TURN we now to the town of Nuremberg, in Bavaria. The zeal with which Duke Albert, the sovereign of Bavaria, entered into the restoration of Roman Catholicism, we have already narrated. To further the movement, he provided every one of the chief towns of his dominions with a holy office, and the Inquisition of Nuremberg still remains—an anomalous and horrible monument in the midst of a city where the memorials of an exquisite art, and the creations of an unrivaled genius, meet one at every step. We shall first describe the Chamber of Torture.
The house so called immediately adjoins the Imperial Castle, which from its lofty site looks down on the city, whose Gothic towers, sculptured fronts, and curiously ornamented gables are seen covering both banks of the Pegnitz, which rolls below. The house may have been the guard-room of the castle. It derives its name, the Torture Chamber, not from the fact that the torture was here inflicted, but because into this one chamber has been collected a complete set of the instruments of torture gleaned from the various Inquisitions that formerly existed in Bavaria. A glance suffices to show the whole dreadful apparatus by which the adherents of Rome sought to maintain her dogmas. Placed next to the door, and greeting the sight as one enters, is a collection of hideous masks. These represent creatures monstrous of shape and malignant and fiendish of nature. It is in beholding them that we begin to perceive how subtle was the genius that devised this system of coercion, and that it took the mind as well as the body of the victim into account. In gazing on them, one feels as if he had suddenly come into polluting and debasing society, and had sunk to the same moral level with the creatures here figured before him. He suffers a conscious abatement of dignity and fortitude. The persecutor had calculated, doubtless, that the effect produced upon the mind of his victim by these dreadful apparitions, would be that he would become morally relaxed, and less able to sustain his cause. Unless of strong mind indeed, the unfortunate prisoner, on entering such a place, and seeing himself encompassed with such unearthly and hideous shapes, must have felt as if he were the vile heretic which the persecutor styled him, and as if already the infernal den had opened its portals, and sent forth its venomous swarms to bid him welcome. Yourself accursed, with accursed beings are you henceforth to dwell—such was the silent language of these abhorred images.
We pass on into the chamber, where more dreadful sights meet our gaze. It is hung round and round with instruments of torture, so numerous that it would take a long while even to name them, and so diverse that it would take a much longer time to describe them. We must take them in groups; for it were hopeless to think of going over them one by one, and particularizing the mode in which each operated, and the ingenuity and art with which all of them have been adapted to their horrible end. There were instruments for compressing the fingers till the bones should be squeezed to splinters. There were instruments for probing below the finger-nails till an exquisite pain, like a burning fire, would run along the nerves. There were instruments for tearing out the tongue, for scooping out the eyes, for grubbing up the ears. There were bunches of iron cords, with a spiked circle at the end of every whip, for tearing the flesh from the back till bone and sinew were laid bare. There were iron cases for the legs, which were tightened upon the limb placed in them by means of a screw, till flesh and bone were reduced to a jelly. There were cradles set full of sharp spikes, in which victims were laid and rolled from side to side, the wretched occupant being pierced at each movement of the machine with innumerable sharp points. There were iron ladles with long handles, for holding molten lead or boiling pitch, to be poured down the throat of the victim, and convert his body into a burning cauldron. There were frames with holes to admit the hands and feet, so contrived that the person put into them had his body bent into unnatural and painful positions, and the agony grew greater and greater by moments, and yet the man did not die. There were chestfuls of small but most ingeniously constructed instruments for pinching, probing, or tearing the more sensitive parts of the body, and continuing the pain up to the very verge where reason or life gives way. On the floor and walls of the apartment were other and larger instruments for the same fearful end—lacerating, mangling, and agonizing living men; but these we shall meet in other dungeons we are yet to visit.
The first impression on entering the chamber was one of bewildering horror; a confused procession of mangled, mutilated, agonizing men, speechless in their great woe, the flesh peeled from off their livid sinews, the sockets where eyes had been, hollow and empty, seemed to pass before one. The most dreadful scenes which the great genius of Dante has imagined, appeared tame in comparison with the spectral groups which this chamber summoned up. The first impulse was to escape, lest images of pain, memories of tormented men who were made to die a hundred deaths in one, should take hold of one's mind, never again to be effaced from it.
