her to his bosom the little one twined her
arms about his neck and said: 'Papa, please come home with us. Mama
cries so much cause you don't come home.' The man sinking into a chair
said: 'O God, am I never to see my home again?'"

This is but one of the thousands of homes destroyed every year by the
drink curse. If I could draw aside the veil and let you look into the
desolate homes of your own city tonight, you would feel Ex-Governor
Hanley of Indiana did not give an overwrought picture when he said:
"Personally, I have seen so much physical ruin, mental blight and
moral corruption from strong drink that I hate the traffic. I hate it
for its arrogance; I hate it for its hypocrisy; I hate it for its
greed and avarice; I hate it for its domination in politics; I hate it
for its disregard of law; I hate it for the load it straps on labor's
back; I hate it for the wounds it has given to genius, for the human
wrecks it has wrought, for the alms-houses it has peopled, for the
prisons it has filled, for the crimes it has committed, the homes it
has destroyed, the hearts it has broken, the malice it has planted in
the hearts of men, and the dead sea fruit with which it starves
immortal souls." With proof of the truth of this phillipic on every
hand, it is a strange anomaly in our government that the degrading
influence of the saloon is linked by law to the elevating influence of
school, church and home.

When Jesus was on earth He came to a fig tree, dressed in rich leaves
but barren of fruit; it was in fig season but the tree had only
leaves. We read that Jesus cursed the tree and it withered. We have in
this country a upas tree named the liquor traffic. It is not a barren
tree, but far worse than barren. Its branches bend with the weight of
its fruit, but not a pint, nor a quart, nor gallon, nor barrel from
its boughs ever benefited a single mortal by its use as a beverage.
Its leaves drip with poison and the bones of its dead victims would
build a pyramid as high as Appenines piled on the Alps. Jesus withered
the tree that produced nothing. We license and cultivate the tree
whose fruitage the Bible compares to the bite of a serpent, the sting
of an adder and the poison of asps.

In the earlier days of the temperance movement, when we discussed the
question along moral lines, the license advocates made it an economic
question, but since the commercial world is fast becoming a great
temperance league, and great industries