Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1871-03-23


country to the other.-N y. Sun.
Temperance and Culture.
a few weeks since a mother in
Syracuse, New York, killed her child
by adraught of poison. The Tribune
commenting on the event says:
"The temperance question has
become an unmitigated bore to men
Of culture and refinement. Tragedies
such as that ut Syracuse may very
properly serve, they think, as a text
for needed and beneficial sermons to
the lower classes, but their conscience
being clean, there Is no reason why
these unhandsome cOrpses should be
brought between the wind and their
more delicate senses. But it is to
these very men we wish to say few
practical words. They would be
prompt to remove a stagnant pool, If
the wind carried the miasIna into the
windows Of their own costly dwell.
ings as well as into the novels where
1t originated. Putting all questions
Of morality aside, drunkenness, as our
physicians and the statistics Of every
State prove, is the pregnant, death
breeding influence which is the cause
Of half the physical disease and cere-
bral weakness in America to day.
Climatic influence has its share in
this, but temperament has more.
We are too bilious and nervous a
people to bear the use Of liquor with
impunity; and the more cultured the
man, the more accustomed to brain
rather than manual labor he is, the
less is he able to bear 1t; the more
sure and rapid is it's effect, not only
upon himself, but upon his children
and his children's children. The
bottle Of champagne on his dinner
table, to the cOOl-headed man of
business, is, he holds, a necessary,
harmless stimulant after his days
work; only a vulgar fanatic would
protest against 1t. He keeps it there,
and passes with smile Of
Indifference vile grog-shops where
the dangerous classes find their nee
essary stimulant. They are not Of
his kin or kind, either in the tempta-
ton or their downfall. In few
years he wonders why his son, under
the influence of champagne and
highly seasoned food, should become
q hopeless debauchee and libertine,
and is still more puzzled as to where
his daughters could have inherited
their weak bodiesand weaker minds.
Let any man consult his family
and he will learn the old,
hackneyed fact in science, that the
use Of liquor entails upon offspring
greater or less degree of imbecility
and disease.
We coniine ourselves to the purely
physical view Of this matter. The
with which we are all
leave none Of us ignorant
nf the fact that drunkenness has
dragged into our penitentiaries and
jails two-thirds Of their inmates.
Looking round through what is
called society, we see but few families
put Of which some gallant, generous
boy, the one usually most loved and
most worthy of love, has not gone
down that sudden path into the outer
cursing God and his own
life. Is this to have an end: Shall
we act as reasonable men, and
grapple with drunkenness as we
would with cholera or any other
pestilence Or shall we, fathers and
60 on year after year build.
ing our hopes on our boy, teaching
him Christ's love with our lips, and
with our hands putting sure death in
his grasp? Is there no child-murtler
in New York as well as in Syracuse ?
The poor wretch ended her child's
life with one draught to save her
from the curse Of many which she
herself had found intolerable-was
she altogether unmerciful ?"