Advertisement of an Honest Rumseller.
Friends and Neighbors of Beatrice:—Having determined to open a commodious and elegantly-arranged saloon for the sale of liquor, I embrace this opportunity of informing you that on the first of next month I shall commence the business of making drunkards, paupers, and beggars, for the sober, industrious, and reputable portion of the community to support. I shall deal in “familiar spirits,” which shall excite men to deeds of riot, robbery, and bloodshed, and by so doing, diminish the comfort, augment the expenses, and endanger the welfare, of the community. I will undertake, on short notice, for a small sum, and with great expedition, to prepare victims for the asylum, the poor-house, the prison, and the gallows. I will furnish an article that will increase the amount of fatal accidents, multiply the number of distressing diseases, and render those which are harmless, incurable. I will deal in an article which will deprive some of life, many of reason, most of property, all of peace; which will cause fathers to be fiends, wives widows, children orphans, and all mendicants! I will cause the rising generation to grow up in ignorance, and prove a burden and a nuisance to the nation; I will cause mothers to forget their babes, virgins their priceless innocence; I will corrupt ministers of religion, obstruct the progress of the gospel, defile the purity of the church, lead astray her many young converts, and cause temporal, spiritual, and eternal death; and if any person should have the impertinence to ask why I have the audacity to bring such accumulated misery upon this happy people, and why I circulate a petition for license, I will tell them that the spirit trade is lucrative, and some professedly good citizens give it their careful countenance. I have applied for license, and expect to get it, and if I don’t bring these evils upon you, somebody else will. I live in a land of liberty; I am purchasing a right to demolish the character, destroy the health, shorten the lives, and ruin the souls of those who choose to honor me with their custom. I pledge myself to do all I have herein promised. Those who wish any of the above splendid evils brought upon themselves or dearest friends, are requested to aid me in this enterprise, and meet me at my bar, where I will, for the sum of ten cents per glass, furnish them the certain means of doing so.—Golden Censer.