ty winters gone
Since poor Jim took to crooked ways and left me all alone!
Jim was my son, and a likelier lad you'd never wish to see,
Till evil counsels won his heart and led him away from me.

'Tis the old, sad, pitiful story, sir, of the devil's winding stair,
And men go down--and down--and down--to blackness and despair;
Tossing about like wrecks at sea, with helm and anchor lost,
On and on, through the surging waves, nor caring to count the cost;
I doubt sometimes if the Savior sees, He seems so far away,
How the souls He loved and died for, are drifting--drifting astray!

Indeed,'tis little wonder, sir, if woman shrinks and cries
When the life-blood on Rum's altar spilled is calling to the skies;
Small wonder if her own heart feels each sacrificial blow,
For isn't each life a part of hers? each pain her hurt and woe?
Read all the records of crime and shame--'tis bitterly, sadly true;
Where manliness and honor die, there some woman's heart dies, too.

I often think, when I hear folks talk so prettily and so fine
Of "alcohol as needful food"; of the "moderate use of wine";
How "the world couldn't do without it, there was clearly no other way
But for a man to drink, or let it alone, as his own strong will might say";
That "to use it, but not abuse it, was the proper thing to do,"
How I wish they'd let old Poorhouse Nan preach her little sermon, too!

I would give them scenes in a woman's life that would make their
pulses stir,
For I was a drunkard's child and wife--aye, a drunkard's mother, sir!
I would tell of childish terrors, of childish tears and pain.
Of cruel blows from a father's hand when rum had crazed his brain;
He always said he could drink his fill, or let it alone as well;
Perhaps he might, he was killed one night in a brawl--in a grog-shop hell!

I would tell of years of loveless toil the drunkard's child had passed,
With just one gleam of sunshine, too beautiful to last.
When I married Tom I thought for sure I had nothing more to fear,
That life would come all right at last; the world seemed full of cheer.
But he took to moderate drinking--he allowed 'twas a harmless thing,
So the arrow sped, and my bird of Hope came down with a broken wing.

Tom was only a moderate drinker; ah, sir, do you bear in mind
How the plodding tortoise in the race left the leaping hare behind?
'Twas because he held right on and on, steady and true, if slow,
And that's the way, I'm thinking, that the moderate