Health and Temperance by G. H. Grannis

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 13.

Health and Temperance.

By G. H. Grannis

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

IN the cable cars the other day I sat between two men on the down trip and between two bright boys on the home trip. A description of these environments will show why I was gloomy in one case and very buoyant and happy in the other. The man on my right was well dressed, wore an oilcloth coat (as it was raining) and a pair of spectacles which gave him the look of a German student. He was rather pale; seemed well-bred; was above the average for attractiveness, and I felt well satisfied with my seat-mate. But I was surprised to see him lean forward and discharge from his mouth an amazing large quantity of tobacco saliva. There were a number of ladies opposite. I observed them wince. But in spite of their distress he kept visiting the innocent floor with the wretched results of his mastication of black plug tobacco. He made of a dry place a pool. It seemed as if he must have swallowed the contents of a blacking box. What wonder that I was disappointed in my seat-mate? My first impulse was to say to him, "My dear sir, your expectoration is odious;" or, "My friend, don't you think that nicotine has deadened your nerve of politeness?" or, more pungently, "Sir, you are a hog." But I said nothing, except to myself. I said to myself, "Here is a fatal breach of manners. This well-dressed man is making himself wholly obnoxious. This is a question of manners rather than of tobacco. This is not the right way to chew tobacco." The best way to chew it is to eschew it.

The man on the left was a dignified, business-looking man. He had brown hair and a stylish goatee, well kept, I thought he might be a banker or a railroad magnate. He seemed a trifle solemn. "The cares of business," thought I. It was a relief to turn to this gentleman from my salivating companion on the right. I noticed his hand trembled in hunting for his nickel. I looked into his face. There was a dull, dreamy aspect of his eye. An amber shade was observable on his nose. He turned his face toward me—oh, misery! This solemn, dignified, impressive stranger's breath was almost strong enough with the fatal fumes of alcohol to light it with a match. It dawned upon me that he was just lordly drunk and nothing else. What a place to be in! I felt wedged in between two national vices until I almost screamed. On the right I seemed to hear the rumbling of a million jaws, grinding and munching, pressing out by muscular contraction the juice of the weed. I saw a million street-car floors, hotel floors, sitting-room floors, even church floors, bespattered with noxious pools, and disgusted faces of women mutely drawing back their skirts in their disgust. On the other hand I saw the black genius of alcohol rise in mist till he seemed to fill the whole car. I heard the gurgling of a million bottles; I saw the great giant's hand of drunkenness stretched out to clutch the whole land; I saw the drink bill of the nation blotted with widows' tears and smirched with orphans' blood. I felt crushed between the upper and nether millstone, alcohol and nicotine.

How wholly the scene was changed when on the home trip two bright and innocent boys sat on either side of me. These boys scattered the gloom for me and made the world look bright again. Their minds were not muddled. Their faces were not discolored by deep potations. Their breaths were not reeking with Gehenna odors so that no woman could kiss them without taking chloroform. God bless the boys, clean and pure! And by what process is that innocent boyhood changed into such manhood as I have described? They are eagerly pressing on to the future, but better that they should always be boys than that they should grow up—or rather grow down—to a manhood without manliness. When and how is the ink of vice first spilled on the white page of childhood? May all the holy angels shield the boys from contamination! I am sure that the solution of the tobacco question and that greater question of strong drink is with them. Mothers and teachers, pastors and relatives and friends should form a wall around the innocency of childhood. If the tares cannot be plucked out from the middle life, we can at least keep old Apollyon from sowing in the soul of boyhood the seeds of drunkenness and ill manners.—G. H. Grannis, in Advance.