Connecticut western news., 1898-09-22

county, in New York state, are eight headstones in line and all alike, and these are the facts: In 1861 diphtheria ragged in the village and a physician was remarkably successful in curing his patients. So confident did he become that he boasted that no case of diph- theria could stand before him and final ly defied Almighty God to produce a case of diphtheIia that he could not cure. His youngest child soon after took the disease and died, and one child after another, until all the eight had died of diphtheria. The blasphemer challenged Almighty God, and God &C., cepted the challenge. Do not think that because God has been silent in your case, O profane swearer, that he is dead. Is there nothing now in the peculiar feeling of your tongue or nothing in the numbness of your brain, that indicates that God may come to avenge your blas- phemies or is already averaging them? But these cases have noticed, believe, are only few cases where there are hundreds. Families keep them quiet to avoid the horrible oonspiouity. Physi- cians suppress them through profes- sional confidence. It is a very, very, very long roll that contains the names of those who died with blasphemies on their lips.
 Still the crime rolls on, up through parlors, up through chandeliers with lights all ablaze, and through the pic tured corridors of clubrooms, out through busy exchanges where oath meets oath and down through all the haunts of sin, mingling with the rat ting dice and cracking billiard balls, and the laughter of her who hath for gotten the covenant of her God, and round the city and round the continent and round the earth a seething, boiling surge filings its hot spray into the face of long suffering God. And the ship captain curses his crew and the master builder his men and the hack driver his horse and the traveller the stone that bruises his foot or the mud that soils his shoes or the defective timepieoe that gets him too late to the rail train. Lar raign profane swearing and blasphemy, two names for the same thing, as being one of the gigantic crimes of this land, and for it's extirpation it does seem as if it were about time for God to arise.
 Wine When Red.
 Then look for moment at the evil of drunkenness Whether you live in Washington or New York or Chicago or Cincinnati or Savannah or Boston or in any of the cities of this land. count up the saloons on that street as com pared with the saloons five years ago and see they are growing far out of proportion to the increase of the popu- lation. You people who are so precise and particular lest there should be some imprudence and rashness in attacking the rum traffic will have your son some night pitched into your front door dead drunk or your daughter will come home with her children because her husband has, by strong drink, been turned into a demoniac The drink fiend has despoil- ed whole streets of good homes in all our cities. Fathers, brothers, sons on the funeral pyre of strong drink! Fasten tighter the victimsl Stir up the flames! Pile on the corpsesl More men, women and children for the sacrifioe Let us have whole generations on fire of evil habit, and at the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery and duloi- mer let all the people fall down and worship King Alcohol, or you shall be cast into the fiery furnace under some political platform
 indiot this evil as the regicide, the ,. 1a ha y,o friciIa tho tr, the uxorioide, of the century. Yet under what innocent and delusive and mirth- ful names alcoholism deoeives the peo- pie! It is "cordial '' It is "bitters. ]" It is an "eye opener. It is an "appe- tizer." It is "digester. It is an in vigorator." It is "settler. It is a "nightcap." Why don't they put on the right labels: Essence of Perdi- tion," "Conscience Stupefier, Five Drams of Heartaohe, !" "Tears of Or phanage, "Blood of Souls, D "Scabs of an Eternal Leprosy, "Venom of the Worm That Never Dies?' Only once in awhile is there anything in the title of liquors to even hint their atrocity, as in the case of "sour mash. That 1 see huNolbAbCu aAA OfCA. ~ ID tAu hOhCSb and any one can understand it. "Sour mash That is, it makes mans dis position sour, and his associations sour and his prospects sour, and then it is good to mash his body, and mash his soul, and mash his business, and mash his family. "Sour mash l' One honest name at last for an intoxioantl But through lying labels of many of the apotheoaries' shops, good people, who are only little undertone in health and wanting some invigoration, have unwittinRly got on their tongue the iangs of this cobra that stings to death 90 large ratio of the human race.
 Satanic Sips.
 Others are ruined by the common and III destructive habit of treating custom srs. And it is treat on their coming to town, and a treat while the bargain ing progresses, and a treat when the purchase is made, and treat as he leaves town. Others, to drown their troubles, submerge themselves with this worse trouble. Oh, the world is bat tered and bruised and blasted with this growing evil. It is more and more in- trenohed and fortified. They have mil lions of dollars subscribed to marshal and advance the alcoholic fors6s. They nominate and elect and govern the vast majority of the offioeholders of this country. On their side they have en- listed the mightiest political power of the centuries. And behind them stand all the myrmidons of the neither world, satanic, Apollyonio and diabolic. It is beyond all human effort to overthrow this Bastile of deoanters or capture this Gibraltar of rum jugs. And while ap- prove of all human agencies of reform would utterly despair if we had noth- ing else. But what cheers me is that our best troops are yet to come. Our chief artillery is in reserve. Our great est commander has not yet fully taken the field. If all hell is on their side, all