Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1889 — DANCER, FROM REIMS. [ARTICLE]

DANCER, FROM REIMS.

Charls A. Dana of New York Sun celebrated his 70th birthday Aug. 8. The richest Chinaman in the town •f Seattle rejoices in the discouraging name of Bad Luckee. Mr. Gladstone is the Worst phonographed man in the world. His speech on the. royal grants was caught as he delivered it, and will be listened to before long by an American audience. A Maine newspaper announced Ben Butler’s appearance in the town, and spoke of the “bright red nose which he always wears.” The general’s friends, of course, knew that the paper meant bright red rose.

Lord Lonsdale is now living the most domestic of lives with his wife, who has apparently forgiven and forgotten the past. Assisted by the countess, Lord Lonsdale is preparing a book on his adventures in the Arctic regions. Mrs. Mary E. Hanchett, who died recently at Chittenango, N. Y.. vjasthe second woman graduate Of an American medical college. She received the degree of doctor of medicine from the - = Albany Medieal college in 1848. She was a woman of great intelligence and force of character. Mr. Wick of Chelsea, England, is the father of a peculiar infant prodigy. His daughter Nelly, four years of age, recently shaved five men inside of thirty minutes for a silver medal. She performed the operation very neatly and had ten minutes to spare, spending about four minutes upon each victim.

The marriage of the Princess Louise to the earl of Fife is regarded with much disfavor at the European courts. Emperor William abstained from sending hie congratulations and the bride’s uncle-in-law, the ozar of Russia, wrote expressing his indignation at the ■“mesalliance,” and adding that such marriages were ruinous to the caste of royal houses. Mr. Gladstone has solved the domestic problem. “Whenever my wife insists I submit,” says the great liberal; “whenever I insist she submits. We never discuss family affairs at the table, and if anything unpleasant occurs during the evening we never refer to it until the next day.” No wonder the grand old man has enjoyed his fifty years of married life. At Lacken the king of the Belgians ushered the shah into the great hall, where stood the queen and her numerous ladies-in-waiting. “Your harem, sire?” inquired the Persian monarch. The king, acton is hed and amused, did not reply, whereupon Nasr-ed-Din, regarding the mature age of the ladies added in an undertone: “You will soon have to renew it won’t you?” Richard Henry Stoddard, says a New York letter, now fails tp recognize his most intimate friends except by voice. He shuffles along in a mechanipal way, trusting to luck to carry him safely through the streets, while his emaciated form and husky voice attest the physical wreck that has overtaken 4his once vigorous frame. Mr. Stoddard’s literary labors have abeen completely abandoned. —-——~

In his latest installment of “Recollections” in Lippincott’s, George W. Childs tells us that he has in his library a set of the Osgood edition of Dickens’s works in fifty-six volumes, in each of which is inserted an autograph letter of the author to him. the first being dated 1855. He Writes with the greatest enthusiasm of the universal accomplishments of Dorn Pedro, the emperor of Brazil, and praises that monarch's extraordinary memory. King Ja Ja of west Africa, who is imprisoned on one of the islands of the West Indies by the English government. has become a prey to melancholia. He refuses to eat and has grown extremely thin. He would have died months ago if he had not been kept up on wine and tobacco. One of his wives is with him but he will not speak to her and spends his time roaming about puffing cigars and sunk in gloomy reverie. He thought that his exile was to be only temporary but he has begun to realize that he will never be allowed to return to. Africa.

According to the Dnjevnik, a paper ■ published at Saratoff, Russia, there is living there a man who is 140 years old. His name is Daniel Samoiloff, and he was born at Saratoff in 1749. He acted as adjutant to Field Marshal Pugatcheff, and took part in the storming of Kasan and Simbirsk and in the bonbardment of Samara. He was arrested with Pugatcheff and brought back to Simbirsk, where he was subjected to 180 blows with rthe knout and condemned to hard labor for life in the Siberian mines. After thirty-eight years’ banishment and hard labor Samoiloff was permitted to return to his native city. Despite the hardships of his exile he is described as still retaining all his faculties.

