The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1859-06-04
The Necessity Of Rational Sunday Recreation
for Our Laboxing Glasses.

Anc Necessity Oh xNhtIOnAl sunday Recreation
for Our Laboring, Glasses.
Among all the influences that exercise per-
nicious sway over the moral character of the
great mass Of our population In New York,
there is probably none so great as the persistent
refusal of those who control the lines of railway
leading from our city to open them to Sunday
travel, and thus give our pent up working peo-
pie chance to breathe once week the pure
and healthy air Of the country
A set OF selfrighteous fanatics, who live on
the fat Of the land, gathered through we'll de-
vised system of religious organizations, are the
great teachers and expounders of the doctrine of
making the Sabbath day Of sadness or of Sc
cret dissipation to the laboring man. They have
their nice houses, and good cooks and sleek
clothes in which they rejoice on Sundays, and on
week days they amuse themselves going round
distributing tracts against the PROCLAMATION of
the Sabbath Perhaps many Of these very
men have their fine country houses to
which they retire on Saturday, where
they rejoice to see their own children
gambol on the grassy sward to view
the leafy green of the trees, aud to hear the
birds carroliDg in their deep shades Perchance
they only fear that some tired citizen may roam
with his children over their meadows, or rest
themselves by the roadside near their lot and
thus, out of one day in seven, contaminate by
their presence the pure air which the sanctimo-
NOUS Sabbath-keeper would keep to himself
So they strive to keep the avenues to the coun.
try closed on that day, and selfconplacently
count upon smoothing their own path to heaven
by depriving the great mass of their fellow crea-
lures of the opportunity to enjoy a rational re-
creation on the only day which the exigences Of
labor leave to them.
Far different from this is the case in the
populous cities of Europe. There, every railway
runs on Sunday cheap and frequent trains into
the country. for distance Of forty or fifty miles.
The citizens avail themselves of the accommoda-
ton in crowds, taking with them their wives
and children, to pass day away from the in
fected air Of the city. Experience has shown that
this practice, SO far from conducting to deprave
their morals or to injure their habits of econo-
my, has directly contrary tendency. The man
who takes his wife and child with him to the scene
of bis Sunday recreation does not give way to
those debasino habits that to SO great degree
characterize the Sunday amusements of our own
pent-up population. He comes home at night to
the sound sleep of sobriety and rises to begin his
work on the morn of the week refreshed and
reinvigorated by his Sunday jaunt.
This is what we require for the relief of our
large and growing population. The present
tyranny Of our social practices, by stopping
every facility for rational enjoyment on Sunday,
drives the working man to the secret hauats of
drunkenness and vice, aad prepares him for the
contamination of crime. Let every railroad and
means of water communication to the country
open frequent and cheap means of travel on Sun
days for distance Of forty or fifty miles from
the city They will soon see innumerable
places Of healthy and rational popular recreation
spring up along their routes Crowds of hard
worked denizens will throng them with their
wives and little ones, to the advantage of both
traveller and conveyor In this way more
healthy moral and physical influence will be
established, and our city purged of much of the
riotous and ruinous debauch that now marks it
on the Sabbath day.