Greenfield Republican, Greenfield, Hancock County, 6 March 1891 — Page 8

TEN PLAGUE80F CITIES.

THE PLAGUE OF INTEMPERANCE LEADS THEM ALL«

A National E»U, Not Confined by Stat* Bordcn-Hothan and W1t«« Waiting for the Inevitable Result.

Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn and New York Sunday and Sunday ^pight. Subject "Ten Plagues of New York and Adjacent Cities.n Text, Genesis ix, 20-21. He said:

This Noah did the best and worst thing for the world. He built an ark against the deluge of water, but introduced a deluge against which the human race haB ever since been trying to build an ark—the deluge of drunkenness. In my text we hear his staggering steps. Shorn and Japhet tried to cover up the disgrace, but there he is, drunk on wine at a time in the his* tory of the world when, to say the least, there was no lack of water. Inebriation having entered the world, has not retreated. Abigail, the fair and heroic wife, who saved the flocks of Nabal, her husband, from confiscation by invaders, goes home at night and finds him so intoxicated she can not tell him the story of his narrow escape. Uriah came to see David and David got him drunk, and paved the way for the despoilation of a housebold. Even the church bishops needed to be charged to be sober and not given to too much wine, and so familiar were people of Bible times with Ihe staggering and failing motion of the inebriate that Isaiah, when he comes to describe the dislocation of worlds, says: "The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard."

Ever since apples and grapes and wheat grew the world has been tomptted to unhealthy stimulants. But the Intoxicants of the olden time were an innocent beverage, a harmless orangeade, a quiet sirup, a peaceable soda water, as compared with the liquids of modern inebriation, into which a madness and a fury and a gloom and afire and a suicide and a retribution have mixed and mingled. Fermentation was always known, but it was not until 3,000 years after Christ that distillation was invented. While we must confess that some of the ancient arts have been lost, the Christian era is superior to all others in the bad eminence Of whi9ky and rum and gin. The modern drunk is a hundred fold worse than the ancient drunk. Noah in his intox» ication became imbecile, but the victims of modern alcoholism have to •truggle with whole menageries of wild beasts and jungles of hissing serpents and perditions of blaspheming demons. An archfiend arrived in our world, and he built an invisible caldron

1mnptation.

He built that cal-

droi and stout for all ages and all Ik. •. First be squeezed into the on the juices of the forbidden fruit of i'aradise. Then he gathered for it a distillation from the harvest fieldB and orchards of the hemispheres. Then he poured into this caldron cap"sicum, and copperas, and logwood,and deadly nightshade, and assault and battery, and vitriol, and opium, and rum, and murder, and sulphuric acid, and theft, and potash, and cochineal, and red carrots, and poverty, and death and hops. But it was a dry compound and must be moistened and liquified, and so the archfiend poured into that caldron the tears of centuries of orphanage and widowhood, and he poured in the blood of 20,000 assassinations. And then the archfiend took a shovel that he had brought up from the furnaces beneath, and he put that shovel into this great caldron and be* gan to stir, and the caldron began to heave, and rock, and boil, and sputter, and hiss, and smoke, and the nations gathered around it with cups and tankards and demijohns and kegs, and there was enough for all, and the archfiend cried: "Ah! champion fiend am I. Who has done more than I for coffins and grave yards and prisons and insane asylums, and the populating of the lost world? And when this chaldron is emptied, I'll fill it again, and I'll stir it again, and it will smoke again, and that smoke will join another smoke—the smoke of a torment that ascendeth for ever and ever. I drove fifty ships on the rocks of Newfoundland and the SkerrieB and the

Goodwins. I have ruined more Senators than gather this winter in the National councils. I have ruined more Lords than are now gathered in the House of Peers. "The cup out of which I ordinarily drink, is a bleached human skull, and the upholstery of my palace is so rich a crimson because it is dyed in human gore, and the mosaic of my floors is made up of the bones of children dashed to death by drunken parents, and my favorite music—sweeter than Te Deum or trieumphal marcn—my favorite music is the cry of daughters turned out at midnight on the street because father has come home from the carousal, and the seven-hundred-voiced shriek of the sinking steamer, because the captain was not himself when he put the ship on the wrong course. Champion find am I! ]. have kindled more fires, I have wrung out more agonies, I have stretched out more midnight shadows, I have opened more Golgothas, I have rolled more Juggernauts, I have damned more souls than any other emissary of diaabollsm. Champion fiend am I!"

