from whence he has fallen and by that far off eminence to the extent of his loss and the depth of his degradation the young and those who have little knowledge of the world are not able to do this yet such is the force of habit that we generally find the young more willing than the old or even the middle aged to come forward and join the ranks of those who entirely avoid these drinks it is not to them however that we can look for those strong convictions of the reality of the evil which naturally impress the minds of persons who have been in a manner compelled to trace out the private history of the victim of they can know nothing of the youth of early promise which once dawned upon yon poor outcast from society � how fondly cherished by a mother he grew up the pride of all the household � how the light of superior intellect adorned his mind while beauty beamed upon his brow and wit and humor woke the ready laugh which ever welcomed him among his friends it is for those only who have been intimately associated with this child of hope really to feel the heart sickening spectacle of his gradual fall � his beauty faded his intellect his wit become profane or lo v or in childish not one of all his admiring and friends who would now acknowledge him not one did we say no not one total among his companions of the midnight or the jovial board but though all have forsaken or him in the lone chamber of his mother tears are falling still while prayers are breathing forth the very soul of that fond woman whose i ve is strong as death and strange to say she who suffered most and been most by his degradation is the last the very last to cast him off she who admired him most in his young beauty who laid her hand so proudly on the golden curls which his noble brow she looks upon him with a mother s fondness still and would fold him to her oh how fondly � yet she however is no philosopher knows little of the wants of human nature or the discipline required to bring it back from disease and wretchedness to a healthy and honorable state and thus when the prodigal comes back as he does occasionally to share the scanty refused to him elsewhere she places before him the tempting draught in her blind and foolish ignorance it necessary when taken in moderation for the restoration of his wasted strength thus it is easy to perceive that such a mother can exercise no over her son and if not the mother with all her tenderness and affection who then is to be looked to for assistance in the hour of need it is in fact this blind and determination to advocate the use of a moderate quantity which produces nearly all the excess now existing in the world it has been justly said that no one was ever yet into the ranks of by its actual victims after they had obviously become such far more calculated to warn and to is the wretched and disgusting spectacle the to the world and if the choice were now submitted to the young whether he would lose a right hand or a right eye or himself to such a fate most assuredly he would prefer the former so opposed is the last stage of to every thing we esteem as desirable of imitation it is besides so generally considered by the world as being easy to retreat after having once gone too far that the young never how this situation can possibly be his until it has actually become so we are all too much in the habit of looking upon the sins of as belonging only to its extreme stage of degradation but did men sin no more under its influence than they do in this helpless and abject state the evil itself would be lessened by an amazing amount it is not excess to which the himself when he a deed of horror that would his arm for the fatal blow no it is what is considered moderation which to the practice not only of open and daring crime but of all those acts of deception employed to betray the innocent and the to their own destruction it is the moderate draught which fires the passions of the and the malignant in short which gives the moving impulse to that vast machinery of guilt which misery and ruin amongst our fellow creatures which their homes them out from christian fellowship and our whole country in the scale of moral worth it is this moderate portion which invariably makes bad men need we inquire whether it ever yet was known to make good men better a voice from the great and glorious then as the results of the movement have been in those who appeared to be lost to their friends and to society its most operation and that to which we look for the greatest good is its power to arrest the downward progress of the moderate before they shall have lost caste among their fellow men in order to do this it is necessary that there should be some powerful and immediate check against so much as the dangerous draught this check has been tried by a mere promise to a friend for a stated period and has proved sufficient for the time though the opposite cases in which it has failed may be reckoned as a thousand to one for until the principle was made known it never seemed to occur to such friends that their part and a very important one in the work of was to join with the tempted in totally and here let us observe that it is one of the peculiar and 