The Jasper weekly courier. [volume] (Jasper, Ind.) 1858-1922, 1914-07-31
Incorporate Temperance.
Food for the Temperate and Intem-
perate to Ponder Over.


perate to Ponder Over.
must entreat you, to begin WITH to do me the
justice OF believing that approach the subject upon
great diffidences That subject is "Intemperate Tenn
perance; or, Review of the Temperance movement
and Criticism of Its Methods" When we see large
band OF earnest, enthusiastic, and, believe, bravey
OF doing battle, accoring to the method which seems
to them best with what we all admit to be most g-
gantic and constantly growing evil it does seem an
of the methods they think it wise to adopt There is
danger that the who does this may be thought to
sympathze with the evil itself, and this because he
happens to have but very scant sympathy or no
sympathy at ALL for the methods usually adopted by
way of combating the evil Because l think the
method adopted by temperance reformers more or less
mistaken ! dc not therefore forfeit my claim to be
take glass of beer when am thirsty and feel to
want 1t, and because feel no shame in making the
confession, that is no reason why should be held up
to public reprobation drunkard, one who is
the apOOgSt for the drunkards filthy vice. do as
sure you that am painfully alive to the evils of in
temperance, and that am sincerely anxious that the
ravages it is making in midst should be- by some
means or other, stayed. think it almost impossible
to exaggerate the evils of drunkenness. don't think
there is any vice. amid all the black catalogue of vices
which brings so appalling array of evil in it's train.
The dark marks l. makes on our social life seen all
about u.s. Perhaps there is no family which cannot
point to some one of its members ruined by that vice.
When the fatal appetite for drink once permitted to
master human fe, there is nothing the victim will
not DO, or leave nndone to crafty the insane passion
In mothers it has eracated all the sweet instincts and
all the grand passionate, yet pule devotion of which
the mothers great heart is capable. In fathers it has
destroyed every sentiment of parental responsibility
children to whom they should have been blessing and
PRIDE 1t robs womanhood of its every grace, man.
hood of its every grandeur. touches maidenhood to
blight all its promise, and make virtue dim, half
for nf most how
to take from its brow its bright of Hope from
the eye its ustre from the cheek it's healthy hue from
the mind its eevatng thought, from the heart all it's
force of pure and steadfast love. There is no more
loathsome object than the hab.ual sot. He is filthy
within and filthy without. On his home, on all his
household goods and gear on his tatered garb on his
reddened, bloated features, on his lackusre eye,
his brow from which thought has been dethroned on
the haggard faces of his wife and children, all
things that are his you may written great star
ing character the words, "This man has bartered
away his manhood and has become beast?' So far,
then, the most ardent temperance reformer and my
self are agreed. will 60 quite as far as he goes in
denouncing drunkenness, and l claim to be quite as
sincerely desirous he be in rdding humanity of
the curse Of It. But then he will not admit my claim
He insists on having monopoly of virtue this mat
ter. The moderate drinker, he says, is worse than
the unkard. The man who can control himself, and
does is worse, he says, than the man who can't con-
troll himself and don't. The man who can take mod
est glass and leave off when he feels to have had
enough; who loves his home and keeps it bright and
decent; who surrounds his wife with all sweet ObSer
vances and oherishes in his late manhood in all it's
strength and ygorif not in all its warmth and pas
son-the honest, wholesome love of his youth; who is
careful to train his children in the honesty and sobre
ty he processes himself such man is worse than the
man who, if he drinks at all must drink himself to
madness, who permits his insane appetite to darken
his home with hideous rum; who gives his betrayed
wife foul blows where she should receive tender
who leaves his boys to become for any parental
control he exercises over them, nmble thieves; his
daughters to become all that womanhood should not
any speech total abstinence the orator will describe
the social effects of drunkenness; he will describe the
drunkard's ruined home, his heartbroken wife and
hungry children and just you think the orator is
about to indicate tine drunken husband and father
the criminal most deserving of baton, he goes off
at tangent and denOunces the temperate drinker
the man who deserves all the hlama The man wh0 |