS.

shame, to the grief and mortification of his friends,
and to loss of that public confidence which might
otherwise entitle him to high position in public
life."

A gentleman who is a leading partner in one of
the largest firms of Boston sends you this warn-
ing in guise of an "o'er true tale." "I know
well a family, called by my wife and myself the
model family — so gentle and lovely in disposition
and so obedient to parents and respectful to
everybody. The eldest son expressed a hope
in Christ during Mr. Moody's visit to this city
some years since and united with the church of
which his father and mother were members. He
had never been out into the world ; he was sent
to a private school in Co|mecticut, and, at the
end of the terra, went with his teacher and mem-
bers of his class to Europe. How or when the
ui)petite for spirituous liquors got hold of him
his father could never learn. Suffice it to say
that for years his parents and friends have done
everything to break its hold, but, well-meaning
as he is, the temptation is too strong for his will
and he has almost broken his parents' hearts."

■iJi'^h-

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH

his friends,

lich might

iu public

r in one of
this wai-n-

"I know
nyself the
iisposition
pectful to
d a hope
• this city
church of
bers. He

was sent
J, at the
md mem-
when the
i of him
it to say
five done
-meaning
r his will
wta."

Let me give you one more incident from these
stories of the drink curse which have about them
a monotony so sad and sequels so appalling.

This, too, comes from an honored Boston mer-
chant, who, for a number of years was mayor of a
neighboring city.

"Some years ago," he says, "a man came to me
to purchasje a house. He had a family, — a wife,
son, daughter and father. He bought a place
worth 112,000. At that time he was in a very
prosperous business and had quite a monopoly of
it for this part of the country. He claimed to be
and I think he was worth 150,000. He seemed
to be correct in all his habits ; his family was an
interesting one. He kept his own.horse and car-
riage, kept a hunting dog, was something of a
sportsman, moved in good society and was gener-
ally called a good fellow." And then comes the
story of the gradual descent, the old, old story,
business declining, house sold, the old father goes
out to do chores for a living, the family move
down througli all the grades of respectability un-
til "at last," says this gentleman, "he came to

UMllillip

DANGER SIGNALS.

i i-

i<) i

me one day to beg, and said that he, wife, and
daughter were living in a garret, sleeping on the
floor, getting a little food when they could, and he
and his son getting drunk whenever they could
beg money enough to get rum. Later his son
was sent to Deer Island for drunkenness, and this
man applied to me to get him a place on a railroad
at the West, promising never to touch liquor
again. He kept his pledge for a few months and
then his poor wife came to my office and told me
that her husband had fallen down stairs and brok-
en his skull. Strange to say he recovered from
this accident — but while he was in the hospital
his father, who had given him all his proper-
ty to start him in business, died in the almshouse,
and there was not a friend or relation to speak a
parting word to the poor old man. But libtle
more remains to be told of this sad, sad case,"
continues the merchant who tells the story. " I
saw the man a few days ago. He was partly
drunk and he came into ray office under the pre-
tence of selling me something, but really to beg,
and he owned to me that he got drunk whenever

THK ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 28

lie had money ; did not believe there was a God
or a future, wanted to die, the sooner the better,
could n't and would n't keep from drinking."

Such is the awful story, which might be dupli-
cated a thousand times today in every large city, of
misery and heartache and anguish and hopeless-
ness, of a soul in perdition, even in this world.

I have spoken of this evil which we are consid-
ering under the title — King Alcohol. With
good reason do I call him King. Whether we
consider his revenues or the number of his sub-
jects or the completeness of his authority over his
vassals we find that no monarch exercises such a
wide and absolute sway as King Alcohol.

Consider firat his revenues : King Alcohol,
with what is paid into his treasury in this one
land of ours, the United States of America, could
buy out today all the presidents and crowned
heads of the old and new world.

Nine hundred millions of dollars is the yearly
liquor bill of the United States alone. An almost
inconceivable sum. We used to say that Cotton
was King, but the value of our cotton goods is
not a quarter part of that sum. The value of

KESe

DANCER SIGNALS.

woolen goods is only about another quarter of
the licjuor bill. Our church property has been
accumulating for generations, and yet the value
of all church property in the United States, of all
denominations, is less than one half that of the
liquor men pour down their throats every year.
We boast of our public schools and point with
pride to our fine buildings and excellent system,
but the amount paid for public education in this
free republic is only §91,000,000, while the
amount paid for rum, whiskey, wine, and beer, is
$900,000,000. Our countrymen pay ten times as
much to ruin themselves body and soul every
year, as they do to educate the minds of their
children. We think that the contribution box is
passed pretty often, and that a large sum must be
raised for the conversion of the heathdn at home
und abroad in the hundred thousand churches of
our land, but for every dollar that goes into the
missionary society two hundred dollars go into
the till of the rumseller. The yearly liquor bill
of this country has been represented by a black
line four inches long, and the amount given for
foreign and home missions by all the churches in

■iiilHMHiWIIil

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

all this laud, is proportionately represented by &'
shadowy, hair-like line, almost too naiTow to
measure.

Says Dr. Dorchester: "The indirect cost being
allowed to be as much as the direct cost of liquors,
the total liquor bill would be $1,800,000,000, or
equal to the aggregate cost of bread, meat, wool-
en and cotton goods, boots and shoes, public edu-
cation and- also the production of gold and silver.
It would pay off all the state, county, and mu-
I'icipal debts of the United States and leave an
amount equal to the yearly gross receipts of all
the railroads in the country. It would pay the
national debt in one year." So much for the
revenues of King Alcohol.

Then think of his subjects as well as his enor-
mous revenues and we see what a mighty mon-
arch we are dealing with. Among the high and
the low does he claim his subjects, among the
rich and the poor, among the young and the old.
He is not dainty in his choice of retainers, this
old monarch. He claims sometimes the fair
young damsel in the careful home, but he does
not despise the haggard bloated beldame in the
2

DANGER SIGKALS.

brothel. He often seeks *he comparatively pure
young man and drags him out from under his
father's roof, out of the church, out of the Sunday-
school class, into his own domain, but he is no
less willing to accept the service and tribute of
the old sot steeped in filth to his very lips, and
he continues him in his service until every power
of body and mind and soul is corrupted and
debauched, and he totters into an untimely grave
almost as vile, almost as much of a fiend as those
to whom he goes.

Not only is King Alcohol the monarch of indi-
viduals, but he is ruler of cities and nations as
well. If all indications which wise men see are
not deceptive he is the niler of the city of Bo»
ton. Says Edward Everett Hale: "This city is
now governed by what is virtually a corporation
of dealers in liquor. There are about twenty-
nine hundred of them, rather more thpn less —
who have been licensed. If we suppose that each
of these men employs at his bar two others, there
are about ten thousand in all who have one
purpose, one instinct, one common interest. —
That interest is to sell as much liquor every

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

day as they can. The community of interest
and of motive makes of them, I say, virtually a
corporation. They defend each other when they
are sued. They pay from a common fund the
expenses of a trial. They vote for the same can-
didates when the day of election comes, and
from the government which elects them they
expect and receive certain distinct services."

Surely, whether we consider his revenues or
his subjects or the army of rumsellers who officer
these subjects, we see that King Alcohol is a
mighty monarch and his sway an awful sway.

Once more we may well call him KING Alco-
hol when we think of the completeness of his do-
minion and of his authority over his subjects.

There have been many tyrants whose rule has
been well-nigh absolute, but none who ever possess-
ed a tithe of the power of this king. Many a
monarch has been able to take the life of his sub-
jects and confiscate his property and sequester his
estate, but none could cause the heart to beat fast
or slow, and the nerves to shake, and the brain to
reel at his pleasure, like King Alcohol. Careful
experiments have been made in scientific circles

DANGEB SIGNALS.

and it has been proved beyond a doubt that very
small quantities of alcohol, the amount contained
in half a table-spoonful of spirits, sensibly and
decidedly affects the sense of touch or feeling, the
sense of weight or the muscular sense, and the
sense of sight or vision, and makes them less
trustworthy and serviceable.

It has been proved by careful, scientific experi-
ment, that a wine-glass of liquor will increase the
action of the heart so as to cause it to do every
twenty-four hoors from an eighth to a quarter
more work than is necessary in driving the blo«d
throughout the system, thus weakening and wear-
ing out the system with every heart-beat. There
was never another tyrant that had such absolute
power us King Alcohol, even affecting every in-
voluntary motion of the heart.

Many a tyrant, as I have said, has taken the
I'fe of his subjects, but never was there a despot
who could compel his vassals to lose every moral
instinct until they should hate father and mother,
aud beat and maul wife and child, and perhaps
murder their nearest kinsman, yet this is just
what King Alcohol does, so absolute is his con-

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 89

trol. It is not many years ago since a young
man, mad with drink, killed his father and mother
and cut out their hearts, which he roasted and ate,
and, in fiendish atrocity, this crime hardly falls be-
low that which we often read in the daily printp.

Many an Eastern Despot has confiscated the
property of his subjects and robbed them of their
crops in harvest, but never was there such a rob-
ber chief as King Alcohol who every day filches
something out of the pockets and the estate of
every man in America. Whenever there is a bad
harvest, distress is felt in every poor man's home
throughout the civilized world, but if the seed
which is cast into the mellow soil should fail to
produce one half a crop, the misery which would
ensue would not be one hundredth part of that
which will be produced by the seed which the
rumseller and the distiller and the brewer are
sowing.

There was a petty little ruler down in one
of the Central American States who, not long
ago, encroached on the territory of his neighbors,
and our government thought it worth while to
send to the Isthmus twelve hundred troops to

wmr-

DANGER SIGNALS.

keep that little t)Tant within reasonable bounds,
lest he shoivld injure the property or rights
of a few of our citizens, or trespass upon our
shadowy claim to a right of way through the
Isthmus, and yet, all the while, a monster tyrant,
who is trampling upon the rights of ten thousand
homes, yea upon the lives and eternal hopes of
millions of our fellow citizens, is allowed to go on
his murderous way unchecked and even un-
questioned by our national government,.

A short time ago the story came from Birming-
ham, as quoted by Mr. Gustaffeon in his book, of
three little girls, nine, ten, and twelve years old,
who purchased whiskey, got drunk, and almost
died in consequence. The same paper contained
the account of three dogs falling sick upon the
road to the meet for fox hunting, presumably
having been poisoned. In this case great indig-
nation was expressed by the public and a reward
of fifty pounds offered for the arrest of the poison-
er. There was no indignation expressed at the
poisoning of the girls with liquor and no reward
offered for the conviction of the poisoner. That
shows how touch more a dog is worth than a

3 bounds,
or rights
upon OUT
rough the
Br tyrant,
thousand
1 hopes of
I to go on
even vin-

Birming-
3 book, of
years old,
id almost
contained
upon the
resumably
•eat indig-
L a reward
he poison-
sed at the
no reward
ler. That
bh than a

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

girl in a Christian land. That shows the sway of
King Alcohol.

Said an English paper some time since : " On
Monday morning the magistrates of Liverpool had
before them twenty-two boys and girls under the
age of seventeen, all of whom had been found
beastly drunk in the public streets on Sunday and
unable to take care of themselves. Again on a
given Sunday 22,000 children were counted in
the public-houses and beer-shops of Manchester ;
and a clergyman, entering one of the beer-
shops at one in the morning, found it full of boys
and girls drinking." I am glad to believe that
the curse of juvenile drinking has not assumed
proportions so tremendous in this land of ours,
but I have been told by a captain of police in
this city of Boston, that boys ten years old have
been brought to his station house too drunk to
get to their homes.

Such, young men, is the horrible, sickening
work of this tyrant of the nineteenth century.
Would that I could excite in you such a loathing
and disgust of him. that you would not only keep
yourselves free itom his shackles, but that you

MMV

DANGEB SIGNALS.

would also arise in the might of your young man-
hood to sweep from our beloved land this curse
of the ages.

If a drop of patriotic blood courses through
your veins ; if you ever cry in sincerity, " God
bless our native land," may you also cry in the
same breath, " down with King Alcohol."

I wonder if any one will read this chapter who
feels that his own manhood is being undermined,
that he is one of the serfs, that he is in the chain-
gang, that his master is King Alcohol.

Let me tell any one who feels in thb way of an-
other King, a stronger King than King Alcohol,
a King with more subjects and larger revenues
and mightier power. I know not how you can
escape from King Alcohol except by transferring
your allegiance to this King. Your will is weak,
home influences are unavailing, even a mother's
prayers and sobs you forget, your pledge will be
broken, the antidote that you take will not quench
your thirat. This King will be by your side in
ever trying hour of temptation. He will break
your shackles. He will rescue you from the
clutches of the enemy, He will never leave you
nor forsake you. His name is Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER ni.
THE hbnchme;n of kino alcohol.

Kino ALConoL, too Wise to Com b for ms VionMS Him-
self, Sends his Better Tx>okino Henohmrn. Per-
sonal Experience of Successfui^ Business Mes.
Bad Companions. Few Boys Enter the Rum
Shops for the First Time Alone. The Boston
Boys' Solemn Compact. Weak Will— the Trai-
tor. Idleness. Wtty Some of Boston's Business
Men are Rich. Busyness that is not Business.
Hope for All.

While speaking to you, in the last chapter, cor-
oerning the ravages of King Alcohol, I was fully
aware that he often did not come himself to claim
his victims, but usually sent in the first place cer-
tain retainers Who are more winning and attract-
ive to look upon than himself. In fact should
he come himself and claim the allegiance of any
young man, his foul and bloated countenance,
his fetid breath, his reeling gait, his rags and
wounds, would frighten away the most reckless.
He knows too much for this, does this astute old
2* 88 .

mms^d

DANGER SIGNALS.

enemy of the race, and so he has a score of
menials, better looking and better dressed than
himself, ready to do his bidding, and bring the
victim under his swa^-. My many correspondents
have recognized this truth and they have pointed
out to me for your s&kes some of these pimps
and procurers of the great enemy, some of those
who fetch and carry for King Alcohol.

I have chosen to call them the Henchmen of
King Alcohol. A henchman, according to the
original derivation of the word, is one who follows
at the haunch of the king or noble; in other
words, one who is always hovering near his lord,
ready to do his bidding. That is exactly the po-
sition of some of these enemies of yours of which
I shall speak in this chapter.

These henchmen do not lurk in the drinking
saloon alone. They go out upon the street, they
button-hole a .young man on his way home from
the prayer-meeting, they knuckle down with the
boy who is playing marbles "for keeps," they
swarm in dull times when apprentices are out of
work, they are particularly active at the noon
hour, and during the long evening when the day's

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

work is over, they always rida in the smoking car,
they are fondof the innuendo and the low jest and
the smutty story. When a young man begins to
keep company with them, they rarely leave him
until they have carriqd him over, body and soul,
into the camp of King Alcohol.

Several of the successful men of Boston have
told me the story of their early lives, and I notice
that in eveiy case these men have not only avoided
the Prince of Evil who hides in the demijohn and
the beer-keg, but have given to all his myrmidons
a wide berth. Let me tell you the story of two or
three of these successful lives. One man, who is
known throughout the whole city for his widely-
bestowed and judicious benevolence, says: "I
came to Boston a poor boy more than fifty years
ago. I came without money, but with that great-
est of earthly blessings, a praying mother at home.
I came with the full determination that, if God
spared my li^e, I would be a successful man.
Every young man should begin with this determi-
nation. Then, having chosen some trade or occu-
pation, stick to it, keeping the old maxim in
mind, 'honor and shame from no condition rise.'"

1 .1. 1 IJM

DANGER SIGNALS.

That determination cherished and held to and
realized at last left no room in that man's life for
any of the henchmen of King Alcohol.

Another one writes me : "I began business a
poor boy. My mother died when I was an infant.
My father was a clergyman, poor in this world's
goods, and could give his boys no financial help.
As a matter of fact I began business at the ago of
fifteen with a capital of five dollars. My fir.'t
factory was a one story building, fifteen feet by
twelve feet. My first product was a carpet bag
full of the articles I made, which I sold from door
to door. I struggled with poverty and many
obstacles. I worked half the night many a night,
and at two or three o'clock in the morning I
crawled up into the little attic over my little
shop, hardly large enough for a dog to sleep in,
and after an hour or two of sleep, got up and went
at it again. My factory has grown to cover three
acres; my product has grown from a carpetbag
full to six tons a day, and the goo<te of my manu-
facture are now sold in every civilized country.
I never used tobacco, cider, or beer. I never
gambled or read low story papers or dime novels.

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

but supplemented my meager educational advan-
tages with good reading.

"When a young man I canvassed twenty-two
states in the Union, selling my goods. I always
refrained from business on Sunday, and went to
church wherever Sunday overtook me, and had
I a voice that would drown Niagara I would say
to every young man, 'See to it that you lay the
foundation of your character well. Toucli not,
taste not, beer, cider, anything that contains
alcohol.' "

Still another gentleman, who is honored by all
who know him, tells me that he came to Boston
from the country forty years ago and applied for
work.

"What can you do?" said the man to whom he
applied. " I can work," replied the boy, " and am
willing to learn." He went to work in the hum-
blest place, he was contented to step first on the
lowest rung of the ladder. In seven years he was
admitted as equal partner in the concern; later
still he bought out his old employer and now,
after forty years, still does business in the old

DAlTOBIt SIGNALS.

Store, where twoscore years ago he went to work
as errand boy.

I mention these cases for the encouragement of
every struggling, disheartened young man who
reads this book. It is no ephemeral success which
these men have achieved. It is no Grant and Ward
prosperity, where one goes up like a rocket and
comes down like a stick. Much that goes by the
name of success is not worthy of the name. Suc-
cess is not money getting. The rich man may be
a pitiful failure. The poor man may be a grand
success. It is possible to buy gold too dear and
political honor too dear. True success is the
attainment of a worthy ideal without the least
sacrifice of honor or manliness.

Thai is what these men to whose lives I have
referred have gained and I think I can tell you in
a single sentence the secret of their success.
They sedulously shunned not only King Alcohol
but all his henchmen.

I have space to mention but three of these
henchmen but from looking at these three you
can know the whole tribe, for they aU have a

M^.^^::^,.-^.^,.

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

family resemblance. These three shall be Bad
Companions, A Weak Will, and Idleness. I men-
tion these three out of the host of myrmidons
whom Alcohol has at his beck and call because
they are the three upon whom my correspondents
most insist.

I venture to say that not one boy in five hun-
dred ever went into a rum shop eUone for the first
time. He went first because he was asked to go ;
because some companion took him by the arm
and said " Let us see what is going on in there."
Oh I if he could only know that that bad com-
panion came to him directly from the devil, if he
could see the grinning face of ApoUyon leering
at him over that companion's shoulder, how he
would start back in fright and dread I

I know of young men who are going to the bad
as fast as time can carry them, and I know the
cause of their downward course, — it is some evil
companion, whom they have not moral courage to
break away from. They walk with hJm to school
or business, they sit with him in church, they
turn to him for his sneer or smile when the most
solemn truths are being urged upon them. The

I tMH in

V.I

9|i

It:

DANOEB SIGNALS.

tears of mother, the warnings of father, the coun-
sel of pastor, are of no avail because of this evil
companion.

In sorrow of heart I say that there are some
young people of my acquaintance whom I have
given up as far as any direct appeal to their con-
science goes, because I see that they are not will-
ing to break with their bad companions. It is
utterly useless. I can only pray and watch for
the time when that evil genius is not by their
side. No more surely does the watchful bird of
the air swoon down from its perch to capture the
seed which the husbandman has just dropped,
than does this bird of evil omicn swoop- upon the
good seed of the word which is dropped in their
heart. The warnings which the business men of
Boston send you on this point are many and
specific.

One of them whose name would carry with it
much weight, did I feel at liberty to give it, says:
" When I look back upon my own narrow escape
from evils of which I can hardly conceive the end,
it brings tears to my eyes. I think the turning-
point was my going to California at the age of

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

the coun-
this evil

are some
)m I have
their con-
not will-
ns. It is
watch for
t by their
ul bird of
ipture the
dropped,
- upon the
)d in their
sss men of
many and

pry with it
'e it, says:
ow escape
^e the endi
10 turning-
the age of

nineteen and by that means breaking off the ac-
quaintances I had formed. I was away so long
that when I returned they had all scattered. I
did not think at the time I was very bad, but
still from my present standpoint it looks bad
enough. I can look around me here in Boston
and see many a man who is a perfect failure
today, who had the brightest prospects when
young, and bad company was the first step down-
ward."

Young man, if you feel that you have not the
moral stamina to jreak with the companions who
are dragging you down, if you feel that there is
no other way to throw off this social chain, every
link of which is a fetter for your soul, then I beg
you to leave everything and flee for your life,
though it be to California, or Australia, or Alaska,
or Patagonia, though you leave father and mother
and home and church behind you, flee as you
would flee from tl'e pestilence.

Better bury yourself forever in some foreign
land and never see your native city again, if the
influences at home are too strong for you to resist,
than bring heartache and sorrow to every one who

DANGER SIGNALS.

loves you by going down to death and ruin, side
by side with some rake whom you have allowed
to link arms with you, and with whom you feel
you must keep step. This is a heroic remedy
that I am proposing I know, and I hope that it is
not necessary in most cases, but I am convinced
that some wills are so weakened, that some well-
meaning young men are so under the dominion of
evil companions that their only safety lies in a
new set of surroundings and companions. Christ
our Lord proposed heroic measures when milder
ones should fail. " If thy hand or thy foot offend
thee, [or cause thee to stumble,] cut them off
and cast them from thee ; it is better for thee to
enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having
two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting
fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out
and cast it from thee, it is better for thee to enter
into life with one eye rather than having two eyes
to be cast into hell fire." If your companion,
though he be your best friend, cause you to stum-
ble, if he leads you into bad ways, if he makes
you careless and thoughtless and indifferent of
the good and complacent of the evil, cast him off,

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

'uin, side
allowed
you feel
I remedy
that it is
onvinced
me well-
ninioa of
lies in a
Christ
in milder
tot offend
them off
3r thee to
in having
krerlasting
ick it out
e to enter
; two eyes
)mpanion,
1 to stum-
he makes
fferent of
}t him off.

flee from him as Joseph fled out of the way of
temptation, though you leave the very garment
by which he seeks to hold you in the clutches of
the tempter.

