CHAPTER XXXVII.

OUR AMERICAN CITIES.

The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.-Zechariah viii: 5.

With this one stroke of the pencil the prophet puts upon canvas the safety and the glee of the world's cities after they have been gospelized. When Christian people shall have had the courage to look upon the sins of the city, and the courage to apply the gospel to those sins, then will come the time when so entirely free from ruffianism and vagabondism will all the streets of all the cities be, that the children, without any protection of police, or any parental anxiety, shall fly kite and play ball anywhere. "The streets of the cities shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof." But before that time, oh, how much expurgation. I have laughed for six weeks to see some of the American clergy running about with their hands full of court-plaster to cover up the sins that I have been probing. A little green court-plaster for this, a little white court-plaster for that, a little blue court-plaster for something else. Ah! my friends, court-plaster can cover up, but it cannot cure. Not saying what my theory is in regard to the treatment of physical disease, in morals I am an allopathist, and I believe in giving a good stout dose to throw the ulcers to the surface, and then put on the salve of the old-fashioned gospel which Christ mixed to cure Bartimeus's blind eyes, and the young man who had fits, and the ten lepers, and the miseries of all generations. There is no man on earth who has more exhilarant

hope in regard to the moral condition and prosperity of our great American cities, but that hope is not based on apology or covering up, but upon exploration, exposure and Almighty medicament. After as thorough an examination as was possible, I come to tell you what I consider to be the moral condition of this country, as inferred from Washington, the city of official power; Boston, the city of culture; Philadelphia, the city of beautiful order; Chicago, the city of miraculous growth; New York, the city of commercial supremacy; Brooklyn, the city of homes; and soon, only stopping next Sunday to have a few words with my critics in regard to what is the mission of a minister of the gospel. As the cities go, so goes the land. Who has moral barometer mighty enough to tell the influence of Cincinnati upon Ohio, or of Baltimore upon Maryland, or of Charleston upon South Carolina, or of New Orleans upon Louisiana, or of Louisville upon Kentucky, or of San Francisco upon California? Let me feel the pulse of the cities, and I will tell you the pulse of the land. God gives to every city, as to every individual, a mission. As our physical and mental characteristics show what our personal sphere is, so topographical and historical facts show the mission of a city. Every city comes to be known for certain characteristics: Babylon for pride, Sparta for military prowess, Dresden for pictures, Rome for pontifical rule, Venice for architecture in ruins, Glasgow for shipbuilding, Edinburgh for learning, and London for being the mightiest metropolis of the world. Our American cities, of course, are younger, and therefore their characteristics are not so easily defined; but I think I have struck the right word in designation of each. Wrapped up and interlocked with the welfare and the very existence of this nation stands the city of Washington, on the

Potomac-planted there by way of compromise. At the dining table of Alexander Hamit n it was decided that in the South wild agree that the National Government should assume the State debts, then the North would agree to have the capital on the Potomac instead of on the Delaware. So the capital went from Annapolis to I' laphila, and from Philaldylia to Trenton, and from Trenton to New York, and then passed from New York to the Potomac, where it will stay until within a century it shall be planted on the banks of the Missis sippi, or the Missouri, just as soon as the nation shall find cat from the law of national growth that it is better to have the hub of a wheel at the center rather than at the rim of the tire. "Well," you say, "what's all that to me?" You have just as much to do with the city of Washington as your heart has to do with your body. Washington is the heart of the nation. If it send out good blood, good national health. If it send out bad blood, bad national sickness. It is to me one of the most fa cinating cities in the world, and I believe I shall show you before I get through that it has come to a higher condition of morality than it has ever before reached. It is a city of palaces. He who has seen the Treasury buildings, and the National Post-office, and the Capitol, and the departments of State, has seen the grandest triumphs of masonry, architecture, painting, and sculpture. I put the eight panels of the bronze door of the Capitol against the door of the Church of Madeleine, at Paris.

You talk about the works of the old masters. Washington and see the works of the new masters: Leutz's "Westward Ho," Brumidi's frescoes, Greenough's Washington, Crawford's statue of Freedom. I put the white marble mountain of magnificence in which our Congress assembles against the Tuilleries and the

Parliament-houses of London. It is a city laid out more grandly than any city in the land. Mr. Ellicott by astronomical observations running the great boulevards from north to south, and from east to west. Every inch of its Pennsylvania avenue historical with the footsteps of Webster, and Clay, and Jackson, and Calhoun, and Washington. Hundreds of thousands of people along those streets vociferating at the inaugurations. Streets along which Charles Sumner moved out toward Mount Auburn, and Abraham Lincoln toward Springfield, the bells of the nation tolling at the obsequies, and the organs of the continent throbbing with the Dead March. City of huzza and requiem. City of patriotism and debauchery. City of national sacrifice and back pay. City of Senatorial dignity and corrupt lobby. City of Emancipation Proclamation and Credit Mobilier. City of the best men and the worst. City of Washington. Now, I have watched that city when Congress was in session, and when Congress was away. The morals of the city are fifty per cent better when Congress is away. Then, at that time, piety becomes more dominant. It is one of the woes of this country that so many national legislators leave their families at home. These distinguished men coming to Washington show the need of domestic supervisal. A man entirely absent from elevated female society is naturally a bear. Men are better at home than they are away from home. It is said that even ministers of the gospel during vacation sometimes go to the Saratoga horse-races. It is said that some members of Congress, faithful to their religious duties during vacation, during term time give the vacation to their religion. There are iniquities in Washington, however, not associated with office-iniquities that stay all the year round. Plenty of drinking establishments, plenty of hells of

infamy, and the police in their attempts to keep order do not get as much encouragement as they ought from the courts and churches. On Christmas Day ten men in contest on Pennsylvania avenue, one of them shot dead, others bruised and mangled, the culprits brought before the District Attorney and let go. The sins rampant in New York and Brooklyn rampant in Washington. Two thousand dramshops and grocery stores and apothecary shops where they sell strong drink-two thousand in Washington. Twelve thousand nine hundred and eighty-three arrests during last year. Over four thousand people in that city who neither read nor write. One hundred and twenty thousand dollars of stolen property captured by the police last year. All this suggestive to every intelligent mind. Washington wants more police. The beat of each policeman in Washington and Georgetown is on an average ten miles. Only nine mounted police in that vast city, which has rushed up in population and more than doubled in nine years— rushing up from 61,000 to 131,000. But oh! what an improvement since the day when the most flourishing liquor establishments were under the National Capitol, and Congressmen and Senators went there to get inspiration before they made their speeches, and went there to get recuperation afterward. Thanks to Henry Wilson and a few men like him for the overthrow of that abomination. During the war there were one hundred gambling-houses in the city of Washington; there were over five hundred professional gamblers there. One gamblinghouse boasted that in one year it had cleared over half a million of dollars. During one session of Congress the keeper of a gambling-house went to the Sergeant-atArms at the Capitol and presented an order for the greater part of the salary of many of the members, who