T. De Witt Talmage

“ Whereupon the police, the mayor and the public sentiment of the city rose up and declared that, though the heavens fell, no woman should be allowed to sell molasses candy on Sunday. Yet the law puts its hands behind its back, and walks up and down in the presence of a thousand abominations and dares not whisper.
There are scores of men to-day on the streets, whose costly family wardrobes, whose rosewood furniture, whose splendid turn-outs, whose stately mansions, are made out of the distresses of sewing-women, whose money they gathered up in a stock swindle. ”

“ There are enough bad newspapers weekly poured out into the homes of our country to poison a vast population. In addition to the home manufacture of iniquitous sheets, the mail-bags of other cities come in gorged with abominations. New York scoops up from the sewers of other cities, and adds to its own newspaper filth. And to-night, lying on the tables of this city, or laid away on the shelf, or in the trunk, for more private perusal, are papers the mere mention of the names of which would send a blush to the cheek, and make the decent and Christian world cry out: "God save the city!" ”

“ People who will lie about nothing else, will lie about a picture. On a small income we must make the world believe that we are affluent, and our life becomes a cheat, a counterfeit, and a sham.
Few persons are really natural. When I say this, I do not mean to slur cultured manners. It is right that we should have more admiration for the sculptured marble than for the unhewn block of the quarry. From many circles in life fashion has driven out vivacity and enthusiasm. A frozen dignity instead floats about the room, and iceberg grinds against iceberg. ”

“ There is human sweat in the golden tankards. There is human blood in the crimson plush. There are the bones of unrequited toil in the pearly keys of the piano. There is the curse of an incensed God hovering over all their magnificence. Some night the man will not be able to rest. He will rise up in bewilderment and look about him, crying: "Who is there?" Those whom he has wronged will thrust their skinny arms under the tapestry, and touch his brow, and feel for his heart, and blow their sepulchral breath into his face, crying: "Come to judgment!" ”

“ The winds of divine help will begin to blow; the way will clear for the great army of Christian philanthropists; the glittering treasures of the world's beneficence will line the path of our feet; and to the other shore we will be greeted with the clash of all heaven's cymbals; while those who resist and deride and pursue us will fall under the sea, and there will be nothing left of them but here and there, cast high and dry upon the beach, the splintered wheel of a chariot, and, thrust out from the surf, the breathless nostril of a riderless charger. ”

“ I denounce the idea, prevalent in society, that though our young women may embroider slippers, and crochet, and make mats for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame for a young woman, belonging to a large family, to be inefficient when the father toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a daughter to be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. ”

“ If a panther come down into the village and carry off a child, the whole neighborhood go out with clubs and guns to bring it down.
But this monster-crime goes forth, carrying off body and soul; and yet, if we speak, a thousand voices bid us be silent.
I shall try to cut to the vitals of the subject, and proceed with the post-mortem of this carcass of death. It is time to speak on this subject. All the indignation of the community upon this subject is hurled upon woman's head. If, in an evil hour, she sacrifice her honor, the whole city goes howling after her. She shall take the whole blame. ”

“ After midnight the eye of God will look down and see uncounted gambling-saloons plying their destruction. Passing down the street to-night, you may hear the wrangling of the gamblers mingling with the rattle of the dice, and the clear, sharp crack of the balls on the billiard-table.
The finest rooms in the city are gambling dens. In gilded parlor, amid costly tapestry, you may behold these dens of death. These houses have walls attractive with elaborate fresco and gems of painting—no sham artist's daub, but a masterpiece. Mantel and table glitter with vases and statuettes. ”

“ Get money! It will do you good when it begins to eat like a canker! It will solace the pillow of death, and soothe the pangs of an agonized eternity! Though in the game thou dost stake thy soul, and lose it forever—get money!
The bad newspaper hesitates not to assault Christianity and its disciples. With what exhilaration it puts in capitals, that fill one-fourth of a column, the defalcation of some agent of a benevolent society! There is enough meat in such a carcass of reputation to gorge all the carrion-crows of an iniquitous printing-press. ”

