San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1879-02-15
A Temperance Lecture.

I
wish all to guard against. II is hidden
by the still summer sea, but upon Il
many human bark..has split. I refe,
| to the mince pie. Yes, my hearers, the
mince pie is a rock that has brought
thousands to watery graves or, not n
watcry graves, exactly, but, you under.
stand what 1 mean. The mince pie ia
the curse of our land. 1t is allurinr
our youth from the path of virtue and
sobriety, and leading them down to ruin
1t begcts an appetite for strong drink
that sweeps everything beforeit. Look
not upon the accursed thing. Shun il
as you would viper. Sit on it; tram.
pie it under your feet, as it were. I
once knew brilliant young man, loved
and courted by all who knew him. His
is the story of thousands. This young
man used to visit his aunt in the fall
that fatal time Of the year when the
mincc pie stalks up and down through
the earth, seeking where it may devour
somebody. This young mans aun.
could make mince pie till you couldn't
rest, and her art lured him to destruc.
ton. That insatiate monster At first
he ate lightly of the damning food;
then, as his appetite grew by what it
fed upon, he ate deeper and deeper, I'm.
til after every meal he would sink into
heavy sleep, only to awake with
head on him bigger than Daniel Web.
ster's. He would chew cloves and car.
damon seeds for hours, and yet you
could smell his breath across the biggest
county in the State. He saw that he
was becoming slave to the accursed
pie. His atlianced bride, who to him
was the one fair woman beneath the
sun, said she would never marry man
that smelled like q distillery that en-
ployed 300 hands and was in full blast
all the time, and unless he reformed she
would be nothing to him but sister.
The young man had all the sisters he
wanted, and, falling at her feet, he reg
Iistered solemn oath, and had it copy
righted next day, that a mince pie
should never pass his lips again as long
as he lived. But, alas! he was already
a slave to strong pie, and in less than
twenty-four hours he tore himself away
from his sweetheart, who made fran
tic grab for his coat-tails, and fled to
his aunt's in the city, and said he hoped
she would have some of her excellent
mince-pies for dinner. The good aunt,
ignorant of the fact that shewas putting
an enemy in his mouth to steal away
his brains, set 'em up, SO to speak, and
in less than two hours the young man
was rip roaring staving blind drunk, as
usual. All, my friends, the story is
CHASTITY one, and needs no embellish-
ment. While in this condition the
young man, the pride of his parents
and the hope Of woman's heart was
arrested for drunkenness and disorderly
conduct. On the way to the mayors
office he shot the officer dead in his
tracks, blew out his own brains with an
other barrel of the pistol, and then
went back and killed his aunt alda dog
that she paid SO for. Ny friends and
fellow-suferers, from the mince-pie to
the tomb is but step. If mince-ples
must be made, I demand, in the name
of the youth of our country, that the
people who manufacture them be COM
PEELED to take out license. II they
must be eaten, beg of you, as you
value your souls salvation, do not eat
them straight. A serpent turks in eve
~ one of them. Ten thousand devils
lie beneath every crust, be it baked ever
so nicely. Every current hides de-
mon with forked tongue Of flame anu
a seven-pronged pitchfork. The suet'
the citron, and the chopped meat are
the broth of hell, and the whole busl'
ness, from stem to stern, is mockery'
and strong drink is raging. In conclu-
sion, my beloved hearers, touch not'
taste not, handle not, enter not into
temptation; or, in other words, look
not upon the mince-pie when it is red'
when it giveth its color in the cup
laorJ n;I T;y,, noa.y.;cI.