Pike County Democrat, Volume 30, Number 16, Petersburg, Pike County, 25 August 1899 — Page 7

----r" EhriSikc County 3,'itucrat KdHor-wiitl I’ruprlttutrtTKit'*U!UU. : • INDIANA. COME HOME. "5g—" — "When the year la young and the green buds ■hoot, When the rose blooms radiant, fair. When the gentle winds come up from the south, When flowers perfume the air; 'The plowman turns the furrow in glee And the ripened seed doth fall To a glorious birth In the mother earth. Then we hear the beckoning call— •Call through the budding hazel copse where the fearful rabbits play, Call low and soft the voice that oft lures love’s light thoughts away. We linger and listen but hear her still Wherever we rove and roam, The sad-voiced mother calling to us; “Come home, my children, come home." When the year’s abloom and the leaf takes

niwpyi ii A deeper, sturdier hue, TV hen the days are long and filled with song » And the nights are rinsed with dew; In the winds that ripple across the wheat. In the blooms that dapple the lawn, In the stars that die in the roseate sky That ushers the radiant dawn— "We hear her voice, like the matin-sor^r of the sweet-voiced mocking-birds; All trem ulous she calls to us, we hear .her loving words; But we fain would linger'along the brook And watch the scurrying foam, 'While the voice still dwells in the shadowy dells: “Come home, my children, come home.” When the year grows old and haggard and gray. When the sunlight dims and pales, When Time’s chill breath in a beautiful death Is clothing the hills and dales; Through the tasseled tops of the waving * corn, # ' O’er the meadows dun and sere. In the rustle of sheaf and fall of leaf In the sundown of the year— We hear her call in the harvest time and beckon her children in Trom the wheat and vine, from the sheep and klne, from the wine press and the * bln. Tired and weary we drop our tasks And wander on through the gloam. • •• To the waiting “mother” who softly caUs: “Come home, my children, come home.” The stars again together shall sing - :i And heaven and earth be one, Klght shall fade as the maple’s shade Melts in the morning sun; The flush of morn and the blush of night Shall meet with the hush of noon; December’s snow shall dFlftsind blow O’er the blooming roses of June. Then the past shall come like a burdened slave, with its heavy tale of years, And Time shall be with Eetmlty, with its finished hopes and fears, Then “Death,” sweet mother, shall call us in, When life is a finished tome, Dike a bird in its 4est we shall nestle and rest And forever be at home. —Albert Marshall Strong, in Chicago Chronicle. Breaking of an Oarsman Knd of an Ambition That Led to the ’Varsity Crew.

f '**rPHEY row beautifully,” said the stranger, “and barring accidents “they’re sure winners.” “barring accidents!” he answered. 4‘Do you realize that if one of those -eight men catches a crab, if one of those oars breaks, one of those slides is jumped, if a box or a steamboat gets in the way, if one of fifty possible accidents happens during the race, they’re -sure losers?” ' “Dear me,” said the stranger, “you make rowing a very uncertain sport.” 9 “It is uncertain,” he answered,curtly. Then they were silent, while the crew out on the glassy stream caught up their long, machine-like stroke, and with the coxswain grunting rhythmically and . the launch puffing behind .swept away up stream. “Xo ’heed to ask if you have rowed,” the stranger said. “Your knowledge of the game and your size show that.” “Yes, I’ve rowed,” he answered, “as a ♦substitute.” • ' , Then, throwing,a huge leg across a Tock, he went on, half to himself: “I’ve aaid too much not to say more. I’ve never said as much before, but the sight of those fellows rowing dragged it out of me. Talk about accidents! “I come of a rowing family. My father stroked the crew in his time, and my uncles rowed, and my cousins. In tact, the ’varsity has not put out many crews that, have not carried a relative of mine. So when I came up. to college, a big, husky freshman, I did not ;give a rip for football, but was hot for rowing. When I finally got into a pairoar, where I nearly pulled the side out of the boat and drove the other fellow irantic, I was a happy man. And when 1 heard the captain, after my performance on the yeasty river, grunt to one of the old oars: ‘If that big dub can only learn to forget what he knows he may do,* I was a very happy man. “Well, I soon told myself and all my friends that I was sure of making the '’varsity. An -trained like_ much of bells, an closer th When W; wantei work ve ere was never a man I could not get too ghts and the dumbthe rpwing machines id to my best friends, an rowing in the tank, I (e there. I took to the hard indly. I grew and waxed •«o that people on the streets turned round to look at me, and the coaches had hard work to find a big enough -man to balance me. But they found him. We had a big, powerful crew, and cs weeks and months of training went by, and time trials were held, we found -we had a fast crew as well. “Well, we came down here for the ceal work and the finishing touches. It was a glorious time for me. I was a horse for work; I grew fairly to love this river and this country; and then everything spoke so strongly to me of the sport I cared for most. There were lockers here with my uncles’ names cut in them; the old nigger cook remembered my father; I wore >« cap that had belonged to One of my

