Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1893-04-27
NEW FIELDS FOR GRANGE WORK.

Essay Read by Jorette c. Howard before
Warren Pond Grange April II, 1898.
Contributed to THE TIMES.
The question came up at our last meet
ing if the taste for intoxicating liquors
is an inheritance from parents to chill
dren, why the daughters of the house do
not inherit the taste as well as the sons
The answer was: "They do not take the
first glass"
Begging the pardon Of both speakers l
would say the daughters do inherit the
curse; the fatal taste for alcoholic slim
illus is handed down to the daughters as
well as the sons, but society and public
opinion throws barriers around our
daughters that deter them from open
drunkenness in many instances. But
the taste is gratified by the choral habit,
the soothing influences Of bromide, NOR
phine, opium in it's various forms, and in
the lower classes the disgusting pipe.
All these are sought to allay that fatal
craving, and in many cases this fatal
inheritance leaps over the obstacles that
public sentiment mercifully places in
their way, and they do take the first
glass and become common druDkards. l
am personally acquainted with ten wom-
en- whom know to take liquor to excess
and l am ashamed to say they live or
have lived within mile of my own home,
and in every case the father or
mother drank before them. 1t is the
curse of the fathers visited on the chill
dren. think our immediate vicinity is
NO worse than other parts of the town Or
other towns. l can count up to you as
many more women who use opium,
bromide, or choral, whose fathers or
mothers or remote ancestors were victims
of alcoholism.
claim it will sometimes skip one gen.
Grafton and then come out with re-doubled
force in the grandchildren ;like the faint
of negro blood, one generation may be
nearly white and in the next you will
find full-blooded negro. asked one
man, who / knew inherited the taste from
his mother, how it was that his sons were
coming up so free from tobacco and
whiskey. He stopped and looking me full
awful warning to them. My children
then, with suppressed laugh, he added,
'syou see am doing some good in the
world in spite of myself" then with
softened, far-away look, he said, 'per-
haps this is in answer to my fathers
prayers. I remember as we knelt around
the family altar this unvarying petition
went up from his trembling lips: Let
these my children be a power for good
In the world So nay moral death serves
for the uplifting of my children" l
think the poet Longfellow, in writing of
Satan, says:
"Since God suffers him to be
He labors for some good
By us not understood"
/ think can say with almost prophet
ic vision that debasing tendencies will
crop out in the grandchildren of these
model sons, perhaps not alcoholism but
In unbalanced minds and want of men
tai vigor. The medical fraternity tell us
that softening of the brain, mania and in
sanity are often iaherited from inebriate
ancestors.
Now, in view of what l have said of
this inherited curse shall we not as
a grange be allowed to discuss this and
other moral subjects for the uplifting of
our members? Is it always to be reap
improving our farms to the neglect Of
our brains? Have we no intellect to be
cultivated, no moral natures to be uplift-
ed. no character to be forming for the
hereafter? Must we as grange be
brought down to the level of those whose
highest moral effort is disbelief in a
God and hereafter, whose profanity is
simply disgusting and whose CONVERSE
ton leaves bad taste in the mouth like
French novel? think have the SEN
timent of the grange with me when say
we as fraternity must set our faces as
a flint against all moral evils. and we
must be aggressive in our warfare, so
shall we move on with Gods help, with
the impetus of the Alpine glaciers.