The Crystal Palace

Queen Victoria is not the only person who has a palace in London. According to the advertisements there is a structure at Sydenham which is distinguished as the "Palace of the People's Pleasures." So that you and I have a palace if we choose to use it. It is not half a bad place to go to; and if it, and places like it, were used a little more, I fancy the people's pleasures would not be quite so dangerous as they are sometimes. But people have very queer ideas about pleasure. Fresh air, and blooming flowers, and playing fountains, and beautiful music, and endless curiosities, and blazing fireworks, and rational refreshment, would seem to include most of the sources of pleasure which men and women could be likely to require. But judging from appearances, there is a very large section who prefer the crystal palaces at our narrow street corners. The air which puffs out of the New Cut, redolent of fried fish, and which floats across half-a-dozen yards of saw-dusted floor, which eddies round spittoons, and toys with wreathes of burning pig-tail; this seems fresh enough for them. They prefer the "early pud" which dribbles out of taps all green with verdigris, to the dewy breeze which blows over' the lawns of Norwood. And as to flowers, if they had a flower-pot, they wouldn't care for it unless it were frothing over with half-and-half. The fountains must be beer fountains; and the entire page 4 system is pretty generally in full play. The music can be dispensed with till pots enough have been drained to inspire it in the shape of songs, and oaths and shouts. The curiosities consist of human beer-barrels, vieing which can hold the most, and carry the greatest number of quarts without overflowing. The fireworks are fever-flashes dancing before bloodshot eyes. The rational refreshment is a sort of wholesale brain-burglary, as men open the doors of their lips to let in the enemy who steals away the judgment. Perhaps it may be felt that this contrast is drawn a little too strongly, and the workman may be inclined to say, "What's the good of talking to poor folks about the Crystal Palace, how do you suppose a working man can spend all his time loafing about at Sydenham; it's all very well for you lazy parsons who have nothing to do but stand up once a week and give advice which you don't take yourselves, to go and sport your broadcloth in the central transept; but its an insult to talk to working people about such things." I'm very sorry if I have offended you. For my own part I know very little about the Crystal Palace. I haven't found time to go to it more than twice or three times within the last four years. But I will tell you what I have done. I have gone out into some suburb of London in the summer time, about my own work; to a meeting, or a lecture, or a service; and I have passed by a road-side public-house, and have seen half-a-dozen or a dozen men sitting on a bench outside, with pewter mugs before them, drinking and laughing, and I have come back two, three, and four hours afterwards, and seen the same men on the same bench, though not in the same state, but some sleepier, and some noisier than they were before. And it seems to me that if the workman has time for all that, it is not a question of time which keeps him from the Crystal Palace. Nor is it, I imagine, a question of expense. Landlords are not such disinterested people that they will allow men to sit hour after hour without spending money. And enough money will be spent by a working man at a public house to take the wife and all the little ones to Sydenham and back, and bring them home with page 5 health upon their faces and pleasure in their hearts. I am afraid, if we are to speak the truth (and it is not much use speaking at all if we don't do that), that it is a question of selfish preference very often which perches a man alone on the public house ale-bench, instead of beside his wife in the train on the way to the High Level Station. Of course, I am not recommending an expenditure of wages in mere amusements, but I want to urge men when they look for pleasure to look for those pleasures which their families can share with them, and not those which carry desolation and wretchedness to the home which is neglected. I have seen a man and his wife be th drunk together in a public house. It is a sickening thing to see, and a revolting thing to think of; but if there are no children left upon the streets, or pining for protection in the home, there does seem an element even about a tragedy like that, which is less selfish and execrable than the oblivion of his kith and kin which is shown by the man who deserts his wife while he embrutes himself. I don't say but that the evil is greater when the woman is thus involved in the same debasement, but the partnership of