223. The Termini of Two City Roads

The Termini of Two City Roads

Pro_4:26 : ’93Ponder the path of thy feet.’94

It was Monday, September 20th, at a country depot. Two young men are to take the cars for the city. Father brought them in a wagon with two trunks. The evening before, at the old home, was rather a sad time. The neighbors had gathered in to say good-by. Indeed, all the Sunday afternoon there had been a strolling that way from adjoining farms; for it was generally known that the two boys the next morning were going to the city to live, and the whole neighborhood was interested, some hoping they would do well and others, without saying anything, hoping for them a city failure. Sitting on the fence talking over the matter, the neighbors would interlard their conversation about the wheat crop of last summer, and the apple crop yet to be gathered, with remarks about the city prospects of Edward and Nicholas, for those were the names of the two young men’97Edward, seventeen; and Nicholas, nineteen’97but Edward, although two years younger, being a little quicker to learn, knew as much as Nicholas. Father and mother on Monday- morning had both resolved to go to the depot with the boys, but the mother at the last moment backed out, and she said that somehow she felt quite weak that morning, and had no appetite for a day or two, and so concluded to say good-by at the front door of the old place. Where she went and what she did after the wagon left, I leave other mothers to guess. The breakfast things stood almost till noon before they were cleared away. But little was said on the way to the railroad station. As the locomotive whistle was heard coming around the curve, the father put out his hand’97somewhat knotted at the knuckles, and one of the joints stiffened years ago by a wound from a scythe’97and said: ’93Good-by, Edward; good-by, Nicholas! Take good care of yourselves, and write as soon as you get there, and let us know how they treat you. Your mother will be anxious to hear.’94

Arrived in the city, they sought out, with considerable inquiry of policemen on street corners and questioning of car-drivers, the two commercial establishments to which they were destined, so far apart that thereafter they seldom saw each other; for it is astonishing how far apart two persons can dwell in a large city, especially if their habits are different. Practically a hundred miles from Bowling Green to Canal Street, or from Atlantic Avenue to Fulton street.

Edward, being the youngest, we must look after him first. He never was in so large a store in all his life. Such interminable shelves, such skilful imitation of real men and women to display goods on, such agility of cash boys, such immense stock of goods, and a whole community of employees. His head is confused, as he seems dropped like a pebble in the great ocean of business life. ’93Have you seen that greenhorn from the country?’94 whispers young man to young man. ’93He is in such and such a department. We will have to break him in some night.’94 Edward stuck at his new place all day, so homesick that any moment he could have cried aloud if his pride had not suppressed everything. Here and there a tear he carelessly dashed off as though it were from influenza or a cold in the head. But some of you know how a young man feels when set down in a city of strangers, thereafter to fight his own battles, and no one near-by seeming to care whether he lives or dies. But that evening, as the hour for closing has come, there are two or three young men who sidle up to Edward and ask him how he likes the city, and where he expects to go that night, and if he would like them to show him the sights. He thanks them, and says he shall have to take some evenings for unpacking and making arrangements, as he had just arrived, but says that after a while he will be glad to accept their company. After spending two or three evenings in his boarding-house room, walking up and down, looking at the bare wall, or an old chromo hung there at the time that religious newspapers by such prizes advanced their subscription lists, and after an hour toying with the match-box, and ever and anon examining his watch to see if it is time to retire, and it seems that ten o’92clock at night, or even nine o’92clock, will never come, he resolves to accept the chaperonage of his new friends at the store. The following night they are all out together. Although his salary is not large, he is quite flush with pocket-money, which the old folks gave him after saving up for some time. He cannot be mean, and these friends are doing all this for his pleasure, and so he pays the bills. At the door of places of entertainment, his companions cannot find the change, and they accidentally fall behind just as the ticket office is approached, or they say they will make it all right, and will themselves pay the next time. Edward, accustomed to farm life or village life, is dazed and enchanted with the glitter of spectacular sin. Plain and blunt iniquity Edward would have immediately repulsed, but sin accompanied by bewitching orchestra, sin amid gilded pillars and gorgeous upholstery, sin arrayed in all the attractions that the powers of darkness in combination can arrange to magnetize a young man, is very different from sin in its loathsome and disgusting shape.

