ence and prepare the way for every vice and crime.
Then, with all that, let us briefly review a few of the attendant
miseries of intemperance that are about us like a swarm of locusts
coming as a plague: In the slimy trail of this alcoholic serpent can
be found everything that is dark and dreadful--yea, everything that is
ruinous. In it can be found men without manhood, women without
womanhood, infancy without hope, want and woe, rage and wretchedness,
disease and death; and, furthermore, in the trail of this venomous
serpent can be found broken vows and broken hearts, bad manners and
bad morals, bad words and bad actions, bad parents and bad children, a
bad beginning and a bad end. Then surely intemperance is the crowning
curse of American society; and as such the traffic is, as has been
often said, a gigantic crime. It came and continues to be an unwelcome
intruder. It erects in our midst distilleries or dramshops. Everywhere
we need the church and schoolhouse, these being uplifting and
elevating forces, while the distilleries and dramshops are mediums
through which distress and want, sorrow and death, are brought into
our midst in an inconceivably short time, carrying to untimely graves
and everlasting woe hundreds--yea, thousands--who otherwise might be
saved.

The traffic is a temptation and a snare, a man trap and a woman trap,
luring ever its victims to death and damnation. No wonder that Lord
Chesterfield, in words as eloquent as they were burning, should say of
rumsellers: "Let us crush out these artists in human slaughter who
have reconciled their countrymen to sickness and ruin and spread over
the pitfalls of debauchery such baits as men cannot resist." And his
suggestions continue to be repeated, serving as a nucleus to which
many cling and receive strength for present and future action. Yet
there is room for more, as the battle is fierce and will possibly be
long.

The traffic is a monster of cruelty. It has ever been one of tears and
groans and blood, in vice, crime, and misery; ever conscienceless,
unprincipled, and as cruel as the grave, while the trafficker is
rarely ever moved by widows' woes, though they swell into rivers of
tears. His heart seems to be incased in stone, while he applies his
infamous trade and hoards his unhallowed wealth, regardless alike of
the claims of God and the cries of his murdered victims.

For heartless cruelty and desolating results, the highway robber is
not to be comp