= . 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS 
 
 ANGELES 
 
 1
 
 THE 
 
 ABOMINATIONS * 
 
 Modern Society. 
 
 REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, 
 
 AUTH(iK OF "CRUMBS SVVEl'T UP." 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 ADAMS, VICTOR & CO., 
 
 98 WILLIAM STREKT. 
 1S72. 
 
 • » . ' 
 
 > ,' ' J J J 1 ) > ' J ' J 1 1 , t , , 
 
 ; '"'. '^' >'' '" 
 
 o * * , . » , * »
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S72, by 
 
 ADAMS, VICrOR & CO., 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washinijtoii.
 
 1 
 on 
 
 < 
 
 CO 
 
 
 '^ PREFACE 
 
 This is a buoy swung over the rocks. If it shall 
 keep ship, bark, fore-and-aft schooner, or hermaphro- 
 dite brig from driving on a lee shore, "all's well." 
 
 The book is not more for young men than old. 
 The Calabria was wrecked " the last day out." 
 
 Nor is the book more for men than women. The 
 best being that God ever made is a good woman, and 
 the worst that the devil ever made is a bad one. If 
 anything herein shall be a warning either to man or 
 woman, I will be glad that the manuscript was caught 
 up between the sharp teeth of the type. 
 
 T. D. W. T. 
 
 Brooklyn, January ist, 1872. 
 
 284848
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 The Curtain Lifted 9 
 
 Winter Nights 25 
 
 The Power of Clothes 38 
 
 After Midnight 59 
 
 The Indiscriminate Dance 79 
 
 The Massacre by Needle and Sewing-Machine 94 
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery 114 
 
 Leprous Newspapers 137 
 
 The Fatal Ten-Strike 154 
 
 Some of the Club-Houses 1S6 
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn 201 
 
 House of Blackness of Darkness 226 
 
 The Gun that Kicks over the Man who Shoots it off 241 
 
 Lies : White and Black 262 
 
 The Good Time Coming 276
 
 THE ABOMINATIONS. 
 
 THE CURTAIN LIFTED. 
 
 Pride of city is natural to men, in all times, 
 if they live or have lived in a metropolis noted 
 for dignity or prowess. Ccesar boasted of his 
 native Rome ; Lycurgus of Sparta ; Virgil of 
 Andes; Demosthenes of Athens; Archimedes of 
 Syracuse ; and Paul of Tarsus. I should suspect 
 a man of base-heartedness who carried about 
 with him no feeling of complacency in regard to 
 the place of his residence ; who gloried not in its 
 arts, or arms, or behavior ; who looked with no 
 exultation upon its evidences of prosperity, its 
 artistic embellishments, and its scientific at- 
 tainments. 
 
 I have noticed that men never like a place 
 where they have not behaved well. Swart- 
 hout did not like New York ; nor Dr. Webster,
 
 lO The Abominations. 
 
 Boston. Men who have free lides in prison- 
 vans never like the city that furnishes tJie 
 vehicle. 
 
 When I see in history Argos, Rhodes, Smyr- 
 na, Chios, Colophon, and several other cities 
 claiming Homer, I conclude that Homer be- 
 haved well. 
 
 Let us not war against this pride of city, 
 nor expect to build up ourselves by pulling 
 Others down. Let Boston have its Covnnon, 
 its Fancuil Hall, its Coliseum, and its Atlantic 
 Monthly. Let Philadelphia talk about its Mint, 
 and Independence Hall, and Girard College. 
 When I find a man living in cither of those 
 places, who has nothing to say in favor of. 
 them, I feel like asking him, " What mean 
 thing did you do, that )-ou dc not like your 
 native city ? " 
 
 New York is a goodly city. It is one city 
 on both sides of the river. The luast River is 
 only the main artery of its great throbbing life. 
 After a while four or five bridges will span the 
 water, and we shall be still more emphatically 
 one than now. When, therefore, I say "New 
 York city," I mean more than a miUion of peo-
 
 The Cicrtaiii Lifted. r i 
 
 pie, including everything between Spuyten 
 Duyvil Creek and Gowanus. That which tends 
 to elevate a part, elevates all. That which 
 blasts part, blasts all. Sin is a giant ; and he 
 comes to the Hudson or Connecticut River, and 
 passes it, as easily as we step across a figure in 
 the carpet. The blessing of God is an angel ; 
 and when it stretches out its two wings, one 
 of them hovers over that, and the other over 
 this. 
 
 In infancy, the great metropolis was laid down 
 by the banks of the Hudson. Its infancy v/as 
 as feeble as that of Moses, sleeping in the bul- 
 rushes by the Nile ; and like Miriam, there our 
 fathers stood and watched it. The royal spirit 
 of American commerce came down to the water 
 to bathe ; and there she found it. She took it 
 in her arms, and the child grew and waxed 
 strong ; and the ships of foreign lands brought 
 gold and spices to its feet ; and, stretching itself 
 up into the proportions of a metropolis, it has 
 looked up to the mountains, and off upon the 
 sea, — one of the mightiest of the energies of 
 American civilization. 
 
 The character of the founder of a city will be
 
 12 The Abominations. 
 
 seen for many years in its inhabitants. Romu- 
 lus impressed his hfe upon Rome. The Pil- 
 grims relax not their hold upon the cities of 
 New England. William Penn has left Philadel- 
 phia an inheritance of integrity and fair dealing ; 
 and on any day in that city you may see in the 
 manners, customs, and principles of its people, 
 his tastes, his coat, his hat, his wife's bonnet, 
 and his plain meeting-house. The Hollanders 
 still wield an influence over New York. 
 
 Grand Old New York ! What southern 
 thoroughfare was ever smitten by pestilence, 
 when our physicians did not throw themselves 
 upon the sacrifice ! What distant land has cried 
 out in the agony of famine, and our ships have 
 not put out with bread-stuffs ! What street of 
 Damascus, or Bcyrout, or Madras that has not 
 heard the step of our missionaries ! What 
 struggle for national life, in which our citizens 
 have not poured their blood into the trenches ! 
 What gallery of exquisite art, in which our 
 painters have not hung their pictures ! What 
 department of literature or science to which our 
 scholars have not contributed ! I need not 
 speak of our public schools, where the children
 
 The Curtain Lifted. 13 
 
 of the cordwaincr, and milkman, and glass- 
 blower stand by the side of the flattered sons 
 of millionnaires and merchant princes ; or of the 
 insane asylums on all these islands, where they 
 who came out cutting themselves, among the 
 tombs, now sit, clothed and in their right 
 mind ; or of the Magdalen asylums, where the 
 lost one of the street comes to bathe the Savi- 
 our's feet with her tears, and wipe them with the 
 hairs of her head, — confiding in the pardon of 
 Him who said — " Let him who is without sin 
 cast the first stone at her." I need not speak of 
 the institutions for the blind, the lame, the deaf 
 and the dumb, for the incurables, for the widow, 
 the orphan, and the outcast ; or of the thousand- 
 armed machinery that sends streaming down 
 from the reservoir the clear, bright, sparkling, 
 God-given water that rushes through our aque- 
 ducts, and dashes out of the hydrants, and tosses 
 up in our fountains, and hisses in our steam- 
 engines, and showers out the conflagration, 
 and sprinkles from the baptismal font of our 
 churches; and with silver note, and golden 
 sparkle, and crystalline chime, says to hundreds 
 of thousands of our population, in the authentic
 
 14 The Abominations. 
 
 words of Him who made it — " I WILL : BE TIIOU 
 CLEAN ! '.' 
 
 They who hve in any of the American cities 
 have a goodly heritage ; and it is in no depreci- 
 ation of our advantages that I speak, but be- 
 cause, in the very contrast with our opportu- 
 nities and mission, THE ABOMINATIONS 
 are tenfold more abominable. 
 
 The sources from which I will bring the array 
 of facts will be police, detective, and alms-house 
 reports ; city .missionaries' explorations, and the 
 testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, 
 who, about to take the final plunge, have stag- 
 gered back just for a moment, to utter the Avild 
 shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail 
 of their despair. 
 
 I shall call upon you to consider the drunken- 
 ness, the stock-gambling, the rampant dishon- 
 esties, the club-houses so far as they are nefari- 
 ous, the excess of fashion, the horrors of un- 
 chastity, the bad books and unclean newspapers, 
 and the whole range of sinful amusements ; and 
 with the plough-share of truth turn up the whole 
 field. 
 
 If we could call up the victims themselves,
 
 The Cti7'taiii Lifted. 15 
 
 they would give the most impressive story. Peo- 
 ple knew not how Turner, the painter, got such 
 vivid conceptions of a storm at sea, until they 
 heard the story that oftentimes he had been 
 lashed to the dock in the midst of the tempest, 
 in order that he might study the wrath of the sea. 
 Those who have themselves been tossed on 
 the wave of infamous transgressions could give 
 us the most vivid picture of what it is to sin and 
 to die. With hand tremulous with exhausting 
 disease, and hardly able to get the accursed 
 bowl to his lips — put into such a hand the 
 pencil, and it can sketch, as can no one else, the 
 darkness, the fire, the wild terror, the headlong 
 pitch, and the hell of those who have sur- 
 rendered themselves to iniquity. While we 
 dare only come near the edge, and, balancing 
 ourselves a while, look off, and our head swims, 
 and our breath catches, — those can tell the story 
 best who have fallen to the depths with wilder 
 dash than glacier from the top of a Swiss- cliff, 
 and stand, in their agony, looking up for a relief 
 that comes not, and straining their eyes for a 
 hope that never dawns — crying, "O God!" 
 " O God!"
 
 1 6 The Abominations. 
 
 It is terrible to see a lion dashing for escape 
 against the sides of his cage ; but a more aw- 
 ful thing it is to behold a man, caged in bad 
 habit, trying to break out, — blood on the soul, 
 blood on the cage. 
 
 Others may throw garlands upon Sin, pictur- 
 ing the overhanging fruits which drop in her 
 pathway, and make every step graceful as the 
 dance ; but we cannot be honest without present- 
 ing it as a giant, black with the soot of the forges 
 where eternal chains are made, and feet rotting 
 with disease, and breath foul with plagues, and 
 eyes glaring with woe, and locks flowing in ser- 
 pent fangs, and voice from which shall rumbl.» 
 forth the blasphemies of the damned. 
 
 I open to you a door, through which you 
 see — what ? Pictures and fountains, and mirrors 
 and flowers ? No : it is a lazar-house of disease. 
 The walls drip, drip, drip with the damps of 
 sepulchres. The victims, strewn over the floor, 
 writhe and twist among each other in contortions 
 indescribable, holding up their ulcerous wounds, 
 tearing their matted hair, weeping tears of 
 blood : some hooting with revengeful cry ; some 
 howling with a maniac's fear ; some chattering
 
 The Curtain Lifted. 17 
 
 with idiot's stare ; some calling upon God ; some 
 calling upon fiends ; wasting away ; thrusting 
 each other back ; mocking each other's pains ; 
 tearing open each other's ulcers ; dropping with 
 the ichor of death ! The wider I open the door, 
 the ghastlier the scene. — Worse the horrors. 
 More desperate recoils. Deeper curses. More 
 blood. I can no longer endure the vision, and 
 I shut the door, and cover my eyes, and turn 
 my back, and cry, " God pity them ! " 
 
 Some one may say, " What is the use of such an 
 exposure as you propose to make ? Our families 
 are all respectable." I answer, that no family, 
 however elevated and exclusive, can be inde- 
 pendent of the state of public morals. 
 
 However pleasant the block of houses in 
 which you dwell, the wretchedness, the tempta- 
 tion, and the outrage of municipal crime will put 
 its hand on your door-knob, and dash its awful 
 surge against the marble of your door-steps, as 
 the stormy sea drives on a rocky beach. 
 
 That condition of morals is now being formed, 
 amid which our children must walk. Do you 
 tell me it is none of my business what street 
 profanity shall curse my boy's ear, on his way to
 
 1 8 The Abominations. 
 
 school ? Think you it is no concern of yours 
 what infamous advertisements, placarded on the 
 walls, or in the public newspaper, shall smite the 
 vision of your innocent little ones ? Shall I be 
 nervous about a stagnant pool of water, lest it 
 breed malaria, and be careless when there are in 
 the very heart of our city thousands of houses, 
 devoted to various forms of dissipation, which 
 day and night steam with miasma, and pour out 
 the fiery lava of pollution, and darken the air 
 with their horrors, and fill the skies with the 
 smoke of their torment, that ascendeth up for- 
 ever and ever? If a slaughter-house be opened 
 in the midst of the town, we hasten down to the 
 Mayor to have the nuisance abated. But now 
 I make complaint, not to the Mayor or Com- 
 mon Council, but to the masses of the people, 
 who have the power to lift men up to office, 
 and to cast them down, against a hundred thou- 
 sand slaughter-houses in our American cities. 
 In the name of our happy homes, of our refined 
 circles, of our schools, of our churches, — in the 
 name of all that is dear and beautiful and vali:- 
 able and holy, — I enter the complaint. If you 
 now sit unconcerned, and leave to professed
 
 The Cicrtain Lifted. 19 
 
 philanthropists the work, and care not who are 
 in authority or what laws remain unexecuted, 
 j-ou may li\e to see the time \\hcn }^ou will 
 curse the day in which your children were born. 
 
 My belief is that such an exposition of public 
 immoralities will do good, by exciting pity for 
 the victims and wholesale indignation against 
 the abettors and perpetrators. 
 
 Who is that man fallen against the curbstone, 
 covered with bruises and beastliness? He was 
 as bright-faced a lad as ever looked up from 
 your nursery. His mother rocked him, prayed 
 for him, fondled him, would not let the night 
 air touch his cheek, and held him up and looked 
 down into his loving eyes, and wondered for 
 what high position he was being fitted. He 
 entered life with bright hopes. The world beck- 
 oned him, friends cheered him, but the archers 
 shot at him ; vile men set traps for him, bad 
 habits hooked fast to him with their iron grap- 
 ples ; his feet slipped on the way ; and there 
 he lies. Who would think that that uncombed 
 hair was once toyed with by a father's fingers ? 
 Who would think that those bloated cheeks 
 were e\'er kissed by a mother's lips ? Would
 
 20 The Abominations. 
 
 you guess that that thick tongue once made a 
 household glad with its innocent prattle ? Ut- 
 ter no harsh Avords in his ear. Help him up. 
 Put the hat over that once manly brow. Brush 
 the dust from that coat that once covered a 
 generous heart. Show him the way to the 
 home that once rejoiced at the sound of his 
 footstep, and with gentle words tell his chil- 
 dren to stand back as you help him through the 
 hall. 
 
 That was a kind husband once and an in- 
 dulgent father. He will kneel with them no 
 more as once he did at family prayers — the 
 little ones with clasped hands looking up into 
 the heavens with thanksgiving for their happy 
 home. But now at midnight he will drive 
 them from their pillows and curse them down 
 the steps, and howl after them as, unclad, they 
 fly down the street, in night-garments, under the 
 calm starlight. 
 
 Who slew that man ? Who blasted that 
 home ? Who plunged those children into worse 
 than orphanage — until the hands are blue with 
 cold, and the checks are blanched with fear, 
 and the brow is scarred with bruises, and the
 
 The Ctirtain Lifted. i\ 
 
 eyes are hollow with grief? Who made that 
 life a wreck, and filled eternity with the uproar 
 of a doomed spirit ? 
 
 There are those whose regular business it 
 is to work this death. They mix a cup that 
 glows and flashes and foams with enchantment. 
 They call it Cognac, or Hock, or Heidsick, or 
 Schnapps, or Old Bourbon, or Brandy, or 
 Champagne ; but they tell not that in the rud- 
 dy glow there is the blood of sacrifice, and in 
 its flash the eye of uncoiled adders, and in the 
 foam the mouth-froth of eternal death. Not 
 knowing what a horrible mixture it is, men 
 take it up and drink it down —the sacrificial 
 blood, the adder's venom, the death-froth — • 
 and smack their lips and call it a delightful 
 beverage. 
 
 Oh ! if I had some art by which I could break 
 the charm of the tempter's bowl, and with mail- 
 ed hand lift out the long serpent of eternal de- 
 spair, and shake out its coils, and cast it down, 
 and crush it to death ! 
 
 But the enchantment cannot thus be broken. 
 It hides in the bottom of the bowl ; and not un- 
 til a man is entirely fallen does the monster lift
 
 22 The Abominations. 
 
 itself up, and strike with its terrific fangs, and 
 answer all his implorations for mercy with fiend- 
 ish hiss. We must arouse public opinion, un- 
 til city. State, and national officials shall no 
 longer dare to neglect the execution of the law. 
 We have enough enactments now to revolu- 
 tionize our cities and strike terror through the 
 drinking-houses and gambling-dens and houses 
 of sin. Tracts distributed will not do it ; Bi- 
 bles printed will not accomplish it ; city mis- 
 sionaries have not power for the work. 
 
 Will tracts do it? As well try with three 
 or four snow-flakes to put out Cotapaxi ! 
 
 We want police officers, common councilmen, 
 aldermen, sheriff's, mayors, who will execute 
 the law. Give us for two weeks in our cities 
 an honest city hall, and public pgllution would 
 fall like lightning from heaven ! 
 
 If you republicans, and you democrats, do 
 not do your duty in this regard, we will, after a 
 while, form a party of our own, and put men in 
 position pledged to anti-rum, anti-dirt, anti- 
 nuisances, anti-monopolies, anti- abominations, 
 and will give to those of you who have been so 
 long feeding on public spoils, careless of public
 
 The Curtain Lifted. 23 
 
 morals, not so much as the wages of a street 
 sweeper. 
 
 We are not discouraged. Tt may seem to 
 many that all of our battling against these evils 
 will come to naught. But if the coral insects 
 can lift an island, our feeble efforts, under God, 
 may raise a brealc-watcr that will dash back the 
 surges of municipal abomination. Beside, we 
 toil not in our own strength. 
 
 It seemed insignificant for Moses to stretch 
 his hand over the Red Sea. What power 
 could that have over the waters ? But the east 
 wind blew all night ; the waters gathered into 
 two glittering palisades on either side. The 
 billows reared as God's hand pulled back upon 
 their crystal bits. Wheel into line, O Israel 1 
 March ! March 1 Pearls crash under the feet. 
 The flying spray springs a rainbow arch over 
 the victors. The shout of hosts mounting the 
 beach answers the shout of hosts mid-sea ; until, 
 as the last line of the Israelites have gained the 
 beach, the shields clang, and the C3'mbals 
 clap ; and as the waters whelm the pursuing 
 foe, the swift-fingered winds on the white 
 keys of the foam play the grand march of Is-
 
 24 The Abominations. 
 
 rael delivered, and the awful dirge of Egyptian 
 overthrow. 
 
 So we go forth ; and stretch out the hand of 
 prayer and Christian effort over these dark, 
 boiling waters of crime and suffering. "Aha! 
 Aha ! " say the deriding world. But wait. 
 The winds of divine help will begin to blow ; 
 the way will clear for the great army of Chris- 
 tian philanthropists ; the glittering treasures of 
 the world's beneficence will line the path of our 
 feet ; and to the other shore we will be greeted 
 with the clash of all heaven's cymbals ; while 
 those who resist and deride and pursue us will 
 fall under the sea, and there will be nothing left 
 of them but here and there, cast high and dry 
 upon the beach, the splintered wheel of a char- 
 iot, and, thrust out from the surf, the breathless 
 nostril of a riderless charger.
 
 WINTER NIGHTS. 
 
 The inhabitants of one of the old cities were 
 told that they would have to fly for their lives. 
 Such flight would be painful, even in the flush 
 of spring-time, but superlatively aggravating if 
 in cold weather ; and therefore they were told 
 to pray that their flight be not in the winter. 
 
 There is something in the winter season that 
 not' only tests our physical endurance, but, es- 
 pecially in the city, tries our moral character. 
 It is the winter months that ruin, morally, and 
 forever, many of our young men. We sit in 
 the house on a winter's night, and hear the 
 storm raging on the outside, and imagine the 
 helpless crafts driven on the coast ; but if our 
 ears were only good enough, we could, on any 
 winter night, hear the crash of a hundred moral 
 shipwrecks. 
 
 Many who came last September to town, by 
 cht. first of March will have been blasted. It 
 only takes one winter to ruin a young man. 
 When the long winter evenings have come,
 
 26 The Ahoininations. 
 
 many of. our young men will improve them in 
 forming a more intimate acquaintance with 
 books, contracting higher social friendships, and 
 strengthening and ennobling their characters. 
 But not so with all. I will show you before I 
 get through that, at this season of the year, 
 temptations are especially rampant : and my 
 counsel is, Look out hoiu yoii spend yo?ir zvintcr 
 nights ! 
 
 I remark, first, that there is no season of the 
 year in which vicious allurements are so active. 
 
 In warm weather, places of dissipation win 
 their tamest triumphs. People do not feel like 
 going, in the hot nights of summer, among the 
 blazing gas-lights, or breathing the fetid air of 
 assemblages. The receipts of the grog-shops 
 in a December night are three times what they 
 are in any night in July or August. I doubt 
 not there arc larger audiences in the casinos in 
 winter than in the summer weather. Iniquity 
 plies a more profitable trade. December, Jan- 
 uary, and February are harvest-months for the 
 devil. The play-bills of the low entertainments 
 then are more charming, the acting is more 
 exquisite, the enthusiasm of the spectators more
 
 Winter Nights. 27 
 
 bewitching. Many a young man who makes 
 out to keep right the rest of the year, capsizes 
 now. When he came to town in the autumn, 
 his eye was bright, his check rosy, his step 
 elastic ; but, before spring, as you pass him 
 you will say to your friend, " What is the matter 
 with that young man ? " The fact is that one 
 winter of dissipation has done the work of ruin. 
 
 This is the season for parties ; and, if they are 
 of the right kind, our social nature is improved, 
 and our spirits cheered up. But many of them 
 are not of the right kind ; and our young people, 
 night after night, are kept in the whirl of un- 
 healthy excitement until their strength fails, and 
 their spirits arc broken down, and their taste 
 for ordinary life corrupted ; and, by the time 
 the spring weather comes, they are in the doc 
 tor's hands, or sleeping in the cemetery. The 
 certificate of their death is made out, and the 
 physician, out of regard for the family, calls the 
 disease by some Latin name, when the truth is 
 that they died of too many parties. 
 
 Away with these wine-drinking convivialities ! 
 How dare you, the father of a household, trifle 
 with the appetites of our young people ? Per-
 
 28 The Abovtinaiions. 
 
 haps, out of regard for the minister, or some 
 other weak temperance man, you have the de- 
 canter in aside-room, where, after refreshments, 
 only a select few are invited ; and }^ou come 
 back with a glare in your eye, and a stench in 
 your breath, that shows that you have been out 
 serving the devil. 
 
 Some one asks, " For what purpose are these 
 people gone into that side-room ? " 
 
 " O," replies one who has just come out, 
 smacking his lips, " they have gone in to see 
 the white dog ! " 
 
 The excuse which Christian men often give for 
 this is, that it is necessary, after such late eating, 
 by some sort of stimulant to help digestion. 
 My plain opinion is, that if a man have no more 
 control over his appetite than to stuff himself 
 until his digestive organs refuse to do their of- 
 fice, he ought not to call himself a man, but 
 rather to class himself among the beasts that 
 perish. I take the words of the Lord Almighty, 
 and cry, " Woe to him that putteth the bottle to 
 his neighbor's lips ! " 
 
 Young man, take it as the counsel of a friend, 
 when I bid you be cautious where you spend
 
 Winter N'ights. 29 
 
 your zvintcr evenings. Thank God that }-ou 
 have Hvcd to see the glad winter days in which 
 your childhood was made cheerful by the faces 
 of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, 
 some of whom, alas ! will never again wish you 
 a "happy New Year," or a "Merry Christ- 
 mas." 
 
 Let no one tempt you out of your sobriety, 
 I have seen respectable young men of the best 
 families drunk on New Year's day. The excuse 
 they gave for the inebriation was that the ladies 
 insisted on their taking it. There have been 
 instances where the delicate hand of woman hath 
 kindled a young man's taste for strong drink, 
 who after many years, when the attractions of 
 that holiday scene were all forgotten, crouched 
 in her rags, and her desolation, and her woe 
 under the uplifted hand of the drunken monster 
 who, on that Christmas mornin"- so lone ago 
 took the glass froro her hand. And so, the 
 woman stands on the abutment of the bridge, on 
 the moon-lit night, wondering pf, down under 
 the water, there is not some quiet place for a 
 broken heart. She takes one wild leap, — and 
 all is over !
 
 30 The Abominations. 
 
 Ah ! mingle not with the harmless beverage 
 of your festive scene this poison of adders ! 
 Mix not with the white sugar of the cup the 
 snow of this awful leprosy ! Mar not the clatter 
 of cutlery at the holiday feast with the clank of 
 a madman's chain ! 
 
 Stop and look into the window of that pawn- 
 broker's shop. Elegant furs. Elegant watches. 
 Elegant scarfs. Elegant flutes. People stand 
 with a pleased look gazing at these things ; but 
 I look in with a shudder, as though I had seen 
 into a window of hell. 
 
 Whose elegant watch was that ? It was a 
 drunkard's watch ! 
 
 Whose furs ? They belonged to a drunk- 
 ard's wife ! 
 
 Whose flute ? Whose shoes ? Whose scarf ? 
 They belonged to a drunkard's child ! 
 
 If I could, I would take the three brazen balls 
 hanging at the door- way, and clang them to- 
 gether until they tolled the awful knell of the 
 drunkard's soul. The pawnbroker's shop is 
 only one eddy of the great stream of municipal 
 drunkenness. 
 
 Stand back, young man ! Take not the first
 
 Whiter Nights. 31 
 
 step in the path that leads here. Let not the 
 flame of strong drink ever scorch your tongue. 
 You may tamper with these things and escape, 
 but your influence will be wrong. Can you not 
 make a sacrifice for the good of others ? 
 
 When the good ship London went down, the 
 captain was told that there was a way of escape 
 in one of the life-boats. He said — " No ; I will 
 go down with the rest of the passengers ! " All 
 the world acknowledged that heroism. 
 
 Can you not deny yourself insignificant indul- 
 gences for the good of others ? Be not allured 
 by the fact that you drink only the moderate 
 beverages. You take only ale ; and a man has 
 to drink a large amount of it to become intoxi- 
 cated. Yes ; but there is not in all the city to- 
 day an inebriate that did not begin with ale. 
 
 "XXX:" What does that mark mean? 
 XXX on the beer-barrel : XXX on the brewer's 
 dray : XXX on the door of the gin-shop : XXX 
 on the side of the bottle. Not beinsf able to 
 find any one who could tell me what this mark 
 means, I have had to guess that the whole thing 
 was an allegory: XXX — that is, thirty heart- 
 breaks. Thirty agonies. Thirty desolated
 
 32 The Aboviinations. 
 
 homes. Thirty chances for a drunkard's grave. 
 Thirty ways to perdition. 
 
 "XXX." If I were going to write a story, 
 the first chapter would be XXX. ; the last — 
 "A pawnbroker's shop." 
 
 Be watchful ! At this season all the allure- 
 ments to dissipation will be especially busy. 
 Let not your flight to hell be in the winter. 
 
 I also remark that the winter evenings, 
 through their very length, allow great swing 
 for indulgences. Few young men would have 
 the taste to go to their room at seven o'clock, 
 and sit until eleven, reading Motley s Dutch 
 Republic or John Foster's Essays. The young 
 men who have been confined to the store all 
 day want fresh air and sight-seeing ; and they 
 must go somewhere. The most of them have, 
 of a winter's evening, three or four hours of 
 leisure. After the evening repast, the young 
 man puts on his hat and coat and goes out. 
 
 " Come in here," cries one form of allure- 
 ment. 
 
 " Come in here," cries another. 
 
 " Go ; " says Satan. " You ought to sec for 
 yourself."
 
 Winter Nights. 2il 
 
 " Why don't you go ? " says a comrade. " It 
 is a shame for a young man to be as g-recn 
 as you are. By this time you ought to have 
 seen everything." 
 
 Especially is temptation strong in such times 
 as this, when business is dull. I have noticed 
 that men spend more money when they have 
 little to spend. 
 
 The tremendous question to be settled by 
 our great populace, day by day, is how to get 
 a livelihood. Many of our young men, just 
 starting for themselves, are very much discour- 
 aged. They had hoped before this to have set 
 up a household of their own. But their gains 
 have been slow, and their discouragements 
 many. The young man can hardly take care 
 of himself. How can he take care of another ? 
 And, to the curse of modern society, before a 
 young man is able to set up a home of his own, 
 he is expected to have enough to support in 
 idleness somebody else ; when God intended 
 that they should begin together, and jointly 
 earn a livelihood. So, many of our young men 
 are utterly discouraged, and utterly unfit to 
 resist temptation.
 
 34 The Abominations. 
 
 The time the pirat'e bears down upon the ship 
 is when its sails are down and it is making no 
 headway. 
 
 People wish they had more time to think. 
 The trouble is now, that people have too much 
 time to think. Give to many of our commer- 
 cial men the four hours of these winter nights, 
 with nothing to divert them, and before spring 
 they will have lodgings in an insane asylum. 
 
 I remark further, that the winter is especially 
 trying to the moral character of our young men, 
 because some of their homes in winter are es- 
 pecially unattractive. In summer they can sit 
 on the steps, or have a bouquet in the vase on 
 the mantel ; and the evenings are so short that 
 soon after gas-light they feel like retiring. 
 Parents do not take enough pains to make these 
 long winter nights attractive. 
 
 It is strange that old people know so little 
 about young people. One would think that 
 they had never been young themselves, but 
 had been born with their spectacles on. It is 
 dolorous for young people to spend the three 
 or four hours of a winter's evening with parents 
 who sit talking over their own ailments and
 
 Winter Nights. • 35 
 
 misfortunes, and the nothingness of this world. 
 How dare you talk such blasphemy ? God 
 was busy six days in making the world, and 
 has allowed it to hang six thousand years on his 
 holy heart ; and that world hath fed you, and 
 clothed you, and shone on }'ou for fifty years : 
 and yet you talk about the nothingness of this 
 world ! Do you expect the young people in 
 your family to sit a whole evening and hear 
 you groan about this magnificent, star-lighted, 
 sun-warmed, shower-baptized, flower-strewn, 
 angel-watched, God-inhabited planet ? From 
 such homes young men make a wild plunge 
 into dissipation. Many of you have the 
 means : why do you not buy them a violin or 
 a picture ? or have your daughter cultured in 
 music until she carf help to make home at- 
 tractive ? 
 
 There are ten thousand ways of lighting up 
 the domestic circle. It requires no large in- 
 come, no big house, no rich wardrobe, no 
 chased silver, no gorgeous upholstery, but a 
 parental heart awake to its duty. 
 
 Have a doleful home and your children will 
 not stay in it, though you block up the door
 
 2,6 ■ The Aboininatio7is. 
 
 with Bibles, and tie fast to them a milhon Hei- 
 delberg catechisms. 
 
 I said to a man, "This is a beautiful tree in 
 front of your house." 
 
 He answered, with a whine, "Yes; but it 
 will fade." 
 
 I said to him, "You have a beautiful gar-' 
 den." 
 
 He replied, " Yes ; but it will perish." 
 
 I found out afterward that his son was a 
 vagabond, and I was not surprised at it. 
 
 You cannot groan men into decency, but you 
 can groan them out. 
 
 Pray ye that your flight be not in the win- 
 ter ! Devote these December, January and 
 February evenings to high pursuits, innocent 
 amusements, intelligent socialities, and Christian 
 attainments. Do not waste this winter. We 
 shall soon have seen the last snow-shower, and 
 have passed up into the companionship of Him 
 whose raiment is exceeding white as snow — as 
 no fuller on earth can whiten it. 
 
 To the right-hearted, the winter nights of 
 earth will soon end in the June morning of 
 heaven.
 
 Winter Nights. 37 
 
 The River of God, from under the Throne, 
 never freezes over. The foHage of Life's fair 
 tree is never frost-bitten. The festivals, and 
 hilarities, and family gatherings of Christmas 
 times on earth, will give way to the larger re- 
 unions, and the brighter lights, and the gladder 
 scenes, and the sweeter garlands, and the richer 
 feastings of the great holiday of Heaven. 
 
 o*> 
 
 34848
 
 THE POWER OF CLOTHES. 
 
 One cannot always tell by a man's coat what 
 kind of a heart he has under it ; still, his dress 
 is apt to be the out-blossoming of his character, 
 and is not to be disregarded. 
 
 We make no indiscriminate onslaught upon 
 customs of dress. Why did God put spots on 
 the pansy, or etch the fern leaf? And what are 
 china-asters good for if style and color are of 
 no importance ? 
 
 The realm is as wide as the world, and as 
 far-reaching as all the generations, over which 
 fashion hath extended her sceptre. For thou- 
 sands of years she hath sat queen over all the 
 earth, and the revolutions that rock down all 
 other thrones have not in the slighest affected 
 her domination. Other constitutions have been 
 torn, and other laws trampled ; but to her de- 
 crees conquerors have bowed their plumes, and 
 kings have uncovered. Victoria is not Queen 
 of England ; Napoleon was not Emperor of
 
 The Pozver of Clothes. 39 
 
 France ; Isabella was not Queen of Spain. 
 FasJiioJi has been regnant over all the earth ; 
 and lords and dukes, kings and queens, have 
 been the subjects of her realm. 
 
 She arranged the mantle of the patriarch, and 
 the toga of the Roman ; the small shoe of the 
 Chinese women, and the turban of the Turk ; 
 the furs of the Laplander, and the calumet of the 
 Indian chieftain. Hottentot and Siberian obey 
 the mandate, as well as Englishman and Ameri- 
 can. Her laws are written on parchment and 
 palm-leaf, on broken arch and cathedral tracery. 
 She arranged how the Egyptian mummy should 
 be wound, and how Caesar should ride, and how 
 the Athenians should speak, and how through 
 the Venetian canals the gondoliers should row 
 their pleasure-boat. Her hand hath hung the 
 pillars with embroidery, and strewn the floor 
 with plush. Her loom hath woven fabrics 
 graceful as the snow and pure as the light. 
 Her voice is heard in the gold mart, in the roar 
 of the street, in the shufiRc of the crowded ba- 
 zaars, in the rattle of the steam-presses, and in 
 the songs of the churches. 
 
 You have limited your observation of the
 
 40 The Abouiijiations. 
 
 sway of fashion if you have considered it only 
 as it decides individual and national costumes. 
 It makes the rules of behavior. It wields an 
 influence in artistic spheres — often deciding 
 what pictures shall hang in the house, what 
 music shall be played, what ornaments shall 
 stand upon the mantle. The poor man will not 
 have on his wall the cheap wood-cut that he 
 can afford, because he cannot have a great daub 
 hke that which hangs on the rich man's wall, 
 and costing three hundred dollars. 
 
 Fashion helps to make up religious belief. It 
 often decides to what church we shall go, and 
 what religious tenets we shall adopt. It goes 
 into the pulpit, and decides the gown, and the 
 surplice, and the style of rhetoric. 
 
 It goes into literature" and arranges the bind- 
 ing, the type, the illustrations of the book, and 
 oftentimes the sentiments expressed and the 
 theories evolved. 
 
 Men the most independent in feeling are by 
 it compelled to submit to social customs. And 
 before I stop I want to show you that fashion 
 has been one of the most potent of reformers, 
 and one of the vilest of usurpers. Sometimes
 
 The Power of Clothes. 41 
 
 it has been an angel from heaven, and at others 
 it has been the mother of harlots. 
 
 As the world grows better there will be as 
 much fashion as now, but it will be a different 
 fashion. In the future life white robes always 
 have been and always will be in the fashion. 
 
 There is a great outcry against this submission 
 to social custom, as though any consultation of 
 the tastes and feelings of others were deplorable ; 
 but without it the world would have neither law, 
 order, civilization, nor common decency. 
 
 There has been a canonization of bluntness. 
 There are men and women who boast that they 
 can tell you all they know and hear about you, 
 especially if it be unpleasant. Some have mis- 
 taken rough behavior for frankness, when the 
 two qualities do not belong to the same family. 
 You have no right, with your eccentricities, to 
 crash in upon the sensitiveness of others. There 
 is no virtue in walking with hoofs over fine car- 
 pets. The most jagged rock is covered with 
 blossoming moss. The storm that comes jarring 
 down in thunder strews rainbow colors upon the 
 sky, and silvery drops on orchard and meadow. 
 
 There are men who pride themselves on their 
 3
 
 42 The Abo7ninations. 
 
 capacity to " stick" others. They say "I have 
 brought him down : Didn't I make him 
 squirm ! " 
 
 Others pride themselves on their outlandish 
 apparel. They boast of being out of the fash- 
 ion. They wear a queer hat. They ride in an 
 odd carriage. By dint of perpetual applica- 
 tion they would persuade the world that they 
 are perfectly indifferent to public opinion. 
 They are more proud of being " out of fash- 
 ion " than others are of being in. They are 
 utterly and universally disagreeable. Their 
 rough corners have never been worn off. They 
 prefer a hedge-hog to a lamb. 
 
 The accomplishments of life are in nowise 
 productive of effeminacy or enervation. Good 
 manners and a respect for the tastes of others 
 is indispensable. The Good Book speaks fa- 
 vorably of those who are a ^^ peculiar'' people ; 
 but that docs not sanction the behavior of queer 
 people. There is no excuse, under any cir- 
 cumstances, for not being and acting the lady 
 or gentleman. Rudeness is sin. We have no 
 words too ardent to express our admiration for 
 the refinements of society. There is no law,
 
 The Poiver of Clothes. 43 
 
 moral or divine, to forbid elegance of demean- 
 or, ornaments of gold or gems for the person, 
 artistic display in the dwelling, gracefulness of 
 gait and bearing, polite salutation, or honest 
 compliments ; and he who is shocked or of- 
 fended by these had better, like the old Scyth- 
 ians, wear tiger-skins, and take one wild leap 
 back into midnight barbarism. 
 