But there is another side to this question of
companionship. If there are evil companions
whose influence is tremendous in dragging down,
there are also good companions wliose influence is
no less powerful in building up. Place yourself
among them. "Get in" with this "set." They
are not exclusive. Their circle will widen. If
you have the same aims and motives they will
gladly receive you.

Let me tell you of a compact made by four
Boston young men nearly forty years ago, when
temperance pledges were by no means as common
as today, for it shows that the power of good com-
panionship and of union in a good cause, is no
less potent than union in evil. This pledge, drawn
up by these four young men, reads as follows:
"Believing that the use of intoxicating liquor,
as a beverage, is both needless, hurtful, and injuria
ous to the human system, that it tends to demoral-
ize the social, civil, and religious interests of all;

DANOEn SIGNALS.

believing that the use of profane language is a
low and vulgar habit, betraying ignorance, and
that no one who continues its use will respect
himself or bo respected by others; and believ-
ing that the use of tobacco, whether chewed or
smoked, is injurious and hurtful ; We do hereby
declare our fixed and unalterable determination
to abstain forever from their use and to rest
strictly on the principles of total abstinence, and
that we will, to the best of our endeavors, try to
have these principles adopted by all, and that we
will live firmly, so that all may know that these
principles tend to happiness, peace, and comfort,
making good citizens, faithful, honest men."
The pledge then goes on to denounce slavery and
war, particularly the Mexican war which was
then in progress. It adopts the Bible as the rule
of conduct for the signers, and thus this manly
paper ended : " And, finally, believing that God
created man for happiness here and hereafter
and made woman to be his companion, and haa
declared that by the sweat of his brow shall man
earn his daily bread, therefore we have settled
down on this firm resolution: Honest industry

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

and virtuous marriage. To tlie full and faithful
performance of all which, we pledge our most
sacred honor."

As three of these noble young men have gone
over to the majority and the other lives in another
city, I think I need not hesitate to tell you that
the pledge ended thus : " Given under our hands
and seals, this the 16th day of January A. D. 1848.
Lewis Smith, Benjamin K. Ames, Thomas C.
SiMONDs, Eliphalet Packaed."

There we see the power and possibility of a
union and companionship that builds up character
and insures a noble life.

But th'-Te henchmen of King Alcohol do not all
direct their attacks from the outside. They have
a faculty of assaulting the citadel of Mansoul
from within, and one of the retainers who often
does his bidding is the very porter of the citadel,
the doorkeeper of the castle. He is called
Weak Will. When Satan corrupts even the
guards within the city, little hope is there indeed
of resistance to the siege which King Alcohol lays
to the character.'" This recreant, traitorous door-
keeper plays into the hands of the bad companions

DANGER SIGNALS.

of whom I have just spoken, and opens the gates
of the soul. If it were not for this traitor within,
the evil influences from without could do little
harm. How many wretched homes would be
made happy if only this doorkeeper. Weak
Will, could be removed, and a stalwart, uncon-
querable, resolute determination could be put in
his place.

One gentleman tells me of a young man who
came to him the other day confessing that for
four years he had averaged a quart of whiskey a
day. He had been compelled to sell ( *. what
little business he had left and has g 'wa}-,
leaving wife and three children without support,
when he could have a fine business. He says,
"Ae cannot get along without hia whiakey." Ah,
poor Weak Will, so often has it played the traitor,
that King Alcohol with all his train of evil spirits
has come and taken full possession.

Here is what another says, who is honored in
many circles of Boston :

" Where is the young man when he deliberately
entertains the thought that he has a right to
indulge in sin? Has he not already prostituted

THE BKBMIBS OF YOUTH.

his soul to evil? Has not the clean-cut line
between good and evil become to him so befogged
and indistinct that he is sure to hesitate in the
hour of temptation ?

" There is a spot where only a positive ' no ' is
safety. If there be inability to say 'no' to evil, the
poor, weakened, undecided soul is open to the
attacks of the Wicked One on every side.

" Tell the young man that the ' I '11 take the
risk,' * I don't care,' ' I 'm not afraid to mingle
in companionship with the wicked,' is going over
the picket line into the ene y's quarters. Tell
him the consequence will bo a divided, careless,
reckless, impoverished soul, wasted in frivolity,
dwarfed in ignorance, made miserable by skepti-
cism, blackened by infidelity, abandoned to
trample upon God 's law and the Sabbath ; and,
soon, loving evil and hating good, his will
become a sin-sold soul."

The third, and last henchman of King Alcohol
which I shall mention, is Idleness, and concerning
the evil which he has wrought, I have a mass of
testimony, all of which I cannot begin to give
you. A very prominent railroad man, the presL-

I i

DANQEB SIGNALS.

dent of one of our largest roads, writes me : " If
I were to addi-ess young men, I should especially
urge upon them the need of forming industrious
habits ; there was never a truer saying than that
' Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to
do.' One great difficulty," he continues, "which
stands in the way of the success of many men,
as it seems to me, is the desire to get along
without work, to obtain easy positions wliere they
can dress well and have a plenty of leisure. All
through my life I have seen man after man
wrecked on these shoals. Having no fixed habits
of industry they drift off and fall into the pits
always open for them."

Another man wlio has done as much as any
other for the boys of Boston, writes : " If every
young man could only see the importance of some
definite aim in life worth living for ! The multi-
tudes are drifting. There la nothing so hard to
steer as a ship in a calm."

Says another: "In my judgment the wise
thing to be done is to keep our boys from
idleness ; have them employed in some business
even a it is not profitable in a pecuniary way."

i: \

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

s me : " If
. especially
industrious

than that
e hands to
les, "which
many men,

get along
where they
isure. All
after man
ixed habits
to the pits

ich as any
"If every
ICO of some
The inulti-
so hard to

t the wise
boys from
le business
:y way."

Another writes : " In my view of the matter,
the seeds of evil are oftenest sown early in life.
In the absence of employment, boys are brought
into temptation by staying away from their
homes, during times of idleness or relaxation, and
perhaps frequently in the evening with doubtful
companions, after the duties of the day are over.
And it is during these evening hours that the
tempter takes his time to scatter the seeds that so
frequently bring forth the fruit of death."

Here I record the wise words of still another of
your friends: "If forty-eight years of life teach
me anything they most certainly reveal to me
that there is not an evil known to our j-oung
people so dangerous and seductive as idleness.
In my opinion it is the parent vice of all others.
We often speak of intemperance as though it was
the cause of all, or nearly all, vice and misery.
Although a terrible curse, I think upon careful
investigation, we shall find thai nine cases in
every ten can be traced to idleness. I happen to
know just how several of our most honored men
of Boston were brought up, and taught to work;
their fathers being farmers in my native town.
8

DANOEB SIGNALS.

One has twice occupied the Mayor's chair, and
declined the third nomination, to the regret of
our first business men, and he could have been
our Governor had he not declined the nomination.
I will also mention the president of one of our
neighboring colleges, whom I very often met on
my four-mile walk to my work, with his farm
tools in his hand, all ready for as hard a day's
work as any. Take the ciise of that wonderful
man, Hon. Oakeii Ames. When a mere boy ho
loaded his two-horse team with shovels and was
on his way at one o'clock in the morning to sell
in Boston, twenty miles distant. Huge snow-
drifts could not stop this lad then, and later on
when our Government wished to build the Union
Pacific Railroad, and was unabl-j to find a man or
corporation to undertake it, this same plucky lad
took the contract, and started with his load of
shovels and built the road to the astonishment of
the whole world. Did these men waste their
time and opportunities in rum shops, low theaters,
gambling dens, low ball-rooms, or in reading
trashy novels ? "

But there is a kind of busyness which is not

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

business, a kind of occupation which is very near
akin to idleness. Activity is not necessarily
work; the hurrying, bustling, stirring, impatient
man may be the veriest idler.

Really to escape this henchman. Idleness, one
must have a high purpose, a noble endeavor, a
useful end in view. One niaj'^ do many little
things and petty things and do them all scrupu-
lously and carefully, but one who really succeeds
can have no petty aims. Mr. Cross says in the
biography of his wife, George Eliot, that she had
a wonderful " genius for taking pains." She did
ten thousand little things well, but every one of
them tended toward a great result. One of my
correspondents has sent me the following clipping,
which appeared first, J think, in the Wide Awake.
"Two men stood at the same table in a large
factory in Philadelphia, working at the same
trade. Having an hour for their nooning every
day, each undertook to use it in accomplishing a
definite purpose ; each persevered for about the
same number of months, and each won success at
last. One of these two mechanics used his daily
leisure hour in working out an invention. When

k:^

DANOEB SIGNALS.

it was complete he changed his workman's apron
for a broad-cloth suit, and moved out of a tene-
ment house into a brown stone mansion. The
other man— -what did he do ? Well, he spent an
hour each day, during most of a year, in the very
difficult undertaking of teaching a little dog to
stand on his hind feet and dance a jig, while he
played the tune. At last accounts he was work-
ing ten hours a day at the same trade and at his
old wages, and finding fault with the fate that
made his fellow workman rich while leaving him
poor. Leisure minutas may bring golden grain
to mind as well as purse, if one harvests wheat
instead of chaff."

I do not intend by any means to imply that I
have told you all the henchmen of King Alcohol.
The old enemy has ten thousand servants to do
his bidding ; in fact almost any good thing can
be perverted until it leads one downward and
not upwur 1. One of my correspondents well
illustrates this truth when he says : " Accom-
plishments and recreations, harmless in them-
selves, may under some circumstances lead to
ruin. I remember that at school we had an

11*1

THE ENI»nES OF YOUTH.

exercise in reading entitled ' the dangers of being
a good singer ' which greatly impressed me, and
which told the story of a youth whose society was
BO much sought in places of conviviality, because
of his ability to sing a good song, that in the end,
he became a frequenter of the lowest resorts, and
obtained a miserable livelihood by singing nightly
in a tavern."

It is a delightful thing to be a good singer, a
God given talent to be prized and cultivated ; it
is worth much to be a good conversationalist, to
have a genial disposition, a cordial manner, but
we must allow God to have control of them all,
OS ministering spirits to lead us upward, and not
let the Devil use them, as his henchmen, to drag
us down.

And now I would close this chapter also with a
word of encouragement to those who are tempted
and tried. Let me say to every one of you,
young friends, that your case is not hopeless.
However sorely you may feel the terrible pressure
of bad companionship, however weak your wills
may be, however the hard times have enforced
idleness upon you, until you feel unable to do any

JU^

— y— MB^itM'SE ,1,1";

DAKOEB SIGNALS.

useful work in the world, though you may have
been dragged by these henchmen into the very
clutches of King Alcohol, your case is not hope-
less, Christ has more servants than King Alcohol.
Young men who have been walking arm in arm
with these henchmen for years have broken loose.
Men who have been picked out of the gutter have
risen to the pinnacle of an honorable life. There is
only one way; all mere moral reform, without
religion, is uncertain. It is of little use to try to
break with the henchmen of Alcohol unless you
take up with the servants of Christ ; but if you
will do this there is eternal hope for you, for one
who was never known to lie has said, " My grace
is sufficient for thee."

lave
rerj
i>pe-
liol.
arm
ose.
lave
re is
10 ut
T to

you
you
one
race

CHAPTER IV.

DIRT IN INK.
Wht Mant Bcsinbss Men Place Bad Litekatubb

FiBST AHOXO THE ENEMIES OF TOCTH. THB THEE

WITH TOE Rotten Hbabt. The Insidioubnbss of
THIS Evil. The Gtpsy Dot's Venoeance. Indict-
ment OF THE Bad Book. It Givss a Stbainbd,
Unnatitbal ""iew of Life. It Globifibs Evil.
It Leaves no Room fob the GIood. The Jellt-
Bao Readeb. The Cobbcft Litbbatube of
Fbanoe. Tbeb-Fboq Minds. What the Law can
Do.

I HAVE entitled this chapter *' Dirt in Ink," for
I know of no more expressive or appropriate
words to express the exact idea I have iu mind
than these, which not long ago stood at the head
of an editorial in one of our Boston dailies. I am
not writing of literature, though it sometimes is
falsely dignified by that name. I am not writing
of anything that is worthy the name of book or
magazine or newspaper, though these respectable
words must often be thus disgraced, but I am

iii«"'^^^3>'

DANGER SIOKALS.

writing of what is only fit to be called dirt, dirt
in printer's ink, dirt spread over white paper, dirt
done up in packets, the shape of a book or pam-
phlet, for this and nothing less and nothing better
is all the vile reading of which I would warn
my young friends. It ia somewhat remarkable,
though I cannot say that I am surprised at it, to
find many of my correspondents among the busi-
ness men placing bad literature in the very fore-
front of the evils which assail the youth of today.
I asked some of them to number with the figures
1, 2, 8, 4, etc., the evils which in their opinion
were the most flagrant and seductive, and very
many of them wrote at the head, before intemper-
ance, before licentiousness, before gambling, the
words " Bad Literature." Surely this is not to -be
wondered at when we remember that the brothel
in the book is usually seen before the real brothel,
that the bar-room of the flash story-paper is
known before the bar-room of wood and glass and
decanters and beer-fountains. If we look for
priority of influence we must usually seek for it
in the gambling den of the printed page, and not
in the gambling den where the rattle of the dice

THE BNEMIES OF YOUTH. 57

lirt

is heard. The poison is first poured into the

lirt

stream out of the bad book.

nn-

The in»idiou»ne»a of this evil is one of its most

ter

dangerous features. If our boys come home

, with the taint of liquor in their breath we know

)le,

it ; if we hear their latch key stealthily opening

the door at one in the morning, we are pretty

isi-

sure that they have not been at a prayer-meeting

re-

all the evening, and we can fight and pray against

*y-

the evils that are threatening them ; but we do not

res

know when their eyes first fall upon the salacious

pictures in the shop-window on their way to

'ry

school; we do not know when some ragged

er-

urchin thrusts a bad paper into their hands aa

they go to the grocer's, we do not know how they

-be

treasure it up and feast upon it in secret, untu

lel '

their very life-blood begins to run in a tainted '

el.

stream. We do not know when these things are

done, but we know that they are done, and this

1 fact is enough to cause us, whether we are parents

or young people, to give very earnest heed to

these things.

Says one very prominent merchant of our city:

*' Bad Literature is undoubtedly as rank a poison

•

DANGER SIGNALS.

to the young mind, as rum is to the body, and
surely paves the way to many other terrible evils."
Another no less widely known, who puts this
evil first, says : " Impure literature enfeebles the
mind and heart as deadly malaria does the body."
Still another of my correspondents speaks of a
kindred evil which often flows from bad reading
and ought to be coupled with it. He says:
" While I have marked bad literature as No. 1 on
the list you give, I think that impure conversa-
tion is another great evil, if not equally perni-
cious in its effects. The tendency of the low jest
and filthy story cannot be other than to contami-
nate the mind." The filthy story which goes
from mouth to mouth usually starts from the
filthy book. Still another writes me as follows :
"My topic is vile literature. If there is one
method used by the satanic powers more effective
than another in the preparation of victims for
sorrow and disgrace in this life and the world to
come it is the casting into the mellow soil of youth-
ful minds of either sex the damnable imaginings
of lust which are the seeds of an inevitable harvest
embracing every sin in that fearful list in the

THE ENEMIES OF YOTTTH.

fifth chapter of Galatians. Now and then one
who has been contaminated may, by the grace of
God, be snatched as a brand from the burning,
but even then an impression made upon the
youthful mind by an obscene picture or a seduc-
tive story of lust and crime is never effaced. The
wretched scar in the soul remains; it may be
overgi'own but never eradicated. I know a man
today who would gladly sacrifice a great deal of
what the world most prizes, if he could blot from
his memory the impressions made in youth by one
obscene book.

" Before the same gale which a few years ago
brought down the noble old elm upon the com-
mon, a beautiful and stately maple succumbed,
upon the lawn of a gentleman in Brookline.
Upon examination a decayed spot was found at
the point where the tree was broken off. The
gentleman recollected, after some time, that many
years before, when a boy, he had hacked a place
in the trunk with an axe, when angered at some
command of his father. After many years the
bark grew over the place and tire wound, to all
appearances, had completely healed and the tree

iil

DANOER SIGNALS.

was apparently as sound as any of its companions
upon the lawn. But the winds blew and the
storm beat upon it and it fell — because it had a
rotten spot at the heart, though hidden from the
eyes of men. Ah I how little we know the cause
of the sudden and unexpected fall of men and
women, who are apparently fair and sound
outside. If we could but examine into the inner
being of such we should, I think, many times find
just such concealed wound, made doubtless away
back in youthful dnys by some vile story or print,
which could never be completely healed, and that
WHS the weak spot which caused so lamentable a
Ml.

*' You cannot swin^ too vigorously this danger
signal before your boys and girls," c >ntiuues this
/gentleman. "If they wouia be safe and happy,
and enjo) .yn^ thoughts in after years as well,
implore theni to fnve n wide berth to the cheap,
f ; 'hy literature of the day."

But that I may not be thought to speak
tmtirely at random in this matter or to rely
wholly upon the representations of others, let me
tell you that I have made this a matter of careful

it'

i!ir

nil

J^m—

THE EKEMies OP YOUTH.

lions
tlie
ad a
the
juse
and
und
iner
find
way
rlnt,
that
le a

iger
this

?py.

rell,
eap,

eak

rely

eful

study for a number of ye.irs past, and I am con-
vinced that the strongest words of my corre-
spondents are none too strong. I have seen our
shop windows filled and our shop counters covered
with this wretched stuff. I have seen our bovs
and girls eagerly gloating over the pictures dis-
played in these windows, on their way to school
and home again. I have seen these papers and
the advertisements of them thrust into their' very
faces on the street corner. Let me give you an
outline of one of these books. This one, which
is the only one I have read, is called " The Gypsy
Boy's Vengeance." It is the only one I have
read through, but, from a hasty glance at many of
them, I am convinced that it does not go beyond
the average in blood-curdling villainy.

In the first chapter of the " Gypsy Boy's Ven-
geance" a robber. Cartouche by name, runs off
with the heroine of the story, a beautiful girl of
high family, and the robber strikes a subordinate
actor in the story to the floor with his clenched
fist. In the second chapter a wild pursuit of the
robber, who escapes in a hack, results in the
shooting of the hackman and the arrest of the

tmmm

""r^^mammmmmmm

DANGER SIGNALS.

robber. The third chapter is taken up with the
wails of a noble lady and with her efforts to
induce a young gypsy boy to kill and thus put
out of the way a witness against her virtue. In
the fourth chapter the robber, by the aid of his
wife, escapes from prison, and, in his exit, by way
of diversion, kills a man who is in the passage.
In the fifth a hand to hand fight betwepn the two
principal characters is rehearsed. In the sixth the
robber kiLj the warden of the prison and three
guards. In the eighth the robber discards liis
wife who had saved his life many times, and takes
up with a new attachment, in the meantime
nearly killing the first.

In the tenth" seven or eight policcrucn are con-
veniently disposed of, and as many more robbers
have their throats cut. Evidently, as the plot
thickens, the dramatis personcB are becoming too
numerous and so the author takes the shortest
way to get rid of them and freely uses the knife
and pistol upon bis heroes. In this same chapter,
besides murdering sixteen men and throwing one
old woman into the river, we are treated to two
fierce fights, in both of which the robber is vic-

^IM

MWHHMMKffiSSC^

THE BNEMIBE OF YOUTH.

■

torious. In the eleventh chapter we enter a
robber's cave, rich with treasure, and are con-
ducted by a secret passage into the heart of Paris.
In the twelfth the old woman who was thiown
into the water again comes upon the stage, and is
this time killed out and (tut, a haughty Spaniard
is also run through with a sword, the heroine is
shot through the heart, and the robber has a
bullet neatly lodged in his back. In the fifteenth
and last chapter the robber is tortured and then
killed by being broken on the wheel, the haughty
Spaniard is killed off in battle, and, there being
nobody left to kill, (with ono or two unimportant
exceptions,) the story naturally comes to an end.
Thus, in this short storj', there are two cases of
adultery, one elopement, nine bloody fights, and
twenty-eight murders.

This is a sample, and a fair sample, of what
our boys and .girls have thrust into their hands
from the time they are able to spell out their
a, b, abs. Such a tale is worse than the raw-head
and bloody-bones stories at which we so often
laugh, and of which I shall speak in another

DANGER SIGNALS.

chapter. Much of it is absolutely filthy and
unreportable. Let us not say that it is advertis-
ing this stuff to call attention to it or to give an
outline cf one of these stories. It is impossible to
advertise it more extensively than it is advertised
at present. If you do r.ot know of it, you,
brethren and father, you, grave and reverend
seigniors, are the only ones who do not know of
it. If you are ignorant, your boys and girls are
not. They have the advertisements of these
papers and books thrust into their hands as they
come out of school, they find them on the door-
steps of your houses as they come home from play,
they pick up the flyers, telling them about these
stories, borne about everywhere on the wings of
the wind, their eyes are attracted at a dozen shop
windows by pictures which have a horrible fasci-
nation and which often border on the indecent if
they are not wholly vile and corrupting. With
these odds against them, the children of today are
beginning the battle of life. The Devil is attack-
ing the citadel of their souls in its weakest part,
and, by appealing to their imagination and their

]
\ '

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

love of excitement and adventure, he is seeking
to undermine the very foundations of manhood
and womanhood.

This is no Iblind and hidden malady, whose
secret springs of poison we cannot get at. It is
something we can see and understand. The evil
is right in our midst. We can put our hands upon
it. We can crush it out if we will. It is a sub-
ject which concerns every community, every
church, every family in the land. It is a theme
which no one of us can afford to ignore, for,
while we shut our eyes, the Devil, on these his
newest wings of printed paper, is flying into the
inmost circles of our homes. No one of us can
say, " I am safe," " My boys are beyond such in-
fluences," " My girls are incorruptible," " It will
not hurt my children if they do read such stuff."
We make a great mistake when we reason in this
way.

Smut always crocks. Pitch always sticks.
When soot is in tl»'^ air it is just as likely to fall
on your head as anj where else, and the smut of
these dirty periodicals is actually in the air today.
Every age has its peculiar dangers, and needs its

•i]!

