If its customs be safe and good, its members, so
far as they are influenced by these customs, will be temperate,
orderly and virtuous; but if its tone be depraved and its customs
evil or dangerous, moral and physical ruin must; in too many sad
cases be the inevitable result.
It is needless to press this view, for it is self-evident and no one
calls it in question. Its truth has daily and sorrowful confirmation
in the wan faces and dreary eyes and wrecks of a once noble and
promising manhood one meets at every turn.
The thorn and the thistle harvest that society reaps every year is
fearfully great, and the seed from which too large a portion of this
harvest comes is its drinking customs. Men of observation and
intelligence everywhere give this testimony with one consent. All
around us, day and night, year by year, in palace and hovel, the
gathering of this sad and bitter harvest goes on--the harvest of
broken hearts and ruined lives. And still the hand of the sower is
not stayed. Refined and lovely women and men of low and brutal
instincts, church members and scoffers at religion, stately
gentlemen and vulgar clowns, are all at work sowing the baleful seed
that ripens, alas! too quickly its fruit of woe. The _home saloon_
vies with the common licensed saloon in its allurements and
attractions, and men who would think themselves degraded by contact
with those who for gain dispense liquor from a bar have a sense of
increased respectability as they preside over the good wine and pure
spirits they offer to their guests in palace homes free of cost.
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