“If in our daily walks our mindBe set to hallow all we find,New treasures still of countless priceGod will provide for sacrifice.We need not bid for cloistered cellOur neighbor and our work farewell,Nor strive to wind ourselves too highFor sinful man beneath the sky;The trifling round, the common taskWill furnish all we ought to ask,Room to deny ourselves—a roadTo bring us daily nearer God.”
“If in our daily walks our mindBe set to hallow all we find,New treasures still of countless priceGod will provide for sacrifice.We need not bid for cloistered cellOur neighbor and our work farewell,Nor strive to wind ourselves too highFor sinful man beneath the sky;The trifling round, the common taskWill furnish all we ought to ask,Room to deny ourselves—a roadTo bring us daily nearer God.”
“If in our daily walks our mindBe set to hallow all we find,New treasures still of countless priceGod will provide for sacrifice.We need not bid for cloistered cellOur neighbor and our work farewell,Nor strive to wind ourselves too highFor sinful man beneath the sky;The trifling round, the common taskWill furnish all we ought to ask,Room to deny ourselves—a roadTo bring us daily nearer God.”
“If in our daily walks our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still of countless price
God will provide for sacrifice.
We need not bid for cloistered cell
Our neighbor and our work farewell,
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky;
The trifling round, the common task
Will furnish all we ought to ask,
Room to deny ourselves—a road
To bring us daily nearer God.”
If we allow the beauties of nature to raise our heart to God, we turn that into a sacrifice. If cross incidents, which could not be avoided or averted, are taken sweetly and lovingly, out of homage to the living will of God, this, too, is a sacrifice. If work be done in the full view of God’s assignment of our several tasks and spheres of labor, and under the consciousness of his presence, however secular in its character, it immediately becomes fit for presentation on the altar. If refreshment and amusement are so moderated as to help the spirit instead of dissipating it, if they are to be seasoned with the wholesome salt of self-denial (for every sacrifice must be seasoned with salt) they, too, become a holy oblation. If we study even perverse characters, with a loving hope and belief that we shall find something of God and Christ in them, which may be made the nucleus of better things, and instead of shutting ourselves up in a narrow sphere of sympathies, seek out and try to develop the good points of a generally uncongenial spirit; if we treat men as Christ treated them, counting that somewhere in every one there is a better mind, and the trace of God’s finger in creation, we may thus possibly sanctify an hour which would else be one of irksome constraint, and after which we might have been oppressed with a heavy feeling that it had been a wasted one. If a small trifle, destined to purchase some personal luxury or comfort, be diverted to a charitable and religious end, this is the regular and standing sacrifice of alms, recognized by the Scripture and the Liturgy. And finally, if we regard our time as, next to Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the most precious gift of God; if we gather up the fragments and interstices of it in a thrifty and religious manner, and employ them in some exercise of devotion or some good and useful work, this, too, becomes a tribute which God will surely accept with complacency, if laid upon his altar andunited by faith and a devout intention with the one Sacrifice of our dear Lord.
Yes; if laid upon his altar; let us never forget or drop out of sight that proviso. It is the altar, and the altar alone, which sanctifieth the gift. Apart from Christ and his perfect sacrifice, an acceptable gift is an impossibility for man. For at best our gifts have in them the sinfulness of our nature; they are miserably flawed by defectiveness of motive, duplicity of aim, infirmity of will. “The prayers of all saints,” what force of interpretation must they have with God, if, as we are sure, “the effectual, fervent prayer of a” (single) “righteous man availeth much!” Yet when St. John saw in a vision “the prayers of all saints” offered “upon the golden altar which was before the throne,” it was in union with that which alone can perfume the tainted offsprings of even the regenerate man. “There was given unto him much increase, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne.”
The increase is the intercession of Jesus. Place your offering, be it prayer or alms, deed or work, or submission—in his hands for presentation; pray him, as your only priest, to transact for you with God, and he will do so. And the sense of God’s favor shall shine out upon thy offering; and the dew of his blessing shall descend upon it, and ye shall be gladdened with your Father’s smile.—Goulburn.[3]
Heaven, as a place of residence and state of enjoyment, should always be viewed in contrast with earth.This is a state of pupilage and probation, that of dignity and promotion. Here is conflict, there victory. This is the race, that the goal. Here we suffer, there we reign. Here we are in exile, there at home. On earth we are strangers and pilgrims, in heaven fellow citizens with the saints; and, released from the strife and turmoil, the bitterness and regrets of earth, are incorporated forever with the household of God.
This is triumph! How striking the contrast! How must earth and its trials be lost sight of in such a vision! How must this contrast strengthen the ties of confidence, and kindle the ardor of devotion!
