The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1894-01-12

anu SuuHt anu pdio anu weak, stdHulIR
around in cold rooms, or pitching pen
MES on the street corner, and munching
slice of unbuttered bread when they
can get it, sworn at by passersby be-
cause they do not get out of the way,
kicked onward toward manhood OF
womanhood, for which they have no
preparation, except depraved appetite
and frail constitution, candidates for
almhouse and penitentiary. Whatever
other cause of poverty may fail, tho sa-
loon may be depended on to furnish an
ever increasing throng of paupers. Oh,
ye grogshops of Brooklyn and New
York and of all the cities; We mouths
of hell, when will ye cease to cIaunch
and devourp There is no danger of
this liquor business failing. All other
styles of business at times fail. Dry
goods stores go under. Hardware stores
go under. Grocery stores go under.
Harness makers fail, druggists fail,
bankers fail, butchers fail, bakers fail,
confectioners fail, but the liquor deal
ers never. 1t is the only secure business
know of. Why the permanence of
the alcoholic trader Because, in the
first place, the men in that business, if
tight up for money, only have to put
into large quantities of water more
strychnine and logwood and nux vomica
and vitriol and other congenial concom,
infants for adulteration. One quart of
the real genuine pandemoniac elixir
will do to mix up with several gallons
of milder damnation. Besides that
these dealers can depend on an increase
of demand on the part of their custom
ers. The more of that stuff they drink.
the thirstier they are. Hard times,
which stop other business, only increase
that business, for men 60 there to
drown their troubles. They take the
spirits down to keep their spirits up.
There is an inclined plane down which
alcoholism slides its victims-claret,
champagne, port, cognac, whisky, tom
and jerry, sour mash, ON and down I'M
! til it is sort of mixture of kerosene
oil, turpentine, toadstools, swill, es-
sence of the horse blankets and general
| nastiness. With its red sword of flame,
that liquor power marshals its process
sion, and they move ON in ranks long
enough to girdle the earth, and the pro-
cession is headed by the nose blotched,
nerve shattered, rheum eyed, lip bloat-
ed, soul scorched inebriates, followed
by the women, who, though brought up
in comfortable homes, now go limping
past with aches and pains and pallor
and hunger and woe, followed by their
children, barefoot, uncombed, freezing,
and with a wretchedness of time and
eternity seemingly compressed in their
agonized features. Forward, march,
cries the liquor business to that army
without banners. Keep that influence
moving on. and you will have the poor
always with you. Report comes from
one of the cities, where the majority of
the inhabitants are out of work and de-
pendent on charity, yet last year they
spent more in that city for rum than
they did for clothing and groceries.
THE IMPRovIDENCE OF woRKMEN.
prove true in the perpetual poverty of
the world is the wicked spirit of i'm
providence. A vast number of people
have such small incomes that they can
not lay by in savings bank or life in
surance one cent year. 1t takes every
farthing they can earn to spread the
table and clothe the family and educate
the children, and if you blame such
people for improvidence you enact a
cruelty. On such a salary as many
clerks and employees and many minis
tiers of religion live, and on such wages
as many workmen receive, they cannot,
in 30 years, lay up 90 cents. But you
know and know many who have com
petent incomes, and could provide some
what for the future, who live up to every
dollar, and when they die their chill
dren go to the poorhouse or on the
street. By the time the wife gets the
husband buried, she is in debt to the
undertaken and gravedigger for that
which she can never pay. While the
man lived he had his wine parties and
fairly stunk with tobacco, and then ex-
pired, leaving his family upon the char
tiles of the world. Do not send for me
to come and conduct the obsequies and
read over such carcass the beautiful
litugy, BLESSED are the dead who die
in the Lord, +" for, instead of that,
will turn over the leaves of the Bible
to Timothy V, IS, where it says: If
any provide not for his own, and espe-
cially for those Of his own house, he
hath denied the faith, and is worse
than an infidel, or will turn to Jere-
miah xxi, 10, where it says, He shall
be buried with the burial of an ass,
drawn and cast forth beyond the gates
of Jerusalem.
| cannot imagine any more unfair or
meane1 thing than for man to get his
sins pardoned at the last minute, and
then go to heaven, and live in a man
sion, and go riding about in golden
chariot over the golden streets, while
his wife and children, whom he might
have provided for, are begging for cold
victuals at the basement door of an
earthly city. 1t seems to me there
ought to be poorhouse somewhere on
the outskirts of heaven, where those
guilty of such improvidence should be
kept for awhile on thin soup and gristle
instead of sitting down at the Kings
banquet. 1t is said that the church is
divine institution, and / believe it.
just as certainly are the savings banks
and the life insurance companies divine
institutions. As out of evil good often
comes so out of the doctrine of proba-
bilities, calculated by Professor Hugens
and Professor Pascal for games of
chance. came the calculation of the
probabilities Of human life as used by
life insurance companies, and no bust
ness on earth is more stable or honor
able, and no mightier mercy for the
human race has been born since Christ
was born. Bored beyond endurance for
my signature to papers of all sorts,
there is one style of paper that l always
sign with feeling of gladness and
triumph, and that is paper which the
life insurance company requires from
the clergyman after decease in his
congregation. in order to the payment
of the policy to the bereft household. 1
always write my name then so they can