The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-02-08
HE WAS NOT THERE.

HE WAS NOT THERE.
By the permission of E. I. Scott, we give
the following thrilling passage from one OF
his speeches:
81 have visited the drunkard's widow ana
orphaned children and shuddered at the sight,
but by my side in pity stood no seller OF IN
toxicating liquor. Standing in the presence
of paupers in poor-houses, viewing with IRE
pressible sorrow the human wrecks rum had
made; inside of prison walls, behind iron
bars on thin straw pallet on an iron frame
within a narrow cell of stone, I've seen
stretched the criminal tossing uneasily, the
noiseless night growing more profound, as
creeps the stiffness of death ESQ feel the
prison-locked), with his brain on fire with
some nameless dread, eyes that would not
close in sleep; then and there I've heard the
outcasts story, how drink-O, God, this
awful drink had led him on, on, then
down into the m@lstrom of sin, OF shame,
and crime, and now of despair, dreading even
freedoms light, shrouded as it were by the
overshadowing possible gallows, he its victim;
but the plying eye Of rumseller fell not on
him, nor came he to see his work.
"I have seen the dying maniac crushed
beneath the complicated folds of imaginary
serpents have heard his awful agonizing cry
for deliverance with his palsied hand trying
to shake the vampire of-tugging at his
throat-until that cry was lost in eternity
yes, seen this man go down into the stariess
night, realizing no touch of loved hand, or
the tender voice of wife or child, saw no eye
of love and pity, heard no prayer as his i'm
mortal spirit took its eternal fight; but in all
these scenes no rumseller stood by his side in
this hour of desolation, of darkness, and de-
spair.
eff men alone were destroyed, without
wringing the hearts that are linked with them,
it would not seem SO damnable. Why should
a christian government and a christian people
like ours, war upon the happiness of the de-
fenceless inmates of the household by the
internal license system? Why-in Gods
name tell us.-in this land of plenty,
where our barns gush with fairness where
our fields groan under the harvests which
roll like golden oceans to the kiss OF the
sunbeams, and where an ever kind Prov
idence has scattered his blessings on every
hand, should women and children go hungry
for bread? A great people look on while the
fatal network of the license system binds the
victim hand and foot, reaches into the home
of young bride, blasts every bright dream,
yoking her to living corpse; reaches In and
shivers the idol of the old mother at the very
altar, and sinks herself like blasted thing to
her grave. Yes, this rumselling blasts the
bright hope of the fathers old age, leaves
him to turn alone to his broken hearthstone
with no child's hand to lay his head, covered
with silvery crown, in the grave. Why, I
repeat, this whirlpool of crime; the daughter
to forget all that's womanly, homes trans
formed into bells, the husband and father
into a demon to torture and kill? Why? that
a few men may fatten by selling rum.
The system is cruel, mercilessly cruel. 1t is
plague-spot, foul excresence on the body
polite; it kills and damns both the drinksr
and the seller"