The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1871-03-09

wine without disgrace and disaster. The
toast and the bacchanalian that, with
musical ALTERATION, couple these two
words, spring from the hot lips of sensu-
atty, and are burdened with shame. A
man who can sing of wine and women in
the same breath, is one whose presence is
disgrace, and whose touch is pollution.
A man who can forget mother and sister,
or wife and daughter, and wantonly en-.
gage in revel in which the name Of wo.
man is invoked to heighten the pleasure
of the intoxicating cup, is, beyond con-
troversy and without mitigation a beast.
''Dost thou think, because thou art virtu-
Gus, there shall be no more cakes and
ale?" Ay, cakes and ale, if you will,
but let it be cakes and ale. Let not the
name by which we call the pure and pre-
cious ones at home be brought in TO illu-
inmate degrading feast.
| OF the worst foes that woman has ever
had to encounter, wine stands Mt the
head. The appetite for strong drink in
man has spoiled the lives of more women
ruined more hopes for them, brought
to them more shame, sorrow and hard
ship-than any other evil that lives.
The country numbers tens of thousands
nay, hundreds of thousands-of wo-
men who are widows to-day, and sit in
hopeless weeds, because their husbands
have been slain by strong drink. There
are hundreds of thousands of homes
scattered all over the land, in which wo-
men live lives of torture, going through
all the changes of sufferingVthat lie be-
tween the extremes of fear and despair,
because those whom they love, love the
wine better than they do the women they
have sworn to love. There are women
by thousands who dread to hear at the
door the step that once thrilled them with
pleasure, because that step has learned to
reel under the influence of the seductive
poison. There are women groaning with
pain, while we write these words, from
bruises and brutalities inflicted by hus-
bands made mad by drink. There can
be no exageration in any statement made
in regard to this matter, because no hui
man imagination can create anything
worse than the truth, and no pen is capa-
bic of portraying the truth. The sor-
rows and the horrors of a wife with a
drunken husband, or a mother with a
drunken son, are as near the realization
of hell as can be reached, in this world
at least. The shame, the Indignation,
the sorrow, the sense of disgrace for her
self and her children, the poverty-and
not unfrequently the beggary-the fear
and the fact Of violence, the lingering,
lifelong struggle and despair of count
less women with drunken husbands, are
enough to make all women curse wine,
and engage unitedly to oppose it every
where as the worst enemy of their sex.
And now what shall we see on the
New Years day, 1871? Women all
over the city of New York-women here
and there all over the country, where like
social customs prevail-setting out upon
their tables the well filled decanters which
before night shall close down, will be
emptied into the brains of young men and
old men, who will go reeling to darker
orgies, or to homes that will feel ashamed
of them. Woman's lips will give the
invitation, woman's hand will fill and
present the glass, woman's careless voice
will laugh at the effects of the misehiev-
Gus draught upon their friends, and hav-
ing done all this, woman will retire to
balmy rest, previously having reckoned
the number of those TO whom she has,
during the day, presented a dangerous
temptation, and rejoiced over it in the
degree of its magnitude.
o woman woman Is it not about
time that this thing were stopped? Have
you husband, brother, a son? Are
they stronger than their neighbors who
have, one after another, dropped into
graves of drunkards look around you,
and see the desolation that drink has
wrought among your acquaintance, and
then decide whether you have a right to
place temptation in any mans way, or
do aught to make a social custom respec-
table which leads hundreds of thousands
of men into bondage and death. Why
must the bottle come out everywhere?
Why can there not be a festal occasion
without this vulgar guzzling Of strong
drink.
Woman, there are some things that you
can do and this is one you can make !
unpopular and disgraceful |
among the young, you can utterly discoun- |
tenance all drinking in your own house
and you can hold in suspicion every !
young man who touches the cup. You |
know that no young man who drinks can
safely be trusted with the happiness of
any woman, and that he is as unfit as a |
man can be for woman's society. Have |
this understood that every young man
who drinks is socially prescribed. Bring
up your children to regard drinking as
not only dangerous but disgracefIl. Place
in no mans way. If men
will make beasts of themselves, let them
do it in other society than yours. lfyour
mercenary husband treat their customers
from private stores kept in their counting |
rooms, shame them into decency by your |
regard for the honor of your home. |
Recognize the living, terrible fact that !
wine has always been, and is to-day, the
curse of your sex; that it steals the
hearts of men away from you, that it dries
up your prosperity, that it endangers
your safety, that it can only bring you
evil. If social custom compels you to
present wine at your feasts, rebel against
it, and make social custom in the inter
ests of virtue and purity. The matter
is very much in your own hands. The
women of the country, in what is called
polite society, can do more to make
the nation temperate than all the legisla-
tors and tumultuous reformers that are
struggling and laundering in their effort
to this end.-Scribner's Monthly.
FEAMALE SocIETY.-What is it that
makes all those men who associate hab-
itually with woman superior to others who