"THE CURSED LIQUOR STORES!"
When the poor heart-broken wife of the murdered Anton, who had been stabbed to the heart by the drunken brute Murphy, a few days before, heard the news of her husband's death, she exclaimed, "Oh! the liquor stores, the cursed liquor stores!" If we only reflect on the feelings of the wretched woman as she contemplated her butchered husband, brought to a bloody grave by rum, we should shrink back in horror from the evils and misfortunes produced by liquor. Rum is the most powerful agent the devil has on earth, and to it may be traced mostly all the crimes, murders, and debaucheries which disgrace society, and convert this beautiful world of ours into a veritable hell. Like the devil himself, it is the father of all evils, and more souls have been lost through its agency than from all other causes combined. We ask, is it not rum that has filled our prisons with criminals, our poor-houses with paupers, our streets with fallen women, and our asylums with lunatics? As soon as rum enters a household the devil goes with it, and there is neither peace, happiness, nor prosperity in that family again. Its inmates become wretched, vile drunkards, going about in rags, hunger, and nakedness, until they wind up in prison or the poor-house, while the rum-seller who supplies them with the fatal poison, keeps his fast horses, and most likely his—we won't write the word. What a fearful responsibility rests upon those who sell whisky, for is it not written, "Woe be to him by whom scandal cometh?" The Lord God has emphatically declared that neither the drunkard nor the fornicator shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. How this terrible sentence should make drunkards tremble. Are they willing to burn in the flames of hell in order to gratify a beastly passion for a few years on earth? If so, let them drink and be merry; if not, let them dash from their lips the wretched cup so brimful of tears, crime, and perdition. Remember the cry of poor Mrs. Anton: "Oh, the liquor stores, the cursed liquor stores!"—New York Tablet.