The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-03-27
"LET RUM ALONE AND 1T WILL
LET you ALONE"
(By Bishop Robert McIntyre)

(By Bishop Robert McIntyre)
There is a slack-twisted sophistry
spun down the line of years which
runs, Let rum alone and it will let
! you alone" Will it? There never
was baser, sadder lie than this. My
ears ring now across forty years with
the ''keening." Did you ever hear it?
Oh. the worthless, piteous, longdrawn
agony of it, of fine girl from Erin's
Isle who found her brother dead in
the weeds besides doggery in the
village Of my youth, and all night
above the chirring of the crickets,
the call of the katydids, the plant of
the whipporwill rose that unearthly,
soul-chilling wall. She let it alone,
but it branded her for life.
/ can see the well-to-do farmer sit
sing before me in church as told the
old, old story. AS twilight fell, dis
missed the people and he rose, went
to his wagon, rode home, entered the
door to be shot dead by a drunken
hireljng. He touched no glass, drank
no drop. He let it alone, but the fud-
| died fool who slew him hauled his
corpse to a stream and flung it in. He
was hanged for it and, weeping, in his
prison, told me drink had been his
downfall.
The dear old German father who
took me one night to help get his
son out of dive said: when lie
was baby he had the fever, and. the
doctor said he would die before morn
ing. He was the only child / had
and l couldn't let him go. I prayed
the Lord to spare him, but | have
wished thousand times he had died
in his innocent childhood. He is a
drunkard now. He has crushed his
mother and brought my gray hairs
down in = grief" That sire let it
alone. He is in heaven today, but,
Oh, if I could say he has his boy.
1t lets no one alone. I have seen
knife because of her fathers craving
| have seen a chum hang his head
as debauched parent tottered by. I
have seen a who'll family wiped out
| by it. | have seen honor smirched,
man degraded, woman dethroned,
childhood disgraced, bodies rotted,
minds clouded, souls lost Our whole
nation is impoverished, peeled, made
sorrowful, by the trouble it makes.
Do you hear the children sobbing
in the night, my friend Do you hear
the poor women praying? Hank, they
are saying: "Give me your hand.
Let us stand up together and make a
vow: while we have vote or a
voice, we are against this thing any
time or anywhere"
| Zone of the fundamental duties of
the American people is the eXtermina-
ton of the traffic in Intoxicating Ii
quors for beverage purposes. Expert
cIC6 Has demonstrated IUdC the only
safe way to handle this traffic is to
destroy it. In the United States it
has reached such proportions that the
nation must join in the struggle
against it. 1t is menace to the in
tegrity and the progress of this re-
public. The fact that alcohol under
mines the brain and paralyzes the
will of man, planting in him and his
posterity the seeds of physical and
moral degeneracy, the seeds of dis
ease, the seeds of poverty, the seeds
of crime, makes it peril to the very
existence of free government. The
liquor traffic imperils both the nation
and the state, and every unit of SOW
ereignty must cooperate against II. !
1t must be fought by the county: it
must be fought by the state; it must
be fought by the nation. "-Excernt !
from address. of United States Sena.
tor Morris Sheppard
Everybody knows what the Old