our young men are
led into temptation? Thus that their ruin is premeditated, secured?
Thus that the fowler is permitted to spread his net in the open day,
and the destroyer licensed to work ruin in darkness? It is awful to
contemplate!" The man was strongly excited.

"Thus it is," he continued; "and we who see the whole extent, origin,
and downward rushing force of a widely sweeping desolation, lift our
voices of warning almost in vain. Men who have everything at
stake--sons to be corrupted, and daughters to become the wives of young
men exposed to corrupting influences--stand aloof, questioning and
doubting as to the expediency of protecting the innocent from the
wolfish designs of bad men; who, to compass their own selfish ends,
would destroy them body and soul. We are called fanatics, ultraists,
designing, and all that, because we ask our law-makers to stay the
fiery ruin. Oh, no! we must not touch the traffic. All the dearest and
best interests of society may suffer; but the rum-seller must be
protected. He must be allowed to get gain, if the jails and poorhouses
are filled, and the graveyards made fat with the bodies of young men
stricken down in the flower of their years, and of wives and mothers
who have died of broken hearts. Reform, we are told, must commence at
home. We must rear temperate children, and then we shall have temperate
men. That when there are none to desire liquor, the rum-seller's
traffic will cease. And all the while society's true benefactors are
engaged in doing this, the weak, the unsuspecting, and the erring must
be left an easy prey, even if the work requires for its accomplishment
a hundred years. Sir! a human soul destroyed through the rum-seller's
infernal agency, is a sacrifice priceless in value. No considerations
of worldly gain can, for an instant, be placed in comparison therewith.
And yet souls are destroyed by thousands every year; and they will fall
by tens of thousands ere society awakens from its fatal indifference,
and lays its strong hand of power on the corrupt men who are scattering
disease, ruin, and death, broadcast over the land!

"I always get warm on this subject," he added, repressing his
enthusiasm. "And who that observes and reflects can help growing
excited? The evil is appalling; and the indifference of the community
one of the strangest facts of the day."

While he was yet speaking, the elder Mr. Hammond came in. He looked
wretched. The redness and humidity o