Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1895 — POISON LURKS IN THE IVY. [ARTICLE]

POISON LURKS IN THE IVY.

He Says Wc Are at the Opening Door of Good Times-Why So Many Men Fall by the Wayside—The Value of a Human Soul. —■■■-

Business Troubles.

In his serr.’on last Sunday Dr. Talmage chose a subject of universal interest, viz., “Business Troubles,” the text selected being Ezekiel xxvii., 24, “These were thy merchants in ad sorts of things.” We are at the opening door of returning national prosperity. The coming crops, the re-establishment of public confidence and, above all, the blessing of God will turn in upon all sections of America the widest, greatest prosperity this country has ever seen. But that door of successes is not yet fully open, and thousands of business men are yet suffering from the distressing times through which we have been passing. Some of the best men in the land have faltered, men whose hearts are enlisted in every good work and whose hands have blessed every great charity. The church of God can afford to extend to them her sympathies and plead before heaven with al! availing prayer. The schools such men have established, the churches they have built, the asyluma and benefit institutions they have fostered, will be their eulogy long after their banking institutions are forgotten. Such urcjr can never fail. They have their treasures in banks that never break and will be millionaires forever. _But I thought it would be appropriate to-day, and useful, for me to *alk about the trials and temptations of out business men and try to offer some curative prescriptions.

Limited Capital.

In the first place, I have to remark that a great many of our business men feel ruinous trials and temptations coming to them from small and limited capital in business. It is everywhere understood that it takes now three or four times as much to do business well as once it did. Once a few hundred dollars were turned into goods—the merchant would be his own store sweeper, his own salesman, his own bookkeeper; he would manage all the affairs himself, and everything would be net profit. Wonderful changes have come; costly apparatus, extensive advertising, exorbitant store rents, heavy taxation, expensive ageucies, are only parts of the demand made upon opr commercial men, and when they have found themselves in such circumstances with small capital they have sometimes been tempted to run against the rocks of moral and financial destruction. This temptation of limited enpitul has ruined uien in two ways. Sometimes they have shrunk down under the temptation. They have jielded the battle before the first shot was fired. At the first hard dun they surrendered. Their knees knocked together at the fall of the auctioneer’s hammer. They blanched at the financial peril. They did not understand that there is such a thing as heroism in merchandise, and that there are Waterloos of the counter, and that a man can fight no braver battle with the sword than he can with the yardstick. Their souls melted in them because su-

gars were up when they wanted to buy and down when they wanted to sell, and unsalable goods were on the shelf and bad debt s in~their ledgers - The gloom of their countenances overshadowed., et en their dry goods and groceries. Despondeucy, coming from limited capital, blacted them. Others have felt it in a different way. They have said: “Here I have been trudging along. I have been trying to be honest all ihese years. I find it is of no use. Now it is make or bre/ik.” The small craft that could have stood the si 1 cam is put out beyond the lighthouse, on the great sea of speculation. He bomnvs a few thousand dollars from friends who dare not refuse him, and he goes bartering on a large scale. He reasons in this way: “Perhaps I may succeed, and if I don’t I will be no worse off than I am now, for SIOO,OOO taken from nothing nothing remains.'’ Stocks are the dice with which he gambles. He bought for a few dollars vast tracts of Western land. Some man aK.the East, living on a fat homestead, meets this gambler of fortune nnd is persuaded to trade off his estate for lots in a Western city with large avenues, and costly palaces, and lake steamers smoking at the wharves, nnd rail trains coming down with lightning speed from every direction. There it is all on paper. The city has never been built, nor the railroads constructed, but everything points that way, and the thing will be done as sure as you live. Well, the man goefchn, stopping at no fraud or outrage. In his splendid equipage he dashes past, while the honest laborer looks up nnd wipes the sweat from his brow and says, “I wonder where that man got all Ids money.” After a while the bubble bursts. Creditors rush in. The law clutches, but finds nothing in its grusp. The men who were swindled say, “I don’t know how I could have ever been deceived by that man,” and.the pictorials in handsome wood cuts set forth the hero who in ten years had genius enough to fail for $150,000. And that is the process by which ranny have bee:rtempted through limitation of capitul to rush into labyrinths from w.hich they could not be extricated. I would not want to chain honest enterprise. I would not want to block up any of the avenues for honest accumulation that open before young men. On the contrary, I would like to cheer them on nnd rejoice when they reach the goal, but when there are such multitudes of men going to ruin for this life nnd the life that is to come, through wrong notions of what are lawful spheres of enterprise, it is the duty of the church of God, and the ministers of religion, and the friends of all young men, to utter a plain," emphatic, unmistakable protest. These are the influences that drown men in destruction and perdition.

Overanxlety.

