There is one thing, however, about the drink habit that is difficult for me to understand, and that is how a young man, who loves his mother, whose mother loves him as only a mother can love, loved him first, loved him best and will love him to the last, can go from home and mother to the impure, degrading vileness of a liquor saloon.  If we enter that young man’s home what do we find?  Perhaps on one of the side-walls, “What is home without a mother,” on the altar the family Bible, every picture on the walls suggestive of home life and purity, every chair and piece of bric-a-brac linked with the sweet association of childhood, the conversation as pure as the sunlight on which the young man lives; yet he will kiss his mother, leave this home, and down the street make his way to a liquor saloon, where often vile pictures hang on the walls, cards lie on the table instead of the family Bible and the air is freighted with oaths and obscenities.

Boys, have any of you done this within the past month, or six months?  Promise me now you will never do this again.  Oh what a grand meeting this would be if every young man and boy in my presence would make the promise!  I plead with you, young man, by the sleepless nights your mother spent to give you rest; by the shadow you have hung over her pathway; by the bleeding heart you’ve wounded but which loves you still: 

  “Come back, my boy, come back, I say,
  And walk now in thy mother’s way.”

I would that every boy in our land were as grateful to his mother as was that Southern girl to her father, who stood years ago in front of an open fire, her back to the fire, her face toward the door, her bare arms full of flowers, waiting for her brother to call with a carriage to take her to a party.  While standing there a flame caught her dress; she gave a scream, dropped the flowers and ran through the door to where her father was standing in the yard.  When the father saw his child coming with flame following, he ran toward her.  As he ran he took off his coat and wrapping it about her face, arms and shoulders, threw her to the ground.  With his left hand he kept the flame from the body, while with his right hand he fought the fire.  He saved his daughter but burned his right arm to the elbow.  Day after day when the doctor would unwrap the arm to dress it, the girl, though burned herself, would go to her father’s bed, gently lift the burned arm and caress it.  When the father recovered his hand was so maimed and scarred, that when introduced to strangers, he would hold his right hand behind him and shake hands with the left.  One day his daughter, seeing him do this, went to his side and reaching for the scarred hand, held it to her lips and kissed it.  She was not ashamed, for that hand had been burned for her.  When the father died and lay in his casket ready for burial, the family came to take their last look.  First came the mother of the girl, then a brother and sister, and then the girl herself.  She kissed the cold brow of her father, then kneeling she took up the disfigured hand and kissed it over and over again.  My boy, your mother has suffered more for you than that father did for his daughter.  I beg you, go home and kiss your mother.  If she is dead or far from you, kiss her memory.  Go to your bed room, kneel there, and pray God to help you to live worthy the love of your mother.