whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”  Proverbs, xxi, 17:  “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man; he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.”  Ah me! what dead courage, what piles of bleached bones that was once the concentration of all that was great and lofty and true.  What aspirations, ambitions, enterprise and resolutions—­what genius, integrity and all that belongs to true manhood—­have been swept from the tablets of time into oblivion by King Alcohol and his horrid half brothers, the gambling hell and the brothel.

A few years ago a noted wild-beast tamer gave a performance with his pets in one of the leading theatres.  He put his lions, tigers, leopards and hyenas through their part of the entertainment, awing the audience by his awful nerve and his control over them.  As a closing act to the performance, he was to introduce an enormous boa-constrictor, thirty feet long.  He had bought it when it was only two days old, and for twenty years he handled it daily, so that it was considered perfectly harmless and completely under his control.  He had seen it grow from a tiny reptile, which he often carried in his bosom, into a fearful monster.  The curtain rose upon an Indian woodland scene.  The wild, weird strains of an oriental band steal through the trees.  A rustling noise is heard, and a huge serpent is seen winding its way through the undergrowth.  It stops.  Its head is erect.  Its bright eyes sparkle.  Its whole body seems animated.  A man emerges from the heavy foliage.  Their eyes meet.  The serpent quails before the man—­man is victor.  The serpent is under control of a master.  Under his guidance and direction it performs a series of fearful feats.  At a signal from the man it slowly approaches him and begins to coil its heavy folds around him.  Higher and higher do they rise, until man and serpent seem blended into one.  Its hideous head is reared above the mass.  The man gives a little scream, and the audience unite in a thunderous burst of applause, but it freezes upon their lips.  The trainer’s scream was a wail of death agony.  Those cold, slimy folds had embraced him for the last time.  They crushed the life out of him, and the horror-stricken audience heard bone after bone crack as those powerful folds tightened upon him.  Man’s playful thing had become his master.  His slave for twenty years had now enslaved him.

The following is a will left by a drunkard of Oswego, New York State:  “I leave to society a ruined character and a wretched example.  I leave to my parents as much sorrow as they can, in their feeble state, bear.  I leave to my brothers and sisters as much shame and mortification as I could bring on them.  I leave to my wife, a broken heart—­a life of shame.  I leave to each of my children, poverty, ignorance, a low character, and the remembrance that their father filled a drunkard’s grave.”  It behooves us as Odd-Fellows to ponder well the lessons