Tlie German Sunday. 69 



merry crowd while the mourners were almost jostled at the 

 side of the grave by other Sunday idlers. Our Sunday 

 Schools, on which we depend, foolishly enough, I gi-ant, for 

 the religious teaching of thousands of our children, are com- 

 monly depleted of the boys during the summer months, be- 

 cause of the attractions and excitements of the gardens. The 

 vicious of all nations, our own included, find on Sunday both 

 their strongest temptations and their best opportunities. Thou- 

 sands of men, women and children are robbed of the rest of 

 one day in seven to minister to the pleasure-seekers. The 

 moral sense of the community is debased and weakened by the 

 example of the violation of law, and the victory of pleasure 

 over restraint. Nay more, it has come to be the settled and 

 avowed determination of associations of men to compel the 

 day's desecration ; to choose it for public celebrations, to 

 ■ repeal all restrictions and restricting ordinances ; to release 

 the American people from the superstition of Sunday observ- 

 ance. 



Now for these evils, which justify my subject on the present 

 occasion, for these evils who are responsible ? Not we, say 

 many of our Germans. If we were left to ourselves, many of 

 these excesses would not occur. We never had them in our 

 own land, we have no desire for them here. Vicious Americans, 

 Irishmen, and others interfere with our quiet; so much so 

 that many of the gardens we never visit, nor can we take our 

 wives and children to them as we used to do at home. This 

 has been often said to me by respectable Germans who at the 

 same time were offended by the denunciation of their custom 

 as all evil. And" they were right, and yet admitted all the 

 charge. Granting all that they can say as to the harmlessness 

 of the Sunday in the Fatherland — for that is not the point of 

 discussion — it cannot be harmless here. They exchange a 

 society of one race for one made up from all the nations of 

 the earth ; a society, of defined ranks and orders, for one in which 

 F. 



