If the thought of a mother, wife, sister, or child

Mingles pain with the draught, let your mirth grow more

wild.

Drink again, O my boys, and again, one and all!
For ye are my slaves-I am King Alcohol!

"GET OUT OF MY SHOP!"

JENNIE E. MUNSON.

'M licensed to sell, get out of my shop,"

'The ramseller angrily cried,

With a frown on his face and a curse on his lip,
To the woman who stood by his side.

"My moments are precious; I've no time to lose;
I have paid my license, I say.

'Tis my business to sell; I shall sell when I choose,
To those who will give me my pay."

"Your moments are precious!

To ruin some innocent one?

Precious for what?

You shall listen a moment; 'tis little I ask
For the wrongs to me you have done.
You have ruined my husband, body and soul,
That you his scant money might gain;

You were licensed to sell, you answered me then,
And all my pleadings were vain.

"You lured him on with your honeyed words
Till your victory you made complete;

Till his money was gone, then one cold night,
You turned him into the street.

The night was dark, he was crazed with rum,
All reason from him had fled;

In the morning light they brought him home;
He was found on the railroad-dead,

"You were licensed to sell, and gave not a sigh, For the miserable work you have done;

And now, not content, you are striving your best
Likewise to ruin my son.

You are leading him on in the downward path,
His meagre earnings you crave;

For that you are willing to send him down.
To an early drunkard's grave.

"Go look at the miserable sots of our town,
Then go back to ten years ago,

And know it is
is you and your cursed work
That have brought them down so low.
You are licensed to sell? Ah, yes, it is true
That your license in money is paid;

But think not that's all will ever be asked
For the miserable wrecks you have made.
"You are licensed to sell; 'tis a miserable plea,
And you'll find it of little worth,

When you stand at the judgment seat of God,
For the deeds done here on earth.

When you stand in the presence of these poor souls
You have helped drag down to hell,

Of little avail will it be to you then
To say, 'I was licensed to sell.""

THREE TOPERS.

TH

HYDE PARKER.

HREE topers went strolling out into the East, Out into the East as the sun went down; Each thought of the liquor that's brewed with yeast, And not of the wife with the tattered gown. For men must drink and women must weep, For there's little to earn and nothing to keep, When the pothouse bar is groaning.

Three wives sat up in a garret bare,

And they lit their dips as the sun sank low,
And they gazed at the squalor and misery there,
Till the night-rake comes rolling up staggering slow.
For men must drink and women must weep,
And storms are sudden when men drink deep,
And the pothouse bar is groaning.

Three bodies lie out on the shining sands

Of the pothouse floor in the morning light; And the women are weeping and wringing their hands, For there's murder done in a drunken fight. For men must drink and women must weep; Oh! would that the temperance pledge they'd keep,' Bid adieu to the bar and its groaning!

THE TEMPERANCE PLEDGE.

IT

THOMAS FRANCIS MARSHALL.

T does appear to me that if the loftiest among the lofty spirits which move and act from day to day could hear the tales I have heard, and see the men I have seen, restored by the influence of a thing so simple as this temperance pledge, from a state of the most abject wretchedness to industry, health, comfort, and in their own emphatic language to "peace," he could not withhold his countenance and support from a cause fraught with such actual blessings to mankind. It is a thing of interest to see and to hear a free, bold, strong-armed, hard-fisted mechanic relate, in his own nervous and natural language, the history of his fall and recovery; and I have heard him relate how the young man was brought up to labor, and expecting by patient toil to support himself and a rising family, had taken to his bosom in his youth the woman whom he loved-how he was tempted to quit her side, and forsake her society for the dram-shop, the frolic, the midnight brawl-how he had resolved and broken his

resolutions till nis business forsook him, his friends deserted him, his furniture seized for debt, his clothing pawned for drink, his wife broken-hearted, his children starving, his home a desert, and his heart a hell. Then they will exultingly recount the wonders wrought in their conditions by this same pledge: "My friends have come back, I have good clothes on, I am at work again, I am giving food and providing comforts for my children, I am free, I am a man, I am at peace here. My children no longer shrink, cowering and huddling together in corners or under the bed, for protection from the face of their own father. When I return at night they bound into my arms and nestle in my bosom. My wife, no longer, with a throbbing heart and agonized ear, counts my steps before she sees me, to discover whether I am drunk or sober; I find her singing and at work."

I say these things have an interest, a mighty interest, for me; and I deem them not entirely beneath the regard of the proudest statesman here. On my conscience, I speak the truth when I say that if, by taking this pledge, it were even probable that it would bring back one human being to happiness and virtue, recall the smile of hope and trust and love to the cheek of one wife, send one rosy child bounding to the arms of a parent whence drunkenness had exiled it long, I would dare all the ridicule of all the ridiculous people in the world, and thank God that I had not lived in vain. And I have had that pleasure.

Think not that I feel myself in a ridiculous position, and wish to divide it with others. By my honor as a gentleman, not so. That pledge, though confined to myself alone, and with reference to its only effect upon me, my mind, my heart, my body, I would not exchange for all earth holds of brightest and best. Let the banners of this temperance cause go forward or go backward, let the world be rescued from its degrading and ruinous bondage to alcohol or not, I for one shall never repent what I have done. I would not exchange. the physical sensations, the mere sense of animal being which belongs to a man who totally refrains from all that can intox

icate his brain_or derange his nervous structure, the elasticity with which he bounds from his couch in the morning, the sweet repose it yields him at night, the feeling with which he drinks in through his clear eyes the beauty and the grandeur of surrounding nature; I say I would not exchange my conscious being as a strictly temperate man, though poverty dogged me, though scorn pointed its slow finger at me as I passed, though want and destitution, and every element of earthly misery, save only crime, met my waking eye from day to day; not for all that time and earth can give would I cast from me this precious pledge of a liberated mind, this talisman against temptation, and plunge again into the dangers and horrors which once beset my path; so help me heaven, as I would spurn beneath my very feet all the gifts the universe could offer, and live and die as I am-poor but sober.

Ου

WILL IT PAY?

MRS. MARY T. LATHRAP.

UT from the hearthstone the children go,
Fair as the sunshine, pure as the snow;

A licensed wrong on a crowded street
Waits for the coming of guileless feet.
Child of the rich and child of the poor

Pass to their wreck through the dram-shop's door;
Oh, say, will they ever come back as they go,
Fair as the sunshine, pure as the snow?

Out from the hearthstone the children fair
Pass from the breath of a mother's prayer.
Shall a father's vote on the crowded street
Consent to the snare for the thoughtless feet?
Ah! fathers, your finest gold grows dim,
Black with the rust of such nameless sin!
Oh, say, will your dearest come back as they go,
Fair as the sunshine, pure as the snow?