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ALLURING AS HONEY. REV. DR. TALMAGE ON TRAPS FOR ’the UNWARY. The Honeybee and Ite Work Tempta tion That la DeUcloue jpnd Attractive, bnt Damaging and Destructive Am brosia and Nectar For the Soul. [Copyright, 1898, American Press Asso- WABHINGTON, Jan. 23.—Dr. Talmage here starts with an oriental scene, from which he draws practical lessons as to the allurements which entrap the unwary, and the discourse will put many oh their guard. The text is I Samuel xiv, 43, “I did but taste a little honey with the end ot the rod that was In my hand, and, 10, I must die.’*. The honeybee is a most ingenious ar chitect, a Christopher Wren among in sects, geometer drawing hexagons and pentagons, a freebooter robbing the fields of pojlen and aroma, wondrous creature -of God whose biography, written by Huber and Swammerdam, is an enchantment for any lover of nature. Virgil celebrated the bee in his fable of Arlstseus, and Moses and Samuel and David and Solomon and t Jeremiah and Ezekiel and St. John used the delicacies of bee manufacture as a Bible symbol. A miracle of formation is the bee. Five eyes, two tongues, the outer having a sheath of protection, hairs on all sides of its tiny body to brush up the par ticles of flowers, its flight so straight that all the world knows of the bee line. The honeycomb is a palace such as no one but God could plan and the honeybee con struct; its cells sometimes a dormitory and sometimes a storehouse and some times a cemetery. These winged toilers first make eight strips of wax and by their antennae, which are to them hammer and chisel and square and plumb line, fashion them for use. Two and two these work ers shape the wall. If an accident hap pens, they put up buttresses of extra beams to remedy the damage. ’ When about the year 1776 an insect be fore unknown in the nighttime attacked the beehives all over Europe and the men who owned them were in vain trying to plan something to keep out the invader that was the terror of the beehives of the continent, it was found that everywhere the bees had arranged for their own pro tection and built before their honeycombs an especial wall of wax, with portholes through which the bees might go to and fro, but not large enough to admit the winged combatant, called the Sphinx atropos. Do you know that the swarming of the bees is divinely directed? The mother bee starts for a new home, and because of this the other bees of the hivo get into an ex citement which raises the heat of the hive some four degrees, and they must die un less they leave their heated apartments, and they follow the mother bee and alight on the branch of a tree, and cling to each other and hold on until a committee of ' two or three bees has explored the region and found the hollow of a tree or rock not far off from a stream of water, and they here set up a new colony and ply their aromatic industries and give themselves to the manufacture of the saccharine edi ble. But who can tell the chemistry of that mixture of sweetness, part of it the very life of the bee and part of it the life of the fields? Plenty of this luscious product was , hanging in the woods of Bethaven during * the time of Saul and Jonathan. Their army was in pursuit of an enemy that by God’s command must be exterminated. The soldiery were positively forbidden to stop to eat anything until the work was done. If they disobeyed, they were ac cursed. Coming through the found a place where the bees had been busy—a great honey manufactory. Honey gathered in the- hollow of the trees until it had overflowed upon the ground in great profusion of sweetness. All the army obeyed orders and touched it not save Jona than, and he, not knowing the military or der about abstinence, dipped the end of a stick he had in his hand into the candied liquid, and as yellow and tempting it glowed on the end of the stick he put it to his mouth and ate the honey. Judg ment fell upon him and but for special in tervention he would have been slain. In my text Jonathan announces his awful mistake, “I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in my hand, and, 10, I must die.” Alas, what multitudes of people in all ages have been damaged by forbidden honey, by which I mean temptation, delicious and attractive, but damaging and destructive! Corrupt literature, fascinating but deathful, comes in this category. Where one good, honest,' healthful book is read now there is a hundred made up of rhetor ical trash consumed with avidity. When th* boys on the cars come through with a pile of