LAN MACLAREN ON THE BEGINNING OF INTEMPERANCE.
It would, perhaps, be impossible for any of us to agree upon a particular sin ' as most dangerous, but I may say there cannot be two opinions about the &in, ' of all the masterful and deadly ems, which is most insidious, and has the most cunning approaches, although in the end its results be awful and disastrous. You ' see, there are sins which just fairly grip ' you of a sudden ; you have a hand-to hand tussle, and the result is a crowned victor or a disgraced victim. I could mention such a sin ; it is not necessary. But intemperance very rarely takes hold of a man like that. If intemperance ever does, it is because the man's father drank, and the alcoholic taint is in hi? veins; and then he falls quite suddenly or because he is placed at a peculiar disadvantage. Usually, intemperance comes with masked and unsuspected be- • ginnings; and if you afterwards said to a man, "Where did you begin?" he would not be able to identify the start. ' Young children, full of the excitement ' and heat of animal spirits, are offered wine when they are too young to resist. Ido not care to be dogmatic in this Dlace ■ about the various circumstances of social ' life, but at once I shall go to the length of saying that to give children wine is , something approaching a dastardly sin. Women with fine sensibilities and highly- ] strung temperaments are ordered stimu- ■< lante during critical circumstances in 1 their lives, and they acquire a habit - which, in the end, become-, their master. ( loung men serve their time in offices where the principals are not so careful < f as they should be about this thins, and i ' where other young men go out two or I three timee a day to the bar, and they . begin to go also. Bargains are made in , some lines, of business over refreshments, which could not otherwise be made, or , would not be made, as one has told me, 1 at such a profit. And so the man <?ete t his present profit, and lays the founda- c tion of his future moral wreck. . . I i believe the day is coming when the finger ' of scorn will be pointed at a man who £ will go out from his r>lace for no other purpose than that of drinking. — Light, November 24, 1906. j
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Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 12
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404LAN MACLAREN ON THE BEGINNING OF INTEMPERANCE. Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 12
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