Dr. Talmage Talks of “The Shorn Locks of Samson.” k Some of the Ways in Which Strong Men Get Their Locks Shorn—The Earth Filled with Carcasses of Giants—A Warning to Young Men. In his discourse of last Sunday in Brooklyn Tabernacle, Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage spoße most eloquently on the snares and temptations of life to a large audience. His text was Judges XVI, .5. “Entice him, and see wherein his great strength Heth, and by what means we may prevail against him, that We may bind him to afflict him ; and we wilt give thee every one of us eleven hundred pieces of silver.” The sermon was as follows:

One thousand rounds, or about five thousand dollars of our money, were inns offered for the < apture of a giant. It would take a skillful photographist to picUure Samson as he reales was. The most facile words are not supple enough to describe him. He was a giant and a child; the conqueror and the defeated; able to snap a lion’s jaw, and yet captured by the sigh of a maiden. He was ruler and slave; acornmingling of virtue and vice, the sublime and ridiculous; sharp enough to make a riddle, and yet-weak enough to be caught in the most superficial stratagem; hdnest enough to settle his debt, and yet outrageously robbing somebody else to get the material to pay it; a miracle and a scoffing; a crowning glory and a burning shame. There he stands, looming up above •then men, a mountain of flesh; his arms bunched with muscle that can lift the gate •f a city; taking an attitude defiant of armed men and wild beasts. His hair had never been cut, and it rolled down in seven great plaits over his shoulders, adding to his fierceness and terror. The Philistines want to conquer him, and therefore they must find out where the secret of his strength lies.

There is a woman living in the valley of Sorek by the name ot Delilah. They appoint her an agent in the case-. The Philistines are secreted in the same building, and then Delilah goes to work and coaxes Samson to tell what is the secret of his strength. “Well,”-he says, “if you should take seven greeta withes, such as they fasten wild beasts with, and put them around me, I should be perfectly powerless.” So she binds him with the seven green withes. Then she claps her hands, and says, “They come—the Philistines!” and he walks out as though there were no impediment. She coaxes him again, ahd says. “Now tell me the secret of this great strength;” and he replies, “If you should take some ropes that never have been used, and tie me with them, Ishould be just like other men.” She ties him with the ropes, claps her hands and shouts, “They come—the Philistines!” He walks out as easy as he did before—not a single obstruction. She coaxes him again, and he says, “Now if you should take these seven long plaits of hair, and by this house loom weave them into.a web, L could not get away.” So the house loom is rolled up, and the shuttle flies backward and forward, and the lpngnlaitsof hair are woven into a web. Then she claps her hands, and says, “They come! the Philistines” He walks out as easily as he did before, dragging a part of the loom with him. But after awhile she persuades him to tell the truth. He says: “If you should take a razor, or shears, and cut off this long hair, I should be powerless, and in the hands of my enemies,” Samson sleeps, and, that she may not wake him during the process of shearing, help is called in. You know that the barbers of the east nave such a ski 11 fu 1 way of manipulating the head, that " to this very day they will put a man, wide awake, sound asleep. I hear the blades of the shears grinding against each other, and I see the long locks falling off. The shears, or razor,-.accomplishes what green withes and new ropes and house loom could not do. Suddenly she claps her handsand says: “The Philistines be upon thee, Samson H- rouses up with a struggle, but his strength is all gone! He is in the hands ot his enemies! I hear the groan of the giant as they take his eyes out, and then I see him staggering oh in his blindness, feeling his way as he goes on toward Gaza. The. prison door is opened and the giant is thrust in. He sits down and puts his hands on the mill crank, which, with exhausting horizontal motion, goes day after day, week after week, month after month -work, work, work! The consternation of the world in captivity, his locks shorn, his eyes punctured, grinding corn in Gaza, tn a previous sermon on this character I learned some lessons, but another class of lessons are before us now. Learn first how very strong people are sometimes coaxed into great imbecilities. Samson had no right to reveal the secret of his strength. Delilah’s first attempt to find out is a failure. He says: ‘.'Green withes will bind me,” but it was a failure. Then he says, “A new rope will hold me,” but that also was a failure. Then he says, “Weave my locks into a web and thavwnr bind me,” yet that also'was a failure. But at last you see how she coaxed it aut of him. Unimportant actions in life that involve no moral principle may without injury be subjected to ardent persuasions, but as" soon as you have come to the line that separates right from wrong, no inducement or blandishment’ ought to make you step over it. Suppose a man has been brought up in a Christian household and taught sacredly to observe the Sabbath. Sunday comes: you I want fresh air. Temptation says, “Sunday ; isjust like other days :now don t be bigoted; : we will ride forth among the works of God ; the whole earth is his temple; we will not i go into any dissipations: come, now, I have 1 the carriage engaged ana we shall be back I soon enough to go to church in the evening; I don’t yield to Puritanic notions; you will J be no worse for a ride in the country: the i blossoms are out and they say everything is looking glorious.” “Well, I will goto please you,” is the response. And out they go over the street, conscience drowned in the clatter of the swift ho'ofs and the rush of the resounding wheels. That temp.ed man may have had moral character enough to break the green withes of ten thousand Philistine allurements, but he has been overcome by coaxing. Two young men passing down this street come opposite a drinking saloon with a red lantern hung out from the door to light men to perdition. “Let us go in.” says one. “No, 1 won’t,” says the other; “I never go to such places.” “Now, you don’t say you are as weak as that. \\ by, I have been going there for two years and it hasn t hurt me. Come, come now, be a man. If you can’t stand anything stronger, take, a little sherry. You need to see the world as it is. Won't believe in intemperance any more than you. 1 can stop drinking just when I want to. You shall go. Now. come right along.” Persuasion has conquered. Samson yields to the coaxing and there is carnival in hell that night among the Philistines and they shout “Ha! ha ’ We've got him.” Those who have the kindest and mostsymi pathetic natures are the most in danger. | Your very disposition to please others wilt |be the very trap they set. If yon were cold and tiafsb and severe in your nature you would not be tampered with. People never fondle a hedgehog. The most sentimental Greenlander never kisses an iceberg. The warmth and susceptibility -of ■ your nature will encourage the siren. I Though strong as a giant, look out for I Delilah’s scissors. Samson, the strongest man who ever lived, was overcome by ’ coaxing. •> I Again, this narrative teaches us the power of an ill disposed woman, Inthe portrait gallery of Bible queens we find | Abigail and Ruth and Miriam and Vashti ana Debprah. but in the rogues'gallery of a police station you find the pictures of women as well as men. Delilah's picture . belongs to the rogues’ gallery, but she hail mo.e power than all Philistia armed with sword and spear. She could carry off the iron gates of Sr./cson's resolution as easily as he shouldered the gates of Ga a. 'J he force that I ud killed the lion which oneday plunged out fierce from the thicket utterly succumbs to tho silkeu net which Dglilah

