My belief is that such an exposition of public immoralities will do good, by exciting pity for the victims and wholesale indignation against the abettors and perpetrators.

Who is that man fallen against the curbstone, covered with bruises and beastliness?  He was as bright-faced a lad as ever looked up from your nursery.  His mother rocked him, prayed for him, fondled him, would not let the night air touch his cheek, and held him up and looked down into his loving eyes, and wondered for what high position he was being fitted.  He entered life with bright hopes.  The world beckoned him, friends cheered him, but the archers shot at him; vile men set traps for him, bad habits hooked fast to him with their iron grapples; his feet slipped on the way; and there he lies.  Who would think that that uncombed hair was once toyed with by a father’s fingers?  Who would think that those bloated cheeks were ever kissed by a mother’s lips?  Would you guess that that thick tongue once made a household glad with its innocent prattle?  Utter no harsh words in his ear.  Help him up.  Put the hat over that once manly brow.  Brush the dust from that coat that once covered a generous heart.  Show him the way to the home that once rejoiced at the sound of his footstep, and with gentle words tell his children to stand back as you help him through the hall.

That was a kind husband once and an indulgent father.  He will kneel with them no more as once he did at family prayers—­the little ones with clasped hands looking up into the heavens with thanksgiving for their happy home.  But now at midnight he will drive them from their pillows and curse them down the steps, and howl after them as, unclad, they fly down the street, in night-garments, under the calm starlight.

Who slew that man?  Who blasted that home?  Who plunged those children into worse than orphanage—­until the hands are blue with cold, and the cheeks are blanched with fear, and the brow is scarred with bruises, and the eyes are hollow with grief?  Who made that life a wreck, and filled eternity with the uproar of a doomed spirit?

There are those whose regular business it is to work this death.  They mix a cup that glows and flashes and foams with enchantment.  They call it Cognac, or Hock, or Heidsick, or Schnapps, or Old Bourbon, or Brandy, or Champagne; but they tell not that in the ruddy glow there is the blood of sacrifice, and in its flash the eye of uncoiled adders, and in the foam the mouth-froth of eternal death.  Not knowing what a horrible mixture it is, men take it up and drink it down—­the sacrificial blood, the adder’s venom, the death-froth—­and smack their lips and call it a delightful beverage.

Oh! if I had some art by which I could break the charm of the tempter’s bowl, and with mailed hand lift out the long serpent of eternal despair, and shake out its coils, and cast it down, and crush it to death!