Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-08-21

some discourse picked out OF the Ell
fusions of the year as the one most
adapted to excite admiration, and in
those churches, from the way the
ladies hold their fans, you know that
they are not so much impressed with
the heat as with the pictureSqueneSs
of half disclosed features. Four puny
souls stand in the organ loft and SQuau
a tune that nobody knows, and wor-
Slippers with $1,000 worth Of diamonds
on the right hand drop a cent into the
poor box, and then the benedictiOn is
pronounced, and the farce is ended.
The toughest thing [ ever tried to do
was to be good at watering place.
The air is bewitched with the world,
the flesh and the devil" There are
Christians who in three or four weeks
in such place have had such terrible
rents made in their Christian robe that
they had to keep darning it until
Christmas to get it mended.
The health Of great many people
makes an annual visit to some mineral
spring an absolute necessity, but take
your Bible along with you and take an
hour for secret prayer every day,
though you be surrounded by guffaW
and saturnalia. Keep holy the Sab
bath, though they deride you as a
bigoted Puritan. Stand off from gam
bling hells and those other institutions
which propose to initiate on this side
the water the iniquities of Baden
Baden. Let your moral and your i'm
mortal health keep pace with your
physical recuperation and remember
that all the sulphur and chalybeate
springs cannot do you SO much good as
the healing, perennial flood that breaks
forth from the Rock of Ages" This
may be your last summer. If so, make
it a fit veStibule of heaven.
Turf Abomination.
Another temptation lowering around
nearly all our watering places is the
horse racing business. We all admire
the horse, but we do not think that it's
beauty or speed ought to be cultured
at the expense of human degradation.
The horse race is not of such impOr-
lance as the human race. The Bible
intimates that man is better than a
sheep, and l suppose he is better than
a horse though, like Jobs stallion, his
neck be clothed with thunder. Horse
races in Olden times were under the
ban of Christian people, and in our
day the same institution has come up
under fictitious names. And it is call
ed q summer meeting" almost sug-
gestive OF positive religious exercises.
And it is called an agricultural fair
suggestive of everything that is i'm
proving in the art of farming. But
under these deceptive titles are the
same cheating, and the same betting,
and the same drunkenness, and the
same vagabondage, and the same
abomination that were to be found
under the old horse racing system.
l never knew a man yet who could
give himself to the pleasures of the
turf for a long reach of time and not
be battered in morals. They hook up
their spanking team and put on their
sporting cap and light their cigar and
take the reins and dash down on the
road to perditionl The great day at
Saratoga and Brighton Beach and
Cape May and nearly all the other wa
tering places is the day of the races.
The hotels are thrOnged, every kind of
equipage is taken up at an almost fab
ulous price, and there are many re-
spectacle people mingling with jock
eys and gamblers and libertineS and
foul mouthed men and flashy women.
The bartender stirs up the brandy
smash The bets run high. The
greenhorns, supposing all is fair, put
in their money soon enough to lose it.
Three weeks before the race takes
place the struggle is decided, and the
men III the secret know on which steed
to bet their money. The men on the
horses riding around long ago arrang-
ed who shall win. Leaning from the
stand or from the carriage are men and
women so absorbed in the struggle Of
bone and muscle and mettle that they
make a grand harvest for the pick
pockets, who carry off the pocketbooks
and the portemonnaieS. Men looking
on see only a string Of horses with
their riders flying around the ring, but
there is many man on that stand
whose honor and domestic happiness
and fortune-white name, white foot,
white f1ank-are in the ring, racing
with inebriety and with fraud and
with profanity and with ruin-black
neck, black foot, black flank. Neck
and neck go the leaders in that moral
Epson. White horse Of honor black
horse Of ruin. Death says, 81 will bet
on the black horse" Spectator says,
81 will bet on the white horse" The
white horse of honor a little way
ahead. The black horse of ruin, Satan
mounted, all the time gaining on him.
Spectator breathless. They put on
the lash, dig in the spurs. There! They
are past the stand. Sure. Just as l
expected it. The black horse of ruin
has won the race, and the galleries Of
darkness "Huzza, huzzar' and the
devils come in to pick up their wagers.
All, my friends, have nothing to do
with horse ra cinO 6ISSina