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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 1. 



children, but they started off again. Somebody 

 said they were going to a farmhouse well near 

 by. " But," said 1, " are you sure the people 

 who live there are using the water from that 

 well ? ' ' Then somebody stated that the water 

 got very bad in the spring, and they hadn't 

 used it at all during the summer. If the chil- < 

 dren went there to that well and drank a great 

 lot, thirsty as they were, before anybody stop- 

 ped them, it might mean sickness for the 

 whole crowd, and possibly death to one or 

 more. Such things have happened more than 

 once ; in fact, we have been told, during this 

 past season, of several cases of sickness and 

 death just because a whole party of picnickers 

 ate or drank something that contained con- 

 tagion.* Now, suppose your children were in 

 the act of drinking from one of these foul 

 wells because they were children and did not 

 know any better ; would you be sleepy and 

 dull, and plead as an excuse for doing nothing 

 that you did not feel "interested" in the 

 matter? Yet, my friends, the contagion these 

 younger ones get from saloons and other like 

 places is a thousand times worse than typhoid 

 fever or diphtheria. Our country is shocked 

 continually by stories of crime, murder, and 

 suicide. These suicides that are so frequent 

 are simply the harvesting of the crop that has 

 been maturing through long years. The sim- 

 ple fact that the Sunday school is right square- 

 ly opposed to the saloon business ought to be 

 enough to make us all interested, wideawake, 

 and on our feet, no matter whether we feel 

 like it or not. There are many readers of 

 Gleanings who, perhaps, do not agree with 

 me in my ideas of the Bible or of the Christian 

 religion ; but who is there among you who 

 would want to hear his boy take such words 

 on his lips as I have mentioned in the fore 

 part of this talk of mine, in the same spirit ? 

 Who would want to find out that his boy was 

 a frequenter of saloons before he was sixteen 

 years old ? Who would not feel troubled and 

 worried to know that this same boy had his 

 mind full of vile thoughts, and that his boyish 

 imagination was stirred into a flame by pic- 

 tures that none but Satan's vile skill could 

 ever paint? Drink, tobacco, and cigarettes 

 follow along speedily nowadays. ; and while it 

 used to take forty or fifty years to get a boy 

 away from the Sunday-school and down to 

 the suicide, now these new agencies do the 

 work in half a dozen years, and every little 

 while we hear of suicides, the direct conse- 

 quence of these influences I have mentioned, 

 before the boy is fairly of age. 



* After the above was in type I found the following 

 in the Daily News and Herald, of Cleveland : 



" Columbus, O., October 19.— At to day's meeting of 

 the State Board of Health. Secretary Probst reported 

 that he found the typhoid-fever outbreak at Conneaut, 

 in which there were ninety-four cases and twelve 

 deaths, due to bad water taken from the lake by the 

 local water company." 



Now may the Lord be praised that we have a State 

 Board of Health that hun's up the cause of such ma- 

 lignant outbreaks, and promptly applies the remedy; 

 and may the time soon come when some officer of the 

 law or servant of Almighty God shall in like manner 

 ferret out and promptly abolish these cesspools of sin 

 that not only corrupt the body but send to eternal 

 ruin both body and soul. 



Mahlon's parents are discussing the matter 

 of his education. When he talked with me 

 about it I told him it depended largely on 

 what he expected to do for a living. I told 

 him of Huber's decision ; and with some re- 

 luctance he confided to me, or if he did not 

 say it I gathered it from his conversation, that 

 if he thought he could ever do such a work as 

 that young minister is doing in that neigh- 

 borhood he would like to prepare himself to 

 preach the gospel of Christ Jesus. It made 

 me think of the time when 1 stood near the 

 pulpit where dear Bro. Reed was preaching. 

 I thought that, if I ever could in any way, 

 direct or indirect, help him to plead with a 

 lost and sinful world, I would rather do it 

 than any thing else. Dear brother or sister, 

 iswwrboyin his teens growing up to love 

 righteousness and hate iniquity, or is it the 

 other way ? God forbid that it may be said of 

 any boy of that tender age that he is learning 

 to love iniquity "and to hate righteousness ; 

 and yet sometimes, dear friends, I fear that 

 well-meaning people sometimes prejudice the 

 boy against righteousness by little flings at 

 the Christian religion, the church, or the 

 Sunday-school. At the Omaha Exposition a 

 man who stood outside of one of the tents in 

 Midway said if there were any Sunday-school 

 boys present they had better go home, for 

 that was no place for them ; and then the 

 crowd laughed their approval or smiled it, 

 thinking, evidently, they were a great deal 

 superior to the boys who go to Sunday school, 

 and whose hearts are pure. 



W 2 



NOTES OF TRAVEL 



* BY A. I. ROOT .'. 



Let us lay aside every weiyht, and the sin which 

 doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience 

 the race that is set before us. — Heb. 12:1. 



About the middle of October a letter came 

 from a nephew of mine, who is much interest- 

 ed in agriculture, saying he expected to visit 

 the fair at Randolph, Portage Co., Ohio, and 

 that if I could make it convenient he would very 

 much like to have me come over on my wheel, 

 as he would not have time to call at Medina 

 this trip. Now, we generally have some beau- 

 tiful days about that time in October. There 

 will be a good deal of sunshine in the middle 

 of the day, but at night there is often a frost ; 

 therefore I feared to go away from home 

 without my overcoat and fur cap. I might 

 have taken a train at least half the way; but 

 I so much prefer wheel-riding I started out 

 early in the morning with said overcoat and 

 fur cap tied to my handle-bars. Before I had 

 gone many miles the sun shone so warm I 

 took off my undercoat also, and rode about 25 

 miles with all this weight — a weight that I 

 did not need at all, and which I should have 

 been much more comfortable without. When 

 I had gone part way I found my nephew 

 would not get in before the evening train, and 

 I greatly wanted to pay a visit to my cousin, 