The things we have been surveying are not the mere models of the instruments made use of in the holy office; they are the veritable instruments themselves. We see before us the actual implements by which hundreds and thousands of men and women, many of them saints and confessors of the Lord Jesus, were torn, and mangled, and slain. These terrible realities the men of the sixteenth century had to face and endure, or renounce the hope of the life eternal. Painful they were to flesh and blood—nay, not even endurable by flesh and blood unless sustained by the Spirit of the mighty God.
We leave the Torture Chamber to visit the Inquisition proper. We go eastward about half a mile, keeping close to the northern wall of the city, till we come to an old tower, styled in the common parlance of Nuremberg the Max Tower. We pull the bell, the iron handle and chain of which are seen suspended beside the door-post. The cicerone appears, carrying a bunch of keys, a lantern, and some half-dozen candles. The lantern is to show us our way, and the candles are for the purpose of being lighted and stuck up at the turnings in the dark underground passages which we are about to traverse. Should mischance befall our lantern, these tapers, like beacon-lights in a narrow creek, will pilot us safely back into the day. The cicerone, selecting the largest from the bunch of keys, inserts it in the lock of the massy portal before which we stand, bolt after bolt is turned, and the door, with hoarse heavy groan as it turns on its hinge, opens slowly to us. We begin to descend. We go down one flight of steps; we go down a second flight; we descend yet a third. And now we pause a moment. The darkness is intense, for here never came the faintest glimmer of day; but a gleam thrown forward from the lantern showed us that we were arrived at the entrance of a horizontal, narrow passage. We could see, by the flickering of the light upon its sides and roof, that the corridor we were traversing was hewn out of the rock. We had gone only a few paces when we were brought up before a massy door. As far as the dim light served us, we could see the door, old, powdery with dust, and partly worm-eaten. Passing in, the corridor continued, and we went forward other three paces or so, when we found ourselves before a second door. We opened and shut it behind us as we did the first. Again we began to thread our way; a third door stopped us. We opened and closed it in like manner. Every step was carrying us deeper into the heart of the rock, and multiplying the barriers between us and the upper world. We were shut in with the thick darkness and the awful silence. We began to realize what must have been the feelings of some unhappy disciple of the gospel, surprised by the familiars of the holy office, led through the midnight streets of Nuremberg, conducted to Max Tower, led down flight after flight of stairs, and along this horizontal shaft in the rock, and at every few paces a massy door, with its locks and bolts, closing behind him! He must have felt how utterly he was beyond the reach of human pity and human aid. No cry, however piercing, could reach the ear of man through these roofs of rock. He was entirely in the power of those who had brought him thither.
At last we came to a side door in the narrow passage. We halted, applied the key, and the door, with its ancient mould, creaking harshly as if moving on a hinge long disused, opened to let us in. We found ourselves in a rather roomy chamber, it might be about twelve feet square. This was the Chamber of Question. Along one side of the apartment ran a low platform. There sat of old the Inquisitors, three in number—the first a divine, the second a casuist, and the third a civilian. The only occupant of that platform was the crucifix, or image of the Saviour on the cross, which still remained. The six candles that usually burned before the "holy fathers" were, of course, extinguished; but our lantern supplied their place, and showed us the grim furnishings of the apartment. In the middle was the horizontal rack, or bed of torture, on which the victim was stretched till bone started from bone, and his dislocated frame became the seat of agony which was suspended only when it had reached a pitch that threatened death.
Leaning against the wall of the chamber was the upright rack, which is simpler, but as an instrument of torture not less effectual, than the horizontal one. There was the iron chain which wound over a pulley, and hauled up the victim to the vaulted roof; and there were the two great stone weights which, tied to his feet, and the iron cord let go, brought him down with a jerk that dislocated his limbs, while the spiky rollers, which he grazed in his descent, cut into and excoriated his back, leaving his body a bloody, dislocated mass.
Here, too, was the cradle of which we have made mention above, amply garnished within with cruel knobs, on which the sufferer, tied hand and foot, was thrown at every movement of the machine, to be bruised all over, and brought forth discolored, swollen, bleeding, but still living.