JiiStim

DANGER SIGNALS.

peculiar, trurapet-tonecl warninga. One note of
alarm wliich we need to sound today, in this latter
part of the nineteenth century, is " Beware of vile
books." Centuries ago, when books were scarce
and print was sealed except to a very few, the
exhortation was, or should have been, " Read, read,
unlock for yourselves the treasures of the world's
lore." Now the cry of pulpit and press and
parental authority should be : " Beware of what
you tead, shut the book, burn the paper, unless
they are worth reading." Better let the field lie
fallow than fill it with thistles and brambles and
dog-wood and deadly niglit-shade. Better let the
mind be empty than fill it with seeds which will
inevitably produce an abundant crop pf disease
and death. Dr. Johnson used to say, that " the
most miserable man was he who could not read
on a rainy day." We must change that motto and
say : " The most miserable man is he who reads
only vile trash on a rainy day."

"Don Juan literature," says Cunningham
Geikie, " is as pestiferous as an open ditch in hot
weather. No genius or wit can excuse or neutral-
ize its wantonness. Coarse feeding makes coarse

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

flesh. Filthiness, like toad-stools, springs rank
from invisible seeds, and the whole race of unclean
books is no better than molds and smuts and mil-
dews."

Let me warn you of this seductive form of evil
in the vigorous words. of Scripture: "Avoid it,
pass not by it, turn from it and pass away."

To be very specific.

I indict this whole class of publications not
only for corrupting the imaginations and inflam-
ing the passions of the young but I indict even
the very best of them for giving a strained, and
unnatural picture of life, and. thus unfitting our
boys and girls for real life. How can our boys take
up the humdrum duties of school on Monday
morning when they have spent all Sunday riding
over the plains with Texas rangers, and robbing
stage coaches with Missouri ruffians? How can
they confine themselves to the routine of the
counter or the farm or the work-bench when their
minds are dancing among the wild delights of a
ha,rein of houris ? How small and paltry will the
honest nine shillings appear for a day's wages
when the mind has been dazzled by the priceless

DANGER SIGNALS.

i i'-i

■ ,!l

jewels and gold of the robber's cave ? These vis-
ions, in manj, many cases, cannot but work the
deadliest ruin. The school-book loses its inter-
est, the shop or farm becomes distasteful and only
excites disgust and longing to escapo, and honest
wages are too mean to strive for ; and thus an-
other life is wrecked, and wrecked on the rock of
these wretched periodicals.

In the second place I indict these publications
for glorifying evil. This, too, is universally true
of them. The effect of every one is to make sin
attractive. To be sure the murderer sometimes
comes to grief, and the robber is occasionally
caught, but he is, after alU a noble fellow, and the
rollicking fun and excitement of his life more
than make up for any "temporary unpleasant-
ness " he may have with the authorities. " Every-
tLing that is naughty is nice " might be the motto
in large capitals over every one of these bad
books. In this way, by glorifying evil, these
books seek to undermine and destroy all that
good men in all the ages have built up with toil
and pain. The Bible is given us to teach, among
other things, that evil in the long run does not

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

VI9-

the
ater-
only
nest

an-
skof

ions
true
i sin
imes
lally
[the
nore
lant-
ery-

lOttO

bad
bese
that

toil
long

not

pay, — these books teach that it does pay. God, in
nature and Providence, says over and over agaia;
"Beware, beware, touch not the unclean thing.
It brings disease, poverty, sickness, loneliness,
sorrow, death. The soul that sinneth, it shall
die." These books say, " No such thing. Wick-
edness is very pleasant. Fondle it. Take it to
your bosom. It will never hurt you." The law
had made it its business in every civilized country
on the globe to emphasize what God and the
Bible say, to make crime dangerous and despi-
cable and unattractive and hideous, by fine and
prison and disgrace and the gallows-tree, and yet,
these books say in effect: "The Bible is anti-
quated, and God knows nothing about it, and the
law is all wrong ; for the freest, jolliest, bravest
life in the world is that of the outlaw and the
scamp."

In the third place, I indict these publications
for being not only wholly evil in themselves but
for taking the place of what is good. There is
nothing so entirely captivating and engrossing to
the young as these very stories. When this Devil,
whose name is Legion, enters their hearts he leaves

DANGER SIGNALS.

no spot for a good angel to occupy. Nay, he
drives out sooner or later, every good influence
and takes undisputed possession of the heart. As
the serpent's deadly eye attracts the young bird so
these books attract the young mind, when it gets
within their spell, until it becomes too weak to
resist their allurements, and the boy or girl finds
it as impossible to go by the secret shelf or closet
or druvver where the longed-for book lies, as it is
for the drunkard to resist his cups or the lauda-
num eater his opium. And what chance, O fellow
Christians ! has the Spirit of God to influence
such an over-wrought and preoccupied mind ?

How can we hope that such a young person will
ever feel his need of pardon and cleansing from
defilement when his whole pleasure is found in
scenes of defilement ? How can we hope that our
churches will be recruited or any of those c&uses
which make for righteousness will be advanced
when the minds of our young people are filled so
full of scenes of vice, that there is no room for
calmer, truer thoughts ? For this reason, if for no
other, every good man and true ought to take up
arms against this crying sin of our times.

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

On these three charges I rest my indictment.
Many more charges might be preferred, but surely
these three are sufficient. These evil books unfit
their readers for all real, honest life ; they glorify
evil ; they exclude all that is good ; they enervate
the mind, weaken the will, stunt the ambition, dull
tlie conscience, sear moral percei)tion, not for a
month or a year but for a life-time. The com-
plete victim of the bad book never recovers.

Colei'idge divides all readers into four classes:
" The hour-glass readers, whose reading, like the
sand, runs in and then out, leaving nothing behind ;
the sponge readers, who imbibe everything only to
return it as they got it, or dirtier ; the jelly-bag
readers, who let the pure pass and keep only the
dregs and refuse; and the fourth class who, like
the slaves in Golconda mines, cast aside all that is
worthless and keep only the diamonds and gems."
The cl iss of books and papers of which I am
speaking continually make jelly-bag readers who
keep only the dregs and refuse, and this never
gets strained out of their lives until the day they
die.

In a sister nation across the water literature ib

DANOEB SIGNALS.

notoriously corrupt. This trash which our boys are
reading cultivates the very same tastes to which
Eugene Sue and George Sand have catered. The
most serious count which some Frenchmen bring
against the Protestant reformation now prevailing
in that country is that it is creating a demand for
a Puritanic literature, and is supplying that de-
mand, while it is in deadly and uncompromising
opposition to loose morals and loose literature.
Even M. Talne. fair and just as he usually is, can-
not resist a fli.ig at the purity of the best English
fiction. la coi lenting upon Dickens he sneer-
ingly say . . "In Nicholas Niokleby you will show
us two good young men, like all young men, mar-
rying two good young women, like all young
women. In Martin Chuzzlewit you will show us
two more good young men, perfectly resembling
the other twu, marrying again two good young
women, perfectly resembling the other two. In
Dombey and Son there will be only one good
young man and one gooti young woman ; — other-
wise no difference. The reader woulu like to
say to these characters, ' Good little people, con-
tinue to be very proper.' "

THE ENBMIBS OP YOUTH.

This is the ay that a highly cultivated and
otherwise fair minded Frenchman can sneer at the
purity of English literature, the purity which is
its chief glory. Do you desire to exchange our
Dickens for a George Sand? our Thackeray for
a Eugene Sue? our Hawthorne for a Zola?
Toward lowering the tone of public morality, to-
ward pavini tlie way for making just such books
the national literature of our land, these exciting,
pernicious novels directly tend.

There are a great many " tree-frog minds," as
some oiie has expressed it, minds that take their
color from that on which they feed. Among our
boys and girls there are ten thousand of these tree-
frog minds whu feed on worthless fiction and
whose whole lives will be colored by it. " What
do you read ? " said the late James T. Fields to
the boy fiend Jesse Pomeroy, as quoted by Mr.
Kent in his " New Commentary." " What do you
read ? " said Mr. Fields. " Mostly one kind," was
the reply, " mostly dime novels." " And what is
the best book you have read ? " " Well,' ' he replied,
»' I like Buffalo Bill best. It 's full of murders and
pictures about murders." " And how do you feel

■^

DANOEB SIGNALS.

after reading it?" " Oh, I feel aa if I wanted to
go and do the same." But the grout danger of
these books ia not that a iow morbidly ferocious
boys like Jesse Pomeroy, or a few maudlin, feather-
headed girls will be ruined by this trashy novel
reading. These results are probable enough and
deplorable enough, but the great danger is that
the mass of our bo3'8 and girls who are neither
brutal, nor ferocious, uor feather-headed, will bo
tainted by this mass of printed corruption. Like
the exhalation from a foul but unseen sewer it
may poison the very air our children breathe
before we wake up to the fact that the air is
poisoned.

And now let me apeak for a moment of the rem-
edies for this curse, for there are effective remedies.
I will speak of other measures at another time,
but I believe that the strong arm of the law
should be invoked to save our children from
this curse. I believe that the law can be en-
forced against those who peddle this stuff upon
the streets and in our news rooms, until every
print that suggesta an impure scene to a prurient
imagination shall be torn from our shop windows.

THB ENBMIES OF YOUTH.

If we have law enough to compel the cleaning
out of filthy sewera that may poison the physical
health of the community, have we not law enough
to clean out these ditchwater books and papers
which will surely poison the murals of the cotn-
munity ?

If there is power enough in the law to shut up
a drunken man simply because he is noisy and
boisterous, is there not power enough to shut away
from the sight of our boys and girls those books
and pictures which will do them more harm than
a regiment of drunkards ?

I am not a visionary enthusiast in this matter.
I do not know that public sentiment is ripe
enough to sustain the law in prohibiting the blood
and thunder novel, I do not know that it can yet
drive "Buckskin Burke," and "Moccasin Mat,"
and "Shorty Jr.. tht; Son of his Dad," into de-
served oblivion, but I do believe that it can rid
our country of al' ' t is openly vile and lewd.
I do believe that 77^; Jolice News and The Po-
lice Gazette a,><] pam,^ < that ilk can be prohib-
ited and tb.it i^cenj s need no longer be of-

DAMGEB SIGNALS.

fended and young imaginations polluted by the
pictures which they contain.

I believe that the law can be so enforced that it
shall be safe to publish the catalogues of girls'
boarding schools ; and it is not safe to do so now,
lest the harpies who vend this bad literature
will use them for evil purposes.

But we must not put off all the responsibility
for the suppression of this evil upon the law
makers. We have something to do, every one of
us, to sustain the law, and to make a public senti-
ment which can enforce the law. Let us each
bear our full share of the responsibility and do our
full duty toward making the literature of our land
pure and ennobling. Parents, you who desire
that your children should not live, even in imag-
ination, with cut-throats and robbers ; young men,
you who would not have your future wives ac-
quainted with courtesans and harlots ; young wo-
men, you who would not have your future hus-
bands imbued with the cruelty of the prize ring
and the bravado of the gambling hell; philanthro-
pists, you who would see the wtrld grow better

-t

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

and not sink back into filth and barbarism ; Chris-
tians, you who love the Lord Jesus Christ and the
childi-eu for whom he died ; arouse you all, and
with one heart and voice let us stem this tide of
evil literature before, it sweeps clean away the
foundations of morality and religion.

CHAPTER V.

TEASH IN INK.
Infaht Indian Extebminatoks. Fubtheb Wise Wobds

FBOM THE BUSINEBS MEN. JoVENILE BuBOLABIES

AND Flash Papebs. One Hcndbed Thousand Peo-
ple OP Boston Keep Compant -vtith Tbain Wbeck-
KBS AND Highwaymen. The Cause of this Tbabh
IN Ink. Cheap Imitation of BuBDKrrE and Mabk
Twain. A Waste of Time. A Sum in ABirnMETio.
The Scbappt Mind of the Mebb Newspapeb Read-
EB. The Young Highwaymen hbab Boston. Thk
Stoby of the Judge's Son.

Some time ago a friend sent me a copy of the
New York Puck, and directed ray attention to a
cartoon on the first page. For the benefit of those
of you who have not seen thii graphic picture let
me describe it. An infant, apparently some six
or eight months of aw, sits in a cradle, one hand
grasps a huge bowie-knife, the other a bull-dog re-
volver, across his knees lies a shot gun, while into
various crevices of the cradle other knives and
pistols are thrust. In the infant's mouth is placed

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

a tube through which he draws nourishment from
a huge bottle labeled " Dime Novels," " Half Dime
Stories," " Five Cent Papers," etc. A wild and
lurid light gleams from the infant's eyes, his tow
hair stands on end with excitement, a fierce and
implacable look settles around the corners of his
mouth. The exciting causes of this preternatural
ferocity lie scattered about on the floor, labeled,
*' Buccaneers of the Battery," "Ike the Indian
Killer," " Bloody Ben," " The Pirates of the Pas-
saic," etc. In short this "Infant Indian Extermi-
nator " in the cradle had been nourished on such
food as made his hair stand on end, and his fin-
gers naturally clutch the bowie-knife and the re-
volver. There is a startling truth hidden in this
grotesque cartoon. The very babies in their
cradles have this exciting, pernicious trash rained
upon them. As they draw milk from the nursing
bottle, they suck in blood and thunder from the
dime novel. Instead of the ' Three Bears," the
child of today reads about " The Five Skulls."
Instead of " Dick Whittington and his Cat," he
reads about "Dick the Destroyer." Instead of
'♦Cinderella and her Golden Slipper," he reads

DANGER SIGNALS.

about the "Tlie Girl Trailer" or "Wild Nell on
the Scaffold." The spirit of that cartoon has its
counterpart in ten thousand households, all our
country over. It is hardly an exaggeration to
make the victim of these worthless novels a tow-
hep.ded baby in his cradle.

This subject is very closely allied to the one pre-
sented in the last chapter. Dirt and trash go to-
gether in literature as well as in th-i scavenger's
cart. The dirty is always trashy; the trashy is
usually dirty.

In the last chapter were quoted the opinions
of some of Boston's prominent men of business
on the kindred subject. I need to add but little
to this testimony to show you what their advice
would be. Let me, however, quote a few more
valuable testimonies. Says one : " I think low lit-
erature is to the mind what scrofula is to the
blood. It soon permeates the whole mind, and
terminates in the malignant cancer which contains
all the vices man is addicted to."

Says another : " Young people, given to the habit
of reading liglit and trashy novels, dilute their
minds, destroy the power of concentrated effort.

THE ENEMIES OF YOTJTH.

and make it impossible for them to grasp and con-
quer that which requires hard and continuous
study. One can read too much for recreation for
a time, and then find to his mortification that the
ability to grasp great truths has departed from
him, perhaps forever."

Still another friend of yours, who says that in
the business in which he has been engaged for
fifty years he has had the training of a score of
young men, some of whom have been very suc-
cessful in life, remarks, that he is sorry to see in
visiting our public library the unread appearance
of scientific ami historical books, and that, so sel-
dom are they called for, it is not deemed necessary
to provide thtun with the usual paper covers.

Another gentleman, who has had much to do in
furnishing you with good reading, writi s : '"My
experience leads me to place Bad Literature first
among the causes leading to the decline of virtue
in youth. This poisons the mind and prepares
the way for dime and other low theatres, intem-
perance, gambling, and licentiousness."

You see most of tliese gentlemen emphasize
the fact, which we cannot make too prominent,

DANGEB SIGKALS.

that bad books are the starting-point for other avils.
" A trashy novel looks innocent," do you say ? "I
can read it without being any the worse." Ah 1
but if it is one key that has often unlocked the
door of perdition for other bright boys and girls
is it safe to fumble with it in the lock, because
you think you may and escape where bo many
have entered in and been lost? In thii> line
another of your friends sends you the following
warning: "The prime cause of ruin would be
the first step taken, as the others would be sure to
follow. Boys would be more likely to start with
bad literature than with anything else."

Let me tell you how I came to have my atten-
tion directed to this subject. Some time ago, as I
was walking along one of the streets in the city
where I then lived, which was most frequented by
boys and girls, the following advertisement, for
substance, struck my eye : " All the boys should
read the wonderful story of the James brothers,
the desperate outlaws of the Western plains,
whose strange and thrilling adventures of success-
ful robbery and murder have never been i»qualled.
The account of these brave and daring spirits,

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

who still defy capture, wUl interest every boy.
For sale here. Price five cents," The next morn-
ing I read the following item in one of the daily
papers of that city : " Seven boys arrested yester-
day for burglary ; four stores having been broken
into by the gang at different times. One of the
ringleaders who had been in all four of the rob-
beries is but ten years old." A few days after
that appeared this item : " Boys made three breaHu
lait night stealing goods and money in as many
dLTerent stores."

1 remember, too, the horrible story which Mr.
Comstock vouches for, of the bloodthirsty band of
ten year old boys who, excited by such stories,
bound themsuives with an oath to slay their own
mothers, and were only discovered because the
heart of one of the little fellows failed him at the
last moment, and he thought he would practice on
the servant girl ; and I remember that these in-
stances are but specimens of a hundred items
which we may read in the papers every year.

But to bring the matter very near home. What
are our boys and girls reading in this year of
grace ? Much that is useful, much that is health-

fin!

DAITOBB SIGNALS.

ful, much that will make them good citizens and
honored men and women, no doubt. I am happy
to believe that large numbers read only such
books. But step into any of our news-stores in
any of our large cities, and a single glance at
those counters, filled with rubbish, will tell us that
other large numbers read only such stuff as tends
to weaken the mind and unnerve the will for hon-
est endeavor, and to graduate in the end either
worthless loafers or state's prison convicts. I, for
one, was totally unaware, until my attention was
directly called to the subject, how, of late years,
this crop of worthless print hab increased. Even
a casual glance would amaze many who have not
studied the subject. Why 1 Fathers and Mothers,
Beadles Dime Novels which, when we were boys
and girls, were the sjmonyras for all this class of
literature, seem to havo gone to seed in these latter
days and a most abundant and pernicious crop has
sprung up iu their stead. The evil genius of our
childhood has taken to himself more than seven
and more than seventy-seven spirits worse than
himself, and all are clamoring for admittance to
the minds of our children. In a single periodical

! IJI'

iHi'

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

store I have counted twenty-one publications of
this class for our young people alone ; twenty-one
different flash papers and magazines bearing the
imprint of different firms, but all bearing the
trade-mark of the Devil.

It is impossible to do more than roughly esti-
mate the number of those who read these publica-
tions, but, from a careful study of the facts and
inquiry into the number of these periodicals sold,
I am convinced that at a very low estimate one-
third of all the inhabitants of any large city are
habitual readers of this trash. This is not random
guess-work. It is founded on careful study and
estimate. I am convinced that if I should say
that one-half of our people read this stuff I should
be easilv within bounds. But for the sake of
being very moderate and conservative I will say
one-third. Then more than one hundred thou-
sand men and women and children in this city of
Cotton Mather and Lyman Beecher and Charles
Sumner and Wendell Phillips are todry spend-
ing their time in the company of thieves and mur-
derers and highwaymen and adulterers, gloating
over their adventures, revelling in their perilous

DAKGEB SIGNALS.

escapes and glorying in their dastardly crimes.
And the saddest part of all this is that many of
these readers are young people. At least one-half
this army belong to this class. At least sixty
thousand young people in this one city are study-
ing, not the story of Moses and Joshua and Paul
and Jesus Christ which our Sunday-schools teach,
not the wonderful dealings of God with his people,
not the deeds of real men in real life, not the
facts of history which elevate the mind, not the
truths of science- which quicken the intellect, but
they are studying " The Gypsy Boy's Vengeance "
or " The Dead Witness " or " Evil Eye, the King
of the Cattle Thieves." There are more boys and
girls in every city and town of our land locked
up every Sunday, (for they get more time as a
general thing to read this trash on Sunday than
any other day), with these exciting and pernicious
stories of unreal and improbable and utterly
detestable life, than assemble in all our Sunday-
schools. There are more of our youth who are
being excited and unstrung and filled with morbid
fancies by these books than are being strengthened
and fitted for life by the sweet influences of the

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

Sabbath day. There are hundreds of thousands
of our young people who are less fitted to take up
life's secular duties on Monday on account of what
they read on Sunday, — the day of rest, in which
God meant that they should be strengthened and
made more ready for life's battle.

The cause of this dire evil is not far to seek.
It has been growing gradually for many years,
and the appetite has been fostered by what it has
fed on. These flash papers whose name today is
legion may be traced back to one or two more
decent progenitors which have had great influence
in shaping the tastes of our youth. They have
begun by sipping their small beer from these very
respectable papers and have endied by taking their
whiskey straight from the rankest and vilest peri-
odicals of the day. In my opinion the sinners,
above all others in this direction, are certain re-
spectable story papers, and for the paradoxical rea-
son that they have been so good as they have been.
Have not well-known men of letters and science,
and eminent divines, even, written for these papers?
do they not contain many really valuable articles,
the record of many scientific discoveries ? are not

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many of their contributions of a high order of
literary merit? Yes, I admit all this, and for
this very reason they have done so much harm.
Their very excellencies have glossed over their
defects and concealed from the eyes of parents
and teachers the fj'.ct that their tendency was in
the direction of trashy sensationalism. In tea
thousand cases they have created an appetite they
could not satisfy, a morbid craving which their
brethren of lower degree and coarser, more un-
blushing sensuousness, have satisfied. It is a long
step from these story papers to the Police O-azette,
but it is a step which is very often taken.

In public readings I have been surprised, often-
times, to notice how even a respectable and intelli-
gent audience will eagerly listen to the silliest
nonsense. Tlie real fan found in the Burlington
Hawkeye and the Detroit Free Press has a thousand
cheap imitations, and the extent to which our cur-
rent literature is flooded with these cheap imita-
tions of Burdette and Mark Twain and Charles
Dudley Warner would be alarming were the lucu-
brations not so puerile. The way in which an audi-
ence will applaud and encore some graphic descrip-

»«

THE ENEMIES OP VOUTn.

tion of how Mr. Jones chased his liat around a .11 ".d
puddle, or the side-splitting manner in which Mr.
Brown sat down on a pin, or the coo-funny-for-
anything way in which one of our Teutonic or
Hibernian neighbors got drunk and sung a maud-
lin song in broken dialect, hardly speaks well for
the intelligence of the audience. In our enter-
tainments why cannot we have real wit to laugh
over instead of this sick and silly semblance of
wit ? Against this kind of tru 1 which is some-
times forced upon us in otherwise unobjectionable
entertainments, we are defenceless, perhaps, but I
am chiefly concerned with the trash which you vol-
untarily read, and there is another class of books a
grade higher than the " Gypsy Boy's Vengeance,"
which, while it is more likely to be read by the
self-respecting young person, is almost equally
pernicious. These books are found in all our li-
braries, public and circulating, and I understand
from those in authority that they constitute the
great bulk of the books that are taken out. If I
should look at that volume covered with brown
paper, my young friend, which you are carrying
home from the public library, should I not find

■\,.

