St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1898-07-23

combination of multiplication tables
and statistics. If you show them an
exquisite picture they will begin to
discuss the pigments involved in the
coloring; if you show them beautiful
rose, they will submit 1t to q botanical
analysis, which is only the post-mortem
examination of q hower. 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 billow of reverber-
ating laughter. They seem Us If ma
ture had built them by contract and
made a bungling job out of it. But,
blessed be to God, there are people in
the world who have bright faces and
whose life is a song, an anthem, q
paean 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 the summer hold perpetual
carnival They are the people you
like to come to your house; they are
the people like to have come to my
nouse. Now it is these exhilarant
and sympathetic and warm-hearted
people that are most tempted to
pernicious amusements. In proportion
as ship is swift it wants a strong
helmsman; in proportion as horse is
gay it wants strong driver; and these
people of exuberant nature will do
well to look at the reaction Of all their
amusements- If an amusement sends
you home at night nervous SO you can
not sleep and you rise in the morning.
not because you =; .~ps out,
but bec-> your duty drags
~sfrom your slumbers, you
have been where you ought not
to have been. There are amuse-
ments that send q man next day to
his work bloodshot, yawning, stupid,
nauseated, and they are wrong
kinds of amusements. There
are entertainments that give
. man disgust with the drudgery Of
life, with tools because they are not
swords, with working aprons because
they are not robes, with cattle be-
cause they are not Infatuated bulls of
the arena. II any amusement sends
you home longing for life Of romance
and thrilling adventure, love that
takes poison and shoots itself, moon
light adventures and hairbreadth es-
capes, you may depend upon it that
you are the sacrificed victim Of un-
sanctified pleasure. Our recreations
are intended to build us up, and If they
pull us down as to our moral or as to
Our physical strength, you may come
to the conclusion that they are OBJ
noxious.
Still further: Those amusements are
wrong which lead into expenditure be-
yond your means Money spent in
recreation is not thrown away. 1t is
all folly for us to come from q place of
amusement feeling that we have wasted
our money and time. You may by it
have made an investment worth more
than the transaction which yielded
you hundred or a thousand dollars.
But how many properties have been
riddled by costly amusements? The
table has been robbed to pay the club.
The champagne has cheated the
children's wardrobe. The carousing
party has burned up the boys primer.
The table-cloth Of the corner sa-
loon is in debt TO the wife's faded
dress. Excursions that in day make
q tour around a whole months wages;
ladies whose lifetime bushes it is to
Ego shopping" have their counterpart
in uneducated children, bankruptcies
that shock the money market and ap-
pail the church, and that send drunk
enness staggering across the richly
figured carpet of the mansion and
dashing into the mirror, and drowning
out the carol of music with the whoop-
ing of bloated sons come home to break
their old mothers heart. When men
60 into amusements that they can
not afford, they first borrow what
they can not earn. and then they
steal what they can not borrow.
First they go into embarrassment
and then into theft, and when q man
gets rs far as that he does not stop
short of the penitentiary. There is
not prison in the land where there
are not victims of unsanctified amuse-
ments. How often have had parents
come to me and ssk me to 60 and beg
their boy of from the consequence of
crimes that he had committed against
his employer-the taking of funds out
of the employers till or the disarrange-
ment of the accounts! Why, he had
salary enough to pay all lawful ex-
meet his sinful amusements And
again and again have gone and inn
plored for the young man-sometimes,
alas, the petition unavailing.
You may judge of amusements by
their effect upon physical health. The
need of many good people is physical
recuperation. There are Chritiam men
who write hard things against their
immortal souls when there is nothing
the matter with them but an incoms
petent liver. There are Christian peo-
pie who seem to think that it is good
sign to be poorly, and because Richard
Baxter and Robert Hall were invalids
they think that by the same sick ness
they may come to the same grandeur
of character. want to tell Christian
deople that God will hold you re-
sponsible for your invalidism if it is
your own fault, and when through
right exercise and prudence you might
be athletic and well. The effect of the
body upon the soul you acknowledge.
Put a man of mild disposition upon the
animal diet of which the Indian par
takes, and in : little while his blood
will change its chemical proportions.
1t will become like unto the blood OF
the lion, or the tiger, or the bear, while
his disposition will change and be-
come fierce, cruel and unrelenting.
The body has powerful effect upon
the soul There are people whose
ideas of Heaven are all shut out with
clouds of tobacco smoke. There
are people who dare to shatter the
physical vase In which God put the
jewel Of eternity. There are men with
great hearts and intellects in bodies
worn out by their own neglects. Mag
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