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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Sept. 15 



physician in constant attendance. One palsied 

 hand on the bedclothes shook and iwitched: he 

 rolled his head from side to side as If in unendur- 

 able pain: his lace was like a dead man's. I wish 

 all the men that so airily and flippantly go into this 

 deadly business of graft could have seen him. for 

 such is the ripened fruit of their work. The wife 

 came into the room, and the son must lead her out. 

 Downstairs the daughter sat crying. All this house- 

 hold crushed: the reputation swept away that the 

 man had toiled forty years to build; all gone for the 

 sake of forty-seven hundred dirty dollars that the 

 man did not need. Think of that for a time, and 

 see where it leads you, particularly if you believe 

 in the sanctity of the existing system. 



Please notice in the above that this man 

 Holstlaw is a professing Christian. He has 

 in his past life built and maintained a Bap- 

 tist church. Now, please do not infer from 

 this that I am casting a slur on the Baptists 

 — Clod forbid. My wife's parents and mine 

 were all members of the Baptist Church ; 

 and I suppose if we were to trace out the 

 history of different senators and public 

 men who have accepted graft we should 

 find them (and I say it with pain) in each 

 and probably all of our churches. As I read 

 the story I could hardly suppress a groan, 

 and I said inwardly, "What does Christian- 

 ity, and what does church-membership 

 mean, and amount to, to a lot of our Amer- 

 ican people?"* 



In a recent Sunday-school lesson we are 

 told that the Savior went into the temple, 

 and while there he cast out the tables of the 

 money-changers, and then said, "It is writ- 

 ten. My house shall be called the house of 

 prayer; but ye have made it a den of 

 thieves." Not only did this man build and 

 maintain a Baptist church, but he was 

 chosen as a delegate to a national conven- 

 tion of that church ; and it was on his way 

 home from that convention (at a time when 

 one would suppose that he would be full of 

 the Holy Spirit, and that he above all 

 others would be living and following the 

 injunction of the dear Savior, "Thoushalt 

 love thy neighbor as thyself") that he was 

 told, " Thou art the man." 



We are not told whether this young 

 State's attorney was a professing Christian 

 or not ; but, thank God, we have some 

 yonng men, if not old ones, whose hearts 

 burn with indignation when they get 

 glimpses of the outrages committed against 

 citizenship that are given us now and then 

 by our political leaders. This young attor- 

 ney had the grit to decide and to stand up 

 boldly against this sort of iniquity, no mat- 

 ter what might be the consequences to him- 

 self. What must have been the feelings of 

 that old senator when he found he was in a 

 trap? I wish the whole wide world, young 

 and old, would remember this incident and 



* Once I was visiting some friends, and while at 

 the dinner-table something was said about a cer- 

 tain person in that community; but the good wife 



protested, saying, "Why, Mr. is a member of 



our church. Surely what you are saying can not 

 be true." The husband here interposed, with a 

 sly twinkle in his eye, "Why, my dear wife, church- 

 members do not pay their debts any better than, 

 nor in a different way from, other people." As this 

 man was not a< t/(/s time himself a member of the 

 church, although his wife was. I could hardly 

 accept his statement as unbiased. God forbid that 

 such a statement should be true in any community. 



consider the consequences — try to imagine 

 how they would feel when summoned before 

 a grand jury, and being shown how their 

 duplicity and rascality were known to all — 

 yes, in possession of this grand jury in 

 plain black and white, in their own hand- 

 writing. 



I admire Edmund Burke for saying 

 briefly, "No correction." I admire him 

 again later on for saying, "Tell the attor- 

 neys that we have nothing to confer about." 

 He insisted on a full and honest confession. 

 The Bible tells us, "Whoso confesseth and 

 forsaketh his sins shall have mercy;" and 

 our political affairs seem to indicate that 

 we as a people need a great lot of "confess- 

 ing." This attorney finally succeeded in 

 inducing this gray-headed old man to tell 

 the truth. I especially admire Charles Ed- 

 ward Russell where he says these senators 

 "for years sold legislation to the highest 

 bidder exactly as they might sell peanuts 

 or town lots." Is the above a fair sample 

 of what is going on in our State and others 

 as it was this time in Illinois? 



And now comes the real wholesome moral 

 of our lay sermon. We are not told that his 

 conscience troubled him so long as he was 

 not found out. How many people have we 

 in our "land of the free and the home of the 

 brave" who sleep all right so long as their 

 iniquity is not brought to light? After this 

 exposure, however, we are told "he had not 

 slept for sixty hours." A short time ago I 

 thought I would try Upton Sinclair's hun- 

 ger cure. I held out pretty well for ^t! 

 hours, and then concluded I was "cured," 

 and broke from my fast. Well, something 

 disturbed me a few days ago, so 1 went 

 without sleep for about IS hours. Most of 

 you will say, "Why, that is nothing ;" but 

 Terry tells us that it is sleep and not food 

 that gives vigor to both mind and body ; 

 and for years past I have been having a 

 nap about once in five or six hours, winter 

 and summer; and when I was deprived of 

 my sleep for 18 hours my nerves seemed all 

 unstrung. Now, when we read that this 

 old friend (I ihin^k friend is the right word; 

 for if we are going to follow in the footsteps 

 of theS Master we must also try to follow 

 him who is the "friend of sinners") had 

 had no sleep for sixty hours we can imagine 

 the color of his face and his tottering foot- 

 steps. The hand-shaking he had been wont 

 to receive while he was supposed to be a 

 good man, and one above reproach, were 

 now "objects of unspeakable terror." It 

 seemed necessary that Mr. Burke should ask 

 him some more questions; but the thought 

 of meeting this clean pure young attorney 

 once more, cast him into a fever. No won- 

 der his hands twitched and shook, and that 

 his head rolled from side to side as if in 

 unendurable pain. Now, then, let me 

 repeat, and put in italics, the following sen- 

 tence from Charles Edward Russell, the lay 

 preacher, who is preaching this sphndid 

 sermon. 



"/ wish all the men that so airily and fliPPontly go 

 into this deadly business of graft could have seen him, 

 for such is the ripened fruit of their ivork." 



