The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1882-03-31
Who Slew allThese2
Df REV. WIN. ARNOT.


If You should visit some battlefield |
an the day alter the battle, when the
ground Il siiewn with many thousands |
wounded, your soul would be alter
nately melted Into pity and kindled in
to iiery indignation by the sight of the |
havoc that man has wrought on man.
Your blood W iuld boil as Won looked |
on mangled carcasses that Yesterday |
were noble men, aud saw blood satura. |
ting. the ground that yesterday brigh.
ened manly countt inccs al d courscd |
through stalwart limbs. You weep. |
and as ,ou curse the horrid spirit OF
war, you cry with AN exceeding
great and bitter cry, "Brolhcrs, deface
not Gods imsge in each other; sheathe
your swords, and live in peace. One
point farther now let the line be stretch.
ed; borrow one feature from the i'm
agination aud add IL to the fact. SUP.
pose You stood and looked upon field
strewed with as many killed and as
many wounded, the corpses more
CHASTITY and the wounds more hide Gus.
with this difference: that when Won
ask, "Who slew all these?" the answer
is not, "Map, in wrath, shed mans
blood" but, Each, IN madness, man.
gled or murdered himself" This new
feature aggravatcs the horror of the
scene.
Your heart would sink more despair
ingiy within you before such an acel-
dana of suicide, than it would In the
presence of any other actual or con-
ceivable field of blood. But, though
the battlefield where thousands aud
tens OF thousands, made in Gods i'm
age, lie mangled, dead or dying, ia a
Stern reality, the other, and more bel.
kh scene is creature of the imagina-
ton only SO far as the grouping of the
objects is concerned.
In social and economical science much
good has been done in our day bv Con-
tentrating upon one point all the scat
tered facts that belong 10 one class and
are charged with tie same meaning
If we could congregate the wounds and
bruises, the mutilations and deaths that
are directly and VIGOROUSLY produced
by strong drink in one year within the
! nlts OF the land, the multitudinous
iight-rays converging from many thou
SAND examples upon point, would
burn through all the scales that encase
the public conscience, aud bring forth,
in cries of agony, a demand resistless
as the volume of mighty river, that
the habit of drinking intoxicants should
cease throughout our borders. If the
murderous work of drink could be COL
lccted ulder our eye, the hai dest heart
would How down like water at the
sight; but the mischief IL not less real i,
not less deep, that it is spread i'm patches
over all the land.
The stock of mutllations and murders
caused by drink can not be collected
but samples every where abound. Here
IS woman partly walking, partly car.
ried between two policemen along the
street. Some remnants of early ele.
gapce shine through rags and wretch
edness. Tho hair, woman's beauteous
ornament, is waving wildly on her
shoulders; blood is streaming from q
gaping wound Oh her brow, She has
fallen on the pavement, and the officers
are humanely conducting her to the
safety of cell. melt with pity as she
passes. but l glow with indignation
honored there. That woman's shame
stinSs Inc, for she is sister of the
human family.
A carter, who had drank hard for
many years, was walking drunk at his
horses head through the streets OF
Glasgow. lie stumbled and fell; the
loaded car went over hIm, and broke
his thigh-bone. lie was carried to the
intirmary; before the insensibility
Of drink went Oft, the insehsibility of
fever came on, aud he died not know
ing what allied him. BY strong drink,
which his depraved appetite demanded,
the light of his understanding was ex,
tinguished; through a dark, painful
passage he was led blindfold, and the
first ligh. that burst again upon his
opening eye was the glory OF the great
white throne. His daughter detailed
The circumstances of his death to the
minister when she called to invite him
to tie funeral. AT the close she said,
with strange subdued CLEAN of salts.
faction rising in the deep and bursting
through the settled sorrow of her coun-
tenance -" lie was bonny corp, sir;
| have ma seen my father sac like himself
this lang time; name o. the blotches, We
KEN" She had long lost sight of her
father-the sober, manly father whom
she knew in her childhood; q bloated
tyrant had for many years been walking
about in his clothes and skin mother
and children starting in terror at the
sound of his football on the threshold BY
1ight. The still features of the dead
suddenly reminded the drunkard's
daughter, in her sad womanhood, of
what her father had been when she was
a child, before tho demon possessed and
changed him.
AS we write, and without rising from
our chair, we take up the newspaper of
the day: paragraph headed "Coro-
ner's Inquest" arrests our eye. 1t is an
inquest over the body of an infant MUIR
dered by its mother. At great fes-
tiyity that mother made merry, and,
like her neighbors, made merry on
strong drink. In the evening she laid
her infant OH The fire, and roasted it.
When the coroner asked her why she
committed such fiendish crime, she
answered that she was drunk, and
thought she was laying the child in It's
cradle. Cases such as this have become
so common that they attract little no.
tice.
They fall thick in This battle, and
they fall fonlly. Killed In brawls,
drowned in bitches, choked by their
own food-they fall, line upon line, in
hundreds, in thousands; ghastly, CORY
heap, if we had any faculty for BRING
ing them together. II that wicked one
who boasts his power 10 exhibit on one
point of space, and at one point Of time,
all the kingdoms of the earth and their
glory, would exert that power in re-
vealiDg to us, not the glory, but the
shame and death which his Kingdom
works by this single agency, methinks
he sight would 90 far 10 burst the
bonds in which he holds the captives.
Ii one years product of drink ia dis
eased, wounded and dead men, " women
and children could be collected and
nilel I'm nna cha m har Of horrnra and