【国外英文文学】The Abominations of Modern Society.doc

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1、【国外英文文学】The Abominations of Modern SocietyPREFACE.This is a buoy swung over the rocks. If it shall keep ship, bark,fore-and-aft schooner, or hermaphrodite brig from driving on a leeshore, alls well.The book is not more for young men than old. The Calabria was wreckedthe last day out.Nor is the book

2、more for men than women. The best being that God evermade is a good woman, and the worst that the devil ever made is a badone. If anything herein shall be a warning either to man or woman, Iwill be glad that the manuscript was caught up between the sharp teethof the type.T.D.W.T.BROOKLYN, January 1s

3、t, 1872.CONTENTS.The Curtain LiftedWinter NightsThe Power of ClothesAfter MidnightThe Indiscriminate DanceThe Massacre by Needle and Sewing-MachinePictures in the Stock GalleryLeprous NewspapersThe Fatal Ten-StrikeSome of the Club-HousesFlask, Bottle, and DemijohnHouse of Blackness of DarknessThe Gu

4、n that Kicks over the Man who Shoots it offLies: White and BlackThe Good Time ComingTHE ABOMINATIONS. * * * * *THE CURTAIN LIFTED.Pride of city is natural to men, in all times, if they live or havelived in a metropolis noted for dignity or prowess. Caesar boasted ofhis native Rome; Lycurgus of Spart

5、a; Virgil of Andes; Demosthenes ofAthens; Archimedes of Syracuse; and Paul of Tarsus. I should suspecta man of base-heartedness who carried about with him no feeling ofcomplacency in regard to the place of his residence; who gloried notin its arts, or arms, or behavior; who looked with no exultation

6、 uponits evidences of prosperity, its artistic embellishments, and itsscientific attainments.I have noticed that men never like a place where they have not behavedwell. Swarthout did not like New York; nor Dr. Webster, Boston. Menwho have free rides in prison-vans never like the city that furnishest

7、he vehicle.When I see in history Argos, Rhodes, Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, andseveral other cities claiming Homer, I conclude that Homer behavedwell.Let us not war against this pride of city, nor expect to build upourselves by pulling others down. Let Boston have its _Common_,its _Faneuil Hall_, its _

8、Coliseum_, and its _Atlantic Monthly_. LetPhiladelphia talk about its _Mint_, and _Independence Hall_, and_Girard College_. When I find a man living in either of those places,who has nothing to say in favor of them, I feel like asking him, Whatmean thing did you do, that you do not like your native

9、city?New York is a goodly city. It is one city on both sides of the river.The East River is only the main artery of its great throbbing life.After a while four or five bridges will span the water, and we shallbe still more emphatically one than now. When, therefore, I say NewYork city, I mean more t

10、han a million of people, including everythingbetween Spuyten Duyvil Creek and Gowanus. That which tends to elevatea part, elevates all. That which blasts part, blasts all. Sin is agiant; and he comes to the Hudson or Connecticut River, and passes it,as easily as we step across a figure in the carpet

11、. The blessing ofGod is an angel; and when it stretches out its two wings, one of themhovers over that, and the other over this.In infancy, the great metropolis was laid down by the banks of theHudson. Its infancy was as feeble as that of Moses, sleeping in thebulrushes by the Nile; and like Miriam,

12、 there our fathers stood andwatched it. The royal spirit of American commerce came down to thewater to bathe; and there she found it. She took it in her arms,and the child grew and waxed strong; and the ships of foreign landsbrought gold and spices to its feet; and, stretching itself up intothe prop

13、ortions of a metropolis, it has looked up to the mountains,and off upon the sea,-one of the mightiest of the energies ofAmerican civilization.The character of the founder of a city will be seen for many years inits inhabitants. Romulus impressed his life upon Rome. The Pilgrimsrelax not their hold u

14、pon the cities of New England. William Penn hasleft Philadelphia an inheritance of integrity and fair dealing; andon any day in that city you may see in the manners, customs, andprinciples of its people, his tastes, his coat, his hat, his wifesbonnet, and his plain meeting-house. The Hollanders stil

15、l wield aninfluence over New York.Grand Old New York! What southern thoroughfare was ever smitten bypestilence, when our physicians did not throw themselves upon thesacrifice! What distant land has cried out in the agony of famine, andour ships have not put out with bread-stuffs! What street of Dama

