Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-06-20


was connected. Who is this black angel
that yoa call religion-wing black,
feet black, feathers black? Our religion
is a bright angel-feet bright. eyes
bright, wings bright-taking her place
in the soul. She pulls rope that
reaches to the skies and sets all the
bells of heaven a-chiming. There are
some persons who, when talking to a
minister, always feel it polite to look
lugubrious. Go forth, o people, to
your lawful amusement! God means
you to be happy. But when there are SO
many sources of innocent pleasure, why
tamper with anything that is dangerous
and polluting? Why stop our ears to a
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, I put on
trial today and judge of them by Ger
tain cardinal principles. First, you
may judge of any amusement by it's
ton There are people who seem made
up of hard facts. They are a combina-
ton of multiplication tables and Stats
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 q botanical analysis, which
is only the post norton examination of
a 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 bungling job out
of it. But, blessed be God, there are
people in the world who have bright
faces and whose life is song, an an
them, q p9an 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
that are most tempted to pernicious
amusements. In proportion as a ship is
swift it wants a strong helmsman; in
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 all their amusements Il
an amusement sends you home at night
nervous so you cannot Sleep and you
rise in the morning, not because you
are 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
a man next day to his work bloodshot,
yawning, stupid, nauseated and they
are wrong kinds of amusements. There
are entertainments that give a 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
Infatuated bulls of the arena. If any
amusement sends you home longing for
a life Of romance and thrilling adven-
ture, love that takes poison and shoots
itself, moonlight adventures and hair
breadth escapes, you may depend upon
unsanctified 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 obnox-
ious.
Still further, those amusements are |
wrong which lead into expenditure be- |
yOnd your means. Money spent in recre- |
alton is not thrown away. tits all folly
for US to come from a place of amuse- |
ment feeling that we have wasted our
money and time You may by it have |
made an investment worth more than |
the transaction that yielded you 500 |
or $1,000. But how many properties
have been riddled by costly amuse-
ments? The table has been robbed to
pay the club. The champagne has
cheated the children's wardrobe. The I
carousing party has burned up the boys |
primer. The tablecloth of the corner
saloon is in debt to the wife's faded |
dress-excursions that in day make
tour around a. whole months wages
ladies whose lifetime business it is to
Ego shopping" have their counterpart
in uneducated children, bankruptcies
that shock the money market and appall
the church and that send drunkenness
across the richly figured car
pet of the mansion and dashing into the
mirror and drowning out the carol of
music with the whooping of bloated
sons come home to break their old
mothers heart. When men go into
that they cannot afford,
they first borrow what they cannot
earn, and then they steal what they
borrow. First they go into en-
barrassment and then into theft, and
when a man gets as far ON as that he