ou around."

They were going to have a great celebration at the opening of a
saloon and billiard hall in Chicago, in the northern part of the
city, where I lived. It was to be a gateway to death and to hell,
one of the worst places in Chicago. As a joke they sent me an
invitation to go to the opening. I took the invitation and went down
and saw the two men who had the saloon, and I said:

"Is that a genuine invitation?"

They said it was.

"Thank you," I said, "I will be around; if there is anything here I
don't like I may have something to say about it."

They said: "You are not going to _preach_?"

"I may."

"We don't want you. We won't let you in."

"How are you going to keep me out?" I asked; "there is the
invitation."

"We will put a policeman at the door."

"What is the policeman going to do with that invitation?"

"We won't let you in."

"Well," I said, "I will be there."

I gave them a good scare, and then I said, "I will compromise the
matter; if you two men will get down here and let me pray with you,
I will let you off."

I got those two rumsellers down on their knees, one on one side of
me, and the other on the other side, and I prayed God to save their
souls and smite their business. One of them had a Christian mother,
and he seemed to have some conscience left. After I had prayed, I
said:

"How can you do this business? How can you throw this place open to
ruin young men of Chicago?"

Within three months the whole thing smashed up, and one of them was
converted some time after. I have never been invited to a saloon
since.

You won't have to give up the world, not by a good deal. If you go
to reunions, and there is drinking, get up and go away. Don't you be
party to it. That is the kind of men we want. When you find anything
that is ruining your fellow men, fight it to its bitter end.

Nehemiah said, "We will not have desecration of the Sabbath." Not
sell the Sunday paper? Not buy a Sunday paper? How many read the
Sunday newspapers?

I suppose that if you had Nehemiah as mayor of New York, he would
stop that sort of thing. Here we have boys who are kept away from
the Sunday school to sell papers on the streets--trains running in
order that the papers can be distributed. I don't believe a man is
in a fit state to hear a sermon whose mind is full of such trash as
the Sunday newspaper is filled with. Men break the Sabbath and
wonder why it is they have not spiritual power. The troub