What did Moses care for the perils of the wilderness, when, from the storm-defying steep of Pisgah, he viewed the land of promise, imaging forth the green fields of heaven’s eternal spring! Look at Elijah, the immortal Tishbite, exchanging the sighs and solitude of his juniper shade, for wheels of fire and steeds of wind that bore him home to God! Look at Paul—poor, periled and weary, amid the journeyings and conflicts of his mission: the hand that once stretched the strong eastern tent, or wore the dungeon’s chain, now sweeps in boldest strain the harps of heaven.… Look at the Christian of apostolic and early times, exchanging the clanking of his chains and the curses of his jailor—the dungeon’s den and martyr’s stake—for the notes of gladness and lofty anthem pealing from lute and harp, bedecked with eternal amaranth! The load of chain with which he went out to meet the descending car of his triumph, with its angel escort, was a richer dowry than the jewels of empire! The taper that flickered in the dungeon of the sainted hero shot a ray more glorious than ever spoke the splendor of the full-orbed moon! What are the crowns or the diadems of all this world’s masters or Cæsars, compared with the prospects of such an expectant!
Christians! what need we care, although on earth we were so poor and low we had nor purse nor pillow; so few and trodden down we had no power; and hamlets, huts and grottoes were the places where we wept and prayed; if these are to be exchanged for a residence amid the jaspers and chrysolites, the emeralds and sapphires of the heavenly Jerusalem!
What though soiled by the dust of toil or damp with the dungeon’s dew—struggling amid tattered want along our lone and periled path—when even here we find ourselves invested with glory in the night of our being, and sustained by hopes guiding and pointing us to the temple hymn and the heavenly harp above! …—Bascom.[4]
BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.
Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.
In all ages, and among all nations, fire has been regarded with peculiar interest. Of the four great elements so essential to life—earth, air, water, fire—the last has often been considered as divine in its origin and influence. To the unscientific observer it seems more than matter, and little less than spirit. Contemplating a flame, he sees that while it has form, it lacks solidity. He may pass a sword through it, but like the ghost of the story, no wound is made in its ethereal substance. Its touch is softer than down, but it penetrates the hardest substances. The diamond carves glass, but flame destroys the diamond.
Men early found that fire was directly connected with their comfort and progress, and even essential to their existence. How they first obtained it is still matter of conjecture; whether it was brought down from the skies, as the ancient Greeks supposed, struck out from the flinty rock, evolved by the friction of dry wood, kindled by the lightning, or obtained from the flaming torch of the volcano, we can not tell.
Certain it is, that having once been obtained, all the early races were very careful to preserve it. Among many it was regarded as sacred, and kept perpetually burning, both in their places of worship and in their homes. The officers appointed for its preservation were of the highest rank and influence. Among the titles assumed by Augustus Cæsar was that of keeper of the public fire. Whenever by accident the fire in the temple of Vesta, at Rome, was extinguished, all public business was at once suspended, because the connection between heaven and earth was believed to be severed, and must be restored before business could properly proceed.
Grecian colonists carried fire to their new homes from the altar of Hestia. The “Prytaneum”[1]of the ancient Greeks and Romans was a place where the national fire was kept always burning; it was here the people gathered, foreign ambassadors received, and hospitalities of the state were offered. Here, too, heads of families obtained coals for lighting their household fires, which in turn became sacred, so that every hearth was an altar, where resided the Lares and Penates, the gods who presided over the welfare of the home.
Fancies akin to these beliefs of olden time may still be found among the nations of the East and in northern Europe.
No correct ideas of combustion were attained until the time of Lavoisier.[2]This great French savant gave precision and accuracy to the investigations of chemical science by the introduction of the balance. He disproved the theory that “water is the ultimate principle of all things,” and prepared the way for a clear apprehension of the truththat matter, though constantly changing its form, is never destroyed. He also announced the correct theory of combustion. Until this time scientists had held what was called the “Phlogiston[3]Theory.” We can but smile at the absurdity of this belief, and yet no hypothesis was ever taught more positively, or maintained more tenaciously. It declared, in brief, that when substances burned, they parted with a certain material called phlogiston. When, at length, its advocates were asked to explain the fact, discovered by Dr. Priestly,[5]that quicksilver, when burned, weighed more than before, they were forced to put forward the ridiculous statement that phlogiston possessed the property of “buoyancy” so that when it was contained in a body its weight was lessened; which was as wise as the brilliant supposition that a person can lift himself over a fence by tugging at his boot straps. After a fierce struggle they were forced to confess that they had placed “the cart before the horse.” The truth was precisely opposite to their statement. Substances when they burn take up something instead of giving it off. That something is oxygen, and a body when burned, if it can be weighed, will be found to weigh as much more as the added weight of the oxygen which has united with it. Example: Iron-rust is iron, plus oxygen.
MAGNESIUM RIBBON BURNING, AND PRODUCING MAGNESIC OXIDE (MgO).[4]
MAGNESIUM RIBBON BURNING, AND PRODUCING MAGNESIC OXIDE (MgO).[4]
We shall here confine ourselves to the consideration of the heat and light produced by chemical action. It will be remembered that by this term (chemical action) is meant the process of uniting two or more different elements to form a compound different from either. We usually consider air essential to combustion, but this is not necessarily the fact. Gold foil or powdered antimony, dropped into a jar of chlorine, spontaneously ignites. Even in the interior of the earth, heat must be produced by the uniting of any elements that have an affinity for each other.
