St. Cloud visiter [sic]. [volume] (St. Cloud, Stearns County, Minn.) 1857-1858, 1858-06-24

city. The plan Of the streets is not more
surely decided by the early inhabitants Of
town than the plan of its moral and So
cial customs. Make it fashionable now, for
mothers to leave their infants to the care
of servants and spend their midnight hours
at cards, and what moral atmosphere shall
surround your sons and daughters? Es-
tablish now, the principle that coquettry
is the chief end Of woman, and what kind
of a community will you have twenty years
hence? Teach the girls Of this generation
that they ought to learn the art Of catch
ing husbands as trade; and the daughters
they will raise, when failing to get the hus-
bands, will resort step farther in the same
road, to the lowest degradation, as the next
best way to make a living. r-..
The woman who has learned and prac-
ticed the arts of coauettry to get hus-
band, is not going to quit the business
when she has him. She. who can marry a
man for living, or sets herself about catch
ing husband as means Of getting one,
has got that far away from the paths Of pu-
rity, that she will find it quite as easy to
20 forward as to turn back. r.. 49,. .
In all earnestness and with the best wish
es for their welfare, we warn the women of
St. Cloud, those Of them who life a social
game" to beware that this game be not
like the letting out Of waters and that it
become not desohting food, in which all
their earthly happiness shah be swept a
way. ...............ts -.... ......+... g.. iii.
Cards, to those who use them at all, are
apt to become madness. If a woman
feeds the early growth of this passion has
she just cause of complaint if it acquire
giants force? If she sets her husband
and sons the example Of a social game,
how can she complain if they take social
game at the tavern? Theexcitement Of cards
appears to demand alcoholic stimulent; and
Z o.
when this is added, and the gambling mad
ness follows, who is to blame more than
she? Those who SOW the wind should ex-
pect to reap the whirlwind. "a little
leaven leaveneth the whole lump" and
that innocent looking social game which
has Infatuated itself into the homes Of SO
many good and estimable citizens, looks
very like a bit of the Femptyings' from Paris
iansociety which have already leavened our
metropolis with that RIGHTEOUSNESS and
crime which, like canker worm, are eat
ing out the vitals of our national virtue.
The men and women who spend their
midnights in the feverish excitement of
cards, are not the people to govern states or
rear families Of ffeemen.
We appeal principally to the women in
this matter, because they have fright to be
as much better than the men as they pos
sibly can be. They have . right to guard
every avenue by which the enemy might
enter their homes, or the community, to
lead the unwary into SIN.
Women have right to be very nearly
as pure as the angels are; and every one
should strive, above all things, 70 obtain
that right, because il is worth more than
all others Their influence should frowr
bad men away from the appearance Of evil
and wherever the card table comes, there
is an appearance Of gambling, and drunk
enness and despair and suicide and fear
full looking for Of judgment to come.