558. Midnight Exploration
Midnight Exploration
Sixth Night
Rev_12:12 : ’93The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’94
Somehow the enemy of all good has found out what will be the hour of his dismissal from this world. He cried out to Christ: ’93Hast thou come to torment us before the time?’94 It is a healthful symptom that Satan is so active now in all our cities. It is the indication that he is going out of business. From the way that he flies around, he is practically saying: ’93Give me five hundred thousand souls; give me New York and Brooklyn; give me Boston and Philadelphia and Cincinnati; give me all the cities, and give them to me quickly, or I will never get them at all.’94 That Satan is in a paroxysm of excitement is certain. His establishments are nearly bankrupted. That the powers of darkness are nervous, knowing their time is short, is evident from the fact that, if a man stand in a pulpit speaking against the great iniquities of the day, they all begin to flutter.
A few nights ago, riding up Broadway, I asked the driver to stop at a street-lamp that I might better examine my memorandum (it happened to be in front of a place of amusement), when a man rushed out with great alarm and excitement, and said to the driver: ’93Is that Talmage you have inside there?’94 Men write me with commercial handwriting, protesting, evidently because they fear that sometime in their midnight carousal they may meet a Christian reformer and explorer. I had thought to preach three or four sermons on the night-side of city life; but now that I find that all the powers of darkness are so agitated and alarmed and terrorized, I plant the battery for new assault upon the castles of sin, and shall go on from Sabbath morning to Sabbath morning, saying all I have to say; winding up this subject by several sermons on the glorious daybreak of Christian reform and charity which have made this cluster of cities the best place on earth to live in. Meanwhile understand, that whatever Satanic excitement may be abroad is only in fulfilment of the words of my text: ’93The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’94
A few nights ago, passing over from Brooklyn by South Ferry, our great metropolis looked like a mountain of picturesqueness and beauty. There were enough stars scattered over the heavens to remind me of the street-lamps of that city which hath no need of the sun. The masts of the shipping against the sky brought to me the cosmopolitan feeling, and I said: ’93All the world is here.’94 The spires of St. Paul’92s and St. George’92s and of Trinity pointed up through the starlight toward the only rescue for the dying populations of our great cities. Long rows of lamps skirted the city with fire. More than ten thousand gaslights, united with those kindled in towers and in the top stories of establishments which ply great industries in perpetual motion, threw on the sky from horizon to horizon the radiance of a vast illumination. Landing on New York side, the first thing that confronted us was the greatest nuisance and the grandest relief which New York has experienced in the last thirty years, the elevated railway, which, while it has commercial significance, has more moral meaning. Ruin and death to the streets through which it runs, it is the means of moral salvation to the crowded and smothered tenement-houses, which have been slaying their thousands year by year. Was there ever such a disfigurement and scarification of carpentry and engineering that wrought such a blissful result? The great obstacle to New York morals is the shape of the island. More than nine miles long, in some places it is only a mile and a half wide. While this immense water frontage of twenty miles is grand for commerce, it shuts into crowded residence the population, unless, by some rapid mode of transit they can be whirled to distant homes at night, and whirled back again in the morning. These people must be near their work. Some of them do not like ferriage. Many of them are afraid of water. From the looks of some of their hands and faces, you infer that they are very much afraid of water. Hence they are huddled together in tenement-houses, which are the destruction of all health, all modesty, and the highest type of morals. For the last thirty years New York has been crowded to death. Hence, when on the night of our exploration we saw the rail-train flying through the air, I said to myself: ’93This is the first practical alleviation of the tenement-house system.’94 People of small means will have an opportunity of getting to the better air and the better morals and the better accommodations of the country. But let not this style of improvement be made at the expense of those whose property is destroyed by the clatter and bang and wheeze of midair locomotive. Let cities, like individuals, pay for damages wrought, and for horses frightened out of their harness, and for carriages smashed against the curbstone. New York and Brooklyn and all our great cities need what London has already gained’97underground railroads, which shall, without hindrance and without danger and without nuisance, put down our great populations just where they want to be, morning and night.
Passing up through the city, on the left was Castle Garden, now comparatively unattractive; but as we went past, my boyhood memory brought back to me the time when all that region was crowded with the finest equipages of New York and Brooklyn, and Castle Garden was thronged with a great multitude, many of whom had paid fourteen dollars for a seat to hear Jenny Lind sing. While God might make a hundred such artists in a year, he makes only one for a century. He who heard her sing would have no right to complain if he never heard any more music until he heard the doxology of the one hundred and forty and four thousand. There was the music of two worlds in her voice. While surrounded by those who almost deified her, she wrote in a private album a verse which it may not be wrong to quote:
In Vain I Seek for Rest
In all created good;
It Leaves Me Still Unblest
And makes me cry for God:
And Sure at Rest I Cannot Be
Until My Heart Finds Rest in Thee.
