THE history of King Alcohol is a history of shame and corruption, of cruelty, crime, rage and ruin.
He has taken the glory of health from off the cheek and placed there the reddish hue of the wine cup.
He has taken the lustre from the eye and made it dim and bloodshot.
He has taken beauty and comeliness from the face, and left it ill shaped and bloated.
He has taken strength from the limbs and made them weak and tottering.
He has taken firmness and elasticity from the steps, and made them faltering and treacherous.
He has taken vigor from the arm and left flabbiness and weakness.
He has taken vitality from the blood and filled it with poison and seeds of disease and death.
He has transformed this body, fearfully and wonderfully and majestically made, God's masterpiece of animal mechanism, into a vile, loathsome, stinking mass of humanity.
He has entered the brain—the temple of thought—dethroned reason, and made it red with folly.
He has taken the beam of intelligence from the eye, and exchanged for it the stupid stare of idiocy and dullness.
He has taken the impress of ennobled manhood from off the face and left the marks of sensuality and brutishness.
He has bribed the tongue to utter madness and cursing.
He has turned the lips to songs of ribaldry and revelling.
He has taken cunning from the hands, and turned them from deeds of usefulness to become instruments of brutality and murder.
He has broken the ties of friendship and planted the seeds of enmity.
He has made a kind, indulgent father a brute, a tyrant, a murderer.
He has transformed the loving mother into a very fiend of brutish incarnation.
He has made obedient and affectionate sons and daughters the breakers of hearts and the destroyers of home.
He has taken luxuries from off the table, and compelled men to cry on account of famine, and beg for bread.
He has stripped backs of their broadcloth and silks, and clothed them with rags.
He has stolen men's palaces, and given them wretched hovels in exchange.
He has taken away acres and given not even a decent burial place in death.
He has filled our streets and by-ways with violence and lawlessness.
He has complicated our laws and crowded our courts.
He has filled to overflowing our penitentiaries and houses of correction.
He has peopled with his multitude our police houses.
He has straitened us for room in our insane asylums.
He has filled our world with tears and groans, with the poor and helpless, with wretchedness and want.
He has banished Christ from the heart and erected a hell within.
These are the counts of our indictment. Let the world judge of the truth.