Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-05-24

a stout driver, and these people of
exuberant nature will do well to look
at the reaction of all their amuse-
ments. If an amusement sends
you home at night nervous, so
that you cannot sleep, and you
rise up in the morning not because you
are slept out, but because your duty
drags you from your slumbers, you
have been where you ought not to have
been. There are amusements that
send man next day to his work with
his eyes bloodshot, yawning, stupid,
nauseated, and they are wrong kinds
of amusement. They are entertain
ments that give man disgust with the
drudgery of life, with tools because
they are not swords, with working
aprons because they are not robes,
with cattle because they are not in
furiated bulls of the arena. If any
amusement sends you home longing
for a life of romance and thrilling adj
venture, love that takes poison and
shoots itself, moonlight adventures
and hair-breadth escapes, you may de-
pend upon it that you are the sacri-
feed victim of unsanctified pleasure.
Our recreations are intended to build
us up, and if they pull us down as to
our moral or as to our physical
strength you may come to the con-
clusion that they are obnoxious.
Still further, these amusements are
wrong which lead you into expendi
lures beyond your means. Money
spent in recreation is not thrown
away. It is all folly for us to come
from a place of amusement feeling
that we have wasted our money and
time. You may by it have made an
investment worth more than the
| transaction that yielded you hun
dreds of thousands of dollars. But
how many properties have been rid
died by costly amusements.
The first time I ever saw the city
mere lad. I stopped at hotel, and
l remember in the eventide one of
these men piled me with his Internal
| art. He saw was green. He wanted
to show me the sights of the town.
He painted the path of sin until it
| looked like emerald, but I was afraid
of him. I showed back from the bas-
| silisk-I made up my mind he was a
basi1isk. L remember how he wheeled
his chair round in front. of me, and,
Will d COuCcuLcTcO duu uIdOOlICdl c1-
fort, attempted to destroy my soul,
but there were good angels in the air
| that night. It was no good resolution
on my part, but it was the all en-
| comprising grace of a good God that
delivered me. Beware, beware, o
young man! "There is way that
seemeth right unto man, but the
end thereof is DEATH
| The table has been robbed to pay
the club: The champagne has cheat
ed the children's wardrobe. The ca
rousing party has burned up the
| boys primer. The tablecloth of the
| corner saloon is in debt to the wife's
| faded dress. Excursions that in a
day make tour around a whole
months wages, ladies, whose lifetime
business it is to go shopping, large
bets on horses, have their counter
parts in uneducated children, , bank
ruptcies that shock the money mar
ket and appa1 the church and that
send drunkenness staggering across
the richly figured carpet of the man
sion and dashing into the mirror and
drowning out the carol of music with
the whooping of bloated sons come
home to break their old mothers
| heart.
| I saw a beautiful home where the
bell rang violently late at night. The
son had been off in sinful indul
gences. His comrades were bringing
him home. They carried him to the
door. They rang the bell at one
o'clock in the morning. Father and
mother came down. They were wait
ing for the wandering son, and then
| the comrades as soon as the door
was opened threw the prodigal head
long into the doorway, crying:
There he is as drunk as fool! Ha,
hal" When men go into amusements
that they cannot afford, they first
borrow what they cannot earn, and
then they steal what they cannot
borrow. First they go into embarrass-
ment and then into lying and then
| into theft, and when a man gets so
far as that he does not stop short of
| the penitentiary. There is not pris-
on in the land where there are not
victims of unsanctifed amusemelts. =
| Merchant, is there disarrange-
ment in your accounts? Is there a
leakage in your money drawer? Did
not the cash account come out right
last night? I will tell you. There is
young man in your store wandering off
into bad amusements. The salary
you give him may meet lawful expend-
itures, but not the sinful indulgences
in which he has entered, and he takes
by theft that which you do not give
him in lawful salary.
I go further and say those are un-
Christian amusements which become
the chief business of mans life. Life
is an earnest thing. Whether we are
born in palace or hoyel, whether we