That was the secret of her music, and never, either day or night, do I pass Castle Garden, but I think of the Swedish cantatrice and the excited and vociferating assemblage’97the majority of whom have joined the larger assemblages of the next world.
Passing on up into New York, we left on the right hand, the once fashionable Bowling Green, around which the wealth of New York congregated’97the once-elegant drawing-rooms, now occupied by steamship companies, where passengers get booked for Glasgow and Liverpool; the inhabitants of those once-elegant drawing-rooms long ago booked for a longer voyage. Passing on up, we heard only the clatter of horses’92 hoofs until we came to the head of Wall street, and by the two rows of gaslights, saw that on all that street there was not a foot stirring. And yet there seemed to come up on the night air the cachinnation of those on whose hands the stocks had gone up, and the sighing of jobbers on whose hands the stocks had gone down. The street, only half a mile long, and yet the avenue of fabulous accumulation and appalling bankruptcy and wild swindle and suicide and catastrophe and death! While the sough of the wind came up from Wall street toward old Trinity, it seemed to say: ’93Where is Ketcham? Where is Swartwout? Where is Gay? Where is Fisk? Where is the Black Friday?’94 Then the tower of Trinity tolled nine times’97three for the bankrupt, three for the suicide, three for the dead! ’93Hurry up, George,’94 I said, ’93and get past this place;’94 for though I do not believe in ghosts, I wanted to get past that forsaken and all-suggestive night-scene of Wall street. Under the flickering gaslight one of active imagination might almost imagine he saw the ghosts of ten thousand dead fortunes.
Hastening on up a few blocks, we came where, on the right side, we saw large establishments ablaze from foundation to capstone. These were the great printing-houses of the New York dailies. We got out. We went in. We went up from editorial rooms to typesetters and proof-readers’92 loft. These are the foundries where the great thunderbolts of public opinion are forged. How the pens scratched! How the types clicked! How the scissors cut! How the wheels rushed, all the world’92s news rolling over the cylinder like Niagara at Table Rock. Great torrents of opinion, of crimes, of accidents, of destroyed reputatons, of avenged character. Who can estimate the mightiness for good or evil of a daily newspaper? Fingers of steel picking off the end of telegraphic wire, facts of religion and philosophy and science, and information from the four winds of heaven! In 1850 the Associated Press began to pay two hundred thousand dollars a year for news. Some of the individual sheets paying fifty thousand dollars extra for despatches. Some of them, independent of the Associated Press, with a wire rake gathering up sheaves of news from all the great harvest fields of the world. It is high time that good men understand that the printing-press is the mightiest engine of all the centuries. The high-water mark of the printers’92 type-case shows the ebb and flow of the great oceanic tides of civilization or Christianity. Just think of it! In 1835 all the daily newspapers of New York issued but ten thousand copies. Now there are over two million copies issued daily, and taking the ordinary calculation that two people read a newspaper, nearly five million people reading the daily newspapers of New York! I once could not understand how the Bible statement could be true when it says that ’93nations shall be born in a day.’94 I can understand it now. Get the news-gatherers and the editors converted, and in twenty-four hours the whole earth will hear the salvation call. Nothing more impressed me in the night exploration than the power of the press. But it is carried on with oh! what aching eyes, and what exhaustion of health. I did not find more than one man out of ten who had anything like brawny health in the great newspaper establishments of New York. The malodor of the ink, however complete the ventilation; the necessity of toiling at hours when God has drawn the curtain of the night for natural sleep; the pressure of daily publication of whatever occurs; the temptation of intoxicating stimulants in order to keep the nervous energy up, a temptation which only the strongest can resist’97all these make newspaper life something to be sympathized with. Do not begrudge the three or five cents you give for the newspaper. You buy not only intelligence with that, but you help pay for sleepless nights and smarting eyeballs and racked brain and early sepulchre.
Coming out of these establishments, my mind full of the bewildering activities of the place, I stopped on the street and I said: ’93Now drive up Broadway, and turn down Chambers street to the left, and let us see what New York will be twenty years from now.’94 The probability is that those who are criminal will stay criminal; the vast majority of those who are libertines will remain libertines; the vast majority of those who are thieves will stay thieves; the vast majority of those who are drunkards will stay drunkards. ’93What,’94 say you, ’93no hope for the cities?’94 Ah! my heart was never so full of high and exhilarant hope as now. We turned down Chambers street until we came to the sign ’93Newsboys’92 Lodging-house,’94 and we went in. Now, if there is anything I like it is boys. Not those brought up beside registers, in houses heated by furnaces’97lads manipulated by some over-indulgent aunt, who has curled their hair until they look like girls’97but I mean genuine boys, such as God makes, with extra romp and hilarity, so that after they have been pounded by the world they shall have some exuberance left. Boys, genuine boys, who cannot keep quiet five minutes. Boys who can skate and swim and rove and fly kites and strike balls and defend sickly playmates when they are imposed on and get hungry in half an hour after they have dined and who keep things stirred up and lively. Thomas Arnold’92s boys.
