[Illustration: Alcohol and Gambling bury their victim in an untimely
and dishonored grave.]

[Illustration: They report their success to Satan and receive his
congratulations.]




CHAPTER VII.

MEANS OF CURE.


Is this disease, or vice, or sin, or crime of intemperance--call it by
what name you will--increasing or diminishing? Has any impression been
made upon it during the half-century in which there have been such
earnest and untiring efforts to limit its encroachments on the health,
prosperity, happiness and life of the people? What are the agencies of
repression at work; how effective are they, and what is each doing?

These are questions full of momentous interest. Diseases of the body, if
not cured, work a steady impairment of health, and bring pains and
physical disabilities. If their assaults be upon nervous centres, or
vital organs, the danger of paralysis or death becomes imminent. Now, as
to this disease of intemperance, which is a social and moral as well as
a physical disease, it is not to be concealed that it has invaded the
common body of the people to an alarming degree, until, using the words
of Holy Writ, "the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint." Nay,
until, using a still stronger form of Scriptural illustration, "From the