The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-05-09 00:00:00

THE LADIES' WAR.

The following letter has been sent to the New York
herald by the wife of Pare Hyacinthe :
'' Geneva, Switzerland, March 23rd, 1874.
"Will you permit me to use the columns of your
journal to give a word of appreciation, counsel, and en-
couragement to the women of America who have en-
listed in the temperance war? There is no doubt that
intemperance is the greatest evil in our beloved Re-
public, and destroys what is dearer than govern-
ment, wealth, education, Or liberty—the happiness,
prosperity, the lives and souls of her people.
It is enough to till the mind of every thinking
person, surely of all who love their fellow-
men or their country, with alarm at the thought that
an entire army of American youth go trooping into
perdition every year by the use of intoxicating liquors.
Illore hearts and hearths are made desolate to-day
throughout the land by drink than by our late war,
for every wife who lost her husband and every mother
who lost her son in that struggle for national life is
consoled in her loss and proud in her grief ; but the
wife or mother who follows her dear ones to the
drunkard's grave, or sits with the ghoul by the fireside,
suffers and weeps in shame which no mourning veil-or
vestment can hide.

"Dear sisters, it is a hard but a holy war you have
inaugurated ; may it end in victory! If you cannot do
all you would, remember you will be blessed if some
are saved. The evil is so deep that it will take a gene-
ration, at least, to cure it. But you must succeed, for
your cause is God's justice and your arms divine; only
let your prayers be intelligent—executive ; for prayer
alone will not suffice--it must be followed by good
works. Search out the cause of your sorrow, which is
not alone with the seller of intoxicating drinks, but
with the appetite that demands it.
"The great American malady is the malady of the
stomach. Conscientious people become dyspeptics ;
non-conscientious people become drinkers. Bear in
mind this fact, that the appetite for drink is not neces-
sarily made by drinking, but in uine cases out of ten it is
ereated and cultivated at your tables—in your childten
—by the use of coffee, tea, pepper, pickles, mustard,
spices, too much salt, hot bread and pastry, raw meat
and grease, and, above all, by the use of tobacco. The
cry of depraved appetite, an inflamed stomach, is al-
ways for something stronger. The use of soup, milk,
and salad, prepared with good oil, should be cultivated.
In short, reform your tables if you would reform your
drunkards, and save your sons. Cure the cause, and the
effect will be but natural. Stop the demand by
correcting appetite, and stop the supply by
preventing manufacture. Any legislator who does
not see and acknowledge that the use of poisonous
drinks, as in England and America, is not a public
evil, a corruption of society, and a civil danger,
that should be dealt with by law, is unworthy
of the place that the intelligent people of America
give him. Instead of rye for whisky raise grapes,
that pure native wine may be used when needed.
Distilleries are slaughter-houses of men and should
be dealt with as such, and money gained from selling
liquors is blood money, and should never touch the
palm of an honest man!
" Be not dismayed by insult, nor discouraged by
defeat ; but with charity for the culprit and pity for
the victim, go on, pray on, work on. God will bless
you.—Yours, most sincerely, " EMILIE J. L0Y8027."