The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1897-08-20

1 =
- 1~AEAS OK thinks he is GO
| REV. TALMAGE' ing on to rich pas
ture field of clover where all day long
he will revel in the herbaceous lux
uriance; but after awhile the men and
the boys close in upon him with sticks
and stones and shouting, and drive
him through bars and into a doorway,
where he is fastened, and with a we'll
aimed stroke the ak fells him. So
many a young man has been driven on
by temptation by what he thought
would be paradisiacal enjoyment; but
after awhile influences with darker
hue and swarthier arm close in upon
him, and he finds that instead OF max
ing an excursion into garden, he has
been driven las an OK to the slaughter"
We are apt to blame young men for
being destroyed when we ought to
blame the influences that destroy
them. Society slaughters a great
many young men by the behest: You
must keep up appearances; whatever
be your salary, you must dress as well
as others, you must give wine and
brandy to as many friends, you must
smoke as costly cigars, you must give
as expensive entertainments, and you
must live in a fashionable boarding
house. If you can't barrow, make
false entry, or subtract here and there
a bill from a bundle of bank bills; you
will only have to make the deception
a little while; in few months, or in a
year or two, you can make all right.
Nobody will be hurt by it, nobody will
be the wiser. You yourself will not be
damaged" By that awful process a
hundred thousand men have been
slaughtered for time sand slaughtered
. for eternity.
Suppose you borrow. There is moth
ing wrong about borrowing money.
There is hardly a man who has not
sometimes borrowed money. Vast es-
tates have been built on a borrowed
!, dollar. But there are two kinds of
, borrowed money: Money borrowed
: for the purpose of starting or keeping
up legitimate enterprise and expense,
and money borrowed to get that which
you can do without. The first is right,
= the other is wrong. If you have
money enough of your own to buy a
coat, however plain, and then you bor-
row money for a dandy's outfit, you
have taken the first revolution of the
, wheel down grade. Borrow for the
necessities; that may be well. Borrow
I for the luxuries; that tips your pros
. poets over in the wrong direction.
! The trouble is, my friends, that peO-
pie do not understand the ethics of
going in debt, and that if you pur-
: chase goods with no expectation OF
t paving for them, or go into debts
3 which you cannot meet, you steal just
c so much money. If 1 go into gro
GERS store and buy sugars and COT
2 fees and meats with no capacity to pay
2 for them, and no intention of paying
? for them, am no more dishonest than
3 if I 90 into the store and when the
r grocer's face is turned the other way l
: FILL nv pockets with the articles OF
4 merchandise and carry off ham! In
the one case l take the merchants
: time. and take the time of his mes
s senger to transfer the goods to my
= house. while in the other case l take
, none of the time of the merchant, and
D l wait upon myself, and l transfer the
4 goods without any trouble to him! In
q other words, a sneak thief is not SO
L bad as a man who contracts debts he
never expects to pay.
> Yet, in all our cities there are fami-
: lies who move every May-day to get
into proximity to other grocers and
meat shops and apothecaries. They
owe everybody within half mile OF
where they now live, and next May
> thev will move into distant part OF
!. the city, finding a new lot of victims.
Meanwhile YOU, the honest family IN
:, the new house, are bothered day by
= day by the knocking at the door of dis
appointed bakers and butchers, and
/, drv goods dealers, and newspaper
. carriers, and you are asked where your
Z predecessor is. You do not know. II
was arranged you should not know
: Meanwhile, your predecessor has gone
e to some distant part of the city, anc
/. the people who have anything to sci
- have sent their wagons and stopped
4 there to solicit the valuable" custom
d of the new neighbor, and he, the new
neighbor, with great complacency anC
d an air of affiuence, orders the fines
| steaks anu TIC lAS lACSb- PAAOSo SN5 - -
, and the best of the canned fruits, anC
+ perhaps all the newspapers
No wonder that so many of our mer
L chants fail in business. They arr
. swindled into bankruptcy by thes'
{ wandering Arabs, these nomads o
city life They cheat the grocer GU
. of the green apples which make then
sick, the physician who attends then
during their distress, and the under
taker who fits them out for departur'
u from the neighborhood where the!
= = owe everybody when they pay tn
debt of nature, the only debt they eve
D do pay.
! Now our young men are coming n
in this depraved state OF commercial
ethics, and l am solieitOus about them
l want to warn them against beinI
= slaughtered on the sharp edges o
= debt. You want many things yo'
q have not, my young friends Ho'
a shall have them # you have patienc
'E.ar