Again, we will contend against these evils by trying to persuade the respectable classes of society to the banishment of alcoholic beverages.  You who move in elegant and refined associations; you who drink the best liquors; you who never drink until you lose your balance, let us look at each other in the face on this subject.  You have, under God, in your power the redemption of this land from drunkenness.  Empty your cellars and wine-closets of the beverage, and then come out and give us your hand, your vote, your prayers, your sympathies.  Do that, and I will promise three things:  first, that you will find unspeakable happiness in having done your duty; secondly, you will probably save somebody—­perhaps your own child; thirdly, you will not, in your last hour, have a regret that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be.  As long as you make drinking respectable, drinking customs will prevail, and the plowshare of death, drawn by terrible disasters, will go on turning up this whole continent, from end to end, with the long, deep, awful furrow of drunkards’ graves.

This rum fiend would like to go and hang up a skeleton in your beautiful house, so that, when you opened the front door to go in, you would see it in the hall; and when you sat at your table you would see it hanging from the wall; and, when you opened your bedroom you would find it stretched upon your pillow; and, waking at night, you would feel its cold hand passing over your face and pinching at your heart.  There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awful curse.  It throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony.  What was it that silenced Sheridan, the English orator, and shattered the golden scepter with which he swayed parliaments and courts?  What foul sprite turned the sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless babble?  What was it that swamped the noble spirit of one of the heroes of the last war, until, in a drunken fit, he reeled from the deck of a Western steamer, and was drowned.  There was one whose voice we all loved to hear.  He was one of the most classic orators of the century.  People wondered why a man of so pure a heart and so excellent a life should have such a sad countenance always.  They knew not that his wife was a sot.

I call upon those who are guilty of these indulgences to quit the path of death!  Oh! what a change it would make in your home!  Do you see how everything there is being desolated?  Would you not like to bring back joy to your wife’s heart, and have your children come out to meet you with as much confidence as once they showed?  Would you not like to rekindle the home-lights that long ago were extinguished?  It is not too late to change.  It may not entirely obliterate from your soul the memory of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor smooth out from your anxious brow the wrinkles which trouble has plowed.  It may not call back unkind words uttered or rough deeds done; for perhaps in those awful moments you struck her!  It may not take from your memory the bitter thoughts connected with some little grave.  But it is not too late to save yourself, and secure for God and your family the remainder of your fast-going life.