 As Christianity advances there will be better 
 apparel, higher styles of architecture, more ex- 
 quisite adornments, sweeter music, grander pic- 
 tures, more correct behavior, and more thor- 
 ough ladies and gentlemen. 
 
 But there is another story to be told. Exces- 
 sive fashion is to be charged with many of the 
 worst evils of society, and its path has often 
 been strewn with the bodies of the slain. 
 
 It has often set up a false standard by which 
 people arc to be judged. Our common sense, 
 as well as all the divine intimations on the sub- 
 ject, teach us that people ought to be esteemed 
 according to their individual and moral attain- 
 ments. The man who has the most nobility of 
 soul should be first, and he who has the least of 
 such qualities should stand last. No crest, or
 
 44 J^^i<^ Abominations. 
 
 shield, or escutcheon, can indicate one's moral 
 peerage. Titles of duke, lord, esquire, earl, 
 viscount, or patrician, ought not to raise one 
 into the first rank. Some of the meanest men I 
 have ever known had at the end of their name 
 D.D., LL.D., and F.R.S. Truth, honor, 
 charity, heroism, self-sacrifice, should win high- 
 est favor ; but inordinate fashion says — " Count 
 not a woman's virtues ; count her rings ; '' 
 " Look not at the contour of the head, but sec 
 the way she combs her hair ;" "Ask not 
 what noble deeds have been accomplished by 
 that man's hand ; but is it white and soft ? '' 
 Ask not what good sense was in her conver- 
 sation, but "in what was she dressed." Ask 
 not whether there was hospitality and cheerful- 
 ness in the house, but "in what style do they 
 live." 
 
 As a consequence, some of the most ignorant 
 and vicious men are at the top, and some of the 
 most virtuous and intelligent at the bottom. 
 During the late war we suddenly saw men hurl- 
 ed up into the highest social positions. Had 
 they suddenly reformed from evil habits ? or 
 graduated in a science ? or achieved some good
 
 The Power of Clolhes. 45 
 
 work for society ? No ! They simply had ob» 
 tained a government contract ! 
 
 This accounts for the utter chagrin which 
 men feel at the treatment they receive when 
 they lose their property. Hold up your head 
 amid financial disaster, like a Christian ! Fifty 
 thousand subtracted from a good man leaves 
 how much ? Honor ; Truth ; Faith in God ; 
 Triumphant Hope ; and a kingdom of ineffable 
 glory, over which he is to reign forever and 
 ever. 
 
 If a millionnaire should lose a penny out of his 
 pocket, would he sit down on a curb-stone and 
 cry ? And shall a man possessed of everlasting 
 fortunes wear himself out with grief because he 
 has lost worldly treasure ? You have only lost 
 that in which hundreds of wretched misers 
 surpass you ; and you have saved that which 
 the Caesars, and the Pharaohs, and the Alexan- 
 ders could never afford. 
 
 And yet society thinks differently ; and you 
 see the most intimate friendships broken up as 
 the consequence of financial embarrassments. 
 You say to some one — " How is your friend — ? " 
 The man looks bewildered, and says, " I do
 
 46 The Abominations. 
 
 not know." You reply, "Why; you used to 
 be intimate." "Well," says the man, "our 
 friendship has been dropped : the man has 
 failed." 
 
 Proclamation has gone forth : " Velvets must 
 go up, and homespun must come down ; " and 
 the question is "How does the coat fit?"- — - 
 not, " Who wears it?" The power that bears 
 the tides of excited population up and down 
 our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, 
 and thrills all nations. Transatlantic and Cis- 
 atlantic, is — clothes. It decides the last offices 
 of respect ; and how long the dress shall be 
 totally black ; and when it may subside into 
 spots of grief on silk, calico, or gingham. Men 
 die in good circumstances, but by reason of 
 extravagant funeral expenses are well nigh 
 insolvent before they get buried. Many men 
 would not die at all, if they had to wait until 
 they could afford it. 
 
 Excessive fashion is productive of a most 
 ruinous strife. The expenditure of many 
 households is adjusted by what their neighbors 
 have, not by what they themselves can afford 
 to have ; and the great anxiety is as to who
 
 The Power of Clothes. 47 
 
 shall have the finest house and the most costly 
 equipage. The weapons used in the warfare 
 of social life are not Minic rifles, and Dahl- 
 gren guns, and Hotchkiss shells, but chairs 
 and mirrors, and vases, and Gobelins, and Ax- 
 minsters. Many household establishments are 
 like racing steamboats, propelled at the utmost 
 strain and risk, and just coming to a terrific 
 explosion. "Who cares," say they, "if we 
 only come out ahead ? " 
 
 There is no one cause to-day of more finan- 
 cial embarrassment, and of more dishonesties, 
 than this determination, at all hazards, to live as 
 well as or better than other people. There are 
 persons who will risk their eternity upon one 
 fine looking-glass, or who will dash out the 
 splendors of heaven to get another trinket. 
 
 " My house is too small." " But," says some 
 one, "you cannot pay for a larger." "Never 
 mind that ; my friends have a better residence, 
 and so will I." "A dress of that pattern I must 
 have. I cannot afford it by a great deal ; but 
 who cares for that ? My neighbor had one from 
 that pattern, and I must have one." There are 
 scores of men in the dungeons of the peniten-
 
 48 The Abominations. 
 
 tiary, who risked honor, business, — everything, 
 in the effort to shine hke others. Though the 
 heavens fall, they must be "in the fashion."- 
 
 The most famous frauds of the day have re- 
 sulted from this feeling. It keeps hundreds of 
 men struggling for their commercial existence. 
 The trouble is that some are caught and incar- 
 cerated, if their larceny be small. If it be great, 
 they escape, and build their castle on the Rhine. 
 Men go into jail, not because they steal, but 
 because they did not steal enough. 
 
 Again : excessive fashion makes people un- 
 natural and untrue. It is a factory from which 
 has come forth more hollow pretences, and 
 unmeaning flatteries, and hypocrisies, than the 
 Lowell Mills ever turned out shawls and ear- 
 ments. 
 
 Fashion is the greatest of all liars. It has 
 made society insincere. You know not what to 
 believe. When people ask you to come, you 
 do not know whether or not they want you to 
 come. When they send their regards, you do 
 not know whether it is an expression of their 
 heart, or an external civility. We have learned 
 to take almost everything it a discount. Word
 
 The Power of Clothes. 49 
 
 is sent, " Not at home," when they are only too 
 lazy to dress themselves. They say, " The fur- 
 nace has just gone out," when in truth they 
 have had no fire in it all winter. They apologize 
 for the unusual barrenness of their table, when 
 they never live any better. They decry their 
 most iu.xurious entertainments, to win a shower 
 of approval. They apologize for their appear- 
 ance, as though it were unusual, when always 
 at home they look just so. They would make 
 you believe that some nice sketch on the wall 
 was the work of a master painter. " It was an 
 heir-loom, and once hung on the walls of a 
 castle ; and a duke gave it to their grand- 
 father." People Avho will lie about nothing 
 else, will lie about a picture. On a small in- 
 come we must make the world believe that we 
 are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat, a 
 counterfeit, and a sham. 
 
 Few persons are really natural. When I say 
 this, I do not mean to slur cultured manners. 
 It is ri'Tht that we should have more admiration 
 for the sculptured marble than for the unhewn 
 block of the quarry. From many circles in 
 life fashion has driven out vivacity and enthusi-
 
 50 The Abominatio}is. 
 
 asm. A frozen dignity instead floats about the 
 room, and iceberg grinds against iceberg. 
 You must not laugh outright : it is vulgar. 
 You must smile. You must not da^h rapidly 
 across the room : you must glide. There is a 
 round of bows, and grins, and flatteries, and 
 oil's ! and all's ! and simperings, and namby- 
 pambyism — a world of which is not worth one 
 good, round, honest peal of laughter. From 
 such a hollow round the tortured guest retires 
 at the close of the evening, and assures his host 
 that he has enjoyed himself. 
 
 Thus social life has been contorted, and de- 
 formed, until, in some mountain cabin, where 
 rustics gather to the quilting or the apple-paring, 
 there is more good cheer than in all the frescoed 
 ice-houses of the metropolis. 
 
 We want, in all the higher circles of society, 
 more warmth of heart and naturalness of be- 
 havior, and not so many refrigerators. 
 
 Again : inordinate fashion is incompatible 
 with happiness. Those who depend for their 
 comfort upon the admiration of others are 
 subject to frequent disappointment. Somebody 
 will criticise their appearance, or surpass them
 
 The Power of Clothes. 51 
 
 ill brilliancy, or will receive more attention. 
 Oh ! the jealchjsy, and detraction, and heart- 
 burnings of those who move in this bewildered 
 maze ! 
 
 The clock strikes one, and the company be- 
 gins to disperse. The host has done everything 
 to make all his guests happy ; but now that 
 they are on the street, hear their criticisms of 
 everybody and everything. " Did you see her 
 in such and such apparel ? " " Wasn't she a 
 perfect fright ! " " What a pity that such an 
 one is so awkward and uncouth ! " " Well, real- 
 ly, — I would rather never be spoken to than 
 be seen with such a man as that ! " 
 
 Poor butterflies 1 Bright wings do not al- 
 ways bring happiness. "She that liveth in 
 pleasure is dead while she liveth." The revela- 
 tions of high life that come to the challenge 
 and the fight are only the occasional croppings 
 out of disquietudes that are, underneath, like 
 the stars of heaven for multitude, but like the 
 demons of the pit for hate. The misery that 
 to-night in the cellar cuddles up in the straw is 
 not so utter as the princely disquietude which 
 stalks through splendid drawing-rooms, brood-
 
 5 2 The Abominations. 
 
 ing ever the slights and offences of high hfe. 
 The bitterness of trouble seems not so unfitting, 
 when drunk out of a pewter mug, as when it 
 pours from the chased lips of a golden chalice. 
 In the sharp crack of the voluptuary's pistol, 
 putting an end to his earthly misery, I hear the 
 confirmation that in a hollow, fastidious life 
 there is no peace. 
 
 Again : Excessive devotion to fashion is pro- 
 ductive of physical di-sease, mental imbecility, 
 and spiritual withering. 
 
 Apparel insufficient to keep out the cold and 
 the rain, or so fitted upon the person that the 
 functions of life are restrained ; late hours, filled 
 with excitement and feasting ; free draughts of 
 wine, that make one not beastly intoxicated, 
 but only fashionably drunk ; and luxurious in- 
 dolence — are the instruments by which this un- 
 real life pushes its disciples into valetudinarian- 
 ism and Ihc grave. Along the walks of high 
 life Death goes a mowing — and such harvests 
 as are reaped ! Materia medica has been ex- 
 hausted to find curatives for these physiological 
 devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, 
 gout, and almost every infirmity in all the realm
 
 The Poiver of Clothes. 53 
 
 of pathology, have been the penalty paid. To 
 counteract the damage, pharmacy has gone 
 forth with medicament, panacea, elixir, embro- 
 cation, salve, and cataplasm. 
 
 To-night, with swollen feet, upon cushioned 
 ottoman, and groaning with aches innumerable, 
 is the votary of luxurious living, not half so 
 happy as his groom or coal-heaver. 
 
 Fashion is the world's undertaker, and drives 
 thousands of hearses to Laurel Hill and Green- 
 wood. 
 
 But, worse than that, this folly is an intellect- 
 ual depiction. This endless study of propri- 
 eties and etiquette, patterns and styles, is 
 bedwarfing to the intellect. I never knew a 
 man or a woman of extreme fashion that knew 
 much. How belittling the study of the cut of a 
 coat, or the tie of a cravat, or the wrinkle in a 
 shoe, or the color of a ribbon ! How they are 
 worried if something gets untied, or hangs 
 awry, or is not nicely adjusted ! With a mind 
 capable of measuring the height and depth of 
 great subjects ; able to unravel mysteries ; to 
 walk through the universe ; to soar up into the 
 infinity of God's attributes, — hovering perpetu-
 
 54 The Abominations. 
 
 ally over a new style of mantilla ! I have 
 known men, reckless as to their character, and 
 regardless of interests momentous and eternal, 
 exasperate^d by the shape of a vest-button ! 
 
 What is the matter with that woman — wrought 
 up into the agony of despair ? O, her muff 
 is out of fashion ! 
 
 Worse than all — this folly is not satisfied 
 until it has extirpated every moral sentiment, 
 and blasted the soul. A wardrobe is the rock 
 upon which many a soul has been riven. The - 
 excitement of a luxurious life has been the 
 vortex that has swallowed up more souls than 
 the Maelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships. 
 What room for elevating themes in a heart 
 filled with the trivial and unreal ? Who can 
 wonder that in this haste for sun-gilded bawbles 
 and winged thistle-down, men should tumble 
 into ruin ? The travellers to destruction are not 
 all clothed in rags. On that road chariot jostles 
 against chariot ; and behind steeds in harness 
 golden-plated and glittering, they go down, 
 coach and four, herald and postilion, racketing 
 on the hot pavements of hell. Clear the track ! 
 Bazaars hang out their colors over the road ;
 
 The Power of Clothes. 55 
 
 and trees of tropical fruitfulness overbranch the 
 way. No sound of woe disturbs the air ; but 
 all is light and song, and wine and gorgeousness. 
 The world comes out to greet the dazzling pro- 
 cession with Hurrah ! and Hurrah ! But, sud- 
 denly, there is a halt and an outcry of dismay, 
 and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea 
 tumbling upon the Egyptians. Shadow of 
 grave-stones upon finest silk ! Wormwood 
 squeezed into impearled goblets ! Death, with 
 one cold breath, withering the leaves and freez- 
 ing the fountains. v 
 
 In the wild tumult of the last day — the 
 mountains falling, the heavens flying, the tlirones 
 uprising, the universe assembling ; amid the 
 boom of the last great thunder-peal, and under 
 the crackling of a burning world — v/hat will 
 become of the fop and the dandy ? 
 
 He who is genuinely refined will be useful 
 and happy. There is no gate that a gentleman's 
 hand cannot open. During his last sickness 
 there will be a timid knock at the basement 
 door by those who have come to sec how 
 he is. 
 
 But watch the career of one thoroughly arti-
 
 ^0 The Abo7ninations. 
 
 ficial. Through inheritance, or perhaps his own 
 skill, having obtained enough for purposes of 
 display, he feels himself thoroughly established. 
 He sits aloof from the common herd, and looks 
 out of his window upon the poor man, and says 
 — " Put that dirty wretch off my steps immedi- 
 ately ! " On Sabbath days he finds the church, 
 but mourns the fact that he must worship with 
 so many of the inelegant, and says, " They are 
 perfectly awful ! " " That man that you put in 
 my pew had a c'oat on his back that did not 
 cost five dollars." He struts through life un- 
 sympathetic with trouble, and says, " I cannot 
 be bothered." Is delighted with some doubtful 
 story of Parisian life, but thinks that there are 
 some very indecent things in the Bible. Walks 
 arm in arm with a millionnaire, but does not 
 know his own brother. Loves to be praised for 
 his splendid house ; and when told that he looks 
 younger than ten years ago, says — "Well, 
 really ; do you think so ! " 
 
 But the brief strut of his life is about over. 
 Up -stairs — he dies. No angel wings hovering 
 about him. No gospel promises kindling up 
 the darkness ; — but exquisite embroidery, ele-
 
 The Power of ClotJics. 57 
 
 gant pictures, and a bust of Shakespeare on 
 the mantel. The pulses stop. The minister 
 comes in to read of the Resurrection, that day 
 when the dead shall come up — both he that 
 died on the floor, and he that expired under 
 princely upholstery. He is carried out to 
 burial. Only a few mourners, but a great 
 array of carriages. Not one common man at 
 the funeral. No befriended orphan to weep a 
 tear upon his grave. No child of want press- 
 ing through the ranks of the weeping, saying — 
 '' Wq is the last friend I have ; and I must see 
 him." 
 
 What now ? He was a great man : Shall not 
 chariots of salvation come down to the other 
 side of the Jordan, and escort him up to the 
 palace ? Shall not the angels exclaim — " Turn 
 out ! a prince is coming." Will the bells 
 chime ? Will there be harpers with their harps, 
 and trumpeters with their trumpets ? 
 
 No ! No ! No ! There will be a shudder, as 
 though a calamity had happened. Standing 
 on heaven's battlement, a watchman will see 
 something shoot past, with fiery downfall, 
 and shriek : " Wandering star — for whom 
 3* 
 
 I*
 
 58 The Abomijtations. ' 
 
 is reserved the blackness of darkness for- 
 ever ! " 
 
 With the funeral pageant the brilliant career 
 terminated. There was a great array of car- 
 riages.
 
 AFTER MIDNIGHT. 
 
 When night came down on Babylon, Nine- 
 veh, and Jerusalem, they needed careful watch- 
 ing, otherwise the incendiary's torch might 
 have been thrust into the very heart of the 
 metropolitan splendor ; or enemies, marching 
 from the hills, might have forced the gates. 
 All night long, on top of the wall and in front 
 of the gates, might be heard the measured step 
 of the watchman on his solitary beat ; silence 
 hung in air, save as some passer-by raised the 
 question : " Watchman, what of the night ? " 
 
 It is to me a deeply suggestive and solemn 
 thing to see a man standing guard by night. 
 It thrilled through me, as at the gate of an 
 arsenal in Charleston, the question once smote 
 me, "Who comes there?" followed by the 
 sharp command : "Advance and give the coun- 
 tersign." Every moral teaicher stands on pick- 
 et, or patrols the wall as watchman. His 
 work is to sound the alarm ; and whether it be 
 in the first watch, in the second watch, in the
 
 6o The Aboviiiiations. 
 
 third watch, or in the fourth watch, to be vigi- 
 lant until the daybreak flings its "morning 
 glories " of blooming cloud across the arching 
 trellis of the sky^. 
 
 The ancients divided their night into four 
 parts — the first watch, from six to nine ; the 
 second, from nine to twelve ; the third, from 
 twelve to three; and the fourth, from three to 
 six. 
 
 I speak now of the city in the third watch, or 
 from twelve to three o'clock. 
 
 I never weary of looking upon the life and 
 brilliancy of the city in the first watch. That 
 is the hour when the stores are closinsr. The 
 laboring men, having quitted the scaffolding and 
 the shop, are on their way home. It rejoices me 
 to give them my seat in the city car. They 
 have stood and hammered away all day. Their 
 feet are weary. They are exhausted with the 
 tug of work. They are mostly cheerful. With 
 appetites sharpened on the swift turner's wheel 
 and the carpenter's whetstone, they seek the 
 evening meal. The clerks, too, have broken 
 away from the counter, and w ith brain weary 
 of the long line of figures, and the whims of
 
 After Midnight. 6 1 
 
 those who go a-shopping, seek the face of 
 mother, or wife and child. The merchants are 
 unharnessing themselves from their anxieties, 
 on their way up the street. The boys that lock 
 up are heaving away at the shutters, shoving 
 the heavy bolts, and taking a last look at the 
 fire to see that all is safe. The streets are 
 thronged with young men, setting out from the 
 great centres of bargain-making. 
 
 Let idlers clear the street, and give right o( 
 way to the besweated artisans and merchants ! 
 They have earned their bread, and are now on 
 their way home to get it. 
 
 The lights in full jet hang over ten thousand 
 evening repasts — the parents at either end of 
 the table, the children between. Thank God ! 
 "who setteth the solitary in families ! " 
 
 A few hours later, and all the places of 
 amusement, good ^nd bad, are in full tide. 
 Lovers of art, catalogue in hand, stroll through 
 the galleries and discuss the pictures. The ball- 
 room is resplendent with the rich apparel of 
 those who, on either side of the white, glisten- 
 ing boards, await the signal from the orchestra. 
 The footlights of the theatre flash up ; the bell
 
 62 The Abo7ni}iations. 
 
 rings, and the curtain rises ; ar^d out from th(, 
 gorgeous scenery glide the actors, greeted with 
 the vociferation of the expectant multitudes. 
 Concert-halls are lifted into enchantment with 
 the \yarble of one songstress, or swept out on a 
 sea of tumultuous feeling by the blast of brazen 
 instruments. Drawing-rooms are filled with all 
 gracefulness of apparel, with all sweetness of 
 sound, with all splendor of manner ; mirrors are 
 catching up and multiplying the scene, until it 
 seems as if in infinite corridors there were gar- 
 landed groups advancing and retreating. 
 
 The out-door air rings with laughter, and with 
 the moving to and fro of thousands on the great, 
 promenades. The dashing span, adrip with the 
 foam of the long country ride, rushes past as 
 you halt at the curb-stone. 
 
 Mirth, revelry, beauty, fashion, magnificence 
 mingle in the great metropolitan picture, until 
 the thinking man goes home to think more seri- 
 ously, and the praying man to pray more ear- 
 nestly. 
 
 A beautiful and overwhelming thing is the 
 city in the first and second watches of the night. 
 
 But the clock strikes twelve, and the third
 
 After Alidnight. di^ 
 
 watch begins. The thunder of the city has roll- 
 ed from the air. Slight sounds now cut the 
 night with a distinctness that excites your atten- 
 tion. You hear the tinkling of the bell of the 
 street-car in the far distance ; the baying of the 
 dog ; the stamp of the horse in the adjoining 
 street; the slammingof a saloon door ; the hic- 
 coughing of the inebriate ; and the shriek of the 
 steam-whistle five miles away. Solemn and 
 stupendous is this third watch. There are re- 
 spectable men abroad. The city missionary is 
 going up that court, to take a scuttle of coal to 
 a poor family. The undertaker goes up the 
 steps of that house, from which there comes a 
 bitter cry, as though the destroying angel had 
 smitten the first-born. The minister of Jesus 
 passes along ; he has been giving the sacrament 
 to a dying Christian. The physician hastens 
 past, the excited messenger a few steps ahead, 
 impatient to reach the threshold. Men who are 
 forced to toil into the midnight are hastening to 
 their pillow. But the great multitudes are 
 asleep. The lights are out in the dwellings, 
 save here and there one. That is the light of 
 the watcher, for the remedies must be adminis-
 
 64 The Abominations. 
 
 tered, and the fever guarded, and the restless 
 tossing of the coverlet resisted, and the ice 
 kept upon the temples, and the perpetual prayer 
 offered by hearts soon to be broken. The 
 street-lamps, standing in long line, reveal the 
 silence and the slumber of the town. 
 
 Stupendous thought : a great city asleep ! 
 Weary arm gathering strength for to-morrow's 
 toil. Hot brain getting cooled off. Rigid 
 muscles relaxing. Excited nerves being sooth- 
 ed. White locks of the octogenarian in thin 
 drifts across the white pillow — fresh fall of flakes 
 on snow already fallen. Children with dimpled 
 hands thrown out over the pillow, with every 
 breath inhaling a new store of fun and frolic. 
 
 Let the great hosts sleep ! A slumbcrless 
 Eye will watch them. Silent be the alarm-bells 
 and merciful the elements ! Let one great wave 
 of refreshing slumber roll across the heart of the 
 great town, submerging trouble and weariness 
 and pain. It is the third watch of the night, 
 and time for the city to sleep. 
 
 But be not deceived. There are thousands 
 of people in the great town who will not sleep a 
 moment to-night. Go up that dark court. Be
 
 After Midnight. 65 
 
 careful, or you will fall over the prostrate form 
 of a drunkard lying on his own worn step. Look 
 about you, or you will feel the garroter's hug. 
 Try to look in through that broken pane 1 
 What do you see? Nothing. But listen. 
 What is it? " God help us ! " No foothghts, 
 but tragedy — mightier, ghastlier than Ristori or 
 Edwin Booth ever acted. No bread. No light. 
 No fire. No cover. They lie strewn upon the 
 floor — two whole families in one room. They 
 shiver in the darkness. They have had no food 
 to-day. You say: "Why don't they beg?" 
 They did beg, but got nothing. You say : 
 " Hand them over to the almshouse." 
 
 Ah ! they had rather die than go to the alms- 
 house. Have you never heard the bitter cry of 
 the man or of the child when told that he* must 
 go to the almshouse ? 
 
 You say that these are vicious poor, and have 
 brought their own misfortune on themselves. 
 
 So much the more to be pitied. The Chris- 
 tian poor — God helps them ! Through their 
 night there twinkles the round, merry star of 
 hope, and through the cracked window-pane of 
 their hovel they see the crystals of heaven.
 
 66 The Aboniiiiations. 
 
 But the vicious are the more to be pitied. 
 They have no hope. They are in hell now. 
 They have put out their last light. People ex- 
 cuse themselves from charity by saying they do 
 not deserve to be helped. If I have ten prayers 
 for the innocent, I shall have twenty for the 
 guilty. If a ship be dashed upon the rocks, the 
 fisherman, in his hut on the beach, will wrap 
 the warmest flannels around those who are the 
 most chilled and battered. The vicious poor 
 have suffered two awful wrecks, the wreck of 
 the body, and the wreck of the soul ; a wreck 
 for time and a wreck for eternity. 
 
 Go up that alley ! Open the door. It is not 
 locked. They have nothing to lose. No bur- 
 glar would want anything that is there. There 
 is only a broken chair set against the door. 
 Strike a match and look around you. Beastli- 
 ness and rags ! A shock of hair hanging over 
 the scarred visage. Eyes glaring upon }^ou. 
 Offer no insult. Be careful what you say. 
 Your life is not worth much in such a place. 
 See that red mark on the wall. That is the 
 mark of a murderer's hand. From the cor- 
 ner a wild face starts out of the straw and
 
 After Midnight. 6y 
 
 moves toward you, just as your light goes 
 out. 
 
 Strike another match. Here is a little babe. 
 It tires not'laugh. It never will laugh, A sea- 
 flower flung on an awfully barren beach : O that 
 the Shepherd would fold that lamb ! Wrap 
 your shawl about you, for the January wind 
 sweeps in. Strike another match. The face of 
 that young woman is bruised and gashed now, 
 but a mother once gazed upon it in ecstasy of 
 fondness. Awful stare of two eyes that seem 
 looking up from the bottom of woe. Stand 
 back. No hope has dawned on that soul for 
 years. Hope never will dawn upon it. Utter 
 no scorn. '1 he match has gone out. Light it 
 not again, for it would seem to be a mockery. 
 
 Pass out ! Pass on ! Know that there are 
 thousands of such abodes in our cities. An 
 awful, gloomy, and overwhelming picture is 
 the city in the third watch. 
 
 After midnight the crime of the city docs its 
 chief work. At eight and a half o'clock in the 
 
 o ■ 
 
 evening the criminals of the city are at leisure. 
 They are mostly in the drinking saloons. It 
 needs courage to do what they propose to do.
 
 6S The Aboniinatioiis. 
 
 Rum makes men reckless. They are getting 
 their brain and hand just right. Toward mid- 
 night they go to their garrets. They gather 
 their tools. Soon after the third watch they 
 stalk forth, silently, looking out for the police, 
 through the alleys to their appointed work. 
 This is a burglar ; and the door-lock will fly 
 open at the touch of the false keys. That 
 is an incendiary ; and before morning there 
 will be a light on the sky, and a cry of " Fire ! 
 Fire ! " That is an assassin ; and a lifeless 
 body will be found to-morrow in some of the 
 vacant lots. 
 
 During all the day there are hundreds of vil- 
 lains to be found lounging about, a part of the 
 time asleep, a part of the time awake ; but at 
 twelve to-night they will rouse up, and their 
 eyes will be keen, and their minds acute, and 
 their arms strong, and their foot fleet to fly or 
 pursue. Many of them have been brought up 
 to the work. They were born in a thief's gar- 
 ret. Their childish plaything was a burglar's 
 dark lantern. As long ago as they can remem- 
 ber, they saw, toward morning, the mother 
 binding up the father's head, wounded by a
 
 After MidnioJit. 69 
 
 watchman's billet. They began by picking 
 boys' pockets, and now they can dig an under- 
 ground passage to the cellar of the bank, or will 
 blast open the door of the gold vault. So long 
 as the children of the street are neglected there 
 will be no lack of desperadoes. 
 
 In the third watch of the night the gambling- 
 houses are in full blast. What though the 
 hours of the night are slipping away, and the 
 wife sits waiting in the cheerless home ! Stii 
 up the fires ! Bring on the drinks ! Put up 
 the stakes ! A whole fortune may be made be- 
 fore morning ! Some of the firms that two 
 years ago first put out their sign of copartnership 
 have already foundered on the gambler's table. 
 The money-drawer in many a mercantile house 
 will this year mysteriously spring aleak. Gam- 
 ing is a portentous vice, and is making great 
 efforts to become respectable. Recently a 
 member of Congress played with a member 
 elect, carrying off a trophy of one hundred and 
 twenty thousand dollars. The old-fashioned 
 way of getting a fortune is too slow ! Let us 
 toss up and see who shall have it ! 
 
 And so it goes, from the wheezing wretches
 
 yo The Abominations. 
 
 who pitch pennies in a rum grocery, to the mil- 
 honnatre gamblers in the gold-market. 
 
 After midnight the eye of God will look 
 down and see uncounted gambling-saloons ply- 
 ing their destruction. Passing down the street 
 to-night, you may hear the wrangling of the 
 gamblers mingling with the rattle of the dice, 
 and the clear, sharp crack of the balls on the 
 billiard-table. 
 
 The finest rooms in the city are gambling 
 dens. In gilded parlor, amid costly tapestry, 
 you may behold these dens of death. These 
 houses have walls attractive with elaborate 
 fresco and gems of painting — no sham artist's 
 daub, but a masterpiece. Mantel and table 
 glitter with vases and statuettes. Divans and 
 lounges with deep cushions, the perfection of 
 upholstery, invite to rest and repose. Aquaria 
 alive with fins and strewn \vith tinged shells 
 and zoophytes. Tufts of geranium, from bead 
 baskets, suspended mid-room, drop their 
 witching perfume. Fountains gushing up, 
 sprinkling the air with sparkles, or gushing 
 throu"-h the mouth cjf the marble lion. Long 
 
 'fc> 
 
 mirrors, mounted with scrolls and wings and
 
 After Midnight. 71 
 
 exquisite carvings, catching and reflecting back 
 the ma2:nificence. At their doors merchant- 
 princes dismount from their carriages ; ofificial 
 dignitaries enter ; legislators, tired of making 
 laws, here take a respite in breaking them. 
 
 From all classes this crime is gathering its 
 victims : the importer of foreign silks, and the 
 Chatham street dealer in pocket-handkerchiefs ; 
 clerks taking a game in the store after the 
 shutters are put up ; and officers of the court 
 whiling away the time while the jury are out. 
 In the woods around Baden Baden, in the 
 morning, it is no rare thing to find the suspend- 
 ed bodies of suicides. No splendor of sur- 
 roundings can hide the dreadful nature of this 
 sin. In the third watch of this very night, the 
 tears of thousands of orphans and widows will 
 dash up in those fountains. The thunders of 
 eternal destruction roll in the deep rumble of 
 that ten-pin alley. And as from respectable 
 circles young men and old are falling in line of 
 procession, all the drums of woe begin to beat 
 the dead march of ten thousand souls. 
 
 Seven millions of dollars are annually lost in 
 New York city at the gaming-table. Some of
 
 "J 2 The Abominations. 
 
 your own friends may be at it. The agents of 
 these gaming-houses around our hotels are well 
 dressed. They meet a stranger in the city ; 
 they ask him if he would like to see the city ; 
 he says, " Yes ; " they ask him if he has seen 
 that splendid building up town, and he says 
 "No." "Then," says the villain to the green- 
 horn, " I will show you the lions and the 
 elephants." After seeing the lions and the 
 elephants, I would not give much for a young 
 man's chance for decency or heaven. He looks 
 in, and sees nothing objectionable ; but let him 
 beware, for he is on enchanted ground. Look 
 out for the men who have such sleek hats — 
 always sleek hats — and such a patronizing air, 
 and who are so unaccountably interested in 
 your welfare and entertainment. All that they 
 want of you is your money. A young man on 
 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, lost in a night all 
 his money at the gaming-table, and, before he 
 left the table, blew his brains out ; but before 
 the maid had cleaned up the blood the players 
 were again at the table, shuffling away. A 
 wolf has more compassion for the lamb whose 
 blood it licks up ; a highwaynran more love for
 
 After Midnight. 
 
 / 3 
 
 the belated traveller upon whose carcass he 
 piles the stone ; the frost more feeling for the 
 flower it kills ; the fire more tenderness for the 
 tree-branch it consumes ; the storm more pity 
 for the ship that it shivers on Long Island 
 coast, than a gambler's heart has mercy for his 
 victim. 
 
 Deed of darkness unfit for sunlight, or early 
 evening hour ! Let it come forth only when 
 most of the city lights are out, in the third 
 watch of the night ! 
 
 Again, it is after twelve o'clock that drunk- 
 enness shows its worst deformity ! At eight or 
 nine o'clock the low saloons are not so ghastly. 
 At nine o'clock the victims are only talkative. 
 At ten o'clock they are much flushed. At 
 eleven o'clock their tongue is thick, and their 
 hat occasionally falls from the head. At 
 twelve they arc nauseated and blasphemous, 
 and not able to rise. At one they fall to the 
 floor, asking for more drink. At two o'clock, 
 unconscious and breathing hard. They would 
 not fly though the house took fire. Soaked, 
 imbruted, dead drunk ! They arc strewn all 
 over the city, in the drinking saloons, — fathers, 
 4
 
 74 The Abominations. 
 
 brothers, and sons ; men as good as you, 
 naturally — perhaps better. . 
 
 Not so with the higher circles of intoxication. 
 The " gentlemen" coax their fellow-reveller to 
 bed, or start with him for home, one at each 
 arm, holding him up ; the night air is filled 
 v.'ith his hooting and cursing. He will be help- 
 ed into his own door. He will fall into the 
 entry. Hush it up ! Let not the children of 
 the house be awakened to hear the shame. 
 He is one of the merchant princes. 
 
 But you cannot always hush it up. 
 
 Drink makes men mad. One of its victims 
 came home and found that his wife had died 
 during his absence ; and he went into the room 
 where she had been prepared for the grave, and 
 shook her from the shroud, and tossed her body 
 out of the window. Where sin is loud and 
 loathsome and frenzied, it is hard to keep it 
 still. This whole land is soaked with the abom- 
 ination. It became so bad in Massachusetts, 
 that the State arose in indignation ; and having 
 appointed agents for the sale of alcohol for 
 mechanical and medicinal purposes, prohibited 
 tiic general traffic under a penalty of five hun-
 
 After Midnight. 
 
 /z 
 
 drcd dollars. The popular proprietors of the 
 Revere, Trcmont,-and Parker Houses were ar- 
 rested. The grog-shops diminished in number 
 from six thousand to six hundred. God grant 
 that the time may speed on when all the cities 
 and States shall rouse up, and put their foot 
 upon this abomination. 
 
 As you pass along the streets, night by night, 
 you will see the awful need that something rad- 
 ical be done. But you do not see the worst. 
 That will come to pass long after you are sleep- 
 ing — in the third watch of the night. 
 
 Oh ! ye who have been longing for fields of 
 w'ork, here they are before you. At the Lon- 
 don midnight meetings, thirteen thousand of the 
 daughters of sin were reformed ; and uncounted 
 numbers of men, who were drunken and de- 
 bauched, have been redeemed. If from our 
 highest circles a few score of men and women 
 would go forth among the w^andering and the 
 destitute, they might yet make the darkest alley 
 of the town kindle with the gladness of heaven. 
 Do not go in your warm furs, and from your 
 well-laden tables, thinking that pious counsel 
 will stop the gnawing of empty stomachs or
 
 76 The Abo7ni7iations. 
 
 warm their stockingless feet. Take food and 
 medicine, and raiment, as well as a prayer. 
 When the city missionary told the destitute 
 woman she ought to love God, she said : " Ah ! 
 if you were as cold and hungry as I am, you 
 could think of nothing else." 
 
 I am glad to know that not one earnest pray- 
 er, not one heartfelt alms-giving, not one kind 
 word, ever goes unblessed. Among the moun- 
 tains of Switzerland there is a place where, if 
 your voice be uttered, there will come back a 
 score of echoes. But utter a kind, sympathetic, 
 and saving word in the dark places of the town, 
 and there will come back ten thousand echoes 
 from all the thrones of heaven. 
 
 There may be some one reading this who 
 knows by experience of the tragedies enacted 
 in the third watch of the night. I am not the 
 man to thrust you back with one harsh word. 
 Take off the bandage from your soul, and put 
 on it the salve of the Saviour's compassion. 
 There is rest in God for your tired soul. 
 Many have come back from their wanderings. 
 I sc8 them coming now. Cry up the news to 
 heaven ! Set all the bells a-ringing ! Under
 
 After Midnight. yj 
 
 the high arch spread the banquet of rejoicing. 
 Let all the crowned heads of heaven come in 
 and keep the jubilee. I tell you there is more 
 joy in heaven over one man who reforms than 
 over ninety-and-nine who never got off the 
 track. 
 
 But there is a man who will never return 
 from his evil ways. How many acts are there 
 in a tragedy ? Five, I believe : 
 
 Act I. — Young- wan starting from home. 
 
 Pare Jits and sisters weeping to have him go. 
 
 Wagon passing over the hills. Farewell kiss 
 
 thrown back. Ring the bell and let the curtain 
 
 drop. 
 
 Act W.—Marriage altar. Bright lights. 
 Full organ. White veil trailing through the 
 aisle. Prayer and congratulation, and excla- 
 mations of ''How zvell she looks / " Rinz the 
 bell, and let the curtain drop. 
 
 Act III. — Midnight. Woman %v ailing for 
 staggerijig steps. Old garments stuck into the 
 broken ivindoiv-pane. Many marks of hardship 
 on the face. Biting of the nails of bloodless 
 fingers. Neglect, cruelty, disgrace. Ring the 
 bell, and let the curtain drop.
 
 yS The Abominations. 
 