16、scus,or Beyrout, or Madras that has not heard the step of our missionaries!What struggle for national life, in which our citizens have not pouredtheir blood into the trenches! What gallery of exquisite art, inwhich our painters have not hung their pictures! What department ofliterature or science to

17、 which our scholars have not contributed!I need not speak of our public schools, where the children of thecordwainer, and milkman, and glass-blower stand by the side of theflattered sons of millionnaires and merchant princes; or of theinsane asylums on all these islands, where they who came out cutt

18、ingthemselves, among the tombs, now sit, clothed and in their right mind;or of the Magdalen asylums, where the lost one of the street comes tobathe the Saviours feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hairsof her head,-confiding in the pardon of Him who said-Let him whois without sin cast the fi

19、rst stone at her. I need not speak of theinstitutions for the blind, the lame, the deaf and the dumb, for theincurables, for the widow, the orphan, and the outcast; or of thethousand-armed machinery that sends streaming down from the reservoirthe clear, bright, sparkling, God-given water that rushes

20、 throughour aqueducts, and dashes out of the hydrants, and tosses up inour fountains, and hisses in our steam-engines, and showers out theconflagration, and sprinkles from the baptismal font of our churches;and with silver note, and golden sparkle, and crystalline chime, saysto hundreds of thousands

21、 of our population, in the authentic words ofHim who made it-I WILL: BE THOU CLEAN!They who live in any of the American cities have a goodly heritage;and it is in no depreciation of our advantages that I speak, butbecause, in the very contrast with our opportunities and mission, THEABOMINATIONS are

22、tenfold more abominable.The sources from which I will bring the array of facts will be police,detective, and alms-house reports; city missionaries explorations,and the testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, who, about to takethe final plunge, have staggered back just for a moment, to utter thew

23、ild shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail of their despair.I shall call upon you to consider the drunkenness, the stock-gambling,the rampant dishonesties, the club-houses so far as they arenefarious, the excess of fashion, the horrors of unchastity, thebad books and unclean newspapers, and

24、 the whole range of sinfulamusements; and with the plough-share of truth turn up the wholefield.If we could call up the victims themselves, they would give the mostimpressive story. People knew not how Turner, the painter, got suchvivid conceptions of a storm at sea, until they heard the story thato

25、ftentimes he had been lashed to the deck in the midst of the tempest,in order that he might study the wrath of the sea.Those who have themselves been tossed on the wave of infamoustransgressions could give us the most vivid picture of what it isto sin and to die. With hand tremulous with exhausting

26、disease, andhardly able to get the accursed bowl to his lips-put into such a handthe pencil, and it can sketch, as can no one else, the darkness, thefire, the wild terror, the headlong pitch, and the hell of those whohave surrendered themselves to iniquity. While we dare only come nearthe edge, and,

27、 balancing ourselves a while, look off, and our headswims, and our breath catches,-those can tell the story best who havefallen to the depths with wilder dash than glacier from the top of aSwiss cliff, and stand, in their agony, looking up for a reliefthat comes not, and straining their eyes for a h

28、ope that neverdawns-crying, O God! O God!It is terrible to see a lion dashing for escape against the sides ofhis cage; but a more awful thing it is to behold a man, caged in badhabit, trying to break out,-blood on the soul, blood on the cage.Others may throw garlands upon Sin, picturing the overhang

29、ing fruitswhich drop in her pathway, and make every step graceful as the dance;but we cannot be honest without presenting it as a giant, black withthe soot of the forges where eternal chains are made, and feet rottingwith disease, and breath foul with plagues, and eyes glaring with woe,and locks flo

30、wing in serpent fangs, and voice from which shall rumbleforth the blasphemies of the damned.I open to you a door, through which you see-what? Pictures andfountains, and mirrors and flowers? No: it is a lazar-house ofdisease. The walls drip, drip, drip with the damps of sepulchres. Thevictims, strewn

31、 over the floor, writhe and twist among each other incontortions indescribable, holding up their ulcerous wounds,tearing their matted hair, weeping tears of blood: some hooting withrevengeful cry; some howling with a maniacs fear; some chatteringwith idiots stare; some calling upon God; some calling