publications, look over the titles and notice that nine out of ten of the books are injurious. All the way from here to Chicago or New Orleans notice that objectionable books dominate. Taste for pure literature is poisoned by this scum of the publishing house. Every book in which sin triumphs over virtue, or in which a glamour is thrown over dissipa tion, or which leaves you at its last line with less respect for the marriage institu tion and less abhorrence for the paramour is a depression of your own moral char acter. The bookbindery may be attractive, and the plot dramatic and startling, and the stylo of writing sweet as the honey that Jonathan took up with his rod, but your best interests forbid it, your moral safety forbids it, your God forbids it, and one taste of It may lead to such bad re sults that you may have to say at the close of the experiment or at the close of a mis improved lifetime, “I did but taste a little honey with the rod that was in my hand, and, 10, I must‘die. ” Corrupt literature is doing more today for the disruption of domestic life than any other cause. Elopements, marital in trigues, sly correspondence, fictitious names given at postoffice windows, clan destine meetings in "parks, and at ferry gates, and in hotel parlors, and conjugal perjuries are among the ruinous results. When a woman young or old gets her head thoroughly stuffed with the modern novel, she is in appalling peril. But some one will say, “The heroes are so adroitly knav ish, and the heroines so bewitchingly un true, and the turn of the story so exquisite, and all thd charactcrs so enrapturing, I cannot quit them.” My brother, my sis ter, you can find styles of literature just as charming that will elevate and purify and ennoble and Christianize while they please. The devil does not own all the honey. There is a wealth of good books coming forth from our publishing houses that leave no excuse for the choice of that which is debauching to body, mind and souk Go to some intelligent man or wom an and ask for a list of books' that will be strengthening to your mental and moral condition. ' Life is so short and your time for Im provement so abbreviated that you cannot afford to fill up with husks and cinders and debris. In the interstices of business that young man is reading that which will prepare him to be a merchant prince, and that young woman is filling her mind with an intelligence that will yet either make her the chief attraction of a good man’s homo or give her an independence of char acter that will qualify her to build her own home and maintain it in a happiness that retires no augmentation from'any of •ur rougher sex. That young man or young woman can, by the right literary and mm*al improvement of the spare ten minutes here or there every day, rise bead and shoulders in prosperity and character and influence above the loungers who read nothing, or read that which bedwarfs. See all the forests of good American literature dripping with honey. Why pick up the honeycombs that have in them the fiery bees which will sting you with an eternal poison while you taste it? One book may for you or me decide everything for this world and the next. It was a turning point with me when in a bookstore in Syracuse one day I picked up a book called “The Beauties of Buskin. ’ It was only a book of extracts, but it was all pure honey, and I was not satisfied until I purchased all his works, at that time expensive be yond an easy capacity to own them, and with what delight I went through reading his “Seven Lamps of Architecture” and his “Stones of Venice” it is impossible for me to describe except by saying that it gave me a rapture for good bopks and an everlasting disgust fgr decrepit or im moral books that willflast me while my life lasts. All around’tho church and the world today there are busy hives of intel ligence occupied by authors and authoress es from whose' pens drip a distillation which is the very nectar of heaven, and why will you thrust your rod Os inquisi tiveness into the deathful saccharine of perdition? Stimulating liquids also come into the category of temptation deliciqus,but death ful. Yon say, “I cannot bear the taste of intoxioating liquor, and how any man can like it is to rue an amazement. ” Well, then, it is no credit to you that you do not take it. Do not brag about your total absti nence, because it is not from any principle that you reject alcoholism, but for the reason that you reject certain styles of food—you simply don’t like the taste of them. But multitudes of people have a natural fondness for all