cousins. And the best thing was that 1 was ms good as any of my family. I was steady, fairly smoooth and tremendously powerful. As one after another of the old oarsmen, the greatest heroes in the world to me, came down to help the coaches, and I saw them eye me first critically and then approvingly, my cup of happiness was, full. I knew I was considered a strong oar, one of the best men in the boat. I knew it from the peculiarly vicious way the coach swore at me when he had fault to find, and the peculiarly tender way be inquired about the rigging of my seat. « “It came to the night before the race, and I was happy and hopeful and not the least excited. The old fellows told stories and sang songs to keep our minds oft the race, and we went to bed quiet and sleepy, I as quiet and sleepy as the rest. „ “Some time in the night I found myself leaning out of my window. How I got there I do not know; I remember nothing after jumping into bed. But there 1 was, kneeling on the floor, with my arms resting on the dill. It was a glorious June night, with a big moon up in the sky making the river all silver and deep shadow. A damp, cool breeze j was blowing, and I smelled woodsy I smells and the smell of salt water. I am very fond of nature, but I have never seen her more beautiful than on that night. Down in the boathouse the coaches were at work putting some finishing touches to the boat. I could see them moving about in the lantern light, and could hear their voices. From the rooms about me came the heavy, regular breathing of the fellows asleep. “Suddenly, as I was gazing at the moonlit river a peculiar change came over it. At first I thought a shadow had come across it, but the change was too slight for a shadow. The river still ran in a bright, silver sheet; light and shade were as clearly denned, but in some way the whole scene was different. It was as if I were looking through glasses ever so slightly darkened. And in some way I seemed to be a great way off from it. Yet the sounds were just as distinct. I could hear the dinghey bumping against the float, and the voices from the boatty^use came up just as clearly.

“After awhile the men came out of the boathouse and up toward the house and, Remembering that it would not do to bejcaught out of bed, I tried to get up. f say I tried—thought of trying woullLbe better. I wanted to get up, I willed to get up with all my will, but not a muscle stirred. I saw the men outside coming up the,walk, their faces white in the moonlight, and I wanted to get out of the way, and never budged. I determined to get up, I bent my mind on getting up until 1 thought it would snap, but my great body never stirred. My big arms lay on the sill in front of me, sinewy, hard as' steel, but they were just as placid and just as helpless ns if they had been a sleeping baby's, I heard the men enter the house, heard the clink of glasses in the dining room as they took a 'nightcap, and then I heard the steps of the coach coming up the stairs to make a final inspection. It seemed to me. that I struggled, or that part of me did; that I strained and fought in horrible agony. It seemed to me that the sweat must be breaking out on me, that my eyes must be starting out of their Sockets; yet my arms hung tranquilly on the sill and my bi> chest rose and fell quietly and regularly. “For some reason the coach did not look into my room, and I knelt before the window for I don’t know how long, sometimes grappling, as it seemed to me. with my helpless body in the bitterest struggle, and sometimes nunab with despair. And at last I simply rose quietly, with no effort, walked over to my bed, threw myself on it and fell fast asleep. “You* think it was nightmare? So did I the next morning, and brushed the remembrance of it away. Nevertheless, I felt just a bit shaken, and I could only toy with my breakfast. Some time in the morning the coach came Up to me, tapped me on the arm and drew me aside. “ILook here, Jim,’ he said, ‘what’s the matter?’ “I tolcj him nothing was the matter. He shook his head and frowned impatiently. “ ‘You and I owe too much to the college to mince matters,’ he said. ‘Come, now, what’s troubling you? Sleep well?’

