Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1893 — UNDER THE GAS-LIGHT. [ARTICLE]

UNDER THE GAS-LIGHT.

The Somber Side of City Life. The Vicious Prowl While Good Men Sleep—- “ The Darkness He Called Night.” Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn, last Sunday: Subject: “The dark side of social life in our great cities.” Text. Genesis i, s—“ And the darkness He called night.” He said: My subject is midnight in town. The thunder of the city has rolled out of the air. The slightest sounds cut the night with such distinctness as to attract your attention. The tinkling of the bell of the street car in the distance and the baying of the dog. The stamp of a horse in the next street. The slamming of a galoon door. The hiccough of the drunkard. The shriek of the steam whistle five miles away. Oh! how suggestive, my friends, midnight Jn town. ' „———- . -• There are honest men pacing up anddown the street. Here is a city missionary who has been carrying a scuttle of coal to that poor family in that dark place. Here is an undertaker going up the steps of a building, from which there comes a bitter cry, which indicates that the destroying angel has smitten the firstborn. Here is a minister of religion who has been giving the sacrament to a dying Christian. U ere is a physician passing along in great haste, the messenger a few steps ahead hurrying on to the household. "Nearly all the lights have gone out in the dwellings. That light in the window” is the light of a watcher, for the medicines must be administered, and the fever must be watched, and the restless tossing off of the coverlid must be resisted,, and the ice must be kept on the hot temples, and the perpetual prayer must go up from hearts soon to .be broken. Oh! the midnight in town. What a stupendjus thought—a whole city at rest. Let the city - sleep. But, my friends, be not deceived. There will be thousands to-night Who will not deep at'all. Go up that dark alley ind be cautious where you tread, lest you fall over the prostrate form »f a drunkard lying on his own doorstep. Look about you, lest you feel the garroter’s hug. Look through the broken window pane and see what you can see. You say, “Nothing.” Then listen. What is it? “God help us!” No footlights, but tragedy ghastlier and mightier than

Ristori or Edwin Booth ever enacted. No light, no fire, no, bread, no aope. Shivering in the cold, they have had no food for twenty-four Dours. You say, “Why don’t they Deg?" They do, but they get nothing. You say, ‘ ‘Why don’t they de.iver themselves over to the almsmuse?” Ah, you would not ask shat if you ever heard the bitter cry of a man or child when told he must jo to the almshouse. Pass on through the alley. Open die door. “Oh.” you say, “it is .ocked.” ; No, it is not locked; if has lever been locked. No burglar would be tempted to go in there to Steal anything. The door is never ocked. Only a broken chair stands igainst the door. Shove it back. So' in. Strike a match. Now look. Beastliness and rags. See those glaring eyeballs. Be careful now what you say, Do not utter any ineult, do not utter any suspicion, if you value your life. Do you know it is midnight when criminals do their worst work? At half past 8 o’clock you will find them In the drinking saloon, but toward 12 o’clock they go to their garrets, they get out their tools, then they start on the street. Watching on cither side for the police, they go to their work of darkness. This is a burglar, and the false key will soon touch the store lock. This is an incendiary, and before morning there will be a light on the sky and a cry of “Fire! fire!” This is an assassin, and to-morrow morning there will be a dead body in one of the vacant lots. During the daytime these villians in our cities lounge about,some asleep and awake, but when the third watch of the night arrives, their eye keen, their brain cool, their arm strong, their foot fleet to fly or pursue, they are ready.

Just so long as there are neglected children of the street, just so long we will have these desperadoes. Some one, wishing to make a good Christian point and to quote a passage of Scripture, expecting to get a Scriptural passage in answer, said to one of these poor lads, cast out and wretched, “When your father and your mother forsake you, who then will take you up?” and the boy said, “The perlice, the perlice!” In the midnight hour, pass down ■ the streets of our American cities, and you hear the click of the dice and the sharp, keen tap of the poolroom ticker. At these places merchant princes dismount, and legislators tired of making laws, take a respite in breaking them. All classes of people are robbed by this crime, the importer of foreign silks and the dealer inChatham street pocket handkerchiefs. The clerks of the store take a hand after the shutters are put up, and the officers of the court while away their time while the jury is out. In Chestnut street, Philadelphia, while I was living in that city, an incident occured which was familiar to us there. In Chestput street a young man went into a gambling saloon, lost all his property, then blew his brains out, and before the blood was washed from the floor by the maid the comrades were shuffling cards again. You see, there is no mercy in the highwayman for the belated traveler on whose body he heaps the

