The Bossier banner., 1894-05-24

| OF dnouyne TO Jne uylng paupef On
Elm street? Who is that belated man
on the way to a prayer meeting? Who
is that city missionary going to take
box in which 10 bury 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 stocks are
up or down. l tell you that Broadway,
between seven and twelve o'clock at
night, between the Battery and Cen
tral park, is an Austerlitz, a Gettys-
burg, a Waterloo, where kingdoms
are lost or won, and three worlds min
gle in the strife.
l meet another coming down off the
hotel steps, and L 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. / am his Gus
toner, and he is going to oblige me
FSlS HluIh. Stcp' n DuolHCSo AlOuSC
that tries to get or keep your custom
through such process as that is not
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 Establishments? l have them
on my lips? Shall 1? Perhaps l had
better leave it to the young men who,
in that process, have been destroyed
themselves while they have been de-
stroying others. l care not how high.
sounding the name of commercial
establishment if it proposes to get Gus
toners or to keep them by such a 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:
SIS my money gomez" They have
robbed you of something for which
dollars and cents can never give you
compensation. When one of these west
efn 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-
ton. 1 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 tn e
purpose of exploration. You do not
contagion. And yet, you go into the
presence of 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
u Gus depth which blasts the eye tina
: looks at it. In the reig of terror, il
> 1902. 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
J, rinth, stifed with the atmosphere anC
:. almost dead, some of them, when the,
} came out the river Seine, where the!
= washed themselves and again breatheC
y the fresh air. But / have to tell yol
: that great many of the men who F'
d on the work of exploration through
L the underground cutters of New Yorl
life never come out at any Seine rive
S where they can wash off the pollution
y of the moral sewage. Stranger, if on
q of the representatives of a commercial
G esta adjustment proposes to take you an
e show you the ''sights" of the town an
n underground New York, say to him
l. please, sir, what do you propose t
u show me?"
l. About sixteen years ago, as a minis
d ter of religion, I felt l had Divin
K commission to explore the iniquities c
Y our cities. / did not ask counsel of m
d session, or my presbytery, or of tn
E. newspapers, but asking the companion
e ship of thrae prominent police official
o. and two of the elders of my church,
n unrolled my commission, and it sai(
ID ''Son of man, dig into the wall: an
lie when digged into the wall, behold
e door; and he saiG, go in and see til
ye wicked denominations that are dor
le here; and l went in, and saw, and b
or holdr' Brought up in the countr.
IN and surrounded by much parent;
O. care, ] had not until that tin
to seen the haunts of iniquit
so By the grace of God defende
IN l had never sowed my wild oats"
d. had soruehow been able to tell fro
ht various sources something about Il
u iniquities of the great cities, and
X preach against them; but saw, in tt
op destruction of great multitude of tt
ee people, that there must be an infatu
1d ton and temptation that had new