weaves for the giant He who had driven an army in riotous retreat with the bleached jaw bone, smiting them hip and thigh with great slaughter, now fails captive at the feet of an unworthy woman. Delilah in the Bible stands in the memorable company of Adah, and Zillah, ahd Bathsheba, and Jezebel, and Athaliah, and .Herodias How deplorable the influence of such in contrast with Rebecca ana Phoebe and Huldah and Tryphona and Jeptha’s daughter and Mary, the mother of Jesus. .While - the latter giitter in the firmanent of God s word like constellations with steady, -cheerful, holy light, the former shoot like baleful metedrs across the terrific heavens, ominous of war, disaster and death. If there is a divine newer in the good mother, her face bright with purity, ahd unselfish love beaming from her eye, a gentleness that-bj’ pangs and sufferings and holv anxieties has been mellowing and softening for many .a year, uttering itself in every syllable, a dignity that-cannot lie dethroned, united with the playfulness that Will not be checked, herJiand the Charm that will instantly take pain out of the child's worst wound, her presence a per)>etual benedicton, her name our defense when we are tempted, her memory an outgushing well of tears and congratulation and thanksgiving, her tie iven a palm waving and a coronal; then there is just as great an influence in the opposite direction in the bad mother her brow beclouded with ungoverned passion, her eyes flashing With unsanctified fire, her lips the fountain of fretfulness and depravity, her example a mildew and a blasting, her name a disgrace to coming generations, her memory a signal for bitterest anathema, her eternity a -whirlwind and a suffocation and a darkness. One wrong headed, wrong hearted mother may ruin one child, and that one child, jgrown up, may destroy a hundred people and the hundred blast a thousand, and the thousand a million. The wife’s sphere is a realm of honor and power almost unlimited. ’ What a blessing was Sarah to Abraham, was Deborah to Lapidoth, was Zipporah to Moses, was Huldah to Shallum. - There are multitudes of men in the marts of trade whose fortuneshave been . tho aa. Sult oT a wife's frugality. Four hands have been achieving that estate; two wthe store, two at the home. 'The burdens of life are comparatively light when there_jare_other hands to help us lift them. The greatest difficulties have often slunk away because there were four eyes to look them out of countenance, What care you for hard knocks in the world as long as you have a bright domestic circle for harbor! One cheerful word in the evening tide as you come in has silenced the clamor of unpaid notes and the disappointment of poor investments. Your table may be quite frugally spread, but it seems more beautiful to you than many tables that smoke with venison and blush with Burgundy. Peace meets you at the door, sits beside you at the table, lights up the evening stand, and sings in the nursery. You have seen an aged couple who for scores of years have helped each other on in life’s pilgrimage going down the steep of years. Long association has ma’de them much alike. They rejoiced at'the same advent, they bent over the same cradle, they wept at the same grave. In the evening they sit quietly thinking of the past, mother khitting at the stand, lather in his arm chair at the fire. Now and then a grandchild comes and they look at him with affection untold and . come well nigh spoiling him with kindness. The life currents beat feebly in their pulses and their work will soon be done and the Master will call. A few short days may separate them, but, not far apart in time of departure, they join each other on the other side the flood. Side by side let Jacob and Rachel be buried. Let one willow overarch their graves. Let their tombstones stand alike marked with the same Scripture. Children and grandchildren will come in the spring time to bring flowers. The patriarchs of the town will come and drop a tear over departed worth. Side by side at the marriage altar. Side by side inthe long journey. Side by side in their craves. After life’s fitful fever they slent well. But there are, as my suoject suggests, domestic scenes not so tranquil. What a curse to Job and Potiphar were their companions, to Ahab was Jezebel, to Jehoram was Athaliah, to John Wesley was Mrs. Wesley, to Samsbn was Delilah. While the. most excellent and triumphant exhibitions of character we find among the women of his tory, and ’t he wo rid thril 1 s with the names of Marie Antoinette and Josephine, and Joan of Arc and Maria Theresa and hundreds of others, who have ruled in the brightest homes and sung the sweetest cantos, enchanted the nations - with their art and "swayed the mightiest of scepters, on the other hand the names of Mary the first of England. Margaret of France, Julia of Rome and Elizabeth Petrowna of Russia have scorched the eye of history with their abominations, and their names, like banished spirits, have gone shrieking and cursing through the world. In female biography we. find the two extremes of excellence and crime. Woman stands nearest the gats of heaven or nearest the door of hell. When adorned by grace she reaches a point of Christian elevation which man cannot attain, and when blasted of crime she sinks deeper than man can plunge. Yet lam glad that the instances in which woman makes utter shipwreck of character are comparatively rare. - But. says some synical spirit, what do you do with those words in Ecclesiastes where So.lomou says: “Behold, this have! found, sailh .the.preacher, counting onediy' one to find out the account: which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man amontr a thousand have 1 found; but a woman among all those have I not found!” My answer is that if Solomon had behaved himself with common decency and kept out of infamous circles he would not have had so much difficulty in finding integrity of character among women and never would have uttered such a tirade. Ever since my childhood I have heard speakers admiring Diogenes, the cynical philosopher who lived in a tub, for going through the streets of Athens in broad daylight with a lantern, and when asked what he did that for, said: “1 am looking for an honest man.” Now I warrant that that philosopher who had such a hard time to find an honest man was himself -dishonest. 1 think he stole both the lantern and the tub. So, when 1 hear a man expatiating on the weaknesses of women, I immediately suspect him and say there is another Solomon with Holomon’s wisdom left out. Still, I would not have the illustrations I have given of transcending excellency in female biography lead you to suppose that there are no perils in woman’s i pathway. God’s grace alone can make an Isabella Graham, or a Christine Alsop, or a , Fidelia Fiske, or a Catherine of Siena.J Temptations lurk about the brightest domestic circle. It was no unmeaning thing when God set up amidst the snlendors of I his word the character of infamous De- ' lilah. Again, this strange story of the text ! leads me to consider some of the ways in which strong men get their locks shorn. God, for some reason best knoqyn to him self, made the strength of Samson to depend on the length of his hair; when the shears clipped it iiis strength was gone. The strength of men is variously distributed. Sometimes it lies in physical development, sometimes in intellectual attainment, sometimes in heart force, sometimes in social position, sometimes in financial accumlation; and there is always a sharp shears ready to destroy it, Every day there are ! Samsons ungianted. I saw a young man start in life under the most cheering advantages. His acute miud was at home in all • scientific dominion. He reached not* only alt rugged attainments, but by delicate appreciation be could catch tho I tinge of the cloud and the sparkle of the w..ve and the diapason of the thunder. He walked forth in life head and shoulders i above others in mental jtatua'u He could wrestle with giantsln opposing systems of philosophy and carry off the gates of opposing schools and smite the enemies of truth hip and thigh with great slaughter. But h> began to tamper with brilliant free . thinking. Modern theories of the soul threw over him their bland shments. , I Skepticism was the Dclil ih that shore bis loci s off, and all the.'Philistines of doubt, and darkness and were upon him. ■ , He d>ed in a very prison of unbelief, his i eyes oat. | bar back in the country d striets—just where I purposely -omit to sav thh>e was writ oiw whose fame wLI last as long as

