Sometimes very ludicrous scenes occur at temperance meetings.  A few years ago, when this question was first agitated in Canada, a meeting was held in a school-house on the English line, in the township of Dummer.  The lecturer, on that occasion, was an itinerant preacher of the Methodist persuasion.  After descanting some time in a very fluent manner, on the evils arising from intemperance, and the great numbers who had lost their lives by violent means, “for my part,” said the lecturer, “I have known nearly three hundred cases of this kind myself.”

This broad assertion was too much for one of the audience, an old Wiltshire man, who exclaimed, in his peculiar dialect, “Now, I know that ’ere be a lie.  Can you swear that you did ever see three out of them three hundred violent deaths you speak on?”

“Well, I have heard and read of them in books and newspapers; and I once saw a man lying dead on the road, and a jar, half full of whiskey, beside him, which, I think, you will allow is proof enough.”

“I thought your three hundred cases would turn out like the boy’s cats in his grandmother’s garden.  Now, I will tell thee, that I did know three men that did kill themselves by drinking of cold water.  There was John H-----, that over-heated hisself, walking from Cobourg, and drank so much water at the cold springs, that he fell down and died in a few minutes.  Then there was that workman of Elliott’s, in Smith, who dropped in the harvest-field, from the same cause; and the Irishman from Asphodel, whose name I forget.  So, you see, that more people do die from drinking cold water than whiskey.”  Then he turned round to a neighbour, who, like himself, was not over-fond of cold water, and said, “I say, Jerome, which would you rather have, a glass of cold water, or a drap of good beer?”

“I know which I would take,” exclaimed Jerome; “I would like a drap of good beer best, I do know.”

This dialogue raised such a laugh against the apostle of temperance, that the meeting was fairly broken up, leaving the Wiltshire man triumphing in his victory over cold water and oratory, in the person of the lecturer.  The dryness of his arguments prevailed against the refreshing and copious draughts of the pure element recommended by his discomfited opponent.

A good joke is not, however, a good argument, though it stood for one at this meeting.  Total abstinence is the best plan to be adopted by habitual drunkards, who, if they can get at strong drink at all, seldom keep their pledge of sobriety.  The British and Foreign Temperance Society, in fact, advises the habitually intemperate to abstain altogether, while, at the same time, it aims at bringing the man to repentance and reformation, by the renovating influence of the gospel.  If I differ in some respects from that society, in its prohibition against the use of spirits altogether, in such a climate as Canada, I still must consider its views far more liberal, and more consistent with scripture rules, than that of any other for the promotion of temperance, as, indeed, possessing more of that charity, without which even the most fervent zeal is worse than useless.