Charles City intelligencer. [volume] (Charles City, Floyd County, Iowa) 1864-1866, 1866-01-25
Communications.
For the Charles City Intclligencer.
Intemperance.

versally admitted maxim that drunken
ness is vice and that temperance is
a virtue. Even the most besotted inc
briate, wallowing in the depths of his
filth and pollution, will hardly deny in
his sober moments that temperance is
a virtue and that drunkenness is the
fruitful mother of the vices and crimes
that disgrace mankind, and that paint
those dark pictures of the human char.
acter which cast their gloomy shadows
over the history of the world.
1t is useless, Gentlemen, for me to
inform you that the track of Intempe.
rance is always strewn with wrecks of
humanity with withered hopes, blight.
ed prospects, imbruted souls, and bro.
ken hearts aching with anguish and
haunted with despair that it is filled
with scenes of suffering, want, misery
shame and crime. 1t is needless that
| should tell you that wherever there
is bloody chapter in history wherev,
cr there is dark deed that shocks
humanity and sends chill of horror
through every heart, which has not
ceased to pulsate with feelings of kind.
ness and sympathy that there you
see the poison, yet legitimate, fruits OF
lntemperance. If you have shared
the usual experience and observation
of men, these facts are within your
own knowledge. Although stung by
your guilty conscience, you may at
tempt to close your eyes to the revolt.
ing and accusing spectacle, yet if your
unholy love of your ill-gotten gains
has not wrung every spark of sympa-
thy from your hearts if your iniqui-
tous traffic has not so humbled your
souls that they have become insensible
to the pain, the misery, the anguish of
souls, the shame and crime you are
daily scattering through the communi-
ty then how must the long array of
innocent wives and children whom you
have robbed of love and protection,
whose abodes you have rendered cheer
less and desolate, whose cup Of joy
you have filled with sorrows bitterest
dregs, and whose hearts you have fill
ed with an anguish from which their
only refuge is the grave how must
the CHASTITY forms of the victims who
have stood at your bar and taken from
your hand the draught that has burned
out their health, their strength and
their manhood, until with tottering
steps they stagger madly on to drunk
ards grave how, say, must these
victims of your crime daily and night
ly haunt your steps and your pillow as
the ghost of the murdered victim
haunts the guilty conscience of the
murderer /!
1t is unnecessary, gentlemen of the
Charles City Saloons, that | shonld in.
form you that, in opening and continu,
ing your saloons for the sale of intoxi
eating liquors in this place. you are
guilty of forming and consummating
a wilfull and deliberate design to un
dermine the foundations of public or
der and virtue in this communicate
degrade and debase the society and to
pollute and to poison the public senti
ment of this town, to ruin the lives
characters and souls of every victim
who puts the intoxicating bowl to his
lips in your saloons, and to destroy
the peace and happiness of the family
of every man who drinks at your bar
need not tell you that, in offering
your liquors to the public, you are full
filling your deliberate purpose to pros
titue the appetites of your fellow be
ings for your own pecuniary profit
that every time You tempt you neigh
Dor with the intoxicating glass, you
do nothing less than to invite him to 9
career of vice, Of shame and of crime
that for every glass of liquid damna
tion sold across your bar, some limo
cent heart must bleed, and some lone
| ly fireside must suffer. You canno
claim to be ignorant that such are th1
inevitable results of your despicabl,
trade.
1t is fearful price, gentlemen, tina
you are paying for wealth, wrung iron
the hearts blood of innocent womel
and children wealth for which, il
your haste to accumulate, you do no
hesitate to fill the cutters with drunk
ards, the aims house with paupers, tn
insane asylum with maniacs, the street
with homeless widows and orphans
. and the grave with its early victims G
anguish, remorse and despair /!
The highwayman who meets his vi,
tim on some obscure road, and, pistt
in hand, demands and receives his MOI
ey, is less guilty than you, for he take
a only money and leaves his victim maj
! while you robb yours alike Of none,
Q character, reputation and manhood
The highwayman is hunted down
his dark retreat, and, when brought
Justice, expiates his guilt in the pen
: tentiary or on the gallows, and II
. public breathe easier and feel saf'
" when the law and its officers put 9