 Act IV. — TJirce graves in a very dark place. 
 Grave of child who died from lack of medicine. 
 Grave of wife who died of a broken heart. 
 Grave of husband and fatJicr zvJio died of dissi- 
 pation. Plenty of weeds, but no flozvc'rs. O 
 what a blasted heath with three graves / Ring 
 the bell, and let the curtain drop. 
 
 Act V. — A destroyed soid's eternity. No 
 light ; no music ; no * hope ! Despair coiling 
 aroujid the heart witJi imutterable anguish. 
 Blackness of darkness forever. 
 
 Woe ! Woe ! Woe ! I cannot bear longer 
 to look. • I close my eyes at this last act of the 
 tragedy. Quick ! Quick ! Ring the bell and 
 let the curtain drop.
 
 THE INDISCRIMINATE DANCE. 
 
 It -is the anniversary of Herod's birthday. 
 The palace is lighted. The highways leading 
 thereto are ablaze with the pomp of invited 
 guests. Lords, captains, merchant princes, and 
 the mightiest men of the realm are on the way 
 to mingle in the festivities. The tables are filled 
 with all the luxuries that the royal purveyors 
 can gather, — spiced wines, and fruits, and rare 
 meats. The guests, white-robed, anointed and 
 perfumed, take their places. Music ! The 
 jests evoke roars of laughter. Riddles are pro- 
 pounded. Repartees indulged. Toasts drunk. 
 The brain befogged. Wit gives place to uproar 
 and blasphemy. And yet they are not satisfied. 
 Turn on more light. Give us more music. 
 Sound the trumpet. Clear the floor for the 
 dance. Bring in Salome, the graceful and ac- 
 complished princess. 
 
 The doors are opened and in bounds the 
 dancer. Stand back and give plenty of room 
 for the gyrations. The lords are enchanted.
 
 So The Abominations. 
 
 They never saw such poetry of motion. Their 
 souls whirl in the reel, and bound with the 
 bounding feet. Herod forgets crown and 
 throne,— everything but the fascinations of Sa- 
 lome. The magnificence of his realm is as 
 nothing compared with that which now whirls 
 before him on tiptoe. His heart is in transport 
 with Salome as her arms are now tossed in the 
 air, and now placed akimbo. He sways with 
 every motion of the enchantress. He thrills 
 with the quick pulsations of her feet, and is be- 
 witched with the posturing and attitudes that 
 he never saw before, in a moment exchanged 
 for others just as amazing. He sits in silence 
 before the whirling, bounding, leaping, flashing 
 wonder. And when the dance stops, and the 
 tinkling cymbals pause, and the long, loud 
 plaudits that shook the palace with their thun- 
 ders had abated, the entranced monarch swears 
 unto the princely performer: "Whatsoever 
 thou shalt ask of mc I will give it to thee, to 
 the half of my kingdom." 
 
 Now there was in prison a minister by the 
 name of John the Baptist, who had made much 
 trouble by his honest preaching. He had de-
 
 The I)idiscri))ii}iatc Diuicc. 8i 
 
 nounced the sins of the king, and brought down 
 upon himself the wrath of the females in the 
 royal family. At the instigation of her mother, 
 Salome takes advantage of the king's extrava- 
 gant promise and demands the head of John 
 the Baptist on a dinner-plate. 
 
 There is a sound of heavy feet, and the clat- 
 ter of swords outside of the palace. Swing 
 back the door. The executioners are returning 
 from their awful errand. They hand a platter 
 to Salome. What is that on the platter ? A 
 new tankard of wine to rekindle the mirth of the 
 lords ? No ! It is redder than wine, and cost- 
 lier. It is the ghastly, bleeding head of John 
 the Baptist ! Its locks dabbled in gore. Its 
 eyes set in the death-stare. The distress of the 
 last agony in the features. That fascinating 
 form, that just now swayed so gracefully in the 
 dance, bends over the horrid burden without a 
 shudder. She gloats over the blood ; and just 
 as the maid of your household goes, bearing 
 out on a tray the empty glasses of the evening's 
 entertainment, so she carried out on a platter 
 the dissevered head of that good man, while all 
 the banqueters shouted, and thought it a grand 
 
 4*
 
 82 The Abo7ninahons. 
 
 joke, that, in such a brief and easy way, they 
 had freed themselves from such a plain-spoken, 
 troublesome minister. 
 
 What could be more innocent than a birthd^ 
 festival ? All the kings from the time of Pha- 
 raoh had celebrated such days ; and why not 
 Herod ? It was right that the palace should be 
 lighted, and that the cymbals should clap, and 
 that the royal guests should go to a banquet ; 
 but, before the rioting and wassail that closed 
 the scene of that day, every pure nature rev i's. 
 
 Behold the work, the influence, and the d 
 of an infamous dancer ! 
 
 I am, by natural temperament and religious 
 theory, utterly opposed to the position of those 
 who are horrified at every demonstration of 
 mirth and playfulness in social life, and who 
 seem to think that everything, decent and im- 
 moral, depends upon the style in which people 
 carry their feet. On the other hand, I can see 
 nothing but ruin, moral and physical, in the 
 dissipations of the ball-room, which have de- 
 spoiled thousands of young men and women 
 of all that gives dignity to character, or useful- 
 ness to life.
 
 The Lidiscriminate Dance. Zt^ 
 
 Dancing has been styled " the graceful 
 movement of the body adjusted by art, to 
 the measures or tune of instruments, or of 
 the voice." All nations have danced. The 
 ancients thought that Pollux and Castor at first 
 taught the practice to the Lacedaemonians ; 
 but, whatever be its origin, all climes have 
 adopted it. 
 
 In other days there were festal dances, and 
 funeral dances, and military dances, and " me- 
 diatorial " dances, and bacchanalian dances. 
 Queens and lords have swayed to and fro in 
 their gardens ; and the rough men of the back- 
 woods in this way have roused up the echo of 
 the forest. There seems to be something in 
 lively and coherent sounds to evoke the move- 
 ment of hand and foot, whether cultured or 
 uncultured. Men passing the street unconsci- 
 ously keep step to the music of the band ; and 
 Christians in church unconsciously find them- 
 selves keeping time with their feet, while their 
 soul is uplifted by some great harmony. Not 
 only is this true in cultured life, but the red 
 men of Oregon have their scalp dances, and 
 green-corn dances, and war dances. It is,
 
 84 The AbojJiinatiofis. 
 
 therefore, no abstract question that you ask me 
 — Is it right to dance ? 
 
 The ancient fathers, aroused by the indecent 
 dances of those days, gave emphatic evidence 
 against any participation in the dance. St. 
 Chrysostom says: — "The feet were not given 
 for dancing, but to walk modestly ; not to leap 
 impudently like camels." 
 
 One of the dogmas of the ancient church 
 reads : " A dance is the devil's possession ; 
 and he that entereth into a dance, entereth 
 into his possession. The devil is the gate to 
 the middle and to the end of the dance. As 
 many passes as a man makes in dancing, so 
 many passes doth he make to hell." Else- 
 where, these old dogmas declare — "The woman 
 that singeth in the dance-is the princess of the 
 devil ; and those that answer are his clerks ; 
 and the beholders are his friends, and the music 
 are his bellows, and the fiddlers are the minis- 
 ters of the devil ; for, as when hogs are strayed, 
 if the hogs'-herd call one, all assemble together, 
 so the devil calleth one woman to sing in the 
 dance, or to play on some instrument, and pre- 
 sently all the dancers gather together."
 
 TJie Indiscriminate Dance. 85 
 
 This wholesale and indiscriminate denuncia- 
 tion grew out of the utter dissoluteness of those 
 ancient plays. So great at one time was the 
 offence to all decency, that the Roman Senate 
 decreed the expulsion of all dancers and dan- 
 cing-masters from Rome. 
 
 Yet we are not to discuss the customs of that 
 day, but the customs of the present. We can- 
 not let the fathers decide the question for us. 
 Our reason, enlightened by the Bible, shall be 
 the standard. I am not ready to excommuni- 
 cate all those who lift their feet beyond a 
 certain height. I would not visit our youth 
 with a rigor of criticism that would put out all 
 their ardor of soul. I do not believe that all 
 the inhabitants of Wales, who used to step to 
 the sound of the rustic pibcorn, went down to 
 ruin. I would give to all of our youth the 
 right to romp and play. God meant it, or he 
 would not have surcharged our natures with 
 such exuberance. If a mother join hands with 
 her children, and while the eldest strikes the 
 keys, fill all the house with the sound of agile 
 feet, I see no harm. If a few friends, gathered 
 in happy circle, conclude to cross and recross
 
 86 The Abominations. 
 
 the room to the sound of the piano well played, 
 I see no harm. I for a long while tried to see 
 in it a harm, but I never could, and I probably 
 never will. I would to God men kept young 
 for a greater length of time. Never since my 
 school-boy days have I loved so well as now 
 the hilarities of life. What if we have felt 
 heavy burdens, and suffered a multitude of hard 
 knocks, is it any reason why we should stand 
 in the path of those who, unstung by life's 
 misfortunes, are exhilarated and full of glee ? 
 
 God bless the young ! They will have to live 
 many a day if they want to hear me say one 
 word to dampen their ardor or clip their wings, 
 or to throw a cloud upon their life by telling 
 them that it is hard, and dark, and doleful. It 
 is no such thing. You will meet with many a 
 trial ; but, speaking from my own experience, 
 let mc tell you that you will be treated a great 
 deal better than you deserve. 
 
 Let us not grudge to the young their joy. As 
 we go further on in life, let us .go with the re- 
 membrance that we have had our gleeful days. 
 When old age frosts our locks, and stiffens our 
 limbs, let us not block up the way, but say,
 
 The Indiscriminate Dance. Sy 
 
 " \Vc had our good times : now let others have 
 theirs." As our children come on, let us cheer- 
 fully give them our places. How glad will I be 
 to let them have everything, — my house, my 
 books, my place in society, my heritage ! By 
 the time we get old we will have had our way 
 long enough. Then let our children come on 
 and we'll have it their way. For thirty, forty, or 
 fifty years, we have been drinking from the cup 
 of life ; and we ought not to complain if called 
 to pass the cup along and let others take a drink. 
 But, while w^e have a right to the enjoyments 
 of life, we never will countenance sinful -indul- 
 gences. I here set forth a group of what 
 might be called the dissipations of the ball-room. 
 They swing an awful scythe of death. Are we 
 to stand idly by, and let the work go on, lest in 
 the rebuke we tread upon the long trail of some 
 popular vanity ? The whirlpool of the ball- 
 room drags down the life, the beauty, and the 
 moral worth of the city. In this whirlwind of 
 imported silks goes out the life of many of our 
 best families. Bodies and souls innumerable 
 are annually consumed in this conflagration of 
 ribbons.
 
 88 The Abojninations. 
 
 This style of dissipation is the abettor of 
 pride, the instigator of jealousy, the sacrificial 
 altar of health, the defiler of the soul, the avenue 
 of lust, and the curse of the town. The tread 
 of this wild, intoxicating, heated midnight 
 dance jars all the moral hearthstones of the city. 
 The physical ruin is evident. What will be- 
 come of those who work all day and dance all 
 night ? A few years will turn them out nervous, 
 exhausted imbeciles. Those who have given 
 up their midnights to spiced wines, and hot 
 suppers, and ride home through winter's cold, 
 unwrapped from the elements, w^ill at last be 
 recorded suicides. 
 
 There is but a short step from the ball-room 
 to the grave-yard. There are consumptions 
 and fierce neuralgias close on the track. Amid 
 that glittering maze of ball-room splendors, dis- 
 eases stand right and left, and balance and 
 chain. A sepulchral breath floats up amid the 
 perfume, and the froth of death's lip bubbles up 
 in the champagne. 
 
 Many of our brightest homes are being sac- 
 rificed. There are families that have actually 
 quit keeping house, and gone to boarding, that
 
 Xhe Indiscrimhiate Dance. 89 
 
 they may give themselves more exclusively to 
 the hiijher duties of the ball-room. Mothers 
 and daughters, fathers and sons, finding their 
 highest enjoyment in the dance, bid farewell to 
 books, to quiet culture, to all the amenities of 
 home. The father will, after a while, go down 
 into lower dissipations. The son will be tossed 
 about in society, a nonentity. The daughter 
 will elope with a French dancing-master. The 
 mother, still trying to stay in the glitter, and by 
 every art attempting to keep the color in her 
 cheek, and the wrinkles off her brow, attempt- 
 ing, without any success, all the arts of the 
 belle, — an old flirt, a poor, miserable butterfly 
 without any wings. 
 
 If anything on the earth is beautiful to my 
 eye, it is an aged woman ; her hair floating 
 back over the wrinkled brow, not frosted, but 
 white with the blossoms of the tree of life ; her 
 voice tender with past memories, and her face 
 a benediction. The children pull at grand- 
 mother's dress as she passes through the room, 
 and almost pull her down in her weakness ; yet 
 she has nothing but a cake, or a candy, or a 
 kind word for the little darlings. When she
 
 go The Abominations. 
 
 goes away from us there is a shadow on the 
 table, a shadow on the hearth, and a shadow in 
 the dwelhng. 
 
 But if anything on earth is distressful to look 
 at, it is an old woman ashamed of being old. 
 What with paint and false hair, she is too 
 much for my gravity. I laugh, even in church, 
 when I see her coming. One of the worst 
 looking birds I know of is a peacock after it 
 has lost its feathers. I would not give one lock 
 of my mother's gray hair for fifty thousand such 
 caricatures of old age. The first time you find 
 these faithful disciples of the ball-room dili- 
 gently engaged and happy in the duties of the 
 home circle, send me word, for I would go a 
 great way to see such a phenomenon. These 
 creatures have no home. Their children un- 
 washed. Their furniture undustcd. Tlieir 
 china closets disordered. The house a scene 
 of confusion, misrule, cheerlessness, and dirt. 
 One would think you might discover even amid 
 the witcheries of the ball-room the sickening 
 odors of the unsvvept, unventil^tcd, and unclean 
 domestic apartments. 
 
 These dissipations extinguish all love of use-
 
 The Indiscriviinaic Dance. 91 
 
 fulness. How could you expect one to be 
 interested in the alleviations of the world's 
 misery, while there is a question to be aecided 
 about the size of a glove or the shade of a 
 pongee ? How many of these men and women 
 of the ball-room visit the poor, or help dress 
 the wounds of a returned soldier in the hospital ? 
 When did the world ever see a perpetual dancer 
 distributing tracts? Such persons are turned in 
 upon themselves. And it is very poor pas- 
 ture ! 
 
 This gilded sphere is utterly bedwarfing to 
 intellect and soul. This constant study of little 
 things ; this harassing anxiety about dress ; 
 this talk of fashionable infinitesimals ; this shoe- 
 pinched, hair-frizzled, fringe-spattered group — 
 that simper and look askance at the mirrors and 
 wonder, with infinity of interest, "how that 
 one geranium leaf does look ; " this shrivelling 
 up of man's moral dignity, until it is no more 
 observable with the naked eye ; this taking of 
 a woman's heart, that God meant should be 
 filled with all amenities, and compressing it 
 until all the fragrance, and simplicity, and art- 
 lessness are squeezed out of it ; this inquisition
 
 92 The Ahoriiinations. 
 
 of a small shoe ; this agony of tight lacing ; 
 this wrapping up of mind and heart in a ruffle ; 
 this tumxbling down of a soul that God meant 
 for great upliftings ! 
 
 I prophesy the spiritual ruin of all partici- 
 pators in this rivalry. Have the white, pol- 
 ished, glistening boards ever been the road to 
 heaven ? Who at the flash of those chande- 
 liers hath kindled a torch for eternity ? From 
 the table spread at the close of that excited and 
 besweated scene, who went home to say his 
 prayers ? 
 
 To many, alas ! this life is a masquerade ball. 
 As, at such entertainments, gentlemen and 
 ladies appear in the dress of kings or queens, 
 mountain bandits or clowns, and at the close 
 of the dance throw off their disguises, so, in 
 this dissipated life, all unclean passions move in 
 mask. Across the floor they trip merrily. 
 The lights sparkle along the wall, or drop from 
 the ceiling — a very cohort of fire ! The music 
 charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. 
 Gemmed hands, stretched out, clasp gemmed 
 hands. Dancing feet respond to dancing feet. 
 Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On
 
 TJie Indiscrifnhiate Dance. 93 
 
 with the dance ! Flash, and rustle, and laugh- 
 ter, and immeasurable merry-making ! But the 
 languor of death comes over the limbs, and 
 blurs the sight. Lights loiver ! Floor hollow 
 with sepulchral echo. Music saddens into a 
 wail. Lights lower ! The maskers can hardly 
 now be seen. Flowers exchange their frag- 
 rance for a sickening odor, such as comes from 
 garlands that have lain in vaults of cemeteries. 
 Lights loivcr ! Mists fill the room. Glasses 
 rattle as though shaken by sullen thunder. 
 Sighs seem caught among the curtains. Scarf 
 falls from the shoulder of beauty, — a shroud ! 
 Lights loivcr ! Over the slippery boards, in 
 dance of death, glide jealousies, disappoint- 
 ments, lust, despair. Torn leaves and withered 
 garlands only half hide the ulcered feet. The 
 stench of smoking lamp-wicks almost quench- 
 ed. Choking damps. Chilliness. Feet still 
 Hands folded. Eyes shut. Voices hushed. 
 Lights out 1
 
 THE MASSACRE BY NEEDLE AND 
 SEWING-MACHINE. 
 
 Very long ago the needle was busy. It was 
 considered honorable for women to toil in olden 
 time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace 
 showing garments made by his own mother, 
 The finest tapestries at Bayeux were made by 
 the Queen of William the Conqueror. Augus- 
 tus the Emperor would not wear any garments 
 except those that were fashioned by some 
 member of his royal family. So let the toiler 
 everywhere be respected ! 
 
 The greatest blessing that could have happen- 
 ed to our first parents was being turned out of 
 Eden after they had done wrong. Adam and 
 Eve, in their perfect state, might have got along 
 without work, or only such slight employment 
 as a perfect garden, with no weeds in it, de- 
 manded. But, as soon as they had sinned, the 
 best thing for them was to be turned out where 
 tlicy would have to work. We know what a 
 withering thing it is for a man to have notliing
 
 Massacre by Needle, Etc. 95 
 
 to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, 
 ■when asked why he kept on working, said, " I 
 do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a 
 man who has a large amount of money to start 
 with has no chance. Of the thousand prosper- 
 ous and honorable men that you know, nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine had to work vigor- 
 ously at the beginning. 
 
 But I am now to tell you that industry is just 
 as important for a woman's safety and happi- 
 ness. The most unhappy women in our com- 
 munities to-day are those who have no engage- 
 ments to call them up in the morning ; who, 
 once having risen and breakfasted, lounge 
 through the dull forenoon in slippers down at 
 the heel and with dishevelled hair, reading 
 George Sand's last novel ; and who, having 
 dragged through a wretched forenoon and 
 taken their afternoon sleep, and having spent 
 an hour and a half at their toilet, pick up their 
 card-case and go out to make calls ; and who 
 pass their evenings waiting for somebody to 
 come in and break up the monotony. Arabel- 
 la Stuart never was imprisoned in so dark a 
 dungeon as that.
 
 96 The Abominatio7is. 
 
 There is no happiness in an idle woman. It 
 may be with hand, it may be with brain, it may 
 be with foot ; but work she must, or be wretch- 
 ed forever. The Httle girls of our families must 
 be started with that idea. The curse of out 
 American society is that our young women are 
 taught that the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, 
 sixth, seventh, tenth, fiftieth, thousandth thing 
 in their life is to get somebody to take care of 
 them. Instead of that, the first lesson should 
 be, how, under God, they may take care of 
 themselves. The simple fact is that a majority 
 of them do have to take care of themselves, and 
 that, too, after having, through the false notions 
 of their parents, wasted the years in which they 
 ought to have learned how successfully to main- 
 tain themselves. We now and here declare the 
 inhumanity, cruelty, and outrage of that father 
 and mother, who pass their daughters into 
 womanhood, having given them no facility for 
 earning their livelihood. Madame de Staol 
 said : " It is not these writings that I am proud 
 of, but the fact that I have facility in ten occu- 
 })ations, in any one of which I could make a 
 livelihood."
 
 Massacre by Needle, Etc. 97 
 
 You say you have a fortune to leave them. 
 O man and woman ! have you not learned that, 
 like vultures, like hawks, like eagles, riches 
 have wings and fly away ? Though you should 
 be successful in leaving a competency behind 
 you, the trickery of executors may swamp it in 
 a nisrht ; or some elders or deacons of our 
 churches may get up an oil company, or some 
 sort of religious enterprise sanctioned by the 
 church, and induce your orphans to put their 
 money into a hole in Venango County ; and if, 
 by the most skilful derritks, the sunken money 
 cannot be pumped up again, prove to them 
 that it was eternally decreed that that was the 
 way they were to lose it, and that it went in the 
 most orthodox and heavenly style. 
 
 O the damnable schemes that professed 
 Christians will engage in — until God puts his 
 fingers into the collar of the hypocrite's robe 
 and rips it clear down to the bottom ! 
 
 You have no right, because you are well off, 
 to conclude that your children are going to be 
 as well off. A man died, leaving a large for- 
 tune. His son, a few months ago, fell dead in 
 
 a Philadelphia grog-shop. His old comrades 
 5
 
 98 The Abominations. 
 
 came in and said, as they bent over his corpse : 
 "What is the matter with you, Boggsey ? " 
 The surgeon standing over him said : " Hush 
 up! he is dead!" — "Ah, he is dead!" they 
 said. " Come, boys, let us go and take a drink 
 in memory of poor Boggsey ! " 
 
 Have you nothing better than money to leave 
 your children ? If you have not, but send 
 your daughters into the world with empty brain 
 and unskilled hand, you are guilty of assassina- 
 tion, homicide, regicide, infanticide — compared 
 with which that of poor Hester Vaughan was 
 innocence. There are women toiling in our 
 cities for three and four dollars per week, who 
 were the daughters of merchant princes. These 
 suffering ones now would be glad to have the 
 crumbs that once fell from their father's table. 
 That worn-out, broken shoe that she wears is 
 the lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gai- 
 ters in which her mother walked ; and that torn 
 and faded calico had ancestry of magnificent 
 brocade, that swept Broadway clean without 
 any expense to the street commissioners. 
 Though you live in an elegant residence, and 
 fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters
 
 Massacre by Needle, Etc. 99 
 
 feel it is a disgrace to them not to know how to 
 work. I denounce the idea, prevalent in soci- 
 ety, that though our young women may em- 
 broider slippers, and crochet, and make mats 
 for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the 
 idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dis- 
 honorable. It is a shame for a young woman, 
 belonging to a large family, to be inefficient 
 when the father toils his life away for her sup- 
 port. It is a shame for a daughter to be idle 
 while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is 
 as honorable to sweep house, make beds, or 
 trim hats, as it is to twist a watch-chain. 
 
 As far as I can understand, the line of re- 
 spectability lies between that which is useful 
 and that which is useless. If women do that 
 which is of no value, their work is honorable. 
 If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. 
 That our young women may escape the censure 
 of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. 
 You may knit a tidy for the back of an arm- 
 chair, but by no means make the money where- 
 with to buy the chair. You may, with delicate 
 brush, beautify a mantel-ornament, but die 
 rather than earn enough to buy a marble man-
 
 TOO The Abominations. 
 
 tel. You may learn artistic music until you 
 can squall Italian, but never sing " Ortonville " 
 or " Old Hundred." Do nothing practical, if 
 you would, in the eyes of renned society, pre- 
 serve your respectability. 
 
 I scout these finical notions. I tell you a 
 woman, no more than a man, has a right to oc- 
 cupy a jDlace in this world unless she pays a 
 rent for it. 
 
 In the course of a lifetime you consume 
 whole harvests, and droves of cattle, and every 
 day you live breathe forty hogsheads of good 
 pure air. You must, by some kind of useful- 
 ness, pay for all this. Our race was the last 
 thing created, — the birds and fishes on the 
 fourth day, the cattle and lizards on the fifth 
 day, and man on the sixth day. If geologists 
 arc right, the earth was a million of years in the 
 possession of the insects, beasts, and birds, be- 
 fore our race came upon it. In one sense, we 
 were innovators. The cattle, the lizards, and 
 the hawks had pre-emption right. The question 
 is not what we arc to do with the lizards and 
 summer insects, but what the lizards and sum- 
 mer insects are to do with us.
 
 Massacre by Needle, Etc. loi 
 
 If wc want a place in this world wc must cam 
 it. The partridge makes its own nest before it 
 occupies it. The lark, by its morning song, 
 earns its breakfast before it eats it ; and the Bi- 
 ble gives an intimation that the first duty of an 
 idler is to starve, when it says if he " will not 
 work, neither shall he eat." Idleness ruins the 
 health ; and very soon Nature says, "This man 
 has refused to pay his rent ; out with him ! " 
 
 Society is to be reconstructed on the subject 
 of woman's toil. A vast majority of those who 
 would have woman industrious shut her up to a 
 few kinds of work. My judgment in this mat- 
 ter is, that a woman has a right to do anything 
 she can do well. There should be no depart- 
 ment of merchandise, mechanism, art, or sci- 
 ence barred against her. If Miss Hosmer has 
 genius for sculpture, give her a chisel. If Rosa 
 Bonhcur has a fondness for delineating animals, 
 let her make "The Horse Fair." If Miss 
 Mitchell will study astronomy, let her mount 
 the starry ladder. If Lydia will be a merchant, 
 let her sell purple. If Lucretia Mott will preach 
 the Gospel, let her thrill with her womanly elo- 
 quence the Quaker meeting-house.
 
 I02 The Abominations. 
 
 It is said, if woman is given such opportuni- 
 ties, she will occupy places that might be taken 
 by men. I say, if she have more skill and 
 adaptedness for any position than a man has, let 
 her have it ! She has as much right to her 
 bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as men 
 have. 
 
 But it is said that her nature is so delicate 
 that she is unfitted for exhausting toil. I ask, 
 in the name of all past history, what toil on 
 earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremen- 
 dous than that toil of the needle to which for 
 ages she has been subjected ? The battering- 
 ram, the sword, the carbine, the battle-axe 
 have made no such havoc as the needle. I 
 would that these living sepulchres in which wo- 
 men have for ages been buried might be open- 
 ed, and that some resurrection trumpet might 
 bring up these living corpses to the fresh air 
 and sunlight. 
 
 Go with me, and I will show you a woman 
 who, by hardest toil, supports her children, her 
 drunken husband, her old father and mother, 
 pays her house-rent, always has whplesome 
 food on her tabic, and, when she can get some
 
 Massacre by Needle, Elc. 1C3 
 
 neighbor on the Sabbath to come in and take 
 care of her family, appears in church, with hat 
 and cloak that are far from indicating the toil to 
 which she is subjected. 
 
 Such a woman as that has body and soul 
 enough to fit her for any position. She could 
 stand beside the majority of your salesmen and 
 dispose of more goods. She could go into your 
 wheelwright shops and beat one-half of your 
 workmen at making carriages. We talk about 
 woman as though we had resigned to her all 
 the light work, and ourselves had shouldered 
 the heavier. But the day of judgment, which 
 will reveal the sufferings of the stake and inqui- 
 sition, will marshal before the throne of God 
 and the hicrarchs of heaven the martyrs of 
 wash-tub and needle. 
 
 Now, I say, if there be any preference in oc- 
 cupation, let woman have it. God knows her 
 trials are the severest. By her acuter sensitive- 
 ness to misfortune, by her hour of anguish, I 
 demand that no one hedge up her pathway to 
 a livelihood. O thef meanness, the dcspicability 
 of men who begrudge a woman the right to 
 work anywhere, in any honorable calling !
 
 I04 The AboDiinatioiis. 
 
 I go still further, and say that women should 
 have equal compensation with men. By what 
 principle of justice is it that women in many of 
 our cities get only two-thirds as much pay as 
 men, and in many cases only half ? Here is the 
 gigantic injustice— that for work equally well, 
 if not better done, woman receives far less com- 
 pensation than man. Start with the National 
 Government : women clerks in Washington get 
 nine hundred dollars for doing that for which 
 men receive eighteen hundred. 
 
 To thousands of young women of New York 
 to-day there is only this alternative : starvation 
 or dishonor. Many of the largest mercantile 
 establishments of our cities are accessory to 
 these abominations ; and from their large es- 
 tablishments there are scores of souls bcinc" 
 pitched off into^ death ; and tJicir employers 
 know it ! 
 
 Is there a God ? Will there be a judgment ? 
 I tell you, if God rises up to redress woman's 
 Avrongs, many of our large establishments will 
 be swallowed up quicker than a South-Ameri- 
 can earthqaake ever took down a city. God 
 will catch these oppressors between the two
 
 Massacre by Needle, Etc. 105 
 
 mill-stones of his wrath, and grind them to 
 powder ! 
 
 Why is it that a female principal in a school 
 gets only eight hundred and twenty-five dollars 
 for doing work for which a male principal gets 
 sixteen hundred and fifty ? 
 
 I hear from all this land the wail of woman- 
 hood. Man has nothing to answer to that wail 
 but flatteries- He says she is an angel. She is 
 not. She knows she is not. She is a human 
 being, who gets hungry when she has no food, 
 and cold when she has no fire. Give her no 
 more flatteries : give her Justice ! 
 
 There are thirty-five thousand sewing-girls in 
 New York and Brooklyn. Across the darkness 
 of this night I hear their death-groan. It is not 
 such a cry as comes from those who are sud- 
 denly hurled out of life, but a' slow, grinding, 
 horrible wasting away. Gather them before 
 you and look into their faces, pinched, ghastly, 
 hunger-struck ! Look at their fingers, needle- 
 picked and blood-tipped ! See that premature 
 stoop in the shoulders ! Hear that dry, hack- 
 ing, merciless cough ! 
 
 At a large meeting of these women, held in a 
 5=*
 
 io6 The Abo7n{nafto7is. 
 
 hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches were de- 
 livered, but a needle-woman took the stand, 
 threw aside her faded shawl, and, with her shriv- 
 elled arm, hurled a very thunder-bolt of elo- 
 quence, speaking out of the horrors of her own 
 experience. 
 
 Stand at the corner of a street in New York 
 at half-past five or six o'clock in the morning, as 
 the women go to their work. Many of them 
 had no breakfast except the crumbs that were 
 left over from the night before, or a crust they 
 chew on their way through the street. Here 
 they come ! the working girls of New York and 
 Brooklyn ! These engaged in bead-work, these 
 in flower-making, in millinery, enamelling, cigar 
 making, book-binding, labelling, feather-pick- 
 ing, print-coloring, paper-box making, but, 
 most overworked of all, and least compensated, 
 the sewing-women. Why do they not take the 
 city-cars on their way up ? They cannot afford 
 the five cents ! If, concluding to deny herself 
 something else, she get into the car, give her a 
 seat ! You want to sec how Latimer and Rid- 
 ley appeared in the fire : look at that woman 
 and behold a more horrible martyrdom, a hotter
 
 Massacre by Needle, Etc. 107 
 
 iire, a more agonizing death ! Ask that woman 
 how much she gets for her work, and she will 
 tell you six cents for making coarse shirts, and 
 finds her own thread ! 
 
 Last Sabbath night, in the vestibule of my 
 church, after service, a woman fell in convul- 
 sions. The doctor said she needed medicine 
 not so much as something to eat. As she be- 
 gan to revive in her delirium, she said, gasp- 
 ingly : "Eight cents! Eight cents! Eight 
 cents ! I wish I could get it done ! I am so 
 tired ! I wish I could get some sleep, but I 
 must get it done ! Eight cents ! Eight cents ! " 
 We found afterwards that she was making crar- 
 ments for eight cents apiece, and that she could 
 make but three of them in a day ! Hear it ! 
 Three times eight are twenty-four ! Hear it, 
 men and w'omen who have comfortable homes ! 
 
 Some of the worst villains of the city are the 
 employers of these women. They beat them 
 down to the last penny, and try to cheat them 
 out of that. The woman must deposit a dollar 
 or two before she gets the garments to work on. 
 When the work is done it is sharply inspected, 
 the most insignificant flaws picked out, and
 
 io8 The Abominations. 
 
 the wages refused, and sometimes the dollar de- 
 posited not given back. The Women's Protec- 
 tive Union reports a case where one of these 
 poor souls, finding a place where she could get 
 more wages, resolved to change employers, and 
 went to get her pay for work done. The em- 
 ployer says: "I hear you are going to leave 
 me ? " — " Yes," she said, " and I have come to 
 get what you owe me." He made no answer. 
 She said: "Are you not going to pay me ? " 
 — "Yes," he said, "I will pay you;" and lie 
 kicked her doivn the stairs. 
 
 How are these evils to be eradicated ? What 
 have you to answer, you who sell coats, and 
 have shoes made, and contract for the Southern 
 and Western markets? What help is there, 
 what panacea, what redemption ? Some say : 
 "Give women the ballot." What effect such 
 ballot might have on other questions I am not 
 licrc to discuss ; but what would be the effect 
 of female suffrage upon vvoman's wages? I do 
 not believe that woman will ever get justice by 
 woman's ballot. 
 
 Indeed, women oppress women as much as 
 men do. Do not women, as much as men, beat
 
 Massacre by Needle, Elc. 109 
 
 down to the lowest figure the woman who sews 
 for them ? Are not women as sharp as men on 
 washerwomen, and miUiners, and mantua-mak- 
 crs ? If a woman asks a dollar for her work, 
 does not her female employer ask her if she will 
 not take ninet)' cents ? You say " only ten cents 
 difference ;" but that is sometimes the difference 
 between heaven and hell. Women often have 
 less commiseration for women than men. If a 
 woman steps aside from the path of virtue, man 
 may forgive, — woman never ! Woman will 
 never get justice done her from woman's ballot. 
 
 Neither will she get it from man's ballot. 
 How, then? God will- rise up for her. God 
 has more resources than we know of. The 
 flaming sword that hung at Eden's gate when 
 woman was driven out will cleave with its terri- 
 ble edge her oppressors. 
 
 But there is something for our women to do. 
 Let our young people prepare to excel in spheres 
 of work, and they will be able, after a while, to 
 get larger wages. If it be shown that a woman 
 can, in a store, sell more goods in a year than a 
 man, she will soon be able not only to ask but 
 to demand more wages, and to demand them
 
 I lo The Abojnhiations. 
 
 successfully. Unskilled and incompetent labor 
 must take what is given ; skilled and competent 
 labor will eventually make its own standard. 
 Admitting that the law of supply and demand 
 regulates these things, I contend that the de- 
 mand for skilled labor is very great, and the 
 supply very small. 
 
 Start with the idea that work is honorable, 
 and that you can do some one thing better than 
 any one else. Resolve that, God helping, you 
 will take care of yourself. If you are, after a 
 while, called into another relation, you \\\\\ all 
 the better be qualified for it by your spirit of 
 self-reliance ; or if you are called to stay as you 
 arc, you can be happy and self-supporting. 
 
 Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak, 
 and woman the vine that climbs it ; but I have 
 seen many a tree fall that not only went down 
 itself, but took all the vines with it. I can tell 
 you of something stronger than an oak for an 
 ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of the 
 great Jehovah. Single or affianced, that woman 
 is strong who leans on God and does her best. 
 The needle may break ; the factory-band may 
 slip ; the wages may fail ; but, over every gOQtJ
 
 Massacre by Needle, Etc. 1 1 1 
 
 woman's head there are spread the two great, 
 gentle, stupendous wings of the Almighty. 
 
 Many of you will go single-handed through 
 hfe, and you will have to choose between two 
 characters. Young woman, I am sure you will 
 turn your back upon the useless, giggling, 
 painted nonentity which society ignominiously 
 acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to 
 make you an humble, active, earnest Christian. 
 
 What will become of this godless disciple of 
 fashion ? What an insult to her sex ! Her 
 manners are an outrage upon decency. She 
 is more thoughtful of the attitude she strikes 
 upon the carpet than how she will look in the 
 judgment ; more worried about her freckles than 
 her sins ; more interested in her bonnet-strings 
 than in her redemption. Her apparel is the 
 poorest part of a Christian woman, however 
 magnificently dressed, and no one has so much 
 right to dress well as a Christian. Not so with 
 the godless disciple of fashion. Take her 
 robes, and you take everything. Death will 
 come down on her some day, and rub the bistre 
 off her eyelids, and the rouge off her cheeks, 
 and with two rough, bony hands, scatter
 
 J 12 TJie Abo))iinations. 
 
 spangles and glass beads and rings and ribbons 
 and lace and brooches and buckles and sashes 
 and frisettes and golden clasps. 
 
 The dying actress whose life had been 
 vicious said: "The scene closes. Draw the 
 curtain." Generally the tragedy comes first, 
 and the farce afterward ; but in her life it was 
 first the farce of a useless life, and then the 
 tragedy of a wretched eternity. 
 
 Compare the life and death of such an one 
 with that of some Christian aunt that was once 
 a blessing to your household. I do not know 
 that she was ever offered the hand in marriage. 
 . She lived single, that untrammelled she might 
 be everybody's blessing. Whenever the sick 
 were to be visited, or the poor to be provided 
 with bread, she went with a blessing. She 
 could pray, or sing " Rock of Ages," for any 
 sick pauper who asked her. As she got older, 
 there were days when she was a little sharp, 
 but for the most part Auntie was a sunbeam — 
 just the one for Christmas-eve. She knew 
 better than any one else how to fix things. 
 Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of 
 everybody who had trouble. The brightest
 
 Alassacre by Needle , Etc. 1 1 
 
 o 
 
 things in all the house dropped from her 
 fingers. She had peculiar notions, but the 
 grandest notion she ever had was to make you 
 happy. She dressed well — Auntie always 
 dressed well ; but her highest adornment was 
 that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the 
 sight of God, is of great price. When she 
 died, you all gathered lovingly about her ; and 
 as you carried her out to rest, the Sunday- 
 school class almost covered the coffin with 
 japonicas ; and the poor people stood at the 
 end of the alley, with their aprons to their 
 eyes, sobbing bitterly ; and the man of the 
 world said, with Solomon, " Ilcr price was 
 above rubies ; " and Jesus, as unto the maiden 
 in Judea, commanded: "I SAY UNTO TIIEE 
 ARISE ! "
 
 PICTURES IN THE STOCK GALLERY. 
 
