The Potteries Examiner : — 1875-06-26 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

DOMESTIC GOSSIP.  A tine and favourable- week—heat and sunshine, and a good bay harvest in prospect. Our best compliments to the clerk of the weather. We hope he will continue in good humour until September mmth—then, as King Lear said— _  "Blow winds, and crack your cheeks."  Look out in our news columns for the report of the judge's award of the brass band contest at Porthill, ,Wolstanton.  Burstem wakes will wake up much pleasing mirth and enjoyable recreation.  Tunstall, last Sunday, witnessed an imposing gather. log of the tribes. How pleased we were to hear of the munificent sums of money collected for the Primitive Methodist Sabbath Schools—above £260. "Well done; would we say to the good and faithful servants. The preaching was excellent, and the best of its kind. Mr. Elphinstone, the esteemed and respected lessee of the Hanley Theatre, is catering well for the drama. loving public. He highly deserves the patronage of all lovers of the buskinned stage. There is room for us all in this beautiful world without quarrelling, and the drama has its place and its junction—to expose the dim tortionate visage of vice and unfold the lovely and attractive forms of virtue. A bad drama is a great curse, but a good drama is a signal blessing. - - -  The Music Hall is a good place to help "To drive dull care away." The excellent and worthy proprietor does all he can to please his patrons and delight his constituency. As a rule, we have noticed wife beaters and heavy sunken don't frequent the temples wheresweet music discourses her soothing and ennobling sounds. The one has no taste and the other no time to devote to anything but what is brutal and degrading. The poor Doctor—lieuealy we mean—does whine and howl this week most piteously. After castigating and bullying others tremendously he now complains because they have given him "a Roland for his Oliver,' and paid him buck with interest. We would say to him, 'Do as you would be done by." If you don't like calumny and abuse when aimed at yourself, keep from heaping it on other men. The pence, we fear, are be. ginning to slacken in their endow to the Magna Charta exchequer. Many are saying "Render an account of thy stewardship: The claimant and his claims are neglected. The revived' Tichborne Gazette" will open many people's eyes. "All is not gold that glitters," and many a populhr demagogue goes up like a rocket and comes down a stick.  The warp and woof of life is not all gay. There is shadow and sunshine. There is a dark background very often to the bright foreground. Last week we chronicled a fatal suicide at Tuustall,this weeka suicide at Hanley, which, luckily, has not proved fatal. The lesson taught us by these painful and regretful circumstances is the old, old story, true as truth, notwithstanding, namely, that intemperance is the fruitful Cause of most atrocious crime. The latter poor fellow was at one time a well-conditioned, respectable man, but he had latterly given way to this detestable vice. When recovered from his self-inflicted wounds, as we hope he will be, we earnestly trust he will learn to shim the paths of the destroyer, and, if he cannot use, without abusing it, that he, and all like him, will desist from drinking that which to them is the staircase down to hell. Charles Lamb—the gentle Elia—became depraved by, and enslaved to, this reason-dethroning, self. respect destroying, character-wrecking, soul and body murdering vies, so that he made a strong and stern vow, "To close his teeth, and not undo them, To suffer wet damnation to pass through 'em." We would affectionately and courteously counsel all the victims to tyrannical habits to assert their manhood, and burst the brutish bowls of unlicensed passion and unrestrained appetite. Let the echoing yell of the lunatic, the pale and careworn face of the pauper, the hardened, guilty, and ferocious look of the felon, the clanking chains of the convict, the reeking blood and haggard visage of the suicide, and the piled-up agony of all the squalor, misery, want, and crime caused by the abase of strong drink warn off OSP friends of each set, and of all ages, from the edge of the fell and fateful whirlpool. Sobriety, Jrugallty, and industry are the three stepping-atones to health, wealth, and wisdom.