ub is easily open to him without
drinking, it will also be found that he ceases to frequent the saloon,
and almost loses his taste for strong drink.

Whatever elevates the taste of the laborer, or expands his mind, or
innocently amuses him, or passes his time pleasantly without indulgence,
or agreeably instructs, or provides him with virtuous associations,
tends at once to guard him from habits of intoxication. The Kensington
Museum and Sydenham Palace, of London; the Cooper Union, the Central
Park, and free Reading-rooms of New York, are all temperance-societies
of the best kind. The great effort now is to bring this class of
influences to bear on the habits of the laboring-people, and thus
diminish intemperance.

It is a remarkable fact, in this connection, that, though ninety out of
the hundred of our children in the Industrial Schools are the children
of drunkards, not one of the thousands who have gone forth from them has
been known to have fallen into intemperate habits. Under the elevating
influences of the school, they imperceptibly grow out of the habits of
their mothers and fathers, and never acquire the appetite.

Another matter, which is well worthy of the attention of reformers, is
the possibility of introducing into those countries where "heavy
drinking" prevails, the taste for light wines and the habit of open-air
drinking. The passion for alcohol is a real one. On a broad scale it
cannot be annihilated. Can we not satisfy it innocently? In this
country, for instance, light wines can be made to a vast extent, and
finally be sold very cheaply. If the taste for them were formed, would
it not expel the appetite for whisky and brandy, or at least, in the
coming generation, form a new habit?

There is, it is true, a peculiar intensity in the American temperament
which makes the taking of concentrated stimulus natural to it. It will
need some time for men accustomed to work up their nervous system to a
white heat by repeated draughts of whisky or brandy to be content with
weak wines. Perhaps the present generation never will be. But the laws
of health and morality are so manifestly on the side of drinking light
wines as compared with drinking heavy liquors, that any effort at social
improvement in this direction would have a fair chance of success. Even
the slight change of habit involved in drinking leisurely at a table in
the open air with women and children--after the German fashion--would be
a great soc