All around, ready to hand, were hung the minor instruments of torture. There were screws and thumbkins for the fingers, spiked collars for the neck, iron boots for the legs, gags for the mouth, cloths to cover the face, and permit the slow percolation of water, drop by drop, down the throat of the person undergoing this form of torture. There were rollers set round with spikes, for bruising the arms and back; there were iron scourges, pincers, and tongs for tearing out the tongue, slitting the nose and ears, and otherwise disfiguring and mangling the body till it was horrible and horrifying to look upon it. There were other things of which an expert only could tell the name and the use. Had these instrument a636tongue, and could the history of this chamber be written, how awful the tale!
We shall suppose that all this has been gone through; that the confessor has been stretched on the bed of torture; has been gashed, broken, mangled, and yet, by power given him from above, has not denied his Saviour; he has been "tortured not accepting deliverance;" what further punishment has the holy office in reserve for those from whom its torments have failed to extort a recantation? These dreadful dungeons furnish us with the means of answering this question.
We return to the narrow passage, and go forward a little way. Every few paces there comes a door, originally strong and massy, and garnished with great iron knobs, but now old and mouldy, and creaking, when opened, with a noise painfully loud in the deep stillness. The windings are numerous, but at every turning of the passage a lighted candle is placed, lest peradventure the way should be missed, and the road back to the living world be lost forever. A few steps are taken downwards, very cautiously, for a lantern can barely show the ground. Here there is a vaulted chamber, entirely dug out of the living rock, except the roof, which is formed of hewn stone. It contains an iron image of the Virgin; and on the opposite wall, suspended by an iron hook, is a lamp, which when lighted shows the goodly proportions of "our lady." On the instant of touching a spring, the image flings open its arms, which resemble the doors of a cupboard, and which are seen to be stuck full on the inside with poniards, each about a foot in length. Some of these knives are so placed as to enter the eyes of those whom the image enfolded in its embrace, others are set so as to penetrate the ears and brain, others to pierce the breast, and others again to gore the abdomen.
The person who had passed through the terrible ordeal of the Question-Chamber, but had made no recantation, would be led along the tortuous passage by which we had come, and ushered into this vault, where the first object that would greet his eye, the pale light of the lamp falling on it, would be the iron Virgin. He would be bidden to stand right in front of the image. The spring would be touched by the executioner—the Virgin would fling open her arms, and the wretched victim would straightway be forced within them. Another spring was then touched—the Virgin closed upon her victim; a strong wooden beam, fastened at one end to its wall by a movable joint, the other placed against the doors of the iron image, was worked by a screw, and as the beam was pushed out, the spiky arms of the Virgin slowly but irresistibly closed upon the man, cruelly goring him.
When the dreadful business was ended, it needed not that the executioner should put himself to the trouble of making the Virgin unclasp the mangled carcass of her victim; provision had been made for its quick and secret disposal. At the touching of a third spring, the floor of the image would slide aside, and the body of the victim drop down the mouth of a perpendicular shaft in the rock. We look down this pit, and can see, at a great depth, the shimmer of water. A canal had been made to flow underneath the vault where stood the iron Virgin; and when she had done her work upon those who were delivered over to her tender mercies, she let them fall, with quick descent, and sullen plunge, into the canal underneath, where they were floated to the Pegnitz, and from the Pegnitz to the Rhine, and by the Rhine to the ocean, there to sleep beside the dust of Huss and Jerome.—Rev. J. A. Wylie, in History of Protestantism.
Good-bye, Tobacco.
By L. D. Santee
A TRUE STORY, BY L. D. SANTEE.
THE afternoon sun was casting long, slanting shadows, and deepening the gloom in the forests, when the 4:30 passenger train stopped at the little station of B—, up in the hills of Vermont.
Two girls, Clara and May, aged fourteen and eleven, were watching eagerly the few passengers who were alighting.
"There's Willie, there's Willie!" cried the youngest, as a bright boy of seventeen sprang lightly to the platform. In another moment he was clasping their hands and kissing their pleased faces. He had been for some months a clerk in one of the large mercantile houses in the city of Manchester, and this was his first home-coming.
Now, to explain why he left home. Mr. Gray had lived all his life, as had his father before him, on the seventy acres of poor land that constituted the old homestead. Here he was married, and here Willie, his oldest, first saw the light.
In an evil hour he was compelled to mortgage the old farm for $200, and afterward had found it very difficult to make it out of the soil, in addition to the expense of living. The soil, never the best, had been worn by fifty years tilling, until it yielded a meager support to the farmer.
