The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-06-28

and the means or Keeping the children at home, where the fathers and mothers and grandfather and grandmother may be participants in the domestic merri- ment But. though I am not now de- rounoing the harmless social enjoyments which take place in the home, I do most Vehemently protest against the promis- cuous dance hall at our summer water ing places. I know of what I am speak | ing. l am not a stranger to the social etiquette of this world. With my parents I have lived all my life in the cities and have summered in Bar Harbor. Sarato- ga, White Sulphur Springs, Asheville many other notable summer resorts. l | have associated during those vacations with the rich and the poor alike. And I believe the hotel ballroom and the sum mer dance hall are among the most awful eesspools of mental, physical and spirit ual destruction. They are the places where the young men and the young women from the very best of homes are often irresistiby drawn into life of worldiness, of sin and of eternal death. Men and women whom l address
 today, l defy you to find one man of noted spiritual power who will contend
 that the summer ballroom is a safe place l in which to allow our sons and daughters
 to pass the summer months defy you to find one young man or woman who
 ever learned the lesson of Christ love in
 the fetid atmosphere of public dance hall.
 The Moral Death.
 The public ballroom of the summer va cation can aptly be termed the place for the Dance of Death" William H. Aims worth, the famous English novelist, once |, gave a description of such a dance 1t was during the famous plague which de- vastated the city of London a few cen- turies ago. The homes of thousands and tens of thousands were deserted. Thous- ands upon thousands were dying. Thou sands upon thousands were dead The dead carts used to make their rounds every day. The drivers, seated upon their piles of stenchful corpses. would | call from street to street, Bring out. bring out your deadr' Decomposed
 corpses would be brought out and the drivers would throw them upon their
 carts as a scavenger might toss dead dog into his wagon. During that awful plague many of the young people rifled | the wine cellars of the homes of the
 wealthy citizens. They took possession | of the deserted cathedrals. They turned the churches into dance halls. They | danced and drank during the night They danced and drank during the day When one of their number would fall in the dance the dancers would stop and lift up the dying man or woman and carry the body out of the room to await the arrival of the death cart It was an awful time. But if we could look below ] the surface and know the subsequent 1 lives of some of those dancers whirling around the summer bathrooms we should 1 find that the fatalities. physical, moral l and spritual are almost as appalling | as in that great plague. The summer ballroom has not even the excuse of phys ical benefit. Is it not place for physi- i cal death? Can our boys and girls go | .s.-f.k | expose themselves as they do and re- turn to the cities strong men and women? Do not consumptions and pneumonias and | fatal physical diseases of all sorts hover about every public dance hall?
 Is. not the public dance hall of the sum mer vacation the place also of moral death? We are very careful with whom our children associate in the city Are you justified In letting that young man about whom you know practically moth | Ing, speak what he would into the ears of | your young daughter as he moves about | in the fascinating dance? People may call | me hypercritical. They may say l am | trying to stop our young people from hav- | ing fun. But l say that any place which has done the physical and moral damage l the summer dance hall has done our chill dren ought to be forbidden to enter. I am l not so much afraid that our young folks | may enter the low halls of evil resort [ as I am that they may enter the vesti- | bules which will lead them into those | Satanic dens l firmly believe that the 1 summer dance hall Is the place where | during the next few months thousands upon thousands of our young people will have their immortal souls destroyed.
 Avoid Games of Chance.
 Summer red light the third: Beware l of all games of chance What does that | mean? Beware of joining the gambling 1 game, which will be played every night in the side room of the hotel which opens Into the hotel bar which game will be | kept up until or o'clock in the morn 1 ing. Beware of commingling with the | "plungers'' gathered before the bookmak- CTS stands at the famous summer races? Oh, no. I would no more expect you to | be found in such flagrantly compromising | positions than you would expect to find | your pastor there. But beware of the nsidious beginnings. Beware of wager | ing the box of candy upon the game of tennis or quoits which is played in the hotel grounds. Beware of betting the | penny upon the simple game which is I played upon the hotel porch. In other words. beware of taking your first lessons in one of the most awful, the most fasci- mating and the most destructive of all | evils. the gambling evil
 | When the poisonous desires of game | young mans heart there seems to be no human power to stop him from commit l ting mental physical and spiritual sui- | eide Senator Chauncey M Depew of New York city, whom even the most lib- orally minded men would not charge with being a bigot, once gave this startling testimony: "A considerable proportion of failures in business and 90 per cent of | the defalcations, thefts and ruin of youths among those who are employed in places of trust are due directly to | gambling I have seen In my vast em- pioyment so much misery caused by the 1 head of the family squandering his sav- l ings In a policy shop and promising young men led astray in small way and | finally becoming fugitiyes or landing in ] the criminal dock that l have come to be- lieye that the community which licenses and toerates public gambling cannot have prosperity in business" With such an impressive warning as that before us, can we afford to trife with this sin in even the smallest way? The policy shop | or the slot machine Is only step from the roulette table and the race track. The race track and the roulette table are the threatening rocks where thou sands upon thousands of human craft | are wrecked for time and for eternity Trifie not with the games of chance, however small the wager, any more than you would play about a rattlesnake's 8 | fang or toy with a boa constrictors s l coils or tigers claw.
 Flirting Denounced.
 Summer red light the fourth: Beware