The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, April 24, 1902, Image 7

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DEATH OF DR. TALMAGE " Makes Appropriate Reprinting I HIS F10US SERMON Considered by Many the Mas r i.i r terpiece 01 inc uicai Pulpit Orator "Oil the Choice of a Wife." Marriage Not For All?Multitudes .Who Nevrr Will Marry, Who Are Not Fit to Marry?Some Eminent Blunderer*? Avoid Matchmakers?Essential Qualities?Beauty a Benediction. Washington. I). C.?The following di"fouise is one of a series of sermons on domestic life delivered several years ago by the late Rev. Dr. T. I)e Witt TaImage, aud by many admirers is considered his pulpit masterpiece. In commemoration -.f kia denth it is now rcDtihlished. It was founded on the text. Judges xiv. 3: "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumeised Philistines?" Samson, the giant, is here asking consent of his father and mother to marriage with one whom they thought unfit for him. He was wise in asking their counsel, hut not wise in rejecting it. Captivated with her looks, the big son wanted to marry a daughter of one of the hostiic families, a deceitful, hypocritical, whining and saturnine creature, who afterward made for him a world of trouble till she quit Inm forever. In my text his parents forbade the banns, practically saying: "When there are so many honest and beautiful maidens of your own country, are you *0 hard put to for a lifetime partner that you propose conjugality with this foreign flirt? Is there such a dearth of lilie.? in our Israelitisli gardens that you must vvear 011 your heart a Philistine thistle? -Do you take a crabapple because there arc no pomegranates? Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumeised Philistines?" Exetiseless was he for suc h a choice in a tend and amid a race celebrated lor female loveliness and moral worth, a land and a race of which self-denying Abigail and heroic Deborah, and dazzling Miriam, and pious Esther, and glorious Ruth, and Marv. who hugged to her hearv. the blessed Lord, were only magnificent specimens. The midnight folded in their hair, the lakes of liquid beauty in their eye. the gracefulness of spring morning in their posture and gait, were only typical of the freater brilliance and glory of their soul. likewise excuseless is anv man in our ,time who makes lifelong alliance with anyone who, because.of her disposition, or heredity, or habits, or intellectual vanity, or moral twistification, may be said to be of the Philistines. The world never owned such opulence of womanly character or such splendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely, motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. 1 have not words to express my admiration for pood womanhood. Woman is not only man*s equal, hut in affectional and religious nature, which is the best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent, nis superior. Yea. during the last twenty yeaYs, through the increased opportunity opened for female education, the women of the country are better educated than the mai joritv of men: and if they continue to i advance mentally at the present ratio, beI fore long the majority of men will have J difficulty in finding in the opposite sex f enough ignorance to make appropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to (the abundance of good womanhood abroad, consequent upon my surroundings since the hour I entered this life until now. I hope the delusion will last until I embark from this planet. So you will understand, if 1 say in this course of sermons something that sepms severe, I am neither nnr HlutrrnntlpfJ. There are in almost every farmhouse in the country, in almost every home of the great town, conscientious women, worshipful women, self-sacrificing women, holy .women, innumerable Marys, sitting at the feet of Christ; innumerable mothers, helping to feed Christ in the person of His suffering disciples: a thousand capped and spectacled grandmothers Lois, wnding over B:ble3 whose precepts they have followed from early girlhood; and tens of thousands of young women that are dawning upon us from school and seminary, that are going to bless the world with good and happy homes, that shall eclipse all their predecessors, a fact that will be acknowledged by all men except those who are struck through with moral decay from toe to cranium; and more inexcusable than the Samson of the text is that man ,who, amid all this unparalleled munificence of womanhood, marries a fool. But some of you are abroad suffering ?from Mtch disaster, and to halt others of you from going over the same precipice, 1 cry out in the words of my text: "Is there never a woman among the daughters of ,thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goet-t to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?" That marriage is the destination of the human race is a mistake that 1 want to correct before I go further. There are multitudes who never will marry, and still greater multitudes who are not fit to marry. In Great Britain to-day there are nine hundred and forty-eight thousand more women than inen, and that. I un derstand. is about the ratio in America. By mathematical and inexorable law, you see, millions of women will never marry. The supply for matrimony greater than .the demand, the first lesson of which is that every woman ought to prepare o take care of herself if need be. Then thereare thousands of men who have no right to marry, because they have become so corrupt of