St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1885-05-23

cattle because they are not nfurlaGed
bulls of the arena. If any amusement
sends you home longing for life of ro-
nance and thrilling adventure, love that
takes poison and shoots itself, moonlight
adventures and hairbreadth escapes, you
may depend upon it you are the sacrificed
victim of unsanctified pleasure. Our
recreations are intended to build us up, and
if they pull us down as to our moral or as
to our physical strength, you may come to
the conclusion that they are obnoxious.
Still further: those amusements are
wrong which lead you into expenditure
beyond your means. Money spent in recre-
alton is not thrown away. 1t is all folly
for us to come from place of amusement
feeling that we have wasted our money
and time. You may by it have made an
investment worth more than the transac-
tion that yielded you hundred or a
thousand dollars. But how many proper
ties have been riddled by costly amuse-
ments? The table has been robbed to pay
the club. The champagne has cheated the
chlldren's wardrobe. The carousing party
has burned up the boys primer. The table,
cloth of the corner saloon is in debt to the
wife's faded dress. Excursions that in
day make tour around q whole months
wages: ladies whose life time business is
to Ego shopping" have their counterparts
in uneducated children, bankruptcies that
shock the money market and appall
the church and that send drunkenness
staggering across the richly figured carpet
of the mansion and dashing into the mirror
and drownin out the carol of music with
the whooping of bloated sons come home
to break their old mothers heart. When
men go into amusements that they can not
afford they first borrow what they can not
earn, and then they steal what they can
not borrow. First they go into embarrass-
ments and then into lyinge and then into
theft, and when man gets as far on as
that he does not stop short of the peniten-
tiary. There is not prison in the land
where there are not victims of unsanctihed
amusements. How often have had parents
come to me and ask me to go over to New
York and beg their boy off from crimes
that he had committed against his en-
ployer-the taking of funds out of the
employers till or the disarrangement of
the accounts. Why, he had salary enough
to pay all lawful expenditure, but not
enough salary to meet his sinful amuse-
ments.
How brightly the path Of unrestrained
amusement opensl The young man says:
snow am off for good time. Never
mind economy. I'll get money somehow.
What fine road What beautiful day
for ride! Crack the whip and over the
turnpike! Come, boys, fill high your
glasses. Drink! Long life, health, plenty
of rides just like thisn Hard working
men hear the clatter of the hoofs and look
up and say: "Why, wonder where those
fellows get their money from? We have
to toll and drudge. They do nothing To
these gay men life is thrill and an excite
ment They stare at other people and in
turn are stared at. The watch chain
jingles. The cup foams. The cheeks
flush. The eyes flash. The midnight hears
their guffaw. They swagger. They jostle
decent men off the sidewalk. They take
the name of God in vain. They parody the
hymn they learned at their mothers kneel
and to all pictures of coming disaster they
cry out: "Who cares" and to the coun-
sci of same Christian friend: "Who are
your Passing along the street some
night you hear shrek in grog-shop,
the rattle of the watchman's club, the
rush Of the police. What is the matter
now? Oh, this reckless young man has
been killed in a grog-shop fight. Garry
him home to his fathers house. Parents
will come down and wash his wound and
close his eyes in death. They forgive him
all that he ever did, though he can not in
his silence ask it, The prodigal has got
home at last.
You may judge of amusements by their
effect upon physical health. The great
need Of many good people is physicalre-
cuperation. I want to tell the Christian
people of my congregation that God will
hold you responsible for your invalidism
if it is your fault, and when through right
exercise and prudence you might be ath-'
letic and well. The effect of the body upon
the soul you acknowledge. Put man of
mild disposition upon the animal diet of
which the Indian partakes and in a little
while his blood will change its chemical
proportions. 1t will become like unto the
blood of the lion or the tiger, or the bear,
while his disposition will change and be-
come fierce, cruel and unreIenting. The
body has powerful effect upon the soul.
There are good people whose ideas of
Heaven are all shut out with clouds of to-
bacco smoke. There are people who dare
to shatter the physical vase in which God
put the jewel of eternity. There are men
with great hearts and intellects in bodies
worn out by their own neglects; magnifi-
cent machinery, capable of propelling a
Great Eastern across the Atlantic, yet
fastened in rickety North River pro-
peller. Physical development which
merely shows itself in fabulous lifting, or
in perilous rope walking, or in pugilistic
encounters, excites only our contempt.
But we confess to great admiration for the