68 Wisconsi7i Academy of Sciences^ Arts^ and Letters. 



visiting and walking out. Let us make no naked issue witli 

 tlie Germans. In the Fatherland men whom all honor for their 

 Christianity have followed the custom we condemn. To us? 

 with our habits and opinions it would be wrong, but to them 

 attending circumstances will make it right or wrong, and 

 those circumstances I think we need to press upon them, 

 waiving the question of difference of custom, until we can 

 convert their judgments and consciences to our views of ob- 

 ligation and duty. 



I have made no apology for the German Sunday, but only 

 urge that it should have the full weight of the fact that our 

 adopted citizens like it, not because they are sinners but 

 because they are Germans. Feeling an intense anxiety that 

 our English and American custom should prevail, I wish to 

 point out the injustice and impolicy with which the matter is 

 commonly treated. And now granting all that has been 

 admitted, let me iirge some reasons why the German innova- 

 tion should be resisted in all proper ways. 



That some consideration is due from them to the feelings 

 and habits of the country which so heartily welcomes them, 

 the intelligent among them would readily admit. You cannot 

 imagine an American crowd invading the rights and customs 

 of a German community, as they have done ours. It would 

 not be tolerated for an instant. The day we reverence as of 

 God's appointment, the quiet and order we desire for it, the 

 undisturbed houses of worship and burial places of our dead 

 to which we are surely entitled, the influence and moral 

 atmosphere we would keep about our children — all these are 

 invaded by strangers within our gates. We give them citizen- 

 ship and all its privileges, even suffrage and political power, 

 and they trample on our ways and feelings, sajdng that they 

 have rights as well as we. I have known a beer-garden to be 

 opened almost at the door of one of our churches, and the 

 services broken in upon by the blasts of a brass-band. I have 

 buried the dead to the music of a waltz and the laughter of a 



