The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-05-24

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 a man disgust with the
| drudgery of life, with tools because
they are not swords, with working g
| 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 life of romance and thrilling ad-
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. 1t 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
| r,e-N, h..
transaction that yielded you hun
dreds of thousands of dollars. But
how many properties have been rid
died by costly amusements.
The first time | ever saw the city
it was the city of Philadelphia was
mere lad. 1 stopped at a hotel, and
| remember in the eventide one of
these men piled me with his Internal
art. He saw l 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
basilisk. L remember how he wheeled
| his chair round in front of me, and,
with a concentered and dia bOlical eff
! fort, attempted to destroy my soul,
but there were good angels in the air
| that night. 1t 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 mani There is a way that
seemeth right unto a 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 sn debt to the WIFE
| faded dress. Excursions that in a
day make a 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 appall 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.
| 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
~ 1a, fhan
the comrades as soon as the door
was opened threw the prodigal head
long into the doorway, crying:
There he is as drunk as a 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 unsanctified amuseme1ts.
Merchant, is there a disarrange-
ment in your accounts? Is there a
leakage in your money drawer? Did
not the CdSn dccOuuI COHlS Oul ny III
last night? | will tell you. There is a
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.
90 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 a palace or hovel, whether we
are affiuent or pinched, we have to
work. If you do not sweat with toll.
Won will sweat with disease. You have
a soul that is to be transtgured amid
the pomp of judgment day, and after
the sea has sung it's. last chant and
the mountain shall have come down
in an avalanche of rock you will live
and think and act, high on throne
where seraphs sing or deep. in dun
geon where demons howl. In a world
where there is so much to do for
yourselves and so much to do for
others God pity that man who has
nothing to do.
go further and say that all those
amusements are wrong which lead into
bad company. If you go to any place
where you have to associate with the
intemperate, with the unclean, with
the abandoned, however well they may
La in he name of Cod c1Iif