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present sources, it will be a strong obstacle to effective dealing with the whole evil.

Third, high license does not touch the evil itself, and it ought to be barred for this reason, if for no other. The curse is in the decoction sold, not in the price paid for the privilege of selling it nor in the character of the man who sells.

Fourth, high license gives to the liquor business a semblance of respectability. It gilds the trap, makes it more alluring and correspondingly more dangerous. I know that it is advanced as a plea for high license that it will make the saloon respectable. The saloon can not be made respectable, but you can give it the guise of respectability.

Fifth, high license practically erects a liquor oligarchy. One effect of such a law as is proposed will be to produce and sustain a banded liquor monopoly. This is contrary to the whole spirit of our laws and constitutions. "No principle, says Judge Pitman, "is more firmly implanted in the American mind than that which John Adams placed in the bill of rights prefixed to the constitution of Massachusetts: 'No man, nor corporation, or association of men, have any other title to obtain advantages, or particular and exclusive privileges, distinct from those of the community, than what arises from the consideration of services rendered to the public.

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Sixth, high license has proved to be a failure in practice. Testimony to this fact may easily be multiplied by one who cares enough for the facts to investigate. It fails to answer the expectations of its friends in every particular in which good results are claimed for it.

Seventh, high license is wrong in principle.

In refusing to accept high license, we are, therefore, neither foolish nor inconsistent. We are doing only what honesty and conscience demand. We want our governments, State and national, to come up besides those of China and Madagascar, which refuse to derive a revenue from that which degrades and destroys their people. We want State and national prohibition. It does prohibit. While liquor dealers move earth and hell to postpone and defeat it, we need no stronger

reasons for pushing it. The evidence is complete, the argument is invincible, the conclusion is thundered into our conscience. Let us bring in the verdict and close the case. High license will not do, for that which is wrong in principle can not be good policy, and a question is never to be settled until it is settled right.

THE TOAST.

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MARY KYLE DALLAS.

I went the gay cork flying,
Sparkled the gay champagne;
By the light of a day that was dying
He filled up their goblets again.
"Let the last, best toast be 'Woman--
Woman, dear woman," said he;
"Empty your glass, my darling,

When you drink to your sex with me."

But she caught his strong, brown fingers,
And held him tight, as in fear,
And through the gathering twilight
Her voice fell on his ear:
"Nay, ere you drink, I implore you,
By all that you hold divine,
Pledge a woman in tear-drops
Rather, by far, than in wine.

"By the woes of the drunkard's mother,
By his children who beg for bread,
By the fate of her whose beloved one
Looks on the wine when 'tis red;
By the kisses changed to curses,
By the tears more bitter than brine,
By many a fond heart broken—
Pledge no woman in wine.

"What has wine brought to woman?
Nothing but tears and pain.

It has torn from her heart her lover,
And proven her prayers in vain;
And her household goods, all scattered,
Lie tangled up in the vine.

Oh! I prithee, pledge no woman
In the curse of so many-wine!"

THE WORLD'S PROBLEM.

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MRS. MARY CLEMENT LEAVITT.

N the past, many mission fields were so free from the drink curse that missionaries might well be excused if they did not foresee what the coming decades had in store for them; nor in the early days of missions, nor when some of the elder living missionaries were young, had the temperance reform produced that horror of the evil effects to be expected from the introduction of drink which is now felt by all Christian souls. These courses combined to prevent such outspoken positions against drink in many missions as would be taken now.

At the present moment, both missionaries and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union are confronted with a most appalling state of affairs. Individual traders from nearly every country of Christian Europe and also from the United States have deluged and are continuing to deluge equatorial Africa with drink. England and France have forced drink upon Madagascar by treaty clauses which that government detests but can not resist. England is using all her governmental power and prestige, building distilleries and breweries, promoting or failing to promote native officials as they forward or hinder the sale, or almost force the natives

of Hindustan, Burmah, Ceylon, and the Straits Settlements to take to drink.

American brewers declare that our ambassadors and consuls in South America have helped them to build up a profitable trade there. The sugar planters have lately learned the trick of making a very destructive distilled liquor from the refuse of their sugar mills, and are deluging the countries with cheap rum. Thus, two new elements are added to the universal wine drinking of past centuries and all its evil results. The brewers also disclose that by the help of our ambassadors and consuls, they hope to build up a trade in China as profitable as that in South America.

How does this tide of drink affect mission work? In the minds of the people of many nations, Christianity and drink are so closely connected that Christian and drunkard are interchangeable terms-especially is this the case in Hindustan. Together with opium it is hated by native patriots and thinkers as an evil introduced by Christians to destroy their people and give the country over to the destroyers, hence they hate Christianity.

Among the savage tribes of Africa it debases and stultifies to such an extent that the work of missionaries is greatly hindered; indeed, they must keep ahead of the drink if they would do their best work in Africa. The words of an African chief, repeated to me on the banks of the Congo by the missionary to whom they were uttered, will ring in my ears till the day of my death: "I have heard about your religion. It is a good religion. But you are too late. Why did not you God men (the African term for missionaries) come before the drink came? The drink has eaten out my people's heads, and they can no longer understand any good thing. The drink has hardened my people's hearts, and they no longer desire any good thing. You are too late! Why did you not come before the drink came?"

What is the problem before us? Nothing less than wresting the world from Satan and giving it back to God.

THE UPAS-TREE.

MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

HERE sprang a tree of deadly name,
Its poisonous breath, its baleful dew,
Scorched the green earth like lava-flame,
And every plant of mercy slew.

From clime to clime its branches spread
Their fearful fruits of sin and woe;
The Prince of Darkness loved its shade
And toiled its fiery seed to sow.

Behold! the axe its pride shall wound,
Through its cleft boughs the sunbeams shine,
Its blasted blossoms strew the ground—
Give glory to the Arm Divine!

And still Jehovah's aid implore,
From isle to isle, from sea to sea,
From peopled earth's remotest shore
To root that deadly upas-tree.

WHAT IS TEMPERANCE ?

L. B. COLES.

INTEMPERANCE lays a foundation for all the moral evils that ever annoyed human society. There is no species of outward sin that is not liable to result from this form of iniquity. It leads men to break every command in the decalogue, to violate every principle of the gospel. It destroys all natural affection, annihilates all human sympathy. It lays the noble workmanship of God, made a little lower than the angels, below the meanest brute, converts the higher

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