BORACIC ACID IMPARTS A GREEN COLOR TO THE FLAME OF ALCOHOL.[6]
BORACIC ACID IMPARTS A GREEN COLOR TO THE FLAME OF ALCOHOL.[6]
The most common agent of combustion is oxygen. Of this interesting gas some description has been given in a preceding article. It is the fruitful source of almost all of our artificial heat.
The fallen tree in the forest is slowly consumed by it, not less surely than the flaming wood and coal in our stoves. The human body is a furnace. In the minute corpuscles[7]of the blood, carbon is uniting with oxygen as certainly as are the particles of carbon in the flame of our lamps.
Oxygen is the scavenger that partially cleans our gutters. It is a bird of prey that devours the offal in our fields and woods. It is nothing less than the gnawing tooth of old Father Time himself, which crumbles cities and destroys all things.
Combustion, as we now know it, consists simply in the union of some combustible material with oxygen. The generic term for all this action is “oxidation.” For convenience, special names are given to particular modes. When metallic oxidation occurs we call the product “rusting.” When oxygen unites with vegetable matter we call it decaying or rotting; when with animal substances we term it rotting or putrefaction. When flame is produced, the word combustion or burning is used. The amount of heat generated is, in all cases, proportioned to the amount of chemical action. Great ingenuity and skill have been shown in the discovery and utilization of materials best calculated to combine readily with oxygen. To these, as a class, has been applied the term
All substances composed essentially of the elements, hydrogen and carbon, would come under this designation. These would include coal, wood, petroleum, the fats, resins, wax and many others, with some of the gases, among which may be named light and heavy carburetted hydrogen, CH₄ and C₂H₄ respectively.
PHOSPHORUS BURNING IN OXYGEN.[8]
PHOSPHORUS BURNING IN OXYGEN.[8]
In the days of our grandfathers tallow candles were almost universally employed for lighting houses, and wood for warming them. It would not be impossible to find even now, in our own country, homes illuminated (?) by a rag burning in a saucer of fat. Some of us are not too young to remember the bundle of candle-rods—nice, straight sticks used in dipping candles—snugly put away for that purpose, alas! sometimes summoned forth to assist in enforcing family discipline!
GREEN FIRE COLORED BY A SALT OF BARIUM.[9]
GREEN FIRE COLORED BY A SALT OF BARIUM.[9]
Strands of twisted cotton wick were suspended from these sticks, and successively dipped into a kettle of hot tallow, until external additions made them of the requisite size. Tin candle moulds finally superseded these. Then the wick was suspended in the center and the fat poured in. In cooling, the candles contracted, and so slipped easily from the moulds. Wax candles can not be cast in moulds, as they expand in cooling. They are made by pouring successive additions upon them. They are afterward given symmetrical form by rolling and shaping. Along the sea coast I have seen womenand children gathering bay berries,[10]a fruit about as large as a grain of black pepper and covered with a grayish-white, fragrant wax. When these seeds are placed in hot water the wax dissolves and serves the same purpose as tallow, making delightfully aromatic candles.
Many of the hydro-carbons possess an agreeable odor. Sometimes the woodmen gather the bark and chips of the hickory to smoke hams and shoulders on account of the peculiarly pleasant flavor they impart. In burning, a candle or lamp becomes a gas factory, manufacturing and consuming its own product. The flame consists of three cones. The first, that next to the wick, is composed solely of gas. It is not hot, as can be shown by thrusting the end of a match into it, the match will not ignite. If the match be placed across the flame at the same point it will burn at the edges, but not in the center. A more striking illustration of the fact that the flame is hot only where it comes in contact with the air, can be shown in the following manner: Place on the bottom of an inverted plate some alcohol, in the center set a tiny saucer containing powder; ignite the alcohol, and the powder will remain undisturbed in the center of the surrounding flame until a draft brings theedgeof the flame against the powder, when it will at once explode.
Look steadily at the flame of an ordinary candle and you can readily discern the three cones; the first is gas, the second gas in rapid combination with the oxygen of the air, the third the products of this combination—watery vapor, carbonic anhydride, and, possibly, some unconsumed carbon.
RED FIRE COLORED BY A SALT OF STRONTIUM.[11]
RED FIRE COLORED BY A SALT OF STRONTIUM.[11]
The process that goes on in our stoves is essentially the same. The carbon and hydrogen of the wood or coal unite with the oxygen that passes through the draft. Now note a wonderful provision for our comfort. It has already been remarked that the product of combustion consists of the thing burned, plus oxygen. Suppose, in the case of our fires, this product were a solid, we should then be forced to take out of the stove more material than we put in. The Creator has, however, provided that these resulting materials shall take the form of gas or vapor, so that they can float away. The ashes that remain form but a small part of the whole. The two most common products of combustion are watery vapor and carbonic anhydride.
The illumination of our towns and cities has long been accomplished by the use of gas manufactured from coal. Bituminous coal is used for this purpose, and the process consists in heating it to destructive distillation, and afterward condensing and absorbing such portions of the volatilized materials as might clog the gas pipes or interfere with perfect combustion.