As long as the interest was paid promptly, Mr. Philipps was pleased to extend the mortgage, and this was all that Mr. Gray had been able to do.
At last affliction came, in the death of Mr. Gray; and his wife was left, with her three children, to support her family and pay off the mortgage on the sterile old farm. Aunt Clara Russell, a milliner in the town a mile distant, and an old friend of the family, hired her board of the Widow Gray, as she was now called, and walked back and forth morning and evening, ostensibly because she liked exercise, really to help her friends in their poverty. They had tried farming the preceding year, and Mrs. Gray confessed with tears that the mortgage could never be paid in that way.
She looked over the old place with its endearing associations,—father's and mother's graves up there in the east side of the orchard; the little church whose spire gleamed so white over the hill and where she was married; then her glance rested on the old barn, where, in their nests of mud under the eaves, the swallows reared their young, and, with their twitterings, enlivened the long bright days of summer; here was the old well with its mossy curb and its old-time sweep,—every object was hallowed by sweet memories, and her heart was heavy indeed as she thought of leaving her home and going into the cold world to struggle for bread.
She had many conferences with Aunt Clara; but, though her heart was warm and tender, she too was poor, and a warm sympathy was all she could offer. However, she succeeded in interesting a friend in Willie, who procured him a place in the city with wages sufficient to make it an object. He had gone in March, and now, in October, made his first visit home. What wonder that the sisters rejoiced, and clasped their brother's hands so lovingly!
He was but little changed. True, he was taller, and his face thinner; but the same eyes and the same yellow, curling hair made the other changes of time unnoticed.
May, especially, had much to tell, of the chickens she had raised, of her cunning little kittens, of the pot-pie mamma was making for supper, and the hundred and one things that, to her, were interesting.
Clara was more quiet. When she found opportunity, she asked anxiously, "Have you saved anything to pay on the mortgage?"
A cloud came over her brother's smiling face, and he answered rather impatiently, "Clara, you don't know anything about city life. I haven't got ten dollars." Then, seeing the pain in his sister's face, he added more hopefully, "I stand a good chance of promotion, and that means increase of pay. If Philipps will only wait on us for a couple of years, we shall be independent."
Clara made no reply, but the trouble in her face deepened. She well knew her brother's sanguine disposition, and thought that it might cause them to lose their home.
It is not necessary to describe the meeting between mother and son. Mrs. Gray resolved to make Willie's week of freedom as happy as possible. True, she was troubled when he told her that he had saved nothing; but she was not a practical woman, and as he told her of his prospects of receiving an increase of salary, she was satisfied in regard to the future.
Ah, what a week that was,—visiting old friends, and at night to be tucked into that little white bedroom under the eaves, and to listen to the rustle of the old elm in front, whose leaves made a music like the sea! And, best of all, mother would come in in the evening, and such good talks as they would have, often lasting late into the night.
One thing troubled Mrs. Gray: Willie had taken to smoking. But upon his representing to her that it was necessary for him to be popular with the boys in the store if he desired promotion, she accepted it with a sigh, as rather a necessary evil.
Aunt Clara was very kind, and Willie felt very regretful when the morning dawned of his last day at home. Aunt Clara didn't go to the shop that morning, but busied herself in her own room. She felt a deep interest in the son of her old friend, and she resolved that before he should go away she would make an earnest effort to free him from the filthy habit that was enslaving him. After breakfast she sent a tiny note to the sitting-room, requesting the pleasure of Mr. Gray's company for a little while in her room.
Willie felt pleased and honored, for it sounded manly to be called "Mr.," and he soon rapped at her door. After a pleasant chat of a few minutes, Aunt Clara put on a business air and said:—
"Well, Mr. Gray, now let us talk business. How long have you been in the store?"
"Just six months," answered Willie promptly.
"And your wages?"
"Thirty dollars per month," said he, taking a small memoranda from his pocket.
"Ah!" said Aunt Clara pleasantly, "that makes quite a large sum; six times thirty is one hundred and eighty; but of course you have expenses to deduct."
