Wit, humor, reason, rhetoric, prose, poetry and story woven into eight popular lectures

by George W. Bain

Young man, start wrong and end right? No, start wrong and you may expect in the autumn of life a penniless, friendless old age; opportunity gone, health shattered, and the "long fingers of memory" reaching out and dragging into its chambers thoughts that will "bite like a serpent and sting like an adder." Bad as this is, it is even worse when your depravity involves another life. What if that other life is your mother, who went to the door of death to give you life, and whose every breath is another thread of sorrow woven into her wasting heart while her boy is bound like Mazeppa to the wild steed of passion.

There are some things I cannot understand about this drink question. I can understand how a young woman with jeweled fingers can tempt a young man to drink wine. I had a bit of experience some years ago down in Texas, that helped me to appreciate how young men are tempted. I gave an address in a Y.M.C.A. lecture course in a city, and at the close of my address a prominent citizen said to me: "Kentucky has a reputation for beautiful women, but we think Texas has the handsomest women in the world. At the hotel where you are stopping, there is a leap year ball tonight and the most beautiful women for a hundred miles around are gathered there. I will call for you at your room in a little while and you must take a look at our Texas girls." A little later I stood in a hallway where I could see down the long ball room, and I declare they were as pretty women as I have ever seen, and I live in Kentucky. I was invited to step inside the door, where between dances I was introduced to couple after couple. It being leap year the ladies were soliciting their partners for the dance, and a very handsome young lady invited me to be her partner. Having never danced and being a Methodist steward, I declined. Another and another asked me to dance, and again and again I declined, giving as an excuse my utter ignorance of the function. Finally a very beautiful, blue-eyed, charming young lady said: "Since you do not dance, may I engage you for a promenade around the ball room?" Boys, if I had been a young man the chances are I would have started down the "turkey-trot" road that evening. I can appreciate how young men are tempted.

There is one thing, however, about the drink habit that is difficult for me to understand, and that is how a young man, who loves his mother, whose mother loves him as only a mother can love, loved him first, loved him best and will love him to the last, can go from home and mother to the impure, degrading vileness of a liquor saloon. If we enter that young man's home what do we find? Perhaps on one of the side-walls, "What is home without a mother," on the altar the family Bible, every picture on the walls suggestive of home life and purity, every chair and piece of bric-a-brac linked with the sweet association of childhood, the conversation as pure as the sunlight on which the young man lives; yet he will kiss his mother, leave this home, and down the street make his way to a liquor saloon, where often vile pictures hang on the walls, cards lie on the table instead of the family Bible and the air is freighted with oaths and obscenities.

Boys, have any of you done this within the past month, or six months? Promise me now you will never do this again. Oh what a grand meeting this would be if every young man and boy in my presence would make the promise! I plead with you, young man, by the sleepless nights your mother spent to give you rest; by the shadow you have hung over her pathway; by the bleeding heart you've wounded but which loves you still:

"Come back, my boy, come back, I say,

And walk now in thy mother's way."

I would that every boy in our land were as grateful to his mother as was that Southern girl to her father, who stood years ago in front of an open fire, her back to the fire, her face toward the door, her bare arms full of flowers, waiting for her brother to call with a carriage to take her to a party. While standing there a flame caught her dress; she gave a scream, dropped the flowers and ran through the door to where her father was standing in the yard. When the father saw his child coming with flame following, he ran toward her. As he ran he took off his coat and wrapping it about her face, arms and shoulders, threw her to the ground. With his left hand he kept the flame from the body, while with his right hand he fought the fire. He saved his daughter but burned his right arm to the elbow. Day after day when the doctor would unwrap the arm to dress it, the girl, though burned herself, would go to her father's bed, gently lift the burned arm and caress it. When the father recovered his hand was so maimed and scarred, that when introduced to strangers, he would hold his right hand behind him and shake hands with the left. One day his daughter, seeing him do this, went to his side and reaching for the scarred hand, held it to her lips and kissed it. She was not ashamed, for that hand had been burned for her. When the father died and lay in his casket ready for burial, the family came to take their last look. First came the mother of the girl, then a brother and sister, and then the girl herself. She kissed the cold brow of her father, then kneeling she took up the disfigured hand and kissed it over and over again. My boy, your mother has suffered more for you than that father did for his daughter. I beg you, go home and kiss your mother. If she is dead or far from you, kiss her memory. Go to your bed room, kneel there, and pray God to help you to live worthy the love of your mother.

I now turn from young men to parents and say, use every means possible to make safe the way of your boys. Some years ago in one of our cities, after a lecture in which I appealed to parents, a leading merchant of the city said: "I wish I had heard that lecture years ago."

"You never used liquor?" I said.

"No, but I am responsible for its use in my family. I am a Methodist, and a total abstainer. In my employ I had a number of clerks, and let it be known I would not allow any of them to drink even moderately. One day a man came to my store with a paper in his hand and said: 'I want to set up a saloon on the next block and I am getting signers to my petition. I am one of your customers; you know me and know I will keep an orderly place.' I said to myself, 'if he doesn't sell others will and we need the revenue anyway,' so I signed the petition. A few months later I chanced to see my youngest boy and one of my clerks coming out of the door of that saloon. Soon after when they entered the store I called them into my office and said: 'Young men, did I see you coming out of a saloon, and had you been taking a drink in there?' When they admitted they had, I said to my son: 'Did I ever set such an example for you to follow?' He answered: 'No, father, but you signed that man's petition to set up the saloon; whom did you expect him to sell to? Did you sign it for him to sell to other fathers' sons and not yours?' I realized as never before the wrong I had done, not only to my own son, but to every father's son to whom that saloon-keeper would sell if they had the money to pay for liquor. I said: "Forgive me, my boy. Promise me you will never enter a saloon again and I promise never to sign a petition or vote to have a saloon-keeper sell to anybody's boy!"