three teaspoonfulls, it destroys life, as clearly shown in
Accum's experiments. Combined with different proportions of water,
sugar, etc., it is modified in its effects. Most of the vegetable and
mineral poisons may be so diluted and modified as to be capable of
application to the bodies of men internally, without producing immediate
fatal consequences; which, nevertheless, cannot be used any length of
time, even thus disarmed, without producing pernicious effects. So it is
with alcohol: like other poisons, it cannot be used any length of time,
even diluted and modified, without proving pernicious to health, and if
persevered in, in considerable quantities, inevitably destructive to
life. This last sentiment, however, we will consider more particularly
under the

THIRD REASON for the disuse of alcohol: It _destroys both body and
soul_. It is estimated that _thirty or forty thousand_ died annually in
the United States from the intemperate use of ardent spirit before the
Temperance reformation began. Thirty or forty thousand! a sacrifice
seldom matched by war or pestilence. The blood which flowed from the
veins of our martyred countrymen, in the cause of freedom, never reached
this annual sacrifice. And the pestilential _cholera_, ruthless as it
is, which has marked its desolating track through many of our towns and
cities, numbers not an amount of victims like this plague, much as its
virulence has been enhanced by ardent spirit. The destructive influence
of immoderate drinking upon the bodily powers of men, is painfully
apparent, sometimes long before the fatal catastrophe. The face, the
speech, the eyes, the walk, the sleep, the breath, all proclaim the
drying up of the springs of life. And although abused nature will often
struggle, and struggle, and struggle, to maintain the balance of her
powers, and restore her wasted energies, she is compelled to yield at
length to suicidal violence.

The effect of the habitual use of ardent spirit upon the health, is much
greater than is generally supposed. An individual who is in the habit of
drinking spirits daily, although he may not fall under the character of
a drunkard, is undermining his constitution gradually, but certainly; as
a noble building, standing by the side of a small, unnoticed rivulet,
whose current steals along under its foundation, and carries away from
its support sand after sand, has its security certainly though
imperceptibly impaired, and finally falls