Nature, it is now known, has her own gas works, on an immense scale. Thirty-five years ago the village of Fredonia, N. Y., was partially lighted with gas, and the supply is still unexhausted. Indeed, of late, many private individuals have sunk pipes two or three hundred feet, and thus supplied their homes with gas for illuminating, heating, and cooking purposes. In Butler and McKean counties, Pennsylvania, the production of these gas wells is enormous. Many have been burning day and night for years, while others have been utilized for heating and lighting towns and cities. Gas is now extensively used in rolling mills for smelting iron. Petroleum, or rock oil, which is usually associated with this natural gas, has now become of immense value to this and other lands. It is one of the chief articles of export from this country, ranking perhaps as fourth. Wells have recently been struck in Pennsylvania that flowed 5,000 and 6,000 barrels per day.
SODIUM BURNING ON HOT WATER.[12]
SODIUM BURNING ON HOT WATER.[12]
There is reason to believe that this material is the product of distillation of organic matter in the earth. It is found in porous rock, usually coarse sand, at depths varying from three hundred to two thousand feet. When the rock above the sand containing oil is tight, the gas is often retained, which by its expansion presses upon the oil and forces it to the surface through the pipes put down for this purpose. This produces a flowing well. When the gas has escaped a pump is necessary.
The most useful hydro-carbon now employed is coal. Its use was first introduced in the latter part of the twelfth century, and as late as the thirteenth century petitions were made by residents of London demanding its exclusion, on account of its injurious effect on the health. But now, Great Britain mines annually more than one hundred million tons of coal. Its uses are manifold. By it England has multiplied her power a thousand fold. It is almost always employed in generating steam, and the aggregate steam power of England is equal to the productive laboring force of four hundred millions of men, or “twice the power of the adult working population of the globe.” Most countries know its value.
POURING CARBON DI-OXIDE FROM ONE VESSEL INTO ANOTHER TO EXTINGUISH FLAME.[13]
POURING CARBON DI-OXIDE FROM ONE VESSEL INTO ANOTHER TO EXTINGUISH FLAME.[13]
Coal is the key that unlocks for us the treasures of the iron ore. It seizes upon the oxygen in the ore, and liberates the pure metal. By a wonderful provision they often exist in the same mountain, side by side. I have seen in Pennsylvania, running out of the same tunnel in the hills, car loads of coal and iron ore.
Among the many advantages possessed by our own country is our immense store of this precious hydro-carbon. With an area of 300,000,000 miles of territory, we have more than 200,000 square miles of known coal producing area, or one in fifteen.
Great Britain has one-half of the coal fields of all Europe,but even she has but one square mile of coal to twenty square miles of territory. Beside, our coal seams are of great thickness, and lie comparatively near the surface. In the far West, vast fields of lignite[14]have been discovered, so that there seems no prospect of our exhausting our fuel supply for ages to come.
The diamond is crystallized carbon, and can be burned, though one would hardly care to be warmed by so costly a fire.
Cleopatra, in a freak of extravagance, dissolved a wonderful pearl, but who could think of the wise queen of England using in so wasteful a manner her Kohinoor.[15]Six of the great diamonds of the world are called, by way of eminence, “The Paragons,” and a romantic interest has been attached to this form of carbon among all nations. In point of fact, however, the black diamonds of the coal pit are more interesting, and of far greater value to mankind than these glittering gems from Golconda,[16]Brazil and the Dark Continent.[17]
BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.
“Rugged or not, there is no other way.”—Luther.
“Rugged or not, there is no other way.”—Luther.
