The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1897-10-22

Ing, anu dC eight u ClOCh VIII PiPS "
hands to breakfast in Mobile Bay
The Three Taverns of my text were
too near the Mediterranean shipping.
But notice the multiplicity. What
could that Italian village, so small that
history makes but one mention OF IT,
want with more than one tavern? There
were not enough travellers coming
through that insignificant town to sup
port more than one house OF lodg-
ment That would have furnished
enough pillows and enough breakfasts
No, the worlds appetite Is dlseaseu'
and the subsequent draughts must DE
taken to slack the thirst created by the
preceding draughts. Strong drink kin
dies the fires of thirst faster than IL
puts them out. There were three taV-
ems. That which cursed that Italian
village curses all Christendom today
too many taverns. There are streets
in some of our cities where there are
three or four taverns in every DlocK;
aye, where every other house is taV-
ern. You can take the Arabic numeral
of my text, the three, and put on the
right hand side of it one cipher, and
two ciphers, and four ciphers, and that
reinforcement of numerals will not
express the statistics of American rum
meries. Even if it were good, healthy
business, supplying necessity, an artl-
Gle superbly nutritious, it is business
nightly overdone, and there are Three
FTouorpc 1rybor thorn O110ht IN he OnlV
one.
The fact is, there are in another
sense Three Taverns now; the gorgeous
Tavern for the affluent, the medium Ia
vern for the working classes, and the
Tavern of the slums, and they stand in
line, and many people beginning with
the first come down through the second
and come out at the third. At the first
of the Three Taverns, the wines are of
celebrated vintage, and the Whistles
are said to be pure, and they are
quaffed from cut glass, at marble side
tables, under pictures approaching
masterpieces. The patrons pull off
their kind gloves, and hand their silk
hats to the waiter, and push back their
hair with a hand on one finger or
which is a cameo. But those patrons
are apt to stop visiting that place. 1t
is not the money that a man pays 1or
drinks, for what are few hundred or
few thousand dollars to man of
large income-but their brain gets
touched, and that unbalances their
judgment, and they can see fortunes
in enterprises surcharged with disas-
ter. In longer or shorter time they
change Taverns, and they come down
to Tavern the second, where the pic
lures are not quite so scrupulous of sug-
gestion, and the small table is rougher,
and the castor standing on it is of Ger
man silver, and the air has been kept
over from the night before, and that
which they sip from the pewter mug
has larger percentage Of benzine, am
bergris, creosote henbane, strychnine,
prussic acid, coculus indicus, plaster of
paris, copperas, and nightshade. The
patron may be seen almost every day,
and perhaps many times the same day
at this Tavern the second. but he is
preparing to graduate. Brain, liver,
heart, nerves, are rapidly giving way.
That Tavern the second has its dismal
echo in his business destroyed and fam
lily scattered, and woes that choke ones
vocabulary. Time passes on, and he
enters Tavern the third; red light
outside; a hiccoughing and besotted
group inside. He will be dragged out
of doors about two o'clock in the morn
ing and left on the sidewalk, because
, the bartender wants to shut up. The
moor victim has taken the regular
: course in the college of degradation. He
has his diploma written on his swollen,
bruised and blotched physiognomy. He
is a regular graduate of the Three
Taverns. AS the police take him in
and put him in the ambulance, the
wheels seem to rumble with two rolls
of thunder, one of which says, Look
not upon the wine when it is red, when
1t moveth itself Alright in the cup, for
at last it biteth like serpent, and
stingeth like an adder" The other
thunder roll says, All drunkards shall
have their place in the lake that burn
eth with fire and birthstone
With these thoughts 1 cheer Christian
reformers in their work, and what re-
ioicing on earth and heaven there will
ha over the consummation. Within a
few days one of the greatest of the
leaders in this cause went up to en-
thronement The world never had but
one Neal Dow, and may never have
another. He has been an illumination
to the century. The stand he took has
directly and indirectly saved hundreds
of thousands from drunkards' graves.
Seeing the wharves of Portland, Maine,
covered with casks of West Indian
rum (nearly an acre of it at one time),
and the city smoking with seven dis
, tilleries, he began the warfare against
drunkenness more than half century
ago. The good he has done, the homes
! he has kept inviolate, the high moral
sense with which he has infused ten
} generations, is a story that neither
earth nor heaven can afford to let die.
Derided belittled, caricatured, malign-
ed, for a quarter of century as few
- men have been he has lived on until
: .. III, dooaoea ,,Divarcol nawcnanerd0rn