marriage is not so ruthlessly forgotten, though it is a partnership for the "worse" and not the "better." Better the wife should starve and die at home, than drink and fall beside a sottish partner at the tap-room. But at least the selfishness of the man is not quite so foully obvious when he and his wife thus openly agree to go hand in hand to hell together. But what I am urging on every working man is that sauce for perseverance and hard work which honest love supplies. I remember when I first fell in love. I don't mean those school-boy "smites" which made me maudlin, and caused me to be il over into poetry at the sight of every pretty girl I saw. But I mean when I fell in downright real, grim, earnest love. I was desperately in earnest, but I was as poor as Job. It was as much as I could do to pay my tailor and my landlady, and how was I to furnish a house? I worked away at all sorts of things. I wrote an article about something in a little magazine, and I got a guinea for it. Beginning at the page 6 basement storey of my house furnishing, I thought to myself, "that is a mop, a bucket, and a scrubbing-brush." I wrote another article in a bigger magazine, and I got five pounds for it. "That's a dresser, and a dozen saucepans, three kitchen chairs, and a toast-rack." I began to think "this is slow work," and I got desperate. But I saw my idol the next day, and there were more magazines in her bewitching eyes than I could ever fill, and I made up my mind that the citadel must be won or I must perish in the attempt. So once more taking a mental inventory of my already-accumulated kitchen furniture, I read a great thick be ok through, from beginning to end, and wrote a long review of it. I remember the be ok was called "Find-lay's Byzantine Empire," and a precious dry job it was to read it. I have since found out that I made a great mistake in reading the be ok at all, and that, according to all the established canons of literary criticism, I ought to have praised the be ok-binder and the printer, and then cut the leaves open, and duly reported upon the odour of the paper-knife. But I wasn't up to snuff then, and as I got five pounds more for Mr. Findlay, I have always believed in the Byzantine Empire ever since, for it almost furnished my kitchen, though not in the Byzantine style. I used to call on all my young married friends, and ask them how much it cost them to furnish their houses. But they used to tell me they didn't know. They all had some convenient old uncle, or grandfather, or guardian, who left them a legacy, or died, or helped them somehow, and tables, and chairs, and carpets seemed to come to them providentially, like Mr. Mxüller's provisions for the orphans at Bristol. But I had no such convenient relations. It was all matter-of-fact hard work. I began to try to get a stair carpet, by some means or another, so I gave a lecture, for which I got two guineas. But when it came to the parlour, and the passage, the gas fittings, the tables, the looking-glasses, and the four-posters, the case looked very desperate. But the next vision of the eyes and ringlets, and the next sound of the voice, made tables, and chairs, and four-posters dwindle into nothing. page 7 So I went to my deacons the next day, and coolly proposed a rise in my salary. I was getting a hundred a year, and I suggested, that as we lived in an age of progress, and as they were men rather in advance of the time than behind it, they would excuse my observing that two hundred pounds would go further than one. Now, it must be a very strong case indeed which nerves a young minister to face his deacons with a plea about money. But I was desperate. And what was my wonder and delight, when instead of finding fault with my preaching, calling me unsound in doctrine, and mercenary in object, and recommending me to look out for another "sphere," they told me they had been thinking of offering me a larger salary themselves. I rather suspect they would have taken a few years to carry out the thought, if I had not spoken, but my appeal decided them, and they gave me an extra hundred pounds. I considered my parlour and passage pretty sumptuously furnished by this time. And now I began to think whether there were no other means of raising the wind. As I had furnished the kitchen by work and the parlour by impudence, I thought I would try and do the rest by economy. So I began to smoke only one pipe a day, and then I left off altogether; I almost starved myself. I had my old clothes rubbed up with turpentine; I wrote masterly reviews of be oks I never read, and gave lots of lectures on things I didn't understand, and in three years I had raised and saved seven hundred pounds, with which I furnished a house. And then I called up a little more cheek and went to the lady's papa and made