American institutions. His name was the terror of all enemies of free government. He stood, the admired of mil)ions;-t .e nation uncovered in his presence, and when he spoke senates sat breathless under the spelt The plotters against good government attempted to bind him with green withes and weave bis locks in a web, yet he walked forth from the enthrallment, not knowing he had burst a bond. But fiom the wine cup there arose a destroying spirit i hat came forth to capture his soul. He drank until his eyes grew dim and his knees knocked together and his strength failed. Exhausted with lifelong dissipations, he went home >to die. Ministers pronounced eloquent euiogiums, and poets sung, and painters sketched, and sculptors chiseled the ma estic- form into marble, and the world wept, but every where it was known that it was strong drink that came like the. infamous Delilah and his locks were shorn. From the Island of Corsica there started forth a nature charged with' unparalleled eueigies to make thrones tremble and convulse the earth. Piedmont, Naples, Bavaria, Germany, Italy, Austria and England rose up to crush the rising man. At the plunge of his bayonets Bastiles burst open. The earth groaned with the agonies of Rivoli, Austerliz, Saragossa and Eylau. Five million men slain in his wars. Crowns were showered at his feet, and kingdoms hoisted triumphal arches to let him under, and Europe was lighted up at me conflagration of consuming cities. He could almost have made a causeway of human bones between Lisbon and Moscow. No power short of omnipod —arres t him. But out of ihc ocean of human blooi therearose a spirit in which the conqueror' found moie than a match. The very ambition that had rocked the world was now to-, be his destroyer. It grasped for too much and in its effort lost ail. He reached up after the scepter of universal dominion, but slipped and fell back into desolation and banishment. The American ship, damaged of the storm, to-day puts up in St. Helena and the crejv go up to see the spot where the French exile expired in loneliness and disgrace, the mightiest of all Samsons snorn of bis locks by ambition, that most merciless of all Deiilahs. ~ ..

