Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1895-06-18
WOES OF THE WINE CUP.
Sam Jones' Plain Talk on the De-
baucheries Of Youngmanhood.
Bsw They Separate from All That's Good
and True, and TrampIe on the
Hearts Of Loved Onss--Ths
-Four Grades.
tCoPYRfGHT. 1881

70 the art OF drunkaru making IN TIE
nurseries. This week we shall say
something of youngmanhood with It's
blcared eyes, with its unsteady step,
with Its imbccile mind and surrender OF
soul TO the evils of intemperance. This
Is large class, not only in America,
but in all countries. verify believe
that true statistics on this point will
show that we have already in America
q million young men between the ages
of sixteen and twenty-five, who are
surely headed toward the maelstrom of
debauchery.
Whatever may be said of hereditary
tendencies, very few young men who
begin early to drink ever escape the
doom of drunkards life. Young men
begin to drink in social way. They
drink because others drink, they drink
because there seems to be a flow Of
reason and feast of soul in the wine
cup, and in very short while the habit
of drinking is fixed upon them. How
merciless this habit! 1t 1gnaws, and
jabs and bites and tears, and will take
no denial. They drink to-day because
they drank yesterday. They drink
tonight because they drank to-day.
A habit with the momentum and
cumulative force which habit always
gives grows with each successive day
and week, until by and by habit be.
comes life and life becomes death. In
the meantime the young man finds the
habit of drink is stronger than his love
for his mother or his devotion for his
father or his respect for his sister, and
should he lead some senseless girl to the
marital altar she will soon find that his
passion for drink is a thousand times
stronger than his devotion to her. SooT
she will find his neglect of her and hi:
attendance upon the wine cup have di
vorced him from her and married him
to the cup which has inevitably doomed
him. In the business world we find
him as incapable of business as he is
powerless to resist the appetite which
with its cumulative force sweeps him
ON to death and ruin. The habit of
drink fixed upon a man will soon find
itself but the center around which all
other bad habits correlate.
Wine and women and gambling,
when these three take hold Upon
human life, how powerlcss the victim
to extricate himself. Lying and theft
and murder. These take their places
around the others. In fact the
drunkard seems to be but an old tree OF
many limbs on which all the buzzards,
black beat and crimson heads gather,
roost and rollic and vomit, until man.
hood and decency and honor and devo-
ton to all that's right seem to forsakc
the victim and leave him to his newt
able fate.
There are two sides to drunkards s
life. The young man conscious already
that he is a drunkard suffers pangs OF
conscience and remorse of soul equal al
most to the horrors of the damned. But
worst of all he does not suffer alone.
Often a loving mother looks upon the
wreck of her boy with bleeding heart
and tear bedimmed eyes. Powerless tc
check him she turns from her boy to @
mcrciful God, and she prays awhile and
then sings: "Oh, where is my wander
ing boy tonight? He was once as pure
as the morning dew. Go search for hin
where you will and bring him to me in
all his blight and tell him love him
STILL"
Every step of drunken boy he puts
his foot upon the tender heart of suf.
fering mother. Wherever his foot does
not come down ruthlessly upon a moth
er's heart, then he steps upon fond
sisters heart and she writhes in pain
and agony as she looks at the unsteady
step and listens to the thick-tongued
utterances of her brother whom she
knows is ruined. When we turn from
mothers sad-eyed face, we look upon
the manly face of noble father, who
perchance has never drank, and has al
ways taught temperance and sobriety
to his boys, and yet in college life or BY
bad association the boy has drifted of
from the moorings of pure home, and
now no sadder heart is to be found
than the heart of the noble father who
looks helplessly on his ruined boy and
groans and cries to God. Not only has
this boy wrecked the happiness of hi'
boys influence by example and associa
ton, other boys are caught and pulled
into this maelstrom of ruin, and may
be a dozen other mothers and dozer
other fathers and dozen other homes
are blighted and rendered SO unhappy
by this self-same drunken boy.
One drunkard may touch hundred
homes, and rob them all of the happi
ness God would have given them
The boy twenty-one years old wh'
never drank, if he will look at the pic
ture Just presented and see how he ha
the happiness of the mother and tn
father and the sister and the home, ant
not only that, but perhaps dozel
other sweet homes in his keeping, thel
he has q motive for sobriety and mani,
conduct enough to build wall owe
which he could not leap; motive sufi
cient to arm him for every conflict ant
be conqueror of every tendency whicl
leads to the drunkard's grave and tn
disruption of home.
The sad and silent mother who wait
In patient and hopeful despair tn
homecoming of her wayward boy pre-
sents . picture on which every younl
boy in his mol lie, sober manhood ough
to look aad then follow the reveries Q
that mothers mind, a. she roam
through every dive and through all tn
saloons OF the city and wonders wher
her boy can be. She thinks of hiI
when no was so beautiful, so pure, S
loving, and the contrast of then an