The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1894-04-20

" SiOSh o. hABAlb ID 1utOTSSIAHS3 CuA-
eating, fascinating, appalling, ex-
hiiarating to the last degree. Stop
in front of that theater, and see
who goes ia. Stop Le that saloon and
see who come out See the great tides
OF life surging backward and forward,
and beating against the marble of The
curbstone, and eddying down into the
saloons. What is that mark on the
face of that debauchee? 1t is the hec-
tic flush of eternal death. What is
that woman's laughter? 1t is the
shrek of a lost soul. Who is that
Christian man going along with a vial
of anodyne to the dying pauper on
Elm street? Who is that belated man
on the way to prayer meeting? Who
is that city missionary going to take
box in which to bury a child? Who
are all these clusters of bright and
beautiful faces? They are going to
some interesting place of amusement.
Who is that man going into the drug
store? That is the man who yesterday
lost all his fortune in Wall street. He
is going to get a dose of belladOnna,
and before morning it will make no
difference to him whether stecks are
up or down. 1 tell you that Broadway,
between seven and twelve o'clock at
night, between the Battery and Cen
trail park, is an Austerlitz, a Gettys-
burg, a Waterloo. where kingdoms
are lost or won, and three worlds min
gle In the strife.
meet another coming down off the
hotel steps, and / say: Where are
you going?" You say: II am going
with a merchant of New York, who
has promised to show me the under
ground life of the city. l am his Gus
toner. and he is going to oblige me
very much" Stop! A business house
that tries to get or keep your custom
worthy of you. There are business es-
tablishments in our cities which have
for years been sending to destruction
hundreds and thousands of merchants.
They have secret drawer in
the counter where money is
kept, and the clerk goes and
gets it when he wants to take these
visitors to the city through the low
slums of the place. Shall / mention
the names of some of these great COM
mercial esta blishments? / have them
on my lips? Shall L? Perhaps l had
better leave it to the young men who,
in that process, have been destroyed
themselves while they have been de-
stroyhg others. l care not how high.
sounding the name of a commercial
establishment if it proposes to get Gus
toners or to keep them by such pro
cess as that; drop their acquaintance.
They will cheat you before you
get through. They will send you
a style of goods different from
that which you bought by
sample. They will give you under
weight. There will be in the package
half dozen less pairs of suspenders
than you paid for. They will rob you.
Oh, you feel in your pockets and say:
''Is my money gomez" They have
robbed you of something for which
dollars and cents can never give you
compensation. When one of these west
ern merchants has been dragged by
one of those commercial agents
through the slums of the city he is not
fit to go home. The mere memory OF
what he has seen will be moral polu.
tion. / think you had better let the
city missionary and the police at
tend to the exploration of New
York and underground life. You
do not go to smallpox hospital for the
purpose of exploration. You do not
go there because you are afraid of the
contagion. And yet, you go into the
presence of a moral leprosy that is as
much more dangerous to you as the
death of the soul is worse than the
death of the body. / will undertake
to say that nine-tenths of the men who
have been ruined in our cities have
been ruined by simply going to OBJ
serve without any idea of participating
The fact is, that underground city life
is a filthy, fuming, reeking, pestifer-
Gus depth which blasts the eye that
looks at it. In the reig of terror, in
1892, in Paris, people, escaping from
the officers of the law, got into the sew
ers of the city and crawled and walked
through miles of that awful laby
rinth, stified with the atmosphere and
almost dead, some of them, when they
came out the river Seine, where they
washed themselves and again breatheC
the fresh air. But I have to tell yoU
that great many of the men who &C
on the work of exploration through
the underground cutters of New York
life never come out at any Seine river
where they can wash off the pollution
of the moral sewage. Stranger, if one
of the representatives of a commercial
esta tablishment proposes to take you ant
show you the sights" of the town anC
underground New York, say to him
please, sir, what do you propose tt
show me?"
About sixteen years ago, as a minis
| ter of religion, l felt l had Divine
commission to explore the iniquities o.
/ our cities. / did not ask counsel of my
| session, or my presbytery, or of the
newspapers, but asking the companion
/ ship of thrae prominent police official,
and two of the elders of my church,
unrolled my commission, and it said
'Son of man, dig into the wall: anC
when / digged into the wall, behold
door; and he said, go in and see the
wicked denominations that are done
here; and went in, and saw, and be
hold.'' Brought up in the country
and surrounded by much parenta
care, / had not until that time
seen the haunts of iniquity
BY the grace of God defended
1 had never sowed my wild oats"
| had somehow been able to tell from
various sources something about the
iniquities of the great cities, and K
preach against them; but saw, in the
destruction of great multitude of the
people, that there must be an infatua
tion and a temptation that had never