The Palatka news and advertiser. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1902-1905, 1902-09-04
YOUNG MAN, DON'T DRINK.

The young man who drinks strong liquor is like
the commander of a fortified city who deliberately
admits known enemy within it's walls. Drink is
&. more hostile and deadly than any army. 1t has
sent more men to destruction and death than have
all the armies of the world. There is nothing it.
You can't gain by it; you may lose everything
health position, reputation, self-respect manhood,
soul.
The first drink admits demon that every success
sve drink strengthens, until day it may be
strong enough to dominate and glut its ravenous
appetite with your brain and blood
You may think yourself strong enough to resist
taking too much. Don't deceive yourself about
your strength. You know nothing about that I'M
til the test comes, and then it more often is too
late. You may never be sure you have the strength
to resist until you have asserted that strength by
resistance. To resist once, twice. or a dozen
times does not prove strength to resist always. 1t
can be proved only by constant and unfaing resis-
tence Any man can resist sometimes The only
man who can have absolute confidence in his power
to resist is he who never drinks at all. If you have
the strength, use it. Assert it now. One drink
more is too much Be strong right now. 1t is
your best chance.
And do not fall INTO the dangerous deluson that
rule, override anything 1t is the strong self-conf
dent man who drinks as he does all else, with gusto
and without fear proud of his strength, who some
day succumbs to the subtle, insidious poison that
rots his body and palsies his brain.
Strong young man! If you today mock at
the assertion that one drink is too much, someday
you may think the same of ten drinks, and later
of twenty. And when that day comes the strength
that could not resist one drink before appetite
formed will be but as a straw in whirlwind.
If you have not the strength and sense to stop
drinking right now, when will you nave it? Will
continued yielding give you added strength or bet
ter sense?
When the raveled nerves of disordered stomach
and the iaccid tissues of a softening brain demand
whisky will you, who could not resist when strength
and sense were whole and craving was unknown
will you be better able to resist then?
1t is not an abstruse question of piety, or ethics
or morality; it is simple question of common
sense and health One does not need to become a
drunkard in the gutter to be injured by whisky 1t
is poison even in small quantities.
Few physicians prescribe it any longer for any
purpose except in hopeless to dull the senses
at the approach of death No physician of learning
and honor administers it to the young in any case.
When impure, most of the commercial whisky
is, it is full; of unknown dangers When pure 1t is
more dangerous still.
1t is sometimes given to pups to stunt their
growth and turn them into freaks" The young
man hoping for the highest possible mental and
physical development should think seriously of this
when tempted to put himself IN place of the pup.
Yong man, don't drink. There is no good in it.
The only possible result is harm to yourself and
row to those that love you best.
Refuse the first drink, or if you have taken that
and more assert your strength now and refuse to
take another and the spirits of all dearest to you
on earth or in heaven will lean and listen and
smile. Take it, and devils will laugh and leer and
mock.