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Temperance in the Home

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 25, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 8.

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Temperance in the Home

By Augusta C. Bainbridge

AUGUSTA C. BAINBRIDGE
“Mama, what do you suppose Helen Wright is going to give her mother for her birthday present?” said Agnes, as she came in from school.
“I am sure, dear, I can not tell,” answered Mrs. Ayers.
“It is a book of poems and songs by Frances Havergal. Mrs. Willis went with Helen this afternoon to choose it. I went, too, for the new book-store is on my way home.”
“What was there about the book that you noticed?”
“It was bound in limp leather, and had a handsome purple silk book-mark. When Agnes handed the book to me, it opened right at the mark, and there was the song we sing in Sabbath-school:—
“Take my hands, and let them move At the impulse of Thy love. Take my feet, and let them be Swift and beautiful for thee.”
“It never seemed real to me before, but I suppose it means live hands and feet, like mine?” and the questioning eyes looked up into mama’s face.
“Yes, dear, live hands and feet, for no others could move.”
“What is impulse?” asked Agnes.
“Impulse is something like force. You know the nerves carry out the commands of the mind through the brain. If the love of God is the force that acts on the mind, the brain will send the orders along the nerves, which are like telegraph-wires, and the muscles will obey those commands. Our muscles contract, and cause our limbs, our feet, or our hands to move.”
“Are there many muscles?”
“Yes, many; but they act together in such perfect harmony that there is no confusion.”
“How does each muscle know its own part?”
“The medulla oblongata attends to that. He is the foreman in this wonderful shop.”
“Suppose he should forget?” queried Agnes, reminded of one of her special failings.
“But he never forgets, unless there has been some narcotic brought into the blood, and then there are all sorts of blunders made.”
“How?”
“Well, he might get dull and sleepy, and not know what to do; or he might get crazy, and give the wrong order. If the will should say, ‘Drive a nail,’ when the foreman is under the influence of this narcotic, the hand could not hold the hammer steadily, nor strike the nail on the head, because the order sent along the nerves by the foreman was not clear,” said Mrs. Ayers.
“Professor Willis said that alcohol is a narcotic. Would just a little bit do any harm?”
“Yes, just a little bit of harm.”
“Then it doesn’t count much, does it?”
“It counts in this way: brain tissue and nerve tissue can act properly only when they are soft, as soft as apple-jelly. Alcohol hardens them very quickly, and their power is gone. Then they can not act. The brain can not obey the mind, and the nerves can not obey the brain or the medulla oblongata.”
“But will not one get well if he doesn’t take any more?”
“Yes; but the greatest danger is the desire for more, which always comes with the use of a narcotic,” said Mrs. Ayers, quietly.
“Then wouldn’t it be best not to take any at all?” questioned Agnes.
“Yes, dear, that is the wise way.”
“Why, mama, what could I do if I had a good impulse,” said Agnes, going back to the word that had first caught her attention, “if my wires—nerves, you know—couldn’t pull my feet in the way I wanted them to go?”
“You would be like poor old Mike when he wants to go straight down the street to his own gate.”
“But he doesn’t go that way,” added Agnes, “and that’s being drunk.”
“Yes, dear, that is the common word for being under the influence of that narcotic poison, alcohol.”
“Well, I want my hands and my feet to do the things ‘the impulse of thy love’ tells them to,” said Agnes, and the purple book-mark and the old sweet song had a new meaning to our little girl from that day.
San Francisco, Cal.