Nebraska advertiser., 1877-12-13
Intemperance.

Streaming down the ages, blIghting
q the rosebuds. shrivefing the grasses,
scorching the heart and blistering the |
soul, has come lurid tongue of flame /!
which. heated by the madness Of hell,
has hissed out the terrors of death,
and dropped over all the world sea
of unutsrable despair. In the dark
ness OF the midnight it has glared
about the hearth stone wet with the
weepings of wives, mothers, and chill
dren, and has bronzed the beauty Of
earth with the horrible cast Of hell
Twisting around the altar OF the
church IL has withered the sweetest
flowers that ever attempted to bloom
for the adornment of heaven, and has
fed death from the very waters of
life. At the gate of heaven itself il
has glared with appalling madness
and seemed like an impossible wall
of flame between misery and bliss
Dripping burning drops of agony into
the tenderest depths of writhing souls,
they have heaved with unuterable
pain and called on God to blot them
from existence forever. This blight
ing curse of the world is the demon
intemperance. Language has never
been made that can depict it in all its
hideousness. Look on the stack of
skeletonsthat rears it's CHASTITY head
an insult to God-high in the clouds
and shapes the whistling winds into
an utterance Of withering denuncia-
tion of the fiery monster that gnawed
the flesh from those bones and tossed
them into the hideous pile; come
forth from hell ye damned, writhing
spirits that were robbed of heaven by
the sparkling temptor, and cast the
red shadow of thy wretchedness upon
the faces of the living; graves, give
up your fostering. bloated millions,
and stretch them in sll their rum
scorohed ghastliness and horrible rot
tenness over the plains and mountain
tops; come hithsr. broken hearts and
torn, bleeding souls from the time of
Noah until to-day; hold up your with
cred hands, ye countless starving
women and children; come all ye
floods OF tears, that scorched where
ere they touched, and boil together in
one vast steaming. sesthing ocean
come death, and,hell. and agony, with
your harvest garnered from the still
and the brewery, and let US mass ii
in horrifying picture, and let it tell
what language never cant Portray
the work of rum in speech! AS well
attempt to blow out the sun with
breath. Not even the ragged scars
and midnight Of even a single soul,
that has been torn b. the bloody tai
Ions OF this cruel, hungry vulture and
plowed by despair, can ever find des
cription in any language that was ev-
erspoken. Yet while hundred thous-
and suffered this unuterabIe agony iu
this beautiful country Of ours last
year; while the echo of their concert
of despair as they huddled about the
gates of death. still rides every breeze
that fans our hills and sings through
our dells, and quivers on every Sun
beam that dances on our church yards
and while hundred thousand more,
with blOatted faces and bleared eyes,
and tattered characters. are making
the land hideous with their cries of
helplessness as they struggle in the
clutch Of death, men are deaf to the
horrible warning. and are slipping
from the same damning cup that made |
all this iDdescribable wretchedness.-l
From every station of life, from the
palace and the hovel, come the bleed /
ing mangled victims to this terrible
curse. and standing before the world
with hopes blighted and characters
lost, they point with their unsteady
fingers back 20 the black waste of their
past lives and cry in soul-harrowing
concert: 1--WE touched the accursed
thing, and are lost! lost! lost!"-
Western RtTay.