You will
lay this book down, and swear that you will never touch the accursed,
ruinous drink, and you will keep your oath. By sobriety and good habits you
will lengthen your mother's days in the land, and smooth her troubled brow,
and give strength to her failing limbs.
Rum is a dreadful knife whose edge is never red with blood, but which yet
severs throats from ear to ear. It assassinates the peace of families, it
cuts away honor from the family name, it lets out the vital spark of life,
and is followed by inconsolable death. It pierces hearts, and enters the
bosom of trust, goring it with gashes which God alone can heal. Rum is a
robber who is deaf to hungry children's cries and famished wives'
pleadings. He is a fell destroyer from whom peace and comfort and content
fly. No one can afford to be his subject, and it is the duty of every one
to rise in arms against him. Let him be cursed everywhere. Let anathemas be
hurled against him by the young and old of both sexes. Death is an angel of
mercy sometimes--this destroyer never. Death may open the gates of heaven
to every victim, but this destroyer can unbar alone the gates of hell.
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