TRAMP'S ELOQUENT LECTURE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 398, 16 June 1908, Page 4

TRAMP'S ELOQUENT LECTURE.

A tramp asked for a free drink in a saloon. The request was granted, and while he was in the act of drinking the proffered beverage one of the young men present exclaimed ; “Stop; make us a speech. It is poor liquor that doesn’t loosen a man’s tongue.” The tramp hastily swallowed the drink, and, as the fiery liquor coursed through his blood, he straightened himself and stood before them with a grace and dignity that all his rags and dirt could, not obscure. ~ ((T1 i “ Gentlemen,” he said, I look to-night at you and , myself, and it seems to me I look at the picture of my lost manhood. This bloated face was once as yonug and handsome as yours. This shambling figure once walked as proudly as yours—a man in the world of men. I, too, once had a home, and friends, and position. I had a wife as beautiful as an artist’s dream, and I dropped the priceless pearl of her honour and respect in the wine cup, and, Cleopatra-like, saw T it jaissolve, and quaffed it down in the brimming draught. I. had children as sweet and lovely as the flowers of spring, and saw them fade and die under the blighting curse of a drunkard father. I had a home where love lit the flame upon the altar, and ministered before it; and I put out the; holy fire, and darkness and desolation reigned in its stead. I had aspirations and ambitions that soared as high as the morning star, and I broke and bruised their beautiful wings, and at last strangled them that I might be tortured with their cries no more. To-day I am a husband without a wife, a father without a child ; a tramp with no home to call his own, a man in whom every good impulse is dead. And all swallowed up in the maelstrom of drink.”

The tramp ceased speaking. The glass fell from his nerveless fingers and shivered into fragments on the floor. The swingingdoors pushed open, and shut again, and when the little group about the bar looked up the tramp had gone. ____________