p. 314 | DRINK'S DOINGS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 20.

DRINK'S DOINGS.

THERE are in the United States about one hundred and eighty thousand liquor stores. If formed in a street, with a row of saloons on each side, allowing 25 feet to each one, they would make a street about four hundred and twenty miles long. Come with us, if you have the nerve and patience, and we will stand at the lower end of that street for one year.

Marching five abreast and 85 miles in length is an army of 7,000,000 men and women who daily enter saloons for intoxicating drinks. Scan them closely as they go by. There are gray-haired men and fair-haired boys among them. There are, alas! many women sunk to deeper depths than the men, because of the greater height from which they have fallen.

See the trembling limbs, the palsied hands, the bleared faces, the bloodshot eyes, as they march with unsteady step and zigzag lines; but do not turn away, for here comes another army—125,000 criminals—from jails, prisons, and penitentiaries. At their head is a long line of persons with their hands smeared with blood; with ropes around their necks, on their way to the gallows. Others are going to prison for life. Every crime known to our law has been committed while they were under the influence of drink.

But hark! whence come those unearthly yells? and who are those bound with strong chains that go raging by? They are raving maniacs made by strong drink. Slimy reptiles crawl over their bodies, and fiends torment them before their time. To all intents and purposes they are already in hell. They are gone now and we breathe more freely.

What is that long line of black coming slowly down the street? It is the line of funeral processions, 100,000 who have died from alcohol and are carried to their graves. Every now and then an unconfined corpse in a rough cart is driven by. Look into the coffins as they go by—see the dead drunkards. Some died from delirium tremens, some frozen to death by the roadside, some drowned, some blew their brains out, some were fearfully stabbed in drunken brawls, some roasted in burning buildings, some crushed to shapeless masses under the cars. Strong drink killed them all, and their tombstones, if they have any, may be fitly inscribed, 'He died a drunkard's death.'

Next comes an array of innocent children. How many thousands there are upon whom have been visited the iniquities of their fathers, and each must bear through life the stigma of being a drunkard's child! Keep back your tears if you can, and look at them. See the gaunt figures and bony hands. Some are moaning with hunger. Some are shivering with cold! They will fill up the ranks of the awful army of drunkards that moves in unbroken columns down to death.

Thus we have listened to the story that the figures tell; but they cannot tell it all. They give only a faint outline of the terrible tragedy that is going on about us. They cannot picture the squalor of the drunkard's home; they cannot tell how many heavy blows have followed from the drunkard's hand; they cannot tell us how many fond expectations and bright hopes which the fair young bride had of the future have been blasted and turned to bitterest gall; they cannot tell how many scalding tears the wives of drunkards have shed; they cannot tell how many mothers' hearts have been broken with grief as they saw a darling son become a drunkard; they cannot tell how many white hairs have gone down in sorrow to the grave mourning over drunken children; they cannot tell how many hard-fought battles the drunkard, in his sober moments, has fought with the terrible appetite; we cannot search the records of the world to tell how many souls have been shut out of

that holy place where no drunkard enters, banished to the regions of eternal despair by the demon drink.—Selected.