Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-02-19

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten
that the Dead are there.
In view Of all this I charge you to break
up clandestine correspondence if you are
engaged in it, and have no more clandes-
tine meetings either at the ferry, or on the
street, or at the house of mutual friends, or
at the corner of the woods. Do not have
letters como for you to the post-ofice under
assumed address. Have no correspondence
that makes you uneasy lest some ono by
mistake open your letters. Do not employ
terms of endearment at the beginning and
close of letters, unless you nave a right to
use them. That young lady is on the edge
of danger who dares not allow her mother
to see her letters.
If you rave sensible parents take them
into your confidence in all the affairs of
the heart. They will give you more good
advice in one hour than you can get from
all the would beside in five years. They
have toiled for you so long and PRAYED for
you SO much, they have your best interests
at heart. At the same time let parents re-
view their opposition to a proposed mari
tai alliance, and see If their opposition is
n on a genuine wish for the child's
welfare, or on some whim or notion or
prejudice or %selishness, fighting a natural
law and trying to make Niagara run up
stream. Mr.. Pitt, the Prime Minister of
England, was always saying wise things.
One day Sir Walter Farquar called on him
In great perturbation. Mr.. Pitt inquired
what was the matter, and Sir Walter told
him that his daughter was about
to be married to one not worthy of her
rank. Mr.. Pitt said: ISIS the
young mano of respectable family" Eyes"
us he respectable in himself?" eyes"
"Has he an estimable character?" eyes,"
"Why, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no
opposition" The advice was taken, and a
happy married life ensued. Let ministers
and officers of the law decline officiating
Mt clandestine marriages. When they are
asked to date a marriage certificate back,
as we all are asked, let them peremptorily
decline to say that the ceremony was in
November instead of January, or decline
to leave the date blank lest others fill out
the record enormously. Let a law be
passed in all our States, as it has already
been in some of our States, making q
license from officers of the law necessary
before we can unite couples, and then make
1t necessary to publish beforehand in the
newspapers, as 1t used to be published in
the New England churches, so that If
there be lawful objection it may be pre-
sented, not swinging the buoy on the
rocks after the ship has struck and gone to
pieces. And here it might be well for me
to take all the romance out Of an escapade
by quoting a dozen lines of Robert Pollock,
che great Scotch poet, where he describes
the crazed victim of one of these esca-
pades:
Yet had she many days
or sorrow in the world. but never wept,
She lived on aims, and carried in her hand
Some withered stalks she gathered in the
spring.
When any asked the cause, she smiled and
said
They were her sisters and would come and
watch
Her grave when she was dead. She never
spoke
Other deceiver, father, mother, home
Or child, or heaven, or hell, Or God, but still
In lonely places walked, md ever gazed
Upon the withcred stalks and talked them
Till wasted to the shadow of her youth,
With woe too wide to see beyond, she died.
But now I turn on this subject an intensel
light. We have fifteen hundred lights ii
this church, and when by electric touch
they are kindled in the evening service il
is almost startling. Butthis whole subiec
of "Clandestine Marriages and Escapades'
l put under a more intense light than that
The headlight Of q locomotive is terrible il
you stand near enough to catch the full
(glare of it. AS it sweeps around thu
b Horseshoe curve" Of the Alleghenies OF
along the edge Of the Sierra Nevadas, how
far ahead, and how deep down, and how
high up it flashes, and there is ~instantane.
GUS revelation of mountain peak and wild
beasts hieing themselves to their caverns
and cascades a thousand feet tall, clingine
in white terror to the precipices! But
more intense, more far-reaching, more
sudden, swifter and more tremendous
Is the headlight of an advancing Judgmen'
Day, under which all the most hidden af
fairs oflife shall come to discovery and ar
raignment. 1 quote an overwhelming
passage of Scripture, in which I put thu
whole emphasis on the word "secret:"
God shall bring every work into Judgment
with every secret thing, whether it be goot
or evil.
What a time that will be in which the
cover shall be lifted from every home and
from every heart. The iniquity may have
been so sly that it escaped all human de.
lection, but it will be as we'll known on
that day as the crimes of Sodom and Go.
morrah, unless, for Christ's sake, it has
been forgiven. All the fingers of universal
condemnation will be pointed at it. Thu
archangel of wrath will stand there with
uplifted thunderbolt ready to strike it.
The squeamishness and prudery of earth.
ly society, which hardly allowed
some sins to be mentioned on earth, are
past, and the man who was unclean and
the woman who was impure will, under 6
light brighter than a thousand MONDAY
sun, stand with the whole story written on
scalp and forehead and cheeks and hands
and feet; the whole resurrection BODY