The champions of temperance have to contend with two chief adversaries—ignorance and organized crime. The well-organized liquor league can boast of leaders whose want of principles is not extenuated by want of information, and who deliberately scheme to coin the misery of their fellowmen into dollars and cents. But the machinations of such enemies of mankind would not have availed them against the power of public opinion, if their cunning had not found a potent ally in the ignorance, not of their victims only, but of their passive opponents. We need the moral and intellectual support of a larger class of our fellow-citizens, before we can hope to secure the effectual aid of legal remedies, and in that direction the chief obstacles to the progress of our cause have been the prevailing misconceptions on the following points:
1.Competence of Legislative Power.—There can be no doubt that the legislative authority even of civilized governments has been frequently misapplied. The most competent exponents of political economy agree that the state has no business to meddle in such affairs as the fluctuation of market prices, the rate of interest, the freedom of international traffic. On more than one occasion European governments, having attempted to regulate the price of bread-stuffs, etc., were taught the folly of such interference by commercial dead-locks and the impossibility of procuring the necessaries of life at the prescribed price, and were thus compelled to remedy the mischief by repealing their enactments. Usury laws tend to increase, instead of decreasing, the rate of interest, by obliging the usurer to indemnify himself for the disadvantage of the additional risk. The attempt to increase national revenues by enforcing an artificial balance of trade has ever defeated its own object. It is almost equally certain that compulsory charities do on the whole more harm than good. On the other hand, there are no more undoubtedly legitimate functions of government than the suppression, and the, if possible, prevention, of crime, and the enforcement of health laws; and it can be demonstrated by every rule of logic and equity that the liquor traffic can be held amenable in both respects. The favorite argument of our opponents is the distinction of crime and vice. For the latter, they tell us, society has no remedy, except in as much as the natural consequences (disease, destitution, etc.) are apt to recoil on the person of the perpetrator; the evil of intemperance therefore is beyond the reach of the law. We may fully concede the premises without admitting the cogency of the conclusion. The suspected possession or private use of intoxicating liquors would hardly justify the issue of a search warrant, but the penalties of the law can with full justice be directed against the manufacturer or vender who seeks gain by tempting his fellowmen to indulge in a poison infallibly injurious in any quantity, and infallibly tending to the development of a body and soul corrupting habit; they may with equal justice be directed against the consumer, stupefied or brutalized by the effects of that poison. The rumseller has no right to plead the consent of his victim. The absence of violence or “malice prepense,”[1]is a plea that would legalize some of the worst offenses against society. The peddler of obscene literature poisons the souls of our children without a shadow of ill-will against his individual customer. The gambler, the lottery-shark, use no manner of force in the pursuit of their prey. By what logic can we justify the interdiction of their industry and condemn that of the liquor traffic? By the criterion of comparative harmlessness? Have all the indecencies published since the invention of printing occasioned the thousandth part of the misery caused by the yearly and inevitable consequences of the poison vice? The lottery player may lose or win, but the customer of the liquor vender is doomed to loss as soon as he approaches the dram-shop. The damage sustained by the habitual player may be confined to a loss of money, while the habitual drunkard is sure to suffer in health, character and reputation, as well as in purse. And shall we condone the conduct of the befuddled drunkard on account of a temporary suspense of conscious reason? That verydementationconstitutes his offense.
His actions may or may not result in actual mischief, but he has put the decision of that event beyond his control. The man who gallops headlong through crowded streets is punished for his reckless disregard of other men’s safety, though the hoofs of his horse may have failed to inflict any actual injury. A menagerie keeper would be arrested, if not lynched, for turning a city into a pandemonium by letting loose his bears and hyenas, and for the same reason no man should be permitted to turn himself into a wild beast.
“Virtue must come from within,” says Prof. Newman;[2]“to this problem religion and morality must direct themselves. But vice may come from without; tohinderthis is the care of the statesman.” And here, as elsewhere, prevention is better than cure. By obviating the temptations of the dram-shop a progressive vice with an incalculable train of mischievous consequences may be nipped in the bud. Penal legislation is a sham if it takes cognizance of moral evils only after they have passed the curable stage. “It is mere mockery,” says Cardinal Manning,[3]“to ask us to put down drunkenness by moral and religious means, when the legislature facilitates the multiplication of the incitements to intemperance on every side. You might as well call upon me as a captain of a ship and say: ‘Why don’t you pump the water out when it is sinking,’ when you are scuttling the ship in every direction. If you will cut off the supply of temptation, I will be bound by the help of God to convert drunkards, but until you have takenoff this perpetual supply of intoxicating drink we never can cultivate the fields. Let the legislature do its part and we will answer for the rest.”
All civilized nations have recognized not only the right but the duty of legislative authorities to adopt the most stringent measures for the prevention of contagious disease; yet all epidemics taken together have not caused half as much loss of life and health as the plague of the poison vice.
2.Magnitude of the Evil.—Since health and freedom began to be recognized as the primary conditions of human welfare, the conviction is gaining ground that the principles of our legislative system need a general revision. It was a step in the right direction when the lawgivers of the Middle Ages began to realize the truth that the liberty of individual action should be sacrificed only to urgent consideration of public welfare, but the modified theories on the comparative importance of these considerations have inaugurated a still more important reform. Penal codes gradually ceased to enforce ceremonies and abstruse dogmas and to ignore monstrous municipal and sanitary abuses. The time has passed when legislators raged with extreme penalties against the propagandists of speculative theories and ignored the propagation of slum diseases, yet, after all, there is still a lingering belief in the minds of many contemporaries that intemperance, as a physical evil, a “mere dietetic excess,” does not justify the invasion of personal liberty. They would consent to restrict the freedom of thought and speech rather than the license of the rum-dealer, yet the tendency of a progressive advance in public opinion promises the advent of a time when that license will appear the chief anomaly of the present age. The numberless minute prescriptions and interdicts of our law books and their silence on the crime of the liquor traffic will make it difficult for coming ages to comprehend the intellectual status of a generation that could wage such uncompromising war against microscopic gnats and consent to gratify the greed of a monstrous vampire.
