A TEMPERANCE LECTURE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 14, 1880

A TEMPERANCE LECTURE.

The most thrilling and sadly suggestive temperance lecture is the sight of a once noble, talented man, left in ruins by strong drink. A Washington paper tells of a ragged beggar, well known in the streets of that city, who once held an important command in the army, having been promoted for personal bravery, from a cavalry lieutenant to nearly the highest rank in the military service. One night recently, when he had been too successful in begging liquor to satisfy his craving, and while lying helplessly drunk in the rear part of a Third street saloon, some men thought to play a joke on him by stealing his shirt, and proceeded to strip him. Underneath his shirt, and suspended by a string from his neck, was a small canvas bag, which the men opened, and found it contained his commission as brevet major-general, two congratulatory letters—one from General Grant, and one from President Lincoln; a photograph of a little girl, and a curl of hair—a "chestnut shadow," that doubtless one day crept over the brow of some loved one.

When these things were discovered, even the half-drunken men who found them felt a respect for the man's former greatness, and pity for his fallen condition, and quietly returned the bag and contents to where they found them, and placed the sleeper's clothes upon him. When a reporter tried to interview the man, and endeavor to learn something of his life in the past few years, he declined to communicate anything. He cried like a child when told how his right name and former position were ascertained, and with tears trickling down his cheeks, said: "For God's sake, sir, don't publish my degradation, or my name, at least, if you are determined to say something about it. It is enough that I know how low I have become. Will you promise that much? It will do no good, but will do my friends a great deal of harm, as, unfortunately, they think I died in South America, where I went at the close of the war." Intemperance and the game-table, he said, had wrought his ruin.—Mercury.