The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1905-01-26
Temperance.
fBy a il-year-old contributor

How often do men who are friend
meet in a good humor, then drink t
excess, talk nonsense, fancy them
selves insulted, take fire within then
rave, threaten, and then come tt
"blows !" A long time ago a poe'
spoke OF those who ''let in thief al
the mouth to steal away the brains.
In such case the stupidity of brute
is often united with the fury of q
demon. Nay, the man among the
tombs was comparatively harmless
he only injured himself.
How often does the drunken reve,
end in the cry of murder. How Otter
is the hand of the intoxicated mar
lifted against his dearest friend, per-
haps the wife of his bosom, and in one
rash hour, performs deed that will
haunt him to the grave. Could call
around me in on one vast assembly
the young men of this nation. l would
say: Hopes of my country, blessed be
ye now in the dew of your youth. But
look well to your foot steps for vipers
and adders surround your way. Look
at the generation who has just pre-
ceded you, the morning of their life
was cloudless and it dawned as bright
ly as your own.
But behold, now the smitten, idle,
poor, irreligious, and vicious, with
halting steps, dragging onward to
meet an early grave. Their bright
prospects are clouded and their sun
is set, never to rise. No home of their
own receives them, while from poorer
to poorer tenements they descend as
improvidence dries up their resources
and now who are those that wait on
their footsteps with nuilled faces
and sable garments That is father,
and that is a mother, whose gray hairs
are coming with sorrow to the grave,
that, is sister weeping over evils
which she can not arrest. And there
is the broken hearted wife and there
are the children, helpless, innocent,
for whom their father has provided
no inheritance save one of dishonor
and disgrace.
And is this beloved youth the history
of your course in this scene of desc
lation do you see the image of your
future selves Is this the poverty and
the disease, which, as an armed man
shall take hold upon you? And are
your relatives and friends to succeed
those who now move on in this mourn
full procession weeping as they go!
Yes bright as your morning now
opens and high as your hopes beat,
this IL your noon and your night, un-
less you shun those habits of intem-
perance which have thus early made
their days of clouds and thick dark
ness. If your places of evening resort
is a place tor social drinking: If you
start with drinking daily, little
prudently, temperately, sit is your
selves" which as in glass you behold.
A distinguished philanthrophist,
noted for his eloquence, said: the
greatest consolation afforded to my
mind of the temperance cause is the
reflection that my child will not be
drunkard. To his remarkever parents
hearts assents for that the tenn
perance cause will be 80 great, at
a period when the child which is now
an infant, shall grow up as to render
all use of ardent spirit as a drink"
can scarcely be Questioned. If any
father or mother could lift the seal
of futurity and read on the page of
coming years that the son now so
loved, SO idoIlzed, perhaps would be-
come bloated, polluted and polluting
creature, reeling under the influence
OF strong drink the remainder of life
would be wretched. To such a parent
this world would, indeed, be a vale of
tears. And the silence and solitude
of the tomb would be welcomed as
the place where the weary might rest.
my child will not be drunkard,"
cheering thought! how 1t swells the
heart with utterance to deep for
utterance [. what an animated pros.
pect does 1t open. The aims. houses,
jails and penitentiaries will then
stand only as so many monuments Of
the vices of an age gone by; and the
evil consequent upon the use of ardent
spirits shall exist only on the
page, ~ 90 many records
Of former degeneracy and the errors
Of mankind. GRACE GOssETT.