The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1898-06-22

per with anything that is dangerous
and polluting? Why stop our ears to
heaven full of songsters to listen to
the hiss of dragon? Why turn back /
from the mountain side all abloom
with wild flowers and adash with the !
nimble torrents, and with blistered |!
feet attempt to climb the hot sides of
CotopaXi?
Now, all opera houses, theaters,
bowling alleys, skating Kinks, and all
styles of amusement, good and bad, l
put on trial today and judge of them
by certain cardinal principles. First,
you may judge of any amusement by
its healthful result or by its baneful
reaction. There are people who seem
made up of hard facts. They are a
combination of multiplication tables
and statistics. If you show them an ex-
quisite picture they will begin to dis
cuss the pigments involved in the col
oring; if you show them beautiful
rose they will submit it to botanical
analysis, which is only the post-mor-
TEN examination of a flower. They
never do anything more than feeblE
smile. There are no great tides OF
feeling surging up from the depth of
their soul in billow after billow of re
verating 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 a song, an anthem,
paean of victory.
Now, it is these eXhilarant and SYM
pathetic and warm-hearted people that
are most tempted to a pernicious
amusement. In proportion as ship is
swift it wants a strong helmsman; in
proportion as horse is gay it wants
a strong driver; and these people of
eXuberant nature will do well to look
at the reaction of all their amuse-
ments. If 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 sium-
bers, you have been where you ought
not. to have been. There are amuse-
ments that send man next day to his
work blood-shot, yawning, stupid,
nauseated, and they are wrong kinds
of amusements. There are entertain
ments that give a man disgust with
the drudgery of life, with tools be-
cause they are not swords, with work.
ing aprons because they are not robes,
with cattle because they are no. m
furiated bulls of the arena. If any
amusement sends you home longing
for life of romance and thrilling adj
venture, love that, takes poison and
shoots itself, moonlight adventures
and hair-breadth escapes, you may de-
pend upon it that you are the sacri-
feed victim of unsanctified pleasure.
Still further: Those amusements
are wrong which lead into expendi-
lures beyond your means. Money
spent in recreation is not thrown
away. 1t is ull folly for us to come
from place of amusement feeling
that we have wasted our money and
! time. You may by it have made an in
vestment worth more than the trans
action that yielded you hundred OF
thousand dollars. But how many
properties have been riddled by costly
amusements? The table has bcen
robbed to pay the club. The cham.
pagne has cheated the childrens ward
robe. The carousing party has burned
|, up the boys primer. The table ciotl
of the corner saloon is in debt TO The
wife's faded dress. Excursions that in
a day make a tour around whole
months wages; ladies whose lifetime
business is to ''go shopping" have
their counterpart in uneducated child
ren, bankruptcies that shock the
money market and appall the church
and that send drunkenness staggering
across the richly figured carpet of the
) mansion an dashing out the carol oI
music with the whooping of bloatet
sons come home to break their Ole
l mothers heart. When men go intt
amusements that they cannot afford
they first borrow what they canno
earn, and then they steal what they
cannot borrow. First they go int
D embarrassment and then into theft
and when man gets as far on as tha
: he does not stop short of the peniten
: tiary. There is not prison in til,
i land where there are not victims o
: unsanctified amusements.
I You may judge of amusements b.
4 their effects upon physical health. TIL,
o need of many good people is physica
I recuperation. There are Christian
S men who write hard things agains
!, their immortal souls when there il
c nothing the matter with them eXcep
n an incompetent liver. There are Chris
d tian people who seem to think it is
e good sign to be poorly, and becaus
: Richard Baxter and Robert Hall wer
S invalids they think that by the sam
), sickness they may come to the sam
:, grandeur of character. / want to te!
Christian people that God will holC
n you responsible for your invalidism i
l. it is your own fault, and when through
S right exercise and prudence you nigh
r be athletic and well. The effect o
o the body upon the soul you acknowl
l. edge. Put a man of mild disposition
o upon animal diet of which the India
IL partakes, and in little time his bloo
# will change its chepical proportions
o 1t will become like unto the blood u
r the lion or the tiger or the bear, whit
d his disposition will change and becom
a fierce, cruel and unrelenting. The bod
r has a powerful effect upon the sou
d There are people whose ideas @
t. Heaven are all shut out with clouds @
'e tobacco smoke. There are people VIII
" dare to shatter the physical vase i
'e which God put the jewel of eternity
% There are men with great hearts an
l. intellects in bodies worn out by thei
n own neglect. Magnificent machncr
a capable of propelling a great Etruri
ID across the Atlantic, yet fastened in
n rickety North River propeller. Phys
ID cal development which merely show