Drunkenness is the greatest evil of this nation, and it takes no logical pro cess to prove to this audience that a drunken nation can not long, be a free nation. I call your attention to the fact that druukenness is not subsiding, certainly that it is not at a Stand-still, but that it is on an onward march, and it is a double quick. There is more rum swallowed in this country, and of a worse kind, than was ever swallowed since the first distillery began its work of death. Whore there was one drunken home there ate ten drunken homOs fWhere there was one drunkard's grave

there are are twenty drunkard'sgraves. It is on the increase. Talk about crooked whisky—by whloh men mean the whisky that does not pay the tax to the Government—I tell you all strong drink is crooked. Crooked otard, crooked cognac, crooked schnapps, crooked beer, crooked wine, crooked whisky—because it makes a man's path crooked, and his life crooked, and his death crooked, and his eternity crocked.

If I could gather all the armies of the dead drunkards and have them come to resurrection, and then add to that host all the armies of the living drunkards, five and ten abreast, and then if I could have you mount a horse and ride along that line for review, you would ride that horse until he dropped from exhaustion, and you would mount another horse and ride till he fell from exhaustion, and you would take another and another, and you would ride along hour after hour, and day after day. Great armies of them. And then if you had voice stentorian enough to make them all hear, and you could give the command ••Forward, march!" their first tramp would make the earth tremble. I do not care which way you look in the community to-day, the evil is increasing.

I call attention to the fact that there .are thousands of people born with a thirst for strong drink, a fact too often ignored. Along some ancestral lines there runs the river of temptation. There are children whose swaddling clothes are torn off the shroud of death. Many a father has made a will of this sort ''In the name of God, amen. I bequeathe to my children my houses and lands and estates share and share shall they alike. Hereto I affix my band and seal in the presence of witnesses." And yet. perhaps, that very man has made another will that the people have never read, and that has not been proved in the courts. That will, put in writing, would read something like this: "In the name of disease and appetite and death, amen. I bequeath to my children my evil habits, my tankards shall be theirs, my wine cup shall be theirs, my destroyed reputation shall be the'rs. Share and share alike shall they in the infamy. Hereto I affix my hand and seal in the presence of all the applauding harpies of hell."

From the multitude of those who have the evil habit born with them this army is being augmented. And I am sorry to say that a great many of the drug stores are abetting this evil, and alcohol is sold under the name of bitters. It is bitters for this, and bitters for that, and bitters tor some other thing, and good men deceived, not knowing there is any thraldom of alcoholism coming from that source, are going down, and some day a man sits with the bottle of black bitters on his table, and the cork flies out, and after it flies a fiend that clutches the man by the throat and says: "Aha! I have been after you for ten years. I have got you now. Down with you! down with you!" Bitters! Ah! yes. They make a man's family bitter, and his home bitter, and his disposition bitter, and his death bitter, and his hell bitter. Bitters! A vast army, all the time increasing.

It seems to me it is about time for the 17,000,000 professors of religion in America to take sides. It is going to be an out-and-out battle with drunkenness and sobriety, between heaven and hell, between God and the devil. Ta'ce sides before there is any further National decadence, take sides before your sons are sacrificed and the new home of your daughter goes down under the alcoholism of an imbruted husband. Take sides while your voice, your pen, your prayer, your vote may have any influence in arresting the despoliation of this Nation. If the 17,000,000 professors of religion should take sides on this subject it would not be very long before the destiny of this Nation would be decided in the right direction.

Is drunkenness a State or National evil? Does it belong to the North, or does it belong to the South? Does it belong: to the East or does it belong to the West? Ah! there is not an American river into which its tears have not fallen and into which its suicides have not plunged. What ruined that Southern plantation?—every field a fortune the proprietor and his family once the most affluent supporters of summer watering places. What threw that New England farm into decay and turned the roseate cheeks that bloomed at the foot of the Green Mountain into the pallor of despair? What has smitten every 6treet of every village, town and city of this continent with amoral pestilence? Strong drink.

