Shame by Editor | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 15, 1885

Shame.

By Editor

Miss Grace Ten Broeck, of Albany, sends a communication to the Journal, from which we get new revelations of the sickening folly indulged in by silly women. She says: "During the last summer it has been my privilege to spend more or less time among the devotees of extreme fashionable life at Saratoga Springs. The latest craze among the ladies, billowed in costly dresses and resplendent with glittering diamonds, appears to be an insane fondness for pet dogs of various species and pedigrees. They encircle the necks of poodles, pugs, and other breeds of favorite puppies, with expensive collars, have their canine wants supplied by employed domestics, and I am told that some of them pay ten dollars per week for the board of a single puppy."

"A hotel clerk exhibits such orders as the following: 'Room No. 122. To the clerk of — Hotel: Please send to my room, for the use of my little pet, 'Watch,' a choice porterhouse steak, cooked rare, and charge to account of Mrs. Ella A. Irving.' Nor is this pet craze confined to such resorts as Saratoga, Newport, and Long Branch.

"It is an open secret that ladies in Albany, ladies who at the altars of Christian churches promised to 'renounce the world,' etc., ladies of means, culture, and prominent social position, spend from one to two hundred dollars annually in the support of a pet dog. Sacred history informs us that dogs ate up Jezebel, the luxurious queen of King Ahab. Are not dogs devouring the consecrated substance of some of our ladies who profess godliness of life and sanctification of nature? The city is full of helpless, homeless, orphaned children, made in God's image, and bought with Christ's blood, who crave food, clothing, shelter, and education. Jesus cries to-day, as he did eighteen centuries ago, 'Give not that which is holy unto dogs.' Does any lady reader of means desire to adopt a far worthier favorite than a puppy, or to lavish her surplus cash on a more deserving foundling than a poodle? Jesus pictures the eternal reward of such self-sacrifice in the latter part of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel. To the women of Albany, Paul's admonition to the Philippians comes with force, 'Beware of dogs!'"