Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1921-05-04

| being the first to tempt you to taste
OF that which proved your ultimate
ruin? Having tasted once, he needs
but little persuasion to induce him
to try a second glass, and q third,
and sooner or later we see him sur
rounded by his friends at a resnect
able hotel or a bar-room. And how
did this come about? He had tasted
one glass at party to plesae that
young lady, and afterwards he re-
fuses to drink with them. That once
| that first, that fatal moment afpords
precedent upon which to conccn-
trate their forces, and by their con-
tinucd laughter and sarcasm they
have finally prevailed. Now 1t Is i'm
possible for him to ever refuse. He
has learned to love their company.
to love their praises. In course of
time the drinking makes such rapid
inroads upon his health, his appear
ance, his language and his actions
that the hotel, in which he once held
his station as the most respectable
guest. now becomes too respectable
for him. lie is cast off, thrown aside
| and falls from one degree of gentccl
drunkenness TO another, until the
gutter, that receptacle for all i'm
purity and foulness, is made the
resting place, the sleeping place. OF
him, the now disgraced and beastly
drunkard. His friends forsake and
| shun him as they would poisonous
reptile. The mind Of the gray-haircd
father becomes scared and blank and
his heart is broken, but the still fond
mother dies with her last words I'M
ploring mercy for her lost, wretchcd
son.
There is hardly any vice but that
can be laid aside with strong de-
termination. The moderate drinker
forms the drunkard. He processes to
have such Il fortress of firmness in
his mind that he can withstand any
attack of the enemy, both open and
concealed; and perhaps one out OF
lack firmness; he has insisted that
what mischief that one has caused.
lie has invited others to drink who
lack tlrmness he has insi ;sted that
his neighbor take glass with him
only one single, harmless, friendly
glass, when that neighbor has al
ready taken harmless glass" one
too many. lie judges of the firmneSs
| Of others by his own; and how many
have been helped to glide into the
pool Of degradation and wretched-
ness!
If you follow drinking liquor your
nerves will be shattered, your intel
lect impaired, your energy and am
/ bition destroyed, your firmness gone.
your reason gone or complete
wreck. and your whole self, both soul
and body, degraded and despised by
all.
Then the moderate drinker, If he
| is a man Of business, holds forth an
example to his clerks to sip Of the
deadly draught; If a father. he Is
! but model for his children, for how
natural it is for child to initiate
It's parent; If man in high stand
ing in society, the people look to him
for a pattern Of morals, and then
| copy his vices. Let him be whom he
may. there will be persons who will
copy from him to their sorrow.
! on hot tn Iri,, &c,
a dangerous man In society and to
himself. 1t matters not whether he
gets his liquor at the grog-shop from
common glasses or in the trunk, in
the side-board, shuck house, barn,
or in splendid palace from silver
| and golden goblets, the sin is the
same, and the wealthier and more
| respectable the man the greater Is
the hazard and the heavier the re-
sponsibility that rests upon him. The
danger is always in the first dram.
When you take the first dram you
| are just that much drunk. You may
laugh at these remarks, but let all
remember that there was a time
when every drunkard likewise laugh
ed. If the spirits Of all the departed
drunkards who have ever existed
were reused from their slumber and
summoned to appear before us that
| they might give answer to the ques-
| ton. What made you drunkard?"
they would raise cry that would
alright and astound the heavens,
which would pierce the innermost