Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1881-10-08
ldnrastcr fntelltgenrer.
SATURDAY EVENING, OCT. 8, 1881.
For Saturday Night Reflection.

For Saturday Night Reflection.
We trust it has not escaped the notice
of our friends, the preachers, that there
are some texts for them in the shameful
crime which shocked this community
few days ago. The subject is not a
pleasant one to contemplate or talk
about, to be sure, nor one which can be
treated by indirection. But sin is not,
in general or in detail, a pleasant SUBJ
ject to handle, or to hear about, and the
nearer it comes home to the congrega-
tion the less agreeable it is
to have it held up to view by
the pastor. The degradation of the
heather is not an untimely or iufrequent
theme Of pulpit eloquence; and even the
sin and suffering which abound amid the
metropolitan squalor of Christian cities
Oftentimes is the subject of religious
discourse at considerable distance from
the scene. We doubt whether there is
enough preaching by the preacher and
work by the churchmen among those
whom they have with them always.
The unhappy victim of this local ira.
gedy, which has only overcome us like a
summer cloud, seems to have been raised
in surroundings of simplicity and virtue.
Left parentless at an early age, bereft of
the restrictions which ought to be found
under the rOoftree Of home, she fell a
too easy victim, it may be, to the allure.
ments of sin and found an asylum only
where public charity provided it,
where the vicious as often rs the
deserving seek refuge, and where are
found associations into which it is an
unhappy fate for mother and offspring
that a new generation should he born.
Wandering thence, always true at least
to her parental duty, she found abandon
ment where she should have had a pro-
tector and was again thrown upon the
tender mercies of public alms-giving.
With enough of independence to embrace
every opportunity that offered to earn
her own living with enough of mother
ly instinct to make some sort of home,
poor and wretched as it was, for three
children, and too much of 4 woman to
play the harlOt, one look at the
naked walls, the bare floors, and the
cheerless air of the whole hovel
was all that was needed to meas
ure that struggle for her own and he1
children'S existence. She may not have
been without sin. He that is had the
right to hurl stones at her none other.
Is it not possible that society left some.
thing unlOne which might have made
her lot more tOlerable and her fate less
pitiGul ! Can it be that warm-ilearted
generous people, who respond to every
call of deserving charity, even among
our ,ntipodes, are passing on the other
side from a hundred such cases as this,
here in our own city, in sight of the
comfortable homes of the rich and piOus
and in the very shadow of the church
steeple ? Brethren; think of these
things tomorrow when you are asked to
sing
From Greenlands icy mountains,
From Indias coral strand.''
Your work may be nearer home than
on the equator Or-at the poles.
The moral anatomy of the case does
not end with the victim. Her assailant
was Il type-a very pronounced type, al
beit-of Il class of young men which,
owing to some defect In the social life of
our community, is becoming numerous
here ut an alarming rate of increase.
Their decentralization and their ruflian-
ism is of character which have deeper
roots than i'm Il failure of repression by
police authority, and which call for more
radical curative treatment than the quar-
ter sessions can administer. The Satur-
day night disorder, Sunday drunken
ness, and RIGHTEOUSNESS of the whole
week around, which have been painfully
noticed by our better class of people to
he steadily on the increase i'm this good
city, are the result of private vices
which must be treated and reached by
home and religious influences. The
brothel and rum shop will not flourish
where there is no patronage. We invite
our Christian fello N-citizens, and all
of philanthropic turn of mind
to withdraw their attention from distant
calls for mission work long enough to
see and hear their duty here at home; to
study the records of our criminal courts,
the scenes on our streets, the young men
OF the corners and the young women on
the pavements; to go up and down
through, the lanes and the alleys and
discover where poverty fingers on the
verge of crime and squalor fructifies
into vice.
Being keeper to our brother, we're his CAIN"
We are doing Il good deal for the next
generation. But better than building
school houses or paying off the national
debt would it be that men and women
in their individual capacity, each for
himself Or herself, look around. walk
square or two from home if needs be,
and find out how to relieve ut least some
child, bOrn with a patrimOny of sin and
shame, from the disadvantage and dam
ger of its heritage.
Give the Old Man q Chance.
The Examiner, which delights to stig--
matize one of the editors of that staunch
Republican paper, the Philadelphia