Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1893-04-15


down the s.reet. Our cities of Brook
Ign and New York and all our great
cities are full of such homes, and the
worst time the midnight.
TEE CRIMINAL CLASSES.
Do you know it is in the midnight. that
criminals do their worst work.
At half past 8 o'clock you will find
them in the drinking saloon, but toward
12 o'clock they go to their garrets, they
get out their tools, then they start on the
street. Watching on either side for the
police, they go to their work of dark
ness. This is a burglar, and the false
key will soon touch the store lock. This
is an incendiary, and before morning
there will be light on the sky and cry
Of "Firel Firer This is an assassin,
and tomorrow morning there will be o
dead body in one of the vacant lots.
During the daytime these villains in our
cities lounge about. some asleep and
some awake, but when the third watch
of the night arrives, their eye keen, their
brain cool, their arm strong, their foot
feet to fly or pursue. they are ready.
Many of these poor creatures were
brought up in that way. They were
born in thieves garnet. Their childish
toy was burglars dark lantern. The
first thing they remember was their
mother bandaging the brow of their IA
Their, struck by the police club. They be-
gan by robbing boys pockets, and now
they have come to dig the underground
passage to the cellar of the bank and are
to blast the gold vault.
Just SO long as there are neglected
children of the street, just so long we
will have these desperadc.s. Some one,
wishing to make q good Christian point
and to quote passage of Scripture, ex-
pecting to get Scriptural passage in an
swer, said to one of these poor lads, cast
out and wretched, when your father
and your mother forsalle you. who then
will take you up?" and the boy said,
"The perice, the perlice."
In the midnight gambling does its
worst work. What though the hours be
away and though the wife be
waiting in the cherries home? Stir up
the fire. Bring on more drinks. Put up
more stakes. That commercial house
that only little while ago put out sign
of copartnership will this season be
wrecked on gamblers table. There
will DO many money till that will
spring q leak. A member of congress
eambled with q member elect and won
$4,000 The old way of getting liy-
ing is so slow. The old way of getting
a fortune is SO stupid. Come, let us toss
up and see who shall have it. And SO
the work G es on. from the wheeling
wretches pitching PENNIES in q rum gro
Gerry up to the millionaire gambler in the
stock market.
GAMBLERS OF ALL CLASSES.
In the midnight hour pass down the
streets of our American cities, and you
hear the click of the dice and the sharp,
keen tap of the poolroom ticker At
these places merchant princes dismount,
and legislators, tired of making laws,
take respite in breaking them. All
classes of people are robbed by this
crime, the importer of foreign silks and
the dealer in Chatham street pocket
handkerchjefs.s. The clerks of the store
take hand after me shuotorS-are put
up, and the officers of the court while
away their time while the jury is out.
In Baden-Baden, when that city was
the greatest of all gambling places on
earth, it was no unusual thing the next
morning in the woods around that city
to find the suspended bodies Of suicides.
Whatever be the splendor of the sur
roundings, there is no excuse for this
crime. The thunders of eternal destruc-
ton roll in the deep rumble of that gam
bling tenpin alley, and as men come out
to join the long procession of sin all the
drums of WOO beat the dead march of a
thousand sorls. In one year in the city
of New York there were $1,000 900 sac
rifced at the gaming table.
Perhaps come Of your friends have
been smitten of this sin. Perhaps some
of you have been smitten byit. Perhaps
there may be stranger in the house this
morning come from some of the hotels.
Look out for those agents of iniquity
who tarry around about the hotels and
ask you, "N.,.l Id you like to see the city|
Yes. "Have you ever seen that splendid
building up town." No. Then the vii
lain will undertake to show you what he
calls the "hons" and the elephants"
and after young man, through morbid
curiosity or through badness of soul, has
seen the "lions" and the elephants" he
will be on enchanted ground. Look out
for these men who move around the
hotels with sleek hats-always sleek hats
and patronizing air and unaccountable
interest about your welfare and enter
tainment. You are fool if you cannot
see through it, They want your money.
In Chestnut street, Philadelphia, willie
I was living in that CITY, an i''rii!ent oc-
Cured which was familiar 10 Us there.
In Chestnut street, young man went
into a gambling saloon, lost all his prop
erty, then blew his brains out, and be-
fore the blood was washed from the floor
by the maid the comrades were shutting
cards again. You see there is more MGR
cy in the highwayman for the belated
traveller on whose body he heaps the
stones; there is more mercy in the frost
for the flower that it kills; there is more
mercy in the hurricane that shivers the
steamer on the Long Island coast than
there is mercy in the heart of gambler
for his victim.
DRINKING IN ALL RANKS.
In the midnight hour, also, drunken
ness does its worst. The drinking will
be respectable at 8 o'clock in the even
ing, a little flushed at 8, talkative and
garrulous at 10, at II blasphemous.
1t 12 the hat falls off and the man
falls to the floor asking for more drink.
6trewn through the drinking saloons OF
the city-fathers, brothers, husbands,
sons, as good as you are by nature, per-
hans better,