Year: 1875

| ton; no intimation of the policy of the
Administration toward Louisiana; moth
| ing to throw any light upon the Pacific
Mail business; nothing but a bald state


ment of quite unimportant fact, to-wit.
that a great many people we're intoxicat-
ed, and that most of them were young
men. Perhaps some old fellow who
knew Washington smiled a grim, hard
smile and said, 1.-THE boys must have
been having a good time Christmas.


And perhaps some other sedate person
who was never young, or, if he was, it
was so long ago he has forgotten it, read
the two or three lines and said it was
Outrageous" for young men to act so.
But the mass of mankind slipped by 1T,
as they button up their coats and has
ten on when they meet in the street any
one who staggers.


/ Not every body though. In a great
many homes and to great many hearts
it meant great deal more than the clas-
siication of a holidays police report. 1t
came to them like news of shipwreck to
one with friends at sea. There was
reading between the lines that made
fathers anxious and mothers distressed.
Mostly young menu And here was the
boy ripening into manhood upon whom
his parents looked with pride, and for
whose future they were SO deeply anX-
ious; could the father help the inyolun-
tary reaching out to catch him from fall
ing, as he read in these three words the
story OF so many young men down and
disgraced?. Could the mother fail to re-
fleet that her boy was very much like
other boys, and that other boys-the
young men in the Washington station
house-had mothers, perhaps just as ten
derly solicitous for their sons welfare as
ha h
how many mother, when she read it,
clasped closer to her bosom the curly
head and dimpled cheeks of her own
darling, as if she would keep him back
from manhood and from all the storm
and stress which carry down so many.
And then the mothers, whose darlings
with their curls and dimples, and all the
sweet and winning ways of childhood,
having moved on out of the radiance of
the morning into the heat and dust of
the noontide, whose boys look level now
into mother's-and perhaps into some
ones not a mother s-eyes-how these
sweet, thoughtful women must have shud-
dered at the bare dreadful possibility
that some time their boys might go reel
ing to the station-house.


Mostly young men, It is suggestive
a painfully suggestive statement It's
the coming of new crop,
and crop of reckless, dissolute men
Young men to-day; and perhaps with
enough of conscience left to suffer re-
morse. enough of selfrespect to suffer
shame but every day growing harder as
habit grows and the senses deaden.
There's no need to write a homily on
temperance, or preach sermon. The
homily writes itself, and the sermon
breaches itself. There's no such sicken-
ing sight in all the world as the drunken
young man or boy; nothing SO painful to
the sensibilities of man or woman; moth
ing that seems so harsh, and unnatural,
and shocking. 1t is such deliberate fly
ing in the face of Nature and finging
away the best gift of God. But the pro
cession moves along. Thins out rapidly
to be sure toward the end, but the young
men keep stepping in and the ranks are
always full. 1t is the thing that fathers
dread for their sons and mothers pray
God their boys may be delivered from,
but it goes right on, and the recruits are
mostly young men" The State cannot
stop it, quackery cannot cure it. Cheer
full homes might save many and-in
Washington good examples in high sta
tions might keep many more from fall
ing. How would it do to try it?