the customary blushing proposals. Now all I want to show by this leaf out of a poor parsons biography is, that love, real love, is a capital incentive to hard work. And if the working man who has already won a wife and gained a home, retains the love of wife and home still in his heart, he will work hard and unselfishly, and no steam engine will dash at it more heartily than the fire in his heart will make him work at his daily labour. An unmarried young carpenter will hammer away twice as hard after he has won the affection of an honest girl, and he will strive page 8 that he may not only be a carpenter but a joiner, through the instrumentality of the wedding ring. And the man whose home is already garnished with a wife and children, will strive hard for their sakes. The heavier the loads he lifts, the lighter will he try to make their burdens. "That was a teazer," he will say, as he heaves the burden on his back, "but it will take so much weight from Polly's heart." Each sixpence that he earns will be regarded as a link in the love-chain which binds him to Polly. That extra two hours overtime is a pair of shoes for Polly. That turn-to at five o'clock in the morning will take Polly to the Crystal Palace. This is the sort of poly-gamy and polytheism we would like to see in vogue. And if every working man worked by the steam power of love, if all he did were done for the wife and little ones, then the manhood of our workmen would rise in quality, and the happines of their homes would be increased. My plan was to look upon each "article" I wrote in the material light of an article of domestic furniture. Talk of penny-a-lining! I used to eke it out to the very super-ative of verbosity. "Ah, if I can only express that idea in twice as many words, it will be an extra poker, tongs, and fire-shovel; and if the editor will but tolerate another half column, there will be a fender also included in the literary effort." I am not very great proficient in the language of the Balearic Islands, but I would have undertaken to translate Shakespeare's plays into Balearic blank verse for a pier-glass and a loo-table; and I should have done it too, by the aid of Cupid's vade mecum, the lexicon of love, and the gradus of devotion. Depend upon it, real love is the grandest spur to hard work that a man can have. If a man would but set about his daily labour on the theory that his own back-ache is his wife's heart's-ease, he would feel so strong that he could almost put a ton weight in his waistcoat pocket. Instead of working as if he were brewing beer, and regarding each task accomplished as so many gallons earned, he would look upon each load heaved on his shoulders as so much weight of care lifted from a wife's heart; he would consider every blow upon the anvil as a link in the chain of home- page 9 slavery broken, and every spark which flew off at the stroke a lamp to bring fresh light into the Crystal Palace of his home. There are too many workmen who straighten up their backs after a day's hard toil, and wipe the sweat off their face, and say, "Phew! that's a tough job! But that bit of overtime will give me half-a-dozen extra glasses at the free-and-easy, and I can go to Gatti's, and make a night of it." Better, and more like a true man, to say, "That extra barrowful means a pair of shoes for Tiny, and that last hour means a new be nnet for the wife." Better to be thinking about others than about self—especially when those others are helpless and weak, and when you are pledged by every sacred oath of manhood, and every be nd of duty to cherish and protect them. According to the ballad which we have heard our sisters sing, the saucy country hoyden told the prying swell, "My face is my fortune." It was a sorry investment of such fortune which allied it to an idle husband. But if an honest man plights troth to any girl or woman, and she asks him what is his fortune, let him show the be les of muscle gnarling his arm, and say, "That is my fortune; and with that I will, God helping me, clear a way among the hardships and the hindrances of life for you and me; and it shall be my pride to spend the fortune of my manhood's strength to make life light and easy for the wife I love." Ah! how many a working man has made a pledge like this, and broken it? How many a pale bruised woman, nursing some naked-footed child, can recal promises like these made by the man who printed those bruises on her breast, and drank away the shoes from that poor child's feet! Perjured by drink. It is the crystal palace of the gin-shop that has done it all. Its glasses sparkle just as the housewife's eyes grow dim. Its traffic thrives just as the home collapses. Its fires grow ruddy as the cottage hearth grows cold. And its be niface grows fat on the leanness of the children of the poor.