DANGER SIGNAL*?.

that it was a book by Mrs, Southwortli or Ouida
or the Duchess or one of those dozen other authors
whom I am afraid you know better than I do?
" Such delicious love stories," you say. " Such
thrilling situations." Ah yes, but if they received
their just deserts I think they must be consigned
to the scavenger's cart with the rest of our trash.
There is nothing absolutely vicious about many of
them, but others are really bad and are read by
respectable people only because their eyes are not
open to their real tendency.

The New York Evening Post, quoting from a
pamphlet which recently appeared criticising the
books in the Boston Public library, says : " ' Vul-
gar 'is the mildest epithet applied to this class
of literature; 'maudlin sentiment,' 'nauseous,'
♦fleshly taint,' 'unwholesome,' ' unoleanness,' 'snig-
gering suggestions,' are the flowers of criticism
which may be gathered on every page." I do not
know how far this criticism is true of the books
in one of the best public libraries in our land, as
the Boston public library undoubtedly is, but I
' am inclined to think there is a great deal of truth
in it, and I utter it in order to put you on your

• 1 1

MKHiWiWiK

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

It.

guard against the trasli and chaff even in that col-
lection where you think there ia nothing but
choice wheat.

In the last chapter I brought some charges
which seemed to me most serious and weighty
against the viler class of periodicals ; allow me to
prefer charges which seem to me no less weighty
against the trashy literature of which I am speak-
ing in this chapter. A very serious charge which
may be brought against this trash is that, to say
the best of it, reading it involves a sheer waste of
time. The shortness of human life should pre-
vent any reasonable young person from touching it.
Do you remember what Dr. Johnson had engraved
on the face of his watch ? " Ihe night cometh."
Let us remember that when we take up a book.
The nigh'> cometh. The daylight is too short to
be wasted upon that which is not worth reading.
The multiplicity of books repeats this same advice.
Go with me into the British Museum in London,
and there a well-nigh innuraerabld array of books,
five hundred thousand of them, look down upon
us from their resting places on the shelves. Let
us do a little sum in arithmetic. Five hundred

DANGKTl SIGNALS.

thousand books before us, little and big, wortliy
and worthless, and there are three hundred and
sixty-five days in the year. Can you read one of
them through every day of the year, Sundays and
all ? If 80 you can get through the library in one
thousand three hundred and seventy years, or a
few days less. Even Methuselah, you see, would
have needed an extension of time of nearly four
hundred years to accomplish this task. But you
cannot read one book a day. Those great folios,
those huge black-letter volumes, make any such
idea ridiculous. No, if you read one a week you
will do well, and pretty steadily you will have to
work to do this. Well then, in nine thousand four
hundred and ninety years you will have finished
' the last book in that collection. That is, if you
read until the inhabited world is once and a half
as old again as it is at present, until Adam has
been dead fifteen thousand years instead of six
thousand, you will have finished the collection,—
provided no new books are added. But new
books will be added at the rate of at least three
thousand a year at a very low estimate, and if
even this rate of increase keeps up during the

THE ENEMIES OP YOXJTH.

nine thousand odd years j'OU are at work on the
original library, you will at the end of that time
be twenty-eight million five hundred thousand
books :n arrears, or enough to occupy you some
five hundred thousand years more. I will not
appall you by carrying our sum in arithmetic any
farthor. It has accomplished its purpose, if it has
shown us that in these days, when it is so pre-
eminently true that of making many books there
is no end, we must make a strict and rigid
choice in that which we read.

When you have the whole world of books to
choose from, will you take the very poorest and
clieapest? When you may live with ^'hakespeare
and Milton and Macaulay and Scott will you
choose Buckskin Burke and Moccasin Mat and
Evil Eye the King of the Cattle Thieves for com-
panions ? When you wish to laugh will you choose
the sloppy wit of some third rate or thirteenth
rate imitator, when you might have the genuine
hum or of Tom Hood or Charles Lamb or Leigh
Hunt or Charles Dickens ? Will you choose to
spend an evening with a drunken cut-throat when
for the same price you might have the company oi

DANGER SIGNALS.

ill

s i

the greatest men who ever wrote or sung ? " Stu-
pidity or commonplace," says one, "is tolerable
only when no better can be had ; like bread of moss
or sawdust that needs a famine to get it down,
except with simpletons who will e^t anything.
"To read in these days is like standing m an or-
chard laden with fruit ; it is not a matter of choice
but of falling too and eating the best. The worm-
eaten,' the wind-blasted and the rottea will of
course be passed by, by a^ sensible man who real-
izes the value of his time." • '_ -

Again this trash in ink not only wastes the time
but it renders the mind of him who indulges in it
scrappy and unable to grasp solid truth, ihis
charge applies to much of the unobjectionable
reading of the day, with what double force then
does it apply to the worse than worthless stories of
which I have been speaking. He who attempts
to read everything will know nothing.

In that thought lies the bane of the multiplicity
of newspapers and magazines of these latter dajs.
And let me here file a caveat against too much
newspaper reading. We can resist the temptation
of reading many books, for books are oftentimes

THE BNEMIES OF YOUTH.

"Stu-
lerable
)f moss

down,
thing."
I an or-
' choice
a worm-
will of
'ho real-

the time
gea in it
1. This
stiouable
rce then
stories of
attempts

iltiplicity
Iter daj s.
boo much
imptation
ftentimes

expensive luxuries, but to the ubiquitous newspa-
per there is no such let or hindrance. It touches
upon every subject and exhausts none. The
name of the newspaper readers of our day is legion.
I mean the exclusive newspaper readers, who
hardly know how a bound volume feels in their
hands. Such people read a little of everything
and very little of anything. Their minds become
as scrappy as their reading, until at last they can
fix their attention upon nothing which is not
dressed in displayed lines, or which is longer than
a cable dispatch. Some one has compared the
mind of a man who reads in this way, to a
boy's pocket. First the boy pulls out a marble,
and then a bit of string, and then a toothless
comb, and then a peanut, and then a shingle-
nail, and tlien a jackstone, and then a rusty screw,
and then a piece of an apple, and then a bit of
candy, until the bottom is reached. The pocket
is full to be sure, but it is full of scrappy trash.
So is the mind of him who contents himself with
the lightest kind of reading. He has a fact here
and a fact there, something curious about alliga-
tors in this corner and a receipt for maiiing apple

"TT"

DANGER SIGNALS.

pie in that ; a vague impression that Bismark is
ruling Germany with a high hand, and one of
Spoopoiulykc's quarrels with his wife in the same
part of his cranium. Ho knows that there has
been trouble between England and Russia, though
he hardly knows what it is all about, and he also
has a vague impression that Lydia E. Pinkhain
cures all diseases. Such is the typical newspaper
reader. As for me, give me the trash the bov
carries in his pocket rather than the trash such a
one carries in liis head. "Marshall thy notions
into a handsome method," quaintly says old
Thomas Fuller. "One will carry twice more
weight, trussed and packed, than when it lies
untoward, flapping, and hanging about the
shoulders." ' '

But there are even more serious counts than
waste of time and dissipation of moral and intel-
lectual energy which I have to bring against this
worthless reading. Its direct tendency is, like the
vile reading before alluded to, toward a worthless,
vicious life. This tendency is too palpable to need
extended illustration. I have hinted at it already
and we can hardly take up a public print without

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

having our previous knowledge of the evils of
this class oT literature extended and confirmed.
Let me mention one or two facts which have re-
cently come to my knowledge. In a country
town about thirty miles from Boston it was found
recently that many of the boys, incited by these
stories, had formed themselves into gangs, after
the manner of their favorite desperados. They
would hold secret meetings in old barns or, pref-
erably, in some cave, if they could find one, as
being raore romantic. They had their signs and
passwords and flash names fdr robbery and murder
and plunder, and burglar's tools, just as they had
read in their favorite story papers. And, had they
not been accidentally discovered and broken up,
actual robbery and murder would undoubtedly
have brought disgrace and sorrow to a score of
families in that pleasant village. I have heard
the master of one of our largest schools in Boston
say that he has discovered and broken up similar
plots among his own boys, and that one of these
plots contemplated violence upon his own life,
though personally he believed that the boys w juld
all love him as he loved them, were they not ex-
6

'"-^flii«MB!B»B^I^Bii»»iaii)S^BW^^ iiif^^^ATi^^r '

i m.Mi. "■.^H'lt'i

■ W. DANOEB 8IGKAL6.

cited by the mock heroics of these bloodthirsty
books.

How these novels corrupt and ruin a life of
bright promise is vividly illustrated in a true tale
which appeared some time ago in one of our relig-
ious papers, but which is worth reproducing because
it presents a living example of the degradation and
infamy to which this miserable fiction leads. It
does not land all its victims in the same abyss,
perhaps, but it faces them all and starts them all
in the same direction. The story is briefly this :
A lad/ in one of our southern cities had her atten-
tion arrested one day by a ragged and half drunken
boy of about seventeen, who was declaiming for
the amusement of a crowd of drunken loafers,
from the English and Latin classics, urged on to
this exhibition of his powers by the promise of
" two big drinks."

An undefinable air of refinement, in spite of
his profane and drunken conduct, attracted the
ladj'^s attention, and his pure pronunciation and
admirable declamation caused her to stop and lis-
ten. While she was listening a dispute arose, a
fight ensued, and the boy was arrested and taken

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. f^

to jail, where it was discovered that he had re-
ceived internal and fatal injuries in the melee.
The lady interested herself in hira, found that he
was the son of a rich judge in Mississippi, that
he had run away from home a year ago, and now
he waa dying, a drunken vagi\bond in jail. We
will let hira tell the causes which brought hira
there in his own words.

" Were your parents unkind to you that you
left thera ? " said his benefactress. " Unkind,"
he repeated with a sob. "Oh, I wish I could
remember a single harsh or unkind word from
them I That would be a little excuse, you know.
No, they were only too indulgent. I was a little
wild then, and I 've heard father say, after I 'd
sowed my wild oats I 'd come out all right." " I
can't understand why you left good parents and
home," said the lady. " Wait a minute, I 'm coming
to that. I 'm almost ashamed f^ tell it, it sounds
so silly. You see I had been i ng a great many
i^tories of adventure. I bought every new volume
as it was issued. My parents did not disapprove
of these books and did not question rae in regard
to them. They did not suspect how tired I was

iB^j«>iX!i^

100

DANGER SIGNALS.

growing of my dull life, and how I longed to imi-
tate some of my plucky young heroes. I thought,
as soon as I was free, adventure would pile in
upon me." "I interrupted him," says the lady,
" How is it possible that you, whose education had
been so carefully carried on, who can even appre-
ciate the beauties of classical literature, could be
influenced by such trash?" "I don't know," he
answered, "but I was. Perhaps I really didn't
what you call appreciate better things, but just
learned them by rote because I liked the sound.
They did n't seen, to belong to my real life, but
these stories did. They were boys like myself who
did these wonderful things and were so reckless
and brave, and they lived in a world like ours."

Thus this boy died; but seventeen years of age,
carefully reared, lovingly nurtured, but he died
an outcast, a drunkard, a tramp in jail, and his
last words to this lady who had been his only friend
were : " Warn, warn all young people whom you
know to let these foolish books alone. They are
very silly, but they do harm to many and they 've
ruined me. They take you one step on the bad
road and the rest comes easy." *

• Fom The Congregationaliat.

THE EKEMIES OF YOUTH.

And now the old question returns : What are
you going to do about it? Young people, what
are 3^0M going to do about it? Will you let this
Octopus, when he is plainly pointed out to you,
twist his slimy arras about you, until your minds
are besotted and your wills weakened, and he has
you completely in his power? Parents, what are
you going to do about it ? You would not allow
a prize fight or a bull fight to take place within
the limits of your municipality, if you could help
it. Why should you allow scenes of greater cru-
elt}'^ and shameleasness to be exhibited to our boys
and girls every day without a protest ? You would
not allow " Leadville Luke " or " Rattling Rube "
to ride through these streets, shooting and robbing
to their heart's content. Why should you allow
them, decked in all the pleasing colors of romance,
to roam through the imaginations of your children ?
Leadville Luke running amuck seven times in a
week through these streets would not do as much
harm as he and his class accomplish in the minds
of our young people. ^

If the people of the land would arise in their
might, if public sentiment would back up the law,

102

DANGER SIGNALS.

this gigantic evil would be quickly disposed of.
♦' There is no evil, the power of which is stronger
than the people," is the noble utterance of the
governor of one of our western states. Of this
wrong thing these words are true. Prevalent as
it is, insidious as it is, it is not stronger than the
power of the people.

Then let us all, young men and fathers, maidens
and mothers, by our influence and example, by
words of warning and prayers for help, by form-
ing and molding public sentiment aright, by coun-
t .racting evil with good, do our share in unmask-
ng and silenciag this battery of the Evil One.

ed of.
fonger
)f the
)f this
ent as
Ein the

laidens
?le, by
f form-
f coun-
amask-

CHAPTER VI.

THE LOW THEATER.

The General " Theater Question" hot Dibcubskd.
Warnings from the Business Men. The Murder-
er's Stabting-Point. The Pbbtt, to Purity of
Cbabacteb. The Low Theater Always Caters
TO Lust. Three Theater Bills. The Rom Shop
NtxT DooB. Jesse James Plays and their
"Strong Situations." The Low Tiikatbr At-
tempts TO Make Black Appear White and Con-
fuses MoBAL Distinctions. The True Picture of
Vice. . . i.

I DO not propose to discuss the " Theater Ques-
tion" in this chapter. Tliat is a broad subject
whose discussion is rarely profitable except in
private corversation with those who are conscien-
tiously troubled by the matter. By every one who
bus reached years of discretion this question, like
othera of Christian ethics, card-playing, dancing,
etc., must be settled for himself. Ask a few ques-
tions like this of yourself. " Can I serve my God
as well if I go to the theater as if I stay away ?

108

104

DANGER SIGNALS.

can I help those who see me there? c&n I build
up my own character in the best manner ? can I
ask God's blessing upon me there ? " If your answer
to these questions is an unhesitating " yes," then
go. If it is a doubtful or hesitating " yes," or an
unqualified "no," then stay away. Never offend
conscience in any of these matters. You are put-
ting out the eye of the soul when, for the sake of
present gratification, you are doing that which
you think may be wrong. The apostle's old rule
about the unclean meat applies here. " He that
doubteth is damned if he eat."

But I am not discussing the general subject of
the theater. There is a phase of the subject which
is often overlooked, but which sadly needs thought
and prayer and careful attention from all true
men. There are certain plague spots, called thea-
ters, before which I must wave the danger signal.
As the red flag waves from the pest-house to warn
people of their danger in passing or entering, so
the only appropriate banner for these play-housea
is the red flag of warning. Indiscriminate de-
nunciation of all theaters has sometimes over-
leaped itself, concealed from the eyes of the Chris-

THF ENE>rrES OF YOUTH.

106

tian public the fact that there are festering places,
called theaters, in every large city, nrhich bear the
same relation to other theaters that adulterated,
poisoned "tanglefoot" bears to pure wines and
liquors. I have not been to these places myself,
and I know that when I make this confession some
will say, " Then you are talking of something you
know nothing about. Your testimony must be
ruled out of court." But softly, my friends. One
does not need to go into a small-pox hospital to
know that small-pox is a horrible disease ; the tes-
timony of others, the scars and pits of those who
have been there, and one's o\^n common sense,
will keep him out of such a place, and yet not
leave him ignorant of the loathsome malady. The
experience of others, the scarred lives of those
who have frequented such places, the indecent
posters with which these places advertise them-
selves upon every dead wall, all tell me what they
are, and tell me ;o wave the danger signal before
your eyes. In order to tell you that it is danger-
ous business to fall off a wharf into deep water I
need not go and fall off first myself.
Bat, as in previous chapters, let me first give

I !

106

DANGEB SIGNALS.

the boys the messages which some of their friends
have sent them, through me. Says one : "A loose
play, a suggestive play, carries impure thoughts and
desires with it, ~ it degrades instead of elevates.
No young man can afford either money, time, or
reputation in this direction." Another sends me
a strong arraignment, which he clips from his daily
paper, of "bill-boards, flaunting in the face of day,
and the eyes of every passer-by, advertisements
of blonde burlesque or opera-bouffe troupes, too
indecent and too shocking to be tolerated in any
community that considers itself enrolled under
the banner of Christianity." Another classes low
theaters with bad literature and promiscuous dan-
ces, and thinks that they all lead on to gambling, li-
centiousness, and intemperance. "Low theaters,"
says still another, " are about as bad as they well
can be." Another writes : " I was in the habit of
attending the theater mostly for the music, of which
I was very fond, and let me tell you, boys, there
is nothing but harm in them. The play on the
boards is all right, perhaps, but the afterpiece and
the company that attends are full of dangers.
Break away from these places, or, rather, never

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

107

friends -
A loose
rhts and
ilevates.
time, or
mds me
liis daily
! of day,
seraents
pes, too
1 in any
d under
isses low
ous dan-
ibling, 11-
heaters,"
;hey well
habit of

of which
lys, there
ly on the
piece and

dangers,
er, never

begin to go to them." Still another writes:
" Young people should avoid these places entirely.
The habit of attending them, if once formed,
often leads to dishonesty. I have known many
young men from good families who went into
stores with good prospects, but other young men
in business persuaded them to go to low thea-
ters, as the first evil step. Being ambitious to
appear as smart as their companions and not
having the means for such indulgence of their
own, they purloined from their employers, were
detected and disgraced." Here is a sad story which
tells how one fair, young life went to pieces on
this shoal. . ' -

"About twenty years ago," says one whose
name is well known throughout Boston, "there
came to my iitore, bringing letters of recommenda-
tion from a firm in Vermont, as bright and hand-
some a boy as I have ever seen. His face was as
fair as that of a girl. His whole appearance was
captivating. We engaged him as boy in the store.
He won favor with all. After a few months I dis-
covered that some of his evenings were spent at
the theater and other places of amusement. J

108

DANGER SIGNALS.

?U'

|ii^

warned him kindly of the results likely to follow.
He confessed it to be unwise and promised to shun
them. A few weeks later he again yielded to the
enticer and went a step lower in the way of evil.
Again I warned him, pleaded with him, prayed for
him, and begged him in the name of and for the
sake of his sainted mother to resist such tempta-
tions, and again told him that the end was death.
With many tears he promised to reform. Not
long after, he left us, married a young and beauti-
ful girl. I then said ' You now have a double
motive for right living.' He promised that his life
should henceforth be upright. But appetite was
strong, and will was weak. His wife had money,
and wine could be had in place of cheaper drinks.
He went into business, failed, and, step by step,
sunk down lower and lower in the scale. He
became a drunkard, and in the frenzy of madness
toward his wife, who had left him on account of
his brutality, he drew a pistol and shot her dead.
Three years ago, or thereabouts, this young and
beautiful boy, grown into a murderer, finished
his course on the gaUows at the state's prison in
Vermpnt." "^ 4"

Ui !

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

109

But now let us reason about this matter calmly
and rationally. Let ne talk with you, young
friends, as though we were sitting together in
your parlor and talking over these matters confi-
dentially, and will you not deal honestly with
yourselves? You know something about these
places, I am afraid. At least you know what the
staring bill-boards say. Do you not think that
there is a peril there to purity of character ? I do
not believe that any of you have got so far that
you despise purity of character and laugh at femi-
nine modesty. I do not believe that any of you
have sunk so low that yoa have forgotten how to
blush. I pity you if you have. Would you not
hang your head in shame if you saw your mother
or your sister attired as some of those whom you
go to see at the low theater are attired ? " Yet
you propose," says Dr. Cuyler, "to pay 3''our
money (through the box-office) to somebody else's
sister and daughter to violate womanly delicacy
for your entertainment. If 'the daughter of He-
eodias ' dances to please you, then you are respon-
sible for the dance, both in its influence on the
dancer and on your own moral sense. Your eyes

110

DANGER SIGNALS.

and ears," he goes on to say, " are windows and
doors to the heart. What eaters once never goes
out. Photographs taken on the memory are not
easily effaced or burned up ; they stick there and
often become tempters and torraenters for a life-
time. ' I 'd give my right hand,' said a Christian
to me once, 'if I could rub out the abominable
things that I put into my mind when I was a fast
young man.' He could not do it ; neither will you
be able to efface the lascivious images or the impure
words which the stage may photograph on your
soul." Let us, I say, be honest with ourselves.
Have you ever attended one of these low shows
but there has been something about it to pander
to lustful desires and appetites ?

A great deal is said about elevating the tone of
the stage. I do not despair of that being done.
I sincerely hope that it may be done and that one
of these days it may take its place with the acad-
emy and the church as one of the teachers of a
pure, exalted morality. If we could remove this
mighty moral influence from the Devil's clutches,
a great stride in the regeneration of the world
would be taken. But it does not look as though

THE ENBMIES OF YOTTTII.

Ill

the tendency was in that direction. As I walked
out the other day I took especial notice of a huge
bill-board which always greets our eyes as we go
down town. On that board three plays were ad-
vertised. One was called a musical farce and ex-
travaganza, if I remember right, and the chief
figure which struck the eye upon it was a hide-
ously bruised and bloated individual, with a bristly
beard, and his head covered with patches of court
plaster, and otherwise deformed to the full extent
of the bill printer's power. If such an individual
presented himself at our doors he would frighten
the ladies, and receive a polite invitation from the
gentlemen to descend the steps, until he could
make himself presentable. The next bil on the
same board represented a scene in a parlor, where
one man is reeling backwards from the effects of
a shot, from a smoking pistol in the hands of
another man, while the legend underneath the pic-
ture, referring, evidently, to the shooting scene,
reads, " Take that, you fool." On this same board
is still another placard advertising a dramatization
of Peck's Bad Boy, one of the worst books that
has been issued during this generation. It is the

"^. '.\--«iiBl*~

iPii

112

DANOEn SIGNALS.

quintessence of disrespect of parents, vile sugges-
tivcness, and coarsest kind of low wit. I would
rather a poison adder should wriggle into my chil-
dren's nursery, than that such a book should find
a spot in their hearts ; and yet it is the dramatiza-
tion of such a book that tliis poster invites all
the children to witness. Such is the choice
selection of announccmi nts borne by one bill-
board on a single day ; and the theaters where
these plays are enacted Jo not all belong to the
" low " class of which I have been speaking. If
such are the apples of Sodom borne on these so-
called respectable trees, what sort of fruit do the
others bear?

