The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1899-09-01

-Four puny souls stand in the organ
loft and squat a tune that nobody
knows, and worshipers, with two thou
sand dollars 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 l 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 a 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 big
| oted Puritan. Stand off from gam
| bling bells and those other institutions
which propose to initiate on this side
| the water the iniquities of Baden-B
den. Let your moral and your immor-
tai health keep pace with your physi-
cal 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 Crock of Ages" This
may be your last summer. If so, make
it fit vestibule of heaven.
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 its
beauty or speed ought to be cultured ut
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
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 called
summer meeting" almost suggest
i've of positive religious exercises. And
it is called an agricultural fair" sug-
gestive of everything that is improving
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 vagabond-
age and the same abomination that
were to be found under the old horse
racing system.
Long ago the English government
got through looking to the. turf for
the dragon and the light-cavalry
horse. They found out that the turf
depreciates the stock and it is worse
yet for men. Thomas Hughes, the mem
Der of parliament and the author
known all the world over, hearing that
a new turf enterprise was being start
ed in this country, wrote letter in
which he said: Heaven help you,
then: for of all the cankers of our
old civilization there is nothing in this
country approaching in unblushing
meanness, in rascality holding its head
high, to this belauded institution OF
the British turf" Another famous
sportsman writes: How many fine
domains have been shared among
these hosts of rapacious sharks during
the last 200 years; and unless the sys-
TEN be altered, how many more are
doomed to fall into the same gulf"
With the bull fights of Spain and the
-baitings of the pit, may the Lord
God annihilate the infamous and &C,
cursed horse racing of England and
Americai
Now, the watering-place are full o
temptations to men and women to tip
ple. At the close of the ten-pin or bill
lizard game, they tipple. At the clos'
of the cotillon, they tipple. Seated
} on the piazza cooling themselves OH
they tipple. The tinged glasses COM
around with bright straws, and the!
, tipple. First, they take light wines,
as they call them; but light wines
: are heavy enough to debase the appe
tite. There is not very long roa'
, between champagne at five dollars
, bottle and whisky at ten cents glass
, Satan has three or four grades dow
: which he takes men to destruction
One man he takes up, and through on
/ spree pitches him into eternal dark
ness. That is a rare case. Very sci
/ dom. indeed, can you find man VIII
r will be such a fool as that. Satan vii
take another man to a grade, to de
scent at an angle about like the Penn
sylvania coal-chute or the Noun
!. Washington rail-track, and shove hir
on. But that is very rare. When
man goes down 70 destruction, Sata
. brings him to a plane. 1t is almost
level. The depression is so slight tina
you can hardly see it. The man doe
not actually know that he is on tn
! down grade, and it tips only little &c
ward total darkness-just little. An
; the first mile 1t is claret, and the ser
e "a ~.fIo 10 charrv and the thir