3.Self-correcting Abuses.—Modern physicians admit that various forms of disease which were formerly treated with drastic drugs can be safely trusted to the healing agencies of nature. Many social evils, too, tend to work out their own cure. High markets encourage competition and have led to a reduction of prices. Luxury leads to enforced economy by reducing the resources of the spendthrift. Dishonest tradesmen lose custom, and a German government that used to fine editors for publishing unverified rumors might have left it to the subscribers to withdraw their patronage from a purveyor of unreliable news. But there are certain causes of disease that demand the interference of art.Poisons, especially, require artificial antidotes. If a child has mistaken arsenic for sugar, its life commonly depends on the timely arrival of a physician. The organism may rid itself of a surfeit, but is unable to eliminate the virus of a skin disease. Alcoholism belongs to the same class of disorders. We need not legislate against corsets; the absurdities of fashion change and vanish like fleeting clouds, and their votaries may welcome the change; but drunkards would remain slaves of their vice though the verdict of public opinion should have made dram-drinking extremely unfashionable. The morbid passion transmitted from sire to son, and strengthened by years of indulgence, would defy all moral restraints and yield only to the practical impossibility to obtain the object of its desire.
“A number of years ago,” says Dr. Isaac Jennings, “I was called to the shipyard in Derby, to see John B., a man about thirty years of age, of naturally stout, robust constitution, who had fallen from a scaffold in a fit, head first upon a spike below. In my visit to dress the wounded head, I spoke to him of the folly and danger of continuing to indulge his habit of drinking, and obtained from him a promise that he would abandon it. Not long after I learned that he was drinking again, and reminded him of his promise. His excuse was, that it would not do for him to abandon the practice of drinking suddenly. A few weeks after this he called at my office and requested me to bleed him, or do something to prevent a fit, for he felt much as he did a short time before having the last fit. I said to him, ‘John, sit down here with me and let us consider your case a little.’ I drew two pictures and held before him; one presented a wife and three little children with a circle of friends made happy and himself respectable and useful in society; the other, a wretched family, and himself mouldering in a drunkard’s grave; and appealed to him to decide which should prove to be the true picture. The poor fellow burst into tears and wept like a child. When he had recovered himself from sobbing so that he could speak he said: ‘Doctor, to tell you the truth, it is not that I am afraid of the consequences of stopping suddenly that I do not give up drinking.I can not do it.I have tried and tried again, but it is all in vain. Sometimes I have gone a number of weeks without drinking, and I flattered myself that the temptation was gone, but it returned, and now if there was a spot on earth where men lived and could not get spirits, and I could get there, I would start in a minute.’ I thought I had understood something of the difficulties of hard drinkers before, but this gave me a new impression of the matter, and most solemnly did I charge myself to do what I could tomake a spot on earth where men could live and couldn’t get spirits.”
4.Lesser Evils.—Even in a stricter form than any rational friend of temperance would desire its enforcement, prohibition would not involve any consequences that could possibly make the cure a greater evil than the disease. The predicted aching void resulting from the expurgation of beer-tunnels could be filled by healthier means of recreation. The grief of the superseded poison-mongers would not outweigh the mountain-load of misery and woe which the abolishment of their cursed trade would lift from the shoulders of the nation. When the state of Iowa declared for prohibition the opponents of that amendment bemoaned the loss entailed by the departure of “so many industrious and respectable citizens,”i. e., from the exodus of the rumsellers! We might just as well be asked to bewail the doom of the Thugs[4]as the subversion of a prosperous industry. We might as well be requested to sympathize with the respectable bloodhound-trainers and knout-manufacturers whom the abolition of slavery threw out of employment. The liquor dealer has no right to complain about the rigor of a law that permits him to depart with the spoils of such a trade. We are told that the mere rumor of Maine laws has deterred many foreigners from making their homes with us; that the Russian peasants decline to come without their brewers and distillers, and that by general prohibition we would risk to reduce our immigration from every country of northern Europe. We must take that risk, and let Muscovites rot in the bogs of the Volga if they can not accept our hospitality without turning our bread corn into poison. Our utilitarian friends would hardly persuade us to legalize cannibalism in order to encourage a larger immigration of Fiji islanders. The absence of such guests might not prove an unqualified evil. I shall not insult the intelligence of my readers by repeating the drivel of the wretches who would weigh the reduction of revenues against the happiness of a hell-delivered nation, and I will only mention the reply of a British financier who estimates that the increase of national prosperity would offset that reductionin less than five years.
5.Efficacy of Prohibition.—Will prohibition prevent the use of intoxicating liquor? Not wholly, but it will answer its purpose. It will banish distilleries to secret mountain glens and hidden cellars. It will drive the man-traps of the poison-monger from the public streets. It will save our boys from a hundred temptations; it will help thousands of reformed drunkards to keep their pledge; it will restore peace and plenty to many hundred thousand homes. More than a century ago the philosopher Leibnitz[5]maintained that the plenary suppressionof the liquor traffic would be the most effectual means for reforming the moral status of civilized nations, and experience has since fully demonstrated the correctness of that opinion. A memorandum endorsed by a large number of statistical vouchers describes the effect of prohibition in Sweden: “The nation rose and fell, grew prosperous and happy, or miserable and degraded, as its rulers and law-makers restrained or permitted the manufacture and sale of that which all along the track of its history has seemed to be the nation’s greatest curse.” … “The vigorously maintained prohibition against spirits in 1753-1756, and again in 1772-1775, proved the enormous benefits effected in moral, economical, and other respects, by abstinence from intoxicating spirits.” … “This it is which has so helped Sweden to emerge from moral and material prostration, and explains the existence of such general indications in that country of comfort and independence among all classes.”
