A NOBLE ENTERPRISE.

Thames Star, Volume XVII, Issue 5202, 30 September 1885, Page 2

A NOBLE ENTERPRISE.

The Men's Christian Temperance Union is confessedly organised on the model of the Women's Temperance Union, bat its object is a vary different one.. It is designed to oppose that terrible erii, roller skating, on the part of women. Of the terrible extent to which roller skating prevails among women the tratts issned by the M.C.T.U. give ample evidence. In most cases the habit of skating is began in early youth. Too often the innocent girl yields to the voice of the tempter, and puts on a skate. The desire' to skate grows upon her, and sooner or later aha openly visits the rink, and in company wi^h other victims of the habit skates day and night, heedless of all that is healthy and holy. Often the married woman seeks in roller skating distraction from the prosaic cares of life. She thinks at first that she will only skate a little now aad then, and that there is no danger that she will become an habitual skater. Alas! lulled by a false estimate of her powers of self restraint, she awakes at last to find herself a confirmed and hopeless ekater. She neglects her household duties to gratify her hellish thirst for skating. She pawns her husband's clothes and sells the family Bible for rink tickets. Night after night she comes home with uncertain footsteps and shattered backcomb, and throws her bruised and aching form on the first convenient bed, where she sinks into the slumber of exhaustion. The M.C.T.U, will leave no means untried to reclaim woman skaters. They will visit the rinks, and hold prayer meetings in the midst of the skaters. They will talk .with the wretched victims of the habit, and they will ask the rink proprietor to abandon his awful trade and to become an honest and decent man. When these measures fail the devoted members of the M.C.T.U. will make raids upon the rinks, breaking up the skating floor with axes and burning the skates in bonfires. The good wishes of all the virtuous people will to with them, and it is to be hoped that the day will come when the anti skating cause will be triumphant in our politics and skating will be for ever suppressed by a prohibitory law.—New York Times