THE TEA-TOTAL MOVEMENT.
The Tea-totallers—whose zeal we much admire, though we cannot rush into the cistern or hang on to the pump with all the ardour they display in their attempts to bring an hydraulic pressure to bear on public opinion—have published a sort of summary of their achievements. They have forwarded "30,000 letters" to noblemen, &c., from which we infer that they have filled at least 300 waste-paper baskets, and furnished wrappers to several thousand quarters of pounds of butter. They have held several hundred "tea-meetings," and they might have added, "munched a million muffins," to say nothing of the consumption of crumpets, which must have been something marvellous. They have delivered some thousands of lectures on water, and have probably exhausted a great many highly respectable pumps in the operation.
We find from a prospectus, that the hot days of August are about to be refreshed by a flood of American eloquence, which is about to be "turned on" at Exeter Hall, through the medium of a Mr. Gough, of whom it is said that "he makes strong men to weep like little children, and women, to sob as if their hearts would burst." This command over the tears of his audience is an appropriate attribute to one whose mission is to popularise water; and there can be no doubt that when every eye around him is gushing with moisture, he will feel himself quite in his element. If he bears out the reputation he brings with him, his lectures will be no laughing matter; for he is, as it were, pledged to set all the men and women off into so many watering-pots, by drawing from them such a series of wailings and sobs, as will not only drown the voice of the orator, but threaten even to drown those who are assembled to hear him. We hope the Trustees of Exeter Hall will see to the drainage of the building before these orations come off, or we do not know what may be the result of a combination of several thousand floods of tears with the orator's flood of eloquence.