St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1885-06-06

500, 102.03 by compound interest. We lived |
in the city, but the children, who had |
learned something of the enjoyment of |
country life from their annual visits to
their grandparents, longed for home
among the green fields. I found a very |
pleasant place in the country for sale. The
cigar money now came into requisition,
and I found it amounted to sufficient |
sum to purchase the place, and it is mine.
Now, boys, you take your choice, smoking
without home, or a home without smok-
ing"
OTHER DANGERS.
Listen to that, young man, and take an
other thing into consideration, and tn at is,
vast amounts of property are destroyed
every year indirectly by this habit. An
agent of an insurance company says:
"One-half our losses come from the spark
of the pipe and the cigar" One young man
threw away his cigar in one of the cities,
and with it he threw away 100000 worth
of property of others that blazed up from
that spark.
But am speaking of higher values to-
day. Better destroy q whole city of stores
than destroy one man. 0, my young
friends, if you will excuse the idiom, viii
say stop before you begin. Here is serf-
dom which has shackle that it is almost
impossible to break. Gigantic intellects
that could overcome every other bad habit
have been flung of this and kept down.
| Some one was seeking to persuade man
| from the habit. The reply was: "Ask me
| to do any thing under the canopy of
Heaven but this. This can not give up
and won't give up, though it takes seven
years of my life."
| must have q word also with all those of
! NV friends whom it does not hurt,who can
stop any time they want to, and who can
| smoke most expensive cigars. My Chris
! tian brother, what is your influence in the
matter? How much can you deny your
| self for the good of others? 1t was great
mystery to many people why Governor
Briggs, of Massachusetts,, wore craYat
but no collar. Some people thought it was
an absurd eccentricity. All, no! This
was the secret: Many years before he
was talking with an inebriate and telling
him that his habit was unnecessary, and
| the inebriate retorted upon him and said:
" We do great many things that are not
| necessary. 1t is not necessary for you
to wear that collar" SWELL" said Gov
ernor Briggs, 81 will never wear collar
again if you won't drink" agreed"
said the inebriate. Governor Briggs never
wore collar. They both kept their bar
gain for twenty years. They kept it to
the death. That is the reason Governor
Briggs did not wear a collar. That is the
Gospel Of the Son of God. Self-denial for
the good and the rescue of others.
HAsHEEsH.
| I take step further. In all ages the
world has sought some flower or herb or
weed to stimulate its lethargy or to compose
it's grief. : A drug called nepenthe was
widely used among the ancient Greeks and
the ancient Egyptians for narcotic pur-
poses. The Theban women knew how to
compound it. You had but to chew the
leaves and your sadness was whelmed
with hilarity. But nepenthe passed out
from the consideration of the world. Next
came hasheesh, which is made from Indian
hemp. It is manufactured from the f1ow-
ers at the top, or workmen in leather cloth
ing walk through the fields of hemp and
the oxidation from the hemp adhered to
the leathern garments, and then this exu-
dation is scraped off and prepared with
aromatics and becomes an intoxicant for
the people. Whole nations have been
stimulated, narcotized and made imbecile
with this accursed hasheesh. The visions
kindled by that drug are said to be gorge
GUS and magnificent beyond all description,
but it finally takes down body, mind and
soul in horrible death.
knew one of the most brilliant men of
| L. ha in MAJ a..
zine or in book or in newspaper column,
he was an enchantment. He could, in the
course of an hours conversation, produce
more wit and strange information than
any man I ever talked with; but he
chewed hasheesh. He did so first as mat
ter of curiosity to see whether the powers
ascribed to it really belonged to it. He put
his hand into the cockatrice's nest to see
whether it would bite, and he found out to
his complete undoing. His father, who
was a minister of the Gospel, prayed for
him and counseled him and obtained for
him the best medical prescriptions of the
best physicians in New York, Philadelphia,
Paris, London, Edinburgh and Berlin. He
said he could not stop. A large circle OF
friends put their wits together to try tc
rescue him, but he went on down. Frs
his body gave way in pangs of convul,
sions Of suffering; then his mind gave
way and he became a raving maniac; Their
his immortal soul went, disappearing God
into starIess eternity.
THE OPIUM HABIT.
Opium demands emphatic recognition
1t is made, as you know, from the white
poppy. 1t is not a new discovery. W.
read of it three hundred years before
, Christ; but it was not until the seven
Eaanth cant11rv that il began its deatl