In the country I have often seen a little child, with her sun-browned face and long golden locks, sweet as any flower she pressed beneath her naked foot; merry as any bird that sung from bush or brake, driving the cattle home; and with fearless hand controlling the sulky leader of the herd, as with armed forehead and colossal strength he quailed before that slight image of God.
Some days ago I saw a different sight—such a child, with hanging head, no music in his voice, nor blush but that of shame upon his cheek, leading home a drunken father upon the public street The man required to be led, guided, guarded. And into a condition hardly less helpless large masses of our people have sunk. Why do they drink? Look at their unhappy and most trying circumstances.
Many of them are born with a propensity to this vice. They suck it in with a mother’s milk. The drunken parent transmits to his children a proneness to his fatal indulgence. The foul atmosphere which many of them breathe, the hard labor by which many of them earn their bread, produce a prostration which seeks in stimulants something to rally the system, nor will they be debarred from their use by any prospect of danger.
With our improved tastes, our books, our recreations, our domestic comforts, we have no adequate idea of the temptations to which the poor are exposed, and from which nothing is truer kindness than to protect them.—GUTHRIE.
