"Money, friends, relatives and all have forsaken him, his hope blasted,
his ambition gone, and he feels that no one has confidence in him, no
one cares for him. In this condition he wends his way to an institution
of reform, a penniless, homeless, degraded, lost and hopeless drunkard.
Here is our subject, how shall we save him? He has come from the squalid
dens, and lanes of filth, of misery, of want, of debauchery and death;
no home, no sympathy and no kind words have greeted him, perhaps, for
years. He is taken to the hospital. A few days pass, and he awakes from
the stupidity of drink, and as he opens his eyes, what a change! He
looks around, kind and gentle voices welcome him, his bed is clean and
soft, the room beautiful, tasteful and pleasant in its arrangements, the
superintendent, the physician, the steward and the inmates meet him with
a smile and treat him as a brother. He is silent, lost in meditation.
Thoughts of other days, of other years, pass through his mind in quick
succession as the tears steal gently down his cheeks. He talks thus to
himself: 'I am mistaken. _Somebody does care_ for the drunkard. And if
somebody cares for me, _I ought to care for myself_.' Here reform first
commences. In a few days, when free, to some extent, from alcohol, he is
admitted to the freedom of the institution. As he enters the
reading-room, the library, the amusement, the gymnasium, dining-room and
spacious halls, the conviction becomes stronger and stronger that
somebody is interested in the inebriate, and he should be interested in
himself. Then comes the lessons of the superintendent. He is taught that
he cannot be reformed, but that he can reform himself. That God helps
those only who help themselves. That he must ignore all boon companions
of the cup as associates, all places where liquor is kept and sold,
that, in order to reform himself, he must become a reformer, labor for
the good of his brother; in short, he must shun every rivulet that leads
him into the stream of intemperance, and as a cap-stone which completes
the arch, that he must look to Him from whence cometh all grace and