TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5106, 17 August 1895, Page 3

TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

A Scotch parson said recently, Bouiowhat sarcastically, of a toper, that lie put an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains, but that the onemy after a protracted search returned without anything. Lord Wriotliesley liussell, who was a rector in Buckinghamshire, ami also Canon of Windsor, became late in life, a teetotaller, and announced the fact to a Temperance meeting at Windsor. He said his reason for going in for total abstinence was that forty years, as a parish clergyman, he had been trying to euro drunkards by making them drink in moderation, but had never once succeeded. A Windsor paper reported that ' the noble and rev. lord gave as his reason that for forty ,rs he had been trying to drink in deration, hut had mm once -mcceM /" '

A liquor-traffic organ says:—"Our Alliance contemporary informs us that a singular diarist who kept an account of every item of his personal expenditure has just died at Vienna. His drink bill for the last lifteen years comprised, we are told, 28,786 'bocks' topped off with 3G,081 'nips of all sorts,' costing him £1,288. ' The liquor men must have missed him,' says .our contemporary,' when he left them at last, agod 73.' Perhaps they did, but at any rate he managed to livo to 73; and, therefore, his somewhat alarming consumption of intoxicants can certainly nut be quoted in favour of the teetotal theory that drink shortens life." The answer to the above is, that although the man lived to be 73 years old, his tale of liquid refreshments runs through only lifteen years. As it accounts for '28,786 " bocks," the presumption is that the drinking period was in the septuagenarian's earlierdays. But whichever it was.theprobability isthatthis man fB endowed by the nature with an ;eptioually grand constitution, licli, had he treated it wisely, refraining from all narcotics, would bavomadehim ahealthy centenarian. M. Camlet lier quotes Sir Richard Burton's saying: "It is my sincere belief that if the slave trade wore revived with all its horrors, and Africa could get rid of the white man with the gunpowder and rum vhich lie . has introduced, Africa would be a gainer in happiness by the exchange." Incidentally the writer condemns the English Niger Company for introducing spirituous liquors of all sorts into, the regions under their rule, for the sake of the large duty upon them. The following passage is from a letter which he quotes as having been sent by a king named Maliki, to Bishop Crowtlier: "Barassa (gin) has ruined my country. It impels my people to violence ami madness. I liaye had to issuo an edict that any dwelling where gin is sold is to be burned to the ground, and that every drunken person is to suffer death. 1 have told the Christian traders that I will agree to every thing except the importation of gin."—The above frames from the Lrnlon Daily News.