MY PAPA DETS DRUNK

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 1, 1881

"MY PAPA DETS DRUNK."

A MAN was passing up State street one cool day, when he saw a little bare-footed girl trotting along the pavement.

“Why are you bare-footed, little girl,” said he, “haven’t you any shoes?”

“No,” she answered, “my papa dets drunk.”

No further explanations were necessary. Given: a drunken father as a premise, and we have a bare-footed child as a conclusion. It is so everywhere. At all times and in all places, with the drunken father we find the neglected child. A mother’s love may shield, and a mother’s care protect for a while her helpless offspring from the calamities caused by intemperance; but as the current sets faster, and the father sinks deeper, the days of poverty and misery come slowly on, and woe to that child whose “papa dets drunk.”

There is perhaps no cause so fruitful of children’s misery as this accursed crime which fills the land with mourning, lamentations, and woe. There is no day or hour or moment in the wide sweep of centuries that does not witness the sufferings of helpless childhood, caused by the use of strong drink. Hunger, cold, rags, nakedness, want, and squalor, haunt the drunkard’s home, and afflict the drunkard’s family. Out of the hovels of drunkards, children start on the race of life, burdened with poverty, burdened with disease, burdened with evil habits, burdened with disgrace, burdened with sins, and nothing but a miracle of mercy can save them from plunging downward into darkness and perdition.

But while this tide of misery rolls on, the rum-seller grows rich by his traffic, the politician trims his course to win the dramaseller’s influence and the rumdrinkers’ votes; and the priest and the Levite too often pass by on the other side, leaving helpless infancy stripped and wounded in its anguish and despair. But though man may be indifferent there is One on high, whose tender mercies are over all his works. He watches the sparrow’s fall, he numbers the very hairs of our heads, and the convulsive sob or wailing cry of the feeblest child, has power to pierce the very heavens. And though the sword of wrath seems to slumber within its scabbard, yet the woe and curse of God pursues the men who engage in this terrible work, and will pursue them to the end.

Meanwhile the pitying Christ looks down upon a lost world; and he who took little children in his arms and put his hands on them and blessed them, is not forgetful of the needs of these suffering, sorrowing ones. O that his sympathy and his love may so inspire our hearts, that we shall do what we can to stay this tide of human misery, and rescue the suffering and stricken little ones from the calamities which are brought upon them through strong drink.—Safeguard.