Temperance by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1884

Temperance.

By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

NOTHING AND SOMETHING.

"It is nothing to me" the beauty said, With a careless toss of her pretty head; "The man is weak if he can't refrain From the cup you say is wrought with pain." It was something when, in after years, Her eyes were drenched with burning tears, And she watched in lonely grief and dread, And startled to hear a staggering tread.

"It is nothing to me" the mother said, "I have no fear that my boy will tread In the downward path of sin and shame, And crush my heart and darken his name." It was something to her when her only son From the path of right was early won; And madly cast in the flowing bowl A ruined body and sin-wrecked soul.

"It is nothing to me," the merchant said, As over his ledger he bent his head; "I am busy to-day with tare and tret, And I have no time to fume and fret." It was something to him when over the wire, A message came from a funeral pyre: A drunken conductor had wrecked a train, And his wife and child were among the slain.

"It is nothing to me," the voter said, "The party's loss is my only dread." Then gave his vote for the liquor trade, Though hearts were crushed and drunkards made. It was something to him when, in after life, His daughter became a drunkard's wife, And her hungry children cried for bread, And trembled to hear their father's tread.

Is it something for us to idly sleep, While the cohorts of death their vigils keep? To gather the young and thoughtless in, And grind in our midst a grist of sin? 'Tis something, yes all, for us to stand Clasping by faith the Saviour's hand; To learn to labor, live, and fight On the side of God and unchanging right.

—Mrs. F. E. W. Harper, in Sabbath Recorder.