Its tide is next to resistless. Days of drunkenness
succeed, months of self-denial are lost, and deplorable results follow
everywhere. Wives are driven to desperation, mothers to despair, children
to want. Demoralization, starvation, damnation follow. Friends are
separated, homes are desolated, and souls are driven to hell itself, and
yet people will talk lightly, and even jokingly of the very thing which
leads to these terrible losses and sufferings--out on a spree.
Debauches not only destroy all capacity for usefulness while they last, but
they demand the vital strength which has wisely been gathered in the system
for days of possible need, when sickness and natural infirmities will lay
hands on the mind or body. The debauch of to-day will borrow from to-morrow
or from next week, or month, or year, that which can not be restored. The
bloated face, the dull, glassy eye, the furtive glance of fear and shame,
the trembling gait, all speak of ravages produced by other causes than
those of time. Indeed, the flight of years can produce no such effects, for
inexorable and wearing as fleeting days and months are, their natural
results differ very widely from those which are caused by an abuse of the
powers of nature.
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