The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-11-29
DR.. Strange on Women as Gamblers
(Richmond News-Leader.l

Richmond News Leader.)
The Rev. Dr. Strange, of ST. Paul's
| Episcopal church, preached a sermon
| yesterday on gambling, a large part of
which was directed to the women of the
| community. He dwelt with special en-
| 7hasls on the responsibility of women of
good social position for giving tone and
| 1avor to society and encouraging or dis
| ,ouraging high standards of thinking and
| living.
| The woman CANISTER is not new. The
satirists of centuries have treated of her.
Burns, in "the Twa Dogs, describing pre-
sumably the women in high life of his
| lays, saws:
"Whyles, owre the wee bit cup an platte.
They sip the scandal potion pretty
Or leelang nights, wi crabbit leuks,
Pore over the devils pictur'd beuks:
Stake on chance a farmers stackyard,
An cheat like ony unhang'd black
guard
Probably if the woran gamester had
| been unknown the world would not now
contain the thousands of wretched men
who every hour of every day in the year
somewhere are praying from agonized
hearts to the freed from the passion for
gambling, the most absorbing, relentless
md destructive of all the passions 1t is
cold and dreadful fact Of physiology
that many men and women have been
made gamblers before they were born.
The woman who allows herself to be mas
tered by the passion invites disaster and
takes the chance of bringing into the
world a human being doomed to vice and
misery and to be a shame and grief to
her in her maturity or old age.
Open gambling for considerable stakes
| among women is a new thing, however,
| in Southern communities. Probably it
was in some vogue everywhere IN the
| country before the Revolutionary war.
but in the last hundred years social
standards have been more rigid and it is
pity to see them relaxed In this coun-
| try, as in others, it behooves representa-
i've and influential women to set their
| faces and use their power against lower
| ing the tone of society. Virginia is the
heart and the representative State of the
South and Richmond is the very heart of
| Virginia Therefore, special responsibility
-ests on Richmond women. They can, if
| hey will. resist the Importation of the
| vulgarity, looseness, i'll manners and
vices which mark certain sets, which the
| Hashy and ostentatious elements at tie
North have borrowed from similar ele-
nents in England. The strength and
glory and beauty of the South have been
| in the grace and purity OF Its women
and the reverence surrounding them.
| They have known how to have and to
manifest high spirit without being bois-
ferrous or rowdy, to maintain their poise
and dignity without rudeness or AFRO
eance, to draw strictly the fine and in
visible but impossible line that separates
propriety from improperly and permits
gaiety and brightness and cleverness
without indecorum.
Internationally if we borrow our man
ners. customs and methods from the
much advertised Smart Sets and Four
Hundreds the standards and tone of our
social life will be debased and vulgarized.
Men are what women make them. A
gambling, swearing, smoking, boisterous
and Haunting womanhood in community,
State or country inevitably makes low
| type of manhood. Profound respect for
womanhood and passionate allegiance to
womanly purity have made our chival>
| and our power, have kept us proud,
courageous and invincible people through
| poverty and oppression, have made us
triumphant over disaster. They have
given Southern men high ideals and noble
purposes restrained the vicious, upheld
he weak, and melted the good to splendid
efforts and results. When women permit
themselves to descend to sharing the vices
in this section at least hitherto peculiar to
men, they forfeit their right to respect and
need not look for respect. They surrender
their power for good and permit us to
exchange the clean and high and bright
social life we have had for the scandal,
ostentation and vulgarity and low tone in
morals and department with which some
communities are sorely afflicted
The women of Richmond may be said to
| stand in the pass. They can keep back
| the baleful and pestiferous influences and
give the entire South a tone and atmos-
phere of refinement, goodness and purity,
or they can permit themselves to be in
fected and get down to the Smart Set
| level The responsibility is on them.
Sermons on the same subject from every
pulpit in Richmond may not be urgently
needed but they could do no harm.