Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1889-04-17

4
Tins Meanwhile you, the honest family
in the new house, are bothered day by day
by the knocking at the door of disappoint
ed bakers, and butchers, and dry goods
dealers, and newspaper carriers, and yon
are asked where your predecessor is' You
do not know. 1t 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
,ulicit the .'valu4b ble'' custom of the new
neighbor; and he, the new neighbor, with
great complacency and with an air of at
auenec, orders the finest steaks and the
highest priced sugars, and the best of the
canned fruits and perhaps, all the newspa-
pers. And the debts will keep on accu
mulating until he gets his goods on the 3Oth
of next April in the furniture cart.
Now, let me say, if there are any such
persons in the house, if you have any regard
for your own convenience, you had better
remove 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 traable of being dunned. And
let me say that if you find that this pictures
your own photograph, instead of being in
church, you ought to be in the penitentia-
~! No wonder that so many of our mer
chants fail in business. They are swindled
into bankruptcy by these wandering Arabs.
these nomads of city life. They cheat the
grocer out of the green apples which make
them sick, the physician who attends their
distress, and the undertaken who fits them
out for departure from the neighborhood
where they owe everybody when they pay
the debt of nature, the only debt they ever
do pay
Now our young men are coming up in
this depraved state of commercial ethics.
and am solicitious about them. want to
warn them against being slaughtered on the
sharp edges of debt. You want many
things you have not, my young friends
You shall have them if you have patience
and honesty and industry. Certain lines
of conduct always lead out to certain sue
cesses.
There is a law which controls even those
things that seem haphazard. have been
told by those who have observed that it is
possible 20 calculate just how many letters
will be sent to the Dead Letter Office every
year through misdireetiOn; that it is pOssi-
BILE to calculate just how many letters will
be detained for lack of postage stamps
through the forgetfulness eff the senders,
and that it is possible to tell Just how many
people will tall IN the streets by slipping on
an orange peel. In other words, there are
no accidents The most Insignificant event
you ever heard of is the link between two
eternities-the eternity of the past aud the
eternity of the future Head the right way,
young man, and you will eome out at the
right goal.
Bring me young man and tell me what
his physical health is, and what his mental
callber, and what his habits, and l will tell
you what will be his destiny for this world,
and his destiny for the world to cone, aud
I will not make Eve inaccurate prophecies
out of the five hundred. All this makes
me solctous in regard to young men, and l
want to make them nervous in regard to
the contraction of unpayable debts. give
you paragraph from my own experience.
NV first settlement as pastor was in
village. My salary was $500 and parson
age. The amount seemed enormous to me.
] said to myself, "What all this for one
year?" 1 was afraid of getting worldly un-
der so much prosperity / resolved to in
vite all the congregation to my house in
groups of twenty five each. We began,
and as they were the best congregation in
all tbs world, and we felt nothing was too
good for them, we piled all the luxuries on
fine table. never completed the under
ia king. At the sad of six mouths l was in
financial despair. [ found what every
Young man learns in time 70 save himself,
or too late, that you must measure the size
of a mans body before you begin to cut che
cloth for his coat.
When a young man wilfully and of
choice, having the comforts of life, goes
into the contraction of unpayable debts, he
knows not into what he goes. The credl
tors get after the debtor, the pack OF
hounds in full cry, and alas! for the rein
deer. They jingle his door bell before he
gets up in the morning; they jingle his door
bell after he has gone to bed at night. They
meet him as he comes off his front steps
They send him postal card or letter, in
curtest style, telling him TO pay up. They
attach his goods They want cash, or a
note at thirty days, or note on demand.
They call him a knave. They say he lies.
They want him disciplined at the church.
They want him turned out of the bank
They come at him from this side. and from
that side, and from before, and from be-
hind, and from above, and from baneath,
and he is nsulted and gibbeted, and sued,
and dunned, and sworn at, until be gets
the nervous dyspepsia, gets neuralgia, gets
liver complaint, gets heart disease, gets
Now he is dead, and you say: "Of course
they will let him alone" Oh, no! Now
they are watchful to see whether there are
any unnecessary expenses at the obsequies,
to see whether there is any useless handle
on the casket, to see whether there is any
surplus plait on tho shroud, to see whether
the hearse is costly or cheap, to see wheth-
or the flowers sent to the easket have been
bought by the family or donated, to see in
whose name the deed to the grave is made
out. Then they ransack the bereft house.
hold, the books, the pictures, the carpets,
the chairs, the sofa, the piano, the mat
tresses, the pillow on which he died.
Cursed be debt! For the sake of your own
happiness, for the sake of your good morals.
for the sake of your immortal soul, for
God's sake, young man, as far as possible,
keep out of it.
II But think more young men are
slaughtered through irreligion. Take away
a young mans rellgi and you make HIM
the prey of evil. We all know that the
Bible is the only perfect system of morals.
Now if you want to destroy the young
mans morals take his Bible away. How
will you do tha'f Well yon will caricature
his reverence for the Scriptures, you will
take all those incidents of the Bible which
can be made mirth of-Jonah's whale.
Samson's foxes, Adams rihs-then you
will caIica' ure eccentric Christians Or in
consistent Christians, then you will pass
off as your own all those hackneyed argu-
men,s against Christianity which are as old
as Tom Paine, as old as Voltsire, as old as
sin Now you have captured his Bible,
and you have taken his strongest fortress;
the way is comparatively clear, and all the
gates OF his soul are set open 10 invitation
to the SINS of earth and the sorrows of
death, that they may come in and drive the
stake for their encampment.
"A steamer fifteen hundred miles from
shore with broken rudder and lost compass,
and hulk leaking fifty gallons the hour, is
better off than young man when you have
robbed him of his Bible. Have you ever
noticed how despicaby mean it is to take
away the worlds Bible without proposing
substitute? 1t is meaner than to come to
sicK man and steal his medicine, meaper
tO tn apd