Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1881-05-22
I saw q happy family.

saw happy family,
With rudy cheeks and faces bright
Whose joyous heart expression found
In eyes that danced with pure delight.
The maids were modest, chaste, and fair,
The boys were brave and noble, too;
The families, as blest as this
The sun shines on, trow are few.
1 saw man with form erect,
And with a calm, expressive face,
Upon the lineaments of which
1t was not hard for one to trace
The workings of noble soul;
sympathetic friend, and kind,
More ardent, constant, firm than whom
Twas meier my privilege to find.
[ saw that cottage once again;
But ali. twas sinking to decay;
The window lights were broken in,
The shutters had been Wrenched away ;
The grounds were overgrown with weeds
No hand had trained the vines of late;
And want dwelt now where wealth had
been;
Twas blishted, cursed, and desolate.
| saw that woman once again;
|. Her face was wan, her cheek was pale !;
And from old cares deep chiseled lines,
[ read, with pain, her sorrows tale.
Within her heart where hope had reigned,
When all was joyous, bright and fair,
4 monarch crowned with ebon sat,
Whose name I've learned to call Despair.
I saw that family again;
But oh. the change, how very sad.
| They wandered forth to virtue lost,
| In filthy, tattered garments clad.
Their eyes no longer danced with Joy,
Nor could they longer happy be,
For sin, and poverty, and shame
Had overwhelmed that family
| saw that man but once again,
With blood-shot eyes and bloated face,
| Upon the lineaments of which
1t was not hard for one to trace
The workings of a fallen soul;
| vicious, prostituted mind,
More wretched and depraved than whom.
| May God forbid l e'er should find.
man, a family, wife,
Once good and happy, young and fair,
Have fallen from the heights of hope
| Far down the starless gulf, Despair
| The cottage, too, the home of peace,
| Has been surrendered up to fate,
| And now its many tongues repeat
| "Beh0ld, I, too, an deS0late"
| What agency, or arm so strong.
What evil genius, Or spell,
| Can so bring down the human race,
From Heavens gate, so near to hell?
In one short word of letters three
OF human ills we find the sum,
The arith'ring, ddghti1eg, damni1tg scourge,
Which bears the simple name of RUM.
incompetence, if not the greatest, is one
of the greatest and most powerful evils ex-
! listing on this mundane sphere. The sub
| iect under consideration is one almost rs
Hold tla
mented upon and decried by learned and
able men who have been filled with the
spirit of philanthropy towards the
| human race-from time immemorial, y
but still it is ever new. Ever new be
cause of the great power intemper-
ance has over mankind for doing HARM and
the necessity of crying it down and saving
| the thousands of victims who are yearly
falling into its power and going down to
eternal ruin. Not only is the man who
drinks unfit for business or the performance
of any social duty while under the Influence
+, of intoxicating liquor, but he is also unfit to
be called human being, reasonable crea-
! ture. Intemperance is the bane of society,
and should be forever extirpated. It fills
our prisons with criminals of every charac-
ter-from the murderer down 1t destroys
| health and life, power and ability. 1t crush
| es homes and fills the land with suffering in
| nocents. 1t strikes at the very heart of
everything that tends to happiness.