Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1874-05-11

70 NVSSlueF. Inc men smoke ana the
women knit, and both sip beer or coffee,
chat with each other as neighbor, aud
listen to the music, which is invariably
furnished Yet the Germans are as So
Der, hardworking, and thrifty as any
people that can be found. Dancing is
not confined with them to the young,
but old men and elderly women dance
along with their children. and even
grandchildren, at the social gatherings.
An English commissioner, who was sent
out to Germany, a few years ago, to find
out why from year to year many English
artisans and their wives grew more de-
graded, shiftless and drunken, while
the German operatives, though working
two hours day more, seemed in every
way superior to them, attributed the
difference, after six months residence
among the latter, to the fact that after
their work the husband and wife often
tidied themselves up, and went together
to the beer cafes, to spend the evening
in social recreation. And a higher grade
of the same thing exists for the better
classes. A German professor and his
wife who reside in Cambridge, and who
spent last Summer in Germany travelling,
told me that wherever they were they
went to a beer cafe every night. In
Germany temperance societies exist, for
the diminution of alcoholic drinking,
but they would no more think of crusad-
ing against beer than they would against
coffee In Bavaria, where is made the
best beer in the world, it is saying
that there are no nervous persons, and
there is little doubt that if American
women, instead of indulging in the de-
structive habit of drinking tea three
times day, would drink it but once,
and at dinner take a pint of mild beer,
in twenty-five years their present pallor,
sall0wness, thinness, and nervousness
would be changed to comparative bloom,
beauty and health. Incorporate tea
drinking is running American women
quite as much as Incorporate whisky
drinking is running American men. and
one needs praying for quite as much as
the other.
This country has been trying prohi-
bition and total abstinence pledges now
for forty or fifty years, and this very
movement among women confesses the
miserable failure of the attempt. But
are women going simply to initiate the
mistakes of the men? If not, then they
will set it down as an axiom before they
go one step further that the male sex is
not going to give up all fermented drinks
not if women pray from now until
doomsday. And this because the Crea-
tor has so made the human frame that
In all ages, countries, and races. from
the savage man to the cultivated. it has
craved tonic which is also food. No
body wants to take a medicine, drug,
every time they feel a little low, and
yet people must either take a drug-as
iron, or quassia, or quinine-or indulge
themselves as, nature meant them to do,
in some fermented liquor.
1t rests with American women wheth-
er In our country this is to be the strong
and dangerous whiskey, rum, gin, or
brandy, or whether it is to be the mild
and beneficial ale, porter, or beer. And
1t is for them. also, to say whether it
shall be drank to excess in bar rooms,
In the company of the vicious or the de-
graded, or in moderation and decencv in
their own.
ask, therefore, why, instead of a
dozen bar rooms or more, a town like st.
Adams should not have, German fashion.
two or three cheerful little halls of diff.
erent grades, open every evening, where
young and old could go and have a pleas
ant time if they wanted it? Billiards is
beautiful game, and quite as fit for
ladies as for gentlemen. Whist is a
noble game, and, as it is now PLAYED.
is an excellent discipline in memory,
quiekness and judgement. Nobody that
plays a good game ofw whist can be fool.
and every boy and girl should be en-
couraged. rather than discouraged to
learn 1t. Music and dancing are natur-
al to the season of youth, and beautiful
and refining in themselves. Amateur
theatricals store the mind with quota
tons, teach one to read aloud, and to
declaim with grace and expression. and
give as much pleasure to the audience
as real theatres. Why do not Christian
women take ali these things into cousid.
alton, and try to make young people at
ease and happy together, instead of shut
ting mp their daughters like porcelain
figures in their parlors. and practically
telling every young man that if he wants
to smoke pipe or cigar, or drink a.
glass of beer, or play game of billiards.
ne has got to 60 where no good woman
can countenance him, and where he is
tempted to drink whiskey, to use pro-
fame and coarse language, and gamble +?
1t women do not want to bring PRAYER
into utter contempt, they must look to
II that having by its omnipotence closed
the bar rooms, they do not leave them
s'empry swami a11 >,