St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1900-09-01


brought to make sin attractive. Vice
is a horrible thing anyhow. It is
born in shame, and it dies bowling
in the darkness. In this world it il
scourged with whip of scorpions.
but afterward the thunders of Gods
wrath pursue it across a boundless
desert, beating it with ruin and woe.
When you come to paint carnality.
do not paint it as looking from behind
embroidered curtains or through lat
tice of royal seraglio, but as writhing
in the agonies Of . city hospital.
Cursed be the books that try to make
impurities decent and crime attractive
and hypocrisy noble! Cursed be the
books that swarm with libertines and
desperadoes, who make the brain OF
the young people whirl with viii
lainy! Ye authors who write them,
We publishers who print them, We
booksellers who distribute them, shall
be cut to pieces, if not by an aroused
community, then at last by the hail
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 at your soul, and those whom
you have destroyed will come around
to torment you, and to pour hotter
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 a 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 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 ringleta
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 vest 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 few favorites, the en-
graver does by his knife for the mil
lion. What the author accomplishes
by so pages the artist does by fias3'
The best part of a 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'
ton of art to the purposes of iniquity
These death warrants of the soul are al
every street corner. They smite 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
lire 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 a whole
book the bad engraver may do on
half side of pictorial. Under the
guise of pure mirth the young mar
buys one of these sheets. He unrolls II
before his comrades amid roars o1
laughter. but long after the paper j:
gone the result may. perhaps, be seeI
in the blasted imaginations of thos'
who it. The queen of death holds
banquet every night. and these period
icals are the invitation to her guests.
Young man, buy not this mora
strychnine for your soul! Pick not III
this nest Of coiled adders for your
pocket! PatroniZe no news stand tina
keeps them. Have your room brigh
with good engravings. but for thes'
outrageous pictures have not one wall
not one bureau. not one pocket. A mai
is no better than the picture he love
to look at. If your eyes are not pur'
YOUR heart cannot be. At the news
stand one can guess the character o
man by the kind of pictorial he pur
chases. When the devil fails to get I
man to read bad book, he sometime!
succeeds in getting him to look at ;
bad picture. When Satan goes a-fish
ing he does not care whether it is ;
long line or a short line, if he onl,
draws his victim in. Beware of lasciv
fous pictoria-s, young man, in tn
name of Almighty God, charge you.
Cherish good books and newspapers
Beware of bad ones. The assassin O
Lord Russell declared that he was LEI
into crime by reading one vivid ro
nance. The consecrated John Angel
James. than whom England never pro
duced better man, declared in his oil
age that he had never yet got over tn
evil effects of having for IS minute
once read bad book. But need no
go so far off. could tell you of a com
rade who was great hearted, noble an,
generous. He was studying for an hon
orable profession. but he had an infids
book in his trunk, and he said to hi,
one day: "De Witt, would you like (,
read it?" / said: "Yes. would"
took the book and read it only for
few minutes. l was really startle,
with what l saw there, and l hanGe,
the book back to him and said: "Yo,
had better destroy that book" No, h
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