The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1871-03-25

had discovered he did not love Sara; now l
knew that he loved me, and the knowledge
filled my heart with secret joy, and my soul
/ with deep sorrow.
The Temperance Question and the Press.
In Scri6ner' Monthly for April is an
article by DR.. Holland, the editor, OH s'The
/ Temperance Question and the Press"
from which we quote:
The time for new departure is come.
1t is punctuated by the shifting and uncer-
/ tain movements of those who have chad
their own way" for many years, and who
find themselves as far from the goal at
which they aimed as they were when they
first started. The press, independently,
must take this question in hand, and edu-
cate the people to temperance. The truth
is that there is not country on the face of
the earth where stimulants are needed so
little, and where they are capable of pro-
ducing so much mischief as in our own
| Our sparkling, sunny atmosphere, and the
myriad incentives to hope and enterprise
! in orr circumstances, are stimulantS of
Gods own appointment for the American
people. This pouring down of intoxicat-
ing liquors is ten thousand times worse
than waste-it is essential saccrilege.-
This Straining of the nerves, this heating
of the blood, this stimulant or stupefaction
of the mind, this impositions of cruel bur-
dens upon the dstive organs, is foul
wrong upon Nature. Tens of thousands of
valuable lives are sacrificed every year to
this Moloch of strong drink. The crime,
the beggary, the disgrace, the sorrow, the
disappointment, the disaster, the sickness,
the death that have flowed in one uninter-
rupted stream from the bottle and the bar
rel, throughout the length of the land, are
enough to make all thinking and manly
men curse their source and swear eternal
entity to it. The American people need to
have it proved to them that under no cir
cumstances are the various forms of intox-
icating drink good for them. They are
not yet convinced of this, although they
know, of course, that the abuse of drink
brings all the evils that can be imagined
Every Juvenile periodical, every newspaper,
every magazine, every review, owes it to
the country to teach this fact persistently.
There has been something in the way in
which the temperance reform has been
pursued which has brought upon it the
stigma of fanaticism. That stigma ought
to be obliterated-so thoroughly obliter-
ated, that the man who weakly yields to a
degrading appetite, or wantonly courts
such an appetite, and the danger and dis
grace it brings, shall feel that he bears
stigma which marks his degradation among
a generation of clean and healthy men,
In short, temperance must be made not
only respectable, but fashionable. The
wine bibber and the beer-drinker, as well
as those of stronger stomachs and coarser
tastes, must be made to feel that they are
socially disgraccd by their habits. In the
family, in the school, everywhere, by all
the ordinary means of approach to young
and plastic minds, the virtue of temper
ance should be inculcated 1t is fashionable
for the young to drink wine to-day. 1t
must not be tomorrow; and in order that
it may not be, the accepted leaders of pub
lie opinion must tell the people the truth,
and enforce upon the people the obligations
of duty. That world of high life which
sends down it's powerful influence upon all
the life beneath it never was influenced by
professional temperance reformers, or by
temperance organizations, and is not likely
to be, the papers, and magazines, and books
it reads, and the social authorities prospects,
must inculcate temperance until it shall be
shame to place a wine-bottle before a
friend.
o Heaven. for one generation of clean
and unpolluted men.-men whose veins are
not fed with fire; men fit to be the compan-
ions of pure women; men worthy to be the
fathers of children; men who do not stum
BILE upon the rock of apoplexy at mid-age,
or 60 blindly staggering down into drunk
ard's grave, but who can sit and look upon
the faces of their grandchildren with eyes
undimmed, and hearts uncankered. Such
a generation as this is possible i'll America;
and to produce such generation as this,
the persistent, conscientious work of the
public press is entirely competent, as an
fundamentally. THE press can do acAat 1t
asal,; and if it will faithfully do its duty,
Maine laws will come to be things unthought
of, and temperance reformers and temper
ance organizations will become extinct.