AMUSEMENTS RIGHT AND WRONG.
Amusement is not an end, but a means of refreshing the mind and replenishing the strength of the body, that the work of life may be easier and better done. When it begins to be the principal thing for which one lives, or when in pursuing it, the mental powers are enfeebled, and health impaired, it then falls under just condemnation.
Amusements that consume the hours of the night which were intended for rest and sleep, thus making one nervous, besides increasing one’s love for romance and adventure, are wrong. Amusements which call one away from study or duty are pernicious, just to the extent they cause negligence or unfaithfulness. Amusements that rouse or stimulate morbid appetites, suggest wrong things, cause one to be discontented, lead into bad company or expenditure beyond one’s means, should always be avoided, for their tendency is downward rather than upward.
Care must be taken in choosing amusements. Those should be chosen which have some advantage beyond merely supplying a pleasant pastime, and those avoided which lead to bad company, drinking, horse racing, gambling or any place where so many are allured to destruction. Multitudes of boys have gone down morally, socially, financially and spiritually under their blasting influences, never to rise again. There are few amusements so harmless, but what they may be carried into low association and made an instrument of evil, hence every boy should look to himself that no dishonesty, betting or over-exertion be allowed.
CARD PLAYING.
Don’t play cards. “Is it possible there is harm in cards?” you ask. “Is it wrong to shuffle a few pieces of pictured and spotted papers in the parlor?” No, my boy. But it is the harm which comes from them, with no known excuse to palliate its pernicious consequences. Card playing has a fascination connected with it. It seems as innocent a game as swinging the mallet on a croquet lawn, but it is as dangerous as a revolver in the hands of a child. It has dealt out death and destruction by the wholesale. “It has made,” as Dr. Withrow said, “so many noble lives base, upright people dishonest, rich people poor, poor people painfully impoverished, and altogether it has a dark indictment against it in the court of heaven.”
“THEY COST ME MY SON.”
On one of the railroads leading out of Chicago, four men, high in position, one of them a judge, another a lawyer, sat passing the time away with a game of euchre. An old lady across the aisle grew restless and at last, standing and breaking in upon their somewhat selfish hilarity, said: “Excuse me, but is not this Judge ——?” “Yes, ma’am,” the man of the bench replied, a little startled and ashamed to acknowledge it under the circumstances. The old lady continued, “I thought so, and, Judge, it was you who sentenced my boy at Oshkosh, to State’s prison for ten years, and it was that other man there that pleaded against him, and he died last year, Judge, in the penitentiary, and it was cards that led him to it. He was a good boy until he took to playing cards and going down to the village grocery, and at last I could do nothing with him. I know I ought not to be talking this way to you, but, Judge, if such as you only knew how much the young people are influenced by what they see you do, I don’t think you would be handling those cards as you and these gentlemen are doing. They cost me my son.” So they have cost thousands of parents their boys, and boys their manliness. They have been the turnkey which has opened the prison gate, the trap-door of the gallows, the instrument of many a suicide, and the decoy which has led many to eternal ruin. Therefore don’t play cards.
THE THEATRE.
Don’t go to the theatre. “What? Is there anything wrong in going to a theatre, and will it injure me?” Yes. It is a pleasure so dangerous in its tendencies, that good men for ages have denounced it. Long ago, Aristotle the philosopher opposed it, saying, “The seeing of comedians ought to be forbidden to young people, until age and discipline have made them proof against debauchery.” Theodore L. Cuyler said, “It fascinates as the wine-cup fascinates, to draw young men into impure associations, and to destroy everything like healthy spiritual life.” Edwin Booth, who was one of the greatest tragedians, remarked, “I would not be willing for my wife and daughter to attend a play unless I knew beforehand the character of the play and the actors.” And, where a lady cannot go, is it fit for a young gentleman? General Grant believed this, for he said, “I never go where I cannot take ladies. I don’t care to go where ladies cannot go.”