The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1896-06-05
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
Why Some GO Up and Others Per
sistently Go Down.
The Causes Are Patent II One VIII Only
Take Pains to NOse the Habits
and Associations of the
Individual

The following discourse, dealing
with the causes of the success or fail
ure of men Ia their lives, was deliv
cred by Rev. I. Dewitt Talmage IL
Washington. His text was:
Men shall clap their hands &C him and shall
hiss him out OF his place.-JOb xvii. %.
This allusion seems to be dramatic
The Bible more than once makes such
illusions. Paul says: "We are made
theater or spectacle to angels and to
men," 1t is evident from the text that
some of the habits of theater-poers
were known in Jobs time, because he
describes an actor Kissed off the stage.
The impersonator comes on the boards
and, either through lack of study Of
the part he is to take or happiness or
other incapacity, the audience is of
Tended, and expresses its disapproba-
ton and disgust by kissing. "Men
clap their hands at him and shall hiss
him out of his place"
Ny text suggests that each one OF
us is put on the stage Of this world to
take some part. What hardship and
suffering and discipline great actors
have undergone year after year that
they might be perfected in their parts.
you have often read. But we. nut on
the stage OF this life to represent
charity and faith and humility and
faith and helpfulness-what little prep
aration we have made, although we
have three galleries Of spectators.
earth and Heaven and hell! Have
we not been more attentive TO the
his a
taken oy ourselves, and, while we
needed TO be looking at home and con-
eentrating on our own duty, we have
been criticising the other performers.
and saying; THAT was too high" or
too low" or too tame" or "too
demohstratfve," while we ourselves
were making a dead failure and pre-
pairing to be ANONYMOUSLY Kissed off
the stage? Each one Is assigned a
place; no supernumeraries hanging
around the drama of life to take this
or that or the other part, as they NAV
be called upon. No one can take our
place. Neither can we put off our
character; no change of apparel can
make us anyone else than that which
we eternally are.
Many make failure of their part in
the drama of life through dissipation,
They have enough intellectual equip
ment and good address and genialitv
unbOunded. But they have a wine
closet that contains all the forces for
their social and business and moral
overthrow. So far back as the wear
p59 King Edgar of England made
law that the drinking cups should
have pins fastened at certain point
In the side, so that the indulger might
be reminded to stop before he got to
the bottom. But there are no pins
projecting from the side of the mod
ern wine cup or beer mug, and the
first point at which millions step il
at the gravelly bottom of their own
grave. DIR. Sax, of France, has
discovered something which all
drinkers ought to know. He has
found out that alcohol, in every shape,
whether of wine or brandy or beer.
contains parasitic life called bacillus
potumaniae. BY a powerful micro
scope these living things are discov.
cred, and when you take strong drink
you take them into the stomach and
into your blood, and getting into the
crimson canals of life, they 90 into
every tissue of your body, and your
entire organism is taken possession of |
by these noxious infinitesimals. When |
In delirium tremens a man sees every |
form of reptilian life, it seems it is |
only these parasites of the brain |
IN exaggerated size. 1t is not a
hallucination that the victim is
m far-ir1
room what is actually crawling and |
'ioting in his own brain. Every time |
you take strong drink you swallow |
these maggOts, and every time the i'm
oiber of alcohol in any shape feels |
vertigo or rheumatism or nausea it is |
Dnly the jubilee of these maggots. |
Efforts are being made for the dis |
,overy of some germicide that can
kill the parasites of alcoholism, but |
he only thing that will ever extir-
,ate them is abstinence from alcohol
md teetotal abstinence, to which I
would before God swear all these
Toung men and old.
America is a fruitful country. and we
aise large crops of wheat and corn
md oats, but the largest crop we raise
n this country is the crop of drunk
lrds. With sickle made out of the
harp edges of the broken glass of
bottles and demijohns they are cut
Town, and there are whole swathes of
hem, whole winrows of them, and it
axes all the hospitals and peniten-
iaries and graveyards and cemeteries
o hold this harvest of hell. Some of
Tou are going down under this evil.
md the never-dying worm of alcohol
SIN has wound around you one of its
oils, and by next New Years day it
will have another coil around you, and
will after awhile put q coil around
our tongue and coil ABOUND your
rain and coil around your lung
nd coil around your foot and a coil
round your heart and some day this
everything worm will with one spring
lghten all the coils at once, and in
he last twist of that awful convolu-
ion you will cry out: ''Oh, my Godr'
nd be gone. The greatest of drama
ist in the tragedy of The Tempest"
emit staggering across the stage
the drunken butler: but
cross the stage of human life strong
rink sends kingly and queenly and
rincely natures staggering forward
gainst the footlights of conspicuitv
nd then staggering back into failure
III the world is impatient for their
isappearance, and human and dia-
olic voices join in kissing them off
he stage
Many also make a failure in the
rama Of life through Incidence. They
re always making calculations how
n Aln 4 Il |