“This key also locks and bars the way to a life of purity and honor.  Says the chaplain of the Ohio penitentiary, Dr. Starr:  “The records show that 1,250 persons have been received into this institution during eighteen months; of these, 930 acknowledged themselves to have been intemperate.’  And the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor adds the statement that of 27,000 crimes committed in that state, eight out of every ten were due to intemperate habits, or occurred while the criminal was under the influence of liquor.

“We need not go further to show that this key is truly the key to failure—­failure in the attempt to attain to anything pure, right and honorable.

“No one knows this better than the manufacturer of strong drink.  ’The handwriting is on the wall,’ says T.M.  Gilmore, president of the Model License League.  ’Our trade today is on trial before the bar of public sentiment, and unless it can be successfully defended before that bar, I want to see it go down forever.’

“In no better way can we help to bring this victorious end than by lending our every influence to cause the world to turn to the true Christian life, for then follows ’love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.’  Paul does not say, ’Shun that which is evil;’ he says abhor it.  May this ever be our attitude toward this giant evil.”

A BUSY LIFE
    —­Pluck and Luck
    —­Industry

A Plucky American Boy Whom the Whole World Delights to Honor.

THE LESSON—­That pluck and perseverance and a “Try—­Try—­Again” Spirit can laugh at obstacles and change them into stepping stones.

The following talk may suggest to many of the younger hearers the secret of the true greatness of Benjamin Franklin, who is considered by many our foremost American.

The Talk.

“Some people trust to luck to carry them through the world.  Like Dickens’ Micawber, they’re ‘always waiting for something to turn up.’  I have heard of a man who was so pleased at finding a big horseshoe that he placed it over his bedroom door.  The next morning, as he closed the door, he jarred the horseshoe from its place and it fell and struck him such a blow on the head that he was in the hospital for a week.  Such results as this are likely to come when we depend upon luck.  Let us remember that luck never figures in God’s calculations.

“I have seen people looking for something like this in their front yards. [Quickly draw the outlines of the four-leaf clover in black, and fill in the outlines with broad sweeps of green.  With black, trace the veins lightly, and then put in the letters to spell ‘Luck.’  This completes Fig. 13.] What is it?  Yes, a four-leaf clover.  And when I saw them looking for it, I thought that they could have been doing a great deal more good by pulling the weeds in their back yards.

[Illustration:  Fig. 13]