ears
hence? I saw a giant oak tree lying in the track of the wind. It had
been called "the monarch of the Sierras." Under the very nests where
tempests hatch out their young, it grew to its greatness. It had seen
many a storm, clad in thunder, armed with lightning, leap from its
rocky bed and go bellowing down the world. But the storms that shook
it only sent its roots down and out that it might fasten itself the
more firmly to the earth. For long years this old tree stood there,
bowing its head in courtesy to the passing storm, while its branches
were but harp strings for the music of the winds. One evening as the
sun went down over the mountain's brow, not a storm cloud on the sky,
a little wind went hurrying round the mountain's base, struck the
great oak and down it went with a crash that made the forest ring.
Young men, why was it a tree that had withstood the storms of ages,
should, before such a little gust of wind bow its head and die? Years
before, when in the zenith of its strength and glory, a pioneer with
an axe on his shoulder, went blazing his way through the wooded
wilderness that he might not be lost on his return. Seeing the great
tree he said: "That's a good one to mark," and taking his axe in hand,
he sent the blade deep into the oak. Time passed with seemingly no
effect from the stroke given by the axeman. But steadily the sun smote
the wound, rain soaked into the scar, worms burrowed in the bark
around it, birds pecked into the decayed wood and finally foxes made
their home in the hollow trunk, and the day came when resisting force
had weakened, boasted strength had departed and the giant monarch of
the Sierras stood at the mercy of the winds that have no respect for
weakness.

There are young men before me today, who can drink or let it alone.
Temptation to them is no more than the gentle breeze in the branches
of the oak in the zenith of its strength. True, temptation has been
along their way blazing, here a glass of wine, there a glass of beer
and yonder a glass of whiskey. They can quit when they please, but the
less they please the more they drink, the more they drink the less
they please. They don't quit because they _can_, if they couldn't quit
they would, because they can, they won't. Thus they reason, while
appetite eats its way into their wills, birds of ill omen peck into
their characters and finally they will go down to drunkards' graves,
as thousands before them have gone. Young men, i