Another peril of the low theater is its inevitable
surroundings. I will not speak of the character of
many of the performers, nor of the company you
may meet there, but ask you for a moment to think
of that rum-shop next door. Did you ever see one
of these establishments without its grog-shop?
Like the Siamese twins they always go together.
Chang and Eng are never separated. If you have
too much self-respect to go out between the acts
"to see a man" or tr get some "cloves," there is

%i'

TTIE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

) sugges-
I would
my chil-
>uld find
ramatiza-
vites all
10 choice
one bill-
13 where
g to the
king. If
these so-
Lit do the

nevitable
iracter of
pany you
t to think
er see one
rog-shop ?
together,
you have
I the acts
" there is

the free lunch counter and biir-roora, brigJitly
lighted and attractive, standing open, when you
come out late at night, tired and thirsty. If a
man is known by the company he keeps, is not an
institution known in the same way, and is not the
low theater always known by the grog-shop that
nestles under its shadow ?

" It is a prevalent hubit with young people who
attend the theater," says ane who has written
wisely upon this subject, " to remain until a late
hour amid the excitements of the plays and then
finish off with a midnight lunch, or a wine supper,
at some neighboring restaurant. To this practice
a young lady of my acquaintance owed her down-
fall. Long after sensible people have laid their
heads upon their pillows, the frequenters of the
theater are apt to be adding a second scene of dis-
sipation to the first." This writer puts it very
mildly when he says, "It must bo pretty hard
work for a Christian to finish up such an even-
ing's experience, with an honest prayer for God's
blessing. That is indeed a poor business and a
poor pleasure on which we cannot with a clear
conscience ask our Heavenly Father's approval."

114

DAKQEB SIGNALS.

But there is still another peril connected with
these low places of amusement, which I would
dwell upon for a few minutes. This is the unnat-
ural and impossible views of life which these '
theaters present. In this respect the bad book and
the bad play exert very much the same influence,
except that the play, from its very nature, is more
alluring and fascinating. Our lives are very much
as are our early dreams of life. If we start with
noble ideals the lives will pretty certainly be
noble. If the ideals are degraded the lives will
pretty certainly be degraded. There is a type of
play very popular, just now, which tends to con-
fuse all moral distinctions, and make black appear
white, and white black; which sets before our
young people, as their ideal of manhood, the out-
law of the plains. That evil is in the same class
as the flashy, blood-and-thunder novel, and is
bven more alluring, since it decks out with scenery
and paint and action, and places behind the foot-
lights, that which the bad book can only represent
with cold type and printer's ink. I have fre-
quently seen upon our bill-boards, just such shows
advertised and they are never long absent from

mmi

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

115

ed with
[ would
3 unnat-
ih these '
»ook and
ifluence,
, is more
iry much
bart with
ainly be
ives will
V type of
a to con-
ic appear
jfore our
, the out-
me class
I, and is
1 scenery
the foot-
represent
have fre-
ch shows
ent from

any large city. A friend recently sent me an ac-
count of such a show, which was recently wit-
nessed in St. Louis by forty thousand people.
Such is the kind of Sunday show which is set
before the young people of a western city.

If there is anything that is particularly harmful
to the average American boy it is just such repre-
sentations of exciting crime. Our boys are high-
strung, nervous, excitable, like the rest of our
people. It is like bringing a spark to a mass of
tow to emblazon our walls with these pictures,
and parade our streets with music and painted
Indians, and then to go through with the mock-
fights and murders and robberies in our places of
public amusement. The phlegmatic Dutchman or
the stolid Indian might stand such scenes and not
be much harmed, but the young American, all
nerves and imagination and enthusiasm, to him it
is often like the intoxicating cup to see such
things. If Buffalo Bill or Jesse James gets a
secure lodging-place in these young minds, I see
no chance there for the example of Jesus Christ
or the words of St. Paul to take root. As well
might you sow wheat in a field completely covered

116

DANGER SIGNALS.

with Canada thistles and expect to reap an abun-
dant harvest. First root out the thistles, then
BOW the wheat. Let us try to pull up the thorns
that the good seed may have a chance to grow.
It is but following our Lord's example. He drove
out the money-changers from the temple, as well
as proclaimed in the temple the way of life. He
pronounced a woe upon the proud as well as a
beatitude upon the meek.

I will not attempt to describe the highly wrought
sensationalism of these plays, but simply give a
quiet, evidently truthful newspaper account which
describes one of these typical dramas. " The sen-
sational play, recounting the deeds of the famous
Missouri bandit, Jesse James, drew a large up-
stairs audience last night. The play proved to be
all that its patrons could desire. They went to
see murders, robberies, fights, and other such pleas-
ant little pastimes, and they were satisfied to their
heart's content. All the strong situations with
which the piece abounded, were received with
demonstrations of delight." A " strong situation,"
I suppose, consists in a peculiarly dastardly
robbery or an unusually blood-curdling murder.

mmi

'4:^^^;

m abun-
les, then
e thorns
to grow.
He drove
I, as well
life. He
veil as a

wrought
y give a
int which

The sen-
e famous
large up-
ved to be
r went to
uch pleas-
d to their
ions with
ived with
dtuation,"

dastardly
gr murder.

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

117

These horrors have been received with " demon-
strations of delight " by New England audiences,
by audiences in which were some of our boys and
girls, by men and women upon whom have been
turned aU their lives the electric light of nineteen
centuries of civilization and Christianity. " The
play," continues this newspaper account, "con-
sists of a series of scenes and incidents in the
Hves of Jesse and Frank James. Tlie first repre-
sents their happy home [the happy home, I would
have you notice, of thieves and murderers and
blacklegs] ; the second, the plains of Kansas ; the
third, a horse race and a robbery ; the fourth, the
outlaws on the Missouri river, introducing an en-
counter between the outlaws and the sheriflf ; and
the fifth, the home of Jesse James and his assas-
sination by the Fords." Though the James Broth-
ers are passing into deserved oblivion, the type of
character which they represent is still multiplied
by these catch-penny shows.

I do not believe that a civilized community ever
suffered from an exhibition of more outrageous
crime. We reprobate and loathe the gladiatorial
shows in which the old Romans delighted, but

118

DANGER SIGNALS.

I \-

there was some excuse for those shows. With all
their cruelty they were exhibitions of muscular
strerigtb and physical endurance. These shows
are exhibitions of little besides perfidy and crime.
The only redeeming feature about them is the
horses, which, I have no doubt, could they speak,
would tell us they were ashamed of the company
they keep. Napoleon was not a man of strict mor-
als ; he did not govern his people upon Puritanic
models, by any means, but, fronr what I know of
his code of laws, I do not believe he would have
allowed any such plays within the borders of his
land. He had had a demonstration of the evils of
such plays in the great revolution which preceded
his accession to power. Says Edmund Burke,
writing of the French Revolution: "While
courts of justice were thrust out by Jacobin tri-
bunals, and silent churches were only funeral
monuments of departed religion, when Paris was
like a den of outlaws, a lewd tavern for revel and
debaucheries, there were in that city no fewer
than twenty-eight theaters, crowded night after
night. From the theater at night back to butch-
ery, blasphemy, and debauchery in the day-time.

aiMi

m i JiB - u j, jyjn» i j i , i j I _ivtffl i nVMt-M»..iM ' ^utw^ivmM.ty »'.. ~ .«.

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

119

With all
muscular
sse shows
,nd crime,
im is the
ley speak,
I company
itrict mor-

Puritanic
I know of
ould have
lers of his
he evils of
I preceded
nd Burke,
" While
icobin tri-
ly funeral

Paris was
f revel and

no fewer
aight after
i to butch-
3 day-time.

IVom butchery, blasphemy, and debaucliery in
the day-time back to the theater at night." In
our orderly cities we allow what Napoleon Bon-
aparte would not allow, we allow one of the
agencies which has always been hand and glove
with rapine and anarchy. Whatever may be the
pretext of these plays, or the eloquent denun-
ciations of crime which are sometimes out into
the mouths of the despairing ouUaw just as he
dies, their real effect is to make the cut-throat
not the villain of the plot, but the hero. What-
ever may be the pretence, his deeds in reality
are never held up for detestation and scorn. Ac-
cording to these plays it is a brave thing to rob
an unprotected stage-coach I It is a r.oble deed
to make families penniless, and wives widows, and
children orphans, if it is only done out-doors on
the Kansas plains. The repi-esentation of that
which ought to send the perpetrators to the gal-
lows is received with demonstrations of delight
by an American audience. ^' I ' i

Did you know, my young friends, that the Devil
has always been at work in this way from the
time Eve ate the apple, trying to prove that evil

DANGER SIGNALS.

is good and good is evil ? " It will not hurt you,"
he said to the mother of the race. " It is good.
It -.vill make you wise ; that is the reason God is
afraid to have you eat it." With Eve's sons and
daughters, ever since, he has been pursuing the
same line of argument, and I believe he never
found a more useful agent to do his bidding than
^when he sent out these theatrical troupes to make
robbery, and murder, and arson appear brave and
attractive ; and slow, plodding virtue to appear
correspondingly tamp and uncttractive. Suppose
we should wake up some morning to find all the
ordinary distinctions which nature makes between
the harmful and the harmless blotted out. Here is
a red-hot fire of coals, but it does not look like a
fire, it looks like a bed of roses, so you take a hand-
ful and put them in ytur bosom. Here is a serpent
with a deadly fang, but it does not look like a ser-
pent, it looks like a beautiful singing bird, which
we carry home as a plaything for our children. It
is a bitter, zero day, but it does not look or feel so,
and, tempted by the false idea that it is a balmy,
June-like day, we venture out, unprotected, and
meet death in the frosty air. Would it be the

THE ENEMIES OF TOUTH.

121

a art you,"
t is good,
on God is
) sons and
•suing tho

he never
[ding than
3S to make

brave and

to appear-
Suppose
and all the
es between
Lit. Here is
look like a
ike a hand-
is a serpent
I like a ser-
bird, which
lildren. It
k or feel so,

is a balmy,
)tected, and
d it be the

sign of a wise, benevolent Providence thus to con-
fuse natural objects and signs of danger and make
the evil in the world appear good and the good
evil ? Nay, would it not be a proof that a malev-
olent deity ruled the world? God never thus
treats" us. Fire burns and we always know that
it will burn ; deadly serpents sting and we know
they will sting. Zero weather freezes and we
know it will always and everywhere freeze. God
never makes a bed of coals look like a bed of
roses, or a rattlesnake look like a humming bird.
But that is just what these miserable dramas of
successful villainy too often accomplish, by mak-
ing a murderer into a hero, and a thief into a
"bandit king." These plays, too, drag into the
full glow of the calcium light that which God in-
tended to stifle in the low, dark dens of vice, or to
hide in the fastnesses of the Western woods.

God has permitted evil in the world, but he has
compelled it for the most part to hide its head. It
goes abroad in the night not in the day-time. It
recruits its forces in dark cellars. It has its hid-
ing place in the outlaw's cave, where the light of
the sun never pierces, and, if we cannot extirpate
6

■BPia-i.^

122

DANGEB SIGNALS.

it, we should not parade it in the brightness of
day. One great demoralizer of our times is this
parade of evil. The latest murder is too often
displayed in head lines, the latest deed of benevo-
lence is found in nonpareil type at the foot of the
column. The last scandal is the talk at every
breakfast-table, the latest proof that Christ's king-
dom is extending over all the world is never men-
tioned. These plays of which I am speaking are
only exaggerated signs of this tendency of our
times, to drag out into the light the vicious and
degrading. If we cannot reform the villain," let
us at least compel him to hide away and not go
about dressed in better clothes than honest folks
can wear. A murderer's life is not happ^'. 'A
robber's home is not an earthly paradise, and it
never can be until God and Satan change places.
Satan would be very glad to have you think so.
He is always trying to make it out so. Don't
believe him, young people. He tells the young
tippler tljere is happiness in the wine cup. Ten
thousand drunkards give the lie to his words. He
makes the young girl think that a life bordering
on the indelicate and the fast is most pleasant.

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

128

ightness of
mes is this
3 too often
of benevo-
foot of the
ik at every
hrist's king-
never men-
peaking are
ency of our
vicious and
) villain, let
and not go
honest folks
i happy,
adise, and it
lange places,
'^ou think so.
,t so. Don't
Is the young
le cup. Ten
s words. He
ife bordering
lost pleasant.

Ten thousand old ball-room flirts know better.
He makes the boy believe that the fast young man
about town has the best time. Ten thousand
debauchees, worn out with lust before they are
fort} know, now, hQw they were deceived in
believing this. Vice does not contribute to the
enjoyment of life. Its place is not in a pleasant
parlor, with a happy wife and children, and with
pious mottoes over the fireplace. Wickedness
tends directly to rags, filth, squalor, misery, and
despair. «

If you really want to see the outcome of vil-
lainy do not look to see it represented by a Jesse
J.nmes troupe or expect to sec it depicted in their
gaudy posters. Go to the upper end of North
street in Boston or the slums of New York.
There is where you see the real results of disobe-
dience to the laws of God and man. In those rum-
soaked, blear-eyed, broken-down men; in those
brazen-faced, blasphemous women ; in those ragged,
dirty, half-naked children ; iu those filthy alleys ; in
those dilapidated tenements; in those windows
stuffed with hats and bundles of rags to keep out
the winter cold and snow ; in them you will find '

124

DANGER 8IOKALS.

the true picture of the outcome of evil, and it is
an outrage upon the morals of any community to
paint it otherwise. Hogarth deserves the thanks
of the Christian world for painting the steps in a
drunkard's life as he did ; for showing the gradual
descent from respectahility to loathsome and exe-
crable debauchery. If he had gone the other way
and represented a rake's progress as pleasant and
respectable, and on the whole quite enjoyable, he
■would deserve the sternest rebuke of every moral-
ist, but no more would he deserve it, than do
those actors who make the outlaw into the gentle-
man, and surround the thief with the blessings
which only an honest life can bring.

My young friends, I pray that none of your
lives ma- be wrecked on this rock which I have
pointed out. I feel indeed that you are in danger
of being led to call evil good and good evil, if
you look upon these false and silly representations.
Have nothing to do with them. In spite of you,
if you witness them, they will lower your moral
tone and corrupt the springs of your life. No
true manhood ever grew out of a boyhood ab-
sorbed in such scenes of vice and crime. Christ

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

125

il, and it is
mrauuity to
the thanks
le steps in a
the gradual
me and exe-
le other way
[)lea8ant and
jnjoyable, he
every moral-
it, than do
;o the gentle-
the blessings

lone of your
which I have
are in danger
good evil, if
presentations.
I spite of you,
jr your moral
^our life. No
I boyhood ab-
crime. Christ

will never take np his abode in company with
thieves and cut-throats. If you have been har-
boring one of these villains of late in your imugi-
nation, turn him out, I pray you, before he makes
you in spirit like himpelf. Hear the end of the
woe against those who call evil good and good
evil, for just this blotting out of moral distinctions
is what these plays accomplish. "Therefore as
the fire burneth up the stubble and the flame
consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rot-
tenness and their blossom shall go up as dust."
So, I fear, will it be with you, if you give place in
your heart to these demons who are trying to
crowd their way in ; your root of good principle
will be as rottenness, and the blossom of your
future promise will go up as dust. Then beware
of the low, play-house door. " Avoid it, pass not
by it, turn from it, and pass on,"

■C-o.

I; ,

CHAPTER VII.

THE GAMBLING DEN.

THB LITTLK HOR8K9 OF INTEBLAKKN. BA9E-BALL POOI^

Booms. Fbom the Prize Candy Bag to the Rou-

LETTB TABLE. THE BEANS IN A BOTrLE. THE

Soap Lottery. What the Boston Merchants

HAVE to say. THE BUTCHER BIRD OF THE COM-
MUNITY, now A MILLION DOLLA.W A YEAR CHANGE
HANDS. REVELATIONS OF AN OlD OAMBLEB. TH«
GAMBLER'S PREVAILING TRAm. CUPIDITY AND
LAZINESS. MIDAS' EARS. GOOD THINGS ALWAYS

COST. The Devil's Private Way.
Whoever visits Interlaken goes, of course,
to the Kursaal, which is one of the chief attrac
tions of the place. Here are beautiful gardens
and floNving fountains, placid little lakes, and
beds of swceUcented flowers, while, off m the
distance, towers, ever, the white-veiled Jungfrau
Here in the garden are little parties, sitting about
small tables, eating and drinking and smoking
and chatting, but the center of attraction i. the
corner where the petiU cheveam are racing about

-MA.-MoaM

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

-Ball Pooi/-
to the rou-
JorrLK. Thk
Merchants
df the com-

iTEAB CHANQB
miBLEB. THJS
DPIDITY AND
IING8 ALWAYS

, of course,
chief attrac-
;iful gardens
3 lakes, and
e, off in the
ed Jungfrau.
sitting about
and smoking
raction i"8 the
1 racing about

their miniature ring. Placards on the walls tell
you to go and see the " little horses," and when
you come to them, you find a row of little silver
steeds on a circular board which the o^'rc sets
in motion, while an eager crowd all ab>."* Lira,
young men and women, sedate fathers nd
matrons, grandfathers and grandmothers even,
are betting their francs on which of those little
silver images will spin the furthest on the smooth
board.

I think that scene is typical of gambling opera-
tions the world over. The little horses are always
racing, and racing away with the money of the
victims. The little horses are always under the
control of the gambler. He sets them spinning,
or stops them at his pleasure. Whoever loses, it
is never the gambler behind the horses. Who-
ever wins, it is sure to be, in the long run, the
gambler behind the horses. To tell you of some
of these little horses who are likely to run off
with your money, and good name, and good prin-
ciples, is my purpose in this chapter. You need
not go to the Kursaal of Interlaken to find them.
They are racing about in every city, and I fear

128

DANGER SIGNALS.

that on them some of you have already taken
your first ride in the direction of the bottomless
pit. A short time since there were over forty
well-known faro houses in Boston, whose names
have been given in one of our daily papers, where
the proprietors and the trustees and the owners
of the buildings were known. Everybody that
looked into the matter knew where they were
except the city authorities, whose duty it was to
shut them up.

But I am hot so much afraid of these notorious
gambling dens as I am of the many pool-rooms,
and poker-rooms, and billiard saloons, where the
little horses are always racing, and tempting you
to a ride to death with them. I am told that in
three pool-rooms of Boston in the year 1884, at
least one million dollars changed hands, mostly
during the base-ball season. Do you know what
that means? It does not mean that our capital-
ists, our solid men of business, who have money
to spare, risk and lose their money on the all-
engrossing question, whether the Bostons will
beat the Providence nine or not, or whether Gal-
vin will make a run, or Burdock will score on t^e

idy taken
)ottomles8
)ver forty
Dse names
era, 'vhere
he owners
body that
they were
r it was to

3 notorious
lool-rooms,
where the
npting you
)ld that in
ar 1884, at
ids, mostly
know what
our capital-
lave money
on the all-
ostons will
whether Gal-
score on t'le

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

129

seventh inning of the league game. It would be
bad enough if such men, who had money to risk,
lost it ; but these base-ball pool-rooms mean that
our clerks and school boys and artisans, who have
no money to spare, are taking losing rides on these
little silver horses. Tlie great bulk of that mil-
lion dollars, lost last year, came from just this
class. You see in the rum-shop virindows this pla-
card in election times : " Election returns received
here every hour " ; and when the base-ball season
commences, we see in those same windows : " Base-
ball returns received here after each inning."
Look out for those places, boys 1 The little silver
horses are waiting in there to give you a swift
ride to destruction. It is a shame that our
national game, about which there is so much that
is truly admirable in skill and athletic exercise,
should be prostituted to fill a gambler's till.

Then there are lotteries in all forms and shapes.
I wish I might open them to your view in their
real character, and write over the door of every
one of them : " Beware, beware ! The little horses
within here seem to be of silver, but it is silver
wrung in ten cent pieces from the pockets of the
6*

180

DANGER SIGNALS.

poor man, and every one that takes a ride on them
will be nearer the gates of destruction than when
he started." Says one of the Judges of the
supreme court of Kentucky, as quoted by Anthony
Comstock : " Lottery gambling is the worst spe-
cies of gaming, because it brings adroitness, cun-
ning, experience, and skill, to contend against
ignorance, folly, distress, and desperation. Every
new loss is an inducement to a new adventure ;
and, filled with vain hope of recovering what is
lost, the unthinking victim is led on, from step to
step, till he finds it impossible to regain his
ground, and he gradually sinks into a miserable
outcast, or, by a bold and still more guilty effort,
plunges at once into that gulf where he hopes for
protection from the stings of conscience, a refuge
from the reproaches of the world, and oblivion
from existence." ^ : ^.

It woul 1 b<! amusing, were it not so sad, to
observe iii' n'^enuity of the Devil in offering
our young , •;)1>j a ride on one of the little silver
horses of chance. Here is that noble institution,
the church fair. Of course it is all right, the
boy or girl tliinks, to attend a church fair, and

on tliem
m when

of the
\nthony
)r3t spe-
eds, cuii-

against
. Every
venture ;
r what is
m step to
egain his
miserable
,lty effort,
hopes for
), a refuge
1 oblivion

so sad, to
n offering
little silver
institution,
right, the
h fair, and

THIS ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

181

here in the fair is a guess-cake, or a grab-bag, or
Pandora's box, or Fortune's well, or some chance
to invest a dime or a quarter, with the chance of
drawing an unknown prize. If there is anything
to be reprobated or despised, it is just this species
of gambling.

We do not wonder when we see the gambler's
table and the rum-shop side by side. They are
congenial companions. But when the gambler's
tools and methods are brought into the house of
God for the ostensible purpose of sui)porting
public worship, or some charitable institution, it is
time for every Christian man to repeat his Mas-
ter's words : " My house shall be called the house
of prayer : but ye have made it a den of thieves."
The church or the charity which cannot live with-
out grab-bags and guess-cakes, had a thousand
times better die.

