Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1900-11-30
Among the race of gadabouts are


those who neglect their homes in order
that they may attend to institutions
that are really excellent and do not
SO much ask for help as demand 1t.
am acquainted, as you are, with wom-
en- who are members of so many boards
of direction of benevolent institutions,
and have to stand at booth in so many
fairs, and must collect funds for so
many orphanages, and preside at SO
many philanthropic meetings, and are
expected to be in so many different
places at the same time that their chill
dren are left to the care of irrespon-
sible servants, and if the little ones
waited to say their prayers at their
mothers knee they would never say
their evening prayers at all. Such
woman makes her own home 50 unat-
tractive that the husband spends his
evenings at the clubhouse or the tav-
ern. The children of that house are
as thoroughly orphans as any of the
fatherless and motherless little ones
gathered in the orphanage for which
that gadabout woman is toiling so in
dustriously. By all means let Chris
tian women foster charitable institu-
lions and give them as much of their
duty of that mother is the duty she
owes to her home.
But no one can take q mothers
place, and it is an awful mistake that
that mother makes who sacrifices
home duties for any church meeting,
however important, or any hospital.
however merciful, or any outside benef-
cence, however glorious and grand.
Not understanding this, we mistake
when we try to give statistics as to how
many Christians there are in our
| churches and in the world. We un-
derstate the facts. We look over our
church audiences on the Sabbath or
our week service and conclude that
| they represent the amount of piety in
that neighborhood. Oh, no! There are
| many most consecrated souls that are
not found in churches. Look into
| those houses with large families of
children and little or no hired help.
For much of the year there is some
| one ill, and a special guardian care
| is requisite. How much time can that
| mother give to churches and prayer
ceilings when most of the family are
down with scarlet fever or have colds
| that threaten now one kind of dis
ease and now another? That mother
| watching at home as much pleases the
| Lord as the mother who at church
takes the sacrament or in the mission
school tells the waits of the street how
| they may become sons and daughters
of the Lord Almighty. That mother
at home is deciding the destiny of the
state by the way she leads that boy
into right thinking and acting and is
deciding the welfare of some future
home by the example she is setting that
| girl, and though the world does not
| appreciate the unobserved work Heav-
en- watches and rewards. On the other
hand, you have known women who
! are off at meetings humanitarian and
philanthropic, planning for the desti-
tute and the outcast, while their own
children went unwashed and un3empt,
their garments needing repairs. their
manners impudent and themselves a
| general nuisance to the community
in which they live.
One bad habit these gadabouts, mas
culine or feminine, are sure to get,
and that is of scandal distribution.
They hear SO many deleterious things
about others and see so much of
wrong behavior that they are loaded
up and loaded down with the faults of
others, and they have their eyes full,
and their ears full, and their hands
| full, and their mouths full of defama-
| ton. The woman who is endowed of
gossip can so easily unite her bonnet
strings and sit down to spend the aft
ernoon. A man can afford you a cigar
as retainer if you will patiently hear
all he has to say about those who can
not pay their debts. or are about to
fail, or are guilty of moral mishap, or
have aroused suspicion of embezzle-
ment. All gadabouts are peddlers,
who unpack in your presence their
large store of nux vomica and night
shade. Such gadabouts have little
prospect of Heaven. If they got there
they would try to create jealousy
among the different ranks of celes-
tials and make trouble among the
Heavenly neighbors. and start quar-
rels seraphic. and would be on per-
petual run. now down this street and
now up that, now in the house of
many mansions. and now in the choir
of the temple, and now on the walls,
and now in the gates, until they would
| be chased down and pushed out into
the pandemonium of backbiters and
slanderers after jeremiah had adj
dressed them in the words: 'sWhy
gaddest thou about so much to change
thy way?"
Now. what is the practical use Of
the present discourse? This: Where
as, SO many have ruined themselves
and ruined others by becoming gad-
abouts among occupations, among re-
ligious theories, among churches,
among neighborhoods; therefore, re-
solved, that we will concentrate upon