TEMPERANCE REFORM. 57 time is not afar off when the moral, religious, social and economic condition of the Christian world will be perfect-a new and truly Christian order as perfect and harmonious in all its relative parts, and in its movements and operations, as is a modern gigantic printing press that automatically prints, folds, trims and pastes together the several parts of a periodical of many pages, three and four copies per second-yes, faster than one can count. YE 31ST LESSON. Temperance Reform. Reform! What does it mean? Replacing, for a worse, a better. Throwing away the sickle, cradle and scythe, and using in their stead the McCormick reaper and mower, is reform. Giving up the spinning-wheel for the spinning-jenny and the old for the new methods of weaving, is reform. So, too, steam and electricity, substituted for horses and oxen in transportation, is reform. Reform has been accomplished in every line of production until one man, by the aid of machinery, does the work of a hundred men of a century ago. Reform has come in on other lines, but not so rapidly because of the opposition of moneyed interests affected. Especially is this true of temperance reform, which aims to substitute sobriety for drunkenness. Great has been the gain, however, in spite of the drawback of greed. The sale of intoxicating liquors is prohibited by public opinion enacted into law in counties and states of the Union aggregating a population of thirty millions. Even no farther back than 1830 all men drank intoxicants, not excepting the clergy and church members. Now, neither drink. And I think that more than one-half of the non-church members are tetotalers. In 1830, both men and women used tobacco. Now, only men. This is the rule. The exceptions are few outside of whitechapel districts. No self-respecting woman indulges in the tobacco or cigarette habit in our country; while the liquor evil is mostly confined to beer guzzling. The stronger drinks are not so much in demand. And the great corporations, that employ millions of men, notably railroad corporations, have turned against the employment of drinkers. He is unwise who will hereafter invest money in establishing breweries or distilleries in the United States, North or South, East or West. believe a half century hence they will all have run their course, been closed and utterly done away, as now they have been and are in several states of our Union. And by A. D. 2000 tobacco will cease to be cultivated, for no one will then poison his physical being with it. I Why have I these beliefs? Because of the intellectual advancement-the higher civilization that is right now at our doors. Men will have learned better than to persist in doing what unfits them for life's duties, destroys their happiness and that of all who love them and are dear to them, and shortens their own lives. It is amazing to see those vices, so general now-especially the disgusting, filthy and harmful tobacco vice. Men of highest standing, as were General Grant and Major McKinley, shortening their days by the excessive use of tobacco! It was the direct cause of the dreadful disease that produced ex-President Grant's death; and physicians have given out that, if President McKinley had never so poisoned his blood for years smoking the strongest cigars excessively, he would in all probability have recovered from his wound. My eldest son, severely wounded in the Rhodesian native rebellion in South Africa, recovered from his wounds after only six weeks' confinement in the Salisbury hospital. He wrote me: "I am sure that having never poisoned my blood with tobacco or alcohol is the cause of my speedy recovery." So all men will come soon to see that what are so injurious and of no benefit, as are alcohol and tobacco; so expensive and so degrading; so outlandish and so filthy in their effects-must be dumped into the garbage ravine, and forever buried from the sight, and cast out from even the memory of civilized men. It will be done. It will soon be a matter of great pride for the young man to say: "I have never defiled my being by making a swill-tub of my stomach and a stink-pot of my mouth. I eat and drink only what will make good blood, not what will poison it. Rather than the wrong pursue YE 32ND LESSON. Life Worth Living. The only life worth living is a life of usefulness. The life of a true mother is worth living. Her children when young love and obey her; when grown up, adore her. She has no other thought but of her home, husband and little ones, and her duty to God. A mother has no time to spare away from her home and hearthstone. She doesn't go out to come home and find her house burned and her little ones ashes and red-hot coals among the blazing ruins. She stays right with them. Her life is worth living for the good she does. When her sons and daughters are old and their locks gray they remember their mother. They would be buried by her side. The life of a true father is worth living. He has no other thought but of home, wife, little ones, country and God-especially the bringing up and education of his children. He is what he wants his sons to be. His life is the "light" of his sons as the life of the Master whom he serves, is the "light of men." He attends the school-meetings, visits the school, encourages the teachers. His religion is to do good-make the world better. He gives every institution designed for good his "God-speed." "Every man may help on the world's advance. See the progress since I was a boy," he says. "How did it come about? By the work of men-hundreds and thousands of them whose lives were worth living. Each did a little-some more, some less-for the world's betterment." He that does nothing to help the world to a higher good-his life is not worth living. Yes, it is said of Jesus: "In Him was life, and the life (of Him) was the light of men." His life, brief as it was, was worth living. Don't count your life worth living because of the bad whisky you have consumed and tobacco and other poisonous drugs to the grief and shame of your parents, wife and the community in which you live, though you think you have had a "good time." A "good time" (if you had one) is not the measure of success in life. but what good you have done. You can do good right here and every day. See this poor, old woman dragging a dog-cart through the mud. laden with clothes for her washing. Take hold and help her pui the cart. The ten cents you spent for the cigar you are defiling your mouth with would better have been given for a couple of loaves of bread to feed the poor widow's starving children. To have done that would give you real satisfaction. There is where true happiness is found. Try it. THE HOME OF THE PRUDENT. 59 One doesn't have to go to the Cannibal Islands as a missionary to find work to do in that line. Jesus found, right on the streets of the Great City of Jerusalem, opportunity to do missionary work, and he didn't have to go to the slum-quarters to find it either. Hear Him: "Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites!" (Mat. xxiii.) You might find missionary work to do among preachers and schoolteachers. Why so many boys forming bad habits? Somebody is blamable for this-somebody who has the instruction of boys in hand. The Salvation Army lassie does not wait for sinners to come to hear her exhort and sing. She goes out after them. When the mountain did not come to Mohammed, Mohammed went to the mountain. It is about time somebody became interested in the work of gathering in the lost sheep and lambs. Not half the people go out to hear the preachers. What is commanded? "Go into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind.' (Luke xiv: 21.) If you see a man on the street making a fool of himself stop and tell him so. If a boy smoking a cigarette, box his ears and send him home, or, rather, go along with him to his home and tell his parents why you brought their son to a halt. They will thank you for it. YE 33RD LESSON. The Home of the Prudent. The most important institution among men is the home. "Be it ever so humble" is a bad phrase, for a home is never humble. The negro's one-roomed cabin in the South, with his many children about the door is not humble. It is grand! A great man art thou who doeth the best for God and country that the environment will permit and who taketh to thyself in thy youth a loving wife. How was it in our grandfather's day? A cabin in the woods. Not a piece of furniture in the house that was not homemade-made by the husband with axe and auger. And the house itself was built by the same hands with the same tools. And not a garment was worn by husband or wife that was not homemade. In a cabin like this, and under like conditions, was Abraham Lincoln born! Can we bring back those days of primitive grandeur?-days of love, joy and equality! Yes. In what way? By taking the right view of things. She is a foolish wife and mother who thinks of the callers thinks to gain admiration for appearance of things. She should think only of convenience and what is best for the children. Nothing should be too fine or nice for freedom; that is to say, the house should not be a band-box, but a park or wild-wood where children may be free to play at will. The home belongs to the home people especially the little people. Build the home to fit them, not fetter them to fit the home. The old-time log-cabin in the woods with coon skins tacked against the outer wall is better for the children than a Vanderbilt palace on Fifth avenue. Water never has seemed to taste from a silver cup half so sweet to me as from a gourd in the old cabin home of my parents. The efforts to be gods and not men are vain. They defeat the true objects of life. Build for comfort and convenience and not for display. Give the children the first consideration. Those who have the (so-called) "best homes" have no place for children. They are an inconvenience-an incumbrance-and always in the way. The finer the home, the fewer the children. So are luxury and high living only canker and rot. They are decay and not growth, decadence and not advancement, and death will follow ours as it did the Roman civilization if this evil be not put an end to. 50 THE DAILY PRESS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. working sordidly to "make money?" Scandalous! thing. It is a shame! Do not think such a No man will, in a truly civilized era, work for any other motive but the common good. It will then be the pride of each to make the greatest personal sacrifices for the common weal. He that can die for the common good-can give his life on the scaffold-to advance the world's glory will gladly embrace the opportunity. The aim will be to give, and not to get; to bestow and not to receive; to sacrifice and not to grow rich. "Take up your cross and follow me." That is the true doctrine of civilization. That is the true political economy. On Jesus Christ will rest the new civilization. "Be like Christ"-the new religion. "Go about doing good"-the occupation of each. How many men today make it the end and object of existence to do as Christ did? How many are as indifferent as he was to their own personal well-being, speaking from the social standpoint? Of course, our own personal well-being is most enhanced the least we covet for self. It is best for us when we know nothing but duty and want nothing but the opportunity to be offered on the altar-to be lifted up as Christ was ilfted up. What is life? Nothing but a space for well doing. But long life—if it had been of necessity for the greatest good Jesus would not have died at the age of thirty-three. He would have lived to be a centennarian at least. It is not how long we live. It is only how we live. Whoever falters is lost. We must go right forward to win the victory. "Cannon to right of them, Volleyed and thundered." So it is all along through life. We must go forward. Having begun this essay with a quotation from Ruskin I will close it with another from the same writer. He says in his lecture entitled "Work": "There will always be a number of men who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect and more or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts, as physically impossible as for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. We do great injustice to Iscariot in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He was only a common money-lover and like all money-lovers, didn't understand Christ. Couldn't make out the worth of him, the meaning of him." YE 26TH LESSON. The Daily Press and the Public Schools. The influence of the pulpit is growing less and there is no other moral mentor to take its place. The two factors that ought to be the conservators and upbuilders of public morality are the free public school and the daily press; but they are not so. Tradition stands in the way of both. Under the old regime the church through the grand and unselfish agency of priests, monks and nuns was the upbuilder of all that was good and the unrelenting foe of all that was evil. No words in our language can adequately express the admirable worth and sublime worthiness of those men and women, separated from all that is most fascinating to the common mind and devoted alone to doing good in obedience to the divine will. Influenced by no motive but to make the world the better for their living in it they were the granite foundation of society. Now society is built upon sand. Where THE DAILY PRESS AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 51 is to be found one public teacher who is not moved solely by the love of money? Who are the public instructors at the summer Chautauquas? And for what end are the Chautauquas instituted? The one end only, viz.: money-making. Who are the chief attractions? The Tillmans! Who are chosen superintendents of our public free schools? Young men professionals attracted solely by salary. In moral ideals they stand not a whit above the common professional level of lawyers, judges, etc., who are "in the swim" reaching after the dollar; but in moral accountability have no more conception of their duty to the young are no more exemplary-than a Sioux Indian; are as low down in moral stamina as the lowest savage of the forest or plain. Supreme judges walk the streets of the city with lighted cigars protruding from their befouled lips and the superintendent of the schools of the capital city of Iowa uses that fact as an argument to prove that the tobacco habit is not an evil, at the same time that the law of the state pronounces it an evil and compels the teachers of the schools to instruct the youth that the nicotine drug (tobacco) is a poison and the use of it a dreadful vice; and in our highest literature we are instructed that it is a horrible curse, and so instructed, too, by the grandest and most exemplary writers-instance Madam Hyacinthe Loyson who, in her wonderful book, entitled "To Jerusalem Through the Lands of Islam," says: "The whole world-Christianity, Israel, Islam, Paganism and savagery, are all victims of perverted appetite (the old vice of Adam) and through deplorable ignorance of the universal poisoning of the human race by nicotine. Tobacco affects the moral, civil, domestic and religious life by its direct action upon brain and heart-troubling alike reason and affection-the two factors of conscience-lowering its action and, therefore, lowering manhood. The different mentality and consumption of tobacco by the different races explain the different effects. Orientals given to meditation rather than action, smoke double the quantity of tobacco compared to the robust, active Occidental; but his poisonous weed often contains less than one per cent of nicotine, while that of the Occident, America and France, often contains seven per cent. Chemical extraction of three of these "best cigars" will kill a man. "The striking effect of tobacco is the obliteration of moral perceptions, the diminution of natural affection, the failure to discern between colors, but far more grave, the failure to discern between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, love and passion, righteous ambition and rapacity and domination. Given as the first fruits of the tobacco vice is the disobedience of parents and law, lying, stealing, revolt, ruined health, blindness, ataxy, sterility, debauchery, war murder. "Any one can verify these statements by personal observation of their immediate surroundings (not forgetting hereditary inoculation) in hospitals, courts and prisons. "I have," she says, "studied these questions carefully for over half a century in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and I am convinced that the use of tobacco is the principal cause of the degeneracy of the race, as it is above all others the vice against nature, taking fire with its fumes and its poison into the human body, thereby profaning the temple of the Holy Spirit." What a grand position the daily press occupies; but how, for the love of money, it is actually the instigator and promoter of vice and crime. The question asked is not what information will best serve to promote public morality, but what will bring largest dividends to the stockholders of this concern. This statement is a profound, most important and most deplorable truth. It is damnable. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. But they are few. To conduct a paper on a "paying basis" all "ads" must be invited and accepted that will not prevent the paper's being carried through the |