“Then I told him about my nightmare. He listened attentively. * “ ‘Humph \* he grunted. ‘I’ll fix you up a little something. You’ll be all right.’ “So he fixed me up a little something and I felt more like myself. That was a long day; it seems to me now an interminable day, for I think I can remember every minute of it. We practiced starting, and had a swim, ate lunch, loafed, read, talked. The jokes we cracked come back to me, the smell of the grass I lay im I can see the ripples on the-water and the big white clouds sailing over the sky. “We were down at the boathouse just before it was time to get the boat into the water. 1 was lying full length on the float ready dressed, just trunks and stocking*, you know. 1 was lying there, letting the warm sun beat down on my big bare body and lazily stiffening and relaxing my limbs to see the muscles stiffen and-swell and then relax. I was lying there laughing to myself to think- that at last I was going to do the thing I had all roy life desired to do; laughing to think of the splendid power with which 1 could do it. And then, just as quiekly and as quietly as you please, everything seemed to be under a light shadow. “Just then the boach came running down the bank. z “‘Now boys, be' alive,’ he cried. 'Time to get out the boat.’ “Everybody jumped up but me. Frank Moore gave me a little kick. ** *Get up. old laaybonea. ’he said*

“Then he caught up one of my anna. But when he let it go it fell back heat* ily on the planks. “ 'Good God,’ he gasped, 'something's the matter with Jim.’ “They crowded round me in a minute, consternation on every face, and the coach came thrusting through them. • —. “ ‘Throw water on him/ he cried. ‘Shake him. Get the doctor.* “They rolled me and I rolled like a log. They drenched me with water and I never gasped. They worked over me as if I had been drowned, and I looked ub into their faces with glassy i eyes and fought, my God, how I fought, ' to speak to them. “At last some one said: 'Xshedead?' j '“How should I know?’ said the! coach. ‘Where’s the doctor?’ “ *0n the observation train by this ; time,’ said some one. “ ‘Well, we can’t stop any longer, there’s the referee’s boat now,’ cried j the coach. ‘Jenks, you stay here with him. Brown, you row in his place.’ “They laid me just inside the boathouse. Then the floor shook to their I steady tramp as they carried out the j boat—the boat that was fairly part of ; my life. They took out the oars, they I got one by one into the boat, the ;

coach s last lecture came to me in a ' long monotone. Then the coxswain's j orders, sharp and clear, a pause, then ! the- swish of the oars through the wa- 1 ter. My hearing was never so acute, i I could even hear the peculiar little grunt that my own rowlock always gave. v “They passed where I could see them for a minute. I saw the long, steady ' swing that was as natural to me as i breathing, the row of brown faces I | knew so well rising and falling togeth- i er. And ih my seat, the seat I cher- j ished more than any in the world, ; rowed hulking Brown—Brown, who j had no idea of time, who even as they started was a little out. “I’ve heard of men whose hair has turned white through the agony they suffered. Mine didn’t turn white; and yet, did I suffer? “I tried to forget everything, but 1 »j lay, it seemed to me for hours, every I minute of them a day long, until 1 | heard the swishing of a launch com- i ing up stream. It bumped against the j float, there was a babble of voices and 1 stamping of feet. Then little Heightley, the freshman coxswain, rushed in, “ ‘Here’s the doctor,’ he cried. “ ‘How did it come out!’ said Jenks, breathlessly, who from the first had J fanned me unremittingly. ‘“It was a great race,’ said Height- : ly, ‘but Brown caught a crab in the last mile and they beat us by ten feet.’ “Then the light shadow slipped quietly off everything and I groaned and sat up. “When the poor broken-hearted boys came back I helped them carry in the boat. They were very good to me. But I have never tridd to row since. I only ; watch.”—N. Y. Sun. TOWN PUMP GIVES OIL. People of Fleminesbnrjf, Ky., Now , Get Petroleum from Their Old Well.

