Only by a study of the drink evil shall we know its ravages in the
home. Those of us who have lived in the pure air of free, country
home-life can not easily realize the moral plague of drunkenness
as it blights the home in the crowded districts of city slum life.
Nor is the home of the city alone cursed by the drink evil. Three
years ago this last holiday season we were doing some evangelistic
work in a neighboring town, a mere village of a couple hundred
inhabitants. I shall never forget how the mother of a dejected home
cried and pleaded for help from the ravages of her drunken husband.
She said that he had spent all of his wages, and had made no
provision for the home, in furniture, in books for the children, nor
in clothing for them nor for her. She had come almost to despair,
and was blaming God for allowing her little ones to suffer because
of a worthless man. O, the world is full of this sort of thing to-day,
if we only knew the sighs and heartaches and blasted hopes of those
who suffer! In a smoking-car one day a commercial traveler refused
to drink with his old comrades, by saying: "No, I won't drink with
you to-day, boys. The fact is, boys, I have sworn off." He was
taunted and laughed at, and urged to tell what had happened to him.
They said: "If you've quit drinking, something's up; tell us what it
is." "Well, boys," he said, "I will, though I know you will laugh at
me; but I will tell you all the same. I have been a drinking man all
my life, and have kept it up since I was married, as you all know. I
love whisky; it's as sweet in my mouth as sugar, and God only knows
how I'll quit it. For seven years not a day has passed over my head
that I didn't have at least one drink. But I am done. Yesterday I was
in Chicago. Down on South Clark Street a customer of mine keeps
a pawnshop in connection with his business. I called on him, and
while I was there a young man of not more than twenty-five, wearing