The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1888-05-19
A STRIKING CASE,

From Afiuence and Honor to Vagrancy,
Poverty and Degradation-The Fate OF
Thousands Every Year.
A few days ago the New York dailiess
chroniclcd the arrest of what the police
man called "bum." This is not an
occurrence worthy of record, of itself.
There is not day but there is less
or greater number brought before
every police judge in any city of the
land. The only reason that we refer
to 1t here is because it is one of the,
alas! too numerous instances of the
fall of man from af1luence and an
honored place in the estimation of his
feIlow-men, to vagrancy, poverty and
want through his slavery to the devil
of rum.
Edward E Palmer was at one time.
one of the most honored private cit
liens OF Brooklyn. He was a capital
ist, man of excellent business abil-
tiles, trusted and honored by his
friends and the public generally. For
several years he was the president of
one of the city's banks. He trans
ferred his investments to the De Kalb.
Avenue Street Railway Company, of
which corporation he became presi-
dent He had a charming wife and
pretty children, and a home of which
any man might be proud, in De Kalb.
avenue. All things were prosperous.
and he was one of the favored ones of
earth apparently.
He was a companionable man, with
hosts of friends; but he, like thousands,
and tens of thousands of Others DIAL
lied with rum. The wine-cup sparkled
at his board. He testified his good
fellowship by inviting his friends to,
the saloon, or by accepting similar in
vitations. The path of life was strewn
with flowers; in the sun of prosperity
all things were pleasant; his business
prospered, and he was accommodating
still greater wealth. Under the stimu--
lus of rum, he made the mad resolve
to take n short cut to becoming
millionaire. Safe and conservative in
his business methods up to the time he
began to become the slave of rum.
thereafter his business acumen de-
serted him, and he plunged boldly into,
the sea of speculation, selecting the,
cotton market as his field. The specu-
lator is like the gambler. He must
have cool head. Rum worked his,
ruin by depriving him of his Judgment
The market went against him, and he,
failed.
Rum, hitherto looked upon as his in
spirer, now became his solaee. 1t had
destroyed his mental energy, and all
those powers which he needed at the
time of adversely. Instead of seeking
some occupation whereby he could
maintain his wife and children, and
endeavoring to regain the wealth he
had lost, he became q sot. Rum had
undermined his moral nature, made
him its slave, and he could not shake
off the chains which bound him. He,
removed to an obscure suburb, where.
amid the direst poverty, his heart
broken wife essays to provide enough
to care for her little ones, while her
husband is saloon loafer, arrested on
the street as vagranti
1t is all well enough for others to
point the finger of scorn at this man,
and show up his shortcomings in the
hour of his adversely. But the fact
remains that rum was responsible for
it all. He is but one of the thousands.
of examples of the fact that when rum
gains dominion over a man, it destroys
every manly quality. 1t deprives him
of courage, destroys his self-reliance,
dulls his brain SO that his business sa-
gacity is destroyed and renders him
a weak, vacilating creature, unfit to
cope with the world, doomed to failure
in every undertaking.
So long as rum can be had, so long
will man fall, and the history of this,
one man be repeated over and over
again, ten thousand times. The
case of this man is no worse than
that of the humblest working-man who
becomes the slave of rum. 1t is only
because there is so mighty contrast
between his former and his present
condition that makes it so striking.
The fate that has overtaken him is tho
fate of thousand every year, whose
degradation is unnoticed because the
distance traversed is not so great.
Toledo Blade.
TEMPERANCE ITEMS.