The Caucasian. (Clinton, N.C.) 188?-1913, 1889-04-11
THE SLAUGHTER.
DR. TaLMAoE's DISCOURSE IN ST.
LOUIS.

Men in Great Cities
ST. LOUIS, April THE Rev. 7. D
Witt Talmage, D. D., OF Brooklyn
preached hero this evening TO a vas
audience. His subject was ''Th.
Slaughter, and his text, Proverbs
VII, q: "As an OK TO the slaughter.
The eloquent preacher said:
There is nothing in the voice OIL
manner of the butcher TO indicate Il
the OK that there Is death ahead. The
OK thinks he is going on TO a rich pas
ture field of clover, where all day
long he will revel in the herbaceou.
iuxuriance; but after a while the men
and the boys close in upon him With
| sucks and stones and shouting, and
drive him through bars and into a
doorway, where he is fastened, and
with we'll aimed stroke the OK fells
himi and so the anticipation of the
redolent pasture field is completely
disappointed. So many q young man
has been driven on by temptation 10
what he thought would be paradisiacal
enjoyment; but after a while inf1u.
ences with darker hue and swarthier
arm close in upon him, and he finds
that instead of making AN excursion
into a garden he has been driven "as
an OK to the slaughter"
/. We are apt to blame young men
Tor being destroyed when we ought to
blame the influences that destroy
them. Society slaughtes great
many young men by the behest, you
must keep up appearances; whatever
be your salary, you must dress as well
as others, you must wine and brandy
as many friends, you must smoke as
costly cigars, you must give as expen-
sive entertainments, and you must
live in as fashionable a boarding
house. II you haven't the money,
borrow. II you can't borrow make a
false entry. or subtract here and there
a bill from bundle of bank bills; you
will only have to make the deception
little while; in few months, or in
year or two, you can make all right.
Nobody will be hurt by it; nobody
will be the wiser You yourself viii
not be damaged. By that awful pro-
cess a hundred thousand men have
been slaughtered for time and slaugh-
tered for eternity. =
THE MISERIES OF GETTING IN DEBT.
Suppose you borrow. There is Moth
ing wrong about borrowing money.
There is hardly man in the house but
has sometimes borrowed money. Vast
estates have been built on a borrowed
dollar. But there are two kinds of
borrowed money. Money borrowed
for the purpose of starting or keeping
up legitimate enterprise and expense,
and money borrowed to get that
which you can do without. The first
is right, the other is wrong. If YOU
have money enough of your own to
buy coat, however plain, and then
you borrow money for a dandy's out
fit, you have taken the first revolu-
ton of the wheel down grade. Bor-
row for the necessities: that may be
well. Borrow for the luXuries; that
tips your prospects over in the wrong
direction.
The Bible distinctly says tho bor-
rover is servant of the lender. 1t is a
bad state of things when you have to
go down some other street to escape
meeting some one whom you owe. If
young men knew what is the despot-
ism of being i'll debt more of them
would keep out of it. What did debt
do for Lord Bacon, with mind tow
ering above the centuries? 1t induced
him to take brides and convict himself
as criminal before all ages. What
did debt do for Walter Scott2 Broken
hearted at Abbotsford. Kept him writ
ing until his hand gave out in paraly-
sis to keep the sheriff away from his
pictures and statuary. Better for him
If he had minded the maxim which he
had chiseled over the fireplace at Alb
botsford, Waste not, want not"
The trouble is. my friends, the peo-
pie do not understand the ethics of
going i'll debt, and that if you pur-
chase goods with no expectation of
paying for them, or 60 into debts
which you cannot meet, you steal just
so much money. II 1 go into a grocer's
store, and | buy sugars and coffees and
meats, with no capacity to pay for
them and no intention of paying for
them, l am more dishonest than if l
60 into the store, and when the grocer's
face is turned the other way I fill my
pockets with the articles of merchan-
disc and carry off ham. In the one
case take the merchants time, and l
take the time of his messenger to
transfer the goods to my house, while
in the other case / take none of the
time Of the merchant, and l wait upon
myself, and transfer the goods with
out any trouble to him. In other
words, a sneak thief is not so bad as
man who contracts for debts he never
expects to pay.
Yet in all our cities there are fam
lilies that move every May day to get
into proximity to other grocers and
meat shops and apothecaries. They
oys everybody within half mile of
where they now live, and next May
they will move into distant part of
the city, finding a new lot of victims.
Meanwhile you, the honest family in
the new house, are bothered day by
day by the knocking at the door of
bakers, and butchers, and
dry goods dealers, IA newspaper car
riers, and you ;;"e ,.sbed where your
predecessor is. You do not know. It
was arranged you should not know.
Meanwhile your predecessor has gone
to some distant part of the city, and
the people who have anything to sell
have sent their wagons and stopped
there to solicit the valuable" custom
of the new neighbor, and he, the new
with great complacency
and with an air of affluence, orders the
finest steaks and the highest priced
sugars, and the best of the canned
fruits, and, perhaps, all the newspa-
pers. Aud the debts will keep on &C
cumulating until he gets his goods on
the Both Of next April in the furniture
cart.
Now, lei me say, if there are any
such persons in the house, if you
have amy regard for your own
convenience, you had ? better re-
move to some greatly distant part of
the city, 1t is too bad that, having
had all the trouble Of consuming
the goods, you should also have the
trouble of being dunnedf And let me
say that if you find that this pictures
your own photograph, instead of being
in church you ought to he in the pen
ltentiary! No wonder that so many
Of orr Dporohonfc fo,1 - l,,e,.oec