The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1877-06-21
Intemperance.

Streaming down the ages, blighting the
rosebuds, shriveling the grasses, scorching
the heart and blistering the soul, has come |
allurid tongue Of fame which, heated by |
HE madness of hell, has hissed out the ter
rors of death, and dropped over all the /
world a sea of unutsefable despair. In the
darkness of the midnight il has glared
about the hearth-stone wet with the weep
ings Of wives, mothers and children, and
has bronzed the beauty of earth with the
horrible cast OF hell. Twisting around
the alter of the church it 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.
st the gate of heaven itself it has glared
/ with appalling madness, and seemed like
an impossible wall Of fame between misery
and bliss. Dripping burning drops of
agony into the tenderest depths of writhing
souls, they heve heaved with unutterable
! pain and called on God to blot them from
existence forever. This blighting curse of
the world is the demon intemperance.-
Language has never been made that can
depict in all It's hideousness. Look on the
stack of skeleton that rears its ghastly head
an insult to God-high in the clouds and
shapes the whistling winds into an utter
rance of withering denuneiation of the fiery
monster that gnawed the flesh from those
bones and tossed them into the hideous pile;
come forth from hell We damned, whiting
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 bloat
ing millions, and stretch them in all theil
/; rum -scorched ghastliness and horrible rot
tenness over the plains and mountain tops
come hither, broken hearts and torn, bleed
ing souls from the time of Noah until to
day; hold up your withered hands, y
I countless starving women and children
: come all ye floods of tears that scorchet
d wherever they touched, and boil togethe
y in one vast seething steaming ocean; com
g death and hell and agony, with your har
vest garnered from the still and the brew
cry, and let US mass it into a horrifyin
picture, and let it tell what language neve
can. Portray the work of rum in speech
AS well attempt to blow out the sun with
= breath. Not even the ragged scars an
- midnight of even a single soul, tina
l. has been torn by the bloody talons of thi
, cruel, hungry vulture, and plowed by des
3 pair, can ever find description in any Ian
% guage that was ever spoken. Yet while
hundred thousand suffered this unutterabl
- agony in this beautiful country Of ours la:
. year; while the echo of their concert {
/ despair as they huddled about the gates
10 death, still rides every breeze that fans ou
hills and sings through our dells, and quiy
= ers on every sunbeam that dance on OF
= churchyards, and while hundred thousap
~ more, with bleated faces and bleared eye
y and tattered characters, are making II
u land hideous with their cries of helple
~ ness as they struggle in the clutch OF deaf
20 men are deaf to the horrible warning; an
~ are slipping from the same damnihg Gu
AL that made all this indiscribable wretche'
he ness. From every station in liIe, from Il
9. palace and the howell come the bieediI
. mangled victims to this terrible curse, ar
standing before the world with hopes bligl
'h ted and characters lost, they point with the
unsteady fingers back to the black waste
f. their past lives and cry in soul-harrowir
a. concert: We touched the accursed thi1
- and are lost! lost! lost!'