Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun,; Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor
There is an idea for you. Let some railroad company fit up a Gospel car
according to the above prescription, and run it, and the porter on that
car would be the most lonesome individual on the train. The Gospel hymn
books would in a year appear as new as do now the Bibles that are put up
in all cars. Of the millions of people who ride in the trains, many of
them pious Christians, who has ever seen a man or woman take a Bible
off the iron rack and read it a single minute? And yet you can often see
ministers and other professing Christians in the smoking car, puffing a
cigar and reading a daily paper.
Why, it is all they can do to get a congregation in a church on Sunday;
and does any one suppose that when men and women are traveling for
business or pleasure--and they do not travel for anything else--that
they are going into a “Gospel car” to listen to some sky pirate who has
been picked up for the purpose, talk about the prospects of landing the
cargo in heaven?
Not much!
The women are too much engaged looking after their baggage, and keeping
the cinders out of their eyes, and keeping the children's heads out of
the window, and keeping their fingers from being jammed, to look out for
their immortal souls. And the men are too much absorbed in the object of
their trip to listen to gospel truths. They are thinking about whether
they will be able to get a room at the hotel, or whether they will have
to sleep on a cot.
Nobody can sing gospel songs on a car, with their throats full of
cinders, and their eyes full of dust, and the chances are if anybody
should strike up, “A charge to keep I have,” some pious sinner who was
trying to take a nap in the corner of the gospel car would say:
“O, go and hire a hall!”
It would be necessary to make an extra charge of half a dollar to those
who occupied the gospel car, the same as is charged on the parlor car,
and you wouldn't get two persons on an average train full that would put
up a nickel.
Why, we know a Wisconsin Christian, worth a million dollars, who, when
he comes up from Chicago to the place where he lives, hangs up his
overcoat in the parlor car, and then goes into the forward car and rides
till the whistle blows for his town, when he goes in and gets his coat
and never says thirty-five cents to the conductor, or ten cents to the
porter. Do you think a gospel car would catch him for half a dollar? He
would see you in Hades first.
The best way is to take a little eighteen carat religion along into the
smoking car, or any other car you may happen to be in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account