Could I call around me in one vast assembly the temperate young men of our land, I would say,—Hopes of the nation, blessed be ye of the Lord now in the dew of your youth. But look well to your footsteps; for vipers, and scorpions, and adders surround your way.
Look at the generation who have just preceded you: the morning of their life was cloudless, and it dawned as brightly as your own; but behold them bitten, swollen, enfeebled, inflamed, debauched, idle, poor, irreligious, and vicious, with halting step dragging onward to meet an early grave! Their bright prospects are clouded, and their sun is set never to rise. No house of their own receives them, while from poorer to poorer tenements they descend, and to harder and harder fare, as improvidence dries up their resources.
And now, who are those that wait on their footsteps with muffled faces and sable garments? That is a father—and that is a mother—whose gray hairs are coming with sorrow to the grave. That is a sister, weeping over evils which she cannot arrest; and there is the broken-hearted wife; and there are the children, hapless innocents, for whom their father has provided the inheritance only of dishonor, and nakedness and woe.
And is this, beloved young men, the history of your course? In this scene of desolation, do you behold the image of your future selves? Is this the poverty and disease which, as an armed man, shall take hold on you? And are your fathers, and mothers, and sisters, and wives, and children, to succeed to those who now move on in this mournful procession, weeping as they go? Yes: bright as your morning now opens, and high as your hopes beat, this is your noon, and your night, unless you shun those habits of intemperance which have thus early made theirs a day of clouds, and of thick darkness. If you frequent places of evening resort for social drinking; if you set out with drinking, daily, a little, temperately, prudently, it is yourselves which, as in a glass, you behold.
THE PILGRIMS.
BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
Mr. Depew is considered one of the foremost of our American orators, and it is enough to say he has risen to this distinction in a land noted for the eloquence of its public men. He is an excellent extemporaneous speaker, is graceful and easy in manner, fluent in utterance, and has a touch of humor that renders him popular. His tribute to the Pilgrims is worthy of a theme so inspiring.
They were practical statesmen, these Pilgrims. They wasted no time theorizing upon methods, but went straight at the mark. They solved the Indian problem with shot-guns, and it was not General Sherman, but Miles Standish, who originated the axiom that the only good Indians are the dead ones. They were bound by neither customs nor traditions, nor committals to this or that policy. The only question with them was, Does it work? The success of their Indian experiment led them to try similar methods with witches, Quakers and Baptists.