The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-10-27
TEMPERANCE
DEPARTMENT
SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION

l. Every Public School in Florida
The decalogue of health, the ritual
of the Holy Spirits most sacred tenn
pie, must be learned in our public
schools, or they are in the deepest
sense, what they have been often
termed, goddess"
AS a beginning of this vital educa-
ton l would teach on scientific
grounds the unreasonableness of u.s.
ing alcoholic drinks. BY every practi-
cal method of illustration and expert
ment l would set before my pupils
that the tendency of yesterday is
likely to become the habit of today
and the bondage of tomorrow. They
should be drilled into the fact that
the alcoholic habit is cumulative, sub
thy strengthening by what it feeds
upon, so that the ignorant claim that
drinks like cider, beer and wine are
| preventives of drunkenness, should
be an insult to their intelligence.
In my geography should be laid
down the maelstrom of moderate
drinking, and the Niagara of drunk
enness; in my grammar the conjuga-
ton of the verbs ito be" and ''to do"
as related to boys life proceedings,
should be no more irregular, and in
my arithmetic the knotty problem of
life should be the one on whose solu-
ton most of study was expended.
Suppose you take a watch, full jew
eled, of finest Geneva workmanship,
and put it into case made of gold,
then into one made of silver, then
into one made of porcelain. You will
find that it keeps just as good time
in cheap case as in costly one, be-
cause there is no interdependence be-
tween the watch and its environment.
But God has wound up a watch in
this snug, round box on the top of
your heads and mine; warranted,
with good usage, to tick right on with
thoughts for eighty or hundred
years. A watch with the handspring
of reason, the balance-wheel of judg-
ment, the fine jewels of Imagination
and fancy, the dial-plate of a human
face divine, and the pointers of a
character thereon, and this wonder
full watch, the human brain, cannot
in n &c
in fine one, for there is the closest
interdependence between the brain
and its environment; between the It's
sues of the body and the temper of
the soul.
But the same truth is illustrated
from another point of view. The ge-
ography of character is a branch"
sure to be taught some day in public
schools. But character is bounded on
the north by sobriety, on the east by
integrity, on the west by industry,
and on the south by gentleness. But
these cardinal points are all deter
mined by the first, sobriety. Clearly
note first that this virtue must pre-
cede that of integrity. DR.. Benjamin
Ward Richardson, the leading spe-
cialist of England, has pent twenty
two years studying the effects of al
eOholics. During a series of expert
ments he associated three hundred
chief physicians with him in his study
and they met in London semi-annual-
ly to give results. In one conclusion
all agreed, and it was this: No form
of degeneracy produced by alcoholic
beverages is more invariable than the
drinkers untruthfulness in word and
deed. The person who drinks will
use all his ingenuity to conceal, first
the fact itself, next it's consequences,
and soon the fine edge of perception
and conscience is worn away, so that
he is untrustworthy in everything.
Therefore, sobriety outranks integ-
rity as an essential of genuine charac-
ter
Next comes industry. But the mus
cles are only "middlemen" 'twixt
mind and matter; their masters are
the nerves or message bearers, and
alcohol strikes for the brain as a
panther leaps upon a deer. So that
the muscles, receiving wrong orders
from the great nerve center move in
unwieldly fashion; the hand cannot
grasp tools, the foot reports distance
inaccurately; the man is transform
ed from a toiler to a reeler, and
proof most painful and humiliating is
given that sobriety outranks industry
upon the map of character
| But gentleness remains to be con-
sidered. 1t is the perfect flower of
strength, the ornament of industry,
the fragrance of integrity. But gen.