Excitement over the flow of oil in the old town well at. Flemingsburg, Ky., continues unabated. Thousands of dollars have been sunk there during the past 20 years in the endeavor to strike oil, numerous wells having been drilled, but with very little success. •Now nature has taken the matter in charge, and by some subterranean upheaval has caused the oil to flow into the large vein which has supplied the town with water for the past 100 years. The old well which has surprised the people by putting forth oil instead of water was at one time a large spring. As far back as can be traced the spring was used by the Indians and early settlers, supplying the country for miles around. After the streets were graded in 1820, it was found necgssary to wall up the old spring and put in a pump. From that time on until the present day, generation after generation of the town people have made the old well the main source of their water supply, but now will have to go elsewhere. An old citizen remarked, when the excitement was at its highest, that he felt as though he had lost his dearest friend, as the old well and spring had furnished water for his family back to the fourth generation. > For some time past an oily taste had been noticed in the water, but an extra amount of water had been pumped from the well to supply the demand of people whose wells had given out, owing to the extremely dry weather, and when most of the water had been drawn from the reservoir, the pump began to spout out a mixture of oil and water. A large crowd soon collected and vessels of every description were filled and carried away.- Large amounts were poured on the streets and ignited, the blaze shooting up and the oil burning with a white and steady glow. Lamps and lanterns were filled and showed a white and splendid light, the flame being strong and white. So much exeitement was caused by this freak of nature that the people began pouring the oil about the streets in a reckless manner and igniting it, and Mayor L. S. Vansant, fearingthe build-~ ings would catch fire from the burning oil. ordered the pump locked. While the well was open barrels of the mixture were carried away, and large quantities flowed down the sewers. The oil has an odor like coal oil, but is of a brownish color. The water is as clear as crystal. For a long time it has been thought that oil could he found in paying quantities, and now the peo* pie are wild on the subject. Just before the well was closed a vessel was filled, showing more than one-half pure oil. Until the well is pumped out and a thorough investigation made, it is impossible to tell the extent of the flow of the^ oil, but it is thought the supply is inexhaustible.—Chicago Inter Ocean.

SUMMEB VACATIONS, Dr. Talmage Draws Some Lessons from Our Annual Outings. Daaccr* aad Temptation* Tkat 8 a rtoaad Oar Water!*« Places— Necessity of a 4*erlo4 at Inoeeapatloa. (Copyright. 1899, by Louis Klopsch.J Washington. Aug. 20. At this season of the year, when all who can get a vacation are taking it, this discourse of Dr. Talmage is suggestive and appropriate. The text is John 5:2, 3: “A pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.’* Outside the citys of Jerusalem there was a sanative watering place, the popular resort for invalids. To this day there is a dry basin of rock which shows that there may have been a pool there 360 feet long, 130 feet wide and 73 feet deep. This pool was surrounded by five piazzas, or porches, or bathing houses, where the patients tarried until the | time when they were to step into the i

water. So far as reinvjgoranng was concerned, it must have been a Saratpga and a Long Branch on a small scale; a Leamington and a , Brighton combined—medical and therapeutic, j Tradition says that at a certain season of the year there was an officer of the government who would go down to that w ater and pour in it some healing quality, and after that the people would come and get the medication. But I prefer the plain statement of Scripture, that at a certain season an angel came dowm and stirred up or troubled the water, and then the people came and got the healing. That angel of God that stirred up the Judaean watering place had his counterpart in the angel of healing who, in our day, steps into the mineral waters of Congress or Sharon or Sulphur Springs, or into the salt sea at Cape May andNahnnt, where multitudes who are worn out with commercial and professional anxieties, as well as those who are afflicted with rheumatic, neuralgic and splenetic diseases, go and are cured by the thousands. These blessed* Bethesdasare scattered all up and down our country. We are at a season of the year when rail trains are laden with passengers and baggage on their way to the mountains and the lakes and the seashore. Multitudes of our citizens are aw*ay for a restorative absence. The city heats are pursuing the people with torch and fear of sunstroke. The long, silent halls of sumptuous hotels are all abuzz with excited arrivals. The antlers of Adirondack deer rattle under the shot of city sportsmen, the trout make fatal snap at the hook of adroit sportsmen,.who toss their spotted brilliants into the game basket ; the baton of the orchestral leader taps the musie stand on the hotel green, and American life has put on festal array, and the rumbling of the tenpin alley, and the crack of the ivory balls on the green-baized billiard tables, and the jolting of the barroom goblets, and the explosive uncorking of the champagne bottles, and the whirl and