character that their offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman. Society will have to be toned up and corrected on this subject, so that it shall' realize that if a woman who lias sacrificed her honor is unfitted for marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed his purity. What right have you. O masculine beast! whose life has been loose, to take under your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared in the sanctity of a respectable home? Will a buzzard dare to court a dove? But the majority of you will marry, and have a right to marry, and as your religious teacher I wish to say to these men. in the choice of a wife first of all seek divme direction. About thirty-fiye years ago. when Martin Karquhar Tupper, tho English poet, urged men to prayer before they decided upon matrimonial association, people laughed. And some of them have lived to laugh on the other side of their mouth. The need of divine direction I argue from the fact that so manv men. and some of them strong and wise, have ,?nn?.?p Wit ness Samson and this woman of Timnath! Witness Socrates, pecked of the historical Xantippel Witness .lob, whose wife had nothing to prescribe for his carbuncles but allopathic doses of profanity! Witness Ananias, a liar, who might perhaps have been cured by a truthful spouse, yet marrying as great a liar as himself?Sapphira! Witness .John Wesley, one of the best men that ever lived, united to one of the most outrageous and scandalous of women, who sat in City Road Chapel, making mouths at him while he preached! Witness the once connubial wretchedness of .lohn Rnskin. the great art essayist, and Frederick W. Robertson, the great preacher. Witness a thousand hells on earth kindled by unworthy wives, termagants that scold like a March northeaster: female spendthrifts, that put their husbands into fraudulent schemes to get money enougli to meet the lavishment of domestic expenditure; opium-using women?about four thousand of them in the United States?who will have the drug, though it should cause the eternal damnation of the whole household; heartless and overbearing, and namby-pamby and unreasonable women, yet married?married perhaps to good men! These are the women who build the low club-houses, where the husbands and sons go because they can't stand it at home. On this sea of matrimony, where so many have wrecked, am I not right in advising divine pilotage'/ Especially is devout supplication needed, because of the fact that society is so full nf artificialities that men are deceived as to whom they are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the dressmaker. and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster, and the dancingmaster, and the cosmetic art have completed their work, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological hieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he offers hand and heart? That is what makes so many recreant husbands. They make an honorable marriage contract, but the goods delivered are so different from the sample by which they bargained. They were swindled, and they backed out. They mistook Jezebel for Longfellow's Kvangcline, and Lucrctia Borgia lor Martha Washington. Aye. as the Indian chief boasts of the scalps he has taken, so there are in society to-day many coquettes who boast of the masculine hearts they have captured. And these women, though they may live amid richest upholstery, are not >o honorable as the cyprians of the street, for these advertise their infamy, while the former profess heaven while they mean hell. There is so much counterfeit womanhood abroad it is no wonder that some caunot tell the genuine coin from the base. Do you not realize you need divine guidance when 1 remind you that mistake is possible in this important affair, and, if made, is irrevocable? The worst predicament possible is to be unhappily yoked together. You see it is impossible to break the yoke. The more you pull apart, the more galling the yoke. The minister might bring yoa up again, and and in your presence read the mar riage ceremony backward, migm put you on the opposite sides of the altar from where you were when you were united, might take the ring off of the finger, might rend the wedding veil asunder, might tear out the marriage leaf from the family Bible record, but that would fail to uumarry you. It is better not to make the mistake than to attempt its correction. But men and women do not reveal all their characteristics till after marriage, and how are you to avoid committing the fatal blunder? There is only one Being in the universe who can tell you whom to choose, and that is the Lord of Paradise. He made Eve for Adam, and Adam for Eve, and both for each other. Adam hAd not a large group of women from whom to select his wife, but it is fortunate, judging from some mistakes which/she afterward made, that it was Eve or nothing. There is in all the world some one who was made for you, as certainly as Eve was made for Adam. All sorts of mistakes occur because Eve was made out of a rib from Adam's side. Nobody knows which of his twenty-four ribs was taken for the nucleus. If you depend entirely upon yourself in the selection of a wife, there m-e tu-pntv-three nossibilities to one that you will select the wrong rib. By the fate of Ahab. whose wife induced him to steal: by the fate of Macbeth, whose wife pushed hitn into massacre; by the fate of James Ferguson, the philosopher, whose wife entered the room while he was lecturing and willfully