 At my entrance upon this discussion, I must 
 deplore the indiscriminate terms of condemna- 
 tion employed by many well-meaning persons 
 in regard to stock operations. The business of 
 the stock-broker is just as legitimate and neces- 
 sary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or 
 hardware ; and a man may be as pure-minded 
 and holy a Christian at the Board of Brokers as 
 in a prayer-meeting. The broker is, in the 
 sight of God, as much entitled to his commis- 
 sions as any hard-working mechanic is entitled 
 to his day's wages. Any man has as much 
 right to make money by the going up of stocks 
 as by the going up of sugar, rice, or tea. The 
 inevitable board-book that the operator carries 
 in his hand may be as pure as the clothing 
 
 Note. — This cliaptcr, thougl: largely devoted to " Oil," is 
 to be construed as reaching any other "Kite" that the stock 
 gamljler flics — any other scheme which his unprincipled ideas ot 
 right and wrong will permit him to work to his own gain and 
 others' loss. The oil mania was only a more popular or attrac- 
 tive vice of the stock-boards, which is reproduced, in spirit and 
 motive, almost every month of the year.
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery, i [5 
 
 merchant's ledger. It is the work of the 
 brokers to facUitate business ; to make transfer 
 of investment ; to watch and report the tides of 
 business ; to assist the merchant in lawful enter- 
 prises. 
 
 Because there are men in this department of 
 business, sharp, deceitful, and totally iniquitous, 
 you have no right to denounce the entire class. 
 Importers, shoe-dealers, lumbermen, do not 
 want to be held responsible for the moral 
 deficits of their comrades in business. Neither 
 have you a right to excoriate those who are 
 conscientiously operating through the channels 
 spoken of. If they take a risk, so do all busi- 
 ness men. The merchant who buys silk at five 
 dollars per yard takes his chances ; he expects 
 it to go up to six dollars ; it may fall to four 
 dollars. If a man, by straightforward operations 
 in stocks, meets with disaster and fails, he 
 deserves sympathy just as much as he who sold 
 spices or calicoes, and through some miscalcu- 
 lation is struck down bankrupt. 
 
 We have no right to impose restrictions upon 
 this class of men that we impose upon no other. 
 What right have you to denounce the operation
 
 ii6 The Aboiuinaiions. 
 
 " buyer — ten days" or *"' buyer — twenty days," 
 when you take a house, " buyer — three hundred 
 and sixty-five days ? " Perhaps the entire pay- 
 ment is to be made at the end of a year, when 
 you do not know but that, by that time, you 
 will be penniless. Give all men their due, if 
 you would hold beneficent influence over them. 
 Do not be too rough in pulling out the weeds, 
 lest you uproot also the marigolds and verbenas. 
 In the Board of Brokers there are some of the 
 most conscientious, upright Christian men of 
 our cities — men who would scorn a lie, or a 
 subterfuge. Indeed, there are men in these 
 boards who might, in some respects, teach a 
 lesson of morality to other commercial circles. 
 
 I will not deny that there are special tempta- 
 tions connected with this business even when 
 carried on legitimately. So there arc dangers 
 to the engineer on a railroad. He does not 
 know what night he may dash into the coal- 
 train. But engines must be run, and stocks 
 must be sold. A nervous, excitable man ought 
 to be very slow to undertake either the engine 
 or the Stock Exchange. 
 
 A clever young man, of twenty-five years of
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 1 1 7 
 
 age, bought ten shares in the Pennsylvania 
 Central Railroad. The stock went up five dol- 
 lars per share, and he made fifty dollars by'the 
 operation. His mother, knowing his tempera- 
 ment, said to him, " I wish you had lost it." 
 But, encouraged, he entered another operation, 
 and took ten shares in another railroad and 
 made two hundred dollars. By this time he 
 was ready for the wildest scheme. He lost, in 
 three years, forty thousand dollars, ruined his 
 health, and broke his wife's heart. Her father 
 
 supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate 
 
 * 
 
 has a shingle up, in a small court, among low 
 
 operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this 
 
 commercial sphere. He would have been unfit 
 
 for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for 
 
 any place that demands steady nerve, cool brain, 
 
 and well-balanced temperament. 
 
 But, while there is a legitimate sphere for the 
 
 broker and operator, there are transactions 
 
 every day undertaken in our cities that can only 
 
 be characterized as superb outrage and villany ; 
 
 and there are members of Christian churches 
 
 who have been guilty of speculations that, in 
 
 the last day, will blanch their cheek, and thun-
 
 Ii8 The Abominations. 
 
 der them down to everlasting companionship 
 with the lowest gamblers that ever pitched 
 pennies for a drink. 
 
 It is not necessary that I should draw the dif- 
 ficult line between honorable and dishonorable 
 speculation. God has drawn it through every 
 man's conscience. The broker guilty of " cor- 
 nering " as well knows that he is sinning 
 against God and man, as though the flame 
 of Mount Sinai singed his eyebrows. He hears 
 that a brother broker has sold " short," and im- 
 mediately goes about with a wise look, saying,: 
 " Erie is going down — Erie is going down ; 
 prepare for it." Immediately the people begin 
 to sell ; he buys up the stock ; monopolizes the 
 whole affair ; drags down the man who sold 
 short ; makes largely, pockets the gain, and 
 thanks the Lord for great prosperity in business. 
 You call it "cornering." I call it gambling, 
 theft, highway robbery, villany accursed. 
 
 It is astonishing how some men, who are 
 kind in their families, useful in the church, 
 charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed 
 of the devil as soon as they enter the Stock 
 Exchange. A respectable member of one of
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 119 
 
 the churches of the city went into a broker's 
 office and said : " Get me one hundred shares 
 of Reading, and carry it ; I will leave a margin 
 of five hundred dollars." Instead of going up, 
 according to anticipation, the stock fell. Every 
 few days the operator called to ask the broker 
 what success. The stock still declined. The 
 operator was so terribly excited that the broker 
 asked him what was the matter. He replied : 
 **To tell you the truth, I borrowed that five 
 hundred dollars that I lost, and, in anticipation 
 of what I was sure I was going to get by the 
 operation, I made a very large subscription to 
 the Missionary Society." 
 
 The nation has become so accustomed to 
 frauds that no astonishment is excited thereby. 
 The public conscience has for many years been 
 utterly debauched by what were called fancy 
 stocks, morus multicaulis, Western city enter- 
 prises, and New England developments. 
 
 If a man find on his farm something as large 
 as the head of a pin, that, in a strong sunlight, 
 sparkles a little, a gold company is formed ; 
 books are opened ; working capital declared ; 
 a select number go in on the "ground floor;"
 
 I20 The Abominations. 
 
 and the estates of widows and orphans au 
 swept into the vortex. Very Httle discredit 
 is connected with any such transaction, if it is 
 only on a large scale. We cannot bear small 
 and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our 
 hats and bow almost to the ground in the pres- 
 ence of the man who has made one hundred 
 thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman 
 was arrested in the streets of one of our cities 
 for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She 
 was tried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming 
 out of prison, she went into the same business 
 and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she 
 was arrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On 
 coming out — showing the total depravity of a 
 woman's heart — she again went into the same 
 business, and sold molasses candy on Sunday. 
 Whereupon the police, the mayor and the public 
 sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, 
 though the heavens fell, no woman should be 
 allowed to sell molasses candy on Sunday. Yet 
 the law puts its hands behind its back, and 
 walks up and down in the presence of a thou- 
 sand abominations and dares not whisper. 
 There are .scores of men to-day on the sf'ccts,
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 121 
 
 whose costly family wardrobes, whose rose- 
 wood furniture, whose splendid turn-outs, whose 
 stately mansions, are made out of the distresses 
 of sewing-women, whose money they gathered 
 up in a stock swindle. There is human sweat 
 in the golden tankards. There is human blood 
 in the crimson plush. There are the bones of 
 unrequited toil in the pearly keys of the piano. 
 There is the curse of an incensed God hovering 
 over all their magnificence. Some night the 
 man will not be able to rest. He will rise up 
 in bewilderment and look about him, crying : 
 " Who is there ? " Those whom he has wrong- 
 ed will thrust their skinny arms under the tapes- 
 try, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, 
 and blow their sepulchral breath into his face, 
 crying : " Come to judgment ! " 
 
 For the warning of young men, I shall specify 
 but two of the world's most gigantic swindles 
 — out English, and the other American. In 
 England, in the early part of the last century, 
 reports were circulated of the fabulous wealth 
 of South America. A company was formed, 
 with a stock of what would be equal to thirty 
 
 millions of our dollars. The government gua- 
 6
 
 122 The Abominations. 
 
 ranteed to the company the control of all the 
 trade to the South Sea, and the company was 
 to assume the entire debt of England, then 
 amounting to one hundred and forty millions of 
 dollars. Magnificent project ! The English 
 nation talked and dreamed of nothing but Peru- 
 vian gold and Mexican silver, the national debt 
 liquidated, and Eldorados numberless and illim- 
 itable ! When five million pounds of new stock 
 was offered at three hundred pounds per share, 
 it was all snatched up with avidity. Thirty 
 million dollars of the stock was subscribed for, 
 when there were but five millions offered. 
 South Sea went up, until in the midsummer 
 month the stock stood at one thousand per 
 cent. The whole nation was intoxicated. 
 Around about this scheme, as might have been 
 expected, others just as wild arose. A com- 
 pany was formed with ten million dollars of 
 capital for importing walnut trees from Virgjnia. 
 A company for developing a wheel to go by 
 perpetual motion, with a capital of four million 
 dollars. A company for developing a new kind 
 of soap. A company for insuring against losses 
 by servants, with fifteen million dollars capitaL
 
 Pictures I'lt the Stock Gallei-y. 123 
 
 One scheme was entitled.' "A company for 
 carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, 
 but nobody to know what it is — capital two 
 million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares 
 of five hundred each. Further information to 
 be given in a month." 
 
 The books were opened at nine o'clock in the 
 morning. Before night a thousand shares were 
 taken, and two thousand pounds paid in. So 
 successful w^s the day's work, that that night 
 the projector of the enterprise went out of the 
 business, and forever vanished from the public. 
 But it was not a perfect loss. The subscribers 
 had their ornamented certificates of stock to 
 comfort them. Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 
 speaking of those times, says " that from morn- 
 ing until evening 'Change Alley was filled to 
 overflowing with one dense mass of living be- 
 ings composed of the most incongruous mate- 
 rials, and, in all things save the mad pursuit in 
 which they were employed, the very opposite 
 in habits and conditions." 
 
 What was the end of this chapter of English 
 enterprise ? Suddenly the ruin came. Down 
 went the whole nation — members of Parliament,
 
 124 The Abouiinations. 
 
 tradesmen, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, royal 
 ladles, and poor needle-women — in one stupen- 
 dous calamity. The whole earth, and all the 
 ages, heard that bubble burst. 
 
 But I am not through. Our young men shall 
 hear more startling things. We surpass Eng- 
 land in having higher mountains, deeper rivxrs, 
 greater cataracts, and larger armies. • Yea, we 
 have surpassed it in magnitude of swindles. I 
 wish to unfold before the young men of the 
 country, and before those in whose hands may 
 now be the price of blood, the wide-spread, 
 ghastly, and almost infinitely greater wicked- 
 ness of the gamblers in oil stock. Now, the 
 obtaining of lands, the transporting of machi- 
 nery, and the forming of companies for the pro- 
 duction of oil, is just as honorable as any 
 organization for the obtaining of coal, iron, 
 copper, or zirfc. God poured out before 
 this nation a river of oil, and intended us to, 
 gather it up, transport it, and use it ; and 
 there were companies formed that have with- 
 stood all commercial changes, and continued, 
 year after year, in the prosecution of an honor- 
 able business. I have just as much respect for
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 125 
 
 the man ^vho has made fiftythousanci dollars by 
 oil as I have for him who has made it by spices. 
 Out of twelve hundred petroleum companies, 
 how many do you suppose were honestly formed 
 and rightfully conducted ? Do you say six 
 hundred ? You make large demands upon 
 one's credulity ; but let us be generous, and 
 suppose that six hundred companies bought 
 land, issued honest circulars, sent out machinery, 
 and plunged into the earth for the rightful de- 
 velopment of resources. To form the other six 
 hundred companies, only three or four things 
 were necessary: First, an attractive circular, 
 regardless of expense. It must have all the 
 colors and hues of earth, and sea, and heaven. 
 Let the letters flame with all the beauty of gold, 
 and jasper, and amethyst. It must state the 
 date of incorporation, and the fact that "all sub- 
 scribers shall get the benefit of the original 
 undertaking. While it does not make so much 
 pretension as some other companies, it must be 
 distinctly announced that this is a safe and per- 
 manent investment." The circular must state 
 that "there are a goodly number of flowing 
 wells, and others which the company are happy
 
 126 The Abominations. 
 
 to say have a very good smell of oil." " The 
 books will be open only five days, as there are 
 only a few shares yet to be taken." Connected 
 with this circular is an elaborate map, drawn 
 by the artist of the company. Never mind the 
 geography of the country. Our map must have 
 a creek running through it, so crooked as to 
 traverse as much of the land as possible, and 
 make it all water-front. "Ah!" said one man 
 to his artist, "you make only one creek." 
 ~" Well," said the artist, " if you want three 
 creeks you c n have them at very little expense. 
 There — you have them now — three creeks ! " 
 
 Then the circular must have good names 
 attached to it. How to get them ? The presi- 
 dent and directors must be prominent men. If 
 celebrated for piety, all the better. The esti- 
 mable man approached says : " I know nothing 
 about this company."— " Well," says the com- 
 mittee waiting on him, " we will give you five 
 hundred dollars' worth of shares. " Immediately 
 the estimable man begins to "know about it," 
 and accepts the position of president. Three 
 or four directors arc obtained in the same way. 
 Now the thing is easy. After this you can get
 
 Pictures ill the Stock Gallery. 127 
 
 anybody. Ordinary Christians and sinners feel 
 it a joy to be in such celebrated society. 
 
 Another thing important is that the company 
 purchase three or four vials of oil to stand in 
 the window — some in the crude state, the rest 
 clarified. Genuine specimens from Venango 
 County. 
 
 Another important thing : there must be a 
 large working capital, for the company do not 
 mean to be idle. They have derricks already 
 building ; and there will be large monthly divi- 
 dends. Let it be known that there were com- 
 panies in some cities who, claiming to have a 
 capital of four hundred thousand dollars, yet had 
 that capital exhausted when they had sunk one 
 well costing five thousand dollars. But never 
 mind. The thing must be right, for some of 
 the directors are eminent for respectability. 
 You say it is certainly important that there be 
 some land out of which the oil is to be obtained. 
 Ohl no. Why be troubled with any land at 
 all ? It is an expense for nothing. You have 
 the circular, and the glowing map, with the 
 creeks and three vials of oil in the window, and 
 a flaming advertisement in the newspapers.
 
 128 The Abominations. 
 
 Now let the books be opened ! Better if you 
 can have a half-dozen offices in one room ; then 
 the agent can accommodate you with anything 
 you desire. If }'ou want to take a " flyer" in 
 this and a " flyer" in that, you shall have it. 
 
 Coming in from the country are farmers, 
 dairymen, day-laborers. Great chances now for 
 speedy emoluments. Pour in the hard-earned 
 treasures. Sure enough, a dividend of one per 
 cent, per month ! Forthwith, another multitude 
 are convinced of the safety of the investment. 
 The second month another dividend. The 
 third month another. Wherxce do these divi 
 dends come ? From the product of the wells ? 
 Oh ! no. It is your own money they are pay- 
 ing you back. How generous of this company 
 to give you five dollars back, when you might 
 have lost it all ! 
 
 But the dividends stop. What is the matter? 
 Instead of the advertisement which covered a 
 whole column of the newspapers, there comes a 
 modest little notice that " a special meeting of 
 the stockholders will be held for the purpose 
 of transacting business of importance." Per- 
 haps it may be to assess the stockholders for
 
 Pic hires ill the Stock Gallery. 129 
 
 the purpose of keeping" the httle kind they 
 have, if they have any. Or it may be for tlie 
 election of a new group of officers, for the pre- 
 sent incumbents do not want to be always 
 before the public. They are modest men. 
 They believe in rotation of office. They cannot 
 consent any longer to serve. Where have they 
 gone to ? They are busy putting up a princely 
 mansion at Long Branch, Germantown, or 
 Chelsea. They havQ served their day and gen- 
 eration, and have gone to their flocks and herds. 
 Where is the Church of- God, that she allows 
 in her membership such gigantic abominations ? 
 Were the thirty pieces of silver that Judas re- 
 ceived denounced as unfit, and shall the Church 
 of God have nothing to say about this price of 
 blood ? Is sin to be excused because it is as 
 high as heaven, or deep as hell ? The man 
 who allows his name to be used as president or 
 director in connection with an enterprise that 
 he knows is to result in the sale of twenty 
 thousand shares of an undeveloped nothing — • 
 God will tear off the cloak of his hypocrisy, and 
 in the last day show him to all the universe — a 
 brazen-faced gambler. His house will be ac-
 
 130 The Abominations. 
 
 cursed. God's anathemas will flash in the 
 chandeHer, and rattle in the swift hoofs of his 
 silver-bitted grays ; and the day of fire will see 
 him willing to leap into a burning oil-well to 
 hide himself from the face of the Lamb. The 
 hundred thousand dollars gotten in unrighteous- 
 ness will not be enough to build a barricade 
 against the advance of the divine judgments. 
 
 Think of the elder in' a church who, from the 
 oil regions, sends an exciting telegram, so that 
 one man buys a large amount of stock at 
 twelve, on Wednesday. The next day it is put 
 on the stock-board at six. The enterprising 
 man, who sold it at twelve, goes out to buy one 
 of the grandest estates within ten miles of the 
 city. The man who bought it goes into the 
 dust ; and the secret gets out that the exciting 
 telegram sent by the elder arose, not from any 
 oil actually discovered, but because in boring" 
 they had found a magnificent odor of oil. 
 
 If he who steals a dollar from a money-drawer 
 is a thief, then he who by dishonesty gets fi\'e 
 hundred thousand dollars is five hundred thou- 
 sand times more a thief. And so the last day 
 will declare him.
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 131 
 
 Did not the law right the injured man ? No ! 
 The poor who were wronged would not under- 
 take a suit against a company that could bring 
 iifty thousand dollars to the enlightenment of 
 judge, jury, and lawyer ; while, on the other 
 hand, the affluent who had be:n gouged would 
 not go to the courts for justice. Why ! how 
 would it sound, if it got out, that Mr. So and 
 So, one of the first merchants on Wall, or 
 Third, or State street, had got swindled ? They 
 will keep it still. 
 
 The guilty range to-day undisturbed through 
 society, and will continue to do so until 
 the Lord God shall bring them to an unerring 
 settlement, and proclaim to an astonished uni- 
 verse how many lies they told about the land, 
 about the derricks, about the yield, about the 
 dividends. What shall such an one say, when 
 God shall, in the great day of account, hold up 
 before him the circular, and the map, and the. 
 newspaper advertisement ? Speechless ! 
 
 Before that day shall come I warn you — Dis- 
 gorge ! you infamous stock gamblers ! Gather 
 together so many of your company as have any 
 honesty left, and join in the following circular : — •
 
 132 The Abominations. 
 
 " We the undersigned, do hereby repent of our 
 villanics, and beg pardon of the public for all 
 the ivrongs that we have done them ; and Jiereby 
 ask the widows and orphans whom we have 
 made penniless to come next Saturday, between 
 ten and three o'clock, and receive back zuhat we 
 stole from them. We hereby confess that the 
 wells spoken of in our circular never yielded any 
 oil ; and that the creeks running through our orna- 
 mented map were an entire fiction ; and that the 
 elder who piously rolled up his eyes and said it 
 zuas a safe investment , was not as devout as 
 he looked to be. Signed by the subscribers at 
 their office, in the year of our Lord 1871." 
 
 Then your conscience will be clear, and you 
 can die in peace. But I have no faith in such a 
 reformation. When the devil gets such a fair 
 hold of a man he hardly ever lets go. 
 
 To the young I turn and utter a word of 
 warning. While you are determined to be 
 acute business men, resolve at the very thresh- 
 old that you will have nothing to do with 
 stock-gambling. This country can richly afford 
 to lose the eight hundred millions of dollars 
 swindled out of honest people, if our young
 
 Pichcres in the Stock Gallery. 133 
 
 ni.-n, by it, will be warned for all the future. 
 Think you such enterprises are forever passed 
 away ? No ! they begin ah'eady to clamor for 
 public attention and patronage. There arc 
 now hundreds of printing-presses busy in mak- 
 ing pamphlets and circulars for schemes as 
 hollow and nefarious as those I have mentioned. 
 There are silver-mining companies, founded 
 upon nobody knows what — to accomplish what, 
 nobody cares. There will be other Canada 
 gold companies ; there will be other copper- 
 mining companies ; there will be more mutual 
 consumers' coal companies, w^ho, not satisfied 
 with the price of ordinary coal-dealers, will 
 resolve themselves into consumers' associa- 
 tions, where the thing consumed is not the 
 coal, but themselves — the companies that were 
 to be immaculate, setting the whole commu- 
 nity to playing the game of " Who's got the 
 money ? " 
 
 Stand off from all doubtful enterprises ! 
 Resolve that if, in a lawful way, you can- 
 not earn a living, then you will die an 
 honest man, and be buried in an honest 
 sepulchre.
 
 134 'r^^^ Aboinitiations. 
 
 There are two or three reasons why you 
 should have nothing to do with such operations. 
 Mentioning the lowest motive first, it will deso- 
 late you financially. I asked a man of large 
 observation and undoubted integrity, how many 
 of the professed stock-gamblers made a perjna- 
 nent fortune. He answered, "Not one! not 
 one of those who made this their only business." 
 For a little while you may plunge in a round of 
 seeming prosperity ; but your money is put into 
 a bag with holes. You cannot successfully bury 
 a dishonest dollar. You may put it down into 
 the very heart of the earth ; you may heave 
 rocks upon the top of it ; on top of the rocks 
 you may put banks and all moneyed institu- 
 tions, but that dishonest dollar beneath will 
 begin to heave and toss and upturn itself, and 
 keep on until it comes to the resurrection of 
 damnation. 
 
 Then this stock-gambling life is wretchedly 
 unhappy. It makes the nerves shake, and the 
 brain hot, and the heart sad, and the life dis- 
 quieted. 
 
 A man in Philadelphia, who seems to be an 
 exception to the rule — that such men do not
 
 Pictures in the Stock Gallery. 1 3 5 
 
 permanently prosper — who has well on towards 
 a million of dollars, and is nearly seventy 
 years of age, may be seen, every day, going 
 in and out, eaten up of stocks, torn in an 
 inquisition of stocks, rode by a nightmare of 
 stocks ; and, with the earnestness of a drown- 
 ing man, he rushes into a broker's shop, cry- 
 ing out: "Did you get me those shares?" 
 In such an anxious, exciting life there are 
 griefs, disappointments, anguish, but there is 
 no happiness. 
 
 Worse than all, it destroys the soul. The 
 day must come when the worthless scrip will 
 fall out of the clutches of the stock-gambler. 
 Satan will play upon him the "cornering" 
 game which, down on Wall street, he played 
 upon a fellow-operator. Now he would be 
 glad to exchange all his interest in Venango 
 County for one share in the Christian's prospect 
 of heaven. Hopeless, he falls back in his last 
 sickness. His delirium is filled with senseless 
 talk about " percentages " and " commissions " 
 and " buyer, sixty days," and " stocks up," 
 and " stocks down." He thinks that the physi- 
 cian who feels his pulse is trying to steal his
 
 136 The Abojniiiations. 
 
 " board book." He starts up at midnight, 
 saying: "One thousand shares of Reading at 
 116^. Take it!" Falls back dead. No more 
 dividends. Swindled out of heaven. STOCKS 
 DOWN ! '
 
 LEPROUS NEWSPAPERS. 
 
 The newspaper is the great educator of the 
 nineteenth century. T^ere is no force com- 
 pared with it. It is book, pulpit, platform, 
 forum, all in one. And there is not an interest 
 — religious, literary, commercial, scientific, agri- 
 cultural, or mechanical — that is not within its 
 grasp. All our churches, and schools, and col- 
 leges, and asylums, and art-galleries feel the 
 quaking of the printing-press. I shall try to 
 bring to }-our parlor-tables the periodicals that 
 are worthy of the Christian fireside, and tr}- to 
 pitch into the gutter of scorn and contempt 
 those newspapers that are not fit for the hand of 
 your child or the vision of your wife. 
 
 The institution of newspapers arose in Italy. 
 In Venice' the first newspaper was published, 
 and monthly, during the time that Venice was 
 warring against Solyman the Second in Dalma- 
 tia. It was printed for the purpose of giving 
 military and commercial information to the 
 Venetians. The first newspaper published in
 
 138 The Aboininatio7is. 
 
 England was in 1588, and called the English 
 Mercury. Others were styled the Weekly Dis- 
 coverer, the Secret Oivl, Heraclitiis Ridens, etc. 
 
 Who can estimate the political, scientific, 
 commercial, and religious revolutions roused up 
 in England for many years past by BclVs Week- 
 ly Dispatch, the Standard, the Morning Chron- 
 icle, the Post, and the London Times? 
 
 The first attempt at this institution in France 
 was in 163 1, by a physician, who published the 
 News, for the amusement and health of his pa- 
 tients. The French nation understood fully 
 how to appreciate this power. Napoleon, with 
 his own hand, wrote articles for the press, and 
 so early as in 1829 there were in Paris 169 
 journals. But in the United States the news- 
 paper has come to unlimited sway. Though in 
 1775 there were but thirty-seven in the whole 
 country, the number of published journals is 
 now counted by thousands ; and lo-day — we 
 may as well acknowledge it as not — the reli- 
 gious and secular newspapers arc the great edu- 
 cators of the country. 
 
 In our pulpits we preach to a few hundreds or 
 thousands of people ; the newspaper addresses
 
 Lep^'ous Newspapers. 139 
 
 an audience of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, 
 or two hundred thousand. We preach three or 
 four times a week ; they every morning or even- 
 ing of the year. If they are right, they are 
 ' gloriously right ; if they are wrong, they are 
 awfully wrong. 
 
 I find no difficulty in accounting for the 
 world's advance. Four centuries ago, in Ger- 
 many, in courts of justice, men fought with 
 their fists to sec who should have the decision 
 of the court ; and if the judge's decision was un- 
 satisfactory, then the judge fought with the 
 counsel. Many of the lords could not read the 
 deeds of their own estates. What has made the 
 change ? 
 
 " Books," you say. 
 
 No, sir ! The vast majority of citizens do not 
 read books. Take this audience, or any other 
 promiscuous assemblage, and how many histo- 
 ries have they read? How many treatises on 
 constitutional law, or political economy, or 
 works of science ? How many elaborate poems 
 or books of travel ? How much of Boyle, or 
 De Tocquevill6, Xenophon, or Herodotus, or 
 Percival ? Not many !
 
 140 The Abominations. 
 
 In the United States, the people would not 
 average one such book a year for eacji in- 
 dividual ! 
 
 Whence, then, this intelligence — this capacity 
 to talk about all themes, secular and religious — 
 this acquaintance with science and art — this 
 power to appreciate the beautiful and grand ? 
 Next to the Bible, the newspaper, — swift-wing- 
 ed, and everywhere"* present, flying over the 
 fences, shoved under the door, tossed into the 
 counting-house, laid on the work-bench, hawk- 
 ed through the cars ! All read it : white and 
 black, German, Irishman, Swiss, Spaniard, 
 American, old and young, good and bad, sick 
 and well, before breakfast and after tea, Mon- 
 day morning, Saturday night, Sunday and 
 week day ! 
 
 I now declare that I consider the newspaper 
 to be the grand agency by which the Gospel is 
 to be preached, ignorance cast out, oppression 
 dethroned, crime extirpated, the world raised, 
 heaven rejoiced, and God glorified. 
 
 In the clanking of the printing-press, as the 
 sheets fly out, I hear the voice cof the Lord Al- 
 mighty proclaiming to all the dead nations of
 
 Leprous Nezvspapers. 141 
 
 the earth, — "Lazarus, come forth!" And to 
 the retreating surges of darkness, — " Let there 
 be hght ! " In many of our city newspapers, 
 professing no more than secular information, 
 there have appeared during the past ten years 
 some of the grandest appeals in behalf of reli- 
 gion, and some of the most effective interpreta- 
 tions of God's government among the nations. 
 
 That man has a shrivelled heart who be- 
 grudges the five pennies he pays to the news- 
 boy who brings the world to his feet. There 
 are to-day connected with the editorial and re- 
 portorial corps of newspaper establishments men 
 of the highest culture and most unimpeachable 
 morality, who are living on the most limited 
 stipends, martyrs to the work to which they feel 
 themselves called. While you sleep in the mid- 
 night hours, their pens fly, and their brains ache 
 in preparing the morning intelligence. Many 
 of them go, unrested and unappreciated, their 
 cheeks blanched and their eyes half quenched 
 with midnight work, toward premature graves, 
 to have the " proof-sheet " of their life correct- 
 ed by Divine mercy, glad at last to escape the 
 perpetual annoyances of a fault-finding public,
 
 142 The Abominations. 
 
 and the restless, impatient cry for " more 
 copy." 
 
 " Nations are to be born in a day." Will this 
 great inrush come from personal presence of 
 missionary or philanthropist ? No. When the 
 time comes for that grand demonstration I think 
 the press in ail the earth will make the an- 
 nouncement, and give the call to the nations. 
 As at some telegraphic centre, an operator will 
 send the messages, north and south, and east 
 and west, San Francisco and Heart's Content 
 catching the flash at the same instant ; so, 
 standing at some centre to which shall reach all 
 the electric wires that cross the continent and 
 undergird the sea, some one shall, with the 
 forefinger of the right hand, click the instru- 
 ment that shall thrill through all lands, across 
 all islands, under all seas, through all palaces, 
 into all dungeons, and startle both hemispheres 
 with the news, that in a few moments shall rush 
 out from the ten thousand times ten thousand 
 printing-presses of the earth: "Glory to God 
 in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will 
 toward men ! " 
 
 You sec, therefore, that, in the plain words
 
 Leprous Newspapers. 143 
 
 to be written, I have no grudges to gratify 
 against the newspaper press. Professional men 
 are accustomed to complain of injustice done 
 them, but I take the censure I have sometimes 
 received and place it on one side the scales, and 
 the excessive praise, and place it on the other 
 side, and they balance, and so I consider I 
 have had simple justice. But we are all aware 
 that there is a class of men in towns and cities 
 who send forth a baleful influence from their 
 editorial pens. There are enough bad news- 
 papers weekly poured out into the homes of 
 our country to poison a vast population. In 
 addition to the home manufacture of iniquitous 
 sheets, the mail-bags of other cities come in 
 gorged with abominations. New York scoops 
 up from the sewers of other cities, and adds to 
 its own newspaper filth. And to-night, lying 
 on the tables of this city, or laid away on the 
 shelf, or in the trunk, for more private perusal, 
 are papers the mere mention of the names of 
 which would send a blush to the cheek, and 
 make the decent and Christian world cry out : 
 " God save the city ! " 
 
 There is a paper published in Boston of out-
 
 144 ^-^^ Abominations. 
 
 rageous character, and yet there are seven 
 thousand copies of that paper coming weekly 
 to New York for circulation. I will not men- 
 tion the name, lest some of you should go 
 right away and get it. It is wonderful how 
 quick the fingers of the printer-boy fly, but the 
 fingers of sin and pollution can set up fifty 
 thousand types in an instant. The supply of 
 bad newspapers in New York does not meet 
 the insatiable appetite of our people for refuse, 
 and garbage, and moral swill. We must, there- 
 fore, import corrupt weeklies published else- 
 where, that make our newspaper stands groan 
 under the burden. 
 
 But we need not go abroad. There are 
 papers in New York that long ago came to 
 perfection of shamelessness, and there is no 
 more power in venom and mud and slime to 
 pollute them. They have dashed their ini- 
 quities into the face of everything decent and 
 holy. And their work will be seen in the crime 
 and debauchery and the hell of innumerable 
 victims. Their columns are not long and 
 broad enough to record the tragedies of their 
 horrible undoincr of innnortal men and women.
 
 Leprous Nczvspapers. 1.I5 
 
 God, after awhile, will hold up these reeking, 
 stenchful, accursed sheets, upon which they 
 spread out their guilt, and the whole universe 
 will cry out for their damnation. See the work 
 of bad newspapers in the false tidings they 
 bring ! There are hundreds of men to-day 
 penniless, who were, during the war, hurled 
 from their affluent positions by incorrect ac 
 counts of battles that shook the money-market, 
 and the gold gamblers, with their hoofs, 
 trampled these honest men into the mire. And 
 many a window was hoisted at the hour of 
 midnight as the boy shouted: "Extra! 
 E.xtra ! " And the father and mother who had 
 an only son at the front, with trembling hand, 
 and blanched cheek, and sinking heart, read of 
 battles that had never occurred. God pity the 
 father and mother who have a boy at the front 
 when evil tidings come! If an individual 
 makes a false statement, one or twenty persons 
 may be damaged ; but a newspaper of large 
 circulation that wilfully makes a misstatement 
 in one day tells fifty thousand falsehoods. 
 
 The most stupendous of all lies is a news- 
 paper lie. 
 
 7
 
 146 The Abo7ninations. 
 
 A bad newspaper scruples not at any slander. 
 It may be that, to escape the grip of the law, 
 the paragraphs will be nicely worded, so that 
 the suspicion is thrown out and the damage 
 done without any exposure to the law. Year 
 by year, thousands of men are crushed by the 
 ink-roller. An unscrupulous man in the 
 editorial chair may smite as with the wing of a 
 destroying angel. What to him is commercial 
 integrity, or professional reputation, or woman's 
 honor, or home's sanctity ? It seems as if he 
 held in his hand a hose with which, while all the 
 harpies of sin were working at the pumps, he 
 splasl^ed the waters of death upon the best 
 interests of society. 
 
 The express-train in England halts not to 
 take in water, but between the tracks there is a 
 trough, one-fourth of a mile in length, filled 
 with water ; and the engine drops a hose that 
 catches up the water while the train flies. So 
 with bad newspapers that fly along the track of 
 death without pausing a moment, yet scooping 
 up into themselves the pollution of society, 
 and in the awful rush making the earth tremble. 
 
 Tiie most abandoned man of the city may go
 
 Leproics Newspapers. 147 
 
 to the bad newspaper and get a slander inserted 
 about the best man. If he cannot do it in any 
 other way, he can by means of an anonymous 
 communication. Now, a man who, to injure 
 another, wih write an anonymous letter, is, in 
 the first place, a coward, and, in the second 
 place, a villain. Many of these offensive 
 anonymous letters you see in the bad news- 
 paper have been found to be written in the 
 editorial cJiair. 
 
 The bad newspaper stops not at any political 
 outrage. It would arouse a revolution, and 
 empty the hearts of a million brave men in the 
 trenches, rather than not have its own circula- 
 lation multiply. What to it are the hard-earned 
 laurels of the soldier or the exalted reputation 
 of the statesman ? Its editors would, if they 
 dared, blow up die Capitol of the nation if they 
 could only successfully carry off the frieze of 
 one of the corridors. There are enough false- 
 hoods told at any one of our autumnal elections 
 to make the " Father of Lies " disown his mon- 
 strous progeny. Now it is the Mayor, then 
 the Governor, now the Secretary of State, and 
 then the President, until the air is so full of
 
 148 The Abominations. 
 
 misrepresentation that truth is hidden from the 
 view, as beautiful landscapes by the clouds of 
 summer insects blown up from the marshes. 
 
 The immoral newspaper stops not at the 
 unclean advertisement. It is so much for so 
 many words, and in such a sheet it will cost no 
 more to advertise the most impure book than 
 the new edition of Pilgrim's Progress. A book 
 such as no decent man would touch was a few 
 months ago advertised in a New York paper, 
 and the getter-up of the book, passing down 
 one of our streets the other day, acknowledged 
 to one of my friends that he had made $18,000 
 out of the enterprise. 
 
 In one column of a paper we see a grand 
 ethical discussion, and in another the droppings 
 of most accursed nastiness. Oh ! you cannot 
 by all your religion, in one col;.imn, atone for 
 one of your abominations in another ! I am 
 rejoiced that some of our papers have addressed 
 those who have proposed to compensate them 
 for bad use of their columns, in the words of 
 Peter to Simon Magus : " Thy money perish 
 with thee ! " But I arraign the newspapers that 
 give their columns to corrupt advertising for
 
 LeproiLs Newspapers. 149 
 
 the nefarious work they arc doing. The most 
 polhited plays that ever oozed from the poison- 
 ous pen of leprous dramatist have won their 
 deathful power through the medium of news- 
 papers ; the evil is stupendous ! 
 
 O ye reckless souls ! get money — though 
 morality dies, and society is dishonored, and 
 God defied, and the doom of the destroyed 
 opens before you — get money ! Though the 
 melted gold be poured upon your naked, blis- 
 tered, and consuming soul — get money ! Get 
 money ! It will do you good when it begins to 
 eat like a canker ! It will solace the pillow of 
 death, and soothe the pangs of an agonized 
 eternity ! Though in the game thou dost stake 
 thy soul, and lose it forever — get money ! 
 
