The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1902-04-30
1T is HE'LL.


If all the blighted hopes, frustrated
ambitions, crushed aspirations, broken
hearts-all of the suffering and sorrow
which excessive drink has caused in
this world could be gathered together
reduced to liquid and poured in the
Pacific, it would make every globule
an infinite hell, every air cell storm
center of destruction, every vapor a
breath of death, every animalcula a
tortured fiend and cause the mighty
basin to burst its bounds, wash down
the law of gravitation and devastate
the universe. Strong drink is the
greatest curse that ever befell man
kind. 1t is worse than pestilence-
equally as bad as poverty more
heartless than war, and makes every
soul that lives in it veritable fiend of
hell. Would to God that every drop
on earth were-I liked to have said in
perdition | would not be so un-
kind to the spirits of the damned. l
hardly know where to put it, unless it
be in the back yard of some outcast
shade, million miles from the con-
fines of creation. And | am not an
overzealous, rantankerous prohibition
iSt either. But | am against it. 1t
does no good-and it does an infinite
deal of harm. 1t is Turing more young
men to the shores of ruin today than
all other diabolical agencies in the
world combined. They start out with
the social drink, taken for the purpose
of getting jolly and having good time,
and end in broken health, shattered
hearts-wreck, ruin, remorse. Great
God. 1t is mystery that sensible,
rational men do not see the danger and
avoid the consequences of so terrible a
snare. The following presents a most
pitiful example of such life:
Probably no more eloquent or dra-
matte sermon on the sin of drunken
ness was ever delivered than to which
/ a small gathering of drinking men
listened to in New Orleans bar room
recently. The drinkers-a group of
well-dressed young men with plenty
of money-were standing at the bar,
when poor, miserable specimen of a
tramp pushed open the swinging
doors, and with bleared eyes, looked
at them appealingly. They ordered a
drink for him, paid for it and then
boisterously demanded that he make a
speech. After swallowing the liquor
the tramp gazed at them for an instant,
and then, with dignity and eloquence
that showed how far he had fallen in
the social scale, he began to speak.
Gentlemen" he said, 81 look tonight
at you and myself, and it seems to me
l look upon the picture of my lost
manhood. This bloated face was once
as young and handsome as yours.
This shambling figure once walked as
proudly as yours, man in the world
of men. l, too, once had home and
friends and position. l had a wife as
beautiful as an artists dream, and l
dropped the priceless pearl of her
honor and respect in the wine cup,
and Cleopatra-like, saw it dissolve, and
quaffed it down in the brimming
draught. l had children as sweet and
lovely as the flowers of spring, and l
saw them fade and die under the curse
of a drunkard father l had home
where love lit the flame upon the altar
and ministered before it, and l put
out the holy fire and darkness and
desolation reigned in its stead. l had
aspirations and ambitions that scared
as high as the morning star, and
broke and bruised their beautiful
wings, and at last strangled them that
l might be tortured with their cries no
more. Today am a husband without
a wife, father without child, a
tramp with no home to call his own, a
man in whom every good impulse is
dead. All, all swallowed up in the
maelstrom of drink"
The tramp ceased speaking. The
glass fell from his nerveless fingers
and shattered in thousand fragments
on the floor. The swinging doors
pushed open and shut to again, and
when the little group about the bar
looked up the tramp was gone. He
had gone out in the dark December
night to wander, no doubt till dawn,
but he, outcast though he was, had
made an impression. They felt that
they had received lesson which they
would remember while they lived, and
when they left the bar room the words
of the poor wanderer still sounded in
their ears like notes Of warning"