upset his astronomical apparatus, so that he turned to the audience and said, "Indies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to be married to this woman;'' by the fate of Bulwer. the novelist, whose wife's temper was so incompatible that he Jurnished her a beautiful house near London and withdrew from her company, leaving her with the dozen dogs whom she entertained as pets: by the fate of John Milton, who married a termagant after he was blind, and when some one called her a ro*e. the poet said: "I am no judge of flowers, but it may be so, for J feel the thorns daily;*' by the fate of an Englishman whose wife was so determined to dance on his grave that he was buried in the sea: by the fate of a village minister whom i knew, whose wife threw a cup of hot tea across the table because they differed in sentiment?by all these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity we implore you to be cautious | and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial state, which decides whether a I -i?11 u ?.? hoi:* I 11 let 11 >11(1 II lime Id w Jiva??.np V? VT.V MV..W, | a heaven here and heaven forever, or a hell now and a hell hereafter. By the bliss of Pliny, (vhose wife, when her husband was pleading in court, had messengers coming and going to inform her what impression he was making; by the joy of Grotius, whose wife delivered him from prison under the pretence of having books carried out lest they be injurious to his health, she sending out her husband unobserved 111 one of the bookeases; by the good fortune of Poland, in Louis' time, whose wife translated and composed for her husband while Secretary of the Interior?talented' heroic, wonderful Madame Roland; by the hapnhiess of many a man who has made intelligent choice of one capable being prime counselor and companion in brightness and in grief?prav to Almighty God. morning, noon, and night, that at the right time and in the right way He will send you a good, honest, loving, sympathetic wife: or if she is not sent to you, that you may be sent to her. At this point let mc warn you not to let a question of this importance he settled by the celebrated matchmakers nourishing in almost every community. Depend upon your own judgment divinely illumined. These brokers in matrimony are ever planning how they can nnite impecunious innocence to au heiress, or celi/ I bate woman to millionaire or marquis, anil that in many cases makes life an unhappiness. How can. any human being, who Igaows neither of the two parties as God knows them, and who is ignorant of the future, give such directions as you require at such a crisis? Take the advice of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine guidance, and you may some day be led to use the words of Solomon, whose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was multitudinous. One day his palace, with its great wide rooms and great wide doors and great lmii was ton small for him and the 1 loud tongue of a woman belaboring him j about some of his neglects, and he re-1 treated to the housetop to get relief from ! the fungal bombardment. And while there ! he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a mattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering. And Solomon envies him and cries out: "It is beter to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide bouse." And one day during the j rainy season the water leaked through j the roof of the palace and began to drop | in a pail or pan set there to catch it. And ! at one side of him all day long the water f went drop! drop! drop! while on the j other side a female companion quarreling about this, and quarreling about that; the j acrimonious and petulant words falling on i his ear in ceaseless pelting?drop! drop! drop! and he seized Ins pen and wrote: 1 "A continual dropping in a very rainy | day and a contentious woman are alike.'' | If Solomon had been as prayerful at the beginning of his life as he was at his close, how much domestic infelicity he ! would have avoided? But prayer about this will amount to i nothing unless you pray soon enough. | Wait until you are fascinated and the j equilibrium of your soul is disturbed by a ' magnetic and exquisite presence, and then i you will answer your own prayers, and I you will mistake your own infatuation for , the voice of God. If you have this prayerful spirit you will [ surely avoid all female scoffers at the j Christian religion: and there are qrtite a j number of them in all communities. It must be told that, though the only in- 1 fluence that keeps woman from being j estimated and treated a# a slave?ave. as ! --j i ? i?I ti Diuie ami neasi ui uuiucu?is vioiov* , anity, since where it is not dominant she ; is so treated; yet there are women who : will so far forget themselves and forget j their Clod that they will go and hear lee-1 turer.i malign Christianity and scoff at the ! most sacred things of the soul. A good , woman, over-persusded by her husband. I may go once to hear such a tirade against tlie Christian religion, not fully knowing what she is going to hear; but she will not go twice. A woman, not a Christian, but a re- j specter of religion, said to me: "I was ! persuaded by my husband to go and hear an infidel lecture once, but going home ! I said to him: "My dear husband, I 1 would not go again though my declination 1 should result in our divorcement forever." ! And the woman was right. If after all j that Christ and Christianity have done j for a woman, she can go again and