Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1888-07-16
OUR CIRCUMSTANCES.
DR. TAINAGE ENRoRCRs THE DUTY OF CON
TRNTNENr.
The Genuine American is Not Happy Unless BE i
Going Somewhere Human Racs Di-
vidsd Into Those Who Scold and
Those Who Get Scoldsd.

Special Tlerom 10 Bse Register.
BROOKLYN, July Is The Rev. 7. De
Witt Talmage, D. D., took for his subject to-
day:"In Good HumorW With Our Circumstan-
ces." His text was Hebrews, Ch. 13, '.
s: "Be content with such things - ye
have" The great preachers discourse
was as follows:
If should ask some one, "Where is
Brooklyn. to-dayp" he would say, "At
Brighton Beach, or East Hampton, or
Shelter Island" "where is New York,
to-day?" At Long Branch" "where is
Philadelphia" ''Cape May" "wbere
is Boston9" "At Martha's Vineyard -
'whefeis Is virginia?'' "At the Sulphur
Springs" "Where the great multitude
from all parts of the land?" AT Sara
toga," the modern Bethesda, where the
angel Of health is ever stirring the wat
ers. But, my friends. the largest multi
tude are at home, detained by business or
circumstances.
LO, THE POOR sCRIBBLERs.
Among them all newspaper men, the
hardest worked and the least compensated; !;
city railroad employees, and ferry masters,
and the police, and the tens of thousands
of clerks and merchants waiting for their
turn of absence, and households with an
invalid who cannot be moved, and others
hindered by stringent circumstances, and
the great multitude OF well-to-do people
who stay at home because they like home
better than any other place, refusing to 90
away simply because 1t is the fashion to
20. When the express wagon, with its
mountain of trunks directed to the Cats
kills or Niagara, goes through the streets,
we stand at our window envious and i'm
patient, and wonder why we cannot 90 as
well as others. Fools that we are, as
though one could not be as happy
at home as anywhere else. Our
grandtathers and grandmothers had az
good time as we have, long before the
first spring was bored at Saratoga, or the
fret deer shot in the Adirondacks. They
made their wedding tour to the next farm
house, or, living in New York, they cele-
brsted the event by an extra walk on the
Battery"
Now, the genuine American is not hap
py until he is
GOING SOMEWHERE,
and the passion ia so great that there are
Christian people with their families de-
tained in the city, who come not to the
house Of God, trying to give people the
idea that they are out of town; leaving the
door-plste unsecured for the same reason,
and for two months keeping the front
shutters closed while they sit in the back
part of the house, the thermometer at
ninety My friends, if it is best for us to
go, let us 20 and be happy. II it is best
for us to stay at home, let us stay at home
and be happy. There is great deal of
good common sense in Psul's advice TO
the Hebrews: "Be content with such
things as ye have" To be content Is to
be in good humor with our circumstances,
not picking quarrel with our obscurity,
or cur poverty, or our social position.
There are four or five grand reasons Why
we should be content with such things as
we have.
The first reason that mention as lead
ing to this spirit advised in the text, is
the consideration that the poorest of US
have all that is Indispensable in life. We
make great ado about our hsrdships,
but how little we talk Of our blessings.
Health of body. which is given in largest
quantity to those who have never been
petted and fondled, and spoiled by fortune,
we take as matter of cou,se. Rather
have this luxury, and have it alone, than,
without it, look out of palace window up
on parks of deer stalking between fountains
and statuary. These people sleep sounder
on straw mattress, than fashionable in
valids on q couch of ivory and eagles
down. The dinner of herbs tastes better
to the appetite sharpened on woodman's
axe or reaper's scyths, than wealthy in
digestion experiences seated at table COW
cred with partridge and venison and pine.
apple. The arsudest luxury God ever
gave msI is health. He who trades that
off for all the palaces Of the earth is in
finitely cheated. We look back ut the
glory of the last Napoleon, but who would
have taken his Versailles and his Tuileries
if with them we had been obliged to take
his gcut2 "Oh," says some one, 'it isn't
the grosser pleasures oovet, bat 1t is the
qualification of an artistic and intellectual
taste" Why, my brother, you have the
original from which these pictures are
copied.
ANOTHER CONSIDERATION
leading rs to o spirit of contentment is the
fact that our happiness is not dependent
upon outward circumstances. You see
people happy and miserable amid all cir
cumstances. In q family where the last
loaf is on the table, and the last stick Of
wood on the fire, you sometimes find
cheerful confidence in God, while in very
fine place you will see and hear discord
sounding her war whoop, and hospitality
freezing to death in cherries parlor. !
stopped one day on Broadway at the head
of Wall street, at the foot of Trinity
Church, to see who seemed the happisst
people passing. l Judged from their looks
the happiest people were not those who
went down into Wall Street, for they had
on their brow the anxiety Of the dollar
they expected to make; nor the people who
came ont Of Wall street, for they had on
their brow the anxiety Of the dollar they
bad lost; nor the people who swept by in
splendid equipage, for they met carriage
that was finer than their, The hap yiest
person in all that crowd, Judging from the
countenauce, was the woman who sat st
the apple stand knitting. believe
REAL HAPPINESS
oftener looks out of the window Of an
humble home, than through the opera
glass Of the gilded box Of theatre.
Another reason why we should come 10
this spirit inculcated in the text is the fact
that all the differences of earthly copdi-
ton are transitory. The houses you build,
the land you culture, the places in which
you barter, are soon to 60 into other hands.
Howsver hard vou may have IL uow III