the rustle of jhe ballroom dance, ami the clattering hcofs of the race courses and other signs of social dissipation attest that the season for the great American watering places is in full play. Music! Flute and drum and cornet-a-piston and clapping cymbals wake the echoes of the mountains. Glad am I that fagged-out American life for the most part has an opportunity to rest and that nerves racked and destroyed will find a Bethesda. I believe in watering places. They rccupdjr&te for active service many who were worn out with trouble or overwork. They are national restoratives. ~ Let not the commercial firm begrudge the clerk, or the employer the journeyman, or the patient the physician, or the church its pastor a season of inoccupation. Luther used to sport with his children; Edmund Burke used to caress his favorite horse; Thomas Chalmers, in the dark hour of the church’s disruption, played kite for recreation—so I was told by his own daughter—and the busy Christ said to the busy apostles: “Come ye apart awhile into the desert and rest yourselves.” And I have observed that they who do not know how j to rest do not know how to work. But I have to declare this truth to-day—that some of our fashionable watering places are the temporal and eternal destruction of “a multitude that no man ean number,” and amid the congratulations of this season and the prospects of the departure of many of you for the country I must utter a warning, plain, earnest and unmistakable. The first emptation that is apt to hover in this direction is to leave your piety at home. You will send the dog and cat and canary bird to be well cared} for somewhere else, but the temptation will be to leave your religion in the room with the blinds down and the doors bolted, and then you will eom«f back in the autumn to find that it is starved and suffocated, lying stretched on the rug, stark dead. There is no surplus of piety at the watering place*. ^ never knew anyone to grow very rapid-! ly in grace at the Catskill Mountain house or Sharon Springs or the Falls of Montmorency. It is generally the case that the Sabbath is more of a carousal than any other day, and there are Sunday walks, and Sunday rides, and Sunday excursions. Elders and deacons and ministers of religion who are entirely consistent at home, sometimes when the Sabbath dawns on them at Niagara falls or the White mountains take a day to themselves. If they go to the church, it is apt to be a sacred parade, and the discourse, instead of being a plain talk about the soul, is apt to be what is called a crack sermon—that is, some discourse picked out of the effusions of the year as the one most adaped to excite admiration, and in

_churches, from the way the ladles held their fans, you know that they ore much impressed with the heat as with jthe picturesquenesf of half disfeatures. Four puny souls stand organ loft and squall a tune that knows, and worshipers, with worth of diamonds on the right: drop a cent into the poor box, and then the benediction is pronounced, it farce is ended. The toughest I ever tried to do was to be good watering place. The air is be* ed with the “world* the flesh and evil." There are Christians who, or four weeks in such a place, havel had such terrible rents made in theiif Christian robe that they had tc keep darning it until Christmas to get it mjended. e health of a great many people s an annual visit to some minera l g an absolute necessity, but takn Bible along with you, anfl take an for secret prayer every day, though you be surrounded by guffaw and' saturnalia. Keep holy the Satthough they deride you as a bipPuTitan. Stand off from gambling and those other institutions which se to imftate on this side the writhe iniquities of Baden-Baden. Lot moral and your immoral Jiealih pace with your physical recuper aand remember that all the si 1|r and chalybeate springs-cannot do so much good as the healing,