Agnin, n great many of our business men are tempted to over anxiety and core. You know that nearly all commercial businesses are overdone in this day. Smitten with the love of quick gain, our cities are crowded with men resolved to be rich at all hazards. They do not care how money comes, if it only comes. Our best merchants are thrown into competition with men of more means and 'ess (Mnscience, and if an opportunity of accumulation be neglected one hour one else picks it up. From January to December the struggle goes on. Night gives no quiet to limbs tossing in restlessness nor to a brain that will not stop thinking. The dreams are harrowed by imaginary loss and flashed by imaginary gains. Even the Babbath cannot dam back the tide of anxiety; for this wave of worldliness

hood and their business honor are dependent upon the uncertainties of the next hour. This excitement of the brain, this corroding care of the heart, this strain of effort that exhausts the spirit, sends a great many of our best men, in middle life, into the grave, their life dashed out against money safes. They go with their store on their backs. They trudge like camels, sweating, from Aleppo to Damascus. They make their life a crucifixion. Standing behind desks and counters, banished from the fresh air, weighed down by parking cares, they are so many suicides. Gh, I wish I could to-day rub out some of these lines of care; tliht I could lift some of the burdens from the heart; that I could give relaxation to some of these worn muscles. It is time Tor yon to begin to take it a little easier. Do your best, and then trust God for the rest. Do not fret. God manages all the affairs of your life, and he .nanngCS them foj the best. Consider the lilies—they always have robes. Behold the fowls of the air—they always have nests. Take a long breath. Bethink betimes that God did not make you for a pack horse. Dig yourself out from among the hogsheads and the shelves and in the light of the holy Sabbath day resolve that you will give to the winds , your fears and your fretfulness and your •distresses. You brought nothing into the world, and it is very certain you can carry nothing out. Haying food and raiment, be therewith content. The merchant came home from the store. There had been a great disaster there. He opened the front door and said in the midst of his family circle: “I am ruined. Everything is gone. lam ruined.” His wife said: “I am left.” And the little child threw up its hands and said: “Papa, lam here.” The aged grandmother, seated in the room, said: “Then yon have all tl>e promises of God, besides, John.” And he burst into tears and said: “God forgive me that I have been so ungrateful. 1 find I have a greatmanyAhings left. God forgive me

Neglect of Home Duties.

Again I remark that many of our business men are tempted to neglect their home duties. How often it is that the store and the home seem to clash, but thsye ought not to be any collision. It is often the case that the father is the mere treasurer of the family, a sort of agent to see that they have dry goods and groceries. The work of family government he does not touch. Once or twice in a year he calls the children up on S' Sabbath afternoon when he has a half hour he does not exactly know what to do with, and in that half hour he disciplines the children and chides them nnd corrects their faults and gives them a great deal of good advice, and then wonders all the rest of the year that his children do not do better when they have the wonderful advantage of that semiannual castigation. The family table, which ought to be the place for pleasant discussion and cheerfulness, often becomes the place of perilous expedition. If there be any blessing asked at ay, it is cut off at both ends nnd with the hand on the carving knife. He counts on his fingers, making estimates in the interstices of the repast. The work done, the hat goes to the head and he starts down the street, and before the family have arisen from the table he has bound up another bundle sis goods and says to the customer: “Anything more I can dp for yon to-day, sir?” A man has more responsibility than those which are discharged by putting competent instructors over his children and giving them a drawing master aud a music teacher. The physical culture of the child will not be attended to unless the father looks to it. He must sometimes lose his dignity. He must uulimber his joints. He must sometimes lead them out to their sports and games. The parent who cannot forget the severe duties of life sometimes, to fly the kite, and trundle the hoop, and chase the ball, and jump thg rope with his children, ought never to have been tempted out of a crusty and unredeemable solitariness. If you want to keep your children away from places of sin, you can only do it by mnking your home attractive. You may preach sermons and advocate reforms and denounce wickedness, and yet your children will be captivated by the glittering saloon of sin unless you can make your home a brighter place than any other place on earth to them. Oh, gather all charms into your house! If you can afford it, bring books and pictures and cheerful entertainments to the household. But, above all, teach those children, not by half an hour twice a year on the Sabbath day, but day after day aud every day tench them that religiou is a great ghtdness, that it throws chains of gold about the neck, that it takes no- spring from the foot, no blitheness from the heart, no sparkle from the eye, no ring from the .laughter, but that “her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” I sympathize with the work being done in many of pur cities), by which beautiful rooms are set apart by our Young Men’s Christian associations, and I pray God to prosper them in all things. But I tell you there is something back of that and before that —we need more happy, consecrated, cheerful Christian homes everywhere.

Value of the Soul.

