The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-10-29

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hearts; how many people who prom
lsed at the marriage altar fidelity un-
til death did them part, were brought
by you to an early and CHASTITY separa-
ton; how many mad houses have you
filled with maniacs; how many graves
have you dug and filed in the Gene
teries; how many ragged and hun
CRY children have you beg
CARED through the fathers whom
you destroyed. If the skeletons
of those whom you have slain
were piled up on top of each other.
how high would the mountain be? If
the tears of all the orphanage and
widowhood that you have pres sed out
were gathered together how wide
would be the lake, or how long the
river? All! they make no answer. On
this subject the modern taverns are as
silent as the oriental three taverns, but
there are millions of hearts that throb
with most vehement condemnation,
and many of them would go as far as
the mother in Oxford. Mass,
whose son had been long
absent from home and was returning,
and at the tavern on the way he was
persuaded to drink, and that one drink
aroused former habit, and again and
again he drank, and he was found next
morning dead in the barn of the tavern.
The owner of the tavern, who gave
| HIM the rum, helped carry his body
home, and his brohen-heartedm mother,
| afterwards telling about it, said: 1T
was wrong, but l cursed him; did it.
! Heaven forgive him and me-"
One of the most advantageous move
ments in the right direction is taking
this whole subject into the education
of the young. On the same school desk
with the grammar, the geography the
arithmetic are books telling the lads
and lasses of 10 and IL and Is years of
age what are the physiological effects
OF strong drink, what it does with the
tissue of the liver and the ventricles of
the brain; and whereas other
generations did not realize the
evil until their own bodies were
blasted, we are to have a
generation taught what the viper is be-
fore it stings them, what the hyena is
before it rends them, how deep the
abyss is before it swallows them. Obi
boards of education, teachers in
schools, professors in colleges iegisla-
lures and congresses, widen and aug
ment that work, and you hasten the
complete overthrow of this evil. 1t
will go down. l have the word of
Almighty God for that in the assured
eXtirpation of all sin. But shall
we have share in the universal VIC
tory? The liquor saloons will drop
from the hundreds of thousands into
the score of thousands, and then from
the thousands into the hundreds, and
then from the hundreds into the tens,
and from the tens to three. The first
of the last three taverns will be where
the educated and philosophlc and the
high-up will take their dram, but that
class, aware of the power of the ex-
ample they have been setting, will
turn their back upon the evil custom
and be satisfied with the two natur-
al beverages that God intended for
the stimulus of the race-the Java
coffee plantations furnishing the
best of the one, and the Chinese tea
fields the best of the other. And some
day the bar room will be crowded with
people at the vendue and the auction
GERS mallet will pound at the sale of
all the appurtenances.
The second of these last three tav.
ems will take down its flaming sign
and extinguish it's red light and close
its doors, for the working classes will
have concluded to buy their own horses
and furnish their own beautiful homes
and replenish finely the wardrobe of
their own wives aud daughters, instead
of providing the distillers, the brewers
and liquor sellers with wardrobes and
mirrors and carriages. And the next
time that second tavern is opened
it will be drug store, or bakery, or
a dry goods establishments or a school.
Then there will be only one more of
the three tayerns left. l don't know
in what country, or city, or neighbor-
hood it will be, but look at it, for it is
the very last. The last imbreiate will
have staggered up to its counter and
put down his pennies for his dram.
Its last horrible adulteration will be
mixed and quaffed to eat out the vitals
and infame the brain. The last
drunkard will have stumbled down its
front steps. The last spasm of delirium
tremens caused by it will be struggled
through. The old rookery will be torn
down, and with it's demolition will
close the long and awful reign of the
nigh test of earth's denominations. The
last of the dissipating three taverns Of
all the world will be as thoroughly
blotted out as were the three taverns
of my text.
In this battle the visible troops are
not so mighty as the invisible. The
Gospel campaign began with the super
midnight chant that
woke the shepherds, the hushed sea, the
eyesight given where the patient had
been without the optic nerve, the sun
obliterated from the monday heavens,
the law of gravitation loosing its grip
as Christ assembled, and as the Gospel
began with the supernatural,
it will close with the supernatural; and
the winds and the waves and the light
nings and the earthquakes will come
in on the right side and against the
wrong side; and our assembled cham
pions will return, whether the world
sees them or does not see them. 1 do
not think that those great souls depart
ed are going to do nothing hearafter
but sing psalms, and play harps, and
breathe franlxincense, and walk seas
of glass mingled with fire. The mis-
sion they fulfilled while in the body
will be eclipsed by their post-mortem
mission, with faculties quickened and
velocities multiplied; and it may have
been to that our dying reformer re-
ferred when he said: Il long to be
freew There may be bigger worlds
than this to be redeemed, and more
gigantic denominations to be over
thrown than this world ever saw;