To prove that this is a National evil call up two states in opposite direc-tion-—Maine and Georgia. Let them testify in regard to this. State of Maine says: "It is so great an evil up here we have anathematized it as a State." State of Georgia says: "It is so great an evil down here that ninety counties of this State have made the sale of intoxicating drink a criminality." So the word comes up from all parts of the land. Either Jrunkenness will be destroyed in this country or the American Government will be destroyed. Drunkenness and free institutions are coming into a death grapple,

Gather up the money that the working classes have spent for rum during the last thirty years, and I will buiid for every workingman a house, and lay out for him a garden and clothe his sons in broadcloth^ and his daughters in silks, and stand at his front door a prancing span of sorrels or bays, and secure him a policy of life insurance, so that the present home may be well maintained after ho is dead. The most persistent, most overpowering enemy of the working hisses is intaxloating liquor. It is the anarchist of the centuries, and has boycotted the body and mind and soul

of Amertean labor. It annually swindles industry out of a large percentage of its earnings. It holds out its blastingsolioitations to the mechanic or operative on his way to work, and at the noon-spell, and on his way home at eventide. On Saturday when the wages are paid, it snathes a large part of the money that might come to the family and sacrifices it among the sa loon keepers. Stand the saloons this country side by side, and it carefully estimated that they would reach from New York to Chicago.

This evil is pouring its vitriolic and damnable liquors down the throats of hundred* of thousands of laborers and while the ordinary strike are ruinous both to employers and employes, I proclaim a universal strike against strong drink, which strike, if kept up will be the relief of the working class es and the salvation of the Nation, will undertake to say that there is not a healthy laborer in the United States, who, within the next twenty years, if he will refuse all intoxicating beverages and be saving, may not become a capitalist on a small scale.

Oh! how many are waiting to see if something cannot be done for the stopping of intemperance! Thousands of drunkards waiting who can not go ton minutes in any direction without having the temptation glaring before their eyes or appealing to their nostrils, they fighting against it with enfeebled will and diseased appetite, conquering, then surrendering, conquering again and surrendering again, and crying: "How long, O, Lord! how long before these infamous solicitations shall be gone?" And how many mothers are waiting to see if this national curse can not lift! Oh! is that the boy who had the honest breath who comes home with breath vitiated or disguised? What a change! How quickly those habits of early coming home have been exchanged for the rattling of the night key in the door long after the last watchman has gone by and tried to see that every thing was closed up for the night! Oh! what a change for that young man who we had hoped would do something in merehandise, or in artisanship or in a profession that would do honor to the family name long after mother's wrinkled hands are folded from the last toil! All that exchanged for startled look when the door-bell rings lest something has happened. And the wish that the scarlet fever of twenty years ago had been fatal, for then he would have gone directly to the bosom of his Savior. But alas! she had lived to experience what Solomon said: *A foolish son is a heaviness to his mother."

I am not much of a mathematician, and I can not estimate it: but is there any one here quick enough at figures to estimate how many mothers there are waiting for something to be done? Ay, there are many wives waiting for domestic rescue. He promised something different from that which, after the long acquaintance and careful scrutiny of character, the hand and the heart were offered and accepted. What a hell on earth a woman lives in who has a drunken husband! ODeath.how lovely thou art to her, and how sott and warm thy skeleton hand! The sepulcher at midnight in winter is a King's drawing room compared with that woman's home. It is not so much the blow on the head that hurts as the blow on the heart. The rum gend came to the door of that beautiful home and opened the door and stood there and said: "I curse this dwelling with an unrelenting curse. I curse that father into a maniac, I curse that mother into a pauper. I curse those sous into vagabonds. I curse those daughters into profligacy. Cursed be bread-tray and cradle. Cursed be coach and chair and family Bible with record of marriages and births and deaths. Curse upon curse."

