Connecticut western news., 1893-10-05

are girdled and canopied and housed with such glories as attend no other Metropolis. -
 They were swamped in ifeboats, or they struck on Goodwin sands or Deal beach or the Skerries, and were never heard of, or disappeared with the City of Boston, or the Vile de Havre. or the Cymbria or were run down in a fishing smack that put out from Newfoundland. But dismiss your previous gloom about the horrors of ocean entombment.
 THE MISTAKES OF JONAH.
 When Sevastopol was besieged in the Anglo French war, Prince Mentchikof, commanding the Russian navy, saw that the only way to keep the English out of the harbor was to sink all of the Russian ships of war in the roadstead, and so 100 vessels sank. When, after the war was over, our American engineer, Gowan, de- scended to the depths in diving bell, it was an impressive spectacle.
 One hundred buried ships! But it is that way nearly all across the Atlantic ocean. Ships sunk not by command of admirals, but by the command of cy- clones. But they all had sublime burial, and the surroundings amid which they sleep the last sleep are more imposing than the Tai Mahal, the mau- soleum with walls incrusted with pre- cious stones and built by the great mo- gull of India over his empress. Your departed ones were buried in the gar dens of the sea, fenced off by hedges of coralline.
 The greatest obsequies ever known on the land were those of Moses, where no one but God was present. The sublime report of that entombment is in the book of Deuteronomy, which says that the Lord buried him. and of those who have gone down to slumber in the deep the same may be said, "The Lord buried them" As Christ was buried in gar den, so your shipwrecked friends and those who could not survive till they reached port were put down amid iri- descence-"In the midst of the garden there was sepulcher." a#
 It has always been mystery what was the particular mode by which George G. Goldman, the pulpit orator of the Meth odist church and the chaplain of the American congress, left this life after embarking for England on the steamship President, March il, 1841. The ship never arrived in port. No one ever signaled her, and on both sides of the ocean 1t has for 50 years been questioned what became of her. But this I know about Cookman-that whether 1t was iceberg or confagration midsea or col Hsion he had more garlands on his ocean tomb than if, expiring on land, each of his million friends had put @ bouquet on his casket In the midst of the garden was his sepulcher.
 But that brings me to notice the mis- homer In this Jonahitic expression of the text. The prophet not only made @ mistake by trying to Ego to Tarshish when God told him to go to Nineveh, but he made mistake when he styled as weeds these growths that enwrapped him on the day he sank. A weed is something that is useless. It is some thing you throw out from the garden. It is something that chokes the wheat. It is something to be grubbed out from among the cotton. It is something un- slightly to the eye. It is an invader of the vegetable or floral world.
 But this growth that sprang up from the depth of the Mediterranean or foated on it's surface was among the most beautiful things that God ever makes. It was 8 water plant known as the red colored alga and no weed at all It comes from the loom of infinite beauty. It is planted by heavenly love- It is the star of sunken Armament. It is lamp which the Lord kindled. It is a cord by which to bind whole sheaves of practical suggestion. It is poem all whose cantos are rung by divine good ness. Yet we all make the mistake that Jonah made in regard to it and call it g weed. H..#.. .
 "The weeds were wrapped about my head" An, that is the trouble on the land as on the seal We call those weeds that are flowers. Pitched up on the beach of society are children without home, without opportunity for anything but sin, seemingly without God. They are washed up helpless. They are called ragamuffins. They are spoken of as the rakings of the world. They are waifs. They are street arabs. They are fotsam and jetsam of the social sea. They are something to be left alone, or something to be trod on, or something to give up to decay. Nothing but weeds. They are up the rickety stairs of that garrett They are down in the cellar of that tene- ment house. They swelter in summers when they see not one blade of green grass, and shiver in winters that allow them not one warm coat or shawl or shoe. .
 Such the city missionary found in one of our city rookeries, and when tho pv,e woman was asked if she sent her child dren to school she replied: "No, sir, never did send lem to school. know it, they ought to learn, but couldn't. try to shame him sometimes Git is my husband, sir), but he drinks and then beats me-look at that bruise on my face-and tell him to see what is comin to his children. There's Peggy goes Bellin fruit every night in those cellars in Water street, and they're hells, sir. She's learnin all sorts of bad words there and don't get back till 13 o'clock at night. If 1t wasn't for her earnin a shillin or two in them places, I should starve. Oh, wish they was out of the city. Yes, it is the truth. I would rather have all my children dead than on the street, but can't help it."
 Another one of those poor women found by a reformatory association, re cited her story of want and woe and looked up and said, T felt so hard to lose the children when they died, but now I'm glad they're gone." Ask any one of thousand such children on the streets, "Where do you Hve~ and they will answer, q don't live nowhere. " They will sleep tonight in ash barrels, or under outdoor stairs, or on the wharf, kicked and bruised and hungry. Who cares for them? Once in awhile city missionary, or 8 tract distributor, or a teacher of ragged schools will rescue one of them, but for most people they are only weeds.
 Yet Jonah did not more completely misrepresent the red alga about his hoal T., tho Mediterranean fbo~ x,ooof