p. 692 | Popular Amusements by Mrs. C. W. Nelson

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 19, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 44.

Popular Amusements.

By Mrs. C. W. Nelson

OUR young people are no longer satisfied with healthful and innocent amusements, but often spend their evenings at the dance, the skating rink, or the card-table. They say that dancing is healthful; they see no harm in it; they never go to low dances. Possibly it was a healthful exercise when young people danced in the daytime and in the open air; but unsuitable clothing, overheated rooms, and late hours and suppers, are enough to make any one pale and languid. In what is commonly called select companies there are often those who are not fit associates for pure girls and boys, and etiquette requires that they join in the dance. Then there is a freedom and a throwing-off of restraint in the dance, which would not be tolerated out of it. And let me ask you, Is a girl ever purer and better on returning from a dance? Is she better prepared to go back to her home, and take up her duties there? Is she ever ready to kneel down and ask God's blessing on her after an evening thus spent? On the contrary, the excitement of the evening is followed by a depression of spirits which is very apt to result in crossness and fretfulness.

How often is the wine cup passed around at the dancing party, and one who perhaps never sees liquor at home, is coaxed into tasting it! And the first glass taken, how easily the habit is formed! How many innocent young girls are led to ruin through the dance! Do we think, when we let our girls go from us, that perhaps they may never come back to us as pure and happy as they once were? Can we see so many girls going down to ruin, and not watch more carefully our own? Careless association with any one and every one too often leads to intemperance and ruin. When the papers are full of accounts of accidents, broken limbs, and seriously injured health; and, worse than physical injuries, of bad habits formed and characters ruined at the rink—can we longer doubt that the rink is a peril and a curse?

Card-playing has become so popular of late that it is even admitted to our churches. Shame on us! Do we realize the force of the weapon we are placing in the enemy's hand? For years Christian people have fought against the evils of the dance. When the skating rink began to be popular, they thought that they had found an amusement which was innocent and healthful. But the craze, and the evils which have arisen from it, have proved the fallacy of that idea. And now that both these amusements have won a bad repute, the great tempter of mankind stands ready with "progressive euchre," a game which has become so popular that Christian people play it even in the church parlors. Euchre is a game of cards, and the natural tendency of cards is downward. We never hear of a man or woman going from the card-table to a prayer-meeting, but we do hear of cards leading to drinking and gambling.

It seems to me that anything that is acknowledged to be a means of leading girls and boys astray should be abolished from our homes and our churches. The boy who learns to play cards at home is just so much the more easily influenced to play them away from home. And the transition from a neighbor's parlor to a fashionable billiard saloon is easy. Once there, it is hard to refuse the friendly glass of wine. O mothers, can we wonder that our children are not what they should be, when from childhood we allow them to become familiar with temptation and to associate with evil? Can we place the child's hand in the fire, and not expect it to be burned? Let us guard our treasures more carefully, and when anything is leading them farther from home and Heaven, let us try to lead them from it to simpler and purer amusements, and save our children from sin and death.—Mrs. C. W. Nelson, in Cal. Christian Advocate.