Again I remark that a great many of our business men are tempted to put the attainment of money above the value of the soul. It is a grand thing to have plenty of money. The more you get of it the better, if it come honestly and go usefully. For the lack of it sickness dies without medicine, and hunger finds its coffin in the empty bread tray, and nakedness shivers for lack of clothes and fire. When I hear a man in canting tirade against money—a Christian man—as though it had no possible use on earth and he had no interest in it at all, I come almost to think that the heaven that would be appropriate for him would be an everlasting poorhotise. While, my friends, we do admit there is such a thing as the lawful use of money—a profitable use of money—let us recognize nlsp the fact that money cannot satisfy a man's soul; that it cannot glitter in the dark valley; that it cannot pay our fare across the Jordan of death; that it cannot unlock the gate of heaven. There are men, Ja all occupations who seem to act as though they thought that a pack of bouds and mortgages could be traded off for a title to heaven, and as though gold would be a lawful tender in that place where if is so common that they make pavements out of it. Salvation by Christ is the only salvation. Treasures in heaven are the only incorruptible treasures. • Have you ever ciphered out in the rtile of loss and gain the sum, “What abaft'**

MOTIiiIMPWPMPi price is worth more than any gem you can bring frqm the ocean, than Australian or Brazilian Mines Btrung in one carcanet. Seek after God, find his righteousness, and all shall be well here; all shall bs well hereafter.

Shipwreck.

Some'of you remember the shipwreck of the Central America. That noble steamer had, I think, about 500 passengers aboard. Suddenly the storm came, and the surges trampled the decks and swung into the hatches, and there went up a hundred voiced death shriek. The foam on the jaw of the wave. The pitching of the steamer as though it were leaping a mountain. The dismal flare of the signal . rockets. The long cough of the steam pipes. The hiss of extinguished furnaces. The walking of God on the wave! The steamer went not down without a struggle.As the passengers stationed themselves in rows to bale out the vessel, hark to the thump of the buckets, as men unused to toil, with blistered hands and strained muscle, tug for their lives. There is a sail seen against the sky. The flash of the distress gun is noticed; its voice heard not, for it is choked in the louder booming of the sea. A few passengers.escaped, but the steamer gave one great lurch and was gone! So there are’some men who sail on prosperously in life. All’s well; all’s well. But at last some financial disaster comes—a euroclydon. Down they go! The bottom of the commercial &ea is strewn with shattered hulks. But because your property goes do not let your soul go. Though all else perish, save that; for I have to tell you of a more stupendous shipwreck than that which I just mentioned. God launched this world 0,000 years ago. It has been going on under freight of mountains and immortals, but one day it will stagger at the cry of fire. The timbers of rock will burn, the mountains flamejikejnasts and the clouds like sails in the judgment hurricane. Then God shall take the passengers off the deck, and from the berths those who have long been asleep in Jesus, and he will set them far beyond the" reach of storm and peril. But how many shall go down will never be known until it shall be announced one day in heaven; the shipwreck of a world! So many millions saved! So many millions drowned! Oh, my dear hearers, whatever you lose, though your houses go, though your lands go, though all your earthly possessions perish, may God Almighty, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, save all your souls.

A Speeles That Looks Pretty, but la Treacherous to the Susceptible. The vine called poison ivy (Rlius toxicodendron) is found growing almost everywhere. It Is commonly met with in old meadows and along moist places, but It is not by any means confined to these places. It clings to trees and stumps by means of little-fingered tendrils which take hold tenaciously on bark or other rough surfaces. It never grows to any great Height. In meadows where it Is mowed off year after year it thickens up from the roots and becomes a mass of low growth. It bears greenish white berries along its tough stems. Its popular name of ivy is given because of its climbing, clinging habit, and the fancied resemblance of its foliage to some varieties of the ivy, but it is in no sense a member of the ivy family. It is a dangerous plant because it communicates its poison by contact Many persons cannot go near 4 without being more or less affected by it. It produces an eruption of the skin of a most irritating, painful character, and frequently very serious results follow. Some persons, however, are not at all susceptible to its influence, and many handle it with perfect Impunity. Why this Is so I have never heard explained. This plant in many ways bears a resemblance to the Ampelopsis, or Virginia creeper, which is one of our most popular native vines. It has the same clinging habit, its leaves are similar in shape, and the two plants are frequently found growing together. Because of these similarities persons very frequently mistake the Ivy for Ampelopsis and dig it up to plant about the house, thinking they have the harmless vine, but in a day or two they find out what a serious mistake they have made by the stinging, smarting, burning eruption which covers every portion of the skin touched by the plaut This mistake as to the Identity of the two plants need not be made if it Is kept in mind that the ivy has three-parted leaves always, while the Ampelopsis has fiveparted ones. There is a wide difference In the fruit of the two plants also, the Ivy having greenish white berries, w'hile those of the Ampelopsis are a dark blue or purple. Another form of Rhus (R. venenata) Is found growing plentifully in swampy places. This is a shrub or bush from five to ten feet high. It has leaves shaped very much like those of R. typhlna, the well-known and beautiful staghorn sumach of our hills and pastures. Because of this resemblance of foliage It Is known in many localities as poison sumach. In others as poison elder, though It Is not In any way related to the family of which the elder is a member. This form of sumach, fortunately. Is not found growing In all portions of the country, as the harmless variety is. It Is much more frequently met with at the WesJ and South than nt the Eust. I do not remember of ever having seen It growing on high or dry land.—Ladles’ Home Journal.