conscience and his fellowmen-these are the piteous objectlessons that have taught me the supreme power of habit over human destiny.

But I saw that the tendency to repeat the same act, and the greater ease with which this is done the second time than the first, and the third time than the second, is the key to paradise as well as pandemonium. I saw the slow, unerring, unfailing plan of God, by which our habits may become our step-ladder to saintship. And I said to my own heart, in the presence of many a bloated inebriate, what I now whisper to you: "No evil habit, however small, shall have dominion over me."

MOTHER'S PRAYER.

CAPTAIN JACK CRAWFORD.

[Capt. Crawford became a teetotaler through a promise made to his mother on her death-bed.]

MOTHER, who, in days of childhood,

Prayed as mothers only pray,

"Guard his footsteps in the wildwood,
Let him not be led astray."
And when dangers hovered o'er me,
When my life was full of cares,
Then a sweet form passed before me,
And I thought of mother's prayers.
Mother's prayers! Ah, sacred memory!
I can hear her sweet voice now,
As, while on her death-bed lying,
With her hand upon my brow,
Calling on a Saviour's blessing,

Ere she climbed the golden stairs-
There's a sting for all transgressing

When I think of mother's prayers.

H

And I made her one dear promise—
Oh, thank Heaven! I've kept it, too,
Yes, I promised God and mother
To the pledge I would be true.
Though a hundred times the tempter
Every day throws out his snares,
I can boldly answer, "No, sir!"
When I think of mother's prayers.

Oh, my comrades, do not drink it!
Think of all your mother said.
While upon her death-bed lying-
Oh, perhaps she is not dead!
Oh, don't kill her, then, I pray you;
She has quite enough of cares.
Say you won't, and Heaven will help you
If you think of mother's prayers.

BREAK THE BOTTLE.

JOHN G. WOOLLEY.

ERE is a saloon, gilded, glazed, embossed, polished, and fairly phosphorescent, in your eyes, with hell light. Come in. Beautiful, isn't it? Plate glass, cut glass, electric light, silver, ivory, mahogony, and gold. It ought to be beautiful. Free competition is prohibited by law so that it may be beautiful, and the bulk of sentiment is that it shall be made to grow in beauty year by year until it perishes of its own perfection.

Two busy men, clean-looking, bright young men, in snowy aprons flit from end to end of the long bar like Swiss bellringers, playing with deft fingers all the scales of Bacchanalian music, from the whisper of beaded bubbles moving themselves aright at the brim of champagne glasses to the hiss of adders in the last cheap whiskey.

A party of happy men enter.

Let us watch them a min

ute. How adroit the bartender is! He makes the bits of ice, the spoon, the shaker, the strainer, the glasses, fairly play a tune; then lets the finished cocktails pour from the large to the small glasses so cleverly that it seems as if he had flushed a covey of little rainbows. A strawberry, a bit of something fragrant, and he stands like an artist, as he is, as if his work were done and his responsibility at an end.

The men raise their glasses-crystal never was clearer-and the drink gleams like a nest of a thousand adders, invisible except their flashing, fascinating eyes. They look into the great mirror over the bar. Would to God that saloon mirrors could be so sensitized as to show men the background of a drink! We can not hear what they say; something pleasant, certainly: "Gentlemen, let us drink to my mother!" My drinking friend, try that some time.

Look at the barrels. Each one bears the national initials, with the national stamp and seal; and every black bottle, by the stamp it bears, is itself a black and damnable edict of the Sovereignty with the token and seal of the righteousness and seal of law upon it. You may not send a defamatory letter through the mail under a stamp of the United States postal service, or even a newspaper containing a notice of the Louisiana Lottery. Society must be protected! But you may go openly to a Government officer, with the expressed purpose of insulting the sovereign State of Maine or Iowa or Kansas by shipping there against the law alcohol, hell manifested in liquid, to debauch and defile and despoil the citizenship, and he will furnish you, at a schedule price, the stamps to give you right of way.

I want you to remember that a saloon is as national as a national bank, as lawful as a public school. I can seem to see upon the face or the rags of every drunken man a legend like you often see on packages of whiskey and tobacco: "Take notice, the manufacturer of this article has complied with all the requirements of the law, according to the statute in such case made and provided!"

Suppose you are remotely in this thing. What of it? If by your consent, express or tacit, your taxes are diminished by the shame-gold of license laws, I say that in the sight of God there's blood on every dollar you own. If you have a bottle anywhere, don't try to help intemperate men. hand that holds a bottle can not lift helpfully on fallen men; the heart that consents to a bottle can not feel helpfully for fallen men.

Break the public bottle.

tried.

The

You can't? You have never

You have tried to keep it corked on Sunday and election day-and failed. You have tried to keep it from drunkards and boys and Indians, but the drunkard was drunk yesterday, is drunk to-day, and will be drunk to-morrow; and for every drunkard that drops down, a boy starts in to fill the gap.

How do you break the public bottle? You vote to break it. The ballot is the freeman's little blast set in the rock of error, honeycombing it by slow and often imperceptible degrees. Perhaps the saloon is to go on, but I am bound to abolish my interest in it. There are twelve million voters in the United States. I'll vote my fraction right, and every time I vote I'll carry my share of that election as long as God is alive.

INDIVIDUALITY OF CONSCIENCE IN THE VOTER.

WE

FRANCES E. WILLARD.

E are firmly persuaded that the separation of the people into two distinct armies, one voting for men who will outlaw the poison curse and the other for men who would legalize it, must come, and that such separation can not come too soon. To-day the sheep and the goats are mixed, and that is not the method of a wise shepherd. To-day the temperance people are a mob and not an army, save as the drums beat, the recruiting goes forward and the battle is

being set in array by our brave brothers, the political Prohibitionists-God bless them, in these crucial hours! Their work is slow and hard and thankless-harder than the Crusade itself.

We do not wish to speak harsh words of armies rallied under other ensigns and against other foes. We simply declare that in the last emergency now hastening on we call not depend upon these; it is their misfortune rather than their fault. We must have this nation policed by an army that will see our prohibition laws enforced. We are tired of officers solemnly sworn to do this who unblushingly violate their oath, and by their traitorous alliance with the poison sellers devote to martyrdom our ministers of God.

With the annual drink bill at nine hundred millions, and the tobacco bill at five hundred millions, of which the lion's share goes to the Government itself; with the people of this country educated by the very curse that smites them until it is almost universally admitted that if they could march to the polls to-day they would outlaw the traffic; with the two old parties obstructing the path by which alone the people can possess themselves of righteous law and faithful lawenforcers; what wonder that we insist this is a national issue, and rejoice in the work of that one party which is trying to open the path by which in a representative government the people's will may be declared?

The supreme need of the hour is individuality of conscience in the voter. He needs to have more sharply defined perceptions of his personal relation to the Government. It is a good thing for the voter to make his protest against the liquor traffic in the prayer-meeting, or by his manner of life; but if he would really tell the Government as well as the Lord and the people that he wants the saloon closed, there is but just one method by which he can be recognized; but just one law under which his opinion can declare itself and his conviction make itself felt, and that law and method are fulfilled when he drops into the box a ballot that calls for prohibition as a law and a prohibitionist as its enforcer.