kinds of intoxi cants. They like it so much that it makes them smack their lips to look at it. They are dyspeptic, and they like to aid diges tion; or they are annoyed by insomnia, and they take it to produce sleep; or they are troubled, and they take it to make them oblivious; or they feel happy, and they must celebrate their hilarity. They begin with mint julep sucked through two straws on the Long Branch piazza and end in the ditch, taking from a jug a liquid half kerosene and half whisky. They not only like it, but it is an all consuming pas sion of body, mind and soul, and after awhile have it they will, though one wine glass of it should cost the temporal and eternal destruction of themselves and all their families and the whole human race. They would say, “I am sorry it is going to cost me and my family and all the world’s population so very much, but here it goes to my lips, and now let it roll over my parched tongue and down my heated throat, the sweetest and most inspiring, the most delicious draft that ever thrilled a human frame. ” To cure the habit be fore it comes to its last stages various plans were tried in olden times. This plan was recommeiyled in the books: When a man wanted to reform, he put shot or bullets into the cup or glass of strong drink—one additional shot or bullet each day that dis placed so much liquor. Bullet after bullet added day by day, of course the liquor be came less and less until the bullets would entirely fill up the glass, and there was no room for the liquid, and by that time it was said the inebriate would be cured. Whether any one ever was cured in that way I know not, but by long experiment It is found that the only way is to stop short off, and when a man does that he needs God to help him, and there have been more cases than you can count when God has so helped the man that he left off the drink forever, and I could count a score of them, some of them pillars in the house of God. Gne would suppose that men Would take warning from some of the ominous names given to the intoxicants and stand off from the devastating influence. You have noticed, for instance, that some of the restaurants are called The Shades, typical of the fact that it puts a man’s reputation in the shade, and his morals in the shade, and his prosperity in the shade, and his wife and children in the shade, and his Immortal destiny in the shade. Now, I find on some of the liquor signs in all our cities the words “Old Crow,” mightily suggestive of the carcass and the filthy raven that swoopj upon it. “Old Crow!” Men and women without numbers slain of rum, but unburled, and this evil is peck ing at their glazed eyes, and pecking at their bloated cheek, and pecking at their destroyed manhood - and womanhood, thrusting beak and claw into the mortal remains of what was once gloriously alive, but now morally dead. “Old Crow!” But, alas, bow many take no warning! They make me think of Caesar on his way to assassination, fearing nothing, though his statue in the hall crashed into frag ments at his feet and a scroll containing the names of the conspirators was thrust into bis hands, yet walking right on to meet the dagger that was to take his life. This infatuation of strong drink is sb mighty in many a man that, though his fortunes are crashing, and his health is crashing, and bis domestic interests are crashing, and we hand him a long scroll containing the names of perils that await him, be goes straight on to physical and mental qnd moral assassination. In pro portion as any style of alcoholism is pleas ant to your taste and stimulating to your nerves and for a time delightful to all your physical and mental constitution is the peril awful. Remember Jonathan and the forbidden honey in the woods at Beth aven. Furthermore, the gamester’s indulgence must be put in the list of temptations de licious but destructive. You who have crossed the ocean many times have noticed that always one of the best rooms has, from morning until late at night, been given up to gambling practices. I heard of men who went on board with enough for a European excursion who landed without money to get their baggage up to the hotel or railroad station. To many there is a complete fascination in games of hazard or the risking of money on pos sibilities. It seems as natural for them to bet as to eat. Indeed the hunger for food is often overpowered by the hunger for wagers. It is absurd for those of us who have never felt the fascination of the wager to speak slightingly of the tempta tion. It has slain a multitude of intellec tual and moral giants, men and stronger than you or I. Down under its power went glorious Oliver Goldsmith, and Gibbon, the famous historian, and Charles Fox, the renowned statesman, and in olden times senators of the United States, who used to bo as regularly qt the gambling house all night as they wore in the halls of legislation by day. Oh, the tragedies <rf the farq,table! I know per sons whd with a slight stake in a ladies’ parlor and ended with the suicide’s pistol at Monte Carlo. They played With the square pieces of bone with black marks on them, not knowing that satan was play ing for their bones at the same time, and was sure to sweep all the stakes off on his side of the table. State legislatures have again and again sanctioned the mighty evil by passing laws in defense of race tracks, and many young men have lost all their wages at such so called “meetings.” Every man'who voted for such infamous bills has on his hands and forehead the blood of these souls. - But in this connection some young con verts say to me: “Is it right to play cards? Is there any harm in a game of whist or euchre?” Well, I know good men who play whist and euchre and other styles of games without any wagers. I had a friend who played cards with his wife and children and then at the close said, “Come, now, let us have prayers.” I will not judge other men’s consciences, but I tell you that cards are in my mind so associated with the temporal and spiritual ruin> of splendid young men that I would as soon say to my family, “Come, let us have a game of cards,” as I would go into a men agerie and say, “Come, let us have a gume of rattlesnakes, ” or into a cemetery and sitting down by a marble slab say to the gravediggers, “Coiqe, let us have a game at skulls.” Conscientious young ladies are silently saying, “Do you think card playing will do us any harm?” Perhaps not, but how will you feel if in the great day of eternity, when we aro asked to give an account of our influence, some man should say: “I’was introduced to games of chance in the year 1898 at your bouse, and I went on from that sport to something more exciting, and went on down until I lost my business, and lost my morals, and lost my soul, and these chains that you see on my wrists and feet are the chains of a gamester’s doom, and I am on my way to a gambler’s hell.” Honey at the start, eternal catastrophe at the last. * Stock gambling comes into the same catalogue. It must bo very exhilaratng to go into the stock market and depositing a small sum of money run the chance of taking out a fortune. Many men are do ing an honest and safe business in the stock market and you are an ignoramus if you do not know that it is just as legiti mate to deal in stocks aS it is to deal in coffee or sugar or flour. But nearly all the outsiders who go there on a financial excursion lose all. The old spiders eat up the unsuspecting flies. I had a friend who put his hand on his hip pocket and said in substance, “I have there the value of (250,000.” His home is today penniless. What was the matter? Stock gambling. Os the vast majority who are victimized you hear not one word. One great stock firm goes down and whole columns of newspapers discuss their fraud or their disaster, and we are presented with their features and their biography. But where one such famous firm sinks 500 unknown men sink with them. Tho great steamer goes down and all the little boats are swallowed in the same engulfment. Gambling is gambling, whether in stocks orbreadstuffs or dice or race horso betting. Exhilaration at the start, but a raving brain and a shattered nervous system and a sacrificed property and a destroyed soul at the last. Young men, buy no lottery tickets, purchase no prize packages, bet on no baseball games or yacht racing, have no faith in luck, answer no mysterious circu lars proposing great income for small in vestment, drive away the buzzards that hover around our hotels trying to entrap strangers. Go out and make an honest living. Have God on your side and be a candidate for heaven. Remember all the paths of sin are banked with flowers at the start, and there are jfienty of helpful hands to fetch the gay charger to your door and hold the stirrup while you mount. But farther on the horse plunges to the bit in a slough inextricable. The best honey is not like that which Jonathan took on the end of the rod and brought to his lips, but that which God puts on the banqueting table of mercy, at which we aro all • invited to sit. I was reading of a boy among the mountains of Switzerland ascending a dangerous place with his father and the guides. The boy stopped on the edge of the cliff and said, “ There is a flower I mean to get. ” “Come away from there, ” said the father. “You will fall off.” “No,” said he.“l must get that beautiful flower.” And the guides rushed toward him to pull him back when, just as they heard him say, “I almost have it,” he fell 2,000 feet. Birds of prey were seen a few days after circling through the air and lowering gradually to the place where the corpse lay. Why seek flowers off the edge of a precipice when you can walk knee deep amid tho full blooms of the very paradise of God? When a man may sit at the king’s banquet, why will he go down the steps and contend for the refuse and bones of a hound’s kennel? “Sweeterthan honey and the honeycomb, ” says David, is the truth of God. “With honey out of the rock would I have satisfied thee,” says God to the recreant. Here is honey gath ered from the blossoms of trees of life, and with a rod made out of the wood of the cross I dip it up for all your eotiis. The poet Hesiod tells of an ambrosia and a nectar the drinking of which would make men live forever, and one sip of tho honey from the eternal rock will give you eternal life with God. Come off the ma larial levels of a sinful life. Come and live on the uplands of grace, where tho vineyards sun themselves. “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is gracious!” Be happy now and happy forever. For those who take a different course the honey will turn to gall. For many things I have admired Percy Shelley, tho great English poet, but I deplore the fact that it seemed a great sweetness to him to dishonor God. The poem “Queen Mab” has in it tho malign ing of the deity. Shelley was impious enough to ask for Rowland Hill’s Surrey chapel that be might denounce the Chris tian religion. He was in great glee against God and She truth. But he visited Italy, and one day on the Mediterranean with two friends in a boat which was 24 feet long fie was coming toward sfiore when an hour’s squall struck the water. A gen tleman standing on shore through a glass saw many boats tossed in this squall, but all outrode the storm except one, in which Shelley and bis two friends were sailing, that never came ashore, but the bodies of two of the occupants were washed upon the beach, one of them the poet. A fu neral pyre was built on the seashore by some classic friends, and the two bodies were consumed. Poor Shelley! He would have no God while be lived, and I fear ha<f no God when he died. “The Lord know eth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” Beware of the forbidden honey! ’•> 11, Illi—M EXPERIMENT IN DETECTION. The CroMlag Policeman la as Wise as Sol omon When Neoeasory. The policeman who maintains life and order at tho meeting of two down town streets must be possessed of con siderable judgment He must know when to make a hole in tho wall, so to speak, through the mass of vehicles and let a portion of the surging humanity go through. He must know how to do several things at once—to at the same time chat pleasantly with a lady friend of his, tell a woman from the suburbs where the streets she’s on is and pull a couple of old gentlemen from the jaws of cable cars, and, what is more surprising, most of the down town force can do this, and, what is truly as tonishing, nearly all do it in a gentle manly manner and keep their tempers well. It is not infrequently that an officer is found who can do all this and more too. At one of the most prominent cross streets there is a policeman who is a close second to the caliph that decided the ownership of an infant in his own highly original way. Among many in stances where his acumen has played a particular part is one that happened a day or so ago. It concerned a bicycle. The latter was left by its rider against the curb. A few minutes later a young man approached it The policeman in question had not seen the owner get off the machine, but he thought tfie new comer looked a trifle suspicious. The chain and sprocket wheel of the bicycle had been secured together by a padlock. When the young man in question began to carry the wheel off instead of unlock ing it he felt it was about time to act. “Do you. own that bicycle?” he said to the young man. ” “Yes,” was the reply. “Where’s your key, then?” was his next. “I’ve lost it ” That settled it. . “Say, now,” continued the police man, “will you give mo your name and address?” The young man seemingly did not want to make any trouble. He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Why, yes, if you want it.” '“And now,” continued the police man, after he had it, “you know the case looks strange, and you know we have so many bikes lost, would you mind waiting 15 minutes to see if any one else should come after that wheel?” “No,, I guess not,” said the young man. Then he leaned back on a railing and began to wait. After he had been there three or four minutes the police man said: “ Well, I guess it’s all right. You can go.” And then, turning to a bystander, he remarked, “You can bet your next month’s pay he wouldn’t have stood there if it wasn’t his.”