But the Evil One uses still subtler means than
the church fair, to incite the love for gaming.
Here is the little five-year-old, who looks with
longing eyes at the tempting candy, or toothsome
pop-corn in the shop window. He begs a couple
of pennies of papa or mamma, and makes his first

s —

132

DANGER SIGNALS.

investment in a prize candy bag, or pop-corn pack-
age. He takes hia first ride on the silver horse.
The notion is first started in his little head, that
perhaps he can get something for nothing, which
is the idea at the root of all gambling.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, we are told,
and soap is essential to cleanliness, and yet, even
V ith this most unpromising article, the gambler
found a way, a year or two ago, to make money.

"The plan is," says Mr. Comstock, in his
"Traps for the Young"; "in order to induce
people to buy their soap, to take advantage of the
gambling propensities of the day, and to adver-
tise a lottery or game of chance in connection
with the soap business. They wrap each cake of
soap with a printed wrapper. For twenty wrap-
pers thus brought back, they trade a ticket bear-
ing a number, and this number represents a share
or interest in a distribution of presents at some
future date. Practically these schemes are sops
thrown to servant girls to encourage extravagance
and dishonesty. There are wastes and peculations
enough in the kitchen without offering ' presents,'
'rewards,' or 'prizes' iu this line. There are

':iMlM«U»'>.->«ttAtw-.

timw'* i C Mk**»»

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTII.

133

•n pack-
ir horse,
ad, that
J, which

ire told,
et, even
gamhler
money.
:, in his
) induce
se of the
to adver-
)nnectiou
h cake of
nty wrap-
sket bear-
its a share
) at some
s are sops
iravagance
)eculation8
' pr<j8ent8,'
There are

enough supplies passed out to poor relations to
satisfy every housekeeper, as it is, and there is no
necessity for chromos or prizes in this department.
These devices practically say to Biddy, 'The
more soap used, wasted, or otherwise disposed of,
of this kind, the more tickets in the distribution.'
Do thinking men and women watit a lottery
started in their kitchen ? " There is another
means of whipping the Devil around the stump,
resorted to very frequently, but still, under the
thin disguise of an exercise of judgment, I can
see one of the little horses waitinf^ for victims who
shall mount and ride. Some merchant with an
unsalable stock will put, perhaps, a bottle of
beans in his window, and give to any one, who
buys a suit of his clothes or a pound of his tea or
coffee, a prize, if he guesses the right number of
beans. As this affords very little opjiortunity for
judgment, but is purely a matter of guess work,
it is nothing more nor less than a disguised lottery.
I only speak of these various cheats to remind
you that the cloven foot may lurk under very
innocent looking forms, but that the spirit of the
thing, from the baby's prize candy package to the

134

DAKOEB SIGNALS.

gambling hell of Monaco, is always the same. But
I have not, as you know, simply my own wisdom
or experience to give you in this matter. A score
of Boston merchants have placed this evil high
up in the list of your enemies. One of them,
whom I well know, in whose heart is a warm spot
for young men, writes: "Among the dangerous
places to be avoided is the billiard table. I knew
a young man, some years since doing business in
Boston, whose prospects were as briglit as those of
any young man I ever saw, whose first step in t' 3
downward path was billiard playing. I used to see
him frequently at the door of the billiard stUoon.
Soon he neglected his business, and prosperous
business soon left him, he contracted other bad
habits, failed, and died, a miserable wreck, before
he was forty years old. To be avoided is the
smoking car, and p ving cards in the cars, as well
as elsewhere. No careful merchant would employ
a young man who has such habits."

Says another : " Poker is a fascinating game
and many a young man quiets conscience by mak-
ing the limit one cent or half a dime, but the love
for the game continues, uo matter how small the

»T .

.<»faawta»Mt*MW<w.»»C'iii .'n i mm miuwmv m im t t tii

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

me. But
J wisdom
A score
evil high
of them,
ravm spot
langerous
I knew
usiness in
IS those of
itep in t^ 3
used to see
rd saloon,
prosperous
other bad
eck, before
ied is the
ars, as well
old employ

iting game
ice by raak-
)ut the love
w small the

sk."

risK. ■ Another prominent merchant writes you :
" The desire for the excitement and possible gains
of the gambling saloon is a very great danger,
and a most painful personal experience with a
young man, formerly in the employ of the firm of
which I am a member, prompts me to suggest a
temptation which I fear is not appreciated and
spoken against as it should be. I refer to the
almost universal pastime of card-playing as prac-
ticed in the smoking-cars, both on long and short
trains. As you are aware, thousands of young
men use these trains in coming to and going from
the city every day. The smoking-car is furnished
with card-tables, and actual gambling is not an
unheard-of experience. The young man to whom
I have referred came into our employ from a
Christian home, and had our confidence in a large
degree. He boarded with his parents seven miles
out of the city. After a time we noticed a change,
and later it proved that he had been stealing, had
then taken nearly a thousand dollars. His own
explanation was that the desire for gambling was
developed in the smoking-car and from that he
went to the saloon and became a thief that he

186

DAKOER SIGNALS.

■,ii

Fi 1

?'U

might indulge the passion which had grown from
such small beginnings."

Another of your friends sends you this terse
message : " Gambling, an inordinate desire to
be rich, lotteries, pool-rooms, stocks, and other
speculations, are fatal fascinations. The example
of a very few successful speculators has lured
hundreds of thousands to disgrace and ruin."
Another large merchant for whom, very likely,
some of you may work, writes : " I regard pool-
rooms as most dangerous to the young, and have
had to fight them on account of their influence
on young men, sf^rae of them mere boys, in ray
own employ. There is a fascination about games
of chance, hard to account for by those who have
no taste for such things, and their influence is
most pernicious." I will quote to you the wise
words of only one more of your friends in this
connection. " In these days of money kings and
fabulous riches, young men become discontented
with the slow way of getting a competence, and
their discontent often develops into a mania for
lottery tickets. I have known young men, strug-
gling in business, with chances of success waiting

own from

this terse
desire to
and other
le example
has lured
aud ruin."
ery likely,
Bgard pool- '
g, and have
r influence
)oys, in my
ibout games
33 who have
influence is
)U the wise
snds in this
y kings and
iiscontented
petence, and
a mania for
[ men, strug-
jcess waiting

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTU.

187

on close application, who have become unsettled
by this feverish anxiety for a sudden impetus.
They have lived on expectation from week to
week, until ' unsuccessful in business,' is written
over their doors."

And now, as plainly as I can, let me place
before you my special reasons for waving this
danger signal. In the first place, to put the mat-
ter Upon the k vv^est grounds, you are sure to be
fleeced, if you have any dealings with the profes-
sionp.l gambler. The fly, stepping daintily into
the spider's web, has just as much chance of
coming out unhurt, as you have, when you enter
the gambling den. The lamb, venturing into the
lion's jungle, is as safe as you are, when you open
the door of the pool-room. The lion and the
lamb may lie down peacefully together, but, it is
a very old witticism that tells us which will
occupy the interior apartment. There is a very
savage bird that is not uncommon hereabout in
winter, called the shriek or butcher bird. It
pounces upon little, unoffending members of the
feathered tribe, scares the canaries behind our
windows, devours all the victims it can, and is

188

DANGER SIGNALS.

said to spit tlio rest upon the spike of some thorn
tree. I do not know any bird of the air that the
professional gambler so much resembles, as the
butcher bird. He dashes even into the family
circle, as the shriek dashes at the glass to secure
the canary. Is it best then for the other birds to
enter his very nest, and invite him to strike his
talons into them? I do not say that you may
never win a dollar in a pool-room, or a prize in a
lottery. But I do say, that it is even worse for
you if you win, than if you lose. I should pray
that if you ever went into the gambler's den, you
might lose every time. It is better to lose a few
feathers, if that will show you the true nature of
your enemy, than to be lured on until he can
drive his claws into your heart.

An old gambler, wlio signs himself C. D. in the
Boston papers, and for whose identity the gamb-
ling fraternity of Boston have offered to give one
thousand dollars, says, virtually, that he has been
through it all, has been a recognized leader among
the gamblers, and he knows that there is no honor
among this class of thieves. They will not hesi-
tate to swindle any one whom they can swindle

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

189

le thorn
that the
, as the
! family

secure
hinls to
^rikc his
row may
rize in a
^orse for
uld pray
den, you
030 a few
nature of

1 he can

D. in the
he gamb-
> give one
has been
ler among
I no honor
not hesi-
,n swindle

safely. He says that in each of two pool-rooms
one thousand one dollar base-ball combination
pt)ol tickets are sold everi/ day of the base-ball
season. Beside this the manager has control ot
the telephone and solicits bets of two dollars and
fifty cents each on the possibility of a score being
made in each inning as played. A, for instance,
bets two dollars and fifty cents that no score will
be made in the first inning of the Boston and
Providence game. B accepts the bet, and they de-
posit five dollars in the hands of the management,
who, for their commission hold back fifty cents.
Their profits from these commissions alone average
fifty or seventy five dollars per day. Moreover,
having control of the telephone, they can learu
before their victims the results of each inning,
thus putting their confederates up to bet always
on the winning side. Has the fly any more chance
in the spider's house than you have in tjie gamb-
ler's house ? We can form some estimate of the
number of victims of this evil when we remember
what Mr. Conistock tells us, that in one office of
the Louisiana lottery in New York City, which
hm been advertised in many papers, calliug them-

140

DANGER SIGNALS.

selves resi-ectablo, throughout the country, the
average receipts for twenty days prior to a raid
which ho made upon them, were five thousand
one hundred and seventy-six dollars per day by
actual count, while tlio average daily orders and
letters received were one thousand seven hundred
and fifty. " I saw, at one time,"' he says, "deliv-
ered to one clerk, from this office, at tlie New
York post-oflice, over five hundred and fifty reg-
istered letters. The annual income of this com-
pany alone, according to their own showing is
four million dollars."

How many little birds killed and spitted by this
detestable shriek do these thousands of letters indi-
cate ? But I would put this matter upon higher
ground. If it was only a matter of your losing
a few dollars or a few hundred dollars it would
not be worth while perhaps to take the time to
utter this warning. But ah I character is involved
in this loss. You can win back the money you
lose by persistent toil, or fortunate business invest-
ments, perhaps, but you cannot win back the
character you lose so easily.

Character is a plant of slow growth, and he

■yjwB » jW! " m^

and he

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

141

who hacks at this tree destroys what years cannot
replace. Says the reformed gambler, whom I
have before quoted: "Gambling, being illegiti-
mate, and ostracized by society, ii only adopted
as a business by men dead to a moral sense of
right and wrong. A careful analysis of my own
case and that of my colleagues has confirmed me
in the belief that the two chief components
which go to make up the profeBsional gambler are
cupidity and laziness." These also, I believe, are
the motives which lead the foolish flies to venture
within the gambler's web, — cupidity and laziness.
A desire to get something for nothing, a desire
for an easy life, for a soft cushion, for a sinecure
office, for a fat place, with little work about it.
This is the demoralizing spirit which honeycombs
character, which eats the pith out of every manly
life, which fills the policy rooms, and lines the
pockets of the gambler. How many of our young
men are drifting about from place to pla y look-
ing for the easy spot ; dissatisfied wita this,
because the work is hard, and with that, because
the hours are long, and with the other place
because the pay is small, unwilling to do their

142

DANGER SIGKAL8.

honest best because of some fancied grievance of
work or pay ; unwilling to do a stroke of work
that they can live without doing, always waiting,
like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, that
shall furnish a snug berth and demand no equiva-
lent of muscle or skill or brain. That is the
gambler's s drit, whether you ever risked a cent
or handled a cue in your life. That is the
spirit which demoralizes and degrades, and opens
the door at last of every gambling hell. Cupidity
and laziness are the two elements of the gam-
bler's character. Sweep them away, and our
gambling dens would be closed to-morrow.
Beware of tliem both. They are soul poisoners.
Whenever you are tempted to wish for money
without wurkinjr for it, think of the story of
Midas. That was just what he desired, you
know, tnd the gods granted his request, and
everything that he touched turned into gold. But
he found this exceedingly inconvenient, for even
his food turned into the bright, yellow metal, and
he could not eat it. Miilis, moreover, had the
ears of an ass given him by the gods. He con-
trived to conceal them under his Phrygian cap for

' M * ' "- > i. ^ H-'^ i .. '

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

143

3vance of
of work
1 waiting,
I up, that
.0 equiva-
at is the
ed a cent
at is the
ind opens
Cupidity
the gam-
and our
;o-morrow.
poisoners.
For money
3 story of
sired, you
^uest, and
gold. But
t, for even
metal, and
3r, had the
1. He con-
;ian cap for

a time, but the servant who cut his hair discovered
them. The secret so much troubled him, for he
could confide it to no human being, that he dug a
hole in the ground and whispered into it, " King
Midas has ass's ears." He then filled up the hole
and felt relieved, for he thought the secret was
buried. But on the same spot a reed grew which,
as it waved in the wind, whispered his secret,
" King Midas has ass's ears," and so betrayed him
again. Look close enough and you will find that
all chose who seek for money without working for
it have the same deformity. Scan the crowds in
the gambling den. They are all alike in this
respect. They all have ass's ears. No Plirygian
cap can conceal them. Their laziness, too, is as
great as their cupidity. "The down-right lazy
man," says Geikie, " is commonly as mean as he is
shiftless, willing to take without giving any equiv-
alent ; if he must work he does as little as posb^"-
ble ; he talks longer about doing, than it takes
others to act. His life might be spent in the
circumlocution office, for it is a long- study of
' how not to do it.' As Gibbon puts it, ' He well
remembers, he has a salary to receive and only

-^^''^''t^fflB^r""

i i

J '

i«i

DANGER SIGNALS.

forgets that he has a duty to perform.' " " In
the way of writing," says Carlyle, "no great thing
was ever or will ever be done with ease, but with
difficulty. Is it with ease that a man shall do hit
best in any shape ? Not so. Goethe tells us he
' had nothing sent him in his sleep, no page of his
but he know well where it came from.' "

Would that I could impress upon you, my
young friends, this one truth : " Good things
always cost.!' For if, in all the fullness of its
meaning, this one thing could be made plain,
no one of you would ever darken the door of a
gambling saloon again. " Good things always cost."
I do not mean to say that money was never won
at a roulette table or from a faro bank or a lottery
wheel. It has been thus won, but money thus
won was never a good thing. I do not mean to
pay that politicjil honor was never bestowed where
it was not deserved or earned. It has been thus
bestowed, but such honor was never a good thing.
" Great men are hard-working men," it has been
well said. "Genius means a great capacity for
work. Genius will work. The m§n eminent iu
all the noble walks of life have been, and are now,

' I ;

1.'" "In
reat thing
but with
ball do hia
3II8 us he
)age of his

L you, my
od things
less of its
lade plain,
door of a
ways cost."
never won
Df a lottery
Qoney thus
3t mean to
Dwed where
8 been thus
good thing,
it has been
japacity for
eminent in
ind are now,

THE ENEMiaS OF YOUTH.

145

great workers. They are trained to endure, and,
when occasion requires, can, and do, labor tremen-
dously. Are you dazzled by the lives of generals,
senators, millionaires, or great men of letters?
Consider the cross,^ ere looking at the crown. It
is a grand thing to win the crown. Try for it.
Try with all the manhood there is in you. You
are worth little if you do not make the trial. Let
no word of mine discourage you. But try no
short cuts. Count the cost and then do valiant
battle. Determine to win all these good things but
win them legitimately." This weakening of the
moral fibre resulting from cupidity and laziness,
fostered by the gambling den, works out its legit-
imate results in defalcation, forgery, embezzle-
ment. The papers are full of stories of dreadful
falls from high places. Our ears are stunned and
our hearts grow sick, but it is the gambling spirit
of the age that will account for every one of them.
"Pool-rooms are the most demoralizing of all
kinds of gambliAg," says the old gamester I have
already quoted. "The defalcations, the direct
cause of pool gambling, are usually first offences,
and are condoned without publicity, but justice
7

mj^j.n ' j » .ii|» ww w »

I f

146

DANOBB SIGNALS.

overtakes the thief at last. Every pool gambler
knows his victims, and in the slang of the trade
says, ' So and so will come a " header " for " dip-
ping " too often in the well.' I know a case in
point. There was a young fellow in one of our
large crockery houses whose fall was predicted in
a pool-room two weeks before it occurred" I
have in my possession the account of scores, who,
in the expressive language of the gambler, have
come just such headers from decency, respectabil-
ity and honor, to shame and degradation and ever-
lasting contempt. And what is the meaning of
that large American colony in Canada except that
its members gambled too* long in wheat or flour
or bank stocks or mining shares, until at last the
long embezzlement came to light, and they had
to flee their country, leaving only a dishonored
name behind.

Am I writing to any one who has taken the
first step on this road, who has begun with penny
ante, or taken a ten cent play in a policy shop, or
a single dollar combination in a base-ball pool?
Let me say io you, most solemnly, that, at the end
of this road is the county jail or the state's prison,

^'%.

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

147

!)1 gambler
' the trade
" for « dip-
w a case ia
one of our
redicted in
jurred " I
jcores, who,
mbler, have
respectabil-
)n and ever-
meaning of
except that
sat or floiir
1 at last the
nd they had
k dishonored

IS taken the
1 with penny
)licy shop, or
je-ball pool?
it, at the end
state's prison,

with grated windows and bolted doors. At the
end is sorrow and shame and a blasted life. The
road which you have begun to travel is strewn
with the carcasses of men who are dead while
they live, dead to everything that is good, to their
families, their homes, their loves, their hopes.
This road is worn smooth by the feet of forgers,
defaulters, and thieves. Let me put up a sign-
board which all may read as they come in their
life's journey to this by-path which leads to the
gambling den.

On this sign-board shall be printed in large
letters,

THE DEVIL'S PRIVATE WAY,

DANGEROUS PASSING.

Whoever takes this s-oad, does so at j
his own risk.

.:i^ | f^,^i«a!tAiA«a^vs:WM■.Trtv^-«f^^.|lW■-l^^prtlMa^t

! i!

1:1'

CHAPTER Vm.

the lbpeb op impuritt.

The Dbeadkd Lepbb of Ancient Times. The more
Loathsome Leper of Modern Times. What the
Merchants Think of Him. Insanity or Suicide.
The Three Doors by which this Lbpeb Enters
the Heart. Imagination-Door. Dr. Holland's
Words ' op Wisdom. Eye-Door and EAB-Dooa A
Word to Younq Women. Keep Safe the Jewel.
Balls and Skating Rinks. A Dancing-Master's
Opinion. Out-Door Sports. The Unspeakable
Turk. The Leper's End.

In some respects the subject which forms the
caption of this chapter is the most difficult of all
to treat. It is seldom alluded to in public, the
literature of the subject is very scanty, and every
writer hesitates to speak of that of which, never-
theless, his conscience tells him he ought to speak,
when writing upon such a subject as the Enemies
of Youth.

Of all the diseases that afflicted the ancient
world leprosy was the most dreadful and the most
148

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

149

), The mors
i. What thk
r OB Suicide.
jtpss Enters

IB. HotXAND'S

Eab-Doob. a
'E THE Jewel.

[CINQ-MASTER'S

Unspeakable

jh forms the
lifficult of all
^n public, the
ty, and every
which, never-
light to speak,
I the Enemies

i the ancient
. and the most

dreaded. The leper was loathed and driven out
from all companionship, except with those who
were diseased like himself. If he ever entered
the synagogue he was railed in from the rest of
the congregation and must enter before and depart
after the rest of the worshipers. As the disease
increased in violence he was more and more iso-
lated. When he approached a fellow creature the
law obliged him to throw dust in the air, to cover
his mouth with his hand, and cry " unclean,
unclean." The utmost care was taken to detect
the presence of the disease, for its approach was
insidious ; and washings and cleansings and exam-
inations, minute and well-nigh innumerable, were
required. If the Jew found that his nearest
friend, his brother, his wife, his child, was a leper,
he had to leave him to his lonely life of separation
and death. The disease began its work very
slowly, it might exist for months and hardly be
known, a slight discoloration, a little scab, was all
that was noticed, but, by and by, it spread with
terrible rapidity, and resulted at last in the com-
plete corruption and dropping away of a hand
or foot or arm, until at last death came to the
slow relief of the sufferer.

'\\

! '' '•

1 t! I

i: I

. i;

li \

150

DANGER SIGNALS.

Do j'ou wonder that the Jews feared the leper ?
Do you wonder that strict laws prevented the
spread of the contagion ? Leprosy, the physical
disease in its most dreaded forms, has been about
stamped out of the modern world, but there is a
moral leprosy which is more loathsome and more
deadly, which walks our streets and enters our
homes, alasl which creeps into our hearts. In-
stead of being afraid of it, we laugh at it, we treat
it as a joke, we invite the leper to our firesides.
He is found everywhere. He dwells in the brown-
stone mansion, and in the filthy cellar. He
sleeps on a bed of down sometimes, and sometimes
on a heap of rags. He walks our streets, he rides
in our horse-cars. He goes to school with our
boys and girls, and his contact is as contagious
and deadly as the leper of Judea. It is not at
hap-hazard that I call this evil spirit of impurity
a leper. If I were able I should not dare to lift
the veil which hides this leper from the gaze of
men. If some omniscient being should go up and
down these streets, sprinkling with blood the doors
where this leper had entered, what thresholds
would be bloodless here ?

\ :

''■ ^j_

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

151

the leper ?
irented the
he physical
been about
1 there is a
5 and more
enters our
liearts. In-
it, we treat
ur firesides.
1 the brown*
cellar. He
i sometimes
ets, he rides
ol with our
s contagious
[t is not at
of impurity
dare to lift
the gaze of
Id go up and
jod the doors
,t thresholds

I have received concerning this evil of sensual-
ity many warnings from your friends, the business
men, young people, which I am glad to give you

right here.

One of them writes : " If you ask what I think
is the most dangerous or seductive influence, in
city life especially, 1 should say licentiousness."

