Rich
divans and easy chairs invited weary men to seek repose from unnatural
excitement. Occasionally women entered that saloon, but they were women
not as God had made them, but as sin had debased them. Women whose
costly jewels and magnificent robes were the livery of sin, the outside
garnishing of moral death; the flush upon whose cheek, was not the flush
of happiness, and the light in their eyes was not the sparkle of
innocent joy,--women whose laughter was sadder than their tears, and who
were dead while they lived. In that house were wine, and mirth, and
revelry, "but the dead were there," men dead to virtue, true honor and
rectitude, who walked the streets as other men, laughed, chatted,
bought, sold, exchanged and bartered, but whose souls were encased in
living tombs, bodies that were dead to righteousness but alive to sin.
Like a spider weaving its meshes around the unwary fly, John Anderson
wove his network of sin around the young men that entered his saloon.
Before they entered there, it was pleasant to see the supple vigor and
radiant health that were manifested in the poise of their bodies, the
lightness of their eyes, the freshness of their lips and the bloom upon
their cheeks.
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