Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-03-09


fore the hour of service, there being no
space available within the building for
more hearers. So large is the number of
those every week disappointed of gaining
admission that the project of hiring the
Madison Square Garden has again been re-
vived. One citizen has offered to pay all
the expenses if the Garden can be secured
and Dr. Talmage can be induced to preach
in it. The text of the preachers discourse
was taken from Elk. viii, 6, Z: "And
the frogs came up and covered the land of
Egypt. And the magicians did so with
their entertainments, and brought up frogs
upon the land of Egypt"
THE ANCIENT PLAGUE OF FROGS.
There is almost universal aversion to
frogs. and yet with the Egyptian they were
honored, they were sacred, and they were
objects of worship while alive, and after
death they were embalmed, and today their
remains may be found among the sepul-
chres of Thebes. These creatures, so at
tractive once to the Egyptians, at divine
behest became obnoxious and loathsome,
and they went croaking and hopping and
leaping into the palace of the king, and
into the bread trays and the touches of the
people, and even the ovens, which now are
uplifted above the earth and on the side of
chimneys but then were small holes in the
earth, with sunken pottery, were filled
with frogs when the housekeepers came to
look at them. If man sat down to eat a
frog alighted on his plate. If he attempted
to put on a shoe it was preoccupied by
frog. If he attempted to put his head upon
a pillow it had been taken possession of by
frog.
Frogs high and low and everywhere;
loathsome frogs, Shiny frogs, besieging
frogs, innRmerable frogs, great plague of
frogs. What made the matter worse the
magicians said there was no miracle in
this, and they could by sleight of hand
produce the same thing, and they seemed
to succeed for by sleight of hand wonders
may be wrought. After Moses had thrown
down his staff and by miracle it became u
serpent, and then he took hold of it and by
miracle it again became a staff, the serpent
charmers initiated the same thing, and
knowing that there were serpents in
Egypt which by peculiar pressure on the
neck would become as rigid as a stick of
wood, they seemed to change the serpent
into the staff, and then, throwing it down,
the staff became the serpent.
So likewise these magicians tried to imi-
tate the plague Of frogs, and perhaps by
smell of food attracting great number of
them to certain point, or by shaking
them out from a hidden place, the ma
gicians sometimes seemed to accomplish
the same miracle. While these magicians
made the plague worse, none of them tried
to make it better. Frogs came up and
covered the land of Egypt, and the ma
gicians did so with their enchantment, and
brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt"
THE MODERN PLAGUE OF FROGS.
Now that plague of frogs has come back
upon the earth = 1t is abroad today. 1t is
shifting this nation. 1t comes in the shape
of corrupt literature. These frogs hop into
the store, the shop, the Office, the banking
house, the factory-intc the home, into the
cellar, into the garrett, on the drawing room
table, on the shelf of the library. While
the lad is reading the bad book the teachers
face is turned the other way. One of these
frogs hops upon the page. While the young
woman is reading the forbidden novelette,
after retiring at night, reading by gaslight,
one of these frogs leaps upon the page.
Indeed they have hoped upon the news
stands Of the country and the mails at the
postoffice shake out in the letter trough
hundreds of them. The plague has taken
at different times possession of this coun-
try. 1t is one of the most loathsome, one
of the most frightful one of the most
CHASTITY of the ten plaques of our modern
cities.
There is a vast number of books and
newspapers printed and published which
ought never to see the light. They are
filed with a pestilence that makes the land
swelter with moral epidemic. The great
est blessing that ever came to this nation
is that of an elevated literature, and the
greatest scourge has been that of unclean
literature. This last has its victims in all
occupations and departments. 1t has
helped to fill insane asylums and peni-
tentiaries and almshouses and dens of
shame. The bodies of this infection lie in
the hospitals and in the graves, while their
souls are being tossed over into lost
eternity, an avalanche of horror and des-
pair.
The London plague was nothing to it
That counted its victims by thousands, but |
this modern pest has already shoveled its |
millions into the charnel house of the NOR
ally dead The longest rail train that ever
ran over the Erie or Hudson tracks was |
not long enough nor large enough to carry
the beastiness and the putrefaction which
have been gathered up in bad books and |
|
years. The literature of nation decides |
the fate of a nation. Good books good |
morals Bad books, bad morals.
THE LOWEST OF BAD LITERATURE.
begin with the lowest of all the litera, !
ture, that which does not even pretend to
be respectable--from cover to cover a blotch |
of leprosy. There are many whose entire
business it is to dispose of that kind of lit
erature. They display it before the school
boy on his way home They get the cata-
logues of schools and colleges, take the
names and postoffice addresses, and send
their advertisements, and their circulars,
aud their pamphlets, and their books to
every one of them.
In the possession of these dealers in bad
literature were found nine hundred thou
sand names and postoffice addresses, to
whom it was thought it might be profit
able to send these corrupt things. In the
year 1873 there were one hundred and sixty
five establishments engaged in publishing
cheap, corrupt literature. From one pub
fishing house there went out twenty differ
ent Sly les of corrupt books Although
over thirty tons of vile literature have
been destroyed by the Society for the Sup
preston of Vice, still there is enough of it
left in this country to bring down upon us
the thunderbolts of an incensed God
In the year 1868 the evil had become so
great in this country that the congress of
the United States passed law forbidding
the transmission of bad literature through
the United States mails, bug there were
large loops in that law through which
criminals might crawl out, and the law
was a dead failure-that law of 1868 But
In 1873 another law was passed by the con-
gress of the United States against the
transmission of cnrrnnf litpratIre throngh