My fellow men! There are true and false lights by which you and I are often led. There is the flash of the true gold and the gleam of the mere tinsel. There is the genuine page 10 brilliant jewel, and the sham and hollow paste. One lures us on to duty, to manhood, and reward; the other decoys us to treason, to sloth, and ruin. Which will you follow? Which are you and I following? It is worth while to ask ourselves, and to keep on asking ourselves until the question is settled to our satisfaction and our honour. Did you ever hear of a will-o'-the-wisp, or an ignis fatuus? It is a sort of strange and phosphorescent light which is said to rise in damp and marshy lands, and deceive the wayfarer into the idea that it is some familiar light. Sometimes he will mistake it for the light of his cottage window, and he will follow it till it has lured him miles from his right course, and sometimes till it leads him to some rolling river, or a frowning precipice. And thus I sometimes think I see the men of Christian England, ay, and alas! the women too sometimes, fixing their eyes upon a garish flare of light which blazes from the paste crystal of a music hall, a gin shop, or a casino, and plodding after it as if it were the light of home. And it leads them from the track of duty to the river of dissipation, and from the path of honour to the precipice of drunkenness. It is a hard challenge to urge the wife of a working man to accept, to vie with the brightness of the public house in the brightness of her home. But a woman can do a good deal when she tries. Let the wife at least make up her mind that if her husband goes to the public house, it shall not be a dirty or a cheerless home which drives him there. You can turn the cottage into a crystal palace quite as bright as the barmaid's snuggery. You can scrub away at every pane of glass, and every pot lid, and every door handle as if you were rubbing off the landlord's budding nose, and make it flash with such a polish as shall multiply your family ten fold as every be y and girl is reflected smiling from each shining surface; and with a cheerful, loving wife smiling beside the steaming tea pot and the humming kettle, he must be a fool indeed if he doesn't feel that he has come to a brighter crystal palace than any beershop in the land with all its gilded lamps and staring sign-boards. Yet still these poor decoys are too often sufficient to draw men page 11 from their homes. And what is the result? Not only do they set up a cold divorce between a man and wife, but they drain away the resources of the family, and leave them to the shifts of vice to earn a livelihood. The children early learn the love of knavery. Did you not read that paragraph in the paper a week ago about "the terror of Drury Lane"? Who or what do you suppose it was? It was not one of the ghosts or demons of the pantomime, walking the pavement like a restless spirit, and terrifying the people from their slumbers. It was not the Cock Lane ghost seeking other quarters, and trying the effect of the air of Drury Lane upon its constitution for a change. No, "the terror of Drury Lane "made his appearance in the dock at be w Street before the worthy magistrate. "Made his appearance," did I say? Hardly that, for "the terror of Drury Lane" could barely be seen above the front of the dock. A shock of stubbly hair sprouting like a tuft above the spikes, was all that the eye could behold of "the terror of Drury Lane." And yet the tall policeman who had the monster in charge, kept looking grimly-down upon the culprit with a glance of horrified veneration. What was this creature? Only a child of eight years old. A little urchin lad, who was the "captain" of a gang of infant desperadoes, ready to dart between the legs of any corpulent old gentleman, to upset an apple woman, or to be put through a panel by a burglar; in short, ready for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; and thus he had earned the distinction of the "terror of Drury Lane." Had he no mother who could spank him with due parental affection, and administer a little subsequent stimulant of cold paving-stone to promote reflection? Very likely he had a mother, but he must earn his living; he must not come home till he has got two shillings out of Drury Lane, and so he is a man of business on his own account. But how about his father? What is his trade? If the child must work so early; can't he be apprenticed to something less romantic than being "the terror of Drury Lane"? Oh, his father is comfortable enough, if anyone did but know page 12 where to find him. He's in good work, getting good wage: but he has found his family an incumbrance, and is not forthcoming. It is parental drunkenness which sends children eight years old to the thief's dock. It is drunkenness which, more or less directly, makes three-fourths of the thieves in England. And if it does this with the sons, what does it do with the daughters? Oh, don't ask me! If you would know, just go down that flight of cold stone steps against Waterloo, or London Bridge, and see what you may see. What is it? A dark shadow rocking to and fro upon the grey wall. Go nearer. I see a woman's head looking out of a muffled shawl, and gazing wistfully at the river. She is looking at the pictures floating past upon the stream, and fancying she sees a palace of purer crystal than she has found on earth in its glistening depths. She hesitates, and seems about to spring. But the stars above seem to speak a language of restraint as she looks upward, and the grim resolution wavers. She turns away and climbs the steps, and hurries on along the street. Will you follow her? She seems to have no home. To and fro—to and fro—through the weary, weary hours, alone with the pity of the stones. And now she slinks into a doorway as a cloud pours down its shower. She seems to be speaking to herself. What does she say? Listen:—

