Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1898-01-29

Luu Styles Oh lGeTaIure JUST as CuuruuluS
that will elevate and purify and ennoble
and Christianize while they please. The
devil does not own all the honey. There
is a wealth of good books coming forth
from our publishing houses that leave
no excuse for the choice of that which
is debauching to body, mind and soul.
! Go to some intelligent man or woman
and ask for IL list of books That will be
strengthening to your mental and moral
condition.
> Life is so short and your time for inn
provement so abbreviated that you call
not afford to fill up with huslis and Gin
ders and debris In the interstices of
business that young man is reading that
which will prepare him to BIZ mer
chant prince, and that young woman is
filling her mind with an intelligence
that will yet either make her the chief
attraction Of q good mans home or give
her an independence of character that
will qualify her to build her own home
and maintain it in happiness that re-
quires no augmentation from any of our
rougher SEX That young man or young
woman can by the right literary aud
moral improvement of the spare ten
minutes here or there every day rise
head and shoulders i'll prosperity and
character and influence above tho lonn-
gers who read nothing or read that
which bedwarfs. See all the forests of
good American literature dripping with
honey Why pick up the honeycombs
; that have in them the fiery bees which
will sting you with an eternal poison
while you taste it? One book may for
you or me decide everything for this
word and the next. 1t was a turning
point with me when in bookstore in
Syracuse one day l picked up book
called 1.-The Beauties of Ruskin. - 1t
was only book of extracts, but it was
all pure honey. and I was not satisfied
until 1 had purchased all his works, at
that time expensive beyond an easy ca
pacity to own them. and with what de-
light l went through reading his ''Sev-
en- Lamps Of Architecture" and his
"Stones of Venice" it is impossible for
me to describe except by saying that it
gave me rapture for good books and
an everlasting disgust for decrepit or
immoral books that will last ME while
my life lasts. All around the church
and the world today there are busy hives
of intelligence occupied by authors and
authoresses from whose pens drip dis
tillation which is the very nectar Of
heaven, and why will you thrust your
rod of inquisitiveness into the beautiful
saccharine of perdition?
Beware of Strong Drink.
Stimulating liquids also come into
the category of temptation delicious but
beautiful. You say, 81 cannot bear the
taste of Intoxicating liquor, and how
ally man can like it is to me an amaze
mcnt Well, then, it is no credit to
you that you DO not take it. Do not braS
about yorr total abstinence, because it
is not from any principle that you re-
ject alcoholism, but for the reason that
you reject certain styles of food; you
simply don't like the taste of them.
But multitudes of people have natural
fondness for all kinds of intoXicants.
They like it so much that it makes
them smack their lips to look at it.
They are dyspeptic, and they like to aid
digestion; or they are annoyed by in
somnia, and they take it to produce
sleep; or they are troubled, and they
take it to make them oblivious; or they
feel happy, and they must celebrate
their hilarity. They begin with mint
julep sucked through two straws on the
Long Branch piazza and end in the
ditch, taking from a jug liquid half
kerosene and half whisky. They not
only like it, but it is an all consuming
passion of body, mind and soul, and aft.
er awhile have it they will, though one
wineglass of it should cost the temporal
and eternal destruction of themselves
and all their families and the whole hui
man race They would say, II am sorry
it is going to cost me and my family
and all the worlds population so very
much but here it goes to my lips, and
now let it roll over my parched tongue
and down my heated throat, the sweet
est, the most inspiring, the most dell
cious draft that ever thrilled q human
frame" To cure the habit before it
comes to its last stages, various plans
were tried in olden times. This plan
was recommended in the books: When
man wanted to reform, he put shot or
bullets into the cup or glass of strong
drink-one additional SHOT or bullet
each day, that displaced so much liquor.
Bullet after bullet added day by day, of
course the liquor became less and less
until the bullets would entirely fill up
the glass and there was no room for the
liquid, and by that time it was said the
inebriate would be cured. Whether any
one ever was cured in that way | know
not, but by long experiment it is found
that the only way is to stop short off,
Ind when man does that he needs God
to help him, and there have been more
cases than you can count when God has
so helped the man that he left off the
drink forever, ard could count score
of them, seine of them pillars in the
house of God.
Moral Death.
One would suppose that men would
take warning from some of the ominous
names given to the intoxicants and
stand of from tie devastating influ-
ence. YIN L:,e ncticed, for Instance,
that some # lie restaurants ere called
"Thc Shades, typical Of the tact that
it puts man s reputation ID the shade
and lis morals in the shade, and his
prosperity in the shace. and his wife
and children in the Shade, and bis I'M
ostal destiny in tbs shade Now.
find on some of the liquor signs in all
our cities the words "Old Grow, y
nightly suggestive of the carcass and
the filthy raven that swoops upon 1t.