Part 25 (1/2)
Try it, Christian philanthropist. ”It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or made weak.” Sacrifices make the world happy, and G.o.d glorious.
Try it, Christian female. It is work for your s.e.x. Woman is the greatest sufferer from intemperance: driven by it from her home; made an outcast from all the comforts of domestic love, while her babes cry for bread, and she has no relief. Lost men will listen to your words of kindness, be cheered by your benefactions, encouraged by your smiles.
Try it, young men. Have you no companions early palsied, withered, and scathed by alcoholic fires, treading now on the verge of the drunkard's grave? Go after them in their misery. Go, thanking G.o.d that you are not as they are. Go, believing that you may save them; that they will receive you thankfully; that they must have your help, or be lost. Go, and be strong in this work. The movements of Providence call you to effort for the unfortunate and wretched, that you may pull them out of the fire. What you do in the blessed work, do quickly. O, if it be in your power to save one young man, do it quickly. Run and speak to that young man. He will thank you for it. His father will thank you. His mother will thank you. His sisters will thank you. His immortal soul, rescued and saved, will love you for ever.
TO THE POOR UNFORTUNATE DRUNKARD.
MY FRIEND AND BROTHER--You are poor and wretched. A horrid appet.i.te hurries you on in the road to ruin. Abroad you are despised. Home is a desolation. A heart-broken wife weeps over you, yet does not forsake you. She hopes, she waits for your reform and for better days.
Conscience bids you stop. But appet.i.te, companions, and custom say, _One gla.s.s more_. That is a fatal gla.s.s. You rise but to fall again, and you feel that you can never reform. But you CAN REFORM. Thousands and thousands around you have reformed, and would not for worlds go back to drinking. They are happy at home; respected abroad; well dressed; well employed; have no thirst for the dreadful cup. They feel for you. They say, ”Come thou with us, and we will do thee good.” Come _sign the pledge_, the pledge of total abstinence. In this is your only hope. This is a certain cure. Touch not, taste not, handle not rum, brandy, whiskey, wine, cider, beer, or any thing that intoxicates, and you will be a new man, a happy man. Begin now. Try it now in the strength of the Lord. From this good hour resolve that none of these accursed drinks shall ever enter your lips. The struggle may be severe, but it will soon be over. Say then, ”Come life, come death, by the help of G.o.d I will be free.”
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.
TOM STARBOARD
AND
JACK HALYARD.
A NAUTICAL TEMPERANCE DIALOGUE.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Tom Starboard and Jack Halyard]
JACK. Halloo, s.h.i.+pmate; what cheer? Mayhap, however, you don't choose to remember an old crony.
TOM. Why, Jack, is that you? Well, I must say, that if you hadn't hailed me I should have sailed by without knowing you. How you're altered! Who would have supposed that this weather-beaten hulk was my old messmate Jack Halyard, with whom I've soaked many a hard biscuit, and weathered many a tough gale on old Ocean? and then you used to be as trim in your rigging as the Alert herself; but now it's as full of ends as the old Wilmington brig that we used to crack so many jokes about at Barbadoes.
Give me another grip, my hearty, and tell me how you come on.
JACK. Bad enough, Tom--bad enough. I'm very glad, however, to overhaul you again, and to find you so merry, and looking so fat and hearty. The world must have gone well with you, Tom.
TOM. You may well say that, Jack, and no mistake. The world has gone well with me. My appet.i.te is good, my sleep sound; and I always take care to have a shot in the locker, and let alone a snug little sum in the seamen's savings-bank, that I've stowed away for squally times, or when I get old, so as to be independent of hospitals and retreats, and all that sort of thing. And what's more to the purpose, Jack, I try to have a clean conscience--the most comfortable of all; don't you think so?
JACK. Why yes, Tom, I do think that a clean conscience must be a very comfortable thing for a man to have. But I can't brag much of mine now-a-days; it gives me a deal of trouble sometimes.
TOM. Ah, that's bad, Jack--very bad. But come, let me hear something about you since we parted, some four years or so ago. Where have you last been, in what craft, etc.? Give me a long yarn: you used to be a famous hand at spinning long yarns, you know, Jack. Don't you remember how angry old copper-nosed Grimes used to get when the larboard watch turned in, and, instead of sleeping, we made you go ahead with the story you were on, which made him wish us all at Davy Jones' locker? Ha, ha, ha.
JACK. O yes, Tom, I remember it all very well; but--
TOM. And then, don't you recollect how we used to skylark in the lee scuppers with those jolly fellows, Buntline and Reeftackle, until the Luff had to hail, and send a Middy with his _compliments_ to the _gentlemen_ of the larboard watch, and to say, that if _quite agreeable to them_, less noise would be desirable? I say, Jack, you seem to have forgotten all these funny times in the Alert. Cheer up, man; don't be downhearted. Give me your flipper again; and if you are really in trouble, you may be sure, that as long as your old messmate Tom Starboard has a shot in the locker, or a drop of blood in his veins, he'll stand by Jack Halyard--aye, aye, to the last.
JACK. Thank you, Tom--thank you. You were always an honest fellow, and meant what you said; so let us steer for the sign of ”The Jolly Tar,”
round the corner, and over a bowl of hot flip we'll talk over old times, and--
TOM. Avast there, Jack--avast, my hearty. None of your hot flip, or cold flip, or any other kind of flip for me. ”The burnt child dreads the fire,” as the old proverb says; and I am the child that was once pretty well scorched: but now I give it a wide berth. If you will come with me to my quiet boarding-house, ”THE SAILOR'S HOME,” I will be very glad to crack a joke with you; but you won't catch me in any such place as ”The Jolly Tar,” I can tell you. I mind what the old Philadelphia Quaker said to his son, who, as he was once coming out of a house of ill-fame, spied old Broadbrim heaving in sight, and immediately wore s.h.i.+p. The old chap, however, who always kept his weather-eye open, had had a squint of young graceless, and so up helm and hard after he cracked, and following him in, hailed him with, ”Ah, Obadiah, Obadiah, thee should never be ashamed of _coming out_--thee should always be ashamed of _going in_.”
No, no, Jack, I side with friend Broadbrim: I won't enter such places.
JACK. Well, I don't know, Tom, but that you are about half right. I think, myself, that ”The Jolly Tar” is not what it's cracked up to be. I am sure that neither the landlord nor the landlady look half as kindly on me as they did when I first came in, with plenty of money in my pocket. Indeed, they have been pretty rough within the last few days, and tell me that I must s.h.i.+p, as they want my advance towards the score run up, of the most of which I am sure I know nothing; but it's always the way.
TOM. Yes, Jack, it's always the way with such folks. The poor tar is welcomed and made much of as long as his pockets are well lined; but let them begin to lighten, and then the smiles begin to slacken off; and when the rhino is all gone, poor Jack, who was held up as such a great man, is frowned upon, and at last kicked out of doors: or if, mayhap, they have let him run up a score, he is hastily s.h.i.+pped off, perhaps half naked, and the advance is grabbed by the hard-hearted landlord, who made poor Jack worse than a brute with his maddening poison. Oh, Jack, how my heart has bled at witnessing the cruel impositions practised upon our poor brother sailors by these harpies. But come, I want to hear all about my old messmate. If I am not greatly out of my reckoning, grog is at the bottom of all your troubles, and long faces, and sighs, and groans. Cheer up, Jack, and unbosom yourself to your old friend and pitcher.