Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1897-06-05

times day. Many Of the most success
full merchants of America and men IN
high political places cannot write an
accurate letter On any theme. They are
completely dependent upon clerks, and
deputies, and stenographers, to make
things right. I knew literary man
who in other years in this city made
his fortune by writing speeches for con-
gressmen or fixing them up for The
Congressional Record after they were
delivered. The millionaire illiteracy of
this country is beyond measurement.
Ungrammatical, but Effective.
Now, suppose a man finds himself in
midlife without education, what is he
to do? Do the best he can. The most eff
fective iayman in a former pastoral
charge that ever heard speak on rell-
gious themes could within five min
utes of exhortation break all the laws
of English grammar, and if he left any
law unfractured he would complete the
work of lingual devastation III the
prayer with which he followed it. But
I would rather have him pray for me If
Iwere sick or in trouble than any Chris
tian man I know of, and in that church
all the people preferred him in exhorta-
ton and prayer to all others. Why? Be-
cause ho was SO thoroughly pious and
had such power with God be was ire
sistible, and as he went on in his pray
er sinners repented and saints shouted
for joy, and the bereaved seemed to get
back their dead in celestial companion
ship And when he had stopped praying
and as soon as could wipe out Of my
eyes enough tears to see the closing
hymn ended the meeting, fearful that
some long winded prayer meeting bore
would pull us down from the seventh
heaven.
Not word have to say against &C.
curacy of speech Or fine elecution or
high mental culture. Get all these you
can. But do say to those who were
brought up in the day of poor school
houses and ignorant schoolmasters and
10 opportunity: You may have so much
of good in your soul and so much of
heaven in your everyday life that you
will be mightier for good than any who
went through the curriculum of Har-
ward or Yale or Oxford, yet never grad
uated in the school of Christ. When you
get up to the gate of heaven, no one
will ask you whether you can parse the
first chapter of Genesis, but whether
you have learned the fear of the Lord,
which is the beginning of wisdom, nor
whether you know how to square the
circle, bat whether you have lived o
square life in round world. Mount
Zion is higher than Mount Parnassus.
But what other multitudes there are
under other disadvantages! Here is a
Christian woman whose husband thinks
religion q sham, and while the wife
prays the children one way the husband
swears them another. Or here is a
Christian man who is trying to do his
best for God and the church, and his
wife holds him back and says on the
way homo from prayer meeting, where
he gave testimony for Christ: "What a
fool you made of YOURSELF I hope here
after you will keep STILL. !" And when
he would be benevolent and give $50
she criticises him for not giving 90
cents. l must do justice and publicly
thank God that 1 never proposed at
home to give anything for any cause OF
humanity or religion but the other part
ner in the domestic firm approved it,
and when it seemed beyond my ability
and faith in God was necessary she had
three fourths the faith. But I know
men who, when they contribute to char
liable objects, are afraid that the wife
shall find it out What a whitening
curse such q woman must be to good
man!
Then there are others under the great
disadvantage Of poverty. Who ought to
get things cheapest? You say those who
have little means. But they pay more.
You buy coal by the ton; they buy it by
the bucket. You buy flour by the bar
rel; they buy it by the pound You get
apparel cheap because you pay cash
they pay dear because they have to get
trusted. And the Bible was right when
it said, "The destruction of the poor is
their poverty
Mistakes In Early Life.
Then, there are those who made a
mistake in early life, and that over
shadows all their days. "Do you not
know that that man was once in pris-
on?' is whispered. Or, "Do you know
that that man once attempted suicide"'
Or, "Do you know that that man once
absconded?" Or, "Do you know that
that man was once discharged for dis
honestly" Perhaps there was only one
wrong deed in the mans life, and that
one act haunts the subsequent half GEN.
fury of his existence.
Others have unfortunate predoml-
nance of some mental faculty. and their