The San Francisco call., 1896-05-04

or drunkard's grave. But he does not stop
there; He that loves the danger shall perish
therein y; or, as great poet has expressed it:
Vice is monster of so frightful mien
That to be hated needs but to be seen;
But seen too OFT, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Go forth into the crowded streets of our
great cities and see what fearful heritage of
misery, degrad alton and crime is being laid
up Tor the youth of future generations by the
rumseller and his victims 60 to the HOSPITALS
and asyiums, where human beings deprived
OF GODS most precious gift, are shrieking in
the unspeakable agonies of delirium whose
only end is hopeless and unre pentinp death.
go TO the prison CELL where the outcast ofsociety
is cut on from communion with his kind; go
into the black shadow of the galiows, where
the guilty wretch who has imbrued his hands
In his brothers blood, yields up his wasted life
as the penalty of his crimesi Gaze on these
sights, and the thousand more that are daily
exposed to our unwilling view, and behold the
effects OF the first indulgence in that sweet
conviv1al glass, amid the seductive surround
ings of the saloonl Would to God that we
could write above the door OF every grogshop
in the land those awful words which Dante
wrote across the gates of hell: "Leaye hooe
behind, all ye who enter herel"
But half OF the awful truth is yet untold, If
the drunkard's curse perished with his miser-
able self, its evil would be immeasurably less
But 1t falls like withering blight on innocent
and guilty alike and involves them both in a
common destruction. "The sins of the parents
shall be visited upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation" What fearful
meaning is there in these prophetic words
and what bitter truth when applied to the
drunkards home. Home? Alasi that the
abode OF love and truth and virtue should be
compared with cage OF unclean beastsl Why
are the gray hairs of that father and mother
brought down in sorrow to the grave2 Why is
that patient, suffering wife dragged to the
lowest depths of want and despair, striving to
prevent the scant earnings of her own bitter
toil from rolling over the rumseller's counter?
Why are those innocent children. deprived OF
fathers care running wild in the streets,
with blasphemies falling from their baby lips
from the first moment that they learned to lisp
the name OF God?
surroundings and become wanderers on the
lace OF the earth? Why swell the ranks of
lawlessness and crime and transmit the curse
which darkens their own lives to the children
who succeed them? 1t is because the husband
and father, like Esau of old has bartered his
OF God hangs over his posterity.
From these well-known facts we can draw but
one conclusion. Avoid the cause and you
avoid Its effects. A wise man will profit from
the experience of others, and in view of the
fact that the first glass begets the desire, and
that the gratifcat tion of that desire is the ruin
OF the man, physically. morally and socially,
nave decided to remove myself from the temp
tation to take that first step by remaining a
total sbstainer.
Professor White in delivering the de-
cision of the judges paid glowing tribute
to the excellency of all the essays, ana he
encouraged the boys to go right ahead in
their splendid work in the cause of temper
ance and humanity.
Fathers Mulligan and Yorke also ad-
dressed the members of the league and the
gathering dispersed by the singing of the
"Te Deum."