 The bad newspaper hesitates not to assault 
 Christianity and its disciples. With what ex- 
 hilaration it puts in capitals, that fill one-fourth 
 of a column, the defalcation of some agent of a 
 benevolent society ! There is enough meat in 
 such a carcass of reputation to gorge all the 
 carrion-crows of an iniquitous printing-press. 
 They put upon the back of the Church all the 
 inconsistencies of hypocrites — as though a bank-
 
 150 The Abo?nijiationi,. 
 
 er were responsible for all the counterfeits upon 
 his institution ! They jeer at religion, and lift 
 up their voices until all the caverns of the lost 
 resound with the howl of their derision. They 
 forget that Christianity is the only hope for the 
 world, and that, but for its enlightenment, they 
 would now be like the Hottentots, living in 
 mud hovels, or like the Chinese, eating rats. 
 
 What would you think of a wretch who, 
 during a great storm, while the ship was being 
 tossed to and fro on the angry waves, should 
 climb up into the light-house and blow out the 
 light ? And what do you think of these men, 
 who, while all the Christian and the glorious 
 institutions of the world are being tossed and 
 driven hither and thither, are trying to climb 
 up and put out the only light of a lost world ? 
 
 The bad newspaper stops not at publishing 
 the most damaging and unclean story. The 
 only question is : " Will it pay ? " And there 
 are scores of men who, day by day, bring into 
 the newspaper offices manuscripts for publica- 
 tion which unite all that is pernicious ; and, 
 before the ink is fairly dry, tens of thousands 
 are devouring with avidity the impure issue.
 
 Leprous Newspapers. 151 
 
 Their sensibilities deadened, their sense of right 
 perverted, their purity of thought tarnished, 
 their taste for plain life despoiled — the printing- 
 press, with its iron foot, hath dashed their life 
 out ! While I speak, there are many people, 
 with feet on the ottoman, and the gas turned 
 on, looking down on the page, submerged, 
 mind and soul, in the perusal of this God-for- 
 saken periodical literature ; and the last Chris- 
 tian mother will have put the hands of the little 
 child under the coverlet for the night, before 
 they will rouse up, as the city clock strikes the 
 hour of midnight, to go death-struck to their 
 prayerless pillows. 
 
 One of the proprietors of a great paper in 
 this country gave his advice to a young man 
 then about to start a paper,: " If you want to 
 succeed," said he, " make your paper trashy, 
 intensely trashy, — make it all trash ! " 
 
 Brilliant advice to a young man just entering 
 business I 
 
 It is very often that, as a paper purifies itself, 
 its circulation decreases, and sometimes when a 
 paper becomes positively religious, it becomes 
 bankrupt, unless some benevolent and Christian
 
 152 The Abominations. 
 
 men come up to sustain it by contributions of 
 money and means. But few religious news- 
 papers in this country are self-supporting. 
 The reason urged is — the country cannot 
 stand so much religion ! Hear it ! Christian 
 men and philanthropists ! 
 
 Many papers that are most rapidly increasing 
 to-day are unscrupulous. The facts are mo- 
 mentous and appalling. And I put young 
 men and women and Christian parents and 
 guardians on the look-out. This stuff cannot be 
 handled without pollution. Away with it from 
 parlor, and shop, and store ! There is so much 
 newspaper literature that is pure, and cheap, 
 and elegant ; shove back this leprosy from your 
 door. 
 
 Mark it well : a man is no better than the 
 newspaper lie Jiahitually reads. 
 
 You may think it a bold thing thus to arraign 
 an unprincipled printing-press, but I know there 
 are those reading this who will take my counsel ; 
 and, in the discharge of my duty to God and 
 man, I defy all the hostilities of earth and hell ! 
 
 Representatives of the secular and religious 
 press ! I thank you, in the name of Christianity
 
 Leprous Neiuspapcrs. 153 
 
 and civilization, for the enlightenment of igno- 
 rance, the overthrow of iniquity, and the words 
 you have uttered in the cause of God and }-oiir 
 country. But I charge you in the name of God, 
 before whom you must account for the tremen- 
 dous influence you hold in this country, to con- 
 secrate yourselves to higher endeavors. You 
 are the men to fight back this invasion of cor- 
 rupt literature. Lift up your right hand and 
 swear new allegiance to the cause of philanthro- 
 py and religion. And when, at last, standing 
 on the plains of judgment, you look out upon 
 the unnumbered throngs over whom you have 
 had influence, may it be found that you were 
 among the mightiest energies that lifted men 
 upon the exalted pathway that leads to the re- 
 nown of heaven. Better than to have sat in 
 editorial chair, from which, with the finger of 
 type, you decided the destinies of empires, but 
 decided them wrong, that you had been some 
 dungeoned exile, who, by the light of window 
 iron-grated, on scraps of a New Testament leaf, 
 picked up from the hearth, spelled out the story 
 of Him who taketh away the sins of the world. 
 In Eternity, Dives is the Beggar ! 
 7*
 
 THE FATAL TEN-STRIKE. 
 
 While among my readers are those who have 
 passed on into the afternoon of life, and the 
 shadows are lengthening, and the sky crimsons 
 with the glow of the setting sun, a large number 
 of them are in early life, and the morning is 
 coming down out of the clear sky upon them, 
 and the bright air is redolent with spring blos- 
 soms, and the stream of life, gleaming and 
 glancing, rushes on between flowery banks, 
 making music as it goes. Some of you are en- 
 gaged in mercantile establishments, as clerks 
 and book-keepers ; and your whole life is to be 
 passed in the exciting world of traffic. The 
 sound of busy life stirs you as the drum stirs 
 the fiery war-horse. Others are in the mechan- 
 ical arts, to hammer and chisel your way 
 through life ; and success awaits you. Sorne are 
 preparing for professional life, and grand op- 
 portunities are before you ; nay, some of you 
 already have buckled on the armor. 
 
 But, whatever your age or calling, the sub-
 
 The Fatal Ten- Strike. 155 
 
 ject of <^amblin^. about which I speak in this 
 chapter, is pertinent. 
 
 Some yea<*fe ago, when an association for the 
 suppression of gambHng was organized, an 
 agent of the association came to a prominent 
 citizen and asked him to patronize the society. 
 He said, " No, I can have no interest in such 
 an organization. I am in no wiscT afifected by 
 that evil." 
 
 At that very time his son, who was his part- 
 ner in business, was one of the heaviest players 
 in "Heme's" famous gaming establishment. 
 Another refused his patronage on the same 
 ground, not knowing that his first book-keeper, 
 though receiving a salary of only a thousand 
 dollars, was losing from fifty to one hundred 
 dollars per night. The president of a railroad 
 company refused to patronize the institution, 
 saying — "That society is good for the defence 
 of merchants, but we railroad people are not in- 
 jured by this evil ; " not knowing that, at that 
 very time, two of his conductors were spending 
 three nights of each week at faro tables in New 
 York. Directly or indirectly, this evil strikes 
 at the whole world.
 
 156 The Abo})iinations. 
 
 Gambling is the risking of something more or 
 less valuable in the hope of winning more than 
 you hazard. The instruments of gaming may 
 differ, but the principle is the same. The shuf- 
 fling and dealing of cards, however full of 
 temptation, is not gambling, unless stakes are 
 put up ; while, on the other hand, gambling 
 may be carried on without cards, or dice, or 
 billiards, or a ten-pin alley. The man who bets 
 on horses, on elections, on battles — the man 
 who deals in "fancy" stocks, or conducts a 
 business which extra hazards capital, or goes 
 into transactions without foundation, but de- 
 pendent upon what men call "luck," is a 
 gambler. 
 
 It is estimated that one-fourth of the business 
 in London is done dishonestly. Whatever you 
 expect to get from your neighbor without offer- 
 ing an equivalent in money or time or skill, is 
 either the product of theft or gaming. Lottery 
 tickets and lottery policies come into the same 
 category. Fairs for the founding of hospitals, 
 schools and churches, conducted on the raffling 
 system, come under the same denomination. 
 Do not, therefore, associate gamblin^j necessarily
 
 The Fatal Tcn-Slrikc. 157 
 
 with any instrument, or game, or time, or place, 
 or think the principle depends upon whether 
 you play for a glass of wine, or one hundred 
 shares in Camden and Aniboy. Whether you 
 employ faro or billiards, rondo and keno, cards, 
 or bagatelle, the very idea of the thing is 
 dishonest ; for it professes to bestow upon you 
 a good for which you give no equivalent. 
 
 This crime is no newborn sprite, but a haggard 
 transgression that comes staggering down under 
 a mantle of curses through many centuries. 
 All nations, barbarous and civilized, have been 
 addicted to it. Before 1838, the French gov- 
 ernment received revenue from gaming houses. 
 In 1567, England, for the improvement of her 
 harbors, instituted a lottery, to be held at the 
 front door of St. Paul's Cathedral. Four hun- 
 dred thousand tickets were sold, at ten shillings 
 each. The British Museum and Westminster 
 Bridge were partially built by similar proce- 
 dures. The ancient Germans would sometimes 
 put up themselves and families as prizes, and 
 suffer themselves to be bound, though stronger 
 than the persons who won them. 
 
 But now the laws of the whole civilized world
 
 158 The ■ A bom ijtations. 
 
 denounce the system. Enactments have been 
 passed, but only partially enforced. The men 
 interested in gaming houses wield such influence, 
 by their numbers and affluence, that the judge, 
 the jury, and the police officer must be bold 
 indeed who would array themselves against 
 these infamous establishments. Within ten 
 years the House of Commons of England has 
 adjourned on "Derby Day" to go out to bet 
 on the races ; and in the best circles of society 
 in this country to-day are many hundreds of 
 professedly respectable men who are acknowl- 
 edged gamblers. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands of dollars in this land 
 are every day being won and lost through sheer 
 gambling. Says a traveller through the West — 
 " I have travelled a thousand miles at a time 
 upon the Western waters and seen gambling at 
 every waking moment from the commencement 
 to the termination of the journey." The South- 
 west of this country reeks with this abomination. 
 In New Orleans every third or fourth house in 
 many of the streets is a gaming place, and it 
 may be truthfully averred that each and all of 
 our cities are cursed with this evil.
 
 The Fatal Ten-Strike. 159 
 
 In themselves most of the games employed in 
 gambling arc without harm. Billiard-tables are 
 as harmless as tea-tables, and a pack of cards as 
 a pack of letter envelopes, unless stakes be put 
 up. Ikit by their use for gambling purposes 
 they have become significant of an infinity of 
 wretchedness. In New York city there are said 
 to be six thousand houses devoted to this sin ; 
 in Philadelphia about four thousand ; in Cincin- 
 nati about one thousand ; at Washington the 
 amount of gaming is beyond calculation. 
 There have been seasons when, by night, 
 Senators, Representatives, and Ministers of 
 Foreign Governments were found engaged in 
 this practice. 
 
 Men wishing to gamble will find places just 
 suited to their capacity, not only in the under- 
 ground oyster-cellar, or at the table back of the 
 curtain, covered with greasy cards, or in the 
 steamboat smoking cabin, where the bloated 
 wretch with rings in his ears deals out his pack, 
 and winks in the unsuspecting traveller, — provid- 
 ing free drinks all around, — but in gilded parlors 
 and amid gorgeous surroundings. 
 
 This sin works ruin, first, by unhealthful stim-
 
 i6o The AboDiiiiations. 
 
 ulants. Excitement is pleasurable. Under 
 every sky, and in every age, men have sought 
 it. The Chinaman gets it by smoking his 
 opium ; the Persian by chewing hashish ; the 
 trapper in a buffalo hunt ; the sailor in a squall ; 
 the inebriate in the bottle, and the avaricious at 
 the gaming-table. 
 
 We must at times have excitement. A. thou- 
 sand voices in our nature demand it. It is right. 
 It is healthful. It is inspiriting. It is a desire 
 God-given. But anything that first gratifies this 
 appetite and hurls it back in a terrific reaction is 
 deplorable and wicked. Look out for the agita- 
 tion that, like a rough musician, in bringing out 
 the tune, plays so hard he breaks down the in 
 strument ! 
 
 God never made man strong enough to en- 
 dure the wear and tear of gambling excitement. 
 No wonder if, after having failed in the game, 
 men have begun to sweep off imaginary gold 
 from the side of the table. The man was sharp 
 enough when he started at the game, but a 
 maniac at the close. At every gaming-table sit 
 on one side Ecstasy, Enthusiasm, Romance — the 
 frenzy of joy ; on the other side, Fierceness,
 
 The Fatal Ten- Strike. i6i 
 
 Rage, and Tumult. The professional gamester 
 schools himself into apparent quietness. The 
 keepers of gambling rooms are generally fat, 
 rollicking, and obese ; but thorough and profes- 
 sional gamblers, in nine cases out of ten, arc 
 pale, thin, wheezing, tremulous, and exhausted. 
 
 A young man, having suddenly hcired a large 
 property, sits at the hazard-table, and takes up 
 in a dice-box the estate won by a father's life- 
 time sweat, and shakes it, and tosses it away. 
 
 Intemperance soon stigmatizes its victim—- 
 kicking him out, a slavering fool, into the ditch, 
 or sending him, with the drunkard's hiccough, 
 staggering up the street where his family lives. 
 But gambling does not, in that way, expose its 
 victims. The gambler may be eaten up by the 
 gambler's passion, yet only discover it by the 
 greed in his eyes, the hardness of his features, 
 the nervous restlessness, the threadbare coat, 
 and his embarrassed business. Yet he is on 
 the road to hell, and no preacher's voice, or 
 startling warning, or wife's entreaty, can make 
 him stay for a moment his headlong career. 
 The infernal spell is on him ; a giant is aroused 
 within ; and though you bind him with cables.
 
 t62 The Abominations. 
 
 they would part like thread ; and though you 
 fasten him seven times round with chains, they 
 would snap like rusted wire ; and though you 
 piled up in his path, heaven-high, Bibles, tracts 
 and sermons, and on the top should set the 
 cross of the Son of God, over them all the gam- 
 bler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on his 
 way to perdition. 
 
 Again, this sin works ruin by killing indus- 
 try. 
 
 A man used to reaping scores or hundreds of 
 dollars from the gaming-table will not be con- 
 tent with slow work. He will say, "What is the 
 use of trying to make these fifty dollars in my 
 store when I can get five times that in half an 
 hour down at ' Billy's '? " You never knew a 
 confirmed "'ambler who was industrious. The 
 men given to this vice spend their time not 
 actively employed in the game in idleness, or 
 intoxication, or sleep, or in corrupting new vic- 
 tims. This sin has dulled the carpenter's saw, 
 and cut the band of the factory wheel, sunk the 
 cargo, broken the teeth of the farmer's harrow, 
 and sent a strange lightning to shatter the bat- 
 tery of the philosopher.
 
 The Fatal Ten- Strike. 163 
 
 The very first idea in gaming is at war with 
 all the industries of society. Any trade or oc- 
 cupation that is of use is ennobling. The street 
 sweeper advances the interests of society by the 
 cleanliness effected. The cat pays for the frag- 
 ments it eats by clearing the house of vermin. 
 The fly that takes the sweetness from the dregs 
 of the cup compensates by purifying the air and 
 keeping back the pestilence. But the gambler 
 gives not anything for that which he takes. 
 
 I recall that sentence. He docs make a re- 
 turn ; but it is disgrace to the man that he 
 fleeces, despair to his heart, ruin to his business, 
 aneuish to his wife, shame to his children, and 
 eternal wasting away to his soul. He pays in 
 tears and blood, and agony, and darkness, and 
 woe. 
 
 What dull work is ploughing to the farmer, 
 when in the village saloon, in one night, he 
 makes and loses the value of a summer harvest ? 
 Who will want to sell tape, and measure nan- 
 keen, and cut garments, and weigh sugars, when 
 in a night's game he makes and loses, and makes 
 again, and loses again, the profits of a season ? 
 
 John Borack was sent as mercantile agent
 
 164 The Abominations. 
 
 from Bremen to England and this country. 
 After two years his employers mistrusted that 
 all was not right. He was a defaulter for 
 eighty-seven thousand dollars. It was found 
 Aat he had lost in Lombard street, London, 
 twenty-nine thousand dollars ; in Fulton street, 
 New York, ten thousand dollars ; and in New 
 Orleans, three thousand dollars. He was im- 
 prisoned, but afterwards escaped and went into 
 the gambling profession. He died in a lunatic 
 asylum. 
 
 This crime is getting its pry under many a 
 mercantile house in our cities, and before long 
 down will come the great establishment, crush- 
 ing reputation, home, comfort, and immortal 
 souls. How it diverts and sinks capital may be 
 inferred from some authentic statements before 
 us. The ten gaming-houses that once were 
 authorized in Paris passed through the banks, 
 yearly, three hundred and twenty-five millions 
 of francs ! The houses of this kind in Germany 
 yield vast sums to the government. The Ham- 
 burg establishment pays to the government 
 treasury forty thousand florins ; and Baden 
 Baden one hundred and twenty thousand florins.
 
 The Fatal Ten- Sir ike. i6 
 
 
 
 Each one of the banks in the large gaming- 
 houses of Germany has forty or fifty croupiers 
 standlncr in its service. 
 
 Where does all the money come from ? Tlie 
 whole ivorld is robbed ! What is most sad, 
 there are no consolations for the loss and suffer- 
 ing entailed by gaming. If men fail in lawful 
 business, God pities, and society commiserates ; 
 but where in the Bible, or in society, is there 
 any consolation for the gambler ? From what 
 tree of the forest oozes there a balm that can 
 soothe the gamester's heart ? In that bottle 
 where God keeps the tears of his children, are 
 there any tears of the gambler ? Do the winds 
 that come to kiss the faded cheek of sickness, 
 and to cool the heated brow of the laborer, 
 whisper hope and cheer to the emaciated victim 
 of the game of hazard ? When an honest man 
 is in trouble, he has sympathy. " Poor fellow ! " 
 they say. But do gamblers come to weep at 
 the agonies of the gambler ? In Northumber- 
 land was one of the finest estates in England. 
 Mr. Porter owned it, and in a year gambled it 
 all away. Having lost the last acre of the 
 estate, he came down from the saloon and got
 
 1 66 The Abominations. 
 
 into his carriage ; went back ; put up his horses, 
 and carriage, and town house, and played. He 
 threw and lost. He started home, and on a 
 side alley met a friend from whom he borrowed 
 ten guineas ; went back to the saloon, and 
 before a great while had won twenty thousand 
 pounds. He died at last a beggar in St. Giles. 
 Ho\y many gamblers felt sorry for Mr. Porter ? 
 Who consoled him on the loss of his estate ? 
 What gambler subscribed to put a stone over 
 the poor man's grave ? Not one ! 
 
 Furthermore, this sin is the source of un- 
 counted dishonesties. The game of hazard it- 
 self is often a cheat. How many tricks and de- 
 ceptions in the dealing of the cards ! The op- 
 ponent's l);ind is ofttimes found out by fraud. 
 Cards are marked so that they may be designa- 
 ted from the back. Expert gamesters have 
 their accomplices, and one wink may decide the 
 game. The dice have been found loaded with 
 platina, so that "doublets" come up every 
 time. These dice arc introduced by 'the gam- 
 blers unobserved by the honest men who have 
 come into the play ; and this accounts for the 
 fact that ninety-nine out of a hundred who gam-
 
 The Fatal Ten- Strike. 167 
 
 ble, however wealthy they began, at the end 
 are found to be poor, miserable, ragged wretch- 
 es, that would not now be allowed to sit on the 
 door-step of the house that they once owned. 
 
 In a gaming-house in San Francisco, a young 
 man having just come from the mines deposited 
 a large sum upon the ace, and won twenjy-two 
 thousand dollars. But the tide turns. Intense 
 anxiety comes upon the countenances of all. 
 Slowly the cards went forth. Every eye is fix- 
 ed. Not a sound is heard, until the ace is re- 
 vealed favorable to the bank. There are shouts 
 of " Foul ! Foul ! " but the keepers of the table 
 produce their pistols and the uproar is silenced, 
 and the bank has won ninety-five thousand dol- 
 lars. Do you call this a game of chance ? 
 There is no chance about it. 
 
 But these dishonesties in the carrying on of 
 the game are nothing when compared with the 
 frauds which are committed in order to get 
 money to go on with the nefarious work. 
 Gambling, with its greedy hand, has snatched 
 away the widow's mite and the portion of the 
 orphans ; has sold the daughter's virtue to get 
 means to continue the game ; has written the
 
 1 68 The Abominations. 
 
 counterfeit signature, emptied the banker's 
 money vault, and wielded the assassin's dagger. 
 There is no depth of meanness to which it will 
 not stoop. There is no cruelty at which it is 
 appalled. There is no warning of God that it 
 will not dare. Merciless, unappeasable, fiercer 
 and wjlder it blinds, it hardens, it rends, it 
 blasts, it crushes, it damns. It has peopled 
 Moyamensing, and Auburn, and Sing Sing. 
 
 How many railroad agents, and cashiers, and 
 trustees of funds, it has driven to disgrace, in- 
 carceration, and suicide ! Witness a cashier of 
 the Central Railroad and Banking Company of 
 Georgia, who stole one hundred and three thou- 
 sand dollars to carry on his gaming practices. 
 Witness the forty thousand dollars stolen from a 
 Brooklyn bank ; and the one hundred and 
 eighty thousand dollars taken from a Wall Street 
 Insurance Company for the same purpose ! 
 These are only illustrations on a large scale of 
 the robberies every day committed for the pur- 
 pose of carrying out the designs of gamblers. 
 Hundreds of thousands of dollars every year 
 leak out without observation from the mer- 
 chant's till into the gambling hell.
 
 The Fatal Teii-Strike. 169 
 
 A man in London keeping one of these gam- 
 bline: houses boasted that he had ruined a no- 
 bleman a day ; but if all the saloons of this land 
 were to speak out, they might utter a more in- 
 famous boast, for they have destroyed a thou- 
 sand noblemen a year. 
 
 Notice also the effect of this crime upon 
 domestic happiness. It hath sent its ruthless 
 ploughshare through hundreds of families, until 
 the wife sat in rags, and the daughters were dis- 
 graced, and the sons grew up to the same infa- 
 mous practices, or took a short cut to destruction 
 across the murderer's scaffold. Home has lost 
 all charms for the gambler. How tame are the 
 cliildren's caresses and a wife's devotion to the 
 gambler! How drearily the fire burns on the 
 domestic hearth ! There must be louder laugh- 
 ter, and something to win and something to 
 lose ; an excitement to drive the heart faster 
 and fillip the blood and fire the imagination. 
 No home, however bright, can keep back the 
 gamester. The sweet call of love bounds back 
 from his iron soul, and all endearments are con- 
 sumed in the flame of his passion. The family 
 Bible will go after all other treasures are lost,
 
 170 The Abominations. 
 
 and if his everlasting crown in heaven were put 
 into his hand he would cry: " Here goes, one 
 more game, my boys ! On this one throw I 
 stake my crown of heaven." 
 
 A young man in London, on coming of age, 
 received a fortune of one hundred and twenty 
 thousand dollars, and through gambling in three 
 years was thrown on his mother for support. 
 
 An only son went to New Orleans. He was 
 rich, intellectual, and elegant in manners. His 
 parents gave him, on his departure from home, 
 their last blessing. The sharpers got hold of him. 
 They flattered him. They lured him to the gam- 
 ing-table and let him win almost every time for a 
 good while, and patted him on the back and said, 
 "First-rate player." But, fully in their grasp, 
 they fleeced him ; and his thirty thousand dollars 
 were lost. Last of all he put up his watch and 
 lost that. Then he began to think of home and 
 of his old father and mother, and wrote thus : — 
 
 " My beloved Parents : — You will doubtless feel a momen- 
 tary joy at the reception of this letter from the child of your bo- 
 som, on whom you have lavished all the favors of your declining 
 years. But should a feeling of joy for a moment spring up in 
 your hearts when you shall have received this from me, cherish 
 it not. I have fallen deep — never to rise. Those giay hairs
 
 The Fatal Ten-Sty ike. 171 
 
 that I should have honored and protected I sliall Ining down 
 ■with sorrow to the grave. I will not curse my destroyer, but 
 oh ! may God avenge the wrongs and impositions practised upon 
 the unwary in a way that shall best please Him. This, my dear 
 parents, is the last letter you will ever receive from me. I hum- 
 bly pray your forgiveness. It is my dying prayer. Long before 
 you shall have received this letter from me the cold grave will 
 have closed upon me forever. Life is to me insupportable. I 
 cannot, nay, I will not suffer the shame of having ruined you. 
 Forget and forgive is the dying prayer of your unfortunate son." 
 
 The old father came to the post-office, got 
 the letter, and fell to the floor. They thought 
 he was dead at first ; but they brushed back 
 the white hair from his brow and fanned him. 
 He had only fainted. I wish he had been 
 dead ; for what is life worth to a father after his 
 son is destro)'ed ? 
 
 When things go wrong at a gaming-table, 
 they shout "Foul! foul!" Over all the 
 gaming-tables of the world I cry out " Foul ! 
 foul! Infinitely foul! " 
 
 In modern days, in addition to the other 
 forms of gambling, have come up the thorough- 
 ly organized and, in some States, legalized 
 institution of lotteries. There are hundreds of 
 citizens on the way to ruin through the lottery 
 system. Some of the finest establishments in
 
 1^2 The Abominations. 
 
 town are by this process being demolished, and 
 the whole land feels the exhaustion of this ac- 
 cumulating evil. The wheel of Fortune is the 
 Juggernaut that is crushing out the life of this 
 nation. The records of the Insolvent Court of 
 one city show that, in five years, two hundred 
 thousand dollars were lost by dealing in lottery 
 tickets. All the officers of the celebrated 
 Bank of the United States who failed were 
 found to have expended the money embezzled 
 for lottery tickets. 
 
 A man drew in a lottery fifty thousand dol- 
 lars, sold his ticket for forty-two thousand five 
 hundred dollars, and yet did not have enough 
 to pay the charges against him for lottery 
 tickets. He owed the brokers forty-five thou- 
 sand dollars. 
 
 An editor writes — " A man who, a few years 
 ago, was blest with about twenty thousand 
 dollars (lottery money), yesterday applied to us 
 for ninepence to pay for a night's lodging." 
 
 A highly respectable gentleman drew twenty 
 thousand dollars in a lottery; bought more 
 tickets, and drew again ; bought more — drew 
 more largely ; then rushed down headlong un-
 
 The Fatal Tcn-Strike. 173 
 
 til he was pronounced by the select men of the 
 village a vagabond, and his children were picked 
 up from the street half starved and almost 
 naked. 
 
 A hard-working machinist draws a thousand 
 dollars ; thenceforth he is disgusted with work, 
 opens a rum grocery, is utterly debauched, and 
 people go in his store to find him dead, close 
 beside his rum-cask. 
 
 It would take a pen plucked from the wing 
 of the destroying angel and dipped in blood to 
 describe this lottery business. 
 
 A man committed suicide in New York, and 
 upon his person was found a card of address 
 giving a grog-shop as his boarding house, 
 three blank lottery tickets, and a leaf from 
 Seneca's Morals, containing an apology for 
 self-murder. 
 
 One lottery in London was followed by the 
 suicide of fifty persons who held unlucky 
 numbers. 
 
 There are men now, with lottery tickets in 
 their pocket, which, if they have not sense 
 enough to tear up or throw into the fire, will 
 be their admission ticket at the door of the
 
 174 T^^^ Abominations. 
 
 damned. As the brazen gates swing open they 
 will show their tickets, and pass in and pass 
 down. As the wheel of eternal Fortune turns 
 slowly round, they will find that the doom of 
 those w4io have despised God and imperilled 
 their souls will be their awful prize. 
 
 God forbid that you, my reader, should ever 
 take to yourself the lamentation of the Boston 
 clerk, who, in eight months, had embezzled 
 eighteen thousand dollars from his employer 
 and expended it all in lottery tickets. " I have 
 for the last seven months gone fast down the 
 broad road. There was a time, and that but a 
 few months since, when I was happy, because I 
 was free from debt and care. The moment of 
 the first steps in my downfall was about the 
 middle of last June, when I took a share in a 
 company, bought lottery tickets whereby I was 
 successful in obtaining a share of one-half of the 
 capital prize, since which I have gone for 
 myself I have lived and dragged out a miser- 
 able existence for two or three months past. 
 Oh, that the seven or eight months past of my 
 existence could be blotted out ; but I must go, 
 and, ere this paper is read, my spirit has gone
 
 The Fatal Ten- Strike. 175 
 
 to my Maker, to give an account of my misdeeds 
 here, and to receive the eternal sentence for 
 self-destruction and abused confidence. Rela- 
 tives and friends I have, from whom I do not 
 wish to part under such circumstances, but 
 necessity compels. Oh, wretch ! lottery tick- 
 ets have been thy ruin. But I cannot add 
 more." 
 
 There are multitudes of people who disap- 
 prove of ordinary lotteries, yet have been tho- 
 roughly deceived by iniquity under a more 
 attractive nomenclature. The lottery in which 
 our most highly respectable and Christian 
 people invest is some "Art Association," or 
 some benevolent " Gift Enterprise," in which 
 they fondly believe there can be no harm in 
 drawing Bierstadt's Yosemite Valley, or Crop- 
 sey's American Autumn I 
 
 At no time have lottery tickets been sown so 
 broadcast as to-day, notwithstanding the law 
 forbids the old-style lottery. 
 
 A few years ago our newspapers flamed with 
 the advertisements of the Crosby Opera House 
 scheme. A citizen of Chicago, finding on his 
 hands an unprofitable building, calls upon the
 
 176 The Abominatio7iS. 
 
 whole country to help him out. Rooms are 
 opened in all the great cities. In rush, not the 
 abandoned and the reprobate (for they like the 
 old styles of swindling better), but the educated 
 and refined and polished, until a host of people 
 are in imminent peril of having thrown upon 
 their hands a splendid Opera House. Philadel- 
 phia buys thirty thousand dollars worth of 
 tickets. The portentous day approaches. 
 The rail trains from many of the prominent 
 cities bring in dignified "Committees" who 
 come to see that the great abomination is con- 
 ducted in a decent and Christian manner. The 
 throng presses in. Hold fast your tickets, all 
 you respectable New Yorkers, Philadelphians, 
 and Bostonians, for the wheel begins to move. 
 The long agony is over. Hundreds of thou- 
 sands of people have made a narrow escape 
 from being ruined by sudden affluence. Swift 
 horses are despatched, that, foam-lathcrcd, 
 dash up to the house of hini who owns the 
 successful ticket. The lightnings tell it to the 
 four winds of heaven, and our weekly pictorials 
 hasten forward the photographers to take the 
 picture of the famous man who owned the
 
 The Fatal Tcn-Strike. 177 
 
 ticket numbered 58,600. Multitudes tliink tliat 
 there has been foul play, and that, after all, they 
 themselves, if the truth were known, did draw 
 the Opera House. Ten years from now there 
 will stand on the scaffold, or behind the prison 
 door, or in the lonely room in whidi the suicide 
 writes his farewell to wife or parents, men who 
 will say that the first misstep of their life that 
 put them on the wrong road was the ticket 
 they bought in the Crosby Opera House. 
 
 The man who won that prize is already dead 
 of his dissipations, and, strange to say, the 
 beautiful building thus raffled away was found 
 to be owned by its original possessor when all 
 the excitement in regard to the matter had died 
 away. 
 
 I care not on what street the office was, nor 
 who were the abettors of the undertaking, nor 
 who bought the tickets. I pronounce the 
 whole scheme to have been a swindle, a crime, 
 and an insult to God and the nation. 
 
 In this class of gambler-makers I also put 
 
 the " gift stores," which are becoming abundant 
 
 throughout the country. With a book, or knife, 
 
 or sewing machine, or coat, or carriage there 
 8*
 
 178 The Abo?ninatio?is. 
 
 goes 3. prize. At those stores people get some- 
 thing thrown in with their purchase. It may- 
 be a gold watch or a set of silver, a ring or a 
 farm. Sharp way to get off unsalable goods. 
 It has filled the land with fictitious articles and 
 covered up our population with brass finger- 
 rings, and despoiled the moral sense of the 
 community, and is fast making us a nation of 
 gamblers. 
 
 The Church of God has not seemed willing to 
 allow the world to have all the advantage of 
 these games of chance. A church fair opens, 
 and towards the close it is found that some of 
 the more valuable articles are unsalable. Forth- 
 with the conductors of the enterprise conclude 
 that they will raffle for some of the valuable ar- 
 ticles, and, under pretence of anxiety to make 
 tlieir minister a present, or please some popular 
 member of the church, fascinating persons are 
 despatched through the room, pencil in hand, to 
 " solicit" shares ; or perhaps each draws for his 
 own advantage, and scores of people go home 
 with their trophies, thinking that all is right, for 
 Christian ladies did the embroidery, and Chris- 
 tian men did the raffling, and the proceeds went
 
 The Fatal Tcn-Strike. 179 
 
 towards a new communion set. But you may 
 depend on it that, as far as morality is concern- 
 ed, you might as well have won by the crack of 
 the billiard-ball or the turn of the dice-box. 
 
 Some good people cannot stand this raffling, 
 and so, at fairs, they go to " voting," some- 
 times for editors, and sometimes for minis- 
 ters, at a dollar a vote. Now the Methodist 
 minister is ahead ; now the Presbyterian leads, 
 and now the Baptist. But, just at the last 
 moment, when one of the ministers of the more 
 popular sect seems sure to get the prize, the 
 members from some obscure denomination, 
 that do not deserve the prize, come in, and by 
 a large contribution carry off for their minister 
 the silver tea-set. 
 
 Do you wonder that churches built, light- 
 ed, or upholstered by such processes as that 
 come to great financial and spiritual decrepi- 
 tude ? The devil says: "/ helped build that 
 house of worship, and I have as much right 
 there as you have ; " and for once the devil is 
 right. 
 
 We do not read that they had a lottery for 
 building the church at Corinth or Antioch, 
 
 »«.
 
 i8o The Abo77tinations. 
 
 \ or for getting up a gold-headed cane or for an 
 embroidered surplice for Saint Paul. All this I 
 style ecclesiastical gambling. More than one 
 man who is destroyed can say that his first step 
 on the wrong road was when he won something 
 at a church fair. 
 
 The gambling spirit has not stopped for any 
 indecency. There lately transpired, in Mary- 
 land, a lottery in which people drew for lots in 
 a burying-ground ! The modern habit of bet- 
 ting about everything is productive of im 
 mense mischief The most healthful and 
 innocent amusements of yachting and base-ball 
 playing have been the occasion of putting up 
 excited and extravagant wagers. That which 
 to many has been advantageous to body and 
 mind has been to others the means of financial 
 and moral loss. The custom is pernicious in 
 the extreme where scores of men in respectable 
 life give themselves up to betting, now on this 
 boat now on that — now on the Atlantics and 
 now on the Athletics. 
 
 Betting, that once was chiefly the accompani- 
 ment of the race-course, is fast becoming a 
 national habit, and in some circles any opinion
 
 The Fatal Tcn-Strike. i8\ 
 
 advanced on finance or politics is accosted with 
 the interrogatory — " IIow much will }'ou bet on 
 that, sir ?" 
 
 This custom may make "no appeal to slow, 
 lethargic temperaments, but there are in the 
 country tens of thousands of quick, nervous, 
 sanguine, excitable temperaments ready to be 
 acted upon, and their feet will soon take hold 
 on death. For some months and perhaps f(^r 
 years they will linger in the more polite and 
 elegant circle of gamesters, but, after a while, 
 their pathway will come to the fatal plunge. 
 Finding themselves in the rapids, they will try 
 to back out, and, hurled over the brink, they 
 will clutch the side of the boat until their 
 finger-nails, blood-tipped, will pierce the wood, 
 and then, with white cheek and agonized stare, 
 and the horrors of the lost soul lifting the very 
 hair from the scalp, they will plunge down 
 where no grappling hooks can drag them out. 
 
 Young man ! stand back from all styles of 
 .gambling! The end thereof is death. The 
 gamblers enter the ten-pin alley where are hus- 
 bands, brothers, and fathers. " Put down your 
 thousand dollars all in gold eagles ! Let the
 
 1 82 The Abominations. 
 
 boy set up the pins at the other end of the alley ! 
 Now stand back, and give the gamester full 
 sweep ! Roll the first — there ! it strikes ! and 
 down goes his respectability. Try it again. 
 Roll the second — there ! it strikes ! and down 
 goes the last feeling of humanity. Try it again. 
 Roll the third — there ! it strikes ! and down 
 goes his soul forever. It was not so much the 
 pins that fell as the soul ! the soul ! FATAL 
 Ten-Strike for Eternity ! " 
 
 Shall I sketch the history of the gambler ? 
 Lured by bad company, he finds his way into a 
 place where honest men ought never to go. 
 He sits down to his first game only for pas- 
 time and the desire of being thought sociable. 
 The players deal out the cards. They uncon- 
 sciously play into Satan's hands, who takes all 
 the tricks, and both the players' souls for trumps 
 — he being a sharper at any game. A slight 
 stake is put up just to add interest to the play. 
 Game after game is played. Larger stakes and 
 still larger. They begin to move nervously on 
 their chairs. Their brows lower and eyes flash, 
 until now they who win and they who lose, 
 fired alike with passion, sit w ilh set jaws, and
 
 The Fatal Tcn-Strike. 183 
 
 compressed lips, and clenched fists, and eyes 
 like fire-balls that seem starting fi-om their sock- 
 ets, to see the final turn before it comes ; if los- 
 ing, pale with envy and tremulous with unut- 
 tered oaths cast back red-hot upon the heart — • 
 or, winning, with hysteric laugh — " Ha ! Ha ! I 
 have it ! I have it ! " 
 
 A few years have passed, and he is only the 
 wreck of a man. Seating himself at the game 
 ere he throws the first card, he stakes the last 
 relic of his wife, and the marriage-ring which 
 sealed the solemn vows between them. The 
 game is lost, and, staggering back in exhaustion, 
 he dreams. The bright hours of the past mock 
 his agony, and in his dreams, fiends, with eyes 
 of fire and tongues of flame, circle about him 
 with joined hands, to dance and sing their or- 
 gies with hellish chorus, chanting — " Hail ! 
 brother ! " kissing his clammy forehead until 
 -their loathsome locks, flowing with serpents, 
 crawl into his bosom and sink their sharp fangs 
 and suck up his life's blood, and coiling around 
 his heart pinch it with chills and shudders unut- 
 terable. 
 
