Connecticut western news., 1899-10-19


 suing Hounds of Trouble and Safe
 and Rescue.
 Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1s9eI
 WAsHINGToN, Oct. 15.-The gospel as a great refreshment Is here set forth by Dr.. Talmage, under figure which will be found particularly graphic by those who have gone out as hunters to find game In the mountains; text, Psalm Xiii, 1, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks"
 David, who must some time have seen a deer hunt, points us here to a hunted stag making for the water. The fascinating animal, called in my text the hart Is the same animal that in sacred and profane literature Is call ed the stag, the roebuck, the hind, the gazelle, the reindeer. In central Syria in Bible times there were whole pas lure fields of them, as Solomon sug- gests when he says, "I charge you by the minds of the field" Their antlers jutted from the long grass as they lay down. No hunter who has been long In John Browns tract" will wonder that In the Bible they were classed among clean animals, for the dews, the showers, the lakes, washed them as clean as the sky. When Isaac, the patriarch, longed for venison, Esau shot and brought home a roebuck. Isaiah compares the sprightliness of the restored cripple of millennial times to the long and quick jump of the stng, saying, "The lame shall leap as the hart" Solomon expressed his disgust at hunter who, having shot deer, is too lazy to cook 1t, saying, ''The soth- full man roasteth not that which he took in hunting" m
 But one day David, while far from the home from which he had been driven and sitting near the mouth of lonely cave where he had lodged and on the banks of a pond or river, hears a pack of hounds in swift pursuit, Be cause of the previous silence of the for est the clangor startles him, and ne says to himself, 'I wonder what those dogs are afteE" Then there Is cracking in the brushwood and the loud breathing of some rushing won- der of the woods, and the antlers of deer rend the leaves of the thicket, and by an instinct which all hunters recognize it plunges into pond or lake or river to cool It's thirst and at the same time, by its capacity for swifter and longer swimming, to get away from the foaming harriers.
 True to Nature.
 David says to himself: Aha! That Is myself! Saul after me, Absalom after me, enemies without number aft CT me. I am chased, their bloody muz- zles at my heels, barking at my good name, barking after my body, barking after my soul. Oh, the hounds, the houndsi But look therep' says David. @That hunted deer has splashed into the water. 1t puts it's hot lips and nostrAs into the cool wave that washes the lathered Hanks, and it swims away from the fiery canines, and it Is Tree at last. Oh, that might find in the deep, wide lake of Gods mercy and consola- ton escape from my pursuers! Oh, for the waters of life and rescue! AS the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, o Godr'
 Some of you have just come from the Adirondacks, and the breath of the balsam and spruce and pine Is still on you The Adirondacks are now pOpulous with hunters, and the deer are being slain by the score. Once while there talking with a hunter I thought would like to see whether my text was accurate in its allusion, and as heard the dogs baying a little way of and supposed they were on the track of deer said to the hunter in rough corduroy, Do the deer al ways make for the water when they are pursuedY He said: "Oh, yes, mis- ter! You see, they are a hot and thirsty animal, and they know where the wa ter is, and when they hear danger in the distance they lift their antlers and snuff the breeze and start for Racquet or Loon or Saranac, and we get into our cedar shell boat or stand by the runway with rife loaded ready to blaze away"
 My friends, that Is one reason why I like the Bible so much. Its allusions are so true to nature. Its cartridges are real cartridges, its ostriches real Ostriches and Its reindeer real reindeer. I do not wonder that this antlered glory of the text makes the hunters eye sparkle and his cheek glow and his respiration quicken, to say nothing of it's usefulness, although 1t is the most useful of all game, Its flesh delicious, it's skin turned inta human apparel, it's sinews fashioned into bow strings, its antiers putting handles on cutlery and the shavings of it's horns used as a re- storatfve, its name taken from the hart and called hartshorn. By putting aside its usefulness this enchanting creature seems made out of gracefulness and elasticity. What an eye, with liquid brightness as if gathered up from a hundred lakes at sunset! The horns a coronal branching into every possible curve, and, after 1t seems done, ascend ing into other projections of exquisite ness, tree of polished bone, uplifted in pride or swung down for awful combat! It is velocity embodied, ti- midity impersonated. the enchantment of the woods, eye lustrous in life and pathetic in death, the splendid animal a complete rhythm of muscle and bone and color and attitude and Iocomotion, whether couched in the grass among the shadows or a living bolt shot through the forest or turning at bay to attack the hounds or rearing for its last fall under the buckshot of the trapper.
 IL Is splendid appearance, that the painters pencil fails to sketch, and only a hunters dream on pillow of hemlocks at the foot of Sr. Regis Is able to picture. When, 20 miles from any settlement, it comes down at even tide to the lakes edge to drink among the lilypads, and, with its sharp edged hoof, shatters the crystal of Long lake, 1t Is very picturesque. But only when, after miles of pursuit, with heaying sides and lolling tongue and eyes swimming In death, the stag leaps from cliff to cliff into Upper Saranac
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