again ' to hear such assaults, she is an awful crea- j ture, and you had better not come near ' such a reeking lepress. She needs to be | washed, and for three weeks to be soaked in carbolic acid, and for a whole year ! fumigated, before she is fit for decent society. While it is not demanded that a woman be a Christian before marriage, she must have regard for the Christian re-' ligion or she is a bad woman and un- | worthy of being your companion in a life j charged with such stupendous solemnity j and vicissitudes. What you want. 0 man^in a wife, is j not a butterfly of the sunshine, not a J giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping gadabout, not a mixture of j artificialities which leave you in doubt as ! to where the humbug ends and the woman j begins, but an earnest soul, one that can- ' not only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep. There will be wide, deen 1 paves in your path of life, and you will both want steadying when you come to ' the verge of.them, 1 tell you. When your ! fortune fails you will want some one to j talk of treasures in heaven, and not charge , upon you with a bitter, "I told you so."' ' Don't make the mistake that the man i of the text made in letting his eye settle ! the question in whicli coolest judgment j directed by divine wisdom are all-important. He who has no reason for his ' wifely choice except a pretty face is like j a man who should buy a farm because of the dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty ; is a talent, and when God gives it He in- 1 tends it as a benediction upon a woman's j face. When the good Princes of Wales j dismounted from the rail train last summer, and 1 saw her radiant face, I could ] understand what they told me the day before, that, when at the great military hospital where are now the wounded and the sick from the Egyptian and other wars, the Princess passed through, all the ; sick were cheered at her coming, and those | who could be roused neither by doctor nor j nurse from their stupor, would get up on j their elbows to look at her, and wan and wasted lips prayed an audible prayer: | "God bless the Princess of Wales. Doesn't she look beautiful?*' The husband looks up in amazement, | and says- "Well, well, you are the great- j est woman I ever saw. I thought you would faint dead away when I told you." I And as he looks at her all the glories of physiognomy in the Court of Louis XV, j on the modern fashion plates, are tame as compared with the superhuman splendors j of that woman's face. Joan of Arc. Mary j Antoinette, and La Belle Hamilton, the | enchantment of the Court of Charles II, are nowhere. There is another time when th; plainest wife is a queen of beauty to her husband. * She has done the work of life. She has reared her children for God am! heaven, and though some of them may le a little wild they will yet come back, for God has j promised. She is dying, and her husband ' stands by. They think over all the years | of their companionship, the weddings'and the burials, the ups and the down, the j successes and the failures. They talk ' over the goodness of God and His faith-J fulness to children's children. She has no j fear about going. The .Lois! has sustained ; her so many years she would not dare to j distrust Him now. The lips of both of ! them tremble as they say good-by and en-1 courage each other about an early meeting ! in a better world. The breath is feebler ] and feebler, and stops. Are you sure of it? j Just hold that mirror at the mouth, anu see if there is any vapor gathering on the surface. Gone! As one of the neighbors takes the old man by the arm gently and says: "Come. you had better go into the next room and rest." he says: "Wait a moment: I must take one more look at that face and at those hands!" Beautiful! Beautiful! My friends I hope you do not call that death. That is an autumnal sunset. That is a crystalline ri"er pouring into a crystal sea. That is the solo of human life overpowered bv hallelujah chorus. That is a queen's coronation. That is heaven. That is the way my father stood at eightytwo. seeing my mother depart at seventynine. Perhaps so your father and mother J went. I wonder if we will die as well. \ ' . I , . . , SOUTHERN INDUSTRIAL For Pructical Education. At the annual meeting of the Texas Cotton Manufacturers' Association last \week at Dallas resolutions were adopted calling for a legislative appropriation sufficient to establish and operate a textile school. The adoption of these resolutions followed an address by President E. A. Du Bose, who called ottAnlirtn r\ tVto noooocitv trhpriPVPT D oncanun iu kuu i ti mvmw . ?. ? new cotton mill is organized in the State, for superintendents, overseers, engineers, machinists and electricians, and the present custom of sending outside of the State for such labor. He insisted that the greatest cotton growing State in the union ought to provide the | means for equipping and qualifying ! natives of the State for these lucrative J positions, especially as the time is not 'far distant when the South will be manufacturing finer fabrics. Thus the campaign for practical education in the ' South widens. It is natural that it j should have its inspiration in the textile industry. But it should not stop i there. It should extend into all lines | in which the rising generation of the | South may learn to labor confidently. Appalachian Park. The bill for the establishment of a national forest reserve in the Southern Appalachians has been reported