perennial flood that breaks forth from Rock of Ages.” This may be yo ir summer. If so, make it a fit vesiiof Heaven. [nother temptation hovering arou nd neajrly all our watering places is the ie racing business. We all adirt re horse, but we do not think that its beauty or speed ought to be cultured at expense of human degradation. The »e race is not of such importance as human race. The Bible intimates thit a man is better than a sheep, ni d I suppose he is better than a ho *se, though, like Job’s stallion, his neck be! clothed with thvmder. Horse races in | olden times were under the bni. of Christian people, and in our day the sa me institution has come up under fictitious names. And it is called a “summer meeting,” almost suggestive of positive religious exercises. And t is called an “agricultural fair,” sugpestivj of everything that is improving in tie art of farming, but under these* deceptive titles are the same chea ing, and the same betting, and the same drunkenness, and the same vagabondage, and the same abomination that Were to be found under the old 1 orse racing system. i I never knew a man yet who could g|ve himself to the pleasures of the turf ir a long reach of time and not bobat:red in morals. They hook up their lanking team and put on their sportg cap and light their cigar* and take e reins and dash down on the road perdition! The great day at Saratoga and Brighton Beach and Cap*.! May nearly all the other Watering places the day of the races. The hotels are ironged, every kind of equips ge is ikon up at au almost fabulous price, ud there are many respectable people mingling with jockeys and gamblers and libertines and foul-roouthec men and flashy women. The bartender stirs up the brandy spaash. The beta run high. The greenhorns, supposing all is fair, put in their money soon enough 1:0 lose it. Three weeks befora the ■ace takes place the struggle isdecided, and the men in the secret know on {which steed to bet their money. The men on the horses riding around long pgo arranged who shall win. leaning (from the stand or from the carriages are men and women so absorbed in the Struggle of bone and muscle and mettle

that they, make a grand harvest lor the pickpockets, who carry off the iocketbooks and the portemonnaics. Men looking on see only a string of horses with their riders flying around the ring. But there is many a man on that stand whose honor and domes' ic happiness and fortune—white man white foot, white flank—are in the ring, racing with inebriety and with fraud and with profanity and with ruin— black neck, blaek foot, black flank. Neck and neck go the horses in that moral Epsom. White horse of honor; black horse of ruin. Death Jsyys: “I will bet on the black horse." Spectator says; “I will bet on the while horse." The white horse of honor a little way ahetd. The black aorse of ruin, Satan mounted, all the time gaining on him. Spectator br :athless. They put on the lash, dig in the spurs. There! They ire past the stard. Sure. Just as I expected. The black horse of ruin has won the race, and ail the galleries of darkness “huzza! huzsa!” and the devils come in to pick up their wagers. Ah,'’toy friends, have nothing to do with horse racing dissipations this summer. Another temptation hoverin g around ,the watering place is the formation of hasty and lifelong alliance^. The watering places t.re responsible for more of the domestic infelicities of.i he country than nearly all other thi igs combined. Society is so artificial there that no sure judgment of character can be formed. They who form companionships amid such circumstances go into a lottery where there are 20 blanks to one prize. In the severe tug of life you want more than glitter and spl ash. Life .is not a ballroom where the music decides the step, and bow and prance and graceful swing of long train :aa make up for strong common seme. You might as well go .among the gaylypainted yachts of a summer regatta to find a war vessel as to go among the light spray of the summer watering place to find character that can stand the test of the great struggle of human life. In the battle of life yc u want a stronger weapon than a lace fan or a croquet mallet. The load of life is so heavy that; in order to draw it you want a team stronger than that made up of a masculine grasshop :*er and a feminine butterfly. If there i i any man in the community who excites my con

