Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1891-03-19
Your sports are merely means to an end.

! Your sports are merely means to an end.
| They are alleyiations and helps. The arm
| of toll is the only arm strong enough to
bring up the bucket out of the deep well
! of pleasure. Amusement is only the bower
where business and philanthropy rest
while on their way TO stirring achieve
ments. Amusements are merely the vines
that grow about the anvil Of toll, and tho
| blossoming of the hammers. Alas for the
man who spends his life In laboriously
doing nothing, his days in hunting up
lounging-places and lcungers, his nights in
seeking out some gas-lighted foolery! The
man who always has on his sporting
| jacket ready to hunt for game In the
mountain or fish in the brook, with no time
| to pray, or work. or read, is not as well OF
as the greyhound that runs by his side, or
| the fly bait with which he whips the
| stream.
A man VINO does not work does not know
how to play. If God had intended us TO
do nothing but laugh, he would not have
| given us shoulders with which to lift, and
hands with which to work, and brains
| with which to think. The amusements Of
! life are merely the orchestra playing while
! the great tragedy of life plunges through
its five acts-infancy, childhood, manhood,
old ago. and death. Then exit the last
earthly opportunity. Enter the over
whelming realities OF an eternal world
/ go further and say that all those
amusemcnts arc wrong which lead into
bad company. III you go to any place
where you have TO associate with the
incorporate, with the unclean, with the
abandoned, however well they may be
dressed, in the name of God quit it. They
will despol your nature. They will under
mine your moral character. They will
drop you when you are destroyed They
will not give one cent to support your
children when you are dead. They will
weep not one tear at your burial. They
will chuckle over your damnatiOn.
Again: Any amusement that gives you
a distaste rr domestic life is bad. How
many bright Domestic circles have been
broken up by sinful amusements The
father went off, the mother went off, the
child went off. There are today the frag-
ments before me of blasted households. Oh,
If you have wandered away, would like to
charm you back by the sound of that one
word "home." Do you know that you
have but little more time to give to domes-
tic welfare? Do you not see, father, that
your children are soon to go out into the
world, and all the influence fer good you
are to have over them you must have now?
Death will break in on your conjugIl rela-
tions, and alas, if you have to stand over
the grave of one who persisted from your
neglect
saw a hayward husband standing at
the death-hed of his Christian wife, and
saw her point to ring on her finger, and
heard her say to her husband. ado you see
that ring?' He replied, Eyes, see It,"
"Well," she said, 'do you remember who
put it there?" "Yes," said he, ~ put il
there" and all the past seemed to rush
upon him. BY the memory of that day
when, in the presence Of men and angels,
you promised TO be faithful in Joy and sor-
row, and in sickness and in health; by the
memory of those pleasant hours when you
sat together in your new home talking of
bright future; by the cradle and the Joyful
hour when one life was spared and another
given; by that sick-bed, when the,little one
lifted up the hands and called for help, and
you knew he must die, and he put one arm
around each of your necks and brought you
very near together in that dying kiss; by
the little grave in Greenwood that you
never think of without a rush of tears; by
tAe family Bible where, amidst stories OF
heavenly love, is the brief but expressive
record of births and deaths; by the neglects
of the past, and by the agcnies of the
future; by a judgment day, when husbands
aud wives, parents and children, in immor-
tai groups, will stand to he caught up In
shining array, or to shrink down into dark
ness; by all that, beg you to give to home
your best affections.
All my friends, there is an hour coming
when our past life will probably pass
before us in review. 1t will be our last
hour. If from our death. pillow we have
to look back and see life spent In sinful
amusement, there will be dart that will
strike through our soul sharper than the
dagger with which V.rginius slew his
child. The memory of the past will make
US quake like Macbeth. The iniquities
and rioting through which we have passed
will come upon us. weird and skeleton as
Meg Merrillics. Death, the old Shylock,
will demand, and take, the remaining
pound of flesh, and the remaining drop Of
blood; and upon our last opportunity for
repentance, and our last chance for heaven,
the curtain will forever drOn.