The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-08-04

people, and in our day the same Institution
has come up under fictitious ames, and II
is called summer meeting almost sug-
e stlve Of positive religious exercises And
1t is called an agricultural fair, suggest
i've of everything that is improving in the
art OF farming. But under these deceptive
titles are the same cheating and the same
betting, the same drunkenness and the same
vagabondage and the same abomluatlons
that we're 10 be found under the old horse
racing system
| / never knew man yet who could
give himself &c the pleasures o. the turf for
u long reach of time and not be battered IN
morals. They hook up their Spanking
team, and put on their sporting cap, and
light Their cigar, and take the reins, and
dash down the road to perdltlon. The great
day at Saratoga, and Long Branch, and
Cape MAY, and nearly all the other water
ing places, is the day of the races. The
hotels are thronged, nearly every kind Of
equipage Is taken up at an almost fabulous
price, and there are many respectable
people mingling with jockeys, and gamblers,
and libertines, and foul-mouthed men and
tiashy women. The bartenders stir up the
brandy smash The bets run high. The
greenhorns, supposing all Is falr, put IN
their money soon enough to lose It. Ihree
weeks before the race takes place the strug-
gle IS decided. and the men in the secret
| know on which sIeed to bet their money.
The two men on tae horses riding around
long before arranged who shall beat.
| Leaning from the stand or from the car
riage are men and women 50 absorbed in
the struggle of bone and musc.e and mettle
that they make a grand harvest for the
pickpockets, who carry off the pOcket-books
| and portemonnaies Men looking on see
| only two horses with two riders flying
around tho ring but there is many man
on that stand whose honor and domestic
! happiness and fortune-white name, white
foot, white fauk-are in the ring, racing
with inebriety. and with fraud, and with
profanity, and with ruin--black neck,
black foot, black flank. Neck and neck
they go in that moral EPSON.
All, my friends have nothing to do with
horse-racing designations this summer.
Long ago the English government got
through looking to the turf for the dragon
and hght-cavalry horse. They found the
turf depreciates the stock, and it is yet
worse for men. Thomas Hughes, the men,
Der of parliament and the author, known
all the world over, hearing that new turf
enterprise was being started in this country,
wrote letter. in which he said: Heaven
help you, then; for of all the cankers Of
our old civilization there is nothing
in this country approaching in un-
blushing meanness, in rascalIty hold
ing its head high, to this be-
Landed institution of the British turf. An
other famous sportsman writes: How
many fine domains have been shared among
these hosts of rapacious sharks during the
last 200 years; and unless the system be al
tered, how many more are doomed to fall
into the same gulfm The Duke Of Hamil-
ton, through his horse racing proclivities,
in three years got through his entire fort
une of $3.50, 900, and l will say that some Of
you are being undermined by it. With the
bull-fghts Of Spain and the bear-baitings
of the pit may the Lord God annihiiate the
infamous and accursed horse racing of En-
gland and America.
go further, and speak of another tempta-
ton that hovers over the. watering places;
and this is the temptation to sacrifice
physical strength. The modern Bethesda
was meant to recuperate the physical
health and yet how many come from the
watering places, their health absolutely de-
stroyedl New York and Brooklyn idiots
Boosting of having imbibed twenty glasses
of Congress water before breakfast. Fami-
lies accustomed to going to bed at 10 o'clock
at night gossiping until or 2
O'Clock in the morning. Dyspep-
tics, usually very cautious about
their health, mingling ice creams, and
lemons, and lobster salads, and cocoanuts,
until the gastric juices lift up all their
voices of lamentation and protest. Delicate
women and brainless young men chassezing
Thousands of men and women coming back
from our watering places in the autumn
with the foundations laid for ailments that
will last them all their life long. You
know as we'll as | do that this is the simple
truth.
In the summer you say to your good
health: "Good-by, | am going to have a
good time for little while l will be very
| glad TO see you again in the autumn
Then in the autumn, when you are hard at
| work in your office, or shop, or counting
| room, Good Health will come and say !:
"Good-by, l am going" You say:
Where are you goingp "Oh," says Good
| Health, Il am going TO take vacation ~
1t is poor rule that will not work both
ways, and your good health will leave you
| choleric and splenetic and exhausted. You
coquetted with your good health in the
| summer time, and your good health is
coquetting with you in the winter time. A
fragment of Pauls charge to the jailer
would be an appropriate inscription for the
hotel register in every watering place:
| do myself no harm"
Another temptation lowering around the
watering place is to the formation of hasty
and lifelong alliances. The watering places
are responsible for more of the domestic in
| felicities of this country than all the other
things combined. Society is so artificial
there that no sure Judgment OF character
| Cdp Oo 1uOsS WHO COUlDdQ-
ionships amid such circumstances go into a
lottery where there are twenty blanks to one
prize. In the severe tug of life you want
more than glitter and splash. Life is not 6
ball room where the music decides the step
and bow and prance and graceful swing
of long trail can make up for strong COM
mon sense. You may as we'll go among the
gayly painted yachts of a summer regatta
to find war vessels as to go among the light
spray of the summer watering place to find
character that can stand the test of the
great struggle of human life All, in the
battle Of life you want a stronger weapon
than lace fan or a croquet mallet The
load of life is SO heavy that in order to dra y
it you want team stronger than one made
up of a masculine grasshopper and femi
nine butterfly.
If there is any man in the community
that excites my contempt, and that excites
the contempt of every man and woman, ii
is the soft-handed, soft-headed 'fop,' who
perfumed until the air is actually sick
spends his summer in taking killing atti-
tudes, and waving sentimental adieus, and
talking infinitesimal nothings, and finding
his heaven in the set of a lavender kid glove
Boots as tight as an inquisition, two hours
of coasummate skill exhibited in the tie OF
a flaming cravat, his conversation
made up of "Ahs" and "Oh's" and
"He-hee's." 1t would take five hun
dred of them stewed down TO make