You who move in elegant and refined associations; you
who drink the best liquors; you who never drink until you lose
your balance: consider that you have, under God, in your power the
redemption of this land from drunkenness. Empty your cellars and
wine-closets of the beverage, and then come out and give us your hand,
your vote, your prayers, your sympathies. Do that, and I will promise
three things: First, That you will find unspeakable happiness in
having done your duty; secondly, you will probably save somebody,
perhaps your own child; thirdly, you will not, in your last hour, have
a regret that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be.
As long as you make drinking respectable, drinking customs will
prevail; and the ploughshare of death, drawn by terrible disasters,
will go on turning up this whole continent, from end to end, with the
long, deep, awful furrow of drunkards' graves.
Oh, how this Rum Fiend would like to go and hang up a skeleton in your
beautiful house, so that when you opened the front door to go in you
would see it in the hall; and when you sit at your table you would see
it hanging from the wall; and when you open your bed-room you would
find it stretched upon your pillow; and waking at night you would feel
its cold hand passing over your face and pinching at your heart!
There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awful
curse.
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