But after a few nights being late out, he says: ’93I must stop. My purse won’92t stand this. My health won’92t stand this. My reputation won’92t stand this.’94 Indeed, one of the business firm, one night from his private box, in which he applauded a play in which attitudes and phraseology occurred which if taken or uttered in his own parlor would have caused him to shoot or stab the actor on the spot’97from this high-priced box this member of the firm sees in a cheaper place the new clerk of his store, and is led to ask questions about his habits, and wonders how, on the salary the house pays him, he can do as he does. Edward, to recover his physical vigor and his finances, stopped a while, and spent a few more evenings examining the chromo on the wall, and counting the matches in the match-box.

’93Confound it!’94 cried the young man, ’93I cannot stand this life any longer, and I must go out and see the world.’94 The same young men, and others of a now larger acquaintance, are ready to escort him. There is never any lack of such guidance. If a man wants to go the whole round of sin, he can find plenty to take him, a whole regiment who know the way. But after a while Edward’92s money is all gone. He has received his salary again and again, but it was spent before he got it, borrowing a little here and a little there. What shall he do now? He has seen in his rounds of the gambling table men who put down a dollar and took up ten, put down a hundred and took up a thousand. Why not he! To reconstruct his finances he takes a hand, and wins; is so pleased he takes another hand, and wins; is in a frenzy of delight, and takes another hand and loses all.

When he first came to the city Edward was disposed to keep Sunday in quietness, reading a little, and going occasionally to hear a sermon. Now, Sunday is a day of carousal. He is so full of intoxicants by eleven o’92clock in the day, he staggers into one of the licensed rum-holes of the city. Some morning, Edward, his breath stenchful with rum, takes his place in the store. He is not fit to be there. He is listless or silly or impertinent or in some way incompetent, and a messenger comes to Him and says: ’93The firm desire to see you in the private office.’94 The gentleman in the private office says:

’93Edward, we will not need you any more. We owe you a little money for services since we paid you last, and here it is.’94

’93What is the matter?’94 says the young man. ’93I cannot understand this. Have I done anything?’94

The reply is. ’93We do not wish any words with you. Our engagement with each other is ended.’94

’93Out of employment!’94 What does that mean to a good young man? It means opportunity to get another and perhaps a better place. It means opportunity for mental improvement and preparation for higher work. ’93Out of employment!’94 What does that mean to a dissipated young man? It means a lightning express train on a down grade on the Grand Trunk to Perdition.

It is now only five years since Edward came to town. He used to write home once a week at the longest. He has not written home for three months. ’93What can be the matter?’94 say the old people at home. One Saturday morning the father puts on the best apparel of his wardrobe and goes to the city to find out.

’93Oh, he has not been here for a long while,’94 say the gentlemen of the firm. ’93Your son, I am sorry to say, is on the wrong track.’94

The old father goes hunting him from place to place, and comes suddenly upon him, that night, in a place of abandonment. The father says: ’93My son, come with me. Your mother has sent me to bring you home. I hear you are out of money and good clothes, and you know as long as we live you can have a home. Come right away,’94 he says, putting his hand on the young man’92s shoulder.

In angry tone, Edward replies: ’93Take your hands off me! You mind your own business! I will do as I please! Take your hands off me, or I will strike you down! You go your way, and I will go mine!’94

That Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning’97for it was by this time two o’92clock in the morning’97the father goes to the city home of Nicholas, and rings the bell, and rings again and again, and it seems as if no answer would be given; but after a while a window is hoisted and a voice cries: ’93Who’92s there!’94

’93It is I,’94 says the old man.

’93Why, father, is that you?’94

In a minute the door is opened and the son says: ’93What in the world has brought you to the city at this hour of the night?’94

’93Oh! Edward has brought me here. I feared your mother would go stark crazy, not hearing from him, and I find out that it is worse with him than I suspected.’94

’93Yes,’94 said Nicholas, ’93I had not the heart to write you anything about it. I have tried my best with him, and all in vain. But it is after two o’92clock,’94 says Nicholas to his father, ’93and I will take you to a bed.’94

