68 The Cooking Clause to the Temperance Pledge. THE COOKING CLAUSE TO THE TEMPERANCE PLEDGE. WELL, if there wasn't a flutter at some of the doors! What, sign a temperance pledge that meant to sign away the right to give the pie-meat a good generous dash of brandy or hard cider? Of course not. There was neighbor So-and-so, not to call names. She was right in the midst of a whole cooking-batch. The stove was getting ruddy trying to keep up with its mistress. The raisins had been stoned. The sifted flour lay white as a snow-drift. Then came the mixing and flavoring. Bottle after bottle of "extracts" was uncorked. Box after box of spices was opened. The room was fairly redolent with odors, as if a breeze right from Araby itself was blowing through the kitchen. Lifting a bottle big enough to make any old toper fairly crazy at the sight, the thrifty cook says: "I must splash in a little of this br” Jingle! jingle! jingle! went the door bell. "Good-morning, neighbor; I am going the rounds with my temperance pledge, and won't you sign it?" It was a seriouseyed, determined-looking woman that had called-one of the modern crusaders. "Let me read it," was the reply; and down went the brandy bottle with the vigorous thump of a pavior. "What, not use any liquor for cooking? Why, I am a temperance woman, but I must use it in cooking." Then came the old rehash of arguments, but no signature to the pledge, and the unwelcome crusader took herself and her pledge out of the way. Was she not right, though, in offering a pledge that interdicted liquor-cookery? "It is a little thing," one says, "to be so fussy about." Ah! that is just the trouble in this thoughtless world of ours. The little things are neglected, and soon there is something big and serious. Many a housekeeper, famous for the smack she gives her cookery, is training her boy to a love for the wine-flavor that marks it so often. "I have sometimes thought what I should do if Fred took to drinking," said a notable housekeeper to a friend. "It is so dread There is Death in the Cup. 69 ful. What if it should come into my dish!" At the same time she was mixing in liquor with Fred's dainty dishes. And one day, when he missed the old wine-flavor in the pudding sauce on the table, he petulantly tipped his chair back and refused to eat any of the food. The dreaded shadow came ultimately, and the friend spoken of above thought that the hand of the mother that stirred the wine into the son's food had mixed the fatal glass for him. She helped form his taste for liquor. The little leak in the dam makes way for the big flood. But here is another point to be thought of. If liquor is used in cooking, some one must sell it. The women that groan in the parlor over the liquor traffic may be fostering it in the kitchen. Some genteel grocer must keep in his dusky cellar the vintage that has such a tang to it, or bottles of old, snapping, country cider. We would like to know how much of the liquor traffic of the country is based on the patronage of its kitchens. It is this accursed trade we are trying to sweep out of existence; and yet the kitchen too often neutralizes the work of temperance legislation. We ought to think about this matter seriously. THERE IS DEATH IN THE CUP. A CAULDRON of iniquity is the dram-shop. Surely there is death in the pot. Anachrasis said that the vine had three grapes: pleasure, drunkenness, misery. Richard III. drowned his own brother Clarence in a butt of wine-these two incidents quite typical. Every saloon built above ground or dug under ground is a center of evil. It may be licensed, and for some time it may conduct its business in elegant style; but after awhile the cover will fall off, and you will see the iniquity in its right coloring. Plant a grog-shop in the midst of the finest block of houses in your city, and the property will depreciate five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty per cent. Men engaged in the ruinous traffic sometimes say: "You don't appreciate the fact that the largest revenues paid to the Government are by our business." Then I remember what 70 There is Death in the Cup. Gladstone, the late Prime Minister of England, said to a committee of men engaged in that traffic when they came to him to deplore that they were not treated with more consideration: "Gentlemen, don't be uneasy about the revenue. Give me 30,000,000 of sober people, and I will pay all the revenue, and have a large surplus. But, my friends, the ruin to property is a very small part of the evil. It takes everything that is sacred in the family, everything that is holy in religion, everything that is infinite in the soul, and tramples it into the mire. Lorenzo de Medici was sick, and his friends thought if they could dissolve some pearls in his cup, and then get him to swallow them, he would be cured. And so these valuable pearls were dissolved in his cup, and he drank them. What an expensive draught! But do you know that drunkenness puts into its cup the pearl of physical health, the pearl of domestic happiness, the pearl of usefulness, the pearl of Christian hope, the pearl of an everlasting heaven, and then presses it to his lips? And O, what an expensive draught! The dram-shop is the gate of hell. While I speak there are some of you in the outer circles of this terrible maelstrom, and in the name of God I cry the alarm: “Put back now or never!" You say you are kind and gentle and generous. I do not doubt it; but so much more the pearl. Mean men never drink, unless some one else treats them. But they who are in the front rank of this destructive habit are those who have a fine education, large hearts, genial natures, and splendid prospects. This sin chooses the fattest lambs for sacrifice. What garlands of victory this carbuncled hand of drunkenness has snatched from the brow of the orator and poet. What gleaming lights of generosity it has put out in midnight darkness. Come with me and look over-come and hang over-look down into it while I lift off the cover, and you may see the loathsome, boiling, seething, groaning, agonizing, blaspheming hell of the drunkard. There is everlasting death in the pot. REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE. The Boy and the Thrush. THE BOY AND THE THRUSH. OLD Cooper King had a bright little son, 71 When he thought of himself as a poor drunkard's boy. Oft he was sent to the small village store, Through woods dark and lonely, a mile or more, With a jug half hidden ingeniously, And his own sad musings for company. Bluebird, and robin, and bobolink gay, They sang so madly above his head One bright June morn the empty old jug Till his father thundered, “Why don't you go?" "Cos," whimpered the child, as he trembling stood, "It says (and he keyed his voice up high, 72 We Must Rally. 'What after? what after?' 'Bottle o' rum! bottle o' rum!' Send for more! send for more!' 'Where's your money? where's your money?' 'Twas the little brown-thrasher, a comical rogue, CLARA J. LOOMIS. WE MUST RALLY. WE must rally our hosts for the battle, To save her from those who enchain her, In the glorious redemption of men, So our phalanx but faithfully stand; From our anchor hope, naught else can sever No, no!-there is duty before us In a worthy work, grand and sublime |