Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1894-09-19
TEMPERANCE COLUMN.
EDITED BY JoNEsBoRo W, c. t. U.
CURSES CONE HOME TO Roosr.

detection in an Illinois city of a young
man in the act of committing a burg
larry. His father was a wealthy dis
tiller and wholesale liquor dealer who
has experienced a good deal of trouble
with his son. Many a time before the
boy has Violated law and been saved
from punishment by the money of his
father. Embezzlement, drunkenness,
gambling, forgery, have each added a
black mark to the score against him.
He seems entirely bad. The town is
resolved he shall escape no longer.
But, though a careful police fixed his
crime upon him, his father secured the
sons freedom on a small bail bond,
and correspondents to all daily papers
do not think the son will return until
prosecution shall have been made
harmless.
There are a good many things about
this case which a careful man has a
right to think about. The father was
a distitler and seller of whisky. With
the profits it brought him he had pur-
chased entrance into the upper circles
of society. He lived in a fine house in
a neighborhood where excellent and
temperate people dwelt in fine houses
all about him. He was a trusted man
in every capacity. Men knew he
would neither lie nor steal.
I suppose this distiller was what a
good many judges would call a moral
man. l have no doubt he would keep
an engagement, even if it were not in
writing; that no one would have to
compel him to do the fair thing. And
I have no doubt he was a chritable,
generous a l fancy l can see his
name at or near the head of the dona-
tionslists. 1t would probably not be
right at the head, because l believe
there are richer distillers than he is in
this city. But he stands we'll.
And he brings up a son who follows
in his footsteps, to his apparently
great surprise-yes, follows in his foot.
steps. The boy is logically and of ne
cessity continuing his fathers work.
The old man leaves his task uncom-
pleted. The son rounds and completes
all that the father begun. The boy is
a more honest exponent of the traffic
in which he was born-in which his re.
speoted father has grown richer than
ever that moral father has been.
There is something wrong when a
fig tree grows from a thistle seed. To
the careless eye it may seem to be,
though. But l charge you to watch it
closely. What looked like q fig was
really a thistle. The shadows, the
other trees, the environment made it
seem a fig for a time; but when the
fruit comes it is the fruit of a thistle.
1t is a thistle, the son of a thistle, and
it will be a thistle, exuding the poison
of thistles to the end of time.
Good people may look at this last
and say: ut is strange that thistle
grew on what we have for years recog-
aized as fig tree" But they have
been simply mistaken. 1t was thistle
from root to branch, from bole to bios
som, and nothing but thistle-rank,
singing, poisonous thistle. That the
thorn of the thistle fruit is today sting
ing the gentle heart of the thistle tree
is no proof that the sufferer is a fig
tree. 1t is not. 1t is a thistle, and it
groans, learning that the everlasting
edict is making sin itself to suffer.
There is no need for me to follow the
whisky from the fathers still house
through revenue inspection, through
Government taxation, through whole
saler's hands to the littls barroom,
through the barkeeper's hands till 1t
stood in a bottle by the side of o glass
on a slab of a mahogany, with a hui
man being before it and a satyr be-
hind. There is no need for me to tell
how the demon in that glass waves
adieu to his brother demons in the bot
tie, and promises to prepare a place
for them, too, presently. There is no
need for me to tell how the money that
pays for the whisky makes by 80 much
the dinner of some women smaller
makes by so much the clothing Of some
child shabbier; makes by so much the
path to the poor house shorter to some
feet, the road to the Jail more open
and direct.
But it is SO. The whisky father dis
titled and sold went straight as an
arrow to the target, TO the work OF
making an embezzler, an adulterer, O
forger, a burglar of some man-oi
many men. The work of his lifetime
bore its sure results. There are more
burglars, more ~embezzlers, more adul.
terers for the whisky that moral mar
has made and sold. Unfortunately fol
him, it made one more than he wanted,
but surely not n more than he had
reason to expect. He carried the
wretch making business as far as he
could-as far as any distiller could.
His son took up the work there and
completed it. This discredited, de-
PRAYED, absolute young fellow is &C
close behind his father in good works
that he steps on that fathers heel and
hurts him.
These are not pleasant things to say
but you must hear them. The flint
house of the father represents many