“ Think you it is no concern of yours what infamous advertisements, placarded on the walls, or in the public newspaper, shall smite the vision of your innocent little ones? Shall I be nervous about a stagnant pool of water, lest it breed malaria, and be careless when there are in the very heart of our city thousands of houses, devoted to various forms of dissipation, which day and night steam with miasma, and pour out the fiery lava of pollution, and darken the air with their horrors, and fill the skies with the smoke of their torment, that ascendeth up forever and ever? ”

“ This accounts for the utter chagrin which men feel at the treatment they receive when they lose their property. Hold up your head amid financial disaster, like a Christian! Fifty thousand subtracted from a good man leaves how much? Honor; Truth; Faith in God; Triumphant Hope; and a kingdom of ineffable glory, over which he is to reign forever and ever.
If a millionnaire should lose a penny out of his pocket, would he sit down on a curb-stone and cry? And shall a man possessed of everlasting fortunes wear himself out with grief because he has lost worldly treasure? ”

“ If, forgetting who you are, any man attempts to say such things in your presence, let your better nature assert itself, look the offender full in the face, and ask—"What do you mean by saying such a thing in my presence!" Better allow a man to smite you in the face than to utter such conversation before you. I do not care who the men or women are that utter impure thoughts; they are guilty of a mighty wrong; and their influence upon our young people is baleful.
If in the club where you associate; if in the social circle where you move, you hear depraved conversation, fly for your life! ”

“ What is the matter with that woman—wrought up into the agony of despair? O, her muff is out of fashion!
Worse than all—this folly is not satisfied until it has extirpated every moral sentiment, and blasted the soul. A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul has been riven. The excitement of a luxurious life has been the vortex that has swallowed up more souls than the Maelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships. What room for elevating themes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal? ”

“ Year by year, thousands of men are crushed by the ink-roller. An unscrupulous man in the editorial chair may smite as with the wing of a destroying angel. What to him is commercial integrity, or professional reputation, or woman's honor, or home's sanctity? It seems as if he held in his hand a hose with which, while all the harpies of sin were working at the pumps, he splashed the waters of death upon the best interests of society. ”

“ He has gathered all the flowers and shrubs into associations. You may plant one "forget-me-not" or "hearts-ease" alone, away off upon the hillside, but it will soon hunt up some other "forget-me-not" or "hearts-ease." Plants love company; you will find them talking to each other in the dew. A galaxy of stars is only a mutual life-insurance company. You sometimes see a man with no out-branchings of sympathy. His nature is cold and hard, like a ship's mast, ice-glazed, which the most agile sailor could never climb. Others have a thousand roots and a thousand branches. ”

“ I speak now of the city in the third watch, or from twelve to three o'clock.
I never weary of looking upon the life and brilliancy of the city in the first watch. That is the hour when the stores are closing. The laboring men, having quitted the scaffolding and the shop, are on their way home. It rejoices me to give them my seat in the city car. They have stood and hammered away all day. Their feet are weary. They are exhausted with the tug of work. They are mostly cheerful. With appetites sharpened on the swift turner's wheel and the carpenter's whetstone, they seek the evening meal. ”

“ Lest you be utterly disheartened, I will show you that we fight in a war in which we will be completely victorious. This is to be no drawn battle; for, when it is done, the result will not be disputed by a man on earth, or an angel in heaven, or a devil in hell. We shall have captured every one of the strongholds of darkness. You and I will live to see the day when gambling-hells will be changed into places of Christian merchandise, and houses of sin swept and garnished for the residence of the purest home circles. ”

“ You may knit a tidy for the back of an armchair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy the chair. You may, with delicate brush, beautify a mantel-ornament, but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may learn artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing "Ortonville" or "Old Hundred." Do nothing practical, if you would, in the eyes of refined society, preserve your respectability.
I scout these finical notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man, has a right to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for it. ”

“ Then this stock-gambling life is wretchedly unhappy. It makes the nerves shake, and the brain hot, and the heart sad, and the life disquieted.
A man in Philadelphia, who seems to be an exception to the rule—that such men do not permanently prosper—who has well on towards a million of dollars, and is nearly seventy years of age, may be seen, every day, going in and out, eaten up of stocks, torn in an inquisition of stocks, rode by a nightmare of stocks; and, with the earnestness of a drowning man, he rushes into a broker's shop, crying out: "Did you get me those shares?" ”