Another one rehearses the story, only one
among ten thousand it is sad to think, of a young
man with bright hopes who was first led away by
the lustful attractions of promiscuous balls, until
he fell to the depths of infamy, and adds: " The
superintendent of one -of our large railways in
Massachusetts told me that for no one cause did
he so quickly discharge an employe as for being
seen with disreputable women ; for, looking at it
from the business, railroad-man's standpoint,
merely, such connection surely leads to extrava-
gance and defalcation."

Another, who is always on the lookout for some
chance to help the boys and girls of Boston, writes :
"You put 'rum' first in your list of 'enemies,'
and I have always done so in my thinking. But
I fear there is another evil, which lurks more in

■/■i^a*MBtovaa^iig^i^agta»'; S a»fc t. . irt i w a fei i W ia*''

"■Pr.'.f i^j.' A'H ' -"*' ,f w— ^ '. ' *

152

DANGER SIGNALS.

the dark, and which is working nearly as much
destruction. I refer to licentiousness. I helieve
it is on the increase. Our young men and women
are not warned as they should be, it is such a deli-
cate matter to speak about."

Another writes these strong words: "Islu.iild
say that the most dangerous and seductive of all
evils is licentiousness, tlio damning sin, the first
poison of the race, starting in the garden, and,
with crushing force, descending from generation
to generation, until, today, its eflPect is felt in
every homo. It is sending more young men to
ruin than all other influences combined. It is not
so open as intemperance and there is its danger,
but if you look for it you will see its marks in the
pale clieek and wan features of our boys and girls
in our homes. Its very secrecy is its danger. Its
victims are filling premature graves, or, what is
worse, our houses for the insane. I believe I am
justified in saying that thousands of new-made
graves are dug yearly to take in the young vic-
tims of this cursed vice whose cause of death is
unsuspected. Oh, for some power to show to the
young the deadly poison of this growing vice ! "

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

168

Says another of your friends, speaking of this
same evil : " This vice not only ruins the natural
body, but impairs the spiritual also. We can
form no conception of its extent for H is known
only to the victim and Him who knows all things.
I speak very stronglj' on this point, for an inci-
dent comes to my mind of a young man of Boston
who took his life by shooting himself some thirty
years ago. Ho was supposed to be of unblemished
character, and probably his relatives and friends
knew nothing to the contrary, but I was on the
jury of inquest and a letter was found on his
person saying that one of two things was before
him — insanity or suicide, therefore he chose the
latter, as the vice he had contracted was too
Btrong for him to conquer. No one can tell what
he must have passed through before he committed
the deed. The contents of that letter have never
been effaced from my memory." I can say
"amen" with all my heart to thia friend's closing
words: "'Would that every young person, aduicted
to this evil, could be warned of the results of such
debasing vice."

T will quote from only one more of the scores of
7«

I »» - ' B »n . 1 . r > ■ . ^1^ ' t ' -.■. ' ,'■■ ' '' ■ ' ■* ' V > ,".;" T* ^?^ ' "' "^t"

154

DANOEB SIGNALS.

letters wliich refer to this leper of impurity. Says
this gentleman : " My observation leads me to
fear chiefly the impure literature of the day and
the impure companion, who teach the practices
that sap the young life at its first springing. I
tell my boys, ' If you will promise your father and
see to it that your mouth and hand are kept pure
until you are twenty-one, I will promise you
health, happiness, and usefulness, and all the good
things you will then care to ask for.' " Here are
some good rules which he adds: "Let the boy
read no book and look at no picture he would not
show his mother or sister. Let him drink nothing
which ho would not ask his mother to sweeten.
Instead of the low theater, the skating rink, and
ball-room, let him organize a home orchestra, in
which sister shall play the piano, brother the
volin, and himself the flute, while baby disarranges
the mu';ic for them all. In this way is safety."

But I hardly need to multiply these warnings
for you are all aware that such a leper as I have de-
scribed is abroad in the land. I need not make that
point any plainer. Alas ! he is too well known to
some of you. But if I cau but tell you of some of

""'<ftii'^'iiifiTSikA'^'Hif''-"irfciiii"-

iVrTifritf-hgii-i^/ift^fclrt'iM

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

.m-

the doors by which he will enter your hearts, and
thus put you on your guard, I should be doing
you a real service. If any one could have warned
the Jewish youth of old of the leper in the way,
giving him sorao infallible rule by which he might
tell of his approach, that secret would have
been of value incalculable to him. If one could
have said to him, "Look outl there, there, through
that door, by that alley-way, you will come in
contact with the leper," how he would have
blocked up and guarded that door or pathway,
lest there he should contract the terrible contagion.
If I can tell you of the three doors by which this
leper, Impurity, will be most likely to enter your
heart, will, you not block them up against his
entrance and forever guard them well? These
three doors are Imagination-door, Eye-door, and
Ear-door. Guard these three entrances to your
soul, and the enemy can never take its citadel.

Of all these doors, I think Imagination-door
most often admits the Leper of Impurity. No
one on earth sees this leper when he knocks at
the door of the imagination, no one on earth
notices when it is opened, a crack at first and then

DANQEU SIGi^AXS.

flung wide open to the unclean guest, but the
devils in hell exult, for they know that he who
opens the door of his heart to such a guest is fast
on the \Tay to join their ranks. Let us give heed,
just hero, to the words of Dr. J. G. Holland, they
are so true and appropriate to this subject.

"Oh, if this imaginary world of sin could be
unveiled," he says, "this world into which the
multitude go unknown and unsuspected, how
would it be red with the blush of shame 1 This
world of se^se, built by the imagination, how fair
and foul it is I Like a fairy island in the sea of
life it smiles in sunlight and sleeps in green,
known of the world, not by communion of knowl-
edge but by personal, secret discovery! The
waves of every ocean kiss its feet. The airs of
every clime play among its trees and tire with the
voluptuous music which they bear. Flowers bend
idly to the fall of fountains, and beautiful forms
are wreathing their white arms and calling for
companionship. Out toward this charmed isk nd
by day and by night a million shallops push, un-
seen of each other and of the world of real life
they leave behind. The single sailors never meet

THE EITEMIES OF YOUTH,

167

each other, they thread the same paths unknown
to each other; they come back and no one asks
them where they have been. If God's light could
shine upon this crowded sea and discover the
secrets of the island which it invests, what shame-
ful retreats and encounters should we witness.
Fathers, mothers, maidens, men, — children even,
whom we have deemed as pure as snow, — flying
with guilty eyes and white lips to hide themselves
from a great disgrace. There is vice enough in
the world of actual life and it is there that we
look for it ; but there is more in that other world
of imagination which we do not see, — vice that
poisons, vice that kills, vice that makes whited
sepulchers of temples that are deemed pure, even
by multitudes of their tenants."

Beware of Imagination-door which this leper
so often uses to make his entrance into your soul.
Lock up Eye-door and Ear-door also. I have tried
to put you on your guard in other chapters against
bad papers, pictures, books, and evil companions,
with their dirty story and smutty joke, but, boys
and girls, you must lock these doora from the
imide. When the burglar comes to your house by

1r,3f««J'?ST-:'s<r',»ra;<S"?l''-

158

DANOEB SIGNALS,

night, it makes very little ditference how many
bars and bolts there are on the outside ; if there
is no bolt on the inside, he can withdraw thom
all and walk in at his pleasure and roh the
house. All that one can do by words of warning,
all that your parents and teachers can do by their
loving advice, is to lock the door from the outside ;
it remains for you to turn the key and drop the
bolt of a firm, resolute, pure purpose, which shall
keep out all these demons from the pit. I often
think, almost with a shudder, of the boy who goes
out from his father's house into the impurity of
the street and the school. He has been most care-
fully reared, every evil thing has been kept beyond
his reach, he has been loved and guarded and
prayed for, but j'-et one half hour with the bad
companion, one glance at the lewd picture, and the
careful training of years is forgotten, and the
leper, entering tlirough Eye-door or Ear-door, has
taken up his abode in that pure young soul and
only too ready to open the door over and over
again to his loathsome companions, until, at last,
little is left but corruption and death in that
heart which left the father's house white and
unsullied.

^Uatmllm I mi ni nl 11 i»i I

- ;

lany
here
hom

the

•

their

dde;

) the
shall

)ften

goes

tyof
care-

yond
and

bad

dthe

the

, has

nd i 1

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

169

Young friends, God has put your manhood, wo-
manhood, and purity, in your own keeping. You
can barter them away for smut, you can soil them
with an indelible staia if you will, or you can pre-
serve them unsullied, as your best heritage and chief
glory. Your friends cannot preserve them for you,
they can only give advice ; your pastor can only
warn you. You, yourself, must lock the door, if
you would keep your enemies out. Upon you
alone will it depend whether you rise to the
company of angels or sink to the level of the
devils. I wish that I might say an earnest word,
right hei'e, to the ^irls and young women who shall
read this chapteu This subject concerns you
more vitally, perhaps, than any one class.

If you had one jewel among your possessions
that was worth a thousand times more than all the
rest of your treasures put together, would you be
careless of that jewel ? Would you leave it lying
about ill a public place for every chance passer-
by to pick up and make off with if ho chose?
Would you see how near you could come to drop-
ping it into some dark cess-pool without actually
letting it fall? Would you carelessly throw it

ii'i i iii

ijl-*""??'*?!'?'

DANOBn SIGNALS.

away from you some dark night, on the chance
that you could find it again in the morning? You
have such a jewel, a treasure that is worth to you
a thousand Kohinoors, and yet I see some of you
trifling with it, as though it was a worthless pebble,
which you might retain or throw away at your
pleasure. Your personal purity, unsullied, immac-
ulate, unsuspected, — that is your jewel. You are
playing with it, holding it very near the edge of the
moral cess-pool, throwing it away, perhaps, for a
little, thinking you can pick it up at your pleasure.
Oh 1 let me tell you how priceless is your treasure,
let me warn you of the awful risk you run.

The snow once sullied can never be whitened,
the lily once crushed and withered can never be
restored to what it was, the maiden soul once
befouled can never regain its freshness of purity.
To my sorrow and shame I see some young girls
whose only thought seems to be of the young men.
On the street, in the horse-cars, in the Sunday-
school, in the prayer-meeting, they are never happy
unless they are whispering and making eyes at
some young man. They are the laughing-stock of
the thoughtless, and they make the judicious

Iw i a tl to iiii i iit i i i rf I lilii r i m ii

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

161

le chance
ig? You
th to you
ae of you
!ss pebble,
T at your
1(1, immac-
You are
ige of the
laps, for a
• pleasure,
'treasure,
in.
whitened,

never be
30ul once
of purity,
lung girls
mng men.
e Sunday-
ver happy
g eyes at
g-stock of

judicious

grieve, and yet they never seem to suspect their
folly or see themselves as others see them. Every
social gathering, every meeting of prayer, every
promenade on the street, every visit to the public
library, is only an excuse for continued flirtation ;
the mind becomes unstrung and is filled with light
ard trifling fancies, the imagination is perverted,
and the will is weakened for any useful efibrt.
Books lose their relish, housework becomes an
unbearable drudgery, and the image of that young
man is seen on the page of every book, sewn into
the garment with every uneven stitch, and is
worked into every slovenly piece of housework
which the giddy girl ia obliged to do. I am not
speaking now of true love, for which this frivolous
passion which borders on the indelicate is often
mistaken. There is as much difference between
true lovers and mere flirts, as there is between the
quiet, steady, cheerful fire on the family hearth-
stone, and the changeable, deceptive flicker which
glows on the rotten stump in the woods at night.
True love is holy and is one of the handmaidens
of God. The mere flirt, male or female, is the
servant of Satan. If you could know, young

«f

162

DANGER SIQNALS.

ladies, what these same young men, whom you
believe are so devoted to you, really think oC the
forward, bold, young woman, your cheeks would
glow with shame whenever your eyes met theirs.
They are bright enough to understand that the
apple that drops too easily into their hand most
likely has a rotten spot at the heart. If you could
hear their jokes and innuendoes, and flings at your
womanhood ; if you could hear them talk about
their " rock maidens," and their " piazza beauties,"
and their " bliggy girls," you would never run the
risk again of being called by those names, — that
is if you have a spark of womanhood left, as I
believe you all have.

But do you say, " I mean nothing bad. I am
only bound to have a good time, to enjoy myself I
I shall look out to stop in season, before I am
ruined" ? Perhaps you will, and oh I perhaps you
may not stop before you are ruined and driven an
outcast from home and friends. But it is not ou
this low plain of possible final escape from the
worse consequences that I would put this subject.
Your treasure is too precious to be trifled with.
Your jewel is too priceless to be risked. It is not

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

168

best to set fire to your house, because it may be
put out before the house is burned to the ground.
It is not wise to fall into deep water because you
may be dragged out before life is quite extinct.
Let me say again, your treasure is too precious
to be trifled with. Your jewel is too priceless
to be risked. It is beciuse personal purity ia
your jewel that I thus plead with you to run no
risk. He who leaves open a safe filled with rub-
bish id not particularly to be blamed. He who
leaves open the safe that contains a million dollars
in securities, is guilty of carelessness which is
almost as criminal as dishonesty.

Let me tell you this, too, young ladies, you are
not only injuring yourselves, you are bringing
reproach upon all womanhood when you thus
cheapen and trifle with the charms of a pure
maidenhood. For nineteen centuries past, Chris-
tianity has had it for her task to raise womanhood
out of the gutter of sensuality and bestiality
where it so long lay helpless.- Patiently, quietly,
faithfully, has Christianity wrought, and right well
has she succeeded, until woman sits upon the
throne, with the sparkling crown of purity encir-

^n""

164

DANGER SIGNALS.

. I

cling her brow. Will you do your little best to
pull her from that proud position, and snatch away
her crown?

Every one who has ever known the influence of
a pure, gentle, loving woman, be she mother or
wife or sister or friend, can sing with Tennyson in
the Princess :

" Happy he
With Buoh a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with liis blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy' to him, and tho' ho trips and falls,
Ho shall not blind his soul with clay."

"Will any of you help to destroy this faith in
womankind ? Will you not rather show us what
Wordsworth calls,

" A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort and commi.od.'*

" Show us how divine a thing
A woman may be made."

But I can hear some of you say. Are you not
going to give us your opinion on balls, dances,
skating-rinks, and such amusements ? I have not
been ready to do so before but I think the way is

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

165

best to
baway

snce of
iher or
jTSon ia

aith in
IS what

you not
dances,
lave not
3 way is

open now. I have no quarrel with the ball-room
in itself. I do not know that it is any more sinful
in itself to skip lightly about to the sound of
music, than to walk gravely and sedately, without
any music to hujry the feet. I have no prejudiiJe
against roller skating in itself considered, but I
have an undying and unconquerable prejudice to
anything and everything which will endanger the
purity of young manhood and womanhood. I
have an undying hatred of any place or any
amusement which tends to soil the white lily of
maidenly modesty, and this, from all that I know,
promiscuous dancing and promiscuous skating in
the public rink does tend to accomplish.

The men to whom I have written send many
warnings against the ball-room and the skating-
rink, and seud many sad stories of ruined lives,
which received their first impetus on the down
hill road in such places. I have not time to quote
these wise words, but, as in a previous chapter the
testimony of an ex-professidrial gambler against
gambling was brought forward, let me here quote
the testimony of a dancing-master againsL the
waltz.

166

DANGER RIONAL8.

Mr. James P. Welsh, who, for ten years, was a
dancing-master, has said in public print : " I have
no hesitation in saying tliat I attribute much of
the vice and immorality now proviiiliiig to the
insidious influence of tiie waltz. I tell you that
in the high circles, young ladic- ;it paitios and
balls are absolutely hugged, — 'erabrac «i" would
be too weak to express my meaning. — by men
who were altogether unknown to theui before the
music for the waltz began to inspire the toes of
the dancers. Is this a pleasant siglit to contem-
plate ? " Mrs. General Sherman, who has written a
book against waltzing, takes the grountl tljut it is
immodest, that it detracts from the purity of the
young ladies engaged in it, and that it is demoral-
izing in the extreme. I venture to say that if it
were not for what this dancing-master calls " the
hugging," the ball-room would lose its chief
attraction. Is it worth while to risk the purity of
manhood or womanhood, for a little temporary
excitement on the waxed floor of. the ball-room ?
It is not as though there were no other pleasures
accessible to the young than those found in the
ball-room and the skating-rink. The purest joys

^;fe::'

1_J

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

167

are those that we experience when we get nearest
to nature. Find your arauseinenta out doors, boys
and girls, and not in the close and dusty halls of
pleasure. Use every holiday for a trip into the
country, if you can. See how many things God
has provided to make you glad, and do not get
the idea that the only possible amusements are in
these stuffy halls and rinks.

There is a thousand tunes more music in the
song of the birds, and the ripple of the brooks,
than there is in the fiddle of the ball-room. There
is vastly more health, wealth, and wisdom, for the
genuine soul, with the blue sky for the curtain
and the light and shade on forest and river
for shifting scenery, than there is in the frescoed
theater with painted trees and rivers and skies for
scenery. I would rather walk ten miles into the
country for a couple of hours in the silent woods,
than go across the street to eoe a score of people
skip up and down a slippery floor. I should like
to have all my boys, yes, and girls too, learn to
fish, shoot, row, swim, play base-bull, and skate in
winter, (I have no great opinion of skating in
summer time,) so that they may grow strong and

1! '

Se:

168

DANQKR SIGNALS.

brave and sound of lu^art; and limb, but I have no
dcsiro to have tbem spend much time or money to
Icaru the false graces and poor acconiplishmeiits
of • 'iC dancing-master. Every season has its out-
door sports and joys, eviMi city boys can have
their share of them. Learn to love them, and my
word for it, a purer, nobler, stronger manhood
and womanhood will be yours.

Not only are individuals in danger but our
nation is. threatened witli this leprosy. The awful
evils of sensuality and impurity arc shown on
a large scale in the degeneracy and imbecility
of the modern Turk. No race has suffered
so much from licentiousness, says u writer in the
Saturday Jlevietv, quoted by a recent American
author: " That the conquerors of Constantinople
were a haniy raoe of great physical orength
there can be do doubt ; that the great 'iiajor'^j
of modern Turks are of an effemiua'e j\-:_m i-»
equally certain ; very many of them j.'o jei .us
of fine appearance, but they ar^ phy> icily wos.!;.
without elasticity, giving the ai^^^aj^ntc- ^ «' .a
who have lost their vitality. The ssliu- may
be said, even more emphaticady, of Turkij«li

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

169

1 have no
: money to
plishments •
lias its oiit-
I can havf
<.m, and my
c manhood

er but our
The awful
shown on
I imbecility
las suffered
Titer in the
it Auiorican
nstantiuoplo
cal : orength
•eat ruajor'^7
aa'a 'jy *,><.' i'*

• ic.-ily vov.i;.

e sjaui may
, of Turkx-li

women; they are small in stature, of a sickly
complexion, easily fatigued by exertion, and
become prematurely old. After the ago of forty
all feminine beauty is gone; the ryes have become
sunken, the cheek* hollow, and tlie face wrinkled.
Another immediate result of the prevailing sensu-
ality is the mental imbecility of multitudes of the
Ottoman Turks ; great numbers among them are
intellect iially stupid. Many even of the young
men have the vacant look which borders close on
the idiotic state. This is not owing so much to a
lack of education as to a mental incapacity wliich
often amounts to real imbe( ility." Such an account
of a whole nation weakened and unnerved by sen-
suality is terribly suggestive. The " unspeakable
Turk " is an awful warning. In the "sick man of
Europe " there is a lesson for the young men of
America.

Let me tell you of the leper's end. " His dis-
ease began with little specks on the eye-lids, and
on the palms of the hand," says one authority,
"and gradually spread over different parts of the
body, bleaching the hair white, wherever it
blKJwed itself, crusting the, affected parts with
8

■■■• "fc^^t

■■

11 r

170

DANGER SIGNALS.

ghining scales and causing swellings and sores.
From the skin it slowly ate its way through the
tissues to the bones and joints and even to the
marrow, rotting the whole body piecemeal. The
lungs, the organs of speech and hearing, and tlie
eyes, were attacked in turn, till, at last, consump-
tion or dropsy brought welcome death."

It almost seems while reading this awful ac-
count of wasting disease, as though I were de-
scribing the living death of the moral leper, the
sensual man. His disease begins with a littlo
spot, a little impure thought, a little dalliance in
imagination with unholy things, but the end, oh,
the dreadful end !

From the outside this moral disease, too, slowly
eats its way through the tissues even to the mar-
row of the soul, rotting away the whole moral
nature, piecemeal. The affections, the will-power,
all the organs of right-thinking and riglit-acting
iire attacked in turn, till at last tlie first death, the
death of the body, brought on by lust and passion,
ushers in the second death, the death of the soul.
We know not what lies beyond the death of the
bv)dy, but we do know that there shall in no wise

mSfJm.

and sores,
irough the
ven to the
leal. The
ig, and the
t, consump-

i awful ac-
I were de-
1 leper, the
ith a little
dalliance in
the end, oh,

, too, slowly

to the mar-

vhole moral

I will-power,
riglit-acting
3t death, the
and passion,
. of the soul,
leath of the

II in no wise

rr.-^ 'um i i_fj[.m":>! \ i%wiK<i^,im.' ' ^ffm ' $\mi--'^^i)>»:u^ f^i-!>wviiiw»;j'*.ii4,.it ' »jiii¥Vi.W:»Hi4yj--8'L^''.^ 9!i

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

171

enter into the heavenly city " anything that defil-
eth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or
maketh a lie," and we also know that " without
are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and
murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and
maketh a lie."

•■i'

CHAPTER IX.

SAPPERS AND MINERS OF CHARACTEB!
. FRIYOLITY, SELFISHNESS, DISHONESTY.

At PETEB8B0RQ IN 1864. THE ENEMIES THAT WOEK
UNDEBGBOUND AND IN THE DABK. FRIVOLITY. TUE

• Wbong Names it Assumes. The Laughteb of
Fools. Pobtbait of the Fbivolocs Young Man
AND Woman. A Business Man's View. Selfish-
ness. Cultivate the Generous Natube. The
MOTH Milleb ofChabacteb. Thomas Canfield.
Dishonesty. More Warnings fbom the Mer-
chants. Honest George Washington and Honest
Abraham Lincoln. A Last Whisper in the Ears
of the Boys and Girls.
About day-break on the thirtieth of July, 1864,
a tremendous explosion was heard in the neigh-
borhood of Petersburg, Virginia ; a huge fort was
blown into the air, carrying with it its whole gar-
rison—a South Carolina regiment, and, where^ a
moment before the fort had been in all its grim
defiance, was seen nothing but a great pit with
ragged edges, two hundred feet long and thirty
172

mt.ii^iaiMiti>/ii..ij

B> g!ivv i' -y^ '' a p gwi'Mayvf ! ■" ?''*' ' '? «■ ■ ^ ■ y^ ^ iag 7 5y'.-:'^- ^ J?B^y w ^ '' y ?* !" ? *^

THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

173

ACTEB:

E8TY.