I have not time to enumerate. Evil as-' sociations, sadden successes, spend thrift Jiabits,.miserly proclivities and dissipation are. the names of some of the shears with' which men are every day made powerless.'. They have strewn the earth with the car-/ casses of giants and filled the great prison house with destroyed Samsons, who sit grinding the mills of despair, their locks shorn and their eyes out. If parents only knew to what temptations their children were subjected they would be more earnest in their prayers and more careful about their example. No young man escapeshaving the pathway of sin pictured in bright colors before him. The first time I ever saw a city—it was the city of Philadelphia—l was a mere lad. 1 stopped at a hotel, and I remember in the eventide a corrupt man plied me with his infernal art. He saw 1 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 shoved back from the basilisk. I made up my mind he was a basilisk. I remember how he reeled his chair round in front of me and with a concentrated and diabolical effort 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 encompassing grace of a good God that delivered me. Beware! beware! O young man! There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is death. If all the victims of an impure life in all lands and ages could be gathered together, they would make a host vaster than that which Xerxes led across the Hellespont, than Timour led across India, than William the Conqueror led across England, than AbouBekr led across Syria; and if they could be stretched out in single file across this continent, I think the vanguard of the host would stand on the beach of the Pacific while yet the rear guard stood on the beach of the Atlantic. I say this not because I expect to reclaim any one that has gone astray in this fearful path, but because I want to utter a' warning for those who still maintain their integrity. The cases of reclamation of those who have given themselves fully up to an impure life are so few, probably you do not know one of them. . I have seen a good many start out on that road. How many have 1 seen come back! Not one that I now think of. It seems as if the! spell of death is on them and no hu man voice or the voice of God can,break the spell. Their feet are hoppled,: their wrists are handcuffed. They have around them a girdle of reptiles bunched at the waist, fastening them to an iron doom; every time they breathe the forked tongues strike them and they strain to break away until the tendons snap and tho blood exudes; and amidst their contortions they cry out: “Take me back to my father's house., Where is mother!” Take me home! Take me home!” - 5 Do I stand before a man to-day the locks of whose strength are being toyed with, let me tell you to escape lest the shears of destruction take your moral and your spiritual integrity. Do you riot see your sandals beginning to curl on that red hot path? This day in the name of Almight God I tear off the beautifying veil and the embroidered mantle of this old hag df Iniquity, and I show you the ulcers aria the jch or and the canecred lip and the parting joints and the macerated limbs and the wriggling putrefaction, and I I cry out, Oh, horror of horrors! In the stillness of this Sabbath hour I lift a warning. Remember it is much easier to form bad habits than to get clear of them; in one minute of time you may get into a sin from which all eternity cannot get you out I Oh. that the voice of God’s truth might drown the voice of Delilah. Come into the paths of peace, and by the grace of a pardoning God start for thrones of honor and dominion upon which you may reign, rather than travel the road to a dungeon where the destroyed grind in the mills of despair, their locks shorn and their eyes out