Temperance Column

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 20, 4 August 1892, Page 2

Temperance Column

-*. The following essay was composed by a lad only fourteen years of age, named C. F. Fhilps, resident at Campbelltown, which took the first prize in the competition:— Temperance means to abstain from intoxicating liquora. Many a strong man has been utterly ruined by continually taking intoxicating drink ; for all kinds of intoxicating liquors contain a certain amount of alcohol and this causes a brisk decay in the nervous system. Many aocidants are cnueed by drunkenness. Men get intoxicated and have to go to their homes at night, and they may fall over bridges into water, and, being unable to get out are drowned. If they have horses they may fall off and get seriously injured, perhaps maimed for life. We are better able to work if we abstain from intoxicat. ing liquors, for if we don't drink anything that is intoxicating our heart gets more rest. When we go to bed at night our heart is supposed to be resting to a certain extent, but if we take alcohol in any form the heart does not get that rest, for it beats much quicker and therefore has to pump more blood. When you get up the next morning you are weaker in mind and body, and unfit for your work then you take more liquor and the weakness increases, and by so doing you rapidly wear away your life. Women and children are often driven into abject misery by their husband's cruelty when under the influence of drink : they often illuae their families. Very often they sell their furniture little by little for the sake of drink, until everything is gone. Their families have to work hard to support themselves, and even then their husbands often take their earnings from them and spend it on drink, leaymg their children hungry. During the last few years men have changed their opinions iv regard to the value of alcohol, People once looked upon it as a preserver of health, and Bupposed it to giye strength and warmth. Lately it has been proved to be a source of disease, to impart no strength and no warmth. Men who do uot abstain are never respected by the public as much as a man of the temperance fame, and a drunkard may be told by signs on his countenance. Temperauoa halls have been erected, and lodges formed for the puspose of trying to entice people away from a certain fate that must surely come upon them in the end if they do not abstain. All parts of the human frame are harmed by the use of alcohol : it interferes with the action of the heart, disturbs digestion, poisons the blood, lowers the temperature, and decreases the strength of the body. Learned men have proved that those who drink have not so long an ayerago of life as those who abstain.