tempt and who ought to excite the tempt of every man and woman, is the aoft-banded, soft-headed dude,;*., who, perfumed until the air is actaa^ig ly sick, spends the summer in striking killing attitudes, and waving senti ||f mental adieus, and taking infinitesimal < nothings, alnd finding his heaven i?r the set of a lavender kid glove. Boots as tight as an inquisition. Two hours of consummate skill exhibited in tk*-' tie of a flashing cravat. Bis convers**)-: tion made up of “Ahs!" and and “He hes!’* There is only ona-counterpart tmgntgi a man as that, and that is the young woman at the watering her conversation made up of Fr^i| moonshine; what she has in her head only equaled by what she has os hair back; useless ever since she was and to be useless until she is dead, less she becomes an intelligent tian. We may admire music and faces and graceful step; but amid heartlessness and the inflation an fantastic influences of our modem tering places beware how you lifelong covenants. ' Another temptation hovering around our watering places is in eating beverages. I am told that HHH becoming more and more for women to drink. I care not bjS||well a woman may dress, if she taken enough of wine to flush cheek and put a glassiness on her she is drunk. She may be handei a $2,500 carriage and have di enough to astound the Tiffany drunk. She may be a graduate best young ladies’ seminary au&? daughter of some man in dan being nominated for the preside; she is drunk. You may have a vocabulary than I have, and yo say in regard to her that she is vivial” or she is “merry” or she is tive” or she is “exhilarated,” but cannot with all your garlands of biage cover up the plain fact Now, the watering places are temptations to men end women to t pie. At the close of the tenpin or liard game they tipple. At the < the cotillion they tipple, the piazza cooling themselves o& j tipple. The tinged glasses come s

with bright straws and they tijSjMe. First they take “light wine#,” as they call them, but “light “wines” are heavy enough to debase the appetite. There is not a very long road between champagne at five dollars a bottle atf$|g|ilsky at ten cents a glass. Satan has riree or four grades down which he takes men to destruction. One man he takes up and through one spree pitches him into eternal darkness. ThtftMs a rare case. Very seldom indeed can you find a man who will be such a fool as that. Satan will take another man to a grade, to a descent at an angle about like the Pennsylvania cook shoot or the Mount Washington rail track, and shove him ofF. But this is very rare. When a man goes down to destruction, Satan brings him to a plane. It is almost a level. The depression Is so slight that you can hardly see it. The matt does not actually know that he is on the down grade, and ft tips only a little toward darkness—just a little. And the first mile it is claret and the second mile it is sherry and the third mile It is punch and the fourth mile it is ale and the fifth mile it is whisky and the sixth mile it is brandy, and then it gets steeper and steeper and steepc** nnti) it is impossible to stop. “Lookthou upon the wine when it is red, tvfien it giveth its color in the cup, when it raoveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingt th like an adder.” ' Whether you tarry at home—which will be quite ns safe and "perhaps quite as comfortable—or go into th^Sraatry, arm yourself against temptation. The grace of God is the only safe shelter, whether in town or country. There are watering places accessible to all of ns. You cannot open a book of the Bible without finding outcome such watering place. Fountains open for sin and imeleanliness. Wells of salvation. Streams from Lebanon. A flood struck out of the rock by Moses. Fountains in the wilderness discovered by II a gar. Water to drink and water to' hiaihe in. The river of God, which is full of water. Water of which if a man drink be shall never thirst. Wells of water in the valley of Baca. Living fountains of water. A pure river of w‘ater as clear as crystal from under the throne God. These are watering places accessible tc all of us. We do not have & laborious packing tip before we start—<ifily the throwing away of our transgressions. No expensive hotel bills to pay; it is “without money and without price." No long and dusty travel before we get there; it is only one step awajp In California, in five miautes, 3

walked around and saw ten fountains all bubbling up, and they were all dif* erent, and in five minutes I can gc through this Bible parterre and find you 50 bright, sparkling fountains bubbling up into eternal life—healing and therapeutic. A chemist will .get to one of those summer watering places and take the water and analyze it and tell you that it contains so much of iron and so much of soda and sc much oi lime and so much of magnesia. I com? to this Gospel well, this living fountain and analyze the water; and ! find that its ingredients are peace, jjardon, forgiveness, hope, comfort, life, Heaven “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye* to this watering place. Crowd around this Bethesda. O you sick, you lame you troubled, you dying—crowd around this Bethesda! Step in it, cb, step is it! The angel of the covenant to-day stirs the water. Why do yon not stej in it? Some of you are wo > weak t« take a step in that < take you up in the arms < plunge you clear under ing that the cure may be i as radical as with Capt. blotched and carbuncled, the Jordan, and after the seventh dive came up, his &in roseate eoriplexiosed as the flesh of a little child* , :1