From the EdinburghReviewfor January, 1873, we learn that in eighty-nine private estates in England and Scotland, “the drink traffic has been altogether suppressed, with the happiest social results. The late Lord Palmerston[6]suppressed the beer shops in Romsey as the leases fell in. We know an estate which stretches for miles along the romantic shore of Loch Fyne,[7]where no whiskey is allowed to be sold. The peasants and fishermen are flourishing. They have all their money in the bank, and they obtain higher wages than their neighbors when they go to sea”—a proof that a small oasis of temperance can maintain its prosperity in the midst of poison-blighted communities.
Here and there the wiles of the poison-mongers will undoubtedly succeed in evading the law, but their power for mischief will be diminished as that of the gambling-hell was diminished in Homburg and Baden,[8]where temptation was removed out of the track of the uninitiated till the host of victims dwindled away for want of recruits. Not the promptings of an innate passion, but the charm of artificial allurements is the gate by which ninety-nine out of a hundred drunkards have entered the road to ruin. It would be an understatement to say that the temptation of minors will be reduced a hundred fold wherever the total amount of sales has been reduced as much as five fold—a result which has been far exceeded, even under the present imperfect system of legal control. “In the course of my duty as an Internal Revenue officer,” says Superintendent Hamlin of Bangor, “I have become thoroughly acquainted with the state and extent of the liquor traffic in Maine, and I have no hesitation in saying that the beer trade is not more than one per cent. of what I remember it to have been, and the trade in distilled liquors is not more than ten per cent. of what it was formerly.” “I think I am justified in saying,” reports the Attorney-General, “that there is not an open bar for the sale of intoxicating liquor in this county” (Androscoggin, including the manufacturing district of Lewiston—once a very hotbed of the rum traffic). “In the city of Biddeford, a manufacturing place of 11,000 inhabitants, for a month at a time not a single arrest for drunkenness has been made or become necessary.” And from Augusta (the capital of the state): “If we were to say that the quantity of liquor sold here is not one-tenth as large as formerly, we think it would be within the truth; and the favorable effects of the change upon all the interests of the state are plainly seen everywhere.”
“It is perhaps not necessary,” says the BostonGlobe, of July 29, 1875, “to dwell on the evils of intemperance, and yet people seldom think how great a proportion of these might be prevented by driving the iniquity into its hiding places, and preventing it from coming forth to lure its victims from among the unwary and comparatively guileless. Few young men who are worth saving, or are likely to be saved to decency and virtue, would seek it out if it were kept from sight. But when it comes forth in gay and alluring colors, it draws a procession of our youth into a path that has an awful termination. Nor does the evil which springs from an open toleration of the way in which this vice carries on its traffic of destruction fall only on men. A sad proportion of its victims is made up from shop girls and abandoned women who are not so infatuated at the start that they would plunge into a life of infamy if its temptations were strictly under the ban, and kept widely separated from the world of decency. But it intruded itself upon them. Its temptations and opportunities are before their eyes, and the way is made easy for their feet to go down to death.”
“To what good is it,” says Lord Brougham,[9]“that the legislature should pass laws to punish crime, or that their lordships should occupy themselves in trying to improve the morals of the people by giving them education? What could be the use of sowing a little seed here and plucking up a weed there, if these beer shops are to be continued to sow the seeds of immorality broadcast over the land, germinating the most frightful produce that ever has been allowed to grow up in a civilized country, and, I am ashamed to add, under the fostering care of Parliament.”
The prohibition of the poison traffic has become the urgent duty of every legislator, the foremost aim of every moral reformer. The verdict of the most eminent statesmen, physicians, clergymen, patriots and philanthropists, is unanimous on that point. We lack energy, not competence, nor the sanction of a higher authority, to gain the votes of the masses.
“We can prove the success of prohibition by the experience of our neighboring state,” writes Dr. Herbert Buchanan, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire; “all the vicious elements of society are arraigned against us,but I have no fear of the event if we do not cease to agitate the subject.”
Agitation, a ceaseless appeal to the common sense and conscience of our fellowmen can, indeed, not fail to be crowned with ultimate success. The struggle with vice, with ignorance and mean selfishness may continue, but it will be our own fault if our adversaries can support their opposition by a single valid argument, and the battle will be more than half won if a majority of our fellow-citizens have to admit that we contend no longer for a favor, but for an evident right.
BY BYRON D. HALSTED, SC. D.
We have here to consider the sources of the three leading dietetic beverages. They are very unlike in general appearance, but all possess the same vegetable principle, called an alkaloid,[1]though known under different names. Thus modern chemistry has proved the identity of the theine of the tea, the caffeine[2]of the coffee and the theo-bromine[3]of the chocolate. This same vegetable alkaloid, remarkable for its large per cent. of nitrogen, is found in small quantities in a few other plants, most of which have been used to some extent for the making of an exhilarating drink. It answers our purpose best to treat each of our three subjects under its respective head.
