Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-08-08
MARTYRS OF EVERYDAY LIFE.
HER 0ES OF RHEUMATISM, NEU-
RALGIA, AND HEADACHE.

martyrs Uf EVERYDAY LlfE.
HEROES OF RHEUMATISM, NEU
RALGIA, AND HEADACHE.
SOME SAD PICTURES OF THF
BRAVE.
JOHN BROWN, THE EDINBU URG
CARRIER.
DIR. TALMAeE's SERMON, SUNDAY, JULY 30
II AKEsIDE, OHIO, July 29.-For many
IL years an assembly of the Chautauqus
type has been held at this point. The
| leading professors, scholars and clergymen
of this and other lands have addressed the
audiences. The Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage
DID,, of Brooklyn, is now here. He lectured
yesterday (Saturday,) and preached to-day
| to throngs innumerable. The subject ol
his sermon to-day was: "The Martyrs o.
Every Day Life" He took for his text
| 'sThou, therefore. endure hardness."-
II Timothy, III, 3. DR.. Talmage said:
Historians are not slow to acknowledge
the merits of great military chieftains. We
have the full-length portraits of the Crom.
wells, the Washingtons, the Napoleons and
the Wellingtons of the world. History is
not written in black ink, but with red ink
of human blood. The gods of human am
bition do not drink from bowls made out Of
silver, or gold, or precious stones, but out oi
the bleached skulls of the fallen. But am
now to unroll before you scroll of heroes
that the world has never acknowledged
those who faced no guns. blew no bugle-
blast, conquered no cities, chained no cap
tives to their chariot-wheels, and yet, in the
great day of eternity, will stand higher than
those whose names startled the nations; and
seraph, and rapt spirit, and archangel will
tell their deeds to listening universe.
mean the heroes of common, every day life.
In this roll, in the first place, | find all
the heroes of the SICK room. When Satan
had failed to overcome Job, he said to God
'Put forth thy hand and touch his bones
and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy
face.n Satan had found out what we have
all found out, that sickness is the greatest
test of ones character. A man who can
stand that can stand anything. To be shut
in room as fast as though 1t were bastile.
To be SO nervous you cannot endure the tap
of child's foot. To have luxuriant fruit,
which tempts the appetite of the robust and
healthy, excite our loathing and disgust
when it first appears on the platter. To
have the rapier of pain strike through the
side, or across the temples, like a razor, or
to put the foot into vice, or throw the
whole body into blaze of fever. Yet there
have been men and women, but more wo-
men than mep, who have cheerfully endured
this hardness. Through years Of exhaust
ing rheumatisms and excruciating neural
gias they have gone, and through bodily dis
tresses that rasped the nerves, and tore the
muscles, and paled the cheeks and stopped
the shoulders. By the dim light Of the sick
room taper they saw on their wall the pic
ture of that land where the inhabitants are
never sick. Through the dead silence of
the night they heard the chorus Of the an
gels. The cancer ate away her life from
week to week and day to day, and she be-
came weaker and weaker, and every "good
night" was feebler than the 'good night"
before-yet never sad. The children look
ed up into her face and saw suffering trans
formed into heavenly smile. Those who
suffered on the battlefield, amid shot and
shell, were not SO much heroes and heroines
as those who in the field hospital and in the
asylum had fevers which no ice could cool
and no surgery cure. No shout of COM
rade to cheer them, but numbness, and ach-
ing and homesickness-yet willing to suffer,
confident in God, hopeful of heaven. Heroes
of rheumatism. Heroes of neuralgia.
Heroes of spinal complaint. Heroes of sick
headache. Heroes of lifelong invalidism
Heroes and heroines. They shall reign for
ever and ever.
Hark / catch just one Fnote Of the eter-
nal anthem: "There shall be no more pain"
Bless God for that.
In this roll ] also find the horoes of toll,
who do their work uncomplainingly. 1t is
comparatively easy to lead a regiment into
battle when you know that the whole nation
will applaud the victory; it is comparatively
easy to doctor the sick when you know that
your skill will be appreciated by large
company of friends and relatives; it is COM
paratively easy to address an audience when
in the cleaning eyes and flushed cheeks you
know that your sen rents are adopted; but
to do sewing where you expect that the en-
ployer will come and thrust his thumb
through the work to show how imperfect it
is, or to have the whole garment thrown
back on you to be done over again; to build
a wall and know there will be no one to say
you did it well, but only swearing en-
ployer bowling across the scaffold; to work
until your eyes are dim and your back
aches, and your heart faints, and to know
that if you stop before night your children
will starve. Ah! the sword has not slain SO
many as the needle. The great battle-fields
of cur last war were not Gettysburg and
Shiloh and south Mountain. The great
battle-fields of the last war were fn the
arsenals, and in the shops and in the attics,
where women made army jackets for a six
pence They toiled on until they died. They
have no funeral eulogium, but, in the name
of my God, this day l enroll their names
among those of whom the world was
not worthy. Heroes of the needle; heroes
of the sewing machine; heroes of the attic;
heroes of the cellar; heroes anG heroines.
Bless God for them
In this roll l also find the heroes who
have uncompiainingly endured domestic in
justices. There are men who for their toll
and anxiety have no sympathy in their
homes. ExhaustiDg application to business
gets them livelihood, but an unfruga! wife
scatters it. He is fretted at from the mo
ment he enters the door until he comes out
fit. The exasperations of business life,
augmented by the exasperations of domestic
life. Such men are laughed at, but they
have heart-breaking trouble, and they
would have long ago gone into appalling
| CuSSlpdUlOu puI lOF Tue grace Ol 0Cu. Oo
ciety to-day is strewn with the wrecks O.
men, who, under the northeast storm of do
mestic infelicity, have been driven on thu
rocks. There are tens of thousands o
drunkards in this country to-day, made snci
by their wives That is not poetry. Tha
is prose. But the wrong is generally in tn
opposite direction. You would not have t.
go far to find wife whose life is a perpetua
martyrdom. Something heavier than
stroke of the fist; nnlzind words, staggerin,
home at midnight, and constant maltreal
ment which have left her only wreck o
what she was on that day when in the mids
of brilliant assemblage the vows were tax
on, and full organ played the weddin,
march, and the carriage rolled away witt
the benediction of the people. What wa
the burning of Latimer aud Ridley at th
stake compared with this? ? Those men 500
became unconscious in the fire, but here i
a fifty-years' martyrdom, fifty years put
ting to death, yet uncomplaining. No bit
ter words when the rollicking companion