Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1898-06-25

! and polluting? Why stop our cars to
heaven full of songsters to listen to the
hiss of dragon? Why turn back from
the mountain side, all a-bloom with wild
/. flowers and a-dash with the nimble tor
rents, and with blistered feet attempt
to climb the hot sides of Cotopaxi?
Now, all opera houses, theaters, bowl
ing alleys, skating Kinks and all styles
of amusement, good and bad, put on
trial today and judge Of them by Ger
tain cardinal principles. First, you
may judge of any amusement by its
hcalthful result or by its baneful reac-
ton. There are people who seem made
up of hard facts They are combina-
ton of multiplication tables and statis-
tics. If You show them an exquisite pic
ture. they will begin to discuss the pig
ments involved in the coloring; if you
show them a beautiful rose, they will
submit it to a botanical analysis, which
is only the post mortem examination Of
flower. They never do anything more
than feebly smile. There are no great
tides of feeling surging up from the
depth of their soul in billow after bill
low of reverberating laughter. They
seem as if nature had built them by
contract and made a bungling job out
of it. But, blessed be God, there are
people in the world who have bright
faces and whose life is a song an an
them, Il pecan of victory Even their
troubles are like the vines that crawl
up the side of a great tower on the
top of which the sunlight sits and
the soft airs of summer hold perpetual
carnival They are the people you like
to have come to your house; they are
the people like to have come to my
house. Now it is these exhilarant and
sympathetic and warm hearted people
that are most tempted to pernicious
amusements. In proportion as a ship is
swift it wants Il strong helmsman; ID
proportion as horse is gay it wants q
strong driver, and these people Of ex-
uberant nature will do well to look at
the reaction of'2ll their amusements. If
an amusement sends you home.at night
ucINOuS ~ Ou NttIIipu oiSCPJ eeANt yDs'
rise in the morning, not because you
nrc slept out, but because your duty
drags you from your slumbers, you
have been where you ought not to have
been. There are amusements that send
man next day to his work bloodshot,
yawning, stupid. nauseatcd and they
are wrong kinds of amusementS. There
are entertainments that give man dis
gust with the drudgery of life, with
tools BECAUSE they are not swords, with
working aprons because they are not
robes, with cattle because they are not
infuriated bulls of the arena. If any
amusement sends you home longing for
life of romance and thrilling adycn-
ture. love that takes poison and shoots
itself, moonlight adventures and hair
breadiii escapes yon may depend upon
it that you IRE the sacrificed victim of
unsauutiiicd pleasure. Our recreations
are intended to build us up, and if they
pull us DOM rs to our moral or as
to or physical strength, you may come
to the conclusion that they are obnox-
ious
Still further, those amusements are
wrong which lead into expenditure be-
yond your means Money spent i'll recre-
nticn is not thrown away 1t lis all folly
fer Us to come from IL place of amuse-
mcnt feeling that we have wasted cur
money ard time. You may by it haze
made an investment worth more than
the transaction that yielded you 500
or $1,000. But how many properties
have been ritdled by costly amuse-
mcnts? The table has leen robbed to
pay the club The champagne has
cheated the children's wardrobe. The
carousing party has burned up the boy
primer. The tablecloth of the corner
saloon is in debt to the wife's faded
6ress-excursions that in q day make a
tour around whole months wages !;
ladies whose lifetime business it is to
"go shopping" have their counterpart
in uneducated children, bankruptcies
that shock the money market and appall
the church and that send drunkenness
staggering across the richly figured car
pet of the mansion and dashing into tho
mirror and drowning out the carol OF
music with the whcoping of bloated
sons como home to break their old
mothers heart When men go into
amusements that they cannot afford,
they first borrow what they cannot
earn, and then they steal what they
cannot borrow First they go into en-
barrass,nent and then into theft, and
when man gets as far on as that he
does not stop short of the pcnltentlary.
There is not prison in the land where
there are not victims of unsanctificd
auusements. How often | have had
parents come to me and ask me to go
and beg their boy off from the conse-
ouence of crimes that he had committed
against his employer-tho taking OF
! funds out of the employers till or the
disarrangelaent of the accounts. Why,
he had salary enough to pay all lawful
expenditure, but not enough salary to
meet his sinful amusements. And again
and again i have gone and ilnplored for
the young mal-sometimes, alas, tho
petition ullavailing
How brightly the path of unrestraln-
ed amusement opens The young man
says: Now | am off for good time.
Never mind economy III get money
somehow What {; fine road What a
beautiful day for ride! Crack the
whip, and over the turnpike Come,
boys, ill high Jour glasses Drink!
Long life, health, plenty of rides just
like tEis!" handwriting men hear the
clattcr of the hoofs and lock up and say
"Why, wonder where those fellows
get their money from. We have to toll
and drudge They do nothing" To
these gay men life is thrill and an ex-
citement. They stare at other people
and in turn are stared at. The watch
chain jingles. The cup foams. The
cheeks flush. The eyes flash. The mid
night hears their guffaw. They swag-
ger. They jostle decent men off the side
walk. They take the name Of God in
vain. They parody the hymn they
learned at their mothers knee, and to
all pictures of coming disaster they cry