TEMPERANCE NOTES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2634, 17 March 1894, Page 3

TEMPERANCE NOTES.

(Truth.)

A gentleman known as a strict temperance advocate has just returned from a trip to the North Island, and, though personally still an abstainer, his denunciations of the " accursed thing " lack somewhat their accustomed vim and point. During his absence he has had Bome experience of so-called "Temperance Hotels." He thinks there are more comfortable inus in Tophet. He says :. — "I arrived at my first 'Temperance Restaurant' at 7.30 p.m, after a long wet jonruey. I was received by a voluminous female, wearing a blue ribbon and a heavy scowl. 'Can 1 have some tea V I asked. No, I could not have tea at that time of night. ' Can uxy clothes be dried ? ' No they could not; the lire was out. So I crawled up to bed and hung my damp garments on the back of the only chair in the place. I thought I would have a drink of water before turning in, but there was no water-bottle in the room and the fluid in my ewer looked pea-soupy. At the j second 'Temperance Hotel,' which I struck on the following evening, the feeding | was dirty, the hash full of the landlady's red hair, the air of tne proprietors was haughty and austere, the partitions of the rooms were thin, the rooms w r ere small, and the bed and blankets were stained, but there were several fly-blown texts on the wall, and 1 was invited to attend ' family prayers.' After these experiences I sojourned at seven different hotels where drink was sold. I received every comfort and attention, was not, as at the last Temperance Hotel, kept awake by noisy boys, and speaking generally, though 1 detest drink as much as ever, I trust decent hotels will not be abolished until the prohibitionists have shown that they have some constructive skill by establishing Temperance Hotels which are not outrages upon comfort, cleanlinoss and decency." TJ>e esperieupe of this absfcajner is t|}e experience of nearly every persqn who lias bravedjthe terrors of teinperance hotels and rpstaurautsj in any part of tb.o world. In the first place many of the people who keep these abodes of misery appeal' to think that the fact oi their own temperanoe sots them upon a moral pinnacle which quite absolves them from giving travel ers money's worth for their money. Speaking (noadly, ti»e food at such places is abominably cooked and served, the buds are dirty,' the attendance an ijnk'own quantity, and the bassos wear more frill to tho square inch than it is gjod for anyone save a saint or angel to wear. Added to which the prices are, for '•he. re.tlly awful entertainment given, exorbitant. But then,' as our temperance friend tacitly admits, the howling prohibitionists n ; re not constrictive. Their genius (() is purely iconoclastic. —"Wo are ready to endorse every word of Uii3.