ng man, Hugh Miller once drank the two glasses of whiskey
which fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons with
whom he worked. On reaching home he tried to read Bacon's Essays, his
favorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehend
the meaning. "The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt,
one of degradation," said he. "I had sunk, by my own act, for the time,
to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilege
to be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable one
for forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never
again sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking
usage; and with God's help I was enabled to hold by the determination."

In a certain manufacturing town an employer one Saturday paid to his
workmen $700 in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. On Monday
$450 of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by the
saloon-keepers. When the fact was made known, the workmen were so
startled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. The
times would not be so "hard" for the workmen if the saloons did not
take in so much of their wages. If they would organize a strike against
the saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase of
wages, and to include an increase of savings.

How often we might read the following sign over the threshold of a
youthful life: "For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "golden
chances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little
sensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife,
lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent
possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in a
thousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, a
brilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, a
skilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, all
exchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, a
shattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fatty
degeneration of the heart, for Bright's disease, for a drunkard's
liver."

With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signed
the pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without a
mouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearful
battle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dyin