Half-past three in the morning,
And no one in the street
But me on the sheltering doorstep,
Resting my weary feet;
Watching the rain-drops patter
And dance where the puddles run,
As bright in the flaring gaslight,
As dew-drops in the sun.

There's a light upon the pavement,
It shines like a magic glass,
And there are faces in it,
That look at me and pass.
page 13 Faces! Ah, well remembered,
In the happy long ago,
When my garb was white as lilies,
And my thoughts were pure as snow.

Faces! Ah, yes I see them,
One—two—and three—and four,
That come in the gusts of tempest,
And go on the winds that be re;
Changeful and evanescent,
They shine 'mid storm and rain,
Till the terror of their beauty,
Lies deep upon my brain.

One of them blears, I know him
With his sottish drunken stare,
For that is the thriftless father
Who drove me to despair.
But the other with wakening pity
In her large tear-streaming eyes,
Turns as she yearned towards me
And whispered "Paradise!"

They pass: they melt in the ripples,
And I shut my eyes that burn
To escape another vision
That follows where'er I turn;
The face of a false deceiver
That ives and lies, ah me
I can see it on the pavement,
Mocking my misery.

They are gone, all three; quite vanished!
Le no one call them back;
For I've had enough of phantoms
And my heart is on the rack
God help me in my sorrow
But there, in the cold wet stone,
Smiling in heavenly beauty
I see my lost, my own!

There on the glimmering pavement,
With eyes as blue as morn,
Floats by the fair-haired darling
From my lonely be som torn.
She clasps her tiny fingers,
She called me "sweet," and smiled,
And says that God forgives me
For the sake of my little child.

I will go to her grave to-morrow,
And pray that I may die,
And I hope my God will take me,
E'er the days of my youth go by :
For 1 am old in anguish,
And long to be at rest,
With my little babe beside me,
And the daisies on my breast.

If you thought that any habit of yours could bring about such misery, would you continue it? Drunkenness and idleness do bring about this anguish, and therefore we entreat you, by the wail of breaking hearts, to crucify the lust for drink, and be sober striving men.

But if the glare of the ginshop is the false light by which the life-traveller is too often led astray—there are true signals by which he may be guided in a safer and a happier course. The light of love and home will beacon you aloof from these quicksands of overthrow and wreck towards which the false light tempts you on. But there is something better to aim at than mere sobriety and steadiness, good as these are. There is an intoxication in which I would that every working man in all the world were revelling, the intoxication of delight which comes over the soul when the peace of God keeps the heart and mind. Around this sea of life we navigate, there is many an inhospitable shore, and many a dangerous headland, besides drunkenness. And God has lighted clear and bright the blaze of His own word to warn and guide you. Trim your sails according to its light. And as the beacon of your strongest page 15 hope and gladdest joy, look to the cross, the cross of Jesus Christ. Look to that cross as it

"Towers above the wrecks of time,
For all the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime."

That beacon light shall cheer you always. It shall shine through the darkness of your hardest sorrow, and your worst despair, and make your voyage prosperous and your landing safe. I have sometimes climbed the hill near Norwood, which brings the Crystal Palace into view, and seen the sun sparkling on the high glass towers, and the sheen-flashing roof, and thought it was a glorious sight. But if you keep the light which shines around the cross before you, as your beacon ever, it will be a sight more glorious, which your eyes shall see, as the glory of the perfect day streams full upon the minarets of that Crystal Palace which shall be inherited by all who trust a living Saviour, upon whose fanes the unsetting brightness of God's smile is beaming, where the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. May you and I meet there, for Christ's sake.