INTEMPERANCE by Alice Leota Noyes

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 45.

INTEMPERANCE.

By Alice Leota Noyes

How MANY men we meet on the journey of life who are daily pursuing the course of intemperance! How many forms of grace and beauty have been turned to ugliness! How many fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons have been ruined! How many wives' hearts have been broken! How many homes have been made desolate! How many souls have been lost! How many men there are who once walked the earth with a manly tread, whose lives were once marked with integrity, but today are ruined inebriates! If it were not for drink, they would be a comfort to their families and a credit to society. O, how dreadful is the path of intemperance! O, the want, misery, and wo that mark its every step!

The young man who begins by taking "an occasional glass" with a friend, never thinks he will become a reeling, bloated drunkard. But day by day the habit grows upon him; deeper and deeper he goes down into the depths of misery, till he has no power to retrace his steps, and at last death claims him, and he goes, like thousands of others, to face, in the great day of God, the drunkard's doom.

Young man, beware of the saloon. Beware of strong drink. It makes the strong man weak. It makes the wise man a fool. It kindles strife and hate. It whets the murderer's knife. It drains the purse. It brings disease and disgrace and death. It makes this world a hell. The only safety for any man, no matter how strong his resolution, is outside the saloon, is total abstinence.

Alice Leota Noyes. Corliss, Quebec, Canada.