The Greenville times., 1900-08-04

brought TO make sin attractive wee
is a horrible thing anyhow. 4t is
born in shame, and 1t dies howlins
in the darkness. In this world IL IL
scourged with a whip OF scorpions
but afterward the thunders of Gods
wrath pursue it across boundlesS
desert, beating it with ruin and woe
When you come to paint carnaii'y,,
do not paint it as looking from behind
embroidered curtains or through iat-
tice of royal seraglio, but as writing
in the agonies of city hospital.
Cursed be the books that try to make
impurities decent and crime attractive
and hypocrisy nobel Cursed be the
books that swarm with libertines ana
desperadoes, who make the BRAIN OF
the young people whirl with VII
lainy! Ye authors who write them'
We publishers who print them, ye
booksellers who distribute them, snail
be cut to pieces, if not by an aroused
community, then at last by the nan
of Divine vengeance, which shall sweep
/ to the lowest pit of perdition all ye
murderers of souls. l tell you,
though you may escape in this world'
YOU will be ground at last under the
hoof of eternal calamities, and you
will be chained to the rock, and you
will have the vultures of despair
clawing al your soul, and those whom
you have destroyed will come around
IN n
Goals of fury upon your head and re-
joice eternally in the outcry OF your
pain, and the howl of your damna-
ton. "God shall wound the hairy
scalp of him that goeth on in his
trespasses."
The clock strikes midnight. A fair
form bends over romance. The
eyes flash fire. The breath is quick
and irregular. Occasionally the color
dashes to the cheek and then dies out.
The hands tremble as though a guar
dian spirit were trying to shake the
deadly book out of the grasp. Hot
tears fall. She laughs with shrill
voice that drops dead at its own
sound The sweat on her brow is the
spray dashed up from the river OF
death. The clock strikes four, and
the rosy dawn soon after begins to
look through the lattice upon the
pale form that looks like a detained
specter of the night. Soon in mad
house she will mistake her ringlets
for curling serpents and thrust her
white hand through the bars of the
prison and smite her head, rubbing
it back as though to push the scalp
from the skull, shrieking: my
brain! My brain!' Oh, stand off
from that! Why will you go sound
ing your way amid the reefs when
there is such vast ocean in which
you may voyage, all sail set?
Much of the impure pictorial liter
ature is most tremendous for ruin.
There is no one who can like good |
pictures better than l do. The quick
est and most condensed way of inn
pressing the public mind is by pic
ture. What the painter does by his
brush for a few favorites, the en-
graver does by his knife for the mil
lion. What the author accomplishes |
by so pages the artist does by fiasa. |
The best part of painting that costs
$4,000 you may buy for ten cents.
Fine paintings belong to the aris-
tocracy of art. Engravings belong to
the democracy of art. You do well
to gather good pictures in your
homes.
But what shall say of the prostitu-
tion of art to the purposes of iniquity?
These death warrants of the soul are at
every street corner. They smte the
vision of the young man with pollu-
ton. Many young man buying copy
has bought his eternal discontinue.
There may be enough poison in one bad
picture to poison one soul and that
soul may poison ten, and ten fifty, and
fifty hundreds and the hundreds thou
sands, until nothing but the measuring
inc of eternity can tell the height and
depth and ghastliness and horror Of
the great undoing. The work of death
that the wicked author does in whole
book the bad engraver may do on a
half side of a pictorial. Under the
guise of pure mirth the young man
buys one of these sheets. He unrolls it
before his comrades amid roars of
laughter, but long after the paper is
gone the result may, perhaps be seen
n the blasted imaginations of those
who saw it. The queen of death holds
every night. and these period
Gals are the invitation to her guests.
Young man, buy not this moral
,trychnine for your soul! Pick not up
his nest of coiled adders for your
pocket! Patronize no news stand that
ieeps them. Have your room bright
With good engravings, but for these
rot one bureau. not one pocket. A man
S no better than the picture he loves
% look at. If your eyes are not pure
our heart cannot be. At the news
tand one can guess the character of
nan by the kind of pictorial he pur-
hases. When the devil fails to get
nan to read bad book he sometimes
ucceeds in getting him to look at a
ad picture. When Satan goes a-fish.
ng he does not care whether it is a
ong line or a short line, if he only
raws his victim in. Beware of lasciv-
Gus pictoria-s, young man, in the
ame of Almighty God, charge you.
Cherish good books and newspap apers.
eware of bad ones. The assassin of
.ord Russell declared that he was led
nto crime by reading one vivid ro-
nance. The consecrated John Angel
ames, than whom England never pro- {
uced better man, declared in his old
ge that he had never yet got over the
vii effects of having for IS minutes
nee read bad book. But l need not
o so far off. could tell you of COM
ade who was great hearted, noble and
enerous. He was studying for an hon