stones, there is more mercy in the] front for the flower it kills, there is more mercy in the hurricane that shivers the steamer on the Long Is land coast than there is mercy ii. tkc heart of a gambler for his victiru In the midnight hour, also, drunkenness does its worst. The drinking will be respectable at eight • clock in the evening, a little flushes at 9, talkative and garrulous at 10, vt 11 blasphemous, at 12 the hat fab: off and the man falls to the floor as/ing for more drink. Strewn through -•he drinking saloons of the city, father, brothers, husbands, sons, as good a you are by nature, perhaps better.^ Oh, if the rum touches the brain, you cannot hush it up. You do not see the worst. In the midnight meetings a great multitude have been saved. We want a few hundred Christian men and women to come down from the highest circles of society to toil amid these wandering and destitute ones, and kindle up a light in the dark alley, even the gladness of heaven. Do not go from your well filled tables with the idea that pious talk is going to step the gnawing of an empty stomach or-to warm stockingless feet. Take bread, take raiment, take medicine as well as take prayer. There is a great dealof common sense in what the poor woman said' to the city missionary when he was telling her how she ought to love God and serve him. “Oh,” said she, “if you were as poor and cold as I am and as hungry, you could think of nothing else!”" We want more common sense in Christian work, taking the bread of this life in. one hand and the bread of the next <ife in the other hand —no such inapt work as that done by the Christian man who during the last war went into a hospital with tracts, and coming to the bed of a man whose legs had been amputated gave him a tract on the sin of dancing! I rejoice befpre God that never are sympathetic words uttered, never a prayer offered, never a Christian almsgiving indulged in but it is -blessed. I tell you there is more delight in heaven over one man that gets reformed by the grace of God than over ninety and nine that never got off the track. I could give you the history in a minute of one of the best friends I ever had. Outside of my own family, I never had a better friend. He welcomed me to my home at the west. He was of splendid personal appearance, and he had

an ardor of soul and a warmth of affection that made me love him like a brother. I saw men coming out of the saloons and gambling hells, and they surrounded my friend, and they took him St the weak point, his social nature, and I saw him going down, and I had fair a talk with him—ford never yet saw a man you could not talk with on the subject of hi's habits if you talked with him- in the right way- I said to him, “Why don’t you give up your bad habits and become a Christian?” I remember now justhow he looked, leaning over his counter, as he replied: “I wish I could. Oh, sir, I should like to be a Christian, but I have gone so far astray I can’t get back.” - “So the time went on. After a while the day of sickness came. 1 was summoned to his sick bed. I hastened. It took me but a very few moments to get there. I was surprised as I went in. I saw him in his ordinary clothes. fully dressed, lying on the top of the bed. I gave him ray hand, and he seized it convulsively and said: “Oh, how glad lam to see you. Sit down there.” I sat down, and he said: “Mr, Talmage, just where fbu sit now my mother sat last night. She has been dead twenty years. Now, I don’t want you to think I am out of my mind, or that I am superstitious; but sir, she sat there last night just as certainly as you sit there now—the same cap and apron and spectacles—it was my old mother —she sat there. ” Then he turned to his wife and said: “I wish you would take these strings off the bed. Somebody is. wrapping strings around me all the time. I wish you would stop that annoyance.” She said: “There is nothing here.” Then I saw it was delirium. He said: “Just where you sit now my mother sat, and she said, ‘Roswell, 1 wish you would do better —I wish you would do better.’ I said, ‘Mother, I wish I could do better. I try to do better, but I can’t. Mother, you used to help me; why can’t you help me now?’ And, sir. I got out of bed, for it was reality, and I went to her and threw my arms around her neck, and I said, ‘Mother, I will do better, but you must help— I cah’t do this alone: I knelt down and prayed. That night his-soul went to the Lord that made it. Arrangements were made for the obsequies. The question was raised whether they should bring him to church. Sombody said, “You can’t

bring such a dissolute man as that into the church.” I said, “You will bring him in the church; he stood by me when he was alive, and I wiil stand by him when he is dead; bring him.” As I stood in the pulpit and saw them carrying the body up the aisle, I felt as If I could weep tears of blood. On one side of the pulpit sat his little child of eight years, a Sweet, beautiful little girl that I had seen him hug convulsiuely in his better momepts. He put on her all jewels, all diamonds, and gave her all pictures and tovs, and then he would go away, as if hounded by an evil spirit, to his cups and house of shame, a fool to the correction of the stocks. She looked up wonderingly. She knew not what it all meant. She was not old enough to understand the sorrow of an orphan child.