The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1889-11-30
DON'T BEGIN.

An Interesting and Instructive Temper
ance Talk with Boys by Marion Har-
land.
"There be three things which are too
wonderful for me, yea, four which ,
know not" said wise man about the
year 700 B. G.
/, woman, thinking aloud in the
year of our Lord 1889, might confess to
inability to understand, we will say, to
be we'll within bounds, some three or four
million things which l should like to
master.
Not one of them puzzles me more
than the problem: "Why do you people
who are we'll drink intoxicating llq-
uors?"
The mystery becomes darker when we
see thirsty men pour down their Threats
that which will make them more thirsty.
The friends of the poet Shelley excused
as eccentricity, and his enemies quoted
as an insane freak, his habit of eating
cayenne pepper to make glass of sherry
a greater luxury to his tongue. 1t
would have been a madden freak had he
cultivated taste for pepper-tea, and
added burning to burning, upon the
pretense that what produced heat would
also relieve it.
No intoxicant is palatable to the tyro.
Brandy is like liquid fire. Whisky is
little more tolerable. Even when molli-
fled by sugar and water, neither is
agreeable to smell or taste.
Champagne makes the tongue Jingle
and chokes the beginner in the act of
IF tpiIo
gent; port and Madeira leave peculiar
and not agreeable taste on the tongue,
which a connoisseur in liquors once
defined to me as the ''true cOchr0dch
.fag0r-a great charm in fine old wine"
The expression is not delicate, but
neither is the habit of tippling.
know man who is the laughing
stock of his acquaintance because of
his ''peripatetic lunches" He always
carries something to eat in his pocket
crackers, cakes, figs, apples, almonds,
raisins, even lump sugar, and munches
continually. l have more than once met
/ him on the street when his hand stuck
J to my glove-a sugary, sirupy hold both
| disgusting and diverting. l do not
know that he has the dyspepsia. If he
has, the probability is that it does not
| deprive him of reason or usefulness. A
man whose stomach is out of order may
be Christian and good citizen. Our
Slutton harms nobody but himself.
The same thing is often said, and al
Gags falsely, of the man who plunges
into four or five liquor saloons on his
way to his business in the morning.
s'takes glass" half dozen times dur
ing the day, and gets thirsty at every
crossing on the way home. The boy
who overcomes his natural distaste to
the fiery potion which at first makes his
flesh crawl and facial muscles contract,
and grows into love of and weak de-
pendence upon what he never needed,
and ought never to have relished, takes
the surest way to hurt his kindred and
friends ever dictated by a tempting
devil.
What is the temptation" of which we
hear so much? Why should ardent
spirits which our boy does not like
incline him to indulgence more than
lemonade Of which he is fond? Why
not as we'll buy and devour sandwich
or cream-puff at every restaurant one
passes, even when he is not hungry, as
invest the same amount in so many
glasses of what is as poisonous as
aconite and water, and not more palata'
BILE? There is SON ething back of it all,
something so idiotically weak that it
would never stand alone if foolish, hot
headed boys would get far enough away
from the absurdity to get cool, steady
look at it.