The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1891-01-09
w. C. T. U.
How to Promote temperance.

How TO temperance.
Edward Everett Hale says in the Cosmo-
politdn Margarine: l once asked the chief
| of a great temperance home how one could
work to destroy the craving for liquor. He
looked at me with some surprise that a
man in my profession should ask such a
question, and said at once: mo man ever
becomes temperate himself unless he tries
to make some one else temperate" In a
fashion l bad known this. as every preacher
of Christianity must know it; it is a doc
trine laid down in the gospels in a hundred
forms, but had never used it as a working
formula nor had l recommended it to other
people as | have lone since. Let me say
this to any person trying to reform a rel
alive or a friend. You must introduce
this desire to help forward somebody else
or your work will not stand long. Your
protege need not speak at temperance
meetings if he does not want to. but do
you take care that he is doing something
in the general cause of ~purity-that he is
thinking of some one besides himself.
We do not attain to purity by
thinking of impurity. We do not
attain to temperance by thinking of
intemperance. Give him a high motive
and you have so far lifted him from the
plane on which he slipped and fell. An
old and wise friend, who is still living
under the not cold shadow of four score
and ten, intoxicating practical morals, said
to me once: 'You are interested in tenn
perance; / will tell you how TO save men
| from drunkenness." And when | eagerly
asked the secret, he replied by saying:
make them plant trees, make them plant
trees? So soon as they are interested in the
f, growth OF auything else they will be led
outside themselves, and they will not have
time to be drunk.' | should be afraid to
trust to this instruction if | had a man
returned to me from the House of Correc-
ton after his teuth confinement for the
tenth spree which had commanded the
attention of the police, but it involves an
element which ought to be more considered
than it seems to be generally. You want
TO change the manner of life Of your
patient as largely as You can, especially
you want to take him into the open air if
you can. The army in the Civil War was,
for the private, u school of temperance.
l think most officers will agree with me in
this. For officers it was often, alas! a
school of drunkenness, because they could
order for their own use liquors which their
men could not use. But under the absolute
prohibition which existed when an army
was far from any ''civilized post" and in
the freedom and freshness of the open air
life, many a man learned practically a
lesson which, before, he had no opportunity
to try, If | were the dictator of this
Nation there should be beef tea, or some
stimulant of equal value and innocence at
the doc of every factory where hard work
is done. that man or woman might drink a
cup as be goes out from work before he
could refresh himself elsewhere. You
overcome evil by putting in good. You
keep the devils out of the house by intro
ducing angels. And the person who is
thoroughly well fed escapes one of the
most terrible temptations as it comes upon
the person who is hungry.