On a comfortable couch in that house the old father lies down coaxing sleep for a few hours, but no sleep comes. Whose house is it? That of his son, Nicholas. The fact is, that Nicholas, soon after coming to the city, became indispensable in the commercial establishment where he was placed. He knew, what few persons know, that while in all departments of business and mechanism and art, there is a surplus of people of ordinary application and ordinary diligence, there is a great scarcity, and always has been a great scarcity, of people who excel. Plenty of people to do things poorly or tolerably well, but very few clerks or business men or mechanics who can do splendidly well. Appreciating this, Nicholas had resolved to do so grandly that the business firm could not do without him. Always at his place a little after everybody had gone; as extremely polite to those who declined purchasing as to those who made large purchases. He drank no wine, for he saw it was the empoisonment of multitudes; and when any one asked him to take something, he said, ’93No,’94 with the peculiar intonation that meant no. His conversation was always as pure as if his sisters had been listening. He went to no place of amusement where he would be ashamed to die. He never betted or gambled, even at a church fair! When he was at the boarding-house, after he Bad got all the artistic development he could possibly receive from the chromo on the wall, he began to study that which would help him to promotion’97study penmanship, study biographies of successful men; or went forth to places of innocent amusement and to Young Men’92s Christian Associations, and was not ashamed to be found at a church prayer-meeting. He rose from position to position and from one salary to another salary.

Only five years in town and yet he has rented his own house, or a suite of rooms, not very large, but a home large enough in its happiness to be a type of heaven. In the morning, as the old father, with handkerchief in hand, comes crying down-stairs to the table, there are four persons, one for each side: the young man, and opposite to him the best blessing that a God of infinite goodness can bestow, namely, a good wife; and on another side, the high chair filled with dimpled and rollicking glee, that makes the grandfather opposite smile outside, while he has a broken heart within.

Well, as I said, it was Sabbath, and Nicholas and his father, knowing that there is no place so appropriate for a troubled soul as the house of God, find their way to church. It is communion day, and what is the old man’92s surprise to see His son pass down the aisle with one of the silver chalices, showing him to be a church official. The fact was, that Nicholas from the start in city life honored God and God had honored him. When the first wave of city temptation struck him, he had felt the need of Divine guidance and Divine protection, and in prayer had sought a regenerated heart, and had obtained that mightiest of all armor, that mightiest of all protection, that mightiest of all reinforcements, the multipotent and omnipotent grace of God, and you might as well throw a thistle down against Gibraltar, expecting to destroy it, as, with all the combined temptations of earth and hell, try to overthrow a young man who can truthfully say: ’93God is my refuge and strength.’94 But that Sabbath afternoon while in the back room, Nicholas and his father are talking over an attempt at the reclamation of Edward, there is a ringing of the door-bell and a man with the uniform of a policeman stands there, and with some embarrassment and some halting and in a round-about way, says, that in a fight in some low haunt of the city, Edward had been hurt. He says to Nicholas: ’93I heard that he was some relation of yours.’94

’93Hurt? Is he badly hurt?’94

’93Yes; very badly hurt.’94

’93Is the wound mortal?’94

’93Yes; it is mortal. To tell you the whole truth, sir,’94 says the policeman, ’93although I can hardly bear to tell you, he is dead.’94

’93Dead!’94 cries Nicholas. And by this time the whole family are in the hallway. The father says: ’93Just as I feared. It will kill his mother when she hears of it. O my son, my son! Would God I had died for thee! O my son, my son!’94

’93Wash off the wounds,’94 says Nicholas, ’93and bring him right here to my house, and let there be all respect and gentleness shown him. It is the last we can do for Him.’94

Oh, what obsequies! The next-door neighbors hardly knew what was going on; but Nicholas and the father and mother knew. Out of the Christian and beautiful home of the one brother is carried the dissolute brother. No word of blame uttered. No harsh thing said. On a bank of camellias is spelled out the word ’93Brother.’94 Had the prodigal been true and pure and noble in life, and honorable in death, he could not have been carried forth with more tenderness or slept in a more beautiful casket or been deposited in a more beautiful garden of the dead. Amid the loosened turf the brothers who left the country for city life five years before now part forever. The last scene of the fifth act of an awful tragedy of human life is ended.

What made the difference between these two young men? Religion. The one depended on himself; the other depended on God. They started from the same home, had the same opportunities of education, arrived in the city on the same day, and if there is any difference, Edward had the advantage, for he was brighter and quicker, and all the neighbors prophesied greater success for him than for Nicholas. But behold, and wonder at the tremendous secret. Voices come up and say: ’93Did you know these brothers?’94 ’93Yes; knew them well.’94 ’93Did you know their parents?’94 ’93Yes; intimately.’94 What was the city, what the street, what the last names of these young men? You have excited our curiosity; now tell us all.

