Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-11-20
The Temperance Meeting.
ADDRESS BY Mr.. GRoGAN.

The town hall was we'll nlled last even
ing on the occasion of a temperance
meeting held under the auspices of the
temperance organizations of Rutland,
the churches suspending their regular
evening services to allow their congrega-
tons an opportunity to attend.
The meeting was opened with prayer
by Rev. j. G. Johnson, when J. NJ.
Haven introduced Mr. Grogan as the
speaker of the evening. Below we give
a mere outline of
THE ADDRESS.
In commencing his lecture the speaker
said that he always felt a peculiar sym
pathy with an audience of temperance
men and women, more especially on the
Lords day. The speaker said that he
had nothing specially prepared, but
spoke from what he felt, and had seen
in an experience of seven long years.
OF a returned soldier, who has spent
twelve or fifteen months in Anderson
vile prison, ask what he thinks of
Southern chivalry and you will get his
answer before he has spoken, in his
fierce looks and the savage flash of his
eye So with the man who has been inn
prisoned in the rum shop and is at last
free-ask him and you viii receive the
answer in the same manner. In this
question of temperance there appears to
me at the outset three great wonders.
First, that an intelligent, rational being
will enter a shop where rum is sold and
step up to the bar and ask for it.
Second, why man will become so bad,
so villainously bad, as to sell liquor !;
dealing out through the day what was
adulterated the previous night, and see
his fellow mortal reel ont of his shop
drunk and ruined in soul and body.
Third. Why our people and nation,
the United States of America, where all
our churches and temperance organiza-
tons are spread over the land, why our
nation, by the enactment of righteous
laws, tolerate this evil.
To me these are three great wonders.
/ can't answer why men will drink.
presume there don't live to-day man
who, when he took the first glass, had
any idea that single person would ever
see him under its influence. The speak
er compared the beginning of drinking
| to the commencement of the use of to-
bacco and snuff-frst in small quanti-
ties. perhaps for the toothache or a cold,
until its use has become habit, and
cannot be controlled, and then we are
enslaved and ruined. Some think that
none but good-for- nothing men and
men of no will-power, only, become
| drunkards. But men of will, real men
and intelligent, do become drunkards.
In the New York inebriate asylum at
/ Binghampton, up to the year 1864, there
had been seven thousand two hundred
and forty-two inmates. Out of this
number thirty-nine were young men who
had studied for the ministry eight judges,
one hundred and ninety-seven lawyers,
two hundred and twenty-six physicians,
four hundred and sixty-six farmers, six
hundred and eighty mechanics, two hun
dred and forty gentlemen, eight hundred
and five women. The record of this in
stitution shows on its list of applicants
| the names of three hundred rich mems
daughters.
The minister, the judge, the lawyer,
farmer, mechanic, all succumb to the
dread destroyer. Houses and lands are
mortgaged and ruin written on the once
happy home Gentlemen appear clothed
in rags and dragging along miserable
existence until relieved by welcome
death. And woman beautiful and pure,
with all her charms, falls beneath its
blast. The Hottest minds and greatest
learning, the spotless reputation pales
before the fell destroyer. Conjugal
love, parental love, hope of heaven
grows dim before its blight. 1t has lost
its terror and human beings are march.
ing on to fill drunkard's grave and re.
ceive drunkard's doom. Here the
speaker repeated long list of names
from ancient and modern history, in.
Guiding some of the greatest men of an
cient and modern times, poets, soldiers
and statesmen, men who were recog'