The word must be spoken that bids you depart,
 Though the effort to speak it would shatter my heart,
 Though in silence with blighted affections I pine,
 Yet the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.

 If one spark in your bosom of virtue remain,
 Go fan it with prayer, till it kindle again,
 Resolved, “God helping,” in future to be
 From wine and its follies unshackled and free.

 And when you have conquered this foe of your Soul,
 In manhood and honor beyond its control,
 This heart will again beat responsive to thine,
 And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine. 
                              —­Unknown.

WAR AMONG THE POETS.

From the Royal Arch News, the warhorse of the booze hoodlums, the snapdragon of the jungle, the siren of Hades.

“The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine,” so sings—­ Miss Cora Vere, who writes jingle for the Anti-Saloon press, and this is the reply that the R. A. News would make: 

 The lips that touch liquor don’t hanker to touch
 The lips of a maiden like you—­not much! 
 If a man—­not a milksop—­should happened to wed
 A creature like you, he had better be dead;
 For never a moment of peace would he see
 Unless he would bow to your every decree,
 If he smoked a cigar, or drank beer, you would make
 A hell of his home, and perhaps you would break
 Into court and denounce him, in search of divorce,
 And fools would uphold you, as matter of course. 
 Perhaps, like the Nation, a hatchet you’d take
 And his bottles of beer and cigar-boxes break,
 And get your name blazoned in all of the papers,
 By your rowdydow talk and unwomanly capers,
 No! the lips that touch liquor don’t hanker to touch
 The lips of a female like you are—­not much!

I am not a poet myself but I am fortunate in having a friend that is, so I called on him to meet this antagonist with a nobler steel, and behold the defeat of this champion of a dying cause: 

An American Countess, or lady Vere. 
 “The lips that touch liquor, shall never touch mine;”
 The meaning is clear, the sense is divine,
 Bespeaks a clear head, an unsullied heart—­
 A fortune from which no sane man would part. 
 O, God! give us more of such women, we pray,
 Then slop-pots of whisky we’d urge to the fray. 
 The hatchets of “Carrie,” and Cora Vere,
 Would knock out the spigots and bungs of whisky.

 An army like those would drive them pell-mell;
 For safety they’d Hazen, and think they did well
 To escape from the jury of women turned loose
 Who have drank to its dregs the damnation of booze.

 The idea that women would “hanker” to touch,
 The lips of a demijohn; I guess not—­“not much;”
 A forty-rod pole should line up between,
 No nearer than that a fair lady be seen.