I will. Nothing in these characters is fictitious except the names. They are in every city, and in every street of every city, and in every country. Not two of them, but ten thousand. Ay, ay! Right before me, and on each side of me, and above me, they sit and stand, the one invulnerable through religious defense and the other blasted of city allurements; those who shall have longevity in beautiful homes, and others who shall have early graves of infamy. And I am here in the name of Almighty God to give you the choice of the two characters, the two histories, the two experiences, the two destinies, the two worlds, the two eternities. Standing with you at the forks of the road something makes me think that if today I set before the people the termini of the two roads, they will all of them take the right one. There are many who have not fully made up their minds which road to take. ’93Come with us!’94 cry all the voices of righteousness. ’93Come with us!’94 cry all the voices of sin. Now, the trouble is that many make disgraceful surrender. As we all know, there is honorable and dignified surrender, as when a small host yields to superior numbers. It is no humiliation for a thousand men to yield to ten thousand. It is better than to keep on when there can be no result except that of massacre. But those who surrender to sin make a surrender when on their side they have enough reserve forces to rout all the armies of Perdition, whether led on by what a demonographer calls Belial or Beelzebub or Apollyon or Abaddon or Ariel. Some of you can remember how we talked about the abdication of Alexander of Bulgaria, but what a paltry throne was that from which the unhappy king descended, compared with the abdication of that young man, or middle-aged man, or old man, who quits the throne of his opportunity and turns his back upon a heavenly throne, and tramps off into ignominy and everlasting exile! That is an abdication enough to shake a universe. In Persia they will not have a blind man on the throne, and when a reigning monarch is jealous of some ambitious relative, he has his eyes extinguished so that he cannot possibly ever come to crowning. And that suggests the difference between the way sin and Divine grace takes hold of a man. The former blinds him so he may never reach a throne, while the latter illumines the blind that he may take coronation.

Why this sermon? I have made up my mind that our city life is destroying too many young men. There comes, in every September and October, a large influx of those between sixteen and twenty-four years of age, and New York and Brooklyn destroy at least a thousand of them every year. They are shoveled off and down with no more compunction than that with which a coal-heaver scoops the anthracite into a dark cellar. What, with the wine-cup and the gambler’92s dice, and the scarlet enchantress, no young man without the grace of God is safe ten minutes. There is much discussion about which is the worst city of the continent. Some say New York, some say New Orleans, some say Chicago, some say St. Louis. What I have to say is, you cannot make much comparison between the infinities, and in all our cities the temptation seems infinite. We keep a great many mills running day and night. Not rice mills or cotton mills. Not mills of corn or wheat, but mills for grinding up men. Such are all the grog-shops, licensed and unlicensed. Such are all the gambling saloons. Such are all the houses of infamy. And we do the work according to law, and we turn out a new grist every hour, and grind up warm hearts and clear heads; and the earth about a cider-mill is not more saturated with the beverage than the ground about all these mind-destroying institutions is saturated with the blood of victims.

We say to Long Island neighborhoods and villages: ’93Send us more supply;’94 and to Westchester and Ulster and all the other counties of the State: ’93Send us more men and women to put under the wheels.’94 Give us full chance, and we could grind up in the municipal mill five hundred a day. We have enough machinery; we have enough men who can run them. Give us more homes to crush! Give us more parental hearts to pulverize! Put into the hopper the wardrobes and the family Bibles, and the livelihoods of wives and children. Give us more material for these mighty mills, which are wet with tears and sulphurous with woe, and trembling with the earthquakes of an incensed God, who will, unless our cities repent, cover us up as quick and as deep as in August of the year 79 Vesuvius avalanched Herculaneum.

O man and women, ponder the path of thy feet! See which way you are going. Will you have the destiny of Edward or Nicholas? On this sacramental day, when the burnished chalices stand in the presence of the people, start from the foot of the cross for usefulness and Heaven. Plutarch tells us that after C’e6sar was slain and his twenty-three wounds had been displayed to the people, arousing an uncontrollable excitement, and the body of the dead conqueror, according to ancient custom, had been put upon the funeral pile, and the flames arose, people rushed up, took from the blazing mass torches, with which they ran through the city, proclaiming the glory of the assassinated ruler and the shame of his assassinators. On this sacramental day, when the five bleeding wounds of Christ, your king, are shown to you, and the fires of his earthly suffering blaze before your imagination, each one of you take a torch and start heavenward’97a torch with light for yourself and light for others; for the race that starts at the cross ends at the throne. While the twenty-three wounds of C’e6sar wrought nothing but the consternation of the people, from the five wounds of our Conqueror flows a transforming power to make all the uncounted millions who will accept it forever happy and forever free.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage