Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 12

Young man, will you tamper and trifle with strong drink? Do you say you can drink or let it alone? I admit you can drink but are you sure you can let it alone? If you can _now_, are you sure you can two years hence? I saw a giant oak tree lying in the track of the wind. It had been called "the monarch of the Sierras." Under the very nests where tempests hatch out their young, it grew to its greatness. It had seen many a storm, clad in thunder, armed with lightning, leap from its rocky bed and go bellowing down the world. But the storms that shook it only sent its roots down and out that it might fasten itself the more firmly to the earth. For long years this old tree stood there, bowing its head in courtesy to the pa.s.sing storm, while its branches were but harp strings for the music of the winds. One evening as the sun went down over the mountain's brow, not a storm cloud on the sky, a little wind went hurrying round the mountain's base, struck the great oak and down it went with a crash that made the forest ring.

Young men, why was it a tree that had withstood the storms of ages, should, before such a little gust of wind bow its head and die? Years before, when in the zenith of its strength and glory, a pioneer with an axe on his shoulder, went blazing his way through the wooded wilderness that he might not be lost on his return. Seeing the great tree he said: "That's a good one to mark," and taking his axe in hand, he sent the blade deep into the oak. Time pa.s.sed with seemingly no effect from the stroke given by the axeman. But steadily the sun smote the wound, rain soaked into the scar, worms burrowed in the bark around it, birds pecked into the decayed wood and finally foxes made their home in the hollow trunk, and the day came when resisting force had weakened, boasted strength had departed and the giant monarch of the Sierras stood at the mercy of the winds that have no respect for weakness.

There are young men before me today, who can drink or let it alone.

Temptation to them is no more than the gentle breeze in the branches of the oak in the zenith of its strength. True, temptation has been along their way blazing, here a gla.s.s of wine, there a gla.s.s of beer and yonder a gla.s.s of whiskey. They can quit when they please, but the less they please the more they drink, the more they drink the less they please. They don't quit because they _can_, if they couldn't quit they would, because they can, they won't. Thus they reason, while appet.i.te eats its way into their wills, birds of ill omen peck into their characters and finally they will go down to drunkards' graves, as thousands before them have gone. Young men, in the morning of life, while the dew of youth is yet upon your brow, I beg you to bind the pledge of total-abstinence as a garland about your character and pray G.o.d to keep you away from the tempter's path.

I wonder that young men will trifle with this great "deceiver." I wonder too at so much ignorance on the question among intelligent people. Some years ago after a temperance address a gentleman was introduced to me as the finest scholar in the city. Next morning we were on the same train, and referring to the lecture of the evening before, he said: "I heard your address and was pleased with your kindly spirit, but I beg to differ with you, believing as I do, that when properly used, alcoholic liquor as a beverage is good for health and strength." I felt disappointed to hear a great scholar make such a statement, but I ventured the reply:

"If that is true G.o.d made a mistake, since He made the whole phenomena of animal life to run by water power. He made it in such abundance it takes oceans to hold it, rivers and rivulets to carry it to man, bird and beast, while in all the wide world He never made a spring of alcohol. If it's good for strength, why not give it to the ox, the mule and the horse?" It takes a good deal of faith to trust a sober mule; I'm sure I wouldn't want to trust a drunken one. There is not a man in my presence who would buy a moderate drinking horse, and no one would wilfully go through a lot where a drunken dog had right of way.

Yet we license saloons to turn drunken men loose in the street, some of them as vicious as mad dogs.

Good for strength? When Samson had slain the regiment of Philistines and was exhausted and athirst; when in his extremity he cried to the Lord: "Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant, and now shall I die from thirst." What was done to revive him and renew his strength? Was strong drink recommended as a stimulant?

The Bible account informs us G.o.d "clave an hollow place in the jaw, and water came thereout." Don't you think if alcoholic liquor had been intended as a beverage for mankind, the great Creator would have made a few springs of it somewhere? Bore into the earth you can strike oil, but you can't strike whiskey. You can find sparkling springs of water almost everywhere, but nowhere a beer brewery in nature. It's water, blessed water all the time. On your right it bubbles in the brook; on your left it leaps and laughs in the cascade; above you it rides in rain clouds upon the wings of the wind; beneath you it hangs in diamond dew upon the bending blade; behind you it comes galloping down the gorge "from out the mountain's broken heart;" before you it goes gliding down the glen, kissing wayside flowers into fragrance and singing, as rippling o'er the rocks it runs: "Men may come and men may go, but I go on forever." Oh, bright beautiful water! may it soon be the beverage of all mankind.

I know some say: "This is a free country; if a man wants to drink and be a brute, let him do so." The trouble about that is, while strong drink will degrade some men to the level of the brute, drunkards are not made of brutes. Some thirty or more years ago a grandson of one of the greatest statesman this country ever produced, was shot in a saloon while intoxicated. While that young man was dying, but a few blocks away a grandson of one of the greatest men that ever honored Kentucky in the Senate of the United States, was in jail to be tried for murder committed while drunk; and in the same city at the same hour in the station-house from drink was a great grandson of the author of "Give me liberty or give me death." Whom did Daniel Webster leave his seat in the Senate that he might hear his eloquence? S.S.

Prentice went down under the cloud of drink. A gifted family gave to a Southern State a gifted son. His state sent him to the halls of national legislation, but drink wrought his ruin. Horace Greeley was his friend, and finding him drunk in a Was.h.i.+ngton hotel said to him: "Why don't you give up what you know is bringing shame upon you and sorrow to your family?"

He replied: "Mr. Greeley, ask me to take my knife and sever my arm from my shoulder and I can do it, but ask me to give up an appet.i.te that has come down upon me for generations, I _can't_ do it." He threw his cane upon the floor to emphasize his utterance. A few days later in the old Saint Charles Hotel, he pierced his brain with a bullet and was sent home to his family in his coffin.

Bring me the men who are drunkards in this city, strip them of their appet.i.te for strong drink, and they are husbands, brothers, fathers, sons, and as a rule, generous in disposition.

Thank G.o.d, while drunkenness will drag down the gifted and n.o.ble, temperance will build up the humblest and lowest. Bring me the poorest boy in this audience, let him pledge me he will never take a drink of intoxicating liquor as a beverage, let him keep that pledge, be industrious and honest; my word for it, in twenty years from now he will walk the streets of the city in which he dwells, honored, respected, loved, and the world can't keep him down. I rejoice we live in a land where I can encourage a boy, a land where rank belongs to the boy who earns it, whether he hails from the mansion of a millionaire or the "old log cabin in the lane;" a land where a boy can go from a rail cut, a tan yard, or a toe-path, to the presidency of the United States; a land where I can look the humblest boy in the face and say:

"Never ye mind the crowd, my boy, or think that life won't tell; The work is the work for aye that, to him that doeth it well.

Fancy the world a hill, my boy; look where the millions stop; You'll find the crowd at the base, my boy; there's always room at the top."

Have you a trade? Go learn one. Do you know how to do things? Go try; you may make mistakes, but do the best you can like the boy who joined the church. At his uncle's table soon after he was asked to say grace.

He didn't know what kind of a blessing to ask, but he did know he was very hungry, so bowing his head he said: "Lord, have mercy on these victuals." I have faith in the boy who will try to do a thing. I believe in a boy like that one in a mission Sabbath school in New York, who though he had but little knowledge of the Bible, had a way of reasoning about Bible lessons. The teacher of his cla.s.s said to him: "James, who was the strongest man of whom we have any account?"

He quickly replied: "Jonah."

"How do you make that out?" said the teacher.

Promptly the answer came: "The whale couldn't hold him after he got him down."

Boys, are you poor? Columbus was a weaver; Arkright was a barber; Esop, a slave; Bloomfield, a shoemaker; Lincoln, a rail-splitter; Garfield tramped a toe-path with no company but an honest mule; and Franklin, whose name will never die while lightning blazes through the clouds, went from the humble position of a printer's devil to that height where he looked down upon other men. If you would win in the battle of life, take the right side of life and build a righteous character. The saddest scene on the streets at night is the young man, whose clothes are finest in quality and fittest in fas.h.i.+on, but whose principles sadly need "patching." I dare say there are young men before me now who would not go into refined company indecently dressed for any consideration, but who will rush into the presence of their G.o.d before they sleep with a dozen oaths upon their lips. Will Carleton puts it this way:

"Boys flying kites, haul in their white plumed birds; You can't do that when flying words; Thoughts unexpressed, may sometimes fall back dead, But G.o.d Himself can't kill them when they're said."

Will Carleton puts it in poetry, let's have it in prose. Boys, pay more attention to your manners than to your moustache; keep your conduct as neat as your neck-tie, polish your language as well as your boots; remember, moustache grows grey, clothes get seedy, and boots wear out, but honor, virtue and integrity will be as bright and fresh when you totter with old age as when your mother first looked love into your eyes.

Little Lucy Rome was taken up for vagrancy in a great city. When brought before the court an austere judge said: "Who claims this child?"

A boy arose and walking down near the Judge, said: "Please, sir; I do.

She's my sister; we are orphans, but I can take care of her if you'll let her go."

"Who are you?" asked the Judge.

"I'm Jimmy Rome, and I have been taking care of my sister; but two weeks ago the man for whom I worked died and while I was out looking for another place, Lucy begged some bread and they took her up. But now I've a good place to work, Judge, and I'm going to put little sister in school. Please let me have her, sir."

The Judge said: "Stand aside. Officer, take the child to the children's home."

The boy with tears streaming down his cheeks, as he heard his sister sobbing, said: "Judge, please don't take her from me."

The Judge, moved by the pleading of the brother, said: "Well, my boy, if you can find some reliable person to go your security you may have her."

"Judge, I don't know anyone to give you; my good friend is dead, but I told you the truth. I don't drink, nor smoke nor swear oaths; I try to be a good boy; I work hard, but I can't give you any security. Judge, will you please let me kiss my little sister before you take her from me?"

With this the boy put his arms about his weeping sister and printed, as he thought, the last kiss upon her cheek. The Judge, with a lump in his throat, said: "Take her, my boy; I'll go your security. I'll give Lucy to the care of such a brother."

Hand in hand the homeless orphan pair walked out of the court room together, Jimmy Rome to make his mark in the business world and his sister to be the wife of a merchant prince.

Boys, be industrious, be honest, be sober. "I will" fluttered from the worm-eaten s.h.i.+ps of Columbus; "I will" blazed upon the banners of Was.h.i.+ngton and Grant; "I will" stamped the walls of Hudson river tunnel, and dug the ca.n.a.l of Panama. Young man, write "I will" upon your brow, give your heart to G.o.d and hope will herald your way to victory as the reward of a well spent life. Keep your eye upon the star of ambition. Don't be like the owl, who when daylight comes hides himself within the shadows of the ivy-bound oak and moans and moans the days of his life away; but rather be like the proud eagle that leaves its craggy summit, starts on its pinion flight through the clouds, rides upon the face of the storm, then on beyond bathes its plumage in the "sunlight of the day G.o.d, and laughs in the face of the coming morrow."

Some one said, and trifled with the secret of success and happiness when he said it: "There's only a dollar's difference between the man who works and the man who pays, and the man who pays, gets that."

There is an old superst.i.tion that somewhere on the earth, under the earth or in the sea, there is a stone called the "philosopher's stone"

and whoever finds it will be "chiefest among ten thousand." The same superst.i.tion prevails with many today; only the name of the stone is turned to "luck," and thousands of young men are waiting for luck to come along and turn up something for them. There is a rule of life, young men, more reliable than luck. It is called an ancient law and runs thus: "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." It is the foundation of more sweet bread and pure enjoyment than all your luck.

On it the feet of Abraham Lincoln rested, while he wedged his way to the highest office in the gift of the American people. On it Shakespeare stood, driving a shuttle through the warp and woof of a weaver's loom and wove out for himself a name and fame immortal. On it Elihu Burrett wielded a sledge hammer, while developing a mind that mastered many different languages. On it Henry Clay made his way from the mill-sloshes of Virginia to the United States Senate, and on it James A. Garfield tramped his toe-pathway from driving a mule, to presiding over the destinies of seventy-five millions of people.

Boys, don't be idle. I know a man to-day who always looks so lazy it really rests me to look at him. A boy working for a farmer was asked by his employer if he ever saw a snail. The boy answered that he had.

"You must have met it, for you surely did not overtake it," said the farmer. I know an old man who seems to take pride in saying he never worked. The first time I saw this man was in my youth. While his father was husking corn in a field, he was seated by a fire reading a novel. Often after that, when I would go to the postoffice in the winter, he would be there by the fire. He moved to the city thirty years ago, where he spends his winters sitting around a fire. He doesn't drink or gamble. I don't think he will have many sins of commission for which to answer; he never commits anything; he sits by the fire. When he dies an appropriate epitaph for his tomb will be:

"He was never much on stirrin' round, Sich wasn't his desire; When weather cool, he was always found, A sittin' round the fire.

"When the frost was comin' down, And the wind a creepin' higher, He spent his time just that way, A sittin' round the fire.

"Same old habit every day, He never seemed to tire; While others worked and got their pay, He sat there by the fire.

"When he died, by slow degrees, Some said, 'he's gone up higher;'

But if he's doin' what he did, He's sittin' round the fire."

The man or woman who lives in this age of the world and lives in idleness, should have lived in some other age. When ox-teams crept across the plains, and stage coaches went six miles an hour, idleness may have been in some kind of harmony with the age, but now, when horses pace a mile in two minutes, express trains make fifty miles an hour, and aeroplanes fly a mile in a minute; when telephone and telegraph send news faster than light flies, the idler is out of place. Carlisle said: "The race of life has become intense; the runners are tramping on each other's heels; woe to the man who stops to tie his shoestrings!"

Young man, if you would keep step with the energy of the age in which you are living, and be ever found on the safe side of life, you must not only be equipped with education, stability and ambition, but to make sure you should start right. If you are going to California tomorrow, which way would you start, east or west? You say: "We would start west." A man riding along a highway said to a farmer by the wayside: "How far to Baltimore?"

The farmer answered: "About twenty-five thousand miles the way you're going; if you'll face about and go the other way, it's fourteen miles."

Young man, which way are you going?

Does someone in my presence say: "I have started wrong; I take a gla.s.s of beer now and then; occasionally utter an oath, and am sowing wild oats in a few other fields; but I'll come out right in the end." Two diverging roads keep on widening; they don't come together at the other ends. If you would make sure of the safe side of life in the end of the journey, then start right. Luke Howard graduated from a fine college and went to a large city to practice his profession. He boarded in a fine hotel and frequented fine saloons. He became dissipated and one morning after a drunken debauch the landlord said: "Sir, you disturbed my boarders last night and I must ask you to leave." Young men, did Luke Howard go to a better hotel? No, but to a grade lower; he started wrong. In this hotel a few months later, he was asked to move on. Did he go to a better? No, still lower, until at last he went to board in the low tavern on the river front. The landlord said: "I remember when you graduated from college. I was present, saw the flowers and heard the applause that greeted your success. I feel honored to have you as a boarder." A few months later, on Christmas night, Luke Howard lay drunk on the bar-room floor. The landlord had borne all he could and, with a kick, he said: "Get up and get out, you brute; I will not keep you another hour." The drunkard with help arose and said: "Where am I? Why, this is my boarding place, my home, and you are my landlord. You said you felt honored to have me board here. What's the matter?"

"Luke Howard, you're not the man you once were, and I want you to leave here at once."

The poor fellow started for the door muttering: "I am not the man I was. I'm not the man I was." Missing the step as he went out, he fell, striking his head against the stone curbing. A physician was summoned and recognizing the injured man as an old friend said: "Luke, speak to your old college chum; I'm here to help you."

The poor drunkard, looking through the blood that flowed from the gaping wound said: "Listen to me, Tom, I'm not the man I was, I'm not the man I was." And thus died the poor fellow.

Young man, start wrong and end right? No, start wrong and you may expect in the autumn of life a penniless, friendless old age; opportunity gone, health shattered, and the "long fingers of memory"

reaching out and dragging into its chambers thoughts that will "bite like a serpent and sting like an adder." Bad as this is, it is even worse when your depravity involves another life. What if that other life is your mother, who went to the door of death to give you life, and whose every breath is another thread of sorrow woven into her wasting heart while her boy is bound like Mazeppa to the wild steed of pa.s.sion.