We entered the Newsboys’92 Lodging-house, and there we found them. I knew them right away, and they knew me, by a sort of instinct of friendliness. Their coats were off; for, although outside it was biting cold, inside the room Christian charity had flooded everything with glorious summer. Over the doorway were written the words: ’93No boys that have homes can stop here.’94 ’93What,’94 I said, ’93can it be possible that all these bright and happy lads have been swept in from the street?’94 First, they are plunged into the bath, and then they pass under the manipulations of the barber, and then they are taken to the wardrobe, and in the name of him who said: ’93I was naked and ye clothed me,’94 they are arrayed in appropriate attire, each one paying, if he can, so there shall be no sense of pauperism; some of them paying one penny for all the privileges of a bountiful table, and the most extravagant paying only six cents. Gymnasium to straighten and invigorate the pinched bodies. Books for the mind. Religion for the soul. I said: ’93Can these boys sing?’94 and the answer came back in an anthem that shook the room:
Ring the Bells of Heaven!
For There’92s Joy Today.
I said: ’93What is this long, broad box with so many numbers nailed by a great many openings?’94 ’93Oh,’94 they said, ’93this is the savings bank; the boys put their money here, and each one has a bank-book, and he gets his money at the beginning of the month.’94 Meanwhile, if under urgency for a new top, or attractive confectionery, or any one of those undefinable things which crowd a boy’92s pocket, he wants money, he cannot get it. He must wait until the first of the month; and so thrift and economy are cultivated. I know statistics are generally very dry, but here is a statistic which has in it as much spirit as anything that Thackeray ever wrote, and as much sublimity as anything John Milton ever wrote: One hundred and forty-three thousand boys have been assembled in these newsboys’92 lodging-houses since the establishment of the institution; twelve thousand have been returned to friends, and fifteen thousand have deposited in this great box over forty-two thousand dollars; while many of the lads have been prepared for usefulness, becoming farmers, mechanics, merchants, bankers, clergymen, lawyers, doctors, judges of courts even, and many of them prepared for heaven, where some have already entered, confronting, personally, that Christ in whose compassion the institution was established. And this society is all the time transporting lads to Western farms. No reformation for them while they stay in the dens of New York. What must be the sensation of a lad who has lived all his days in Elm street or Water street when he wakes up on the Iowa prairie, with one hundred miles of room on all sides? One of these lads, getting out West, wrote a letter, descriptive of the place, and urging others to come. He said:
’93I am getting along first-rate. I am on probation in the Methodist Church. I will be entered as a member the first of next month. I now teach a Sunday-school class of eleven boys. I get along first-rate with it. This is a splendid country to make a living in. If the boys running around the streets with a blacking-box on their shoulder or a bundle of papers under their arms only knew what high old times we boys have out here they wouldn’92t hesitate about coming West, but come the first chance they got.’94
Is not a lad like that worth saving? There are thousands of them in New York. God have mercy on them!
As I came down off the steps of that benevolent institution, I said, ’93Surely the evils of our cities are not more wonderful than their charities.’94 Then I started out through New Bowery, and I came to the sign of the Howard Mission, famous on earth and in heaven for the fact that through it so many Christian merchants and bankers, and philanthropists have saved multitudes of boys and girls from eternal calamity. One summer that institution, taking some children one or two hundred miles into the country to be taken care of gratuitously for two or three weeks on farms, the train stopped at the depot, and one lad, who had never seen a green field, rushed out and gathered up the grass and the flowers, and came back, and then took out a penny, his entire fortune, and handed it to the overseer, and said, ’93Here, take that penny and bring out more boys to see the flowers and the country.’94 Seated on the platform of the Howard Mission that night, looking off upon these rescued children, I said within myself, ’93Who can estimate the reward for both worlds to these people who put their energies in such a Christlike undertaking?’94 What a monument for the counselors of the institution and its advisers, and thousands of people who in giving food through that institution have fed Christ, and in donating garments have clothed Christ, and in sheltering the wandering have housed Christ! God will follow such men and women with His mercy to the edge of the pillow on which they die, and then, on the other side of the gate, He will give them a reception that will make all heaven echo and re-echo with their deeds. But oh! how much work before all this vagrancy is ended!
