A CAUTION TO MOTHERS.—One of the first literary men in the United States said to a temperance lecturer: "There is one thing which I wish you to do everywhere; entreat every mother never to give a drop of strong drink to a child. I have had to fight as for my life all my days to keep from dying a drunkard, because I was fed with spirits when a child. I thus acquired an appetite for it. My brother, poor fellow, died a drunkard."
A GIRL DRUNKARD.—A young girl of eighteen, beautiful, intelligent, and temperate, the pride of her home, was recommended to take a little gin for some chronic ailment. She took it; it soothed the pain; she kept on taking it; it created an artificial appetite, and in four years she died a drunkard.—Medical Temperance Journal.
"A LITTLE WON'T HURT HIM."—I was the pet of the family. Before I could well walk I was treated to the sweet from the bottom of my father's glass. My dear mother would gently chide with him, "Don't, John, it will do him harm." To this he would smilingly reply, "This little sup won't hurt him." When I became a school-boy I was ill at times, and my mother would pour for me a glass of wine from the decanter. At first I did not like it; but, as I was told that it would make me strong, I got to like it. When I became an apprentice, I reasoned thus: "My parents told me that these drinks are good, and I cannot get them except at the public-house." Step by step I fell.... I have grown to manhood, but my course of intemperance has added sin to sin. My days are now nearly ended. Hope for the future I have none.—Dying Drunkard.
DANGER.—In one of Mr. Moody's temperance prayer meetings at Chicago, a reformed man attributed a former relapse of drunkenness wholly to a physician's prescription to take whiskey three times a day!
KILLED BY THE POISON.—Many years ago, when stage coaches were in use in England, during a very cold night, a young woman mounted the coach. A respectable tradesman sitting there asked her what induced her to travel on such a night, when she replied that she was going to the bedside of her mother, of whose illness she had just heard. She was soon wrapped in such coats, etc., as the passengers could spare, and when they stopped the tradesman procured her some
brandy. She declined it at first, saying she had never drank spirits in her life. But he said, "Drink it down; it won't hurt you on such a bitter night." This was done repeatedly, until the poor girl fell fast asleep, and when they arrived in London she could not be roused. She was stiff and cold in death, and the doctor, on the coroner's inquest, said that she had been killed by the brandy.—Mrs. Balfour.
IN CASE OF SHIPWRECK.—In the winter of 1796 a vessel was wrecked on an island of the Massachusetts coast, and five persons on board determined to swim ashore. Four of them drank freely of spirits to keep up their strength, but the fifth would drink none. One was drowned, and all that drank spirits failed and stopped, and froze one after another, the man that drank none being the only one that reached the house at some distance from, the shore, and he lived many years after that.
IT EXHAUSTS STRENGTH.—Concerning one cold winter when there were very severe snow-storms in the Highlands of Scotland, James Hogg, the poet, says: "It was a received opinion all over the country that sundry lives were lost, and a great many more endangered, by the administration of ardent spirits to the sufferers while in a state of exhaustion. A little bread and sweet milk, or even bread and cold water, proved a much safer restorative in the fields. Some who took a glass of spirits that night never spoke another word, even though they were continuing to walk and converse when their friends joined them. One woman found her husband lying in a state of insensibility; she had only sweet milk and oatmeal cake to give him, but with these she succeeded in getting him home and saving him."—Bacchus.
SHIPMASTER OF THE KEDRON.—"I was brought up in a temperance school, and when I shipped before the mast I stuck to my principles, though everyone else on board drank excepting two boys whom I persuaded to abstain. In a very severe storm off a lee-shore, when it was so cold they had to break the icicles off the ropes to tack the ship, all drank but myself and these two boys. The men would work very well for a few minutes, and then slack off and take another drink, until they were all keeled up, and we three boys had all we could do to keep the ship from going ashore. If we had drank with the rest, all would have been lost, for the men were too drunk to save themselves. Providentially, the storm abated before morning, and we were saved. Now, for many years I have been captain of my own ship, and I never give out one drop of liquor."—Captain Brown.