Oh! how many wives are there waiting to see if something can not be done to shake these frosts of second death off the orange-blossoms! Yea, God is waiting, the God who works through human instrumentalities, waiting to see whether this Nation is going to overthrow this evil and if it refuses to do so. God will wipe out the Nation as he did Phoenicia, as he did Rome, as he did Thebes, as he did Babylon. Ay, he is waiting to see what the Church of God will do. If the Church does not do its work, then he will wipe it out as he did the Church of Ephesus, Church of Thyatira, Church of Sardis. The Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches to-day stand side by side with an impotent look gazing on this evil,which costs the country more than $1,000,000,000 a year to take care of the 800,000 paupers and the 315,000 criminals and the 80.000 idiots, and to bury the 75,000 drunkards. Protagoras boasted that out of the sixty years of his life forty years he had spent in youth: but this evil may make the more infamous boast that all its life it has been ruining the bodies, minds and souls of the human race.

Put on your spectacles and take a candle, and examine the platforms of the two leading political parties of this country, and see what they are doin? for the arrest of this evil and for the overthrow of this abomination. Resolutions—oh! yes resolutions about Mormonism! It if safe to attack that organized Hastiness 2,000 miles away. But not one resolution against drunks enness, which would turn this entire Nation into one bestial Salt Lake City. Resolutions against political corruption, but not one word about drunkenness, which would rot this Nation from scalp to heel. Resolutions about protection against competition with foreign industries, but not one word about protection of family and church and Nation against the scalding, blasting, all consuming, damning tariff of strong drink put upon every financial, individual, spiritual, moral, National interest.

I look, injjanother direction. The Church of God is the grandest and

most glorious institution on earth. What has it in social phalanx accomplished for the overthrow of drunkenness? Have its forces ever been mar shaled? No, not in this direction. "So long ago a great ecclesiastical coun assembled in New York, and resolu tions arraigning strong drink were offered, and clergy with st.ong drink their tables and strong drink in thei cellars defeated the resolutions bj threatening speeches. They could no bear to give up their own lu&fcs. I tel this audience what many of you maj never have thought of. that today—noi in the millennium, but today--the Church holds the balance of power ii America and if Christian people—th* men and the women who profess love the Lord Jesus Christ and to lovt purity and to be the sworn enemies o^ all uncleanness and debauchery an sin—if all such would march eide bj side and shoulder to shoulder, thisevil would soon be overthrown. Thin of 300,000 churches and Sunday-school in Christendom marching shoulder to shoulder! How very short a time it would take them to put down this evil if all the churches of God, transatlantic were armed on this subject!

Young men of America, pass over into the army of teototalism. Whisk good to preserve corpses, ought never to turn you into a corpse. Tens of thousands of young men have been dragged out of respectability, and out of purity, and out of good character, and into darkness by this infernal stuff called strong drink. Do not touch it! Do not touch it!

But th's evil will be arrested, Blucher came up just before night and saved the day at Waterloo. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon it looked very bad for the English. Generals Ponsonby and Picton fallen. Sabers broken, flags surrendered, Scots Grays annihilated. Only forty-two men felt out of the German brigade. The Eng'.ish army falling back and falling back. Napoleon rubbed his hands together, and said: "Aha! aha! We'll teach that little Englishman a lesson! Ninety chances out of a hundred are in our favor. Magnificent! magnificent!" He even sent messages to Paris to say he had won the day. But before sundown filucher came up, and he who had been the conqueror of Austerlitz became the victim of Waterloo. That name which had shaken all Europe and filled even America with apprehension that name went down, and Napoleon, muddy and hatless, and crazed with his disasters, was found feeling for the stirrup of a horse, that he might mount and resume the conflict.

Well, my friends, alcoholism is im* perial, and it is a conqueror, and there are good people who say the night of National overthrow is coming, and that it is almost night. But before sunrise the Conqueror of earth and heaven will ride in on the white horse, and alcoholism, which has had its Austerlitz of triumph, shall have its Waterloo of defeat. Alcoholism having lost its crown, the grizzly and cruel breaker of human hearts, crazed with the disaster, will be found feeling in vain for the stirrup on which to re-* mount its foaming charger. "So, oh Lord, let thine enemies perish!"

Too Mtioh for Ned.