 Take warning ! You are no stronger than
 
 184 The Abominations. 
 
 tens of thousands who have, by this practice, 
 been overthrown. No young man in our cities 
 can escape being tempted. Beware of tJie first 
 beginnings ! This road is a down-grade, and 
 every instant increases the momentum. Launch 
 not upon this treacherous sea. Spht hulks 
 strew the beach. Everlasting storms howl up 
 and down, tossing the unwary crafts into the 
 Hell-gate. I speak of what I have seen with 
 my own eyes. I have looked off into the abyss 
 and have seen the foaming, and the hissing, and 
 the whirling of the horrid deep in which the 
 mangled victims writhed, one upon another, and 
 struggled, strangled, blasphemed, and died — 
 the death-stare of eternal despair upon their 
 countenances as the waters gurgled over them. 
 
 To a gambler's death-bed there comes no 
 hope. He will probably die alone. His former 
 associates come not nigh his dwelling. When 
 the hour comes, his miserable soul will go ou^ 
 of a miserable life into a miserable eternity. As 
 his poor remains pass the house where he was 
 ruined, old companions may look out a moment 
 and say — " There goes the old carcass — dead 
 at last," but they will not get up from the table.
 
 The Fatal Teii-Strike. 185 
 
 Let him down now into his grave. Plant no 
 tree to cast its shade there, for the long, deep, 
 eternal gloom that settles there is shadow 
 enough. Plant no " forget-me-nots " or eglan- 
 tines around the spot, for flowers were not 
 made to grow on such a blasted heath. Visit 
 it not in the sunshine, for that would be mock- 
 ery, but in the dismal night, when no stars are 
 out, and the spirits of darkness come down 
 horsed on the wind, tJien visit the grave of the 
 gambler !
 
 SOME OF THE CLUB-HOUSES. 
 
 Iniquity never gives a fair fight. It springs 
 out from ambush upon the unsuspecting. Of 
 the tens of thousands who have fallen into bad 
 habits, not one deliberately leaped off, but all 
 were caught in some sly trap. You may have 
 watched a panther or a cat about to take its 
 prey. It crouches down, puts its mouth be- 
 tween its paws, and is hardly to be seen in the 
 long grass. So iniquity always crouches down 
 in unexpected shapes, takes aim with unerring 
 eye, and then springs upon you with sudden 
 and terrific leap. In secret places and in un- 
 looked-for shapes it murders the innocent. 
 
 Men are gregarious. Cattle in herds. Fish 
 in schools. Birds in flocks. Men in social 
 circles. You may, by the discharge of a gun, 
 scatter a flock of quails, or by the plunge of the 
 anchor send apart the denizens of the sea ; but 
 they will gather themselves together again. If 
 you, by some new power, could break the 
 associations in which men now stand, they
 
 Some of the Club-Hoiises. 187 
 
 would again adhere. God meant it so. He 
 has gathered all the flowers and shrubs into 
 associations. You may plant one " forget-me- 
 not" or " hearts-ease " alone, away ofif upon the 
 hillside, but it will soon hunt up some other 
 "forget-me-not" or "hearts-ease." Plants 
 love company ; you will find them talking to 
 each other in the dew. A galaxy of stars is 
 only a mutual life-insurance company. You 
 sometimes see a man with no out-branchings of 
 sympathy. His nature is cold and hard, like a 
 ship's mast, ice-glazed, which the most agile 
 sailor could never climb. Others have a thou- 
 sand roots and a thousand branches. Innumer- 
 able tendrils climb their hearts, and blossom all 
 the way up ; and the fowls of heaven sing in 
 the branches. 
 
 In consequence of this tendency, we find men 
 coming together in tribes, in communities, in 
 churches, in societies. Some gather together 
 to cultivate the arts ; some to plan for the wel- 
 fare of the State ; some to discuss religious 
 themes ; some to kindle their mirth ; some to 
 advance their craft. So every active commu- 
 nity is divided into associations of artists, of
 
 1 88 The Abominations. 
 
 merchants, of bookbinders, of carpenters, of 
 masons, of plasterers, of shipwrights, of plum- 
 bers. Do you cry out against it ? Then you 
 cry out against a tendency divinely implanted. 
 Your tirades will accomplish no more than if 
 you should preach to a busy ant-hill or bee- 
 hive a long sermon against secret societies. 
 
 Here we find in our path the oft-discussed 
 question, whether associations that do their 
 work with closed doors, and admit their 
 members by pass-words, and greet each other 
 with a secret grip, are right or wrong. I 
 answer that it depends entirely upon the nature 
 of the object for which they meet. Is it to pass 
 the hours in revelry, wassail, blasphemy, and 
 obscene talk, or to plot trouble to the State, 
 or to debauch the innocent ? Then I say, 
 with an emphasis that no man can mistake, 
 "No." But is the object the improvement of 
 the mind, or the enlargement of the heart, ^ 
 or the advancement of art, or the defence of 
 the government, or the extirpation of crime, 
 or the kindling of a pure-hearted sociality ? 
 Then I say, with just as much emphasis, 
 "Yes."
 
 Some of the Club-Houses. 189 
 
 There is no need that we who plan for the 
 conquest of right over wrong should publish to 
 all the world our intentions. The general of aii 
 army never sends to the opposing troops infor- 
 mation as to the coming attack. Shall we who 
 have enlisted in the cause of God and humanity- 
 expose our plans to the enemy ? No ! We 
 will in secret plot the ruin of all the enterprises 
 of Satan and his cohorts. When they expect 
 us by day, we will fall upon them by night. 
 While they are strengthening their left wing, we 
 will double up their right. By a plan of battle 
 formed in secret conclave, we will come sudden- 
 ly upon them, crying : "The sword of the Lord 
 and of Gideon ! " 
 
 Secrecy of plot and execution are wrong only 
 when the object and influence are nefarious. 
 Every family is a secret society ; every business 
 firm, and every banking and insurance institu- 
 tion. Those men who have no capacity to 
 keep a secret are unfit for positions of trust 
 anywhere. There are thousands of men whose 
 vital need is culturing in capacity to keep a 
 secret. Men talk too much — and women too. 
 There is a time to keep silence, as well as a
 
 IQO The Abominations. 
 
 time to speak. Although not belonging to any 
 of the great secret societies about which there 
 has been so much violent discussion, I have 
 only words of praise for those associations 
 which have for their object the reclamation of 
 inebriates, or like the score of mutual benefit 
 societies, called by different names, that provide 
 temporary relief for widows and orphans, and 
 for men incapacitated by sickness or accident 
 for earning a livelihood. 
 
 I suppose there are club-houses in our cities 
 to which men go with clear consciences, and 
 from which they come ^fter an hour or two of 
 intellectual talk, and cheerful interview, to en- 
 joy the domestic circle. But that this is not 
 the character of scores and hundreds of club- 
 houses we all know. Can I, then, pass this 
 subject by without exposition of the monstrous 
 evil ? There arc multitudes who arc uncon- 
 sciously having their physical, moral, and 
 eternal well-being endangered by club-room 
 dissipation. Was it right to expose the plot 
 of Guy Fawkes, by which he would have de- 
 stroyed the Parliament of England ? And am I 
 wrong in disclosing a peril which threatens not
 
 So7ne of the Chib-Houses. 191 
 
 only your well-being here, but your throne in 
 heaven ? 
 
 I deplore this ruin the more because this 
 style of dissipation is taking down our finest 
 men. The admission-fee sifts out the penurious 
 and takes only those who are called the best 
 fellows. Oh ! how changed you are ! Not so 
 kind to your wife as you used to be ; not so 
 patient with your children. Your conscience 
 is not so much at rest. You laugh more now, 
 and sing louder than once, but are not half so 
 happy. It is not the public drinking-saloon 
 that is taking you down, nor theatrical amuse- 
 ments, nor the houses of sin that have cost 
 thousands of other men their eternity : but it is 
 simply and undeniably your club-room. You 
 do not make yourself as agreeable in your 
 family as once. You go home at twelve o'clock 
 with an unnatural flush upon your cheek and a 
 strange color in your eye that you got at the 
 club. You merely acknowledge that you feel 
 queer. You say that champagne never intoxi- 
 cates ; that it only exhilarates, makes the con- 
 versation fluent, shakes up the humor, and has 
 no bad efiect except a headache next day.
 
 192 The Abomiiiatiojts. 
 
 Be not deceived. Champagne may not, like 
 whiskey, throw a man under the table ; but if, 
 through anything you drink, you gain an 
 unnatural fluency of speech and glow of feel- 
 ing, you are simply drunk. 
 
 If those imperilled were heartless young men, 
 stingy young men, I would not be so sorry as 
 I am ; but there are many of them generous 
 to a fault, frank, honest, cheerful, talented. I 
 begrudge the devil such a prize. After a while 
 these persons will lose all the frankness and 
 honor for which they are now distinguished. 
 Their countenances will get haggard, and in- 
 stead of looking one in the eye when they talk, 
 they will look down. After a while, when the 
 mother kindly asks, "What kept you out so 
 late?" they will make no answer, or will say 
 " That is my business ! " They will come cross 
 and befogged to the store and bank, and ever 
 and anon neglect some duty, and after a while 
 will be dismissed : and then, with nothing to do, 
 will rise in the morning at ten o'clock, cursing 
 the servant because the breakfast is cold, and 
 then go down town and stand on the steps of a 
 fashionable hotel, and criticise the passers-by.
 
 Some of the Club-Hotises. 193 
 
 While the young man who was a clerk in a 
 cellar has come up to be the first clerk, and he 
 who a few years ago ran errands for the bank 
 has got to be cashier, and thousands of other 
 young men of the city have gone up to higher 
 and more responsible positions, he has been 
 going down, until there he passes through the 
 street with bloated lip, and bloodshot eye, and 
 staggering step, and hat mud-spattered and set 
 sidewise on a shock of greasy hair, the ashes of 
 his cigar dashed upon his cravat. Here he 
 goes ! Look at him, all ye pure-hearted young 
 men, and see the work of the fashionable club- 
 room. I knew one such who, after the con- 
 taminations of his club-house, leap'ed out of 
 the third-story window to put an end to his 
 wretchedness. 
 
 Many who would not be seen drinking at the 
 bar of a restaurant, think there is no dishonor 
 and no peril connected with sitting down at a 
 marble stand in an elegantly furnished parlor, 
 to which they go with a private key, and where 
 none are present except gentlemen as elegant as 
 themselves. Everything so chaste in the sur- 
 roundings ! Soft carpets, beautiful pictures,
 
 194 ^'^'^ Abomi?iatio7ts. 
 
 cut glass, Italian top tables, frescoed walls. In 
 just such places there are thousands of young 
 men, middle-aged men, and old men, preparing 
 themselves for overthrow. 
 
 In many of these club-rooms the talk is not 
 as pure and elevated as it might be. How is 
 it, men and brothers, at half-past eleven o'clock, 
 when the tankards are well emptied, and the 
 smoke curls up from every lip ? Do they ever 
 swear ? Are there stories told unworthy a man 
 who venerates the name of his mother ? Does 
 God, whose presence cannot be hindered by 
 bolt, and who comes in without a pass-word, 
 and is making up His record for the judgment- 
 day, approve of the blasphemies you utter ? 
 
 You think that there is no special danger, 
 yet acknowledge that you have felt queer some- 
 times. Your head was not right, and your 
 stomach was disturbed. I will tell you what 
 was the matter. Yo7i tvere dnink. You un- 
 derstood not that protracted hiccough ; it was 
 the drunkard's hiccough. You could not ex- 
 plain that nausea ; it was the drunkard's vomit. 
 The fact is that some of you, who have never 
 in your own eyes or in the eyes of others fully
 
 Some of the Club-Hoiises. 195 
 
 sacrificed your respectability, have for six 
 months been written down in God's book as 
 drunkards. 
 
 How far down need a man go before he be- 
 comes an inebriate ? Must he fall into the 
 ditch ? No ! Must he get into a porter-house 
 fight ? No ! Must he be senseless in the 
 street ? Must he have the delirium tremens ? 
 No ! He may wear satin and fine linen ; he 
 may walk with hat scrupulously brushed ; may 
 swing a gold-headed cane, and step in boots of 
 French leather, dismount from a carriage, or 
 draw tight rein over a swift, sleek, high-mettled, 
 full-blooded Arabian span, but yet be so thor 
 oughly under the power of strong drink that he 
 is utterly offensive to his Maker and rotten as a 
 heap of compost. 
 
 The fact that this whole land to-day swelters 
 with drunkenness I charge upon the drinking 
 club houses. They wield an influence that makes 
 it respectable, and I will not put my head to the 
 pillow to-night until I have written against them 
 one burning anathema maranatha ! When I 
 see them dragging down scores of our young 
 men, and slaying professed Christians at the very
 
 196 The Abo7ninations. 
 
 altar, and snatching ofif the garlands of life from 
 those who would otherwise reign forever and 
 forever, I tell you I hate them with a perfect 
 hatred, and pray for more height, and depth, 
 and length, and breadth of capacity with which 
 to hate them. 
 
 Along this blossoming and over-arched path- 
 way, and through this long line of temptations 
 that throw their garlands upon the brow, and 
 ring their music into the ear, go a great host. 
 
 No one can estimate the homes that have 
 been shattered by the dissipations of the club 
 house. There are weak women who would 
 never consent to a husband's absence in the 
 evening, however important the duty that takes 
 him away. Any man who wishes to take his 
 share of the public burdens and is willing to 
 work for the political, educational, and social 
 advancement of the community must of ne- 
 cessity spend some of his evenings away from 
 home. There are associations and churches 
 that have a right to demand a share of a man's 
 presence and means, and that is a weak woman 
 who al\va}'s looks offended when her husband 
 goes out in the evening.
 
 So7iic of the Club-Hoiiscs. 197 
 
 But club-houses become a pest when they de- 
 mand all a man's evenings ; and that is a result 
 we are called to deplore. Every head of a 
 household is called to be its educator, its com- 
 panion, its religious instructor and exemplar; 
 not only to furnish the wardrobe and to make 
 the money to pay the bills when they come in, 
 but to give his highest intellectual energies and 
 social faculties to the amusement, instruction, 
 and improvement of the household. 
 
 But I describe the history of thousands of 
 households when I say that the tea is rapidly 
 taken, and while yet the family linger the father 
 shoves back his chair, has " an engagement," 
 lights his cigar and starts out, not returning 
 until after midnight. That is the history of 
 three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, 
 except when he is sick and cannot get out. 
 
 How about home duties ? Have you fulfilled 
 all your vows ? Would your wife ever have 
 married you with such a prospect ? Wait until 
 your sons get to be sixteen or seventeen years 
 of age, and they too will shove back from the 
 tea-table, have an "engagement," light their 
 cigars, go over to their club-houses, their night-
 
 198 The Abominations. 
 
 key rattling in your door after midnight — the 
 effect of your example. And as your son's con- 
 stitution may not be as strong as yours, and the 
 liquor he drinks more terribly drugged, he will 
 catch up with }'ou on the road to death although 
 you got the start of him. And so you will both 
 go to hell together ! A revolving Drummond- 
 light on the front of a locomotive casts its gleam 
 through the darkness as it is turned around ; so 
 I catch up the lamp of God's truth and turn it 
 round until its tremendous glare flashes into all 
 the club-houses of our cities. 
 
 Flee the presence of the dissipating club- 
 houses. "Paid your money ? " Sacrifice that 
 rather than your soul. " Good fellows," are 
 they ? They cannot stay what they are under 
 such influences. Mollusca live two hundred 
 fathoms down in the Norwegian seas. The Si- 
 berian stag grows fat on the stunted growth 
 of Altaian peaks. The Hedysarium thrives 
 amid the desolation of Sahara. Tufts of osier 
 and birch grow on the hot lips of volcanic 
 Schnechalten. But good character and a useful 
 life thrive amid club-room dissipations — Never ! 
 
 The best way to make a wild beast cower is
 
 Some of the Chtb-Ho2ises. iqq 
 
 to look him in the eye, but the best way to treat 
 the temptations I have described is to turn your 
 back- and fly ! O ! my heart aches ! I see men 
 struggling to get out of the serfdom of bad hab ■ 
 its, and I want to help them. I have knelt with 
 them and heard their cry for help. I have had 
 them put one hand on each of my shoulders, 
 and look me in the eye, with an agony of 
 earnestness that the judgment shall have no 
 power to make me forget, and from their lips, 
 scorched with the fires of ruin, have heard them 
 cry "God help me!" There is no rescue for 
 such, save in the Lord Almighty. 
 
 Well, what we do, we had better do right 
 away. The clock ticks now and we hear it. 
 After a while the clock will tick and we shall 
 not hear it. Seated by a country fireside, I 
 saw the fire kindle, blaze, and go out. I gath- 
 ered up from the hearth enough for profitable 
 reflections. Our life is just like the fire on that 
 hearth. We put on fresh fagots, and the fire 
 bursts through and up, and out, gay of flash, 
 gay of crackle — emblem of boyhood. Then the 
 fire reddens into coals. The heat is fiercer ; 
 and the more it is stirred, the more it reddens.
 
 200 The Abominations. 
 
 With sweep of flame it cleaves its way, until all 
 the hearth glows with the intensity — emblem 
 of full manhood. Then comes a whiteness to 
 the coals. The heat lessens. The flickering 
 shadows have died along the wall. The fagots 
 drop apart. The household hover over the ex- 
 piring embers. The last breath of smoke has 
 been lost in the chimney. Fire is out. Shovel 
 up the white remains. AsHES !
 
 FLASK, BOTTLE, AND DEMIJOHN. 
 
 There has in all ages and climes been a ten- 
 dency to the improper use of stimulants. 
 Noah, as if disgusted with the prevalence of 
 M'ater in his time, took to strong drink. y>y 
 this vice Alexander the Conqueror was con- 
 quered. The Romans, at their feasts, fell off 
 their seats with intoxication. Four hundred 
 millions of our race are opium-eaters. India, 
 Turkey, and China have groaned with the deso- 
 lation ; /and by it have been quenched such 
 lights as Haller and De Quincey. One hundred 
 millions are the victims of the betel-nut, which 
 has specially accursed the East Indies. Three 
 hundred millions chew hashish, and Persia, Bra- 
 zil, and Africa suffer the delirium. The Tartars 
 employ murowa ; the Mexicans the agave ; the 
 
 Note. — This chapter, in its first shape, was given some cur- 
 rency under the title of "The Evil Beast." I have, however, 
 so revised and added to that Lecture, that, as here given, it is 
 essentially a new presentation of the dreadful Abomination of 
 Rum, and it is in tliis present shape that 1 wish the public to re- 
 ceive it as a full expression of my views thereon. T. D. \V. T. 
 
 9"
 
 202 The Abo7ninatio?is. 
 
 people of Guarapo an intoxicating quality taken 
 from sugar-cane ; while a great multitude, that 
 no man can number, are the disciples of alcohol. 
 To it they bow. In its trenches they fall. In 
 its awful prison they are incarcerated. On its 
 ghastly holocaust they burn. 
 
 Could the muster-roll of this great army be 
 called, and they could come up from the dead, 
 what eye could endure the reeking, festering 
 putrefaction and beastliness ! What heart 
 could endure the groans of agony ! 
 
 Drunkenness : Does it not jingle the bur 
 glar's key ? Does it not whet the assassin's 
 knife ? Does it not cock the highwayman's 
 pistol ? Does it not wave the incendiary's 
 torch ? Has it not sent the physician reeling 
 into the sick-room ; and the minister, with his 
 tongue' thick, into the pulpit ? Did not an ex- 
 quisite poet, from the very height of reputation, 
 fall, a gibbering sot, inte^ the gutter, on his way 
 to be married to one of the fairest daughters of 
 New England, and at the very hour when the 
 bride was decking herself for the altar ; and did 
 he not die of delirium tremens, almost unattend- 
 ed, in a New York hotel ? Tamerlane asked for
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Deriiijohn. 20 
 
 ^ 
 
 one hundred and sixty thousand skulls, with 
 ■which to build a pyramid to his own honor. 
 He got the skulls, and built the pyramid. But 
 if the bones of all those who have fallen as a 
 prey to dissipation could be piled up, it would 
 make a monster pyramid. Talk not of Water- 
 loo and Austerlitz, for they were not fields of 
 blood compared with this great Golgotha. 
 
 Who will gird himself for the journey, and try 
 with me to scale this mountain of the dead — 
 going up miles high on human carcasses, to find 
 still other peaks far above, mountain above 
 mountain, white with the bleached bones of 
 drunkards ! 
 
 Hang not your head or shut your eyes until 
 we have seen it. We must get a sight at the 
 monster before we can shoot him. • 
 
 I will begin at our national and State capi- 
 tals. Like government, like people. Henry 
 Vni. blasts all England with his example of 
 uncleanness. Catharine of Russia drags down 
 a whole empire with her nefarious behavior. 
 No Christian man can be indifferent to what 
 every hour of every day goes on at Washing- 
 ton. While the Presidential Impeachment trial
 
 204 The Abominations. 
 
 advanced, some of the men who were to render 
 their solemn verdict on the subject were reehng 
 in and out of the Senate chamber, — the intoxi- 
 cated representatives of a free Christian people. 
 It was a great question whether several mem- 
 bers of that high court could be got sober in 
 time to vote. 
 
 Only recently a Senator from New England 
 rises up with tongue so thick, and with utter- 
 ance so nonsensical, that he is led into the ante- 
 room. He was a good " Republican." 
 
 One of the Middle States has a representative 
 who very rarely appears in his seat, for the rea- 
 son that he is so great an inebriate that he can 
 neither walk nor ride, lie is a good Democrat. 
 
 As God looks down on our State and national 
 legislatures, he holds us responsible. We cast 
 the votes. We lift up the legislators. 
 
 Will the lime never come when this nation 
 shall rise up higher tlian partisanship, and cast 
 its suffrage for sober men ? 
 
 The fact is that the two millions of dollars 
 which the liquor dealers raised for the purpose 
 of swaying State and national legislation has 
 done its work, and the nation is debauched.
 
 Flask, Bottle, and De?}tijohn. 205 
 
 Higher than legislatures or the Congress of the 
 United States is the Whiskey Ring ! 
 
 The Sabbath has been sacrificed to the rum 
 traffic. To many of our people the best day of 
 the week is the worst. Bakers must keep their 
 shops closed on the Sabbath. It is dangerous 
 to have loaves of bread going out on Sunday. 
 The shoe-store is closed ; severe penalty will at- 
 tack the man who sells boots on the Sabbath 
 But down with the window-shutters of the grog 
 shops. Our laws shall confer particular honors 
 upon the rum traffickers. All other traders 
 must stand aside for these. Let our citizens 
 who have disgraced themselves by trading in 
 clothing, and hosiery, and hardware, and lum- 
 ber, and coal, take off their hats to the rum- 
 seller, elected to particular honor. It is unsafe 
 for any other class of men to be allowed license 
 for Sunday work. But swing out your signs, 
 oh ye traffickers in the peace of families, and in 
 the souls of immortal men ! Let the corks fly, 
 and the beer foam, and the rum go tearing 
 down the half-consumed throat of the inebriate. 
 God does not see, does he ? Judgment will 
 never come, will it ?
 
 2o6 The Abonihiations. 
 
 People say — " Let us have some law to 
 correct this evil." We have more law now 
 than we execute. In what city is there a 
 mayoralty that dare do it ? There is no advan- 
 tage in having the law higher than public 
 opinion. What would be the use of the Maine 
 Law in New York ? Neal Dow, the Mayor of 
 Portland, came out with a posse and threw the 
 rum of the city into the street. From the 
 alms-house a woman came out and said, " Oh ! 
 if this had only been done ten years ago, my 
 husband would not have died a drunkard, and 
 I would not have been a widow in the alms- 
 house." 
 
 But there are not enough police in the city 
 of New York to stand by its Mayor in such an 
 undertaking ; public opinion is not educated. 
 
 I do not know but that God is determined to 
 let drunkards triumph ; and the husbands and 
 sons of thousands of our best families be de- 
 stroyed by this vice, in order that our people, 
 amazed and indignant, may rise up and demand 
 the extermination of this municipal crime. 
 
 There is a way of driving down the hoops of 
 a barrel until tlie hoops break.
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 207 
 
 We arc in this country, at this time, tryin^f^ 
 to regulate this evil by a tax on whiskey. You 
 might as well try to regulate the Asiatic chol- 
 era, or the small-pox, by taxation. The men 
 who distil liquors are, for the most part, un- 
 scrupulous ; and the higher the tax, the more 
 inducement to illicit distillation. New York 
 produces forty thousand gallons of whiskey 
 every twenty-four hours ; and the most of it 
 escapes the tax. The most vigilant officials fail 
 to discover the cellars, and vaults, and sheds 
 where this work is done. 
 
 Oh, the folly of trying to restrain an e/il by 
 government tariffs ! If every gallon of whiskey 
 made, if every flask of wine produced, r^hould 
 be taxed a thousand dollars, it would not be 
 enough to pay for the tears it has wrung out of 
 the eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the 
 blood it has dashed on the altars of the Chris- 
 tian Church, nor for the catastrophe of the 
 millions it has destroyed forever. 
 
 Oh ! wc are a Christian people ! From Bos- 
 ton a ship sailed for Africa, with throe mis- 
 sionaries, and twenty-two thousand gallons 
 of New-England rum on board. Which will
 
 2o8 The Aboniiiiations. 
 
 have the most effect: the missionaries, or the 
 rum ? 
 
 Rum is victor. Some time when you have 
 leisure, just go down any of our streets, and 
 count the number of drinking places. Here 
 they are — first-class hotels. Marble floors. 
 Counter polished. Fine picture hanging over 
 the decanters. Cut glass. Silver water-cool- 
 ers. Pictured punch-bowls. High-priced liq- 
 uors. Customers pull off their gloves, and 
 take up the glasses, and click them, and with 
 immaculate pocket handkerchief wipe their 
 mouth, and go up-stairs, or into the reading- 
 room, and complete extensive bargains. 
 
 Here it is — the restaurant. All sorts of vi- 
 ands, but chiefly all styles of beverage. They 
 who frequent this place have fairly started on 
 the down grade. Having drunk once, they 
 lounge at the corner of the bar until a friend 
 comes up, and then the beverage is repeated. 
 After a while they sit at the little table by the 
 wall and order a rarer wine ; for they feel richer 
 now, and able to get almost anything. Towards 
 bed-time they take out their watch and say they 
 must go home. They start, but cannot stand
 
 Flask, Bottle, and DonijoJui. 209 
 
 straight. With a gentleman at each arm, they 
 start up the street. More and more overcome, 
 the man begins to whoop, and shout, and swear, 
 and refuse to go any farther. Hat falls off. 
 Hair gets over his eyes. Door-bell of fine 
 house rinss. Wife comes down the stairs. 
 Daughters look over the banisters. Sobbing 
 in the dark hall. Quick — shut the front door, 
 for I do not want to look in. God help 
 them ! • 
 
 Here it is— a wine-cellar. Going into the 
 door are depraved men and lost women. Some 
 stagger. All blaspheme. Men with rings in 
 their cars instead of their nose ; and blotches of 
 breast-pin. Pictures on the wall cut out of the 
 Police Gazette. A slush of beer on floor and 
 counter. A pistol falls out of a ruffian's pock- 
 et. By the gas-light a knife flashes. Low 
 songs. They banter, and jeer, and howl, and 
 vomit. An awful goal, to which hundreds of 
 people better than you have come. 
 
 All these different styles of drinknig-places 
 are multiplying. They smite a young man's 
 vision at every turn. They pour the stench of 
 their abomination on every wave of air.
 
 2IO The Abo})iinations. 
 
 I sketch two houses in this street. The first 
 is bright as home can be. The father comes at 
 nightfall, and the children run out to meet 
 him. Luxuriant evening meal, gratulation, and 
 sympathy, and laughter. Music in the parlor. 
 Fine pictures on the wall. Costly books on the 
 stand. Well-clad household. Plenty of every- 
 thing to make home happy. 
 
 House the second. Piano sold yesterday by 
 the sheriff. Wife's furs at pawnbroker's shop. 
 Clock gone. Daughter's jewelry sold to get 
 flour. Carpets gone off the floor. Daughters 
 in faded and patched dresses. Wife sewing for 
 the stores. Little child with an ugly wound on 
 her face, struck in an angry blow. Deep shadow 
 of wretchedness falling in every room. Door- 
 bell rings. Little children hide. Daughters 
 turn pale. Wife holds her breath. Blundering 
 steps in the hall. Door opens. Fiend, brand- 
 ishing his fist, cries — "Out! Out! What are 
 you doing here ! " 
 
 Did I call this house the second ? No ; it is 
 the same house. Rum transformed it. Rum 
 imbruted the man. Rum sold the shawl. 
 Rum tore up the carpets. Rum shook its fist.
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Deniijoh7t. 21 1 
 
 Rum desolated the hearth. Ritvi changed that 
 paradise into a hell ! 
 
 I sketch two men that you know very well. 
 The first graduated from one of our literary in- 
 stitutions. His father, mother, brothers and 
 sisters were present to see him graduate. They 
 heard the applauding thunders that greeted his 
 speech. They saw the bouquets tossed to his 
 feet. They saw the degree conferred and the 
 diploma given. He • never looked so well. 
 Everybody said, " What a noble brow I \Vhat 
 a fine eye ! What graceful manners ! What 
 brilliant prospects ! " All the w^orld opens be- 
 fore him and cries, " Hurrah ! Hurrah ! " 
 
 Man the second. Lies in the station-house 
 to-night. The doctor has just been sent for to 
 bind up the gashes received in a fight. His 
 hair is matted, and makes him look like a wild 
 beast. His lip is bloody and cut. 
 
 Who is the battered and bruised wretch that 
 was picked up by the police and carried in 
 drunk, and foul, and bleeding ? Did I call him 
 man the second ? He is man the first ! Rum 
 transformed him. Rur^. destroyed his pros- 
 pects. Rum disappointed pa-ental expectation.
 
 212 The Abomiiiatiotis. 
 
 Rum withered those garlands of commence- 
 ment-day. Rum cut his Hp. Rum dashed 
 out his manhood. RUM, accursed RUM ! 
 
 This foul thing gives one swing to its scythe, 
 and our best merchants fall ; their stores are 
 sold, and they slink into dishonored graves. 
 
 Again it swings its scythe, and some of our 
 best physicians fall into sufferings that their 
 wisest prescriptions cannot cure. 
 
 Again it swings its scythe, and ministers of 
 the gospel fall from the heights of Zion with 
 loncf-resoundinc: crash of ruin and shame. 
 
 Some of your own household have already 
 been shaken. Perhaps you can hardly admit 
 it ; but where was your son last night ? Where 
 was he Friday night ? Where was he Thurs- 
 day night ? Wednesday night ? Tuesday 
 night ? Monday night ? 
 
 Nay, have not some of you, in your own 
 bodies, felt the power of this habit ? You 
 think that you could stop ? Are you sure you 
 could ? Go on a little further, and I am sure 
 you cannot. I think, if some of you should 
 try to break away, you would find a chain on 
 the right wrist, and one on the left ; one on the
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Dcviijohn. 213 
 
 right foot, and another on the left. This ser- 
 pent does not begin to hurt until it has wound 
 around and round. Then it begins to tighten, 
 and strangle, and crush until the bones crack, 
 and the blood trickles, and the eyes start from 
 their sockets, and the mangled wretch cries 
 "O God! O God! Help! Help!" But it is 
 too late ; and nothing but the fires of woe can 
 melt the chain when once it is fully fastened. 
 
 The child of a drunkard died. My friend, 
 a minister of the Gospel, sat in a carriage with 
 the drunkard, and the coffin of the little child. 
 On the way to the grave, the drunkard put his 
 hand on the lid of his child's coffin and swore 
 that he never would drink again. Before the 
 next morning had come he was dead drunk I 
 
 I spread out before you the starvation, the 
 cruelty, the ghastliness, the woes, the terror, the 
 anguish, the perdition of this evil, and then 
 ask. Are you ready, fully and forever, to sur 
 render our churches, our homes, our civiliza- 
 tion, our glorious Christianity? One or the 
 other must surrender. It can be no "drawn 
 battle." 
 
 But how are we to contend ?
 
 214 '^^^^ Aboniinations. 
 
 First, by getting our children right on this 
 subject. Let them grow up with an utter 
 aversion to strong drink. Take care how you 
 administer it even as medicine. If you find 
 that they have a natural love for it, as some 
 have, put in a glass of it some horrid stuff and 
 make it utterly nauseous. Teach them as faith- 
 fully as you do the catechism, that rum is a 
 fiend. Take them to the alms-house and show 
 them the wreck and ruin it works. Walk with 
 them into the homes that have been scourged 
 by it. If a drunkard hath fallen into a ditch, 
 take them right up where they can see his 
 face, bruised, savage and swollen, and say, 
 " Look, my son : Rum did that ! " 
 
 Looking out of your window at some one 
 who, intoxicated to madness, goes through the 
 street, brandishing his fist, blaspheming God, 
 — a howling, defying, shouting, reeling, raving 
 and foaming maniac, — say to your son, " Look ; 
 that man was once a child like you." As you 
 go by the grog-shop, let your boy know that 
 that is the place where men are slain, and their 
 wives made paupers, and tln'ir children slaves. 
 Hold out to your children all warnings, all
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 215 
 
 rewards, all counsels, lest in after days they 
 break your heart, and curse your gray hairs. 
 
 A man laughed at my father for his scrupu- 
 lous temperance principles, and said — " I am 
 more liberal than you. I always give my 
 children the sugar in the glass after we have 
 been taking a drink." 
 
 Three of his sons have died drunkards ; and 
 the fourth is imbecile through intemperate 
 habits. 
 
 Again, we will battle this evil at the ballot- 
 box. How many men are there who can rise 
 above the feelings of partisanship, and demand 
 that our officials shall be sober men ? 
 
 I maintain that the question of sobriety is 
 higher than the question of availability ; and 
 that however eminent a man's services may be, 
 if he have habits of intoxication, he is unfit 
 for any office in the gift of a Christian people. 
 Our laws will be no better than the men who 
 make them. 
 
 Spend a few days at Harrisburg, or Albany, 
 or Washington, and you will find out why, 
 upon these subjects, it is impossible to get 
 righteous enactments.
 
 2l6 The Abominations. 
 
 Again, we will war upon this evil by organ- 
 ized societies.. The friends of the rum traffic 
 have banded together ; annually issue their 
 circulars ; raise fabulous sums of money to 
 advance their interests ; and by grips, pass- 
 . words, signs, and stratagems set at defiance 
 public morals. Let us confront them with 
 organizations just as secret, and, if need be, with 
 grips, and pass-words, and signs maintain our 
 position. There is no need that our philan- 
 thropic societies tell all their plans. 
 
 I am in favor of all lawful strategy in the 
 carrying on of this conflict. I wish to God 
 we could lay under the wine-casks a train, 
 which, once ignited, would shake the earth 
 with the explosion of this monstrous ini- 
 quity. 
 
 Again : we will try the power of the pledge. 
 There are thousands of men who have been 
 saved by putting their names to such a docu- 
 ment. I know it is laughed at ; but there are 
 men who, having once promised a thing, do it. 
 "Some have broken the pledge." Yes; they 
 were liars. lUit all men are not liars. I do 
 not say that it is the duty of all persons to
 
 Flask, BottUy and Dc7ni John. 217 
 
 make such signature ; but I do say that it will 
 be the salvation of many of you. 
 
 The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can 
 never be estimated. At his hand four millions 
 of people took the pledge, including eight pre- 
 lates, and seven hundred of the Roman Catholic 
 clergy. A multitude of them were faithful. 
 
 Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand 
 drunkards had been permanently reformed in 
 five years. 
 
 Through the great Washingtonian movement 
 in Ohio, sixty thousand took the pledge. In 
 Pennsylvania, twenty-nine thousand. In Ken- 
 tucky, thirty thousand, and multitudes in all 
 parts of the land. Many of these had been 
 habitual drunkards. One hundred and fifty 
 thousand of them, it is estimated, were perma- 
 nently reclaimed. Two of these men becam< 
 foreign ministers ; oge a governor of a State ; 
 several were sent to Congress. Hartford re- 
 ported six hundred reformed drunkards ; Nor- 
 wich, seventy-two; Fairfield, fifty; Sheffield, 
 seventy-five. All over the land reformed men 
 were received back into the churches that they 
 
 had before disgraced ; and households were 
 10
 
 2i8 The Abo7iiinatio7is. 
 
 re-established. All up and down the land 
 .there were gratulations, and praise to God. 
 The pledge signed, to thousands has been the 
 proclamation of emancipation. 
 
 I think that we are coming at last to treat 
 , inebriation as it ought to be treated, namely, 
 as an awful disease, self-inflicted, to be sure, but 
 nevertheless a disease. Once fastened upon a 
 man, sermons will not cure him ; temperance 
 lectures will not eradicate the taste ; religious 
 tracts will not remove it ; the Gospel of Christ 
 will not arrest it. Once under the power of 
 this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on ; 
 and if the foaming glass were on the other side 
 of perdition, he would wade through the fires 
 of hell to get it. A young man in prison had 
 such a strong thirst for intoxicating liquors, 
 that he cut off his hand at the wrist, called for a 
 bowl of brandy in order t^ stop the bleeding, 
 thrust his wrist into the bowl, and then drank 
 the contents. 
 
 Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between 
 a man and his cups ! Clear the track for him ! 
 Away with the children : he would tread their 
 life out ! Away with the \\'ife : he would dash
 
 Flask, Dottle, and DeiJiijohn. 219 
 
 her to death ! Away with the Cross : he 
 would run it down ! Away with the Bible : 
 he would tear it up for the winds ! Away with 
 heaven : he considers it worthless as a straw ! 
 " Give me the drink ! Give it to me 1 Though 
 hands of blood pass up the bowl, and the soul 
 trembles over the pit, — the drink 1 give it to 
 me ! Though it be pale with tears ; though 
 the froth of everlasting anguish float in the 
 foam— give it to me 1 I drink to my wife's 
 woe ; to my children's rags ; to my eternal 
 banishment from God, and hope, and heaven ! 
 Give it to me ! the drink ! " 
 
 Again : we will contend against these evils 
 by trying to persuade the respectable classes 
 of society to the banishment of alcoholic 
 beverages. You who move in elegant and 
 refined associations ; you who drink the best 
 liquors ; you who never drink until you lose 
 your balance : consider that you have, under 
 God, in your power the redemption of this 
 land from drunkenness. Empty your cellars 
 and wine-closets of the beverage, and then 
 come out and give us your hand, your vote, 
 your prayers, your sympathies. Do that, and
 
 2 20 The Abominations. 
 
 I will promise three things : First, That j^ou 
 will find unspeakable happiness in having done 
 your duty ; secondly, you will probably save 
 somebody, perhaps your own child ; thirdly, 
 you will not, in your last hour, have a regret 
 that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be. 
 
 As long as you make drinking respectable, 
 drinking customs will prevail ; and the plough- 
 share of death, drawn by terrible disasters, 
 will go on turning up this whole continent, 
 from end to end, wiih the long, deep, awful 
 furrow of drunkards' graves. 
 
 Oh, how this Rum Fiend would like to go and 
 hang up a skeleton in your beautiful house, so 
 that when you opened the front door to go in 
 you w^ould see it in the hall ; and when you sit 
 at your table you would see it hanging from the 
 wall ; and when you cpen your bed-room you 
 would find it stretched upon your pillow ; and 
 waking at night you would feel its cold hand 
 passing over your face and pinching at your 
 heart ! 
 
 There is no home so beautiful but it may be 
 devastated by the awful curse. It throws its 
 jargon into the sweetest harmony What was
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Demijohn. 221 
 
 it that silenced Sheridan's voice and shattered 
 the golden sceptre with whicli lie swayed parlia- 
 ments and courts ? What foul sprite turned the 
 sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless 
 ballad ? What brought down the majestic form 
 of one who awed the American Senate with his 
 eloquence, and after a while carried him home 
 dead drunk from the office of Secretary of State ? 
 What was it that crippled the noble spirit of 
 one of the heroes of the last war, until the other 
 night, in a drunken fit, he reeled from the deck 
 of a Western steamer and wag drowned 1 There 
 was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He 
 was one of the most classic orators of the cen- 
 tury. People wondered why a man of so pure 
 a heart and so excellent a life should have such 
 a sad countenance always. They knew not 
 that his wife wa^ a sot. 
 
 " Woe to him that giveth his neighbor 
 drink ! " If this curse was proclaimed about 
 the comparatively harmless drinks of olden 
 times, what condemnation must rest upon those 
 who tempt their neighbors when intoxicating 
 liquor means copperas, nux vomica, logwood, 
 opium, sulphuric acid, vitriol, turpentine, and
 
 222 The Aboininatio7is. 
 
 strychnine! "Pure liquors:" pure destruc- 
 tion ! Nearly all the genuine champagne made 
 is taken by the courts of Europe. What we 
 get is horrible swill ! 
 
 I call upon woman for her influence in the 
 matter. Many a man who had reformed and 
 resolved on a life of sobriety has been pitched 
 off into old habits by the delicate hand of her 
 whom he was anxious to please. 
 
 Bishop Potter says that a young man who 
 had been reformed sat at a table, and when the 
 wine was passed to him refused to take it. A 
 lady sitting at his side said, " Certainly you will 
 not refuse to take a glass with me ? " Again 
 he refused. But when she had derided him for 
 lack of manliness he took the glass and drank 
 it. He took another and another ; and putting 
 his fist hard down on the table, said, " Now I 
 drink until I die." In a few months his ruin 
 was consummated. 
 
 I call upon those who are guilty of these in- 
 dulgences to quit the path of death. O what a 
 change it would make in your home ! Do you 
 see how everything there is being desolated ! 
 Would you not like to bring back joy to your
 
 Flask, Bottle, aiid Demijohn. 223 
 
 wife's heart, and have your children come out 
 to meet you with as much confidence as once 
 they showed ? Would you not like to rekindle 
 the home lights that long ago were extinguish- 
 ed ? It is not too late to change. It may not 
 entirely obliterate from your soul the memory 
 of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor 
 smooth out from anxious brows the wrinkles 
 which trouble has ploughed. It may not call 
 back unkind words uttered or rough deeds done 
 — for perhaps in those awful moments you struck 
 her ! It may not take from your memory the 
 bitter thoughts connected with some little grave : 
 but it is not too late to save yourself and secure 
 for God and your family the remainder of your 
 fast-going life. 
 
 But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. 
 I may address one who may not have quite 
 made up his mind. Let your better nature 
 speak out. You take one side or the other in 
 the war against drunkenness. Have you the 
 courage to put your foot down right, and say to 
 \'our companions and friends: "I will never 
 drink intoxicating liquor in all my life, nor will I 
 countenance the habit in others." Have noth-
 
 2 24 The Abominations. 
 
 ing to do with strong drink. It has turned the 
 earth into a place of skulls, and has stood open- 
 ing the gate to a lost world to let in its victims, 
 until now the door swings no more upon its 
 hinges, but day and night stands wide open to 
 let in the agonized procession of doomed men. 
 
 Do I address one whose regular work in life 
 is to administer to this appetite ? I beg you — 
 get out of the business. If a woe be pronounced 
 upon the man who gives his neighbor drink, how 
 many woes must be hanging over the man who 
 does this every day, and every hour of the day ! 
 
 A philanthropist, going up to the counter of a 
 grog-shop, as the proprietor was mixing a 
 drink for a toper standing at the counter, said 
 to the proprietor, " Can you tell me what your 
 business is good for?" The proprietor, with 
 an infernal laugh, said, " It fattens grave- 
 yards ! " 
 
 God knows better than you da yourself the 
 number of drinks you have poured out. You 
 keep a list ; but a more accurate list has been 
 kept than yours. You may call it Burgundy, 
 Bourbon, Cop- /',>:, Ilcidsick, Hock ; God calls it 
 f t.rong d'ipk Qiethcr you sell it in low oyster
 
 Flask, Bottle, and Dciiiijohu. 225 
 
 cellar or behind the polished counter of first- 
 class hotel, the divine curso is upon you. I tell 
 you plainly that you Mill meet your customers 
 one day when there will be no counter between 
 you. When your work is done on earth, and you 
 enter the reward of your business, all the souls 
 of the men whom you have destroyed will 
 crowd around you and pour their bitterness into 
 your cup. They will show you their wounds 
 and say, " You made them ; " and point to their 
 unquenchable thirst, and say, " You kindled 
 it;" and rattle their chain and say, "You 
 forged it." Then their united groans will smite 
 your ears ; and with the hands out of which you 
 once picked the sixpences and the dimes, they 
 will push you off the verge of great precipices ; 
 while, rolling up from beneath, and breaking 
 among the crags of death, will thunder : 
 
 " Woe to him that giveth his neighbor 
 drink/"
 
 THE HOUSE OF BLACKNESS OF 
 DARKNESS. 
 
 Men like to hear the fraihies and fauhs of 
 others chastised. With what blandness and 
 placidity they sit and hear the religious teacher 
 excoriate the ambition of Ahab, the treachery 
 of Judas, the treason of Athaliah, and the wick- 
 edness of the Amalekites. Indeed, I have 
 sometimes felt sorry for the Amalekites, for in 
 all ages, and on all occasions, they are smitten, 
 denounced, and pursued. They have had theii 
 full share of censure and excoriation. It is high 
 time that in our addresses in pulpits, and in do- 
 mestic circles, we turn our attention to the driv- 
 ing out of these worse Amalekites which arc 
 swarming in society to-day, thicker than in the 
 olden time. The ancient Amalekites lived for 
 one or two hundred years ; but these arc not 
 weakened after a thousand years. Those tra- 
 versed only a few leagues of land ; these stalk 
 the earth and ford the sea. Those had each a 
 sword or spear ; these fight with a million
 
 House of Blackiiess of Darkness. 227 
 
 swords, and strike with a million stings, and 
 smite with a million catastrophes. Those were 
 conquered with human weapons ; but to over- 
 come these we must bring out God's great field- 
 pieces, and employ an enginery that can sweep 
 from eternity to eternity. 
 
 There is one subject which we are expected, in 
 all our teachings, to shun, or only to hint at : I 
 mean the wickedness of an impure li fe. Though 
 God thunders against this appalling iniquity from 
 the heavens curse after curse, anathema after 
 anathema, by our unwillingness to repeat the 
 divine utterance we seem to say, " Lord, not so 
 loud ! Speak about everything else ; but if this 
 keeps on there will be trouble ! " Meanwhile 
 the foundations of social life are being slowly 
 undermined ; and many of the upper circles of 
 hfe have putrefied until they have no more 
 power to rot. 
 
 If a fox or a mink come down to the farm- 
 yard and carry off a chicken, the whole family 
 join in the search. 
 
 If a panther come down into the village and 
 carry off a child, the whole neighborhood go 
 out with clubs and guns to bring it down.
 
 2 28 The Abominations. 
 
 But this rtonster-crime goes forth, carrying 
 off body and soul ; and yet, if we speak, a thou- 
 sand voices bid us be silent. 
 
 I shall try to cut to the vitals of the subject, 
 and proceed with Xho. post-mortem of this carcass 
 of death. It is time to speak on this subject. 
 All the indignation of the community upon this 
 subject is hurled upon woman's head. If, in an 
 evil hour, she sacrifice her honor, the whole city 
 goes howling after her. She shall take the whole 
 blame. Out with her from all decent circles ! 
 Whip her. Flay her. Bar all the doors of so 
 ciety against her return. Set on her all the 
 blood-hounds. Shove her off precipice after 
 precipice. Push her down. Kick her out ! 
 If you see her struggling on the waves, and with 
 her blood-tipped fingers clinging to the verge of 
 respectability, drop a mill-stone on her head. 
 
 For a woman's sin, men have no mercy ; and 
 the heart of other women is more cruel than 
 death. 
 
 Foi* her, in the dark hour of her calamity, 
 the women who, with the same temptation, 
 might have fallen into deeper damnation, have 
 no commiseration and no prayer.
 
 House of Blackness of Darkness. 229 
 
 The heaviest stroke that comes down upon a 
 fahen woman's soul is the merciless indignation 
 of her sisters. 
 
 If the multitudes of the fallen could be placed 
 in a straight line, it would reach from here to 
 the gates of the lost, and back again. 
 
 But what of the destroyer ? 
 
 We take his arm. We flatter his appearance. 
 We take off our hats. He is admitted to our 
 parlors. For him we cast our votes. For him 
 we speak our eulogies. And when he has gone ♦ 
 we read over the heap of compost : " Blessed are 
 the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from 
 their labors and their works do follow them." 
 
 In the fashionable city to-day there walk a 
 thousand libertines. They are a moving pest. 
 Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their 
 bones have in them the decay of the pit. They 
 have the eye of a basilisk. They have been 
 soaked in filth, and steeped in uncleanliness, and 
 consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the 
 loathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of 
 the robe of one of these elegant gentlemen, and 
 pull it aside, and say, " Behold a Leper ! " 
 
 First, if you desire to shun this evil, you will
 
 230 The Abominations. 
 
 have nothing to do with bad books and impure 
 newspapers. With such an affluent Hterature 
 as is coming forth from our swift-revohing 
 printing-presses, there is no excuse for drag- 
 ging one's self through sewers of unchastity. 
 Why walk in the ditch, when right beside the 
 ditch is the solid flagging? It seems that in 
 the literature of the day the ten plagues of 
 Egypt have returned, and the frogs and lice 
 have hopped and skipped over our parlor tables. 
 
 Waiting impatiently in the house of some- 
 parishioner, for the completion of a very pro- 
 tracted toilet, I have picked up a book from 
 the parlor table, and found that every leaf was 
 a scale of leprosy. 
 
 Parents are delighted to have their children 
 read, but they should be sure as to what they 
 read. You do not have to walk a day or two 
 in an infected district to get the cholera or 
 typhoid fever ; and one wave of moral un- 
 hcalth will fever and blast an immortal nature. 
 Perhaps, knowing not what you did, you read 
 a bad book. Do you not remember it alto- 
 gether ? Yes ; and perhaps you will never get 
 over it.
 
 House of Blackness of Darkness. 231 
 
 However strong and exalted your character, 
 never read a bad book. By the time you get 
 through the first chapter you will see the drift. 
 If you find the marks of the hoofs of the devil 
 in the pictures, or in the style, or in the plot, 
 away with it. You may tear your coat, or 
 break a vase, and repair them again, but the 
 point where the rip or fracture took place will 
 always be evident. It takes less than an hour 
 to do your heart a damage which no time can 
 entirely repair. _ Look carefully over your 
 child's library ; see what book it is that he reads 
 after he has gone to bed, with the gas turned 
 upon the pillow. Do not always take it for 
 granted that a book is good because it is a Sun- 
 day-school book. As far as possible know 
 zvJw wrote it, who illustrated it, who published 
 it, who sold it. 
 
 Young man, as you value heaven, never buy 
 a book from one of those men who meet you 
 in the square, and, after looking both ways, to 
 see if the police are watching, shows you a 
 book — very cheap. Have him arrested as you 
 would kill a rattle-snake. Grab him, and shout 
 " Police ! police ! "
 
 232 The Abominations. 
 
 But there is more danger, I think, from 
 many of tlie family papers, pubhshed once a 
 'Aeek ; in those stories of vice and shame, 
 full of infamous suggestions, going as far as 
 they can without exposing themselves to the 
 clutch of the law. I name none of them ; but 
 say that on some fashionable tables there lie 
 " family newspapers " that are the very vomit 
 of the pit. 
 
 The way to ruin is cheap. It costs three 
 dohars to go to Philadelphia ; six dollars to 
 Boston ; thirty-three dollars to Savannah ; 
 but, by the purchase of a bad paper for ten 
 cents, you may get a through ticket to hell, 
 by express, with few stopping-places, and the 
 final halting like the tumbling of the lightning 
 train down the draw-bridge at Norwalk — sud- 
 den, terrific, deathful, never to rise. 
 
 O, the power of an iniquitous pen ! If a 
 needle puncture the body at a certain point, life 
 is destroyed ; but the pen is a sharper instru- 
 ment, for with its puncture you may kill the soul. 
 And that very thing many of our acutest minds 
 arc to-day doing. Do not think that this 
 which you drain from the glass, because it is
 
 House of Blackness of Darkness. 233 
 
 sweet, is therefore healthful : some of the worst 
 poisons are pleasant to the taste. The pen 
 which for the time fascinates you may be dipped 
 in the slime of unclean literature. 
 
 Look out for the books that come from 
 France. It has sent us some grand histories, 
 poems, and pure novels, but they are few in 
 number compared with the nastiness that it has 
 spewed out upon our shore. 
 
 Do we not read in our Bibles that the ancient 
 flood covered all the earth ? I would have 
 thought that France had escaped, for it does 
 not seem as if it had ever had a thorough 
 washing. 
 
 In the next place, if you would shun an im- 
 pure life, avoid those who indulge in impure con- 
 versation. There are many people whose chief 
 niirthfulncss is in that line. They are full of 
 innuendo, and phrases of double meaning, and 
 are always picking out of the conversation of 
 decent men something vilely significant. It is 
 astonishing in company, how many, professing 
 to be Christians, will tell vile stories ; and that 
 some Christian women, in their own circles, 
 have no hesitation at the same style of talking.
 
 234 ^^^ Abominations. 
 
 You take a step down hill, when, without 
 resistance, you allow any one to put into your 
 ear a vile innuendo. If, forgetting who you are, 
 any man attempts to say such things in your 
 presence, let your better nature assert itself, 
 look the offender full in the face, and ask — 
 " What do you mean by saying such a thing in 
 my presence ! " Better allow a man to smite 
 you in the face than to utter such conversation 
 before you. I do not care who the men or 
 women are that utter impure thoughts ; they 
 are guilty of a mighty wrong ; and their influ- 
 ence upon our young people is baleful. 
 
 If in the club where you associate ; if in the 
 social circle where you move, you hear de- 
 praved conversation, fly for your life ! A man 
 is no better than his talk ; and no man can 
 have such interviews without being scarred. 
 
 I charge our young men against considering 
 uncleanness more tolerable, because it is sanc- 
 tioned by the customs, habits, and practices of 
 what is called high life. If this sin wears kid 
 gloves, and patent leathers, and coat of exqui- 
 site fit, and carries an opera-glass of costliest 
 material, and lives in a big house, and rides in
 
 House of Blackness of Darkness. 235 
 
 a splendid turn-out, is it to be any the less 
 reprehended ? No ! No ! 
 
 I warn you not so much against the abomina- 
 tion that hides in the lower courts and alleys of 
 '' the town, as against the more damnable vice 
 that hides behind the white shutters and brown- 
 stone fronts of the upper classes. 
 
 God, once in a while, hitches up the fiery 
 team of vengeance, and ploughs up the splendid 
 libertinism, and we stand aghast. 
 
 Sin, crawling out of the ditch of poverty and 
 shame, has but few temptations ; but, gliding 
 through the glittering drawing-room with mag- 
 nificent robe, it draws the stars of heaven 
 after it. 
 
 Poets and painters have represented Satan as 
 horned and hoofed. If I were a poet I should 
 describe him with manners polished to the last 
 perfection, hair flowing in graceful ringlets, eye 
 a little blood-shot, but floating in bewitching 
 languor ; hands soft and diamonded ; step light 
 and artistic ; voice mellow as a flute ; boot ele- 
 gantly shaped ; conversation facile, carefully 
 toned, and Frenchy ; breath perfumed until it 
 would seem that nothing had ever touched his
 
 236 The Abommations. 
 
 lips save balm and myrrh. But his heart I 
 Avould encase with the scales of a monster, then 
 fill with pride, with beastliness of desire, with 
 recklessness, with hypocrisy, with death. Then 
 I would have him touched with some rod of dis- 
 enchantment until his two eyes would become 
 the cold orbs of the adder ; and on his lip would 
 come the foam of raging intoxication ; and to 
 his feet the spring of the panther ; and his soft 
 hand should become the clammy hand of a 
 wasted skeleton ; while suddenly from his heart 
 would burst in crackling and all-devouring fury 
 the unquenchable flames ; and in the affected 
 lisp of his tongue would come the hiss of the 
 worm that never dies. 
 
 But, until disenchanted, nothing but myrrh, 
 and balm, and ringlet, and diamond, and flute- 
 like voice, and conversation aromatic, facile, 
 and Frenchy. 
 
 There are practices in respectable circles, 
 I am told by physicians, which need public 
 reprehension. Herod's massacre of the in- 
 nocents was as nothing compared with that 
 of millions and millions by what I shall call 
 ante-natal murders. You may escape the grip
 
 House of Blackness of Darkness. iT^y 
 
 of the law, because the existence of such Hfe 
 was not known by society ; but I tell }'ou that 
 at last God will shove down on you the ava- 
 lanche of his indignation ; and though you may 
 not have wielded knife or pistol in your deedj 
 of darkness, yet, in the day when John Wilkes 
 Booth and Antony Probst come to judgment, 
 you will have on your brow the brand of mu7'- 
 derer. 
 
 Hear me when I repeat, that the practices of 
 high life ought not to make sin in your eyes 
 seem tolerable. God is no respecter of per- 
 sons ; and robes and rags will stand on the 
 same platform in the day when the archangel, 
 with one foot on the sea and the other on the 
 land, swears, by Plim that liveth forever and 
 ever, that Time shall be no more. 
 
 O, it is beautiful to see a young man living a 
 life of purity, standing upright where thousands 
 of other young men fall. You will move in 
 honorable circles all your days ; and some old 
 friend of your father will meet you and say : 
 " My son, how glad I am to see you look so 
 well. Just like your father, for all the world. I 
 thought you would turn out well when I used
 
 238 The Abominations. 
 
 to hold you on my knee. Do you ever hear 
 from the old folks ? " 
 
 After a while you yourself will be old, and 
 lean quite heavily on your cane, and take short 
 steps, and hold the book off to the other side of 
 the light. And men will take off their hats in 
 your presence. Your body, unharmed by early 
 indulgences, will get weaker, only as the sleepy 
 child gets more and more unable to hold up its 
 head, and falls back into its mother's lap : so 
 you shall lay yourself down into the arms of the 
 Christian's tomb, and on the slab that marks the 
 place will be chiselled : " Blessed are the pure 
 in heart, for they shall see God." 
 
 But here is a young man who takes the other 
 route. The voices of uncleanness charm him 
 away. He reads bad books. Lives in vicious 
 circles. Loses the glow from his cheek, the 
 sparkle from his eye, and the purity from his 
 soul. The good shun him. Down he goes, 
 little^ by little. They who knew him when he 
 came to town, while yet lingering on his head 
 was a pure mother's blessing, and on his lip the 
 dew of a pure sister's kiss, now pass him, and 
 «»ay, " What an awful wreck ! " His eye blear-
 
 House of Blackness of Darkness. 239 
 
 ed with frequent carousals. His cheek bruised 
 in the grog-shop fight. His Hp swollen with 
 evil indulgences. Look out what you say to 
 him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower 
 down and lower down, until, outcast of God 
 and man, he lies in the alms-house, a blotch of 
 loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls 
 out for God ; and then for more drink. Now 
 he prays ; now curses. Now laughs as fiends 
 laugh. Then bites his nails to the quick. Then 
 runs both hands through the shock of hair that 
 hangs about his head — like the mane of a wild 
 beast. Then shivers — until the cot shakes — 
 with unutterable terror. Then, with uplifted 
 fist, fights back the devils, or clutches the 
 serpents that seem winding him in their coil. 
 Then asks for water, which is instantly con- 
 sumed by his cracked lips. Going his round 
 some morning, the surgeon finds him dead. 
 Straighten the limbs. You need not try to 
 comb out or shove back the matted locks. 
 Wrap him in a sheet. Put him in a box. Two 
 men will carry it down to the wagon at the door. 
 With chalk, write on the top of the box the 
 name of the exhausted libertine.
 
 240 The Abominations. 
 
 Do you know who it is ? 
 
 That \'& you, O man, if, yielding to the temp- 
 tations to an impure hfe, you go out, and 
 perish. 
 
 There is a way that seemeth bright, and fair, 
 and beautiful ; but the end thereof is BLACK- 
 NESS OF Darkness Forever.
 
 THE GUN THAT KICKS OVER THE 
 MAN WHO SHOOTS IT OFF. 
 
 Blasphemy is a crime that aims at God, 
 but does its chief harm to the one that fires 
 
 it off. 
 
 So I compare it to a piece of imperfect fire- 
 arms to which the marksman puts his eye, and, 
 pulhng the trigger, by the rebound finds himself 
 in the dust. 
 
 I tell you a story, Oriental and marvellous. 
 History speaks of the richest man in all the 
 East. He had camels, oxen, asses, sheep, and 
 what would make any man rich even if he had 
 nothing else — seven sons and three daughters. 
 It was the custom of this man's children to 
 have family reunions. One day he is at home, 
 thinking of his darling children, who are keep- 
 ing banquet at their elder brother's house. 
 Yonder comes a messenger in hot haste, evi- 
 dently, from his looks, bearing evil tidings. 
 Recovering himself sufficiently to speak, he 
 
 says,: "The oxen and the asses have been 
 1 1
 
 242 The Abominations. 
 
 captured by a foraging party of Sabeans, and 
 all the servants are butchered except myself" 
 Another messenger is coming. He says that 
 the sheep, and the shepherds have been struck 
 by lightning. Another messenger is coming. 
 He says that the Chaldeans have come and 
 captured the camels, and killed all but himself 
 Another messenger, who says: "While thy 
 sons and daughters were at the feast, a hurri- 
 cane struck the corner of the tent, and they are 
 all dead ! " But his misfortunes are not yet 
 completed. The old man is smitten with the 
 elephantiasis, or black Leprosy. Tumors from 
 head to foot ; face distorted ; forehead ridged 
 with offensive tubercles ; eyelashes fall out ; 
 nostrils excoriated ; voice destroyed ; intoler- 
 able exhalation from the whole body ; until, with 
 none to dress his sores, he sits down in the 
 ashes, with nothing but broken pieces of pot- 
 tery to use in the surgery of his wounds. At 
 this point, when he needed all consolation 
 and encouragement, his wife comes to him, 
 and says, virtually : " This is intolerable ! 
 Our property gone, our children slain, and 
 now this loathsome, disgusting disease is upon
 
 The GiiJi that Kicks, Etc. 243 
 
 you. Why don't you swear? Curse God 
 and die!" 
 
 But profanity would not have removed one 
 tumor from his agonized body ; would not have 
 brought to his door one of the captured camels ; 
 would not have restored any one of the dead 
 children. Swearing would have made the pain 
 more unbearable, the pauperism into which 
 he had plunged more distressing, the bereave- 
 ment more excruciating. 
 
 And yet, from the swearing and blasphemy 
 with which our land is cursed, one would think 
 there were some great advantage to be reaped 
 from the practice. There is to-day in all our 
 land no more prevalent custom, and no more 
 God-defying abomination, than profane swear- 
 ing. You can hardly walk our streets five 
 minutes without having your ears stung and 
 your sensibilities shocked. The drayman swear- 
 ing at his horse ; the tinman at his solder ; the 
 sewing-girl imprecating her tangled thread ; the 
 bricklayer cursing at his trowel ; the carpenter 
 at his plane ; the sailor at the tackling ; the 
 merchant at the customer ; the customer at the 
 merchant ; the printer at the miserable proof-
 
 244 The Abojninations. 
 
 sheet ; the accountant at the troublesome Hne 
 of figures ; — swearing in the cellar and in the 
 loft, before the counter and behind the counter, 
 in the shop "and on the street, in low saloon 
 and fashionable bar-room. Children swear, 
 men swear, ladies (!) swear. Profanity from 
 the lowest haunt calling upon the Almighty, to 
 the fashionable " O Lord ! " of the glittering 
 drawing-room. 
 
 This whole country is blasted with the evil. 
 Coming from the West, a gentleman sat behind 
 two persons conversing. Profanities were so 
 frequent in the conversation of the two persons 
 in front, that the gentleman behind took out his 
 pencil and paper and made a record. The 
 profanities filled several sheets in the course of 
 two days, at the close of which time the gentle- 
 man handed the manuscript to the persons 
 conversing. The men said : " Is it possible 
 that we have uttered so many profanities in the 
 course of two days ? " The gentleman said : 
 "Yes." — "Then," said one of the men, "I 
 shall never swear again." 
 
 I make no abstract discussion. I hate ab- 
 stractions. I had rather come right out and
 
 The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 245 
 
 have a talk with you about a habit that you 
 admit to be wrong. This habit has grown from 
 the fact that the young often think it an evi- 
 dence of manUness. There are tliousands of 
 boys and youth who indulge in it. I hear 
 children along the street, but just able to walk, 
 practising this iniquity. They cannot talk 
 straight, but they get enough distinctness to 
 let you know that they are damning their own 
 souls and the souls of others. Oh ! it is horrible 
 to see a little child, the first time it lifts its feet 
 to walk, set them down on the burning pave- 
 ment of hell ! Between sixteen and twenty 
 years of age there is apt to come a time when a 
 young man is as much ashamed of not being 
 able to deliver an oath as he is of the dizziness 
 that comes from his first cigar. He has his 
 hat and coat and boots of the right pattern, 
 and there is but one thing more now to bring 
 him into fashion, and that is a capacity to 
 swear. 
 
 So there are some of our young men sur- 
 rounded by an atmosphere of profanities. 
 Oaths sit on their lips, they roll under their 
 tongues, and nest in the shock of hair. In
 
 246 The Abominations. 
 
 elegant drawing-rooms they abstain from such 
 utterances, but fill ckib-room and street with 
 their immoralities of speech. You suggest the 
 wrongfulness of the habit, and they thrust their 
 finger in the sleeve of their vest, and swagger, 
 and say : " Who cares ! " They have no 
 regard for God, but great respect for the ladies. 
 Ah ! there is no manliness in that. 
 
 The most ungentlemanly thing a man can do 
 is to swear. This habit is becoming more and 
 more prevalent because of the immorality of 
 parents and employers. There are very many 
 fathers who indulge in this habit. They feel 
 moved to utter themselves in this way, but first 
 look around to see if their children are present. 
 They have no idea that their children know 
 anything about it. The probability is that if 
 you swear, your children swear. They were in 
 the next room and heard you, or somebody 
 told them about your habit. Your child is 
 practising to do just as you do. He is laughed 
 at, at first, for his awkwardness, but after 
 a while he will swear as well as you. 
 
 Then look at the example of master carpen- 
 ters, masons, roofers, and hatters. You know
 
 The Giui that Kicks, Etc. 247 
 
 how some of you go around the building, and, 
 when the work of your journeyman and subor- 
 dinates does not please you, what do you say? 
 It is not praying, is it ? Forthwith, your jour- 
 neymen and subordinates learn the habit. 
 Hence our hat-shops, and house-scaffoldings, 
 and side-walks, and wharves, and dockyards, 
 and cellars, and lofts ring with blasphemies. 
 
 Men argue that, if it is right for a man worth 
 fifty or a hundred thousand dollars to swear, it 
 can be overlooked in men who have merely 
 their day's wages. Because they are poor must 
 they be denied this one luxury ? 
 
 This habit becomes more prevalent because 
 of the infirmities of temper. There are many 
 m^i who, when at peace, are most fastidious of 
 speech, but when aroused into the violence of 
 passion, blaze with imprecation. The Oriental's 
 wife spoken of would not have liked her husband 
 to be profane under ordinary circumstances, but 
 now that the camels are gone, and the sheep 
 are gone, and the property is gone, and the 
 boils have come, she says: "Why don't }'ou 
 swear? Curse God and die ! " Others, all the 
 year round, have not the froth of profanity
 
 248 The Abominations. . 
 
 wiped from their lips, but try to expend all 
 the fury of a twelvemonth in one red-hot para- 
 graph of five minutes. A man apologized for 
 his occasional swearing by saying that, once in 
 a year, in this way he cleared himself out. 
 There are men who have no control of their 
 blasphemous utterances, who want us to send 
 them to Congress. Others have blasphemed in 
 senatorial places, pretending afterwards that it 
 was a mere rhetorical flourish. 
 
 Many fall into this habit through the frequent 
 use of what are called by-words. I suppose 
 that all have favorite phrases of this kind in 
 which there is no harm ; but a profusion of this 
 style of speech often ends in bald profanity. It 
 is, " I declare!" "My stars!" "Mercy on 
 me!" "Good gracious!" "By George!" 
 " By Jove ! " and " By heavens ! " and no harm 
 is intended ; but it is a very easy transition 
 from this kind of talk to that which is positively 
 obnoxious. The English language is magnifi- 
 cent, and capable of expressing every shade of 
 feeling and every degree of energy and zeal ; 
 and there is no need that uc take to ourselves 
 unlawful words. If you are happy, Noah Web-
 
 The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 249 
 
 stcr offers to your tongue ten thousand epithets 
 in which you may express your exhilaration ; 
 and if you are righteously indignant, there are 
 in his dictionary whole armories of denunciation 
 and scorn, sarcasm and irony, caricature and 
 wrath. Utter yourself against some meanness 
 or hypocrisy in all the blasphemies that ever 
 smoked up from perdition, and I will go on to 
 denounce the same meanness and hypocrisy 
 with a hundred-fold more stress and vehemency 
 in words across which no slime has ever trailed, 
 and through which no infernal fires have shot 
 their forked tongues, — words pure, innocent, 
 all-impressive, God-honored, Anglo-Saxon, — in 
 which Milton sang, and Bunyan dreamed, and 
 Shakespeare wrote. 
 
 But whatever be the source of this habit, it is 
 on the increase. At sixteen, boys swear with 
 as much facility as the grandfather did at sixty. 
 Our streets are cursed by it from end to end. 
 Our hotels, from morning until midnight, re- 
 sound with it. ]\Ien curse on the way to the 
 bar to get their morning dram ; curse the news- 
 boy who cries the paper ; curse the breakfast 
 for being cold ; curse at the bank, and curse at
 
 250 The Abominations. 
 
 the store ; curse on the way to bed ; curse at 
 the stone against which they strike their foot ; 
 and curse at the sphnter that gets under the 
 nail. If you do not know that this is so, it is 
 because your ear has been hardened by the per- 
 petual din of profanities that are enough to 
 bring down upon any city the hurricane of fire 
 that consumed Sodom. 
 
 The habit is creeping up into the higher cir- 
 cles. Every woman despises flat and unvarnish- 
 ed imprecations ; but in the most elevated circles 
 there are women who swear without knowing 
 it. They have read Bulwer, and George Sand, 
 and the exaggerated style of some of our im- 
 ported as well as home-made periodical litera- 
 ture, until they do not actually know what is 
 decency of speech. With fairy fan to their lips 
 they utter their oaths, and, under chandeliers 
 which discover not the faintest blush, recklessly 
 speak the holiest of names. This is helped on 
 by the second glass of wine, that is perfectly 
 harmless ; and though no one dare charge her, 
 being so finely- dressed, with anything like in- 
 toxication, yet there comes a glassiness to the 
 eye, and a glow to the check, and a style of
 
 The Gu7t that Kicks, Etc. 251 
 
 speech to the tongue that were not known be- 
 fore she took the second glass that was perfectly 
 Jiarmlcss. 
 
 One wild, terrific wave of blasphemy is sweep- 
 ing over the land. See the effects of this wide- 
 spread profanity in the increasing perjury. If 
 men in ordinary conversation so commonly use 
 the name of God, is it wonderful that in the 
 jury-box, and in the alderman's office, and in 
 the custom-house so many swear falsely ? No- 
 tice the way an oath is administered. They 
 toss the Bible at a man, and in the most trivial 
 way say: "So help you God — kiss the book." 
 I suppose enough lies arc every day told in the 
 custom-house to sink it. Smuggling, although 
 it be done against positive oath, is in some cir- 
 cles considered a grand joke ; and you say some 
 day to your friend, " How can you sell those 
 goods so cheaply?" and your friend says with 
 an eye-twinkle, "The Custom-House tariff was 
 not as high on those things as it might have 
 been." Men more easily break their solemn 
 oaths than formerly. What strange verdicts 
 juries do sometimes render ! What peculiar 
 charges judges do sometimes make ! What
 
 252 The Abominations. 
 
 unaccountable slowness sheriffs and their depu- 
 ties sometimes exhibit in the execution of their 
 writs! What erratic railroad enterprises sud- 
 denly pass at our State capitals ! What won- 
 derful changes Congress makes in the tariff 
 on liquors ! 
 
 What is an oath ? Anything solemn ? Any- 
 thing appealing to the Almighty? Anything 
 stupendous in man's history? No! It is 
 "kissing the book!" In a land where the 
 name of God so often becomes the foot-ball of 
 what are called respectable circles, how can we 
 expect that it can excite any veneration when, 
 in the presence of county clerk, or alderman, or 
 judge, or legislative assembly, it is used in sol- 
 emn adjuration ? This habit lowers, bedwarfs, 
 and destroys the entire moral nature. You 
 might as well expect to raise harvests and vine- 
 yards on the side of belching Stromboli as to 
 have any great excellency grow upon your soul 
 when it so often overflows with the scoriae of 
 this awful propensity. You will never swear 
 yourself up. You will swear yourself down. 
 The Mohammedans, when they find a slip of pa- 
 per they cannot read, put it aside, for fear the
 
 The Gun tJiat Kicks, Etc. 253 
 
 name of God is on it. That, you say, is one 
 extreme. We go to the other. 
 
 You arc wilHng to acknowledge this a miser- 
 able habit, and would like to have some recipe 
 for its cure. 
 
 Reflect much upon the uselcssncss of the 
 habit. Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy 
 load ? Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein? 
 Did they ever extirpate the meanness of a 
 customer ? Did they ever collect a bad debt ? 
 Did they ever cure a toothache ? Did they ever 
 stop a twinge of the gout ? Did they ever save 
 you a dollar, or put you a step forward in any 
 great enterprise ? or enable you to gain a posi- 
 tion, or to accomplish anything that you ever 
 wanted to do ? How much did you ever make 
 by swearing ? What, in all the round of a life- 
 time of profanity, did you ever gain by the 
 habit ? 
 
 Reflect, also, upon the fact that it arouses 
 God's indignation. The Bible reiterates, in 
 paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after 
 chapter, the fact that all swearers and blasphe- 
 mers are accursed now, and arc to be forever 
 miserable. There is no iniquity that has been
 
 254 ^/^^ Abominations. 
 
 so often visited with the immediate curse of 
 God. 
 
