The Monitor-register., 1897-10-22

SUOp VlSlUlnS GndG place. Ii is not the
money that a man pays for drinks-for
what are a few hundred or a few thou
sand dollars to a man of large income
but their brain gets touched, and that
unbalances their judgment, and they
can see fortunes in enterprises sur
charged with disaster. In longer or
shorter time they change taverns, and
they come down to tavern the second,
where the pictures are not quite SO scru-
i pulous of suggestion, and the small ia
BILE is rougher, and the caster standing
! ON it is of German silver, and the air
has been kept over from the night before,
and that which they sip from the pew
benzine, ambergris, c~reosote, henbane,
strychnine, prussic acid, coculus indi-
Gus, 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 de-
stroyed and family scattered and woes
that choke ones vocabulary. Time pass
es on, and he enters tavern the third; a
red light outside, a hiccoughing and be-
sotted group inside. He will be drag
ged out of doors about 2 O'Clock in the
morning and left on the sidewalk, be-
cause the bartender wants to shut up.
! The DOOR victim has taken the regular
course in the college of degradation.
He has his diploma written Oh his swol-
len, bruised and blotched p~hysiognomy.
He is a regular graduate of the three
taverns. AS the police take him up and
put him in the ambulance the wheels
seem to rumble with two rolls of thun-
the wine when it is red, when it
eth itself Alright in the cup, for at the
last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth
like an adder" The other thunder roll
says, "All drunkards shall have their
place in the lake that burneth fire and
with birthstone. q
Temptation.
l am glad to find in this scene of the
text that there is such a thing as de-
Ginning successfully great tavernian
temptations. | can see from what Paul
said and did after he had travelled the
following II miles of his journey that
he had received no damage at the three
taverns. How much he was tempted l
know not. Do not suppose he was su-
perior to temptation. That particular
temptation has destroyed many of the
g~randest, mightiest, noblest statesmen,
philosophers, heroes, clergymen, apos-
ties of law and medicine and govern
ment and religion. Paul vas not phys
ically well under any circumstances. 1t
was not in mock depreciation hat he
said he was sin bodily presence weak. ="
1t seems that his eyesight was SO poor
I that he did his writing through an
amanuensis, for he mentions it as some
thing remarkable that his shortest epis-
tie, the one to Philemon, was in his
own penmanship, saying, II, Paul, have
written it with my own hand" He
had been thrown from his horse, he had
been stoned, he had been endungeoned,
he had had his nerves pulled on by
preaching at Athens to the most schol-
arly audience of all the earth, and at
Corinth to the most brilliantly p~rofligate
assemblage and been howled upon by
the Ephesian worshipers of Diana,
tried for his life before Felix, charged
by Festus with being insane, had crawl
ed up on the beach, drenched in the ship
wreck, and much of the time had an
iron handcuff on his wrist, and if any
man needed stimulus Paul needed it,
but with all his physical exhaustion he
got past the three taverns unchanged
and stepped into Rome all ready for the
tremendous ordeal to which he was sub
jected. Oh, how many mighty men,
feeling that they must brace up after
extraordinary service and prepare them
selves for other service, have called on
the spirit of wine for inspiration, and
in a few years have been sacrificed on
the altar of a Moloch who sits on a
throne of human carcasses. 1t 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 tavernsl
Notice that a 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, if
they would only keep a book upon the
counter or a scroll that could be unroll-
ed from the wall telling how many
homesteads they have desolated and
how many immortal souls they have
blastedl You say that would spoil their
business, Well, I suppose it would, but
a business that cannot plainly tell it's
effect upon its customers is a business
that ought to be spoiled. All, you mys-
ferrous 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 well 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
filled 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
Oxford, Mass, whose son had been
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 a 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. l did
it. Heaven forgive him and me.
The Rock of Safety.
But what a glad time when the world
comes to its last three taverns for the
sale of ~intoxicantsl Now there are SO