Indictment of King Alcohol.
THE history of King Alcohol is a history of shame and corruption, of cruelty and crime, of rage and ruin. He has taken the glow of health from the cheek, and placed there the reddish hue of the wine cup. He has taken luster 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 firmness and elasticity from the step, and made it 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 the seeds of disease and death. He has transformed this body, fearfully and wonderfully made, God's masterpiece of mechanism, into a vile, loathsome, stinking mass of humanity. He has entered the brain, the temple of thought, dethroned reason, and made it reel with folly. He has taken the beam of intelligence from the eye, and left in exchange the stupid stare of idiocy and dullness. He has taken the impress of ennobled manhood from the face, and left the mark of sensuality and brutishness. 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 the kind, indulgent father a brute, a tyrant, a murderer. He has transformed the kind and affectionate mother into a very fiend of brutish incarnation. He has made obedient sons and daughters the breakers of hearts and the destroyers of homes. He has taken luxuries from off the table, and compelled men to cry on account of famine, and to beg for bread. He has stolen men's palaces and given them hovels in exchange. He has robbed men of valuable acres, and given them not even a decent burial-place in death. He has filled our streets and highways with violence and lawlessness. He has complicated our laws and crowded our courts. He has filled to overflowing houses of correction and penitentiaries. He has peopled with his multitudes our poorhouses. He has straitened us for room in our insane asylums. He has taken away faith, hope, and charity—yea, all that is lovely and of good report—and given despair, infidelity, enmity, and all the emotions and deeds of wickedness. He has banished Christ from the heart, and created hell within it. He has wrecked and enfeebled the bodies, shattered and destroyed the minds, imperiled and damned the souls of our fellow-men. These are counts of the indictment. Let the world judge of the truth.—Sel.