 At New Brunswick, a young man was stand- 
 ing on the raih-oad track blaspheming. The 
 cars passed, and he was found on the track with 
 his tongue cut out. People could not under- 
 stand how, with comparatively little bruising ©f 
 the rest of his body, his tongue could have been 
 cut out. Not long ago, in Chicago, a man told 
 a falsehood, and said that he hoped, if what he 
 said was not true, God would strike him dead. 
 He instantly fell. There was no longer any 
 pulse. There was no reason for his death, ex- 
 cept that he asked God to strike him dead, and 
 God did it. In Scotland a club was formed, 
 in which the members competed as to which 
 could use the most horrid oaths. The man who 
 succeeded best in the infamy was made presi- 
 dent of the club. His tongue began to swell. 
 It protruded from his mouth. He could not 
 draw it in. He died within three days. Phy- 
 sicians were astounded. There was nothing like 
 it in all the books. What was the matter with 
 him? lie cursed God, and died! Near Cats- 
 kill, N. Y., during a thunder-storm, a group of
 
 The Gu7t that Kicks, Etc. 255 
 
 men were standing in a blacksmith-shop. There 
 came a crash of thunder, and the men were 
 startled. One man said that he was not afraid ; 
 and he made a wager, that he dared go out in 
 front of the shop, while the lightnings were fly- 
 ing, and dare the Almighty. He went out; 
 shook his fist at the heavens, crying, " Strike, 
 if you dare ! " Instantly a thunder-bolt struck 
 him. He was dead. He cursed God, and died ! 
 God will not abide this sin. He will not let it 
 escape. There is a kind of manifold paper b}' 
 which a man may, with a heavy pencil, write 
 upon a dozen sheets at once — the writing going 
 down through all the sheets. So every oath 
 and blasphemy goes through, and is written in- 
 delibly on every leaf of God's remembrance. 
 Ah! how much our Father bears! Can you 
 make an estimate of how many blasphemies will 
 roll up from the streets and saloons of our cities 
 to-night? If you go out and look up you can- 
 not see them. There will be no trail of fire on 
 the sky. . But the air is full of them. The 
 name of Christ is not so often spoken in worship 
 as in derision. God will be cursed to-night by 
 hundreds of lips. The grog-shops will curse
 
 .256 The Abominations. 
 
 him. The houses of shame will curse him. 
 Five Points will curse him. Bedford street will 
 curse him. Chestnut street will curse him. 
 Madison square will curse him. Beacon street 
 will curse him. Every street in all our cities 
 will curse him. 
 
 This blasphemy is an abomination that no 
 words of mine can describe. And God hears it. 
 They curse His name. They curse his Sabbath. 
 They curse his Bible. They curse his people. 
 They curse his Only Begotten Son. Yes ; they 
 swear by the name of Jesus ! It makes my hair 
 rise, and my flesh creep, and my blood chill, 
 and my breath catch, and my foot halt. 
 
 Dionysius had a cave where men were incar- 
 cerated. At the top of the cave was an. aper- 
 ture to which he could put his car, and could 
 hear every sigh, every groan, every word of 
 the inmates. This world is so arranged that 
 all its voices go up to heaven. God puts down 
 his ear and hears every word of praise offered, 
 and. every word of blasphemy spoken. 
 
 Our cities must come to judgment. All these 
 oaths must be answered for. They die on the 
 air, but they have an eternal echo. Listen for
 
 The Gun that Kicks, Etc. 257 
 
 the echo. It rolls back from the ages to come. 
 Listen : — " All blasphemers shall have their place 
 in the lake that biirncth with fire and brim- 
 stone.'' Some have thought that a lost soul in 
 the future world will do that which it was most 
 prone to do in this world. If so, then think of 
 a man blaspheming God through all eternity ! 
 
 This habit grows upon a man, until at last it 
 pushes him off forever. I saw a man die with 
 an oath betweeo his teeth. Voltaire rose from 
 his dying pillow, and, supposing that he saw 
 Christ in the room, cried out, "Crush the 
 wretch ! " A celebrated officer during the last 
 war fell mortally wounded, and the only word 
 he sent to his wife was : " Tell her I f ught like 
 hell!" 
 
 There arc thousands of men who arc having 
 all their moral nature pulled down by the fiery 
 fingers of this habit. At last, pinched, shriv- 
 elled, and consumed, they will get down on 
 their beds to die, and at the step of the doctor 
 in the hall, or the shutting of the front door, 
 they will start up, thinking they hear the 
 sepulchral gates creak open. 
 
 Who is this God that you should maltreat his
 
 258 The Abominations. 
 
 name ? Has he been haunting you, starving 
 you, or freezing you all your life ? No ! He 
 is your Father, patient and loving. He rocked 
 your ^cradle with blessings, from the time you 
 were born. He clothes you now, and always 
 has clothed you. You never had a sickness 
 but he was sorry for you. He has brooded 
 over you with wings of love. He has tried to 
 press you to his heart of kindness and compas- 
 sion. He wants to forgive you. He wants to 
 help you. He wants to make you happy. He 
 watched last night over your pillow while you 
 slept. He will watch to-night. He was your 
 father's God, and your mother's. He has 
 housed them safe from the blast, and he wants 
 to shelter you. Do you trifle with his name ? 
 Do you smite him in the face ? Do you thrust 
 him back by your imprecations ? 
 
 Who is this Jesus Christ that I hear men 
 swearing by ? Who is he ? Some destroyer, 
 that they so treat his name ? What foul thing 
 hath he done, that our great cities speak his 
 name in thousand-voiced jeer and contempt? 
 Who is he ? A Lamb, whose blood simmered 
 in the fires of sacrifice to save you. A Broth-
 
 The Gtiu that Kicks, Etc. 259 
 
 er, who put dow n his crown of glory that )'oa 
 might take it up. For many years he has been 
 striving, night and day, to win your affections. 
 There is nothing in heaven that he is not will- 
 ing to give you. He came with blistered feet 
 and streaming eyes, with aching head and 
 broken heart to relieve you. On the craft of a 
 doomed humanity he pushed out into the sea, 
 to pick )'ou off the rock. Who will ever again 
 malign his name ? Is there a hand that will 
 ever again be lifted to wound him ? If so, let 
 that hand, blood-dipped, be lifted now. Which 
 one of my readers will ever again utter his 
 sacred name in imprecation ? If any, now let 
 them speak. Not one !^ Not one ! 
 
 One summer among the New England liills 
 there was an evening memorable for storm and 
 darkness. The clouds, which had been all day 
 gathering, at last unlimbered their batteries. 
 The Housatonic, that flows in silence save as 
 the paddles of pleasure-parties rattle in the row- 
 lock, was lashed into foam and its waves stag- 
 gered, not knowing where to lay themselves. 
 The hills jarred at the rumbling of God's 
 chariots. Blinding sheets of rain drove the
 
 26o The Abominatio7is. 
 
 cattle to the bars, and beat against the win- 
 dow-pane as if to dash it in. The corn-fields 
 crouched in the fury, and the ripened grain- 
 fields threw their crowns of gold at the feet of 
 the storm-king. After the night shut in, it was 
 a double nisrht. Its black mantle was rent with 
 the lightnings, and into its locks were twisted 
 the leaves of uprooted oaks, and shreds of 
 canvas torn from the masts of the beached 
 shipping. It was such a night as makes you 
 thank God for shelter, and bids you open the 
 door to let in even the spaniel howling outside 
 with the terror. We went to sleep under the 
 full blast of heaven's great orchestra, and the 
 forests with uplifted voice, in choiring hosts that 
 filled all the side of the mountains, praising 
 the Lord. 
 
 We waked not until the fingers of the suony 
 morn touched our eyelids. We looked out and 
 Housatonic slept as quiet as a baby's dream. 
 Pillars of white cloud set up along the heav- 
 ens looked like the castles of the blest, built 
 for hierarchs of heaven on the beach of the 
 azure sea. The trees sparkled as though there 
 had been som^ great grief in heaven, and
 
 TJic Gun that Kicks, Etc. 261 
 
 each leaf had been God-appointed to catch an 
 angel's tear. It seemed as if God our Father 
 had looked down upon earth, his wayward 
 child, and stooped to her tear- wet cheek, and 
 kissed it. 
 
 Even so will the darkness of our country's 
 crime and suffering be lifted. God will roll 
 back the night of storm, and bring in the morn- 
 ing of joy. Its golden light will gild the city 
 spire, and strike the forests of ^Maine, and 
 tinge the masts of Mobile ; and with one end 
 resting upon the Atlantic beach and the other 
 on the Pacific coast, God will spring a great 
 rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting 
 covenant that the land shall never again be 
 deluged with crime.
 
 LIES : WHITE AND BLACK. 
 
 There are ten thousand ways of telling a He. 
 A man's entire life may be a falsehood, while 
 with his lips he may not once directly falsify. 
 There are those who state what is positively 
 untrue, but afterwards say, "may be," softly. 
 These departures from the truth are called 
 " white lies ; " but there is really no such thing 
 as a white lie. The whitest lie that was ever 
 told was as black as perdition. No inventory 
 of public crimes will be sufficient that omits this 
 gigantic abomination. There are men, high 
 in Church and State, actually useful, self-deny- 
 ing, and honest in many things, who, upon 
 certain subjects, and in certain spheres, arc not 
 at all to be depended upon for veracity. In- 
 deed, there are multitudes of men who have 
 their notions of truthfulness so thoroughly per- 
 verted, that they do not know when they are 
 lying. With many it is a cultivated sin ; with 
 some it seems a natural infirmity. I have 
 known people who seemed to have been born
 
 Lies: White and Black. 263 
 
 liars. The falsehoods of their Hvcs extended 
 from cradle to grave. Prevarication, misrepre- 
 sentation, and dishonesty of speech appeared 
 in their first utterances and was as natural to 
 them as any of their infantile diseases, and was 
 a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. 
 But many have been placed in circumstances 
 where this tendency has day b)' day, and hour 
 by hour, been called to larger development. 
 They have gone from attainment to attainment, 
 and from class to class, until they have become 
 regularly graduated liars. 
 
 The air of the city is filled with falsehoods. 
 They hang pendent from the chandeliers of our 
 finest residences ; they crowd the shelves of 
 some of our merchant princes ; they fill the 
 side-walk from curb-stone to brown-stone facing. 
 They cluster around the mechanic's hammer, 
 and blossom from the end of the merchant's 
 yard-stick, and sit in the doors of churches. 
 Some call them "fiction." Some style them 
 "fabrication." You might say that they were 
 subterfuge, disguise, delusion, romance, eva- 
 sion, pretence, foible, deception, misrepresenta- 
 tion ; but, as I am ignorant of anything to be
 
 .264 The Abominations. 
 
 gained by the hiding of a God-defying outrage 
 under a lexicographer's blanket, I shall chiefly 
 call them what my father taught me to call 
 them — lies. 
 
 I shall divide them into agricultural, mercan- 
 tile, mechanical, and ecclesiastical lies ; leaving 
 those that are professional, social, and political 
 for some other chapter. 
 
 First, then, I will speak of those that are 
 more particularly agricultural. There is some- 
 thing in the perpetual presence of natural 
 objects to make a man pure. The trees never 
 issue "false stock." Wheat-fields are always 
 honest. Rye and oats never move out in the 
 night, not paying for the place they have 
 occupied. Corn shocks never make false as- 
 signments. Mountain brooks are always " cur- 
 rent." The gold on the grain is never counter- 
 feit. The sunrise never flaunts in false colors. 
 The dew sports only genuine diamonds. 
 
 Taking farmers as a class, I believe they are 
 truthful, and fair in dealing, and kind-hearted. 
 But the regions surrounding our cities do not 
 always send this sort of men to our markets. 
 Day by day there creak through our streets,
 
 Lies: White and Black. 265 
 
 and about the market-houses, farm wagons that 
 have not an honest spoke in their wheels, or a 
 truthful rivet from toncrue to tail-board. Dur- 
 ing the last few years there have been times 
 when domestic economy has foundered on the 
 farmer's firkin. Neither high taxes, nor the 
 high price of dry-goods, nor the exorbitancy of 
 labor, could excuse much that the city has wit- 
 nessed in the behavior of the yeomanry. By 
 the quiet firesides of Westchester and Bucks 
 counties I hope there may be seasons of deep 
 reflection and hearty repentance. 
 
 Rural districts are accustomed to rail at great 
 cities as given up to fraud and every form of 
 unrighteousness ; but our cities do not absorb all 
 the abominations. Our citizens have learned 
 the importance of not always trusting to the size 
 and style of apples in the top of a farmer's bar- 
 rel, as an indication of what may be found 
 farther down. Many of our people are accus- 
 tomed to watch to see how correctly a bushel of 
 beets is measured ; and there are not many hon- 
 est milk-cans. Deceptions do not all cluster 
 around city halls. When our cities sit down 
 
 and weep over their sins, all the surrounding 
 12
 
 266 The Abominations. 
 
 counties ought to come in and weep with 
 them. 
 
 There is often hostihty on the part of produ- 
 cers against traders, as though the man who 
 raises the corn were necessarily more honorable 
 than the grain dealer, who pours it into his 
 mammoth bin. There ought to be no such hos- 
 tility. The occupation of one is as necessary as 
 that of the other. Yet producers often think it 
 no wrong to snatch away from the trader ; and 
 they say to the bargain-maker, " You get your 
 money easy." Do they get it easy ? Let those 
 who in the quiet field and barn get their living 
 exchange places with those who stand to-day 
 amid the excitements of commercial life, and 
 see if they find it so very easy. While the 
 farmer goes to sleep with the assurance that his 
 corn and barley will be growing all the night, 
 moment by moment adding to his revenue, the 
 merchant tries to go to sleep, conscious that 
 that moment his cargo may be broken on the 
 rocks, or damaged by the wave that sweeps 
 clear across the hurricane deck ; or that the gold 
 gamblers may, that very hour, be plotting some 
 monetary revolution, or the burglars be prying
 
 Lies: White and Black. 267 
 
 open his safe, or his debtors fleeing the town, or 
 his landlord raising the rent, or the fires kind- 
 ling on the block that contains all his estate. 
 Easy ! is it ? God help the merchants ! It is 
 hard to have the palms of the hand blistered 
 with out-door work ; but a more dreadful pro- 
 cess when, through mercantile anxieties, the 
 brain is consumed ! 
 
 In the next place we notice mercantile lies, 
 those before the counter and behind the counter, 
 I will not attempt to specify the different forms 
 of commercial falsehood. There are merchants 
 who excuse themselves for deviation from truth- 
 fulness because of what they call commercial 
 custom. In other words, the multiplication and 
 universality of a sin turns it into a virtue. 
 There have been large fortunes gathered where 
 there was not one drop of unrequited toil in the 
 wine ; not one spark of bad temper flashing 
 from the bronze bracket ; not one drop of 
 needle-woman's heart-blood in the crimson 
 plush ; while there are other great establishments 
 in which there is not one door-knob, not one 
 brick, not one trinket, not one thread of lace, 
 but has upon it the mark of dishonor. What
 
 268 The Abominations. 
 
 wonder if, some day, a hand of toil that had 
 been wrung, and worn out, and blistered until 
 the skin came off, should be placed against the 
 elegant wall-paper, leaving its mark of blood, — 
 four fingers and a thumb ; or that, some day, 
 walking the halls, there should be a voice ac- 
 costing the occupant, saying. Six cents for 
 making a shirt ; and, flying the room, another 
 voice should say, Twelve cents for an army 
 blanket ; and the man should try to sleep at 
 night, but ever and anon be aroused, until, 
 getting up on one elbow, he should shriek out, 
 Who's there ? 
 
 There are thousands of fortunes made in 
 commercial spheres that are throughout right- 
 eous. God will let his favor rest upon every 
 scroll, every pictured wall, every traceried 
 window ; and the joy that flashes from the 
 lights, and showers from the music, and dances 
 in the children's quick feet, pattering through 
 the hall, will utter the congratulation of men 
 and the approval of God. 
 
 A merchant can, to the last item, be thorough- 
 ly honest. There is never any need of false- 
 hood. Yet how many will, day by day, hour
 
 Lies: White and Black. 269 
 
 by hour, utter what they know to be wrong. 
 You say that you are seUing at less than cost. 
 If so, then it is right to say it. But did that 
 thing cost you less than what you ask for it ? 
 If not, then you have lied. You say that 
 article cost you twenty-five dollars. Did it ? 
 If so, then all right. If it did not, then you 
 have lied. Suppose you are a purchaser. You 
 are " beating down " the goods. You say that 
 that article, for which five dollars is charged, is 
 not worth more than four. Is it worth no more 
 than four dollars ? Then all right. If it be 
 worth more, and, for the sake of getting it for 
 less than its value, you wilfully depreciate it, 
 you have lied. Yoic may call it a sharp trade. 
 The recording angel writes it down on the 
 ponderous tomes of eternity — "Mr. So and So, 
 merchant on Water street, or in Eighth street, 
 or in State street ; or Mrs. So and So, keep- 
 ing house on Beacon street, or on Madison 
 avenue, or Rittenhouse square, told one lie." 
 You may consider it insignificant, because relat- 
 ing to an insignificant purchase. You would 
 despise the man who would falsify in regard to 
 some great matter, in which the city or the
 
 270 The Abominations. 
 
 whole country was concerned ; but this is only 
 a box of buttons, or a row of pins, or a case of 
 needles. Be not deceived. The article pur- 
 chased may be so small you can put it in your 
 vest pocket, but the sin was bigger than the 
 Pyramids, and the echo of the dishonor will re- 
 verberate through all the mountains of eternity. 
 
 You throw out on your counter some speci- 
 mens of handkerchiefs. Your customer asks, 
 " Is that all silk? no cotton in it?" You an- 
 swer, "It is all silk." Was it all silk? If 
 so, all right. But was it partly cotton? Then 
 you have lied. Moreover, you lost by the 
 falsehood. The customer, though he may live 
 at Lynn, or Doylestown, or Poughkeepsie, will 
 find out that you defrauded him, and next 
 spring, when he again comes shopping, he will 
 look at your sign and say: "I will not try 
 there. That is the place where I got that hand- 
 kerchief." So that, by that one dishonest 
 bargain, you picked your own pocket and in- 
 sulted the Almighty. 
 
 Would you dare to make an estimate of how 
 many falsehoods in trade were yesterday told 
 by hardware men, and clothiers, and fruit-
 
 Lies : White and Black. 
 
 271 
 
 dealers, and dry-goods establishments, and im- 
 porters, and jewellers, and lumbermen, and 
 coal-merchants, and stationers, and tobacco- 
 nists ? Lies about saddles, about buckles, 
 about ribbons, about carpets, about gloves, 
 about coats, about shoes, about hats, about 
 watches, about carriages, about books, — about 
 everything. In the name of the Lord Al- 
 mighty, I arraign commercial falsehoods as 
 one of the greatest of abominations in city 
 and town. 
 
 In the next place, I notice inecJianical lies. 
 There is no class of men who administer more 
 to the welfare of the city than artisans. To 
 their hand we must look for the building that 
 shelters us, for the garments that clothe us, for 
 the car that carries us. They wield a wide- 
 spread influence. There is much derision of 
 what is called " muscular Christianity ; " but in 
 the latter, day of the world's prosperity, I think 
 that the Christian will be muscular. We have 
 the right to expect of those stalwart men of toil 
 the highest possible integrity. ]\hiny of them 
 answer all our expectations, and stand at the 
 front of religious and philanthropic enterprises.
 
 272 The Abominations. 
 
 But this class, like the others that I have named, 
 has in it those who lack in the element of 
 veracity. They cannot all be trusted. In 
 times when the demand for labor is great, it is 
 impossible to meet the demands of the public, or 
 do work with that promptness and perfection 
 that would at other times be possible. But 
 there are mechanics whose word cannot be 
 trusted at any time. No man has a right to 
 promise more work than he can do. There are 
 mechanics who say that they will come Monday, 
 but they do not come until Wednesday. You 
 put work in their hands that they tell you shall 
 be completed in ten days, but it is thirty. 
 There have been houses built of which it miehtbe 
 said that every nail driven, every foot of plas- 
 tering put on, every yard of pipe laid, every 
 shingle hammered, every brick mortared, could 
 tell of falsehood connected therewith. There 
 are men attempting to do ten or fifteen pieces 
 of work who have not the time or streneth 
 to do more than five or six pieces ; but by pro- 
 mises never fulfilled keep all the undertakings 
 within their own grasp. This is what they call 
 " nursing'' the job.
 
 Lies: White and Black. 273 
 
 How much wrong to his soul and insult to 
 God a mechanic would sa\'e, if he promised 
 only so much as he expected to be able to 
 do. Society has no right to ask of you impos- 
 sibilities. 
 
 You cannot always calculate correctly, and 
 you may fail because you cannot get the help 
 that you anticipate. But now I am speaking of 
 the wilful making of promises that you know 
 you cannot keep. Did you say that that shoe 
 should be mended, that coat repaired, those 
 brick laid, that harness sewed, that door 
 grained, that spout fixed, or that window 
 glazed, by Saturday, knowing that you would 
 neither be able to do it yourself nor get any 
 one else to do it? Then, before God and man, 
 you arc a liar. You may say that it makes no 
 particular difference, and that if you had told 
 the truth you would have lost the job, and that 
 people expect to be disappointed. But that 
 excuse will not answer. There is a voice of 
 thunder rolling among the drills, and planes, 
 and shoe-lasts, and shears, which says : " All 
 liars shall have their place in the lake that burn- 
 etii with fire and brimstone."
 
 2/4 TJie Abominations. 
 
 I next notice ecclesiastical lies ; that is, false- 
 hoods told for the purpose of advancing 
 churches and sects, or for the purpose of de- 
 pleting them. There is no use in asking many 
 a Calvinist what an Arminian believes, for he 
 will be apt to tell you that the Arminian be- 
 lieves that a man can convert himself; or to 
 ask the Arminian what the Calvinist believes, 
 for he will tell you that the Calvinist believes 
 that God made some men just to damn them. 
 There is no need of asking a pedo-Baptist what 
 a Baptist believes, for he will be apt to say that 
 the Baptist believes immersion to be positively 
 necessary to salvation. It is almost impossible 
 for one denomination of Christians, without pre- 
 judice or misrepresentation, to state the sen- 
 timent of an opposing sect. If a man hates Pres- 
 byterians, and you ask him what Presbyterians 
 believe, he will tell you that they believe that 
 there are infants in hell a span long. 
 
 It is strange also how individual churches will 
 sometimes make misstatements about other 
 individual churches. It is especially so in re- 
 gard to falsehoods told with reference to pros- 
 perous enterprises. As long as a church is fee-
 
 Lies: White and Black. 275 
 
 ble, and the singing is discordant, and the min- 
 ister, through the poverty of the church, must 
 go with threadbare coat, and here and there a 
 worshipper sits in the end of a pew having all 
 the seat to himself, religious sympathizers of 
 other churches will say, " What a pity ! " But, 
 let a great day of prosperity come, and even 
 ministers of the gospel, who ought to be rejoiced 
 at the largeness and extent of the work, de- 
 nounce, and misrepresent, and falsify, — starting 
 the suspicion, in regard to themselves, that the 
 reason they do not like the corn is because it is 
 not ground in their own mill. 
 
 How long before we shall learn to be fair in 
 our religious criticisms ! The keenest jealousies 
 on earth are church jealousies. The field of 
 Christian work is so large that there is no need 
 that our hoe-handlcs hit. 
 
 May God extirpate from the world ecclesi- 
 astical lies, commercial lies, mechanical lies, 
 and agricultural lies, and make every man, the 
 world over, to speak truth with his neighbor 1
 
 A GOOD TIME COMING. 
 
 As on some bitter cold night, while thresh- 
 ing our hands about to keep our thumbs from 
 freezing, we have looked up and seen the north- 
 ern lights blazing along the sky, the windows 
 of heaven illumined at the news of some great 
 victory, so from beyond this bitter night of 
 abomination a brightness strikes through from 
 the other side. 
 
 I have thought that it would be well, in 
 these chapters on the sins of the times, to lift 
 before you a vision of what our cities will be 
 when the work of good men shall have been 
 concluded and our population redeemed. I 
 doubt not that sometimes men have shut this 
 book, thinking that the gigantic wrongs we 
 depict may never be discomfited. Lest you 
 be utterly disheartened, I will show you that 
 we fi"ht in a war in which we will be com- 
 pletely victorious. This is to be no drawn 
 battle ; for, when it is done, the result will not 
 be disputed by a man on. earth, or an angel in
 
 A Good Time Corning: 277 
 
 heaven, or a devil in hell. We shall have 
 captured every one of the strongholds of dark- 
 ness. You and I will live to see the day when 
 . gambling-hells will be changed into places of 
 Christian merchandise, and houses of sin swept 
 and garnished for the residence of the purest 
 home circles. 
 
 Beethoven was deaf, and could not hear the 
 airs he composed ; but when the song of uni- 
 versal disenthralment arises, and white Circas- 
 sian stands up by the side of black Ethiopian, 
 and tropical groves wave to the Lebanon 
 cedars, we shall, standing somewhere, know it 
 and see it, and hear it. If gone from earth, 
 we will be allowed to come out on the hills and 
 look. 
 
 We do not talk about impossibilities. We 
 do not propose a medicine about which we 
 have to say that it will "kill or cure." For 
 this balm that oozes from the tree of heaven 
 will inevitably cure. 
 
 I remark that this coming time of municipal 
 elevation will be a time of financial prosperity. 
 Many seem to suppose that when the world's 
 better days conrie, the people will forsake their
 
 278 Tin Abominaiions. 
 
 industries, and give themselves to perpetual 
 psalm-singing, and, being all absorbed in 
 spiritual things, will become reckless as to dress 
 and dwelling ; and very rigid laws then govern- 
 ing the commercial world, all enterprise and 
 speculation will cease, and all hilarity be strick- 
 en out of the social circle. There is no war- 
 rant for such an absurd anticipation. I suppose 
 that when society is reconstructed, where there 
 is now, in the course of a year, one fortune 
 made, there will be a hundred fortunes made. 
 Every one knows that the commercial world 
 thrives in proportion as there is confidence be- 
 tween man and man ; and the extirpation of 
 all double-dealing and fraud from society will 
 increase this confidence, and hence greater 
 prosperity. The heavy commercial disasters 
 that have smitten this land were the work of 
 godless speculators and infamous stock-gam- 
 blers. It is crime that is the mightiest foe to 
 business ; but when the right shall hurl back 
 into ruin the plots of bad men, and purify the 
 commercial code, and thunder down fraudulent 
 establishments, and put into the hands of 
 honest men the keys of commercial prosper-
 
 A Good Time Coming. 279 
 
 ity, blessed will be the bargain-makers of the 
 city. 
 
 That will be a prosperous time, for taxes 
 will be a mere nothing. Every style of busi- 
 ness is taxed now to the utmost. City taxes, 
 county taxes, State taxes, United States taxes, 
 license taxes, manufacturing taxes, stamp taxes, 
 — taxes ! taxes ! taxes ! Our citizens must 
 make a small fortune every year to meet these 
 exactions. What hand fastens to all of our 
 great industries this tremendous load ? Crime ! 
 We have to pay the board of every man and 
 woman who, by intemperance, is cast into the 
 alms-house. We have to support the orph.ans 
 of those who plunge themselvea. into their 
 graves by beastly indulgences. We support 
 from our pockets the large machinery of muni- 
 cipal government, which is vast just in propor- 
 tion as the criminal proclivities of the city are 
 great. What makes necessary hospitals, houses 
 of refuge, police-stations, and alms-houses, the 
 Tombs, Sing Sing, and Moyamensing ? 
 
 In that good time coming there shall be no 
 exhaustive taxation ; no orphans homeless, for 
 parents will be able to leave their children a
 
 28o The Abominatio7is. 
 
 competency ; no prisons, for crime will have 
 given place to virtue. Then the vast swindles 
 Avhich now, from time to time, disgrace our 
 cities, will be unheard of. No voting of public 
 money that, on its way to some city improve- 
 ment, falls into the pockets of those who voted 
 it. No courts of Oyer and Terminer, at vast 
 expense to the people. No empanelling of ju- 
 ries to inquire into theft, arson, murder, slan- 
 der, and black-mail. In that day of redemption 
 there will be better factories, grander architec- 
 ture, finer equipages, larger estates, richer opu- 
 lence. 
 
 Again : when our cities are purified the 
 churches will be multiplied, purified, and 
 strengthened. Now, denominations, and the 
 individuals of the different sects, are often jeal- 
 ous of each other. Christians are not always 
 kindly disposed toward each other ; and minis- 
 ters of the gospel sometimes forget the bond of 
 brotherhood. Tn that day they will be sympa- 
 thetic and helpful. There may be differences 
 of opinion and sentiment, but no acerbity, no 
 hypercriticism, and no cxclusiveness. In that 
 day all the churches will be filled with worship-
 
 A Good Time Coniiiio-. 281 
 
 pers. We have not to-day, in the cities, church- 
 room for one-fourth of our population ; and yet 
 there is a great deal more room than the people 
 occupy. The churches do not average an at- 
 tendance of five hundred people. The vast ma- 
 jority do not attend public worship. But in 
 the day of which I speak there will be enough 
 church-room to hold all the people, and the 
 room will be occupied. In that time what rous- 
 ing songs will be sung ! What earnest sermons 
 will be preached ! What fervent prayers will 
 be offered ! In these days a fashionable church 
 is a place where, after a careful toilet, a few 
 people come in, sit down, and what time they 
 can get their minds off their stores, or away 
 from the new style of hat in the seat before 
 them, listen in silence to the minister — war- 
 ranted to hit no man's sins — and to the choir, 
 who are agreed to sing tunes that nobody 
 knows ; and, having passed away an hour in 
 dreamy lounging, go home refreshed. 
 
 I pronounce much of what is called " church 
 music," in our day, a mockery and a farce. 
 Though I have neither a cultured voice nor a 
 cultured ear, no man shall do my singing.
 
 282 The Abominations. 
 
 When the storms, and the trees, and the dragons 
 are called on to praise the Lord, I feel that I 
 must sing, for I know more about music than do 
 the dragons. Nothing can take the place of 
 artistic music. The dollar that I pay to hear 
 Parepa or Nilsson sing is far from being wasted. 
 But, when the hymn is read, and the angels of 
 God stoop from their thrones to bear up on their 
 wings the praise of the great congregation, let us 
 not drive them away with our indifference. I 
 have preached in churches where fabulous sums 
 of money were paid to performers, and the har- 
 mony was exquisite as any harmony that ever 
 went up from an Academy of Music ; and yet, 
 for all the purposes of devotion, I would prefer 
 the hearty, out-breaking song of a backwoods 
 Methodist camp-meeting. When these fancy 
 starveling songs get up to the gate of heaven, 
 how do you suppose they look, standing be- 
 side the great doxologies of the glorified ? Let 
 an operatic performance, floating upward, get 
 many hours the start, and it shall be caught 
 and passed by the shout of the Sailors' Bethel, 
 or the hosanna of the Sabbath-school children. 
 I know a church where there was no singing
 
 A Good Tiine Coming. 283 
 
 except that done by the choir, save one old 
 Christian man ; and they waited upon him by 
 a committee, and asked him if he would not 
 stop singing, for he disturbed the choir ! 
 
 The day cometh when all the churches will 
 rejoice in this department of service, rightly 
 conducted, and when from all the great audi- 
 ences of attentive v/orshippers will rise a multi- 
 tudinous anthem. 
 
 "O God! let all the people praise thee!" 
 Again : when the city is redeemed, the low 
 haunts of vice and pollution will be extinguish- 
 ed. Mr. Etzler, of England, proposes, by the 
 forces of tide, and wind, and wave, and sun- 
 shine, to reconstruct the world. In a book of 
 much genius, which rushed rapidly from edition 
 to edition, he says: — "Fellow-men: I promised 
 to show the means of creating a paradise within 
 ten years, where everything desirable for human 
 hfe may be had by every man in superabun- 
 'dance, without labor and without pay ; where 
 the whole face of nature shall be changed into 
 the most beautiful forms, and man may live 
 in the most magnificent palaces, in all imagin- 
 able refinements of luxury, and in the most de-
 
 284 The Abo7ni7iations. 
 
 lightful gardens ; where he may accomphsh 
 without labor, in one year, more than hitherto 
 could be done in thousands of years ; may level 
 continents ; sink valleys ; create lakes ; drain 
 lakes and swamps, and intersect the land every- 
 where with beautiful canals and roads for 
 transporting heavy loads of many thousand 
 tons, and for travelling a thousand miles in 
 twenty-four hours ; may cover the ocean with 
 floating islands, movable in any desired direc- 
 tion, with an immense power and celerity, in 
 perfect security, and with all the comforts and 
 luxuries ; bearing gardens and palaces, with 
 thousands of families, and provided with rivu- 
 lets of sweet water ; may explore the interior 
 of the globe, and travel from pole to pole in 
 a fortnight ; provide himself with means yet 
 unheard of for increasing his knowledge of the 
 world, and so his intelligence ; leading a life of 
 continual happiness, of enjoyment yet un- 
 known ; free himself from almost all the evils 
 that afflict mankind except death, and even 
 put death far beyond the common period of 
 human life, and, .finally, render it less afilict- 
 ing. From the houses to be built will be
 
 A Good Time Coming. 285 
 
 afforded the most enrapturing views to be 
 fancied ; from the galleries, from the roof, and 
 from its turrets may be seen gardens, as far as 
 the eye can see, full of fruits and flowers, 
 arranged in the most beautiful order, with 
 walks, colonnades, aqueducts, canals, ponds, 
 plains, amphitheatres, terraces, fountains, sculp- 
 tured works, pavilions, gondolas, places for 
 public amusement, to delight the eye and fancy. 
 All this to be done by urging the water, the 
 wind, and the sunshine to their full develop- 
 ment." Mr. Etzler gives plates of the machi- 
 nery by which all this is to be done. He pro- 
 poses the organization of a company ; and says 
 small shares of twenty dollars will be sufficient 
 — in all from two hundred thousand to three 
 hundred thousand dollars — to create the first 
 establishment for a whole community, of from 
 three to four thousand individuals. "At the 
 end of five years we shall have a principal of 
 two hundred millions of dollars ; and so paradise 
 will be wholly regained at the end of the tenth 
 year." 
 
 There is more reason in this than in many of 
 the plans proposed ; but mechanical forces can
 
 286 The Abo77iinatio?is. 
 
 never recreate the world. I shall take no shares 
 in the large company that is proposed ; my 
 faith is that Christianity will yet make the worst 
 street of our cities better than the best street 
 now is. 
 
 Archimedes consumed the enemies of Syra- 
 cuse by a great sun-glass. As the ships came 
 up the harbor, the sun's rays were concentrated 
 upon them : now the sails are wings of fire ; 
 the masts fall, and the vessels sink. So, by the 
 great sun-glass of the Gospel, the rays of 
 heaven will be concentred upon all the filth 
 and unchastity and crime of our great towns, 
 and under the heat they will blaze and expire. 
 When the day comes that I have shown will 
 come, suppose you that there will be any 
 midnight brawls ? any shivering mendicants, 
 kicked oft* from the marble steps ? any droves 
 of unwashed, uncombed, unfed children ? any 
 blasphemers in the street ? any staggering past 
 of inebriates ? No ! No wine-cellars. No 
 lager-beer saloons. No distilleries where they 
 make the XXX. No bloated checks. No 
 blood-shot eyes. No fist-battered foreheads. 
 The grandchildren of that woman who now
 
 A Good Time Coming. 287 
 
 walks up the street with a curse, as the boys 
 stone her, will be philanthropists, and heal the 
 sick, and manage great commercial enterprises. 
 When our cities are so raised, we shall have 
 a different style of municipal government. The 
 great question, in regard to the execution of the 
 law, now is: "What is popular?" Our city 
 governments slumber — great carcasses of insuffi- 
 ciency, sending up their stench into the nostrils 
 of high heaven, while there are thousands of 
 gambling-houses, and drinking-saloons, and 
 more places of damnable lust than the decency 
 of the country has time to count. Do you tell 
 me that the authorities do not know it ? They 
 do know it. All the police know it. The 
 sheriff and his deputies know it. The aldermen 
 know it. The mayors know it. Everybody 
 who keeps his eyes and ears open knows it. In 
 the name of God I impeach the municipal 
 authorities of many of our cities, that they neg- 
 lect to execute the law. You cannot charge it 
 upon any one party. Within the past few years 
 both parties, and all kinds of parties, have been 
 in power ; but the work has never been done. 
 You have but to pass the City Hall, or look in
 
 288 The Abominatio7ts. 
 
 upon the rooms of some of our city ofticials, to 
 see to what sort of men our cities have been 
 abandoned. Look at the swearing, bloated, 
 sensual wretches who stand on the outside of 
 the New York City Hall, picking their teeth, 
 waiting for some crumbs of emolument to fall at 
 their feet ; and then tell me how far it is from 
 New York to Sodom. Who are those wretched 
 women sent up in the city van to the police- 
 court, apprehended for drunkenness ? They 
 will be locked up in jail ; but what will be done 
 with the groggeries that made them drunk ? 
 Who are these men in the city-prison ? That 
 man stole a pair of shoes ; that boy, one dollar 
 from the counter ; that girl snatched a purse — 
 all villanies of less than twenty or thirty dollars' 
 damage to the community ; but for that gam 
 bier, who last night took that young man's 
 thousand dollars — nothing ! For that man who 
 broke in upon the purity of a Christian house- 
 hold, and by a perfidy and adroitness that beat 
 the strategy of hell, flung that girl into the 
 chasm of earthly despair, from which her lost 
 soul goes shrieking to the bottomless pit — 
 nothing ! For those who "fleeced" a young
 
 A Good Tiiiie Coming. 289 
 
 man, and induced him to filch from his employ- 
 ers vast sums of money, until, in his agony, he 
 came to an officer of the church, and frantically 
 asked what he should do — nothing ! 
 
 Verily, small crimes ought to be punished ; 
 but it were more just if our authorities would 
 turn out from our jails and penitentiaries the 
 small villains, the petty criminals, the infantile 
 offenders, the ten-dollar desperadoes, and fill 
 their places with some of these monsters of 
 abomination, who drive their roan span through 
 our fine streets until honest men have to fly to 
 escape being run over ; and if they would turn 
 out from their incarceration the poor girls of 
 the town, and put in some of the magnificent 
 ladies who cover up the sidewalk with their 
 unpaid-for fineries, and with scornful look, in 
 the church-aisle, pass the daughters of pov- 
 crt)', who with their faded dress and plain 
 hat dare to come to worship God in the same 
 sanctuary. 
 
 But all these wrongs shall be righted. Our 
 streets shall hear the tramp of a regenerated 
 multitude. Three hundred and sixty bells \Vere 
 rung in Moscow when the prince was married ;
 
 290 The Abominations. 
 
 but when righteousness and peace shall "kiss 
 each other" in all the earth, ten thousand 
 bells will strike the jubilee. Poverty enriched. 
 Hunger fed. Disease cured. Crime purified. 
 The cities saved. 
 
 THE END.
 
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