“ Amid that glittering maze of ball-room splendors, diseases stand right and left, and balance and chain. A sepulchral breath floats up amid the perfume, and the froth of death's lip bubbles up in the champagne.
Many of our brightest homes are being sacrificed. There are families that have actually quit keeping house, and gone to boarding, that they may give themselves more exclusively to the higher duties of the ball-room. Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, finding their highest enjoyment in the dance, bid farewell to books, to quiet culture, to all the amenities of home. ”

“ But the day of judgment, which will reveal the sufferings of the stake and inquisition, will marshal before the throne of God and the hierarchs of heaven the martyrs of wash-tub and needle.
Now, I say, if there be any preference in occupation, let woman have it. God knows her trials are the severest. By her acuter sensitiveness to misfortune, by her hour of anguish, I demand that no one hedge up her pathway to a livelihood. O the meanness, the despicability of men who begrudge a woman the right to work anywhere, in any honorable calling! ”

“ The business of the stock-broker is just as legitimate and necessary as that of a dealer in clothes, groceries, or hardware; and a man may be as pure-minded and holy a Christian at the Board of Brokers as in a prayer-meeting. The broker is, in the sight of God, as much entitled to his commissions as any hard-working mechanic is entitled to his day's wages. Any man has as much right to make money by the going up of stocks as by the going up of sugar, rice, or tea. The inevitable board-book that the operator carries in his hand may be as pure as the clothing merchant's ledger. ”

“ What help is there, what panacea, what redemption? Some say: "Give women the ballot." What effect such ballot might have on other questions I am not here to discuss; but what would be the effect of female suffrage upon woman's wages? I do not believe that woman will ever get justice by woman's ballot.
Indeed, women oppress women as much as men do. Do not women, as much as men, beat down to the lowest figure the woman who sews for them? Are not women as sharp as men on washerwomen, and milliners, and mantua-makers? ”

“ Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leans on God and does her best. The needle may break; the factory-band may slip; the wages may fail; but, over every good woman's head there are spread the two great, gentle, stupendous wings of the Almighty.
Many of you will go single-handed through life, and you will have to choose between two characters. Young woman, I am sure you will turn your back upon the useless, giggling, painted nonentity which society ignominiously acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to make you an humble, active, earnest Christian. ”

“ Looking out of your window at some one who, intoxicated to madness, goes through the street, brandishing his fist, blaspheming God,—a howling, defying, shouting, reeling, raving and foaming maniac,—say to your son, "Look; that man was once a child like you." As you go by the grog-shop, let your boy know that that is the place where men are slain, and their wives made paupers, and their children slaves. Hold out to your children all warnings, all rewards, all counsels, lest in after days they break your heart, and curse your gray hairs. ”

“ After a while the clock will tick and we shall not hear it. Seated by a country fireside, I saw the fire kindle, blaze, and go out. I gathered up from the hearth enough for profitable reflections. Our life is just like the fire on that hearth. We put on fresh fagots, and the fire bursts through and up, and out, gay of flash, gay of crackle—emblem of boyhood. Then the fire reddens into coals. The heat is fiercer; and the more it is stirred, the more it reddens. With sweep of flame it cleaves its way, until all the hearth glows with the intensity—emblem of full manhood. ”

“ There are thousands of fortunes made in commercial spheres that are throughout righteous. God will let his favor rest upon every scroll, every pictured wall, every traceried window; and the joy that flashes from the lights, and showers from the music, and dances in the children's quick feet, pattering through the hall, will utter the congratulation of men and the approval of God.
A merchant can, to the last item, be thoroughly honest. There is never any need of falsehood. Yet how many will, day by day, hour by hour, utter what they know to be wrong. ”

“ Is sin to be excused because it is as high as heaven, or deep as hell? The man who allows his name to be used as president or director in connection with an enterprise that he knows is to result in the sale of twenty thousand shares of an undeveloped nothing—God will tear off the cloak of his hypocrisy, and in the last day show him to all the universe—a brazen-faced gambler. ”

“ This style of dissipation is the abettor of pride, the instigator of jealousy, the sacrificial altar of health, the defiler of the soul, the avenue of lust, and the curse of the town. The tread of this wild, intoxicating, heated midnight dance jars all the moral hearthstones of the city. The physical ruin is evident. What will become of those who work all day and dance all night? A few years will turn them out nervous, exhausted imbeciles. ”