The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1880-07-15
miscellaneous.
T. DEWITT TALMAGE,
SUMMER SPORTS.
Need Of Rest and Recreation.

having QVe pOICuee IL VhSpO 10y
titude of blind, halt, withered, waiting
for the moving Of the water"
Outside the City of Jerusalem there
was a sanative watering.place, the popu'
lar resort for invalids. To this day there
is a dry basin of rock which shows that
there must have been a pool there three
hundred and sixty feet long, n hun
bred and thirty feet wide and seventy
five feet deep. This pool vas surrounded
by five pit zzas or porches, or bathing
houses, where the patients tarried until
the time when they were to step into the
water. So far as refrigeration was con-
cerned it must have been a Saratoga and
along Branch on a small scale a Lean
ippton and a Brighton Combined-med-
ical and therapeutic. Tradition says
that at a ctrtain season of the year there
was an officer Of the government who
would 90 down to that water and pour
in it some healing quality, and that after
that the people would come and get the
medication but l prefer the plain state
ment Of Scripture, that at a certain season
an angel came and stirred up or troubled
the water; and then the people came and
got the healing. That angel Of God that
stirred up the Judean watering.pl place had
his counterpart in the angel Of healing
that, in our day, steps into the mineral
waters of Congress, or Sharon, or Sulphur
Springs, or into the salt sea at Cape May
and Nahant, where multitudes who are
worn out with commercial and profes'
sional anxieties, as we'll as those who are
afflicted with rheumatic, neuralgia and
~splenetiC diseases go, and are cured by
the thousands. These Bethesdas are
scattered all up and down our country,
blessed be God!
We are at a season Of the year when
railroad trains are being ladent with
passengers and baggage on their way to
the mountains and the lakes and the sea-
shore. M%ultitudes Of our citizens are
packing their trunks for a restorative alb
BenCe. The city heats are pursuing the
people with torch and fear Of sunstroke'
The long silent halls Of sumptuous hotels
are all able re with excited arrivals. The
crystalline surface Of Winnipseogee is
shattered with the stroke Of steamers al
den with txcursionists. The antlers of
Adirondack deer rattle under the shot OF
city sportsmen. The trout make fatal
snap at the hook of adroit sportsmen,
and toss their spotted brilliance into the
game basket. Soon the baton of the or
Chestra leader will tap the music.stand
on the hotel green and American life will
put on festal array, and the rumbling OF
the ten pin alley, and the crack of the
ivory balls on the green baize billiard
tables, and the jolting of the barroom
goblets, and the explosive uncorking OF
champagne bottles, and the whirl and
the rustic of the ballroom dance, and
the gathering hoofs of the race coursers,
will attest that the season for the great
American watering. places is fairly inau'
gurated. Mus.C-fute and drum, and
Cornet. q -piston, and %clapping cymbals-
will wake the echoes Of the mountains.
Glad l am that tagged out American life,
for the most part, will have an opportu'
nifty to rest, and that nerves racked and
destroyed will find a Bethesda.
l believe in watering.plaCes. l go
there sometimes. Let not the CONNER
Cial firm begrudge the clerk, or the en-
ployer the %journeyman, or the patient
the physician, or the Church its pastor,
a season Of in~oCcupation. Luther used
to sport with his children; Edmund
Burke used to caress his favorite horse
Thomas Chalmers, in the dark hour of
the Church's disruption, played kite for
reCreation-so l was told by his own
daughter; and the busy Christ said to the
busy Apostles: "Come ye apart a while
into the desert, and rest yourselves" and
l have observed that they who do not
know how to rest do not know how to
work.
But l have to declare this truth to-day;
that some of the fashionable watering
places are the temporal and eternal des-
truction of "a multitude that no nan can
number" and amid the congratulations
Of the 81 ason, and the prospect of the de.
parture of many for the country, l must
utter a note of warning, plain, earnest
and unmistakable. The first temptation
that is apt to hover in this direction is to
leave your piety all at home. You will
send the cog, the cat, and canary bird to
be we'll cared for somewhere else, but
the temptation will be to leave your re.
ligion in the room with tine blinds down
and the door bolted, and then you will
come back in the autumn to find that it
is starved and s%uffocated, lying stretched
on the rug, stark dead. There is no sur
plus Of piety at the watering-places. l
never knew any one TO grow very rap
idly in grace at the Catskill Mountain
House, or Sharon Springs, or the Falls Of
Montmorency. 1t is generally the case
the Sabbath is more Of a %carousal than
any other day, and there are Sunday
walks, Sunday rides and Sunday excur
sions. Elders and deacons and minis
ters of religion who are entirely consist
emit at home, sometimes when the Sab.
bath dawns on them at Niagara Falls or
the White Mountains take the day to
themselves. If they 90 to church it is
apt to be a sacred parade instead Of be.
ing a plain talk about the sou is apt to
be what is called a crack sermon; that is,
some discourse picked out of the efu.
Bions Of the year as the one best adapted
to excite admiration and in those
nhnrnhaa from the wau the ladiaa hnld