Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-10-18

Ill q few years have been Sacr1f1ced on
the altar of Moloch who sits on
throne of human carcasses It would
not be wise or kind or Christian to call
their names in public, but you call them
out of your own memory. Oh, how
MANY splendid men could not get past
the three taverns
Notice that profound mystery is at
tached to these Italian hostelries. No
hotel register tells the names of those
who stopped at those taverns, there is
no old account book as to how many
drank there, there is no broken chalice
or jug to suggest what was the style OF
LIQUID which these customers consumed.
So an awful mystery hangs about the
barrooms of the modern taverns. Oh, it
they would only keep a book upon the
counter or scroll that could be unroll-
ed from the wall telling how many
homesteads they have desolated and
how many immortal souls they have
blasted! You say that would spoil their
business. Well, suppose it would, but
business that cannot plainly tell it's
effect upon it's customers is a business
that ought to be spoiled. All, you mys-
terious barrooms, speak out and tell
how many suicides went out from you
to halter or pistol Or knife or deadly
leap from fourth story window; how
many young men, started we'll in life,
were halted by you and turned on the
wrong road, dragging after them bleed
ing parental hearts; how many people
who promised at the marriage altar
fidelity until death did them part were
brought by you to early and CHASTITY sep
aration; how many madhouses have you
filed with maniacs; how many graves
have you dug and filled in the cemeter-
les; how many ragged and hungry chill
dren have you beggared through the ia
theirs whom you destroyed If the skel-
etons of all 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 widow
hood that you have pressed 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
long absent from home and was return
ing, 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
the 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 broken hearted
mother, afterward telling about it, said:
cit was wrong, but cursed him. did
it. Heaven forgive him and me-"
The Rock of Safety.
But what glad time when the world
comes to its last three taverns for the
sale of intoxicants! Now there are so
many Of them that statistics are only a
more or less accurate guess as to their
number. We sit with half closed eyes
and undisturbed nerves and hear that
in 1872 in the United States there were
1864 breweries, 4, $40 distilleries and
I'll, 500 retail dealers, and that possibly
by this time these figures may be truth
fully doubled. The fact is that these es-
Establishments are innumerable, and the
discussion is always disheartening, and
the impression is abroad that the plague
be cured, and the most of sermons on
this subject close with the book of Lam
entations and not with the book of
Revelation. Excuse me from adopting
any such infidel theory. The Bible re-
iterates it until there is no more power
in inspiration to make it palmer that
the earth is to be not half or three
quarters, but wholly redeemed. On that
rock I take my triumphant stand and
join in the chorus of hosannas
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 1asses of 10 and 10 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 genera
lions did not realize the evil until their
own bodies were blasted we are to have
generation taught what the viper is
before it stings them, what the hyena
is before it rends them, how deep is the
abyss before it swallows them. Oh,
boards of education, teachers in schools,
professors in colleges, legislatures and
congresses, widen and augment that
work, and you hasten the complete over
throw of this evil! 1t will go down
have the word of Almighty God for that
in the assured extirpation of all sin.
But shall we have share in the uni
versal victory? The liquor saloons will
drop from the hundreds of thousands
IL 81 L.
from the thousands into the hundreds,
and then from the hundreds into the
tens, and from the tens to three.
of L. Al,