But I said to the driver, ’93We must hasten out on Broadway, for it is just the time when the places of amusement will be disbanding, and we shall see the people going up and down the streets.’94 Coming from all sides, these are the great tides of life and death. The last orchestra, had played. The curtain had dropped at the end of the play. The audiences of the concerts in the churches and the academies had all dispersed, moving up and down the street. Good amusements are very good. Bad amusements are very bad. He who paints a fine picture, or who sculptures a beautiful statue, or sings a healthful song, or rouses an innocent laugh, or in any way cuts the strap of the burden of care on the world’92s shoulder, is a benefactor, and in the name of God I bless him; but in this great city there are enough places of iniquitous amusement to keep all the world of darkness in perpetual holiday. In fifteen minutes, in some sections of our city, you may find enough vicious amusements to invoke all the sulphur and brimstone that overwhelmed Sodom. The more than three hundred miles of Croton water pipes underlying New York city, emptied on these polluted places, could not wash them clean! You see the people coming out flushed with the strychnine wine taken in the intervals of the programme’97some of the people in companionship that insures their present and eternal discomfiture, turning off from Broadway on the narrow streets running off on each side! The recording angel must have shivered with horror as he penned their destiny.
Looking out of the carriage, I saw a tragedy on the corner of Broadway and Houston street. A young man, evidently doubting as to which direction he had better take, his hat lifted high enough so you could see he had an intelligent forehead; he had a stout chest and a robust development. Splendid young man. Cultured young man. Honored young man. Why did he stop there while so many were going up and down? The fact is, that every man has a good angel and a bad angel contending for the mastery of his spirit, and there was a good angel and a bad angel struggling with that young man’92s soul at the corner of Broadway and Houston street. ’93Come with me,’94 said the good angel; ’93I will take you home; I will spread my wing over your pillow; I will lovingly escort you all through life under supernatural protection; I will bless every cup you drink out of, every couch you rest on, every doorway you enter; I will consecrate your tears when you weep, your sweat when you toil, and at the last I will hand over your grave into the hand of the bright angel of a Christian resurrection. In answer to your father’92s petition and your mother’92s prayer, I have been sent of the Lord out of heaven to be your guardian spirit. Come with me,’94 said the good angel, in a voice of unearthly symphony. It was music like that which drops from a lute of heaven when a seraph breathes on it.
’93No, no,’94 said the bad angel, ’93come with me; I have something better to offer; the wines I pour are from chalices of bewitching carousal; the dance I lead is over floor tessellated with unrestrained indulgences; there is no God to frown on the temples of sin where I worship. The skies are Italian. The paths I tread are through meadows, daisied and primrosed. Come with me!’94
The young man hesitated at a time when hesitation was ruin, and the bad angel smote the good angel until it departed, spreading wings through the starlight upward and away, until a door flashed open in the sky and forever the wings vanished. That was the turning point in that young man’92s history; for, the good angel flown, he hesitated no longer, but started on a pathway which is beautiful at the opening, but blasted at the last. The bad angel, leading the way, opened gate after gate, and at each gate the road became rougher and the sky more lurid, and what was peculiar, as the gate slammed shut it came to with a jar that indicated that it would never open. Passed each portal, there was a grinding of locks and a shoving of bolts; and the scenery on each side the road changed from gardens to deserts, and the June air became a cutting December blast, and the bright wings of the bad angel turned to sackcloth, and the eyes of light became hollow with hopeless grief, and the fountains, that at the start had tossed with wine, poured forth bubbling tears and foaming blood, and on the right side the road there was a serpent, and the man said to the bad angel, ’93What is that serpent?’94 and the answer was, ’93That is the serpent of stinging remorse.’94
On the left side the road there was a lion, and the man asked the bad angel, ’93What is that lion?’94 and the answer was, ’93That is the lion of all-devouring despair.’94 A vulture flew through the sky, and the man asked the bad angel, ’93What is that vulture?’94 and the answer was, ’93That is the vulture waiting for the carcasses of the slain.’94 And then the man began to try to pull off him the folds of something that had wound him around and around, and he said to the bad angel, ’93What is it that twists me in this awful convolution?’94 and the answer was, ’93That is the worm that never dies!’94 And then the man said to the bad angel, ’93What does all this mean? I trusted in what you said at the street corner; I trusted it all, and why have you thus deceived me?’94 Then the last deception fell off the charmer, and it said, ’93I was sent forth from the pit to destroy your soul; I watched my chance for many a long year; when you hesitated that night I gained my triumph; now you are here. Ha! ha! You are here. Come, now, let us fill these two chalices of fire, and drink together to darkness and woe and death. Hail! Hail!’94 O young man! will the good angel sent forth by Christ, or the bad angel sent forth by sin, get the victory over your soul? Their wings are interlocked this moment above you, contending for your destiny, as above the Appennines, eagle and condor fight mid-sky. This hour may decide your destiny, God help you. To hesitate is to die!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage