Soil our addition."

{26} Morals has made wonderful progress since then, in all directions,
and heavy drinking has been more and more restricted to those who are

"Marked cross from the womb and perverse."

With few exceptions every one who goes to perdition by the alcohol route
would reach that destination by some other highway if the alcohol line
were not running.

Every man whose sloth or improvidence has brought himself and his family
to beggary, every thieving tramp upon the highways, every rascal in the
penitentiary, every murderer upon the gallows, hastens to plead "whisky
brought {27} me to this!" because he knows that such a plea will bring
him a gush of sloppy sympathy unobtainable by other means.

Whisky makes no man lazy, shiftless, dishonest, false, cowardly or
brutal. These must be original qualities with him. If he has them he
will probably take to whisky--though not inevitably--which then does the
community the splendid service of hurrying him along to destruction, and
of abridging his infliction upon the public. {28}

------

PEOPLE who have done much in the way of reforming drunkards have been
astonished to find how little real manhood remained after eliminating
whisky from the equation. They had supposed the manhood to be only
obscured, and were disheartened to find how frequently it happened to be
demonstrated that there never was enough of it to pay for the trouble of
"saving the victim of intemperance." Like the cherubim before the throne
of God, the Temperance orators "con- tinually do cry," the burden of
their song being that hundreds of thousands are annually slain by the
monster Intemperance. {29} Quite singularly these figures are probably
not exaggerated. Myriads of times kindly-hearted physicians write in the
death certificate "pneumonia," "heart-failure," "diabetes," etc., when
truth demands "beer" or "whisky."

------

BUT what of this?

Is it not merely Nature sweeping out her overcrowded workshop? Ridding
her laboratory of misfits, defectives, and rejects? Into her junk pile
alcohol whisks away daily thousands of thieves, gamblers, prostitutes,
loafers, "sports," spongers, swindlers, {30} and others of the criminal
and quasi-criminal classes. Over their moldering clay the daisies bloom
in sweet oblivion of

"The sins and crimes
Done in their days of nature."

Upon these alcoholism accommodatingly performs the office of ju