For answer, he opened his book and pointed to his list of expenses. One month's account ran as follows, and it was on an average with the rest:—
Month's wages..................$30 00
Board..........................$12 00
Clothing purchased............. 5 00
Washing........................ 1 00
One supper..................... 4 00
Cigars......................... 4 00
Miscellaneous.................. 1 50—$27 50
Balance on hand,................$2 50
Aunt Clara studied the account for some time. Finally she handed it back, and asked, "When does the mortgage mature?"
"Ten months from to-day," answered Willie gravely.
"At this rate you will have about twenty-five dollars to pay it. Hardly enough, Willie?"
He shook his head sadly. At last he said,—
"We must get an extension of time."
"And if Mr. Philipps refuses to grant this, you will lose your home."
Willie nodded, while a startled expression overspread his features. He had not thought of the matter in this light.
"The mortgage is for two hundred dollars, I believe. Now you had better expect the worst and prepare for it. The interest has been paid in advance, so the amount at maturity will be only two hundred dollars. Your mother, if she is prospered, can raise fifty dollars, but that will be the utmost that she can do. That will leave one hundred and fifty for you to raise, or else the place belongs to Mr. Philipps. Now let us see if we can lessen your expenses. The dear old place is worth some self-denial, don't you think so?"
"I do," responded Willie heartily.
Aunt Clara again took the book and read slowly:—
"'Board, per month, $12.' That is necessary. 'Clothing, $5.00; perhaps you can save some here. Washing, $1.00; supper, $4.00.' Here is a big leak. And I see by your memoranda that when it is not 'supper' it is some other pleasure equally expensive. In ten months there would be a waste of forty dollars. 'Cigars, $4.00'—forty dollars more. Over one-half what you have to raise to save your home."
"But, Aunt Clara," said the boy, rather confusedly, "one has to be on good terms with the rest of the clerks."
"My dear boy," said Aunt Clara very earnestly, "could you lose the dear old home that shelters your mother and sisters for the good will of young men that care very little about you? Can you not call to mind any for whom you have a warm regard only those who are smokers? True friendship does not need to be cemented with tobacco smoke. Do cigars make you purer or better, or fit you any better for the duties of your place?"
"No; I must admit that it is no particular help."
"Then be sure," she continued, "their disuse will not stand in the way of your promotion. Besides," she added rather archly, "after you redeem the place, you can send home a box of cigars for Clara and May to smoke, and perhaps your mother would enjoy a cigar as she moves about the kitchen."
Willie's face was scarlet, and he shook his head without speaking.
"Willie," said Aunt Clara, again resuming637her earnest way of speaking, "either tobacco or the farm must go. Like all snares of the devil, the filthy habit you have taken up will grow stronger year by year. Soon to the desire to be popular will be added a craving for the stimulus that tobacco affords. I call it filthy, because it places you below your pure-lipped mother and sisters. You think with disgust of your sisters smoking. Is it any worse for Clara than for her brother? Is it any worse for your mother than for her son? Then think of this old house being lost, a sacrifice to tobacco!"
For some time the boy sat very still. The habit had taken a stronger hold upon him than he was before aware of.
"But even if I should economize, we couldn't raise all," said he, helplessly.
"If you save all you can," was the reply, "you will have over one hundred dollars by the time you need it. Then, if necessary, you can sell your cow and pay the rest."
The conflict was severe, but at last he said, looking up with a smile, "Good-bye, tobacco, now and forever."
Aunt Clara came over and kissed him, and taking a small watch from her bosom, said, "Let this be a token of my affection for you, and a reminder of your noble resolve." Willie's lip quivered, and he could not trust his voice to speak, as he turned and left the room.
The cow had to be sold; but the place was saved, and Willie has long since replaced the cow. But the grandest, happiest day of his life was when he took up the mortgage. He said to Aunt Clara, while the glad tears stood in his eyes, "Tobacco went, but we saved the farm."
The Home Circle.
THE OLD-FASHIONED HOUSE.
Of all the tender and comfortable things
That now and then sweet memory brings,
There's nothing dearer that love recalls
Than the old-fashioned house with its whitewashed walls.
Not a mansion to-day, though a marvel of art,
Can ever usurp its place in my heart;
For there my earliest prayers were said,
And I slept at night in a trundle bed,
'Neath coverlids reaching from feet to chin,
By a mother's hand tucked gently in,
And a good-night kiss on my tired brow—
Oh, earth holds no such blessing now!
A garden was fragrant in flowery beds,
Where marigolds lifted their velvet heads,
And, warmed by sunshine, refreshed by dew,
The bachelor-button and touch-me-not grew.
In a river that curved like a shepherd's crook,
We fished for minnows with bent-pin hook,
Or with little bare feet oft waded through,
And bravely "paddled our own canoe."
'Twas a home of welcome no one could doubt,
Whose latch-string hung invitingly out;
And many a stranger supped at its board
While blazing logs in the chimney roared.
Oh! this is an age of reform and change;
And things æsthetic, modern, and strange—
Improvements that savor of silver and gold—
Are superseding the cherished and old.
But I turn from palaces built for show,
With mansard roofs and stories below
Of frescoed, kalsomined, dadoed halls,
To the old-fashioned house with its whitewashed walls.
—The Budget.
Alcohol Poisonous.
By Dio Lewis
We put a drop of alcohol into a man's eye. It poisons it. We try it upon the lining of a living stomach. Again it poisons it. We study the stomachs of drinking men, and find that alcohol produces, in regular stages, redness, intense congestion, morbid secretions, deeper hurt, destruction of parts, utter ruin. We study its influence upon the health and strength of sailors and soldiers, and find it helps to freeze them in the arctic regions and exhaust them in the tropics. We watch two regiments on a long march in India, one with and the other without grog, and are driven to the conclusion that even moderate quantities of alcohol weaken the muscles and break the endurance. We visit the training ground of oarsmen, pedestrians, and prize-fighters, and learn everywhere the same lesson,—alcohol is a poison to muscle and brain.—Dio Lewis's Nuggets.
Do Your Best.
A GENTLEMAN once said to a physician, "I should think that at night you would feel so worried over the work of the day that you would not be able to sleep."
"My head hardly touches the pillow, when I fall asleep," replied the physician. "I made up my mind," he continued, "at the commencement of my professional career, to do my best under all circumstances; and, so doing, I am not troubled by any misgivings."
A good rule for us to follow. Too many are disposed to say: "No matter how I do this work now; next time I'll do better." The practice is as bad as the reasoning. "No matter how I learn this lesson in the lower class; when I get into a higher department, then I'll study." As well might the mother in knitting stockings say: "No matter how the tip is done; even if I do drop a stitch now and then, I'll do better when I get further along." What kind of a stocking would that be?
As well might the builder say: "I don't care how I make the foundation of this house; anything will do here. Wait till I get to the top, then I'll do good work."
Said Sir Joshua Reynolds once to Dr. Samuel Johnson, "Pray tell me, sir, by what means have you attained such extraordinary accuracy and flow of language in the expression of your ideas?"
"I laid it down as a fixed rule," replied the doctor, "to do my best on every occasion, and in every company to impart what I know in the most forcible language I can put it."—The Wellspring.
The Evils of Skating Rinks
CHIEF MCKANE, of Coney Island, said not long since that nine out of every ten cases of social demoralization which comes before him were attributable to the skating rinks. The admissions of the parties brought before the court are to the same effect. The indictment against this, at first seemingly harmless amusement, grows terribly condemnatory.—Chicago Standard.
SIN begins in the heart. If you keep your thoughts pure, your life will be blameless.
Health and Temperance.
One View of the Matter.
I WAS lecturing out in Kansas last spring, where they have prohibition. An intemperate man came to me and said:—
"Yes, Mr. Perkins, this prohibition will bring ruin to the State."
"It will, will it?"
"Yes; it will impoverish us and destroy our business houses."
"Now let's see about this, my friend," I said. "Let's examine this a little."
"If a Kansas farmer brings a thousand bushels of corn into Topeka, he gets how much for it?"
"Four hundred dollars," answered my friend. "Now, if they take this thousand bushels of corn over to Peoria, how much whisky will it make?"
"Four thousand gallons."
"And this whisky is worth—how much?"
"O, after they have paid $4,000 revenue tax on it to the other 36 States, it will be worth about $4,600."
"And if this whisky should come back to Kansas you would have to pay about $4,600 for it?"
"Yes, more too. We'd have to pay about $5,000 for it."
"Would it be worth anything to your citizens?"