THAT WOEK

voLiTY. Tub
aughtkb of
Young Man
tw. Sklfisii-
&.TUKK. Tub
LS Canfield.

I TUB MEB-

AND Honest

IN THE EABS

'. July, 1864,
1 the neigli-
iige fort was
;8 whole gar-
md, where a
all its grim
■eat pit with
g and thirty

feet deep. That awful piece of destruction was
the work of the sappers and miners. That hole
beneath the fort had been dug a little at a time ;
one shovelful after another had been removed.

For many days and nights before, Union troops
had been at work digging away noiselessly but
rapidly beneath that fort, the garrison above never
suspecting what they were about. Eight thou-
sand pounds of powder were placed in this hole
and then all that was left to do was to apply the
fuse, and fort and garrison and munitions of war
were blown into the air.

I think there are some enemies iu your way
that seek to undermine your character just as
these sappers undermined the fort at Petersburg.
In the preceding chapters I have endeavored to
point out tc ihe young people some of their ene-
mies who were waiting at every corner to give
them battle and capture them, body and soul, if
possible. But most of these enemies of which I
have spoken have been visible and open enemies.
The rum-shop stares at you every time you go
down street, and the bright light which shines
from the window at night is like a warning bea-

DANGER BIGNAL8.

con to tell you of the rocks and whirlpools which
await every one who comes too near. The bad
paper is flaunted in all our shop windows, while
the bill of the low theater, on every dead wall, tells
you, in letters six feet long, what to expect if you
are so foolish as to enter that spider's trap.

But here is another class of enemies who work
underground and in the dark ; they never show
their horns and hoofs, but before the poor, thought-
less boy or girl knows it, the mine is dug, the train
is laid, the character is honeycombed, and all the
Arch-enemy has to do is to apply the spark of
some terrible temptation, and another life is for-
ever ruined and another home disgraced. We
hear nothing luit the explosion, but the silent
preparations for the explosion may have been
going on for years. We see the hopes and fond
expectations of a generation flying into the air,
like the di'bris of the ruined fort on that summer
morning in 18G4, but we do not see how, little by
little, like rust spots eating away at the polished
Bteel, the preparation for that destruction of hopes
and joys and life plans has been going on.

We are terribly allocked by the news of the

W|!Wl i 4W|PMir

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

175

ools which
The bad
ows, while
[ wall, tells
pect if you
rap.

, who work
lever show
)r, thought-
g, the traia
aud all the
\G spark of
life is for-
aced. We
; the silent
have been
es and fond
into the air,
hat summer
)W, little by
the polished
ion of hopes
;oo.
news of the

defalcation when it gets into the paper. But the
defalcation is nothing but the explosion. The boy
began to dig the mine for that explosion when he
cheated in marbles and stole cookies from his
mother's pantry. When the young woman is dis-
graced and driven out of respectable society that
is the explosion, but the girl began to dig the mine
years ago, when she flirted with the boy in the
Sunday-school class on the other side of the aisle,
or allowed some little familiarity from a man who
was neither father nor brother. There are many of
these sappex-3 and miners who are constantly at
work trying to find the easiest way into the very
citadel of your cliaracters, boys and girls, but I
can mention only three of them here. And
these three shall be Frivolity, Selfishness, and i>t«-
honesty. If all the trouble they make you was the
trouble they seem to work today that would be
bad enough. No one likes a frivolous, thought-
less, light-headed young person, a selfish girl or a
boy whom he cannot trust. If that was all thes'?
enemies of yours did, rendering you disagreeable
and unpleasant to others for the time being, it
would be enough, but oh, thhik of the future!

I^MM

DANGEIc SIGNALS.

V;- .■..

They are not only injuring you now, but they are
preparing the way for an awful explosion one of
these days, in which manhood and womanhood,
home and friends, prospects and hopes, will all be
involved. Let us take a look at these under-
ground enemies of yours one by one ; if possible
unearth them and discover what they are about.

First, Frivolity. I mention this sapper of char-
acter first because he does far more harm than is
generally supposed. He tries to borrow the
clothes of some one else, and palls himself Gay-
ety. Happiness, Light-heartedness. But these are
not his true names. Gaj'ety is a very different
personage. Pleasure and Frivolity do not long
keep company, and Frivolity instead of being
light-hearted often carries a very heavy heart. In
telling you to beware of Frivolity I would not
take away a single real enjoyment out of your
lives. God has put you in a beautiful world and
He meant to have you enjoy it. Every green shoot
that thrusts its head above the soil, every bright-
hued flower, every sweet-voiced bird, tells us how
many things God has provided to make us glad.
When you feel the life coursing through your

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

thej' are
on one of
manhood,
V'ill all be
ise imder-
f possible
J about.
ir of char-
m than ia
rrow the
iself Gay-

these are
' different

not long

of being
heart. In
would not
it of your
world and
rreen shoot
ery bright-
jlls us how
e us glad,
ough your

veins so that you cannot help running and shout-
ing and laughing, why run and shout and laugh,
if it is the proper time and place. I like to see
girls play with their dolls and their hoops, and
boys fly their kites and kick foot-ball and jump
leap-frog, and have right merry times. This is not
what I mean by Frivolity, the sapper and miner
of character. There is always a taint of evil
about the fun he brings. There is usually some-
thing low and smutty and tainted about his so-
called pleasure. There is often a smile on his face
and a laugh in his voice, to be sure, but it is hol-
low, insincere sort of merriment.

" The laughter of the fool," says Solomon, " is
as the crackling of thorns under a pot." I think
he had the grin and the hollow laugh of the frivo-
lous man in mind when he wrote that verse. We
all know young men whose lives are all honey-
combed with this evil. No one puts any confidence
in them. If one had an important place to fill he
would not think of looking to them to fill it, simply
because their lives give the impression of being so
frivolous. Let me say to you all, very seriously,
life is not a huge joke, by any means. It is not all
8*

■f^

178

DANOEn SIGNALS.

one long holiday. There are some holidays in it,
and many days of quiet, health-giving recreation,
but life is no joke. Life means hard, serious work
of hand or brain. It means ten hours a day over
the ledger, or ten hours a day at the forge, or at
the carpenter', bench, or it means five hours in
the school-room and two or three more of hard
study at home, or it means drudgery in the kitchen
or over the wash-tub ; and, if you make up your
mind, as the frivolous person seems to do, that life
is a sort of huge Barnum's circus, where- you must
play the part of clown, and wear the cap and bells,
you will find out before long that you are dread-
fully mistaken, ard that you are being left away
behind in the race.

I think I can draw the picture of the frivolous
young person. If it is a yomg man, he never
sticks long to any one thing. He gets tired of
this and that and the other because there is too
much work about it. He is always looking for the
easy place, with little work and large pay. That
is the fool's paradise. He gets half an education,
but studying is hard work and he soon leaves
school for business. He secures a good place

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

179

lya in it,
jcreatiou,
OU8 work
day over
[•ge, or at
hours in
•e of hard
le kitchen
e up your
0, that life
). you must
, and bells,
are dread-
left away

e frivolous
,, he never
its tired of
;here is too
king for the
pay. That
I education,
soon leaves
good place

before he is well known, but very soon loses it
because it is found that he cares more for his own
amusement than his employer's interests. He is
very often seen hi the ranks of the sidewalk bri-
gade, who have such a laborious time holding up
the lamp-post on the street corner of a summer ev-
ennig. If he ever goes to church he is apt to come
in on Sunday evenhig about fifteen minutes before
the service is through, for the sake of ogling the
girls or going home with them afterward. But he
is more likely to stay outside, for the purpose of
pufl&ng cheap cigar smoke into the faces of the
people when they come out, or of making ungal-
lant remarks about the young ladies of the audi-
ence. If he happens to be rich he is very likely
to be a dandy and to carry his arms bent out,
while he sucks an ivor}'-headed cane, and apes the
English fool.

If the frivolous young person is of the other
sex, she pats all sorts of tawdry finery upon her
back, where it will make the most show possible,
like the merchant who puts all his best goods in
the show case, and has no stock in trade behind.
She is always on the lookout for the frivolous

DAKOEB SIGNALS.

young man. She understands all about handker-
chief and glove flirtation, and is an adept in all
those arts which lie on the debatable border -land
between innocence and virtue. As was said before,
the sappers and miners in warfare dig underground
for the sake of undermining something at a dis-
tance. They start their tunnel a thousand yards
away, perhaps, from the fort they wish to blow up.
So this sapper, Frivolity, begins with something
which seems very innocent, but ends with some-
thing very different, for the end thereof is death.

To show you that I am not alone in ray esti-
mate of this enemy of yours let me give you the
message which one of the gentlemen to whom I
wrote in your behalf has sent yoi; : " Perhaps one
of the most common, and, in its beginning, seem-
ingly the most innocent enemy of youth, is frivol-
ity. By this I don't mean cheerfulness, vivacity,
the love of a good story or a good joke. I pity
the young person who is habitually gloomy and
fails to enjoy innocent amusement, but I refer to
the habit, so common among many, of thinking
and speaking lightly on serious subjects. Once
commence the habit of thinking or speaking

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

181

handker-
pt in all
rder-land
id before,
ergroiiiid
at a dia-
ixid yards
( blow up.
5ome thing
ith some-
is death.
ft my esti-
re you the
o whom I
erhaps one
tiing, seem-
b, is frivol-
s, vivacity,
ke. I pity
;loomy and
it I refer to
of thinking
ects. Once
Di speaking

lightly of temperance, virtue, duty to others,
reverence for God, and the course is entered upon
that leads to acts corresponding with the thoughts
and words." ^ '' —

Let us thi\»k for a moment of some of the sins
to whiih habitual frivolity is almost sure to lead.
I never saw the boy, wlio, the first time he ever
tried to swear, uttered a loud-sounding oath. It
was a little, timid, half-and-half sort of an oath
that he began with, and back of that was some
trifling jest about serious things. He begins with
some poor witticism about religious matters, but
he ends with the shocking oath which is uttered
almost unconsciously, and by that time the charac-
ter is pretty well honeycombed with irreverence
and profanity.

Or take the sin of Sabbath breaking for in-
stance. Very few boys go sailing or horse rac-
ing or to a base-ball match at first on Sunday.
They begin by thinking lightly of God's day, by
giving up habits of church-going on every frivo-
lous pretext, by trying to make themselves believe
that the fourth commandment has very little to
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23 WIEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580

(716) 872-4503

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182

DANGEil SIGNALS.

Sabbath and God's house does not end here.
" Young men are not aware," writes one of your
friends, "how much a steady observance of the
Sabbath and attendance on public worship estab-
lish their character and prospects of success in
this life, to say nothing of their eternal hopes." I
know a case where a father with his son applied
to the president of a bank for a vacant position
for that son. The president was not a Christian
but a shrewd, business man of the world. After
inquiring about the young man's education and
acquirements, he said to the father: "One thing
more, is he in the habit of attending church
regularly? I do not care where he attends, but
we cannot employ any one who is not regularly an
attendant on church. Any young man who is
known to be an habitual Sabbath-breaker stands
a sorry chance to obtain a good position or to
retain it after his habits are known."

I might give you a score of such warnings from
the business men of Boston, but I feel that I am not
going to the root of things until I begin further
back and warn you, not only of profanity and
Sabbath-breaking, but of that habit of mind from

" i iJJUJJ.I I llJ jf'WISWW

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THE ENBMIB8 OP YOUTH.

188

which they spring, of that light and frivolous way
of living which regards life as nothing but a show
or holiday, out of which you must get only the
greatest possible amount of fun. When you have
become habitually profane or habitual Sabbath-
breakers, the tunnel has been dug, the fortress has
been undermined, and the explosion only awaits
the spark of temptation. But if I can lead yoi?
to kaow that

" Life is real, life is earnest" ;
if I can lead you to realize that muscle and brain
and heart and a steadfast purpose and a soul given
to God are the winning factors in life's battle ; if
I could show you that a laugh at serious things
and a sneer at religion, and dalliance with tempta-
tion, tell of a shallow brain as well as a tainted
heart, I would be doing you a service for which I
should thank God as long as I live.

Another of the sappers ar. 1 miners of which I
would warn you is Selfishness. One gentleman
well known in business circles, writes these wise
words on the subject :

"Perhaps Selfishness must rank among the
greatest enemies of youth. The desire to get and

HHH

184

DANQEB SIGNALS.

not give is one of our constant foes. One of the
roost important results of the church system of
weekly offeungs for charitable purposes is the
early training of children to habitual, systematic,
and intelligent giving. A gentleman who was
solicited to contribute to a worthy object gave
promptly but rather sparingly. When afterward
shown the need of a larger contribution he pleas-
antly responded with the desired addition, accom-
panied with the remark, 'I was never in a condi-
tion to give much until lately, and I find that one
requires education in giving as much as in every-
thing else.' I have often been called upon to
raise money for benevohnt objects," continues this
gentleman, "and it has been painfully interesting
to observe the disposition of the majority of peo-
ple either to avoid giving, or to give as little
as decency or conscience will allow. My life's
observation leads me to the conviction ^that no
man succeeds so well in life as he who tries to
li;ve his neighbor as himself."

I have noticed that this sapper, Selfishness,
begins way back in babyhood to undermine the
ckiracter. When the little girl begins to play

ine of the
system of
les is the
yrstematic,
who was
aject gave
afterward
[X he pleas-
ton, accom-
in a condi-
id that one
as in every-
id upon to
ntinues this
r interesting
rity of peo-
ive as little
. My life's
tion that no
who tries to

, Selfishness,
ttdermine the
jgins to play

. ,

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

186

with her dolls he tells her to keep the best doll
for herself and give her playmate the homely rag-
baby ; when the little boy begins to build his first
block house he tells him to use the best blocks
and give his companions the poorest. Before the
baby has discarded her pinafores this evil spirit is
always whispering to her*to look out for number
one; to take the biggest lump of sugar and incest
piece of cake and the handsomest plaything and
every time she does this she is allowing her great
enemy to dig the trench under the citadel of her
life, called character, a little longer and deeper.

Perhaps some little boys and girls may read this
chapter. In order to make this matter very plain
even to them, let me change the figure. Some-
times, when I am calling on your fathers and moth-
ers, I see a harmless-looking little insect, with
white wings, flying about the room. Nothing
could look more innocent and unoffending than
that little white-winged miller. But I notice that
all the family are very anxious to kill it. Your
mother tries to capture it, and if she fails then
youv father claps his hands at it, and then uncle
John takes his turn, and then you try for it your-

186

DANGER SIGNAL?.

self, until, perhaps, every one in the room has
taken his turn. If that little, fluttering moth
was a mad dog you could n't seem much more
anxious to put it out of the way, for you know
that, though it looks so harmless, yet, if it gets
into the carpets and woolen clothes, it will riddle
them all through with tiny holes, and spoil them
for next winter's use. Now this sin of selfishness
of which I am warning you is very much like
those moth millers. It is flying around in all our
homes. It lights here and there and everywhere,
sometimes upon the father and mother, sometimes
upon the older brother and sister, sometimes even
upon' the baby's cradle. It makes no noise. It
flits about as silently as the moth-miller and
often looks just as innocent, but it does a thousand
times more harm. It would be better for you to
find all your winter clothes in the fall full of moth-
holes than to find your characters when you grow
up, full of the holes of selfishness.

Whenever you see one of these sins fluttering
about your hearts kill it, kill it, give it no quarter.
After all though there are so many selfish people
in the world and the air is so thick with these

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room has
ring moth
luch more
you know
, if it gets
will riddle
spoil them

selfishness
much like
[ in all our
verywhere,

sometimes
itiraes even

noise. It
miller and

a thousand

for you to
ill of moth-
n you grow

s fluttering
no quarter.

Ifish people
with these

THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH.

187

miserable moths, it is the generous, unselfish peo-
ple whom the world honors. We never think of
honoring selfish Emperor Nero or Caligula or.King
Henry the Eighth, though they did occupy such
high places ia the world and though they have made
so much history, but it is some humble, unknown
man whom we delight to honor. It is that pilot
on Lake Erie, for instance, who stuck to the
wheel of the burning steamer until the parched
skin peeled off his arms, rather than turn away
from his post of duty, or it is Flo. once Nightin-
gale who went into the fever-stricken hospitals of
the Crimea t^ make the soldiers' lot a little easier,
or Ida Lewis who, in the dark and stormy night,
rowed out upon the wild billows to save the ship-
wrecked sailors. These are the ones whom we
love to think of and to honor. They were not
great in intellect or wealth or position but they
had unselfish hearts, they had not allowed the
jnoths of self-indulgence to honeycomb their souls.
We need not go so far away from home to find
an heroic example of unselfishness. A few days
ago a Boston boy of nineteen was going across the
Broadway bridge, when he saw a younger boy fall

'^i

188

DANGER SIGNALS.

out of a boat into the water. It was a startling
leap of forty feet from the bridge to the water,
but, without waiting a moment, he plunged in,
and battled with the swift tide and caught the
drowning boy, and at a terrible risk to his own
life he saved him. How the moths of selfishness
must have flitted before his eyes, irhen he made
that leap as he thought of the risk he ran I But
I think he must have killed a great many others
in his life-time, for he brushed them all aside and
took the risk and saved the life. All honor, I say,
to that Boston bo}', Thomas Canfield.

I shall mention only one more sapper of charac-
ter. His name is Dishonesty. Not glaring dis-
honesty, at first, which would lead you to pick a
man's pocket or take a dollar from your employ-
er's till. This sapper never begins his work in
this way. He ends it there often, but he begins
with the little lie, the half truth that is often worse
than a lie, the endeavor to keep up appearances
when there is no substance behind the appearance.
I cannot begin to give you all the warnings which
have come to you on this score from your friends.
But I will record one which I hope you will take

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THE ENEMIES OP YOUTH.

189

BtartHng
e water,
nged in,
ight the
his own
ilfishness
he made
in I But
ly others
iside and
or, I say,

)f charac-
aring dis-
to pick a
r employ-
i work in
le begins
ten worse
pearances
ipearance.
igs which
ir friends,
will take

to heart: *'My observation of men has shown
me that one of the most prolific roots of evil and
one of the hardest to eradicate is the desire to
gjt something for nothing. From this spring all
forms of dishonesty and financial rascality, all
cheating in trade, all gambling devices, and it
enters largely into the composition of all shams.
If we can bring a youth to the point of refusing
to receive anything of value without giving a fair
equivalent much has been gained. I would teach
a boy that by withholding his car fare when he is
overlooked by the conductor he violates a contract
which should be held all the more binding because
unwritten, and the act injures him more than it
does the railway company, because he thereby
impairs his own integrity — the last thing he can
afford to do."

Our daily papers are sad commentaries on this
terrible evil. Hardly ever do I take one up with-
out seeing something about the last forgery or
defalcation or embezzlement. It is not a solitary
explosion here and there, at long intervals, but our
ears are deafened and our hearts are made sick by
the explosion of these mines, where character,

100

DANGER SIGNALS.

good name, fair fame, bright prospects, all, all are
ruined. And j'et, in every case, the sapper began
his work years ago. The sly glance at the open
book on examination day, the interlinear trans-
lation, the attempt to make one dollar buy two
dollars worth of goods, the effort to live on ten
ddlara a week and appear to have twenty, the
false shame of honest poverty; by all these
methods the wiley sapper is slowly eating into the
character, until the reckless speculation, the mis-
appropriation of funds, the flight to Canada or
the outlook from btbind- prison bars reveals how
rotten and hopeless is the character. There is no
reproach resting upon the American name today
that compares with the reproach of financial dis-
honesty. Are we getting to be a nation of sharp-
ers and swindlers? Our defaulted state bonds,
and repudiated debts, our Readjusters and Scalers
in politics look like it. Is " American " to become
a synonym for sharp practice and financial crook-
edness ? Young men, you have something to do
with the answer to that question. If you and
those whom you represent are not on your guard
the sappers and miners of dishonesty will not only

THE ENE>ilE8 OF YOUTH.

191

blo v up the fortress of individual integrity, but
the fortress of nationiil honor as well. There is
a useful and honorable career for every boy in
America of unstained, transparent honesty. I do
not refer now to ordinary, commercial honesty,
which will not steal any more than it can steal
safely, which makes up its mind to be just honest
enough to keep out of jail, as honest as the rest of
the world, but to integrity of that high standard
which makes a religion of honesty, the honesty
which would not overcharge or deceive a customer
any more than it would pick his pocket, wliich
would not take the slightest advantage of another,
even when it would never be found out, which
could not be surprised into a lie o\ frightened into
an untruth. The times are waiting for such young
men, watching eagerly for their development, hold-
ing out hands full of honors to them.

Who are the two men, who, in all the one hun-
dred and nine years of our national life, are the
most honored and loved by the American people ?
Honest George Washington and honest Abraham
Lincoln. Some people say that Washington was
a commonplace man iu intellect and attainments.

•^

192

DANOEB SIGKALS.

that there have been many greater generals and
statesmen, but no one says that there was ever a
more honest man or a ruler of greater integrity.
You have read, perhaps, the recent story of honest
Abraham Lincoln ; how, when a rising young law-
yer he was employed on a case which he became
convinced was an unjust prosecution of an inno-
cent man, he persuaded his client to relinquish it,
and announced in open court his mistake and his
abandonment of the caso. That incident is only
an index of his life. His honesty, perhaps, did
not make him president, but his honesty has made
his name revered by fifty millions of people, and
will perpetuate it as long as America lives.

Do you desire to be in good company? Un-
known on earth though your name may be, do
you wish to be ranked in God's sight with the
good and pure and true ? Let me whisper in your
eiws, boys and girls, as I end my talks with you,
you never will thus be ranked in heaven or on
earth unless you shun these sappers and miners of
character ; unless you kill these silently working
character moths; unless you look out for "the
little foxes which spoil the vines."

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