Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1894-04-12

these clusters Of bright and beautiful faces'
They are going 20 some interesting place
of amusement. Who Is that man going
into the drug store? That Is the man who
yesterday lost all his fortune on Wall
street. He is going in for dose of bella
donna, and before morning It will make
no difference to him whether stocks are
up or down ! tell you that Broadway,
between and 10 o'clock at night between
the Battery and Central park is an Aus
terlitz, n Gettysburg, a Waterloo, where
kingdoms are lost or won and three worlds
mingle in the strife.
SEEING THE sLuMs.
meet another coming down off the ho
tel steps, and | say. "Whcrc are you GO
ing" You say, 81 am going with MGR
chant of New York who has promised to
show me the underground life of the city.
/ am his customer, and he is going to oblgc
me very much. Stop. A business house
that tries to get or keep your custom
through such process as that is not wor-
thy of you There are business establish
ments in our cities which have for years
been sending 10 destruction hundreds and
thousands of merchants. They have Sc
cret drawer in the counter, where money
is kept, and the clerk goes and N0ts it when
ne wants TO take tncSc NlsllOTS lO Ile CITY
through the low sluIns OF the place.
Shall | mention the names of some of
these great commercial establishments? l
have them on my lips. shall II Perhaps
had better leave it to the young men who,
in that process, have been destroyed them
selves while they have been destroying
others l care not how high sounding he
name Of u commercial establishment if it
mr. a r. - :. ar n n
by such a process as thas Drop their ac-
quaintancr They will cheat you before
you get through They will send you II
style of goods different from that which
you bought Ivy sample They will give you
underwcight There Will be in the pack
age half dozen less pairs of suspendcrs
than you paid for Ihcy will rob you. Oh,
you feel fin your pockets and say. is my
money gone They have robbed you Of
something for which dollars and cents can
never give you compensation.
When one OF these western merchants
has been dragged by one OF those CONNER
cial agents through the slums of the
city, he is not fit to 60 home. The mere
memory of what he has seen will I've moral
pollution. I think YOU had better is tine
city missionary and the police attend to
the exploration of New York and under
ground life You do not go to u small
pox hospital for the purpose Of exploration,
You do not 20 there because you are afraid
of contagion.
And yet you 60 into the presence of NOR
al leprJSy that is as much more dangerous
to you as the death Of the soul is worse
than the death of the body. | will under
take to say that nine tcnths of the men
who have been ruined in our cities have
been ruined by simply going to observe
without any idea OF participating
EXPLoRING A CITY's 1NIQUITIEs.
The fact is that underground city life is
filthy Tuning, rccking, postiferous depth
! which blasts the eye that looks at it. In
the reign of terror in 1892 in Paris poo
| pie escaping from the officers of the law
( got into the sewer, of the city and crawled
and walked through miles Of that awful
/ labyrinth stifled with the atmosphere and
! almost dead, some of them, when they came
/ out to the river Seine, where they washed
/ themselves and again breathed the fresh
air. But l have TO tell you that great
many OF the mon who so on the work of
| exploration through the underground gut
tiers of New York life never come out at
any Seine river where they can wash OF
the pollution of the moral sewage. Stran-
] .
mercial establishment proposes to take YOU
and show you the sights of the town
and underground New York, say to him.
Please, sir what part do you propose to
show me?'
About is years ago as minister of reli-
gion | felt | had divine commission to
explore the i1iquities of our cities. l did
not ask counsel of my session. or my pres
! bytcry or OF the newspapers, but asking
the cumpanionship of three prominent po-
! lice officials and two Of the elders of my
church unrolled my commission and it
said: Son of man, dig into the wall and
when / had digCed into the wall behold n
| door, and he said Go i'll and see the wick
| ed denominations thai are don" here. and
went in and saw, and behold!' Brought
up in Tho country and surrounded by much
parental care, ] had not until that time
seen the haunts of iniquity. BY the grace
of GOD defended, I had never sowcl my
wild oats - ] had somehow been able to
! tell from various sources something about
the iniquities OF the great cities and TO
preach against them, but | saw, in the de
| structiOn of Il great multitude of the pco-
pie that there must be an infatuatiOn and
a temptation that had never been spoken
about, and / said, 81 will explore
saw thousands of men going down, ana If
there had been spiritual percussion an
swcring To the physical percussion the
whole air would have been full of the rum
bic and roar and crack and thunder OF
the demolition, and this moment, if we
should pause in our service, we should
hear the crash, crash.
WHERE RUINED SOULS ARE BURIED.
Just as in the sckly season you some
times hear the bell at the gate OF the Gem
etery ringing almost necessarily, so found
that the bell AT the gate of the cemetery
where ruined souls are buried was tollinp
by day and tolling by night. ] said, 81
will explore. ! Went as a physician goes
into fever lazaretto, to see what pract zeal
and useful information | might get. That
would be IA foolish doctor who would stand
outside the door of an invalid writing q
Latin prescription. When the lecturer in
medical college is done with his lecture
he takes the students into the dissectinp
room, and he shows them the reality
went and saw, and came forth 10 my pull
pit to report n plague, and to tell how sin