intoxicating liquor as a beverage, and when you are as old as
I am you will not regret it. You cannot find me in all the world, one
man between forty and eighty years of age, an abstainer all his life,
who would change that record if he could. Boys, that's a very safe
rule that has not a single exception. But how many are there who
regret they ever put the bottle to their lips? "If I had only let
strong drink alone" is the bitter wail of millions of men and women.
From pauper poverty and prison cells, electric chairs and dying
drunkard's lips comes the cry: "Drink has been my curse!"

Does some young man in this audience say, "I can quit if I please?"
Then I beg you to _please_, ere you reach the time when you will
strive to quit, but in vain. I know you don't intend to go beyond your
power of control; neither did the drunkards who have gone before you.
Do you suppose Edgar Allen Poe dreamt when he took his first drink in
the social gathering of an old Virginia gentleman's home that it would
bring from his brilliant brain the weird strain:

"Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Do you suppose Thomas F. Marshall, our gifted Kentucky orator, dreamt
when he stood at the foot of the ladder of fame and all Kentucky
pointed him to the golden glory of its summit, that his last words
would be: "And this is the end. Tom Marshall dying; dying in a
borrowed bed, under a borrowed sheet, and without a decent suit of
clothes in which to be buried!"

I well remember the first time I saw Thomas Marshall. He had returned
from Washington, where he had thrilled Congress by his eloquence. He
was announced to speak in Lexington on court day afternoon. I went
with my father from our country home to hear the then golden mouthed
orator. For nearly two hours he swayed that audience as the storm king
sways the mountain pine. On unseen wings of eloquence he soared to
heights I had never imagined within the reach of mortal tongue.

I also remember the last time I saw this brilliant Kentuckian. He was
standing on a street corner in Lexington, Kentucky. His hair hung a
tangled mass about his forehead, his eagle eyes were dimmed by
debauch, and a thin, worn coat was buttoned over soiled linen. As he
straightened himself and started to the bar-room, I could see traces
of greatness lingering about his brow like sheet lightning about the
bosom of a summer storm cloud. Not long after