St. Cloud visiter [sic]. [volume] (St. Cloud, Stearns County, Minn.) 1857-1858, 1858-06-17

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They We're kind, and would have taught
JUS the use Of these bits of bristleboard
with their vulgar pictures Of black and
red; but it appeared to us that their touch
would have blistered our fingers.
Our next Introduction to cards, was on
a steamboat, when two coarse, sensualfaced
women bedizened with vulgar 6nery, sat in
the cabin, sometimes with their vulgar
husbands, sometimes with other male pas
sengers, playing cards, and always with a
bottle or two Of wine on the table before
them. They were northern people who
had been south and made fortune; and
were now going back north, on the occa-
sion Of the death of the father of one of
the women, toplay coincidence, and display
their colored servants, gold watches and
southern airs. One Of them had an liant
wandering about the boat in the arms of
his nurse; and the other appeared as il
she might live in hourly expectation of a
similar charge. To see them sit in the
cabin, in circle of men, slapping down
cards and calling out trumps," "deal,''
euchred" and so on and so forth!
These are the only women we ever saw
play; and, in our mind, cards, coquettry
and coarseness are trinity, odious and
inseparabla.
We do not at all suppose that all women
who play cards are like these; but we dc
think it is business in which women
should never engage. It is no amusement.
1t gives no exercise to the body, no relax:,-
ton to the mind.
All games Of chance are prostitution
Of the divine ordinance of the lot. Let any
protesting christian read the solemn account
Of the mariners in Jonah praying to God
and casting lots, Or of the Apostles choos-
a successor to Judas, and think if they are
willing to make that appeal twenty times
in an evening, to decide who shall pay for
a plate of ice cream, or some other such
wcighty matter? Let them think of per-
ishing sailors, who, in the extremity Of life,
may at that moment be making that SOL
emn appeal to the Most High, to decide
who shall die for his fellows; and say if
they are willing to prostitute the lot to so
frivilous a purpose as the decision Of a fire.
side game.
The people of St. Cloud have made Il
dangerous beginning in laying the founda-
ton of the social amusements Of our young
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 daugh ters? 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 living.
| The woman who has learned and prac-
ticed the arts Of coquettry 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 a husband as a means of getting one,
has got that far away from the paths Of pu-
rity, that she will find it quite as easy to
60 forward as to turn back.
In all earnestness and with the best wish.
es for their welfare, we warn the women oil
st. Cloud, those of them who like social
game" to beware that this game be not
like the letting out Of bates and that il
become not a desolating food, in which all
their earthly happiness shall be swept a.
way.
Cards, to those who use them at all, are
apt to become madness. If woman
feeds the early growth of this passion has
she just cause Of complaint if it acquire 4
giants force? If she sets her husband
and sons the example of social game
how can she complain if they take socia
game at the tavern?
The natural excitement of the game ap.
pears to demand alcoholic stimulent; and
when this is added, and the gambling mad
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