Tea(Thea viridis[4]).—The tea of commerce is the prepared leaves of a shrub belonging to the order Camelliaceæ[5]represented in the United States by loblolly bay[6]and Stuartia.[7]Perhaps the most familiar near relative of the tea plant is the camellia of our green houses and window gardens. The wild tea shrub grows from twenty to thirty feet high, and is found native in China and Japan. When under cultivation the shrub is pruned so as to not exceed six feet in height. The flowers are large, white and fragrant; they are produced in clusters in the axils of the simple, oblong, evergreen, serrate leaves. China and Japan are among the leading tea-growing countries, its cultivation being chiefly confined between twenty-five and thirty-five north latitude. Tea was in general use in China in the ninth century, but it was not until the seventeenth century that it was introduced into Europe. About the middle of this century the East India Company imported tea into England, since which time it has become the regular beverage of many millions of people in all parts of the world. The importations of tea into the United States for the year ending June 30th, 1884, were 67,665,910 pounds. It will be seen that this gives somewhere near a pound and a quarter of tea for each man, woman and child in this country. Most of our China tea trade is carried on with Shanghai, Foo Chow and Amoy.
In China the tea shrub is grown chiefly on the southern slopes of hills in poor, well watered soil, to which manure is applied. The seeds are dropped in holes at regular intervals, and during the third year the first crop is obtained. In from seven to ten years the shrubs are cut down and shoots spring up from the stumps, which continue to yield crops of leaves. A single plant produces on an average between three hundred and three hundred and fifty pounds of dried leaves. The leaves are picked three times a year, in April, May, and June or July. The young, tender leaves of the first gathering make the best tea, and this is very largely consumed in its native country. The older leaves of the second and third pickings make a poorer quality of tea which abounds in tannin,[8]and contains but a small per cent. of the best elements of superior tea. It was long supposed that black and green sorts of tea were made from distinct varieties, or even species of plants; in fact, there has been a great deal of mystery surrounding the culture and preparation of tea until within the past score of years. Authorities now state that there is only one species of plant yielding tea leaves, and from this all sorts are made. The differences are natural, being some of them due to climate and conditions of soil, etc., while others are the result of the manipulation of the leaves after they are gathered. Black and green tea may come from the same shrub, or even the same branch of a plant. The leaves forming black tea undergo a fermentation before they are dried, while those designed for green tea are at once submitted to a high heat in iron pans, and not copper pans, as generally supposed. After the leaves for black tea have been gathered they are placed in heaps, when they become flaccid and turn dark from incipient fermentation. The leaves are then rolled between the thumb and fingers or upon bamboo tables until the desired twist is obtained. They next pass to a drying room and are heated in an iron pan; again twisted, and afterward dried over a slow fire. The principal difference between the preparation of black and green tea is that in the latter the freshly gathered leaves go at once into the heated pans. The repeated twisting and heating is nearly the same with both classes. The green teas are sometimes artificially colored by using turmeric[9]with gypsum or Prussian blue. A flavor is frequently given to the tea by adding aromatic flowers, as those of the pekoe and caper.[10]Among the leading varieties of black tea are: Bohea, a small leaf, crisp and strong odor, with brackish taste; two sorts of Congous—the large leaf with fine flavor, and the small leaf with a burnt smell. The Souchong is the much prized “English Breakfast,” made from leaves of three-year-old trees. Only a small part of the so-called Souchong is genuine. Pekoe is made from the tenderest leaves gathered from three-year-old plants while in bloom. Oolongs are common kinds of black teas, much used for mixing with other sorts. Of the green teas the Gunpowder is round, like shot, with green color and fragrant taste. The Imperial is more loosely rolled than the Gunpowder. Young Hyson is in loose rolls, which easily crumble to the touch; it gives a light green infusion. Old Hyson is the older leaves in the picking for Young Hyson. Twankay consists of mixed and broken leaves, and is of inferior quality. Japan teas are both colored and uncolored, and come from Japan; they are very largely consumed in this country.
The chemical composition of a fair sample of tea is; Theine, 1. to 3. per cent.; caseine,[11]15.; gum, 18.; sugar, .3; tannin, 26.; aromatic oil, .75; fat, 4.; vegetable fiber, 20.; mineral substances, 5.; and water, 5. per cent.
The tannin is an astringent, while the theine acts as a gentle excitant upon the nervous system. This is probably enhanced by the warmth of the infusion. The best authorities agree that tea is a valuable article of diet for healthy, grown people. It however is not suitable for children until growth is completed. Adults with irritable constitutions may be injured by tea-drinking. Tea is the solace of old age. Cibber[12]wrote: “Tea! thou soft, thou sober, sage and venerable liquid … thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink-tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moments of my life, let me fall prostrate.” Waller[13]truthfully says: