Connecticut western news., 1897-08-19
A TALK TO YOUNG MEN
DR. TAlMAGE ON THE EVILS OF GOING
 IN DEBT.


 ing Up pAppearances-Te of City Life-Dangers of the Wine Cup-Christ the Friend of Struggling Humanity.
 NEW YORK, Aug. 15.-Dr. Talmage in his sermon for today shows how run ming into hopeless debts and skeptioism have undone young men in town and country. The text is Proverbs vii, 22, ''As an OK to the slaughter.
 There is nothing in the voice or man. ner of the butcher to indicate to the OK that thero is death ahead. The OK thinks he is going on to rich pasture field of clover where all day long he will revel in the herb.ceous luxuriance. 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 doorway, where he is fas- tened, and with we'll aimed stroke the ax fells him, and so the anticipation of the redolent pasture field is completely disappointed. So many young man has been driven on by temptation to what he thought would be paradisiaoal enjoyment, but after awhile influences with darker hue and swarthier arm close in upon him, and he finds that in- stead of making an excursion into a garden he has been driven "as an OK to the slaughter"
 Society to Blame.
 We are apt to blame young men for. being destroyed when we.y co xt6 blame the influences that d1dy 1is. s Society slau1neotf . lx@ (syytp2 men by the bo<st; s 91 sSSSk .kssp ID appearances. or bssyour salary, you must drad1 ns we'll as others, you ulnst give wine and brandy to as many friends, you must smoke as costly cigars, you must give as expensive entertain ments and you must live in as fashion able boarding house. If you haven't the money, borrow. If you can't bor- row, make false entry or subtract here and there bill from bundle of bank bills. You will only have to make the deception a little while. In few months or in year or two you can make all right. Nobody will be hurt by it, nobody will be the wiser. You your self will not be damaged. By that aw- ful process 100, 900 men have been slaughtered for time and slaughtered for eternity.
 Suppose yea borrow. There is noth ing wrong about borrowing money. There is hardly man who has not sometimes borrowed money. Vast es- tates have been built on borrowed dollar. But there are two kinds of bor- rowed money. money borrowed for the purpose of starting or keeping up legiti- mate 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 coat, however plain, and then you borrow money for dan- dy's outfit, you have taken the first rev. olution of the wheel down grade. Bor- row for the necessities; that may be well. Borrow for the luxuries; that tips your prospects over in the wrong direction.
 The Bible distinctly says the borrow CT is servant of the lender. It is bad state of things when you have to go down some other street to escape meet ing some one whom you owe. If young men knew what is the despotism of be- ing in debt, more of them would keep out of it. What did debt do for Lord Bacon, with mind towering above the centuries? It induced him to take bribes and convict himself as a criminal be- fore all ages. What did debt do for Walter Scott, broken hearted at Abbots- ford? Kept him writing until his hand gave out in paralysis to keep the sheriff away from his pictures and statuary Better for him if he had minded the maxim which he had chiseled over the fireplace at Abbotsford, Waste not, want not. :"
 Going In Debt.
 The trouble is, my friends, that peo- pie do not understand the ethics of go- ing in debt, and that if you purchase goods with no expectation of paying for them. or go into debts which you can- not meet, you steal just so much money. If go into a grocer's store and I buy sugars and coffees and meats with nc capacity to pay for them, and no inten- tion of paying for them, am more dis honest than if I go into the store, and when tho grocer's face is turned the other way l fill my pockets with the articles of merchandise and carry off g ham. In the one case take the mer- chants time, and take the time of his messenger to transfer the goods to my house, while in the other case I take none of the time of the merchan an6 wait upon myself, and I transfer the goods without any trouble to him. II other words, sneak thief is not so baG as man who contracts debts he never expects to pay.
 Yet in all our cities there are fami lies who move every May day to ge into proximity to other grocers ano meatshops and apothecaries They ow, everybody within half a mile of wher, they now live, and next May they vii move into distant part of the city finding a new lot of victims. Mean while you, the honest family in the nev house, are bothered day by day by tn knocking at the door of disappointed bakers and butchers and dry goods deal CTS and newspaper carriers, and you ar asked where your predecessor is Yol do not know. It was arranged yo1 should not know. Meanwhile you predecessor has gone to some distan part of the city, and the people wh have anything to sell have sent thei wagons and stopped there to solicit tn "valuable" custom of the new neigh bor, and he, the new neighbor, wit great complacency and an air of affiu ence, orders the finest steaks and tn highest priced sugars and the best c the canned fruits and perhaps all tn newspapers. And the debts will kee on accommodating until he gets his good on the 80th of next April in the furni ture cart.
 No wonder that so many of our mer chants fail in business. They are swin dled into bankruptcy by these wander ing Arabs, these nomads of city life They cheat the grocer out of the gree apples which make them sick, the phy aician who attends them durinp thpi