Cincinnati Enquirer. Gov. Nicholls. of Louisiana, as most people know, has lost an arm and a but60 deftly have the artificial members been fitted to the stumps that but few people are in the secret of his loss. His colored body servant was left behind on the occasion of his last visit in Vicksburg, and they put at his disposal during his stay there a likely young lad, who was told to try and take the old body servant's place. That night, when Gov. NichoHs was ready to retire, he stretched out one of his legs to Ned, the servant, and said: ''Ned, unscrew that leg." "Ned's eyes began to open with horror, but he obeyed, and took the leg off. Gov. Nicholls then said, calmly stretching out an arm, "Ned, unscrew that arm." The boy rolled up his eyes until nothing but the whites could be seen, but he obeyed and unscrewed the arm. The Governor, who now realized'his condition of mind, determined to have a little fun with him, so, reaching out his neck, he said: "Ned, unscrew that head." But the boy never waited to see whether his head would corue oft or not, and no one ever succeeded in getting him to go near Gov. Nicholls again. He said ho was the worst hoodoo"' that he over saw.

The celebration of Washington's birthday by the students of Gale sburg. III... began at midnight, when a hug-: band of "preps" gained the top of the college, barricaded the doors behiuo them, fastened their yellow banner to the cap of the staff and rang the bell The freshrnen churged, and until long after daylight a noisy and lierco demonstration prevailed. The freshmen by smashing in the doors with a sledge hammer, managed to get past all tiltbarricades but the last, which effectually barred their way. Five of the •prep" were captured, bound hand and foot, and treated with violence The "preps" held the fort all day The affair was little less than disgrace ful, owing to the damage done college property and is heartily condemned b\ a majority of the students.

Victor Irwin Clark was arrested at

Cairo,

111-,charged with having defrauded the American Express Company of various sums of money. He was agent of the company at St. Charles, la., but left there several months ago, taking with him a blank money order book. An accounty kept by himself aud found upon his porson on the 21 th shows that he drew money ia sums ranging from $10 to $45 in Memphis, Kansas City, St. Joseph, Mo., Po o, Kan., Belleville, Plymouth and Ashley, O., and various other cities. He will be taken back to St. Charles.

GEORGE WASHINGTON. Personal Appearance of the Father of His Country.

In a memoir written by David Akerson in 1811 is.found this description oi the father of his country: Washington had a large, thick nose, and it was very red that day, giving me the impression that he was not so moderate in the use of liquors as he was supposed to be. I found

afterward

that

it was a peculiarity. His nose was apt to turn scarlet in a cold wind. He was standing neat- a small camp fire, evidently lost in thought and making no effort to keep warm. He seemed six and a half feet in height, was as erect as an Indian, and did not for a moment relax from a military attitude th seemed a vital part of the man. Washington's exact height was six feet two inches in his boots. He was then a little lame from striking his knee against a tree. His eye was so gray that it looked almost white, and he had a troubled look on his colorless face. He had a piece of woolen tied around his throat and was quite hoarse. Perhaps the throat trouble from which he finally died had its origin about him.

Washington's boots were enormous. They were No. 13. His ordinary walking shoes were No. 11. His hands were lurge in proportion, and he could not buy a glove to fit him, and had to have his gloves made to order. His mouth was his strong feature, the lips being always tightly compressed. That day they were compressed so tightly as to be almost painful to look at. At that time he weighed 200 pounds, and there was no surplus flesh about him. Ho was tremendously muscled, and the fame of his great strength was everywhere. His large tent, when wrapped up with the poles, was so heavy that it required two men to place it in the camp wagon. Washington would lift it with one hand and throw it in the wagon as easily as it were a pair of saddlebags. He could hold a musket with one hand and shoot with precision as easily as other men did with a pistol. Hi3 lungs were weak, his voice never strong.

He was at that time in the prime of life. His hair was a chestnut-brown, his cheeks were prominent and his head was not large in contrast to every other part of his body, which seemed large and bony at all points. His finger joints and wrists were so large as to be genuine curiosities. As to his habits at that period, I found out much that might be interesting. Ho was an enormous eater, but was content with bread and meat if he had plenty of it. It was his regular custom to take a drink of rum or whisky (neat) on awakening in the morning. Of course all this was changed as he grew old. I saw him at Alexandria a year before he died. His hair was very gray und his form sightly bent. His chest was very thin. He had fa^e teeth, which did not fit his mouth and pushed his under lip outward.

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Veterinary Surgeon and Dentist, Lameness a Specialty. Charges reasonable. Graduate Chicago Veterinary College. Office at Ear'y's drug store Greenfield Ind.

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