TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4918, 5 January 1895, Page 2

TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

A Russian correspondent of St. James' Gazelle says that, with a view to repressing drunkenness, tho names of all persons, without exception, who are found drunk in the streets of St. Petersburg, are now published regularly by theofficialPofe Qasette, where some rather distinguished names of both women and men have, in consequeuce appeared. The American Grocer says:—The Insurance Monitor is authority for the statement that the nation's drink bill is four times as great as the entire cost of all the life insurance that is carried by all the citizen&of the country. One represents tWfrj, discredit, degradation, deatli ;*Tne other represents homes saved, children educated, positions maintained, and competency when old, According to the AmericanE/wre' Journal, seventy-five times as much beer is consumed in " high license " Nebraska as in prohibition Kansas. The license fees in Nebraska range from 25 dollars to 1,500 dollars per year in sundry places. It is stated that the law-abiding people of the largest city of Kansas, Topeko, having became aware that the prohibitory law is being violated, have organised themselves to preserve Topeka's good name as' tho cleanest city of its size in the world.'

Society says " Dr. Norman Kerr has just written a book to provo that alcoholism is a disease. If it is, we ought to have as many ' Homes for Inebriates' as there are publichouses, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson is furnished with another po\vw|i argument for knocking the bofHh out of the brewer's vats. For it would clearly be unfair to provide ' homes' for thogenteel upporclasses, and leave the wage-earners and the paupers to go to the devil without making an effort to save them." Three Clubs of the university of Leipzig have determined to give up meeting in tho mornings for tho ■purpose of drinking beer. The reason for letting this ancient academical custom drop is that it interferes with the work of tho students. Dr. Wilkinson, surgeon to the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade, lias cautioned the volunteers against the danger af administering alcohol to half-drowned persons. Ho regards it as a fatal mistake to give them brandy, until the wet clothing has been removed and tho temperature raised in a warm bed. And even then, we should add, they will be better without it, and with a good cup of tea or milk in. its place, it Dr. Johnston, who has finished a 'journey of 4,000 miles on foot in Africa, describes an incident resulting from the import of liquor into llashonaland. " Two miners on coming into Salisbury had treated themselves to a few bottles of whig- J key, retiring to their hut to consume them, and when no longer able to maintain their equilibriuin,one asked the other, 'How do you feel?' ' Feel!' was tho reply, ' 1 feel—that lam under the sphere—of British inlluonce."

Police Inspector Hunt, of tho Chicago Police Force, speaking of the first bloodshed in connection with the lato railway riots wherein a number of men where shot dead, spoke of their rushing away when fired on, but " tho aliens were soon, emboldoned by the absence of police • and gained courage by drink, and the saloons soon became full of guzzling fellows who became braver the more they drank. They then rushed out and completed their work of destruction and burned more cam jiufc scattered like sheep when the p«n came round again,"

In a conversation with Sir John Hall, an eminent New Zealand politician, a reporter of the Westminster Gazette drew from him the following reference to Temperance in Now Zealand :—" I snpposo" (said tie reporter) " Temperance is one of the subjects the importance of which women seo most clearly because they have suffered much from its absence ?" " les, they have learned by suffering. There is still a good deal of drinking in New Zealand, though in this respect alsothe colony compares favourably with the Mother Country and neighbouring colonies. Wo have, comparatively speaking, fewer drunkards and fewer publio houses than England. Also, the fact is satisfactory that the quantity of spirits hap lately diminished a good deal. Still, more money is spent in drink than onght to be spent," It occurred to Sir John Lub», eminent ant-fancier study ants under the influence of liquor. "None of my ants," he writes, in his" Beauties of Nature," "would voluntarily degrade themselves by getting drank. However, I got over the difficulty by patting thorn into whisky for a few minutes I took 50 specimens, twenty-five from one' twenty-five from another, made thom. dead drunk, marked each' with a spot' of paint, and put them on i table close to where other ants, from one 01, nests were feeding. These other ants sods

noticed those which I had made drunk. Theyseemed quiteastonished to find their comrades in such a disgraceful condition, and as much at a loss to know what to do with their drunkards as wo are. After a while, however, to cut my story short, they carried them all away; the strangers i they took to the edge of the moat and dropped into the water, while they boro their friends home into the nest, where by degrees they slept off tho effects of the spirit."