— Chicago Times-Herald. BRAINS EQUAL TO COURAGE. The Cat Rescued, but the Stout Woman Was Not Satisfied. It was a damp day, but the crowd stood and watched the black cat as it mewed plaintively and clung to the trailing vine three stories above the street in front of a four story brown stone dwelling. A long wire supported the vine, nearly reaching the roof. The cat, in a sportive mood evidently, had climbed the long vine and at the third story stopped, as if fright had paralyzed further efforts. Every minute it mewed, and its appeal for help collected a crowd. A large wonum said: “ Why don’t some one climb up there and release that cat?” “Suppose you try it, madam, ” chirped a dapper little man, who looked upon the affair as a joke. '•“Well, if I had your small heft I would climb that vine. Men never do anything dangerous these days. ” , “Oh, yes, they do, madam! They catch cold, drink too much and stay out late at their lodges.” She gave the little man a look and ejaculated: “You think you are smart, don’t you? You can talk, but you can’t rescue even a cat. ” “You do me wrong. Watch me rescue that cat even at the peril of being in sulted. Do not be frightened. I go, but I will return. ” He ran across the street as the large woman shouted, “He is go ing to climb!” He rang the doorbell of the house, and when the servant girl appeared he pointed to the cat above. The door closed, and a few minutes later a window in the third story opened, and the girl, reaching her arm out, caught the cat and took it ini The crowd cheered, and the dapper man bowed, but the large woman said con temptuously : “Men have no courage. They get wo men to rescue cats.”—New York Com mercial. Useful Books. If a scholar has little money for books, he should, expend it mostly on works of reference, and so get a daily return for his output So seems to have thought a young man of whom we re cently heard, who, when asked by a canvasser to purchase an encyclopedia, said he had one. “Which one.is It?” inquired the can vasser. The young man could not remember. Neither could he tell who published it, but it was a flneiwork, in many large volumes. “Do you ever use them?” asked tho agent “Certainly—almost every day. ” “In what line?” "Oh, I press my trousers with them. They are splendid for that ’’—Rambler. A Fortune For Flower*. Mrs. Mackay spends more on floral decorations when giving a dinner party or reception than any other member of the fashionable world. She has been known to have chariots—drawn by swans—filled with roses, from which her guests could help themselves. Her dinner tables are a wealth of flowers. When the blossoms are expensive and put of season, the bill for flowers at a reception often amounts to £soo.—Lon lon Standard. simflating theYood andßegula iiqg the Stomachs and Bowels of Promote gTHgesGon,Cheerful- BessandHßstCdntains neither OpniifTMorphine nor Mineral. Not Narcotic. MwauMMSHMaime • • eeMBiMMWWMM AdSaX- J j A perfect Remedy for Constipa tion, Sour Stomach,Diarrhoea, Worms .Convulsions .Feverish ness and Loss OF SLEEP. Facsimile Signature of NEW YORK. [ EXACT COPY Os WRAPPER, a; --2 —GET YOTJK JOB PRINTING * DONE A.T •’a- h- : vft®? wit -wSt#-"-- ■ The Morning Call Office. IB __ w _ aa _ aHM ’. /:r:* We have Just supplied our Job Office with a complete line ol Stationer* kinds and can get up, on abort notice, anything wanted in the way 01 LETTER HEADS, BILL HEADS ! *'/. V STATEMENTS, IRCULARB, ENVELOPES, NOTES, * MORTGAGES, PROGRAMS,- JARDB, . POSTERS . "' ‘ " DODGERS, £TJ. ]*Tt j 8 We trrry Ue jest ine ci ENVEJXIFES vt.j iTutC : this trad/*. 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For further information apply to 1 _.I . . . ... , 1 ■ ■ • ■ ■ ■' '•■'SS SEE THAT THE FAC-SIMILE SIGNATURE OF t s' ■ ■<./ - IS ON THE WRAPPER OF EVERY BOTTLE OF mioß Outofia ia pvt up K raa-dae betth* raly. It la Mt aold ia balk. Don’t allow to r.” yon anything alsa on tho plea or promiad tl>A i* M jo»t M good ’’and “wfll anawer ev«y pw poao." flea that yen gvt 0-A.B-T-0-B-I-A. I The lac- _ - alalia baa