Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1894-04-13

I meet another coming down off the
hotel steps, and l say, where are you
going:" You say: Il am going with a
merchant Of New York who has prom
ised to show me the underground life Of
the city. l am his customer, and he is
going to obhge me very much. " Stopl
A business house that tries to get or keep
your custom through such process as
that is not worthy of you. There are
business establishments in our cities
which have for years been sending to
destruction hundreds and thousands of
merchants They have a 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 commercial establishments?
have them on my lips. Shall l? Per-
haps had better leave it to the young
men who in that process have been de-
stroved themselves while they have been
DESTROYING others. l care not how high
sounding the name Of q commercial es-
Enlistment if it proposes to get custom
ers or to keep them by such a process as
that. Drop their acquaintance. They
vii cheat You before you get through.
They will send you a style Of goods dlt-
ferent from that which you bought by
sample. They viii give you under
weight. There Will be in the package
half a dozen less pairs Of suspenders than
Won paid for. They will rob you. Oh,
Won feel in your pockets and say, rs my
money gomez" 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 com
mercial agents through the Sums Of the
city, he is not fit to go home The mere
memory Of what he has seen will be
moral pollution 1 think You had better
4 let the city missionary and the police at
tend to the exploration Of New York and
underground life. You do not go to a
smallpox hospital for the purpose Of eX-
ploration. You do not go there because
YOU are afraid Of cOntagion. And yet
voa 20 into the presence Of moral lep-
ROSY that is as much more dangerous to
YOU as the death Of the soul is worse
than the death Of the body. l will I'M
dertake to say that nine-tenths Of the
men who have been ruined III 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, Tuning rocking, pestiferous
depth which blasts the eye that looks at
it. In the reign of terror i'll 1892 in
Paris people escaping from the officers
of the law got into the sewers Of the
CITY and crawled and walked through
miles Of that awful labyrinth, stifed
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 | have to tell you that great
many Of the men who 60 on the work of
exploration through the underground
cutters Of New York life never copae out
at any Seine river where they can wash
off the pollution of the moral sewage
Stranger, if one Of the representatives
Of q commercial establishment proposes
to AXE 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:'
EXPLORING THE sLUMS.
About 1G years ago as a minister of
religion felt l had divine commission
to explore the iniQuities of our cities. l
did not ask counsel Of my session or my
prosbytery or Of the newspapers, but
asking the companionship Of three
prominent police officials and two Of the
elders of my church unrolled my COM
mission, and it said: "Son Of man, dig
into the wall And when l had digged
into the wall behold a door, and he said
90 in and see the wicked denominations
that are done here. And l went in and
saw and bcholdr' Brought up i'll the
country and surrounded by much pa
rental care l had not until that time seen
the haunts Of iniquity. By the grace Of
God defended, l had never sowed my
wild oats.
had somehow been able to tell from
various sources something about the in
| iouiues Of The great cities and TO preach
AGAINST them, but | saw i'll the destTuc.
ton Of q great multitude of the people
tLat there must be an infatuation and
I = Ie1
about, and l said Il Will explore" l
saw thousands Of men going down, and
if there had been a spiritual percussion
answering to the physical percussion
the whole air would have been full of
the rumble and roar and crack and thun-
/ Ter Of the demolition, and this moment,
# we should pause in our service, we
| should hear the crash, crash Just as in
/ he sickly season you sometimes hear
he bell at the gate Of the cemetery
ringing almost necessarily, so l found
chat the bell at the gate Of the cemetery
where ruined souls arc buried was toll
ling by day and tolling by night. said,
Il Will explore"
went as physician goes into a fever
| lazaretO to see what practical and useful
information l might get. That would be
foolish doctor who would stand outside
the door of an invalid writing a Latin
prescription. When the lecturer in a
medical college is done with his lecture,
be takes the students into the dissecting
room, and he shows them the reality. l
went and saw and came forth to my pull
pit to report plague and to tell how
sin dissects the body and dissects the
mind and dissects the soul. ooh, " say
you, ARE you not afraid that in conse-
Quence of such exploration Of the iniqui-
ties Of the city other persons might make
exploration and do themselves damage?"
l reply: IF in company with the COM
missioner Of police, and the captain Of
police, and the inspector Of police, and
the company Of two Christian gentle
men, and not with the spirit Of curiosity,
but that you may see sin in order the
better to combat it, then, in the name OF
the eternal God, go? But, if not then
stay away"
Wellington, standing in the battle Of
Waterloo when the bullets were buzzing
around his head, saw civilian ON the