The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-02-18
GOING AND COMING.
BY BRICK PoMERoY.


 panorama that showed so much in such little space. With the help of the pen we will picture it for boys and girls.
 A man, little more than fifty years of age, called on us this after noon to pay his respects, to dear, good old friend, as he was pleased to call us-and to borrow quarter. He lacked just that much of enough to buy ticket to Newburgh, his home, to which place he said he was called suddenly to attend the bedside of his aged mother.
 The man was growing old. His eyes had red fringe of morass or wet groundwork around them. His skin was calcimined by the queer com- pounds he had been taking into his body and blood these thirty years that we know of His hand was unsteady, and his once manly form vibrated as does some old hay wagon on it's way down hill.
 The man told us two lies in one minute. One was that he was friend, the other, that his mother was ill and had called him to Newburgh; but he was chilly, hungry, suffering, and we gave him what he asked for. He was not friend, as he never did thing that we know of, to sustain our ef- forts or enterprise, or in emulation of an example of sobriety. His mother died four years ago. The old bum, the spent sport and politician, who is fa- ,nf1sor rrrs{h oil ho ,>A1stsool from that which leads the dog into a grog dispensing groggery to smaller one that held his trousers about his waist, received the quarter he asked for, and we take our pay in printing the panorama.
 In 1865, the same man was in our employ. A man of more than average ability, and much ambition. But he could not keep away from the saloon. More than one- half that his hands earned each week went down his throat as sort of sour-mash hog wash. His once well-dressed wife, slid along down hill on her fading wardrobe, as went their four children till at last, turned out of home and compelled to scramble in all manner of ways to keep her children out of the grasp of the law, she sickened and died and was buried by the hand of charity. All the day of the funeral her husband was drunk-too drunk to be decent; too drunk to realize how good God was to his wife, to thus open the door of death so she could escape from drunken husband.
 His children were cared for in a poor fashion. Her eldest boy went to the street life and to the bad. Six years ago he died in jail. His two eldest girls went hither and yon. One was buried year ago on Hart's island, pauper, she was led astray by bartender, kept by him few months as toy, and at last was brut- ally pounded ,and turned into the street. The other daughter is rapidly follow ing her sister. The fourth child, boy, is paddling his own canoe as rail way hand, and, though he wears a terrible load over his heart, is keeping out of dissipation, and declares that he will succeed in life.
 Down hill, down hill, down hill. The man has lost himself in his own life. Helped down hill by the polit- ical influences that lasso and lure men to destruction, degradation and disso- lution so rapidly in this hot bed of drunkenness that controls democracy and dictates to decency in this great city, the man who but for drink would still be a man, has been for twenty odd years painting his terrible picture, which will be all that he will have to show on entering the world and the life beyond this.
 Better for his manhood had he been killed before he was thus confiscated by the saloon influence that has eaten his talents, his genius, his health, his manhood and what he eyer inherited of God-hood, 80 entirely away.
 All the once useful man is now fit for is to run into political caucus to vote for the nomination of some duly selected pocket suffer, and thus to be stood in line and pushed on to vote for the candidate selected by the sa- loon keeper as the one to steer stuff into his possession. Heaven help the wretch but heaven has no help fol those who wreck themselves and gc deliberately down, down, down; who drag, and push, and plunge parents wife, children, hopes, friends and good opportunities down with them
 
 Soon after the wreck had gone out in came bright-eyed Jew boy, witt bask.t of candy that he was ped. ding from office to office. A ittl,