favorably in Congress. Nothing should be permitted to prevent its becoming an act. It authorizes the purchase of 4,00,000,000 acres of land in*the mountain region extending from Southern Virginia and West Virginia to Northern Alabama and Georgia, touching South Carolina and Tennessee and containing not only the greatest variety of timber in the country, but what it of equal importaice, the head springs of more than a dozen important rivers emptying into ihe Atlantic ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The passage of the bill is of prime importance to secure conditions whereby the value of these streams for transportation and irriga- j tion, and as sources of industrial and commercial power, may be maintained, [ if not increased, and to give practical j encouragement to the development of scientific forestry, the necessity for which is becoming every year more recognized. From Wadesboro to Winston. Representatives of the WinstonSalem (N. C.) Chamber of Commerce recently appeared before a special com ? * *9 raittee ana a nuraoer ui mcmucia m Charleston (S. C.) Chamber of Commerce advocating the construction of the proposed Wadesboro & Winston Railroad, which would give a direct route from Charleston via the Atlantic Coast Line or the Norfolk & Western railroad to coal lands in Virginia and West Virginia. It was stated that the financial plan of the proposed construction was well advanced. The distance from Wadesboro to WinstonSalem in a direct lipe is about seventyfive miles, and ? line so constructed would run through Anson. Stanly, Davidson and Forsyth counties, in North Carolina, It might also touch Rowan county. Big Oil Contract. It is announced that the United Gas | Improvement Co. has awarded to the i Lone Star & Crescent Oil Co. a con- ! - * * -m - PAA AOA I tract for the delivery or 1,0uv.wv uai- 1 rels cf crude Texas oil per annum for 1 five years. The oil is to be used in the ' manufacture of illuminating gas, and ; is expected to injure a saving in ex- I penses of about $750,000 a year. This contract, involving an expenditure of more than $2,000,000, becomes effective at once. The oil will be sent from the Lone Star & Crescent gushers in the Beaumont field by pipe line to Sabine Pass, and thence by steamers to New York and Philadelphia. To Irrigate Rice Lands. Charter has been filed by the Calcasieu & Mermentou Canal Co., with capital stock of $25,000 for the construction of an irrigation canal. The ! canal will connect the Calcasieu and ! Mermentou rivers, and by taking advantage of natural water-courses its length will be reduced to ten miles. This canal will reclaim thusands of acres of overflowed lands and enable the rice-growers to send their products to market at cheaper rates. L. Kaufman is president; J. A. Bell, vice-persident; H. B. Milligan. secretary, and H. C. Drew, treasurer, all of Lake Charies, La. The Cotton Crop. New. Orleans. Special.?Secretary Hester's statement of the world's visible supply of cotton, issued Friday shows the total visible to be 3,886,517 bales, against 3,993,336 last week and 3,389,878 last year. Of this the total American cotton is 2,746,510 bales against 2,861,336 last week and 2,777,878 last year, and of all other kinds, including Egypt, Brazil. India, etc., 1,140,000, against 1.132,000 last week, and 1,052,000 last year. Of the world's visible supply of cotton there is now afloat and held in Great Britain and continental Europe 2,109,000 bales, against 1,899,000 last year; in Egypt 186,000, against 533,000 last year, and in the United States 9SO.OOO, against 1,224,000 last year. Heavy Damage Awarded. New York, Special.?Mrs. Lottie G. Dimon, widow of Henry G. Dimon, who was killed in the Park Avenue Tunnel accident on the New York Central Railroad several months ago. was awarded $60,000 damages against the railroad company by a Jury in White Plains, N. Y., Friday, . .% x 1 !?> *? Snap Snots. A severe thunderstorm did consider able damage in Berlin. Love matches don't all set th'f world on fire. The installation of Nicholas Murray Butler as president of Columbia "University, April 21, will be attended by President Roosevelt. I Poorlu? I u " For two years I suffered terribly from dyspepsia, with great depression, and was always feeling poorly. I then trie4 Oyer's Saraaparilla, and in one week I wrs a new man."?John McDonald, Philadelphia, Pa. Don't forget that it s "Ayer's" Sarsaparilla that will make you strong and hopeful. Don't waste your time and money by trying some other kind. Use the old, tested, tried, and true Ayer's Sarsaparilla. S1.Ma bottle. An**atots. I AtV your doctor what he think* of AyW* Sartaparlll*. He know* *1! kbont thl* *r*nd old family medlclAe. Follow his advice end we will be Mtliflsd. J. C. atxb Co.. Lowell, Mess. to the acre at less cost, means more money. More Potash in the Cotton fertilizer improves the soil; increases yield?larger profits. Send for our book (free] explaining how to get these results. . GERMAN KALI WORKS, 93 Nassau St., New York. *o?tonor.ono*o*o*o?io*o*o*o?o I f.APUDINE f g V LaORtPPE, COLDS, ETC. o tT Does Not Affect the Heurt. f y Sold by Druggist*. 15 and 25c bottle. J* oaio*otioaoieo*o:ao*o*o*oaio*o? So. 17. Genuine stamped C C C. Never sold in balk. Beware of the dealer who tries to sell "something jut u good." mmmmmmmmaammmnmam Good enough for anybody! | ^All Havana Filler "FLORODORA"BANDS are of same value as tags from 'STAR: 'DRUMMONO'Natural Leaf. \ 'GOOD LUCK' OLD PEACH&HONET ;'RAZORand 'E.RICEGREENVILLE' Tobacco. ^4