"No; I suppose it would cause a good deal of idleness and crime. It would hurt us. I never did think whisky a positive benefit. I—"
"Well, how much would it hurt you?" I asked.
"O, I can't tell. I—"
"Well, I'll tell you," I said. "It will hurt you directly about $5,000 worth. You would sell the corn from which this whisky is made for $400, and then buy back the whisky for $5,000. You would be directly out of pocket just $4,600. And, indirectly, it would cost Kansas, in idleness and crime—caused by the 4,000 gallons of whisky—about $20,000. It would take 16,000 men a day apiece to drink it up, if they drank a quart a day each. The loss of 16,000 days' labor to Kansas would be $20,000, wouldn't it?"
"I declare!" exclaimed my friend, "I never heard it put in that way. I see it all plainly now. I'll never say anything about prohibition damaging Kansas again."
"Yes," I said, "if Kansas can save $25,000 on every thousand bushels of corn by letting it go over to Peoria, the more she is damaged that way the richer she will become, till finally Illinois, utterly impoverished, will have to call on Kansas to lend her money to build poor-houses. But there is one thing in Kansas," I said, "that will be ruined by prohibition."
"What is that?" asked my friend.
"Why, her poor-houses. Your poor-houses and jails will become empty. Think of a poor-house with not a soul in it but the poor master! Think of a jail without a convict—poor bankrupt-jail and poor-house!"—Christian Standard.
Sleeplessness.
Druggists tell us that there is a growing demand for various medicines and preparations containing opiates in one shape or another. People wreck their nervous systems by injudicious habits of life, and the result is unsound sleep, dyspepsia, and countless other evils. A little advice to such persons may not be out of place. They should of course be careful to abandon that method of life which brings them into physical disorder. Their complaint may be fed by tobacco; narcotics should be avoided. One cause of their trouble may be that they take insufficient outdoor exercise. Perhaps they drink too much tea or coffee, or eat too much flesh meat. There are a thousand practices allowed by convention which are in themselves harmful and prejudicial to the health.
The quality of sleep may be improved by diminishing the length of time spent in bed. A hot shower bath at bed-time cleanses the skin and predisposes to sleep. Many a toiling business or literary man goes to bed tired and worn out, only to toss from one side to another. His brain is hot and full of blood, while his feet are cold. He thinks over again the thoughts that have been engaging his attention during the day, or does over again the business that has called forth his energies for twelve or sixteen hours past. His night is a round of tossing to and fro. Is there any wonder that, failing to find out what is the true and natural remedy for his pains, he resorts to opiates, which he knows will give him temporary relief?
There is one sure and safe way to remedy his pains. If, after leaving work, he would take a brisk walk of a mile or two before going to bed, and then, after the walk, would hold his head under a stream of cold water, he would find relief—that is, supposing he does this when he is first troubled with sleepless nights. But no; if he lives half a mile or more from his work, he takes a car home, and, throwing off his clothes, goes to bed as quickly as possible.
The want of balance between mental and physical labor is a fruitful cause of sleeplessness. Many a business man, whose duties keep him in an office all day, would improve his health a great deal if he were to fit up his attic as a carpenter's shop and spend an hour therein after supper. This of course would be beneficial only if he happened to have a liking for mechanics; then he would find his occupation afforded him amusement, mental occupation, and muscular effort in just the proper proportions.—Herald of Health.
The Harmful Habits of Society
WHAT is to become of us? With the morphine habit making a host of liars; the quinine habit, a ghostly band of nerveless, would-be suicides; the tobacco habit giving us a tendency to cancer, and what not; the whisky habit taking people by crooked ways to early graves; the money habit filling the country with avaricious speculators, thieves, and bank-robbers; the office-seeking habit turning honest people away from honest work to getting an office,—it does seem that we are generally in a bad way.—Columbia (S. C.) Register.
The Legitimate Fruit of the Dram Shop
By Gough
SEE the results of this traffic in its true colors, placed so full and fair before you that the very youngest cannot err in their decision. A liquor-seller had a tavern undergoing repairs. One day a boy came running to his mother, crying out, "Mother, mother!" "What is it, my boy?" "Mr. Poole's tavern is finished, mother." "How do you know, my dear?" inquired the mother. "Why, I saw a man come out drunk!" That is the legitimate fruit of the dram shop.—Gough.