The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-11-03

ter taste and higher morals. He COR
rectly states that more youth of the
attend the state fair than are
gathered at any point in the year. He
writes and f~orcefully:
Every school boy and every school
girl in this state who can possibly do
so. come to the state fair every year.
Trinity, the University, Davidson, Gull
ford, Wake Forest, the Agricultural and
Mechanical college, Elon college, Bing-
hams, Horner's and numerous other
schools for young men, are represented
here, and | want to ask of every reason
able and thoughtful man if ii is a wise
policy to place before the mind of the
youth of North Carolina, in their for
native period, in the minds of those
who are preparing themselves to take
your places in the ranks of the army
of citizenship of our dear old state after
you are gone, a sentiment that is in
the a degrading, a sentiment which
is a disease germ of immortality which
will multiply as this grand old state
gradually changes from the peaceful,
quiet and conservative paths of our
fathers into the restless, lmpulsive,
discontendted ways of a manufactur-
ing state? Is it right to place before
the eyes of the Womanhood of North
Carolina, at q place where more of
them ear be reached than any other
place in the state at any one time, rep
resentatives Of St. Mary's, Peace. the
Baptist Female University, Littleton
Female College, LOuisburg Female Col
lege, and the numerous colleges aud
schools Of our state scenes so immoral
as to shock their delicate sensibilities,
so low, SO vile, and so pregnant with
obsceniry and vulgarity as to make
them blush with shame as they pass
on their way from the floral hall to the
grand stand?"
There can be but one answer among
reflective, moral, benevolent, philan-
thropic people to these questions. If
you corrupt the fountains the streams
must be impure. If you familiarize the
young with vice you open the way for
immOra practice. If good citizenship
depends much on proper education Of
mind and heart, how much more good
morals, pure life, faithful duty depend
upon keeping the minds of the young
uncontaminated, and their tastes far
in advance of the prevailing tastes of
the obscene, the corrupt, the impure.
You nay rely upon it that, vice stings
us even in our pleasures" and as
Juvenile said long ago mo man ever ~
rived suddenly at the summit of vice"
Thousands know Alexander Pope's
very famous lines. They were true in
the last century and are true now, and
will be forever true:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
AS to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then en-
brace"
But the greatest of all poets has a
more powerful statement of how vice
hardens, deadens, degrades. 1t fits so
well our purpose, although it is not the
fashion" in latter-day journalism to
quote from the greatest class of writer's
the immortal pOets-we take leave
to copy some other lines of verse.
Shakespeare says most profoundly:
But when we in our viciousness grow
hard
Oh misery ont the wise gods seal our
eyes;
In our own filth drop our dear judg-
ments;
Adore our errors; laugh at US while we
strut
To our confusion"