32、 upon fiends;wasting away; thrusting each other back; mocking each others pains;tearing open each others ulcers; dropping with the ichor of death!The wider I open the door, the ghastlier the scene.-Worse thehorrors. More desperate recoils. Deeper curses. More blood. I can nolonger endure the vision,

33、 and I shut the door, and cover my eyes, andturn my back, and cry, God pity them!Some one may say, What is the use of such an exposure as you proposeto make? Our families are all respectable. I answer, that no family,however elevated and exclusive, can be independent of the state ofpublic morals.How

34、ever pleasant the block of houses in which you dwell, thewretchedness, the temptation, and the outrage of municipal crime willput its hand on your door-knob, and dash its awful surge against themarble of your door-steps, as the stormy sea drives on a rocky beach.That condition of morals is now being

35、 formed, amid which our childrenmust walk. Do you tell me it is none of my business what streetprofanity shall curse my boys ear, on his way to school? Think you itis no concern of yours what infamous advertisements, placarded onthe walls, or in the public newspaper, shall smite the vision of yourin

36、nocent little ones? Shall I be nervous about a stagnant pool ofwater, lest it breed malaria, and be careless when there are in thevery heart of our city thousands of houses, devoted to various formsof dissipation, which day and night steam with miasma, and pour outthe fiery lava of pollution, and da

37、rken the air with their horrors,and fill the skies with the smoke of their torment, that ascendeth upforever and ever? If a slaughter-house be opened in the midst of thetown, we hasten down to the Mayor to have the nuisance abated. Butnow I make complaint, not to the Mayor or Common Council, but to

38、themasses of the people, who have the power to lift men up to office, andto cast them down, against a hundred thousand slaughter-houses inour American cities. In the name of our happy homes, of our refinedcircles, of our schools, of our churches,-in the name of all that isdear and beautiful and valu

39、able and holy,-I enter the complaint. Ifyou now sit unconcerned, and leave to professed philanthropiststhe work, and care not who are in authority or what laws remainunexecuted, you may live to see the time when you will curse the dayin which your children were born.My belief is that such an exposit

40、ion of public immoralities willdo good, by exciting pity for the victims and wholesale indignationagainst the abettors and perpetrators.Who is that man fallen against the curbstone, covered with bruises andbeastliness? He was as bright-faced a lad as ever looked up from yournursery. His mother rocke

41、d him, prayed for him, fondled him, wouldnot let the night air touch his cheek, and held him up and looked downinto his loving eyes, and wondered for what high position he was beingfitted. He entered life with bright hopes. The world beckoned him,friends cheered him, but the archers shot at him; vil

42、e men set trapsfor him, bad habits hooked fast to him with their iron grapples; hisfeet slipped on the way; and there he lies. Who would think that thatuncombed hair was once toyed with by a fathers fingers? Who wouldthink that those bloated cheeks were ever kissed by a mothers lips?Would you guess

43、that that thick tongue once made a household glad withits innocent prattle? Utter no harsh words in his ear. Help him up.Put the hat over that once manly brow. Brush the dust from that coatthat once covered a generous heart. Show him the way to the home thatonce rejoiced at the sound of his footstep

44、, and with gentle words tellhis children to stand back as you help him through the hall.That was a kind husband once and an indulgent father. He will kneelwith them no more as once he did at family prayers-the little oneswith clasped hands looking up into the heavens with thanksgiving fortheir happy

45、 home. But now at midnight he will drive them from theirpillows and curse them down the steps, and howl after them as, unclad,they fly down the street, in night-garments, under the calm starlight.Who slew that man? Who blasted that home? Who plunged those childreninto worse than orphanage-until the

46、hands are blue with cold, and thecheeks are blanched with fear, and the brow is scarred with bruises,and the eyes are hollow with grief? Who made that life a wreck, andfilled eternity with the uproar of a doomed spirit?There are those whose regular business it is to work this death. Theymix a cup th

47、at glows and flashes and foams with enchantment. Theycall it Cognac, or Hock, or Heidsick, or Schnapps, or Old Bourbon, orBrandy, or Champagne; but they tell not that in the ruddy glow thereis the blood of sacrifice, and in its flash the eye of uncoiledadders, and in the foam the mouth-froth of eternal death. Not knowingwhat a horrible mixture it is, men take it up and drink it down-thesacrificial blood, the adders venom, the death-froth-and smack theirlips and call it a delightful beverage.Oh! if I had s