The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1898-01-28

! Uuhu duy Obn6I CdubO lhol
ital intrigues, sly correspondence, ficti-
tious names given at postoffice win
dows, clandestine meetings in parks and
at ferry gates and in hotel parlors and
oonjugal perjuries are among the ruin
GUS results. When woman, young or
old, gets her head thoroughly stuffed
with the modern novel, she is in appal-
ling peril. But some one will say, "The
heroes are so adroitly knavish and the
heroines so bewitchingly untrue and the
lurn Of the story so exquisite and all the
characters SO enrapturing cannot quit
them. My brother, my sister, you can
find styles of literature just as charming
that will elevate and purify and ennoble
and Christianize while they please. The
devil does not own all the honey. There
is wealth of good books coming forth
from our publishing houses that leave
no excuse for the choice of that which
is debauching to body, mind and soul.
Go to some intelligent man or woman
and ask for list of books that will be
strengthening to your mental and moral
condition.
Life is so short and your time for i'm
provement so abbreviated that you can
not afford to fill up with husks and Gin
ders and debris. In the interstices of
business that young man is reading that
which will prepare him to be mer-
chant prince, and that young woman is
filling her mind with an intelligence
that will yet either make her the chief
attraction of good man home or give
her an independence of character that
will qualify her to build her own home
and maintain it in happiness that re-
quires no augmentation from any of our
rougher sex. That young man or young
woman can by the right literary and
moral improvement of the spare ten
minutes here or there every day rise
head and shoulders in prosperity and
character and influence above the loun-
gers who read nothing or read that
which bedwarfs. See all the forests of
good American literature dripping with
honey. Why pick up the honeycombs
that have in them the fiery bees which
will sting you with an eternal poison
while you taste it? One book may for
you or me decide everything for this
word and the next. 1t was turning
point with me when in a bookstore in
Syracuse one day | picked up book
called "The Beauties of Ruskin. 1t
was only book of extracts, but it was
all pure honey, and l was not satisfied
until had purchased all his works, at
that time expensive beyond an easy ca
pacity to own them, and with what de-
light went through reading his "Sey.
en- Lamps of Architecture" and his
"Stones of Venice" it is impossible for
me to describe except by saying that it
gave me rapture for good books and
an everlasting disgust for decrepit or
immoral books that will last me while
my life lasts All around the church
and the world today there are busy hives
of intelligence occupied by authors and
authoresses from whose pens drip dis
tillation which is the very nectar of
heaven, and why will you thrust your
rod of inquisitiveness into the beautiful
saccharine of perdition?
Beware of Strong Drink.
Stimulating liquids also come into
the category of temptation delicious but
beautiful. You say, II cannot bear the
taste of Intoxicating liquor, and how
any man can like it is to me an amaze
ment." Well, then, it is no credit to
you that you do not take it. Do not brag
about your total abstinence, because it
is not from any principle that you re-
a1onhn1icpn hI1t Cor tho that
you reject certain styles of food; you
simply don't like the taste of them.
But multitudes of people have natural
fondness for all kinds of intoxicants.
They like it so much that it makes
them smack their lips to look at it.
They are dyspeptic, and they like to aid
digestion; or they are annoyed by in
somnia, and they take it to produce
sleep; or they are troubled, and they
take it to make them oblivious; or they
feel happy, and they must celebrate
their hilarity. They begin with mint
julep sucked through two straws on the
Long Branch piazza and end in the
ditch, taking from a jug liquid half
kerosene and half whisky. They not
Only ike IL, DuU III is al ali cOusuIuluS
passion of body, mind and SOUL and aft
er awhile have it they will, though one
wineglass of it should cost the temporal
and eternal destruction of themselves
and all their families and the whole hu-
man race They would say, l am sorry
it is going to cost me and my family
and all the worlds population SO very
much, but here it goes to my lips, and
now let it roll over my parched tongue
and down my heated throat, the sweet
est, the most inspiring, the most deli
Cious draft that ever thrilled human
frame. To cure the habit before it
comes to its last stages, various plans
were tried i'll olden times. This plan
was recommended in the books: When
a man wanted to reform, he put shot or
bullets into the cup or glass of strong
drink-one additional shot or bullet
each day, that displaced so much liquor.
Bullet after bullet added day by day, of
course the liquor became less and less
until the bullets would entirely fill up
the glass and there was no room for the
liquid, and by that time it was said the
inebriate would be cured. Whether any