Demon rum -- the end is near

Brookville American, July 1856

Let's Take A Drink

"Let's go and take a drink, boys," said a well-dressed young man as the cars stopped at the Waukegan station. And so the boys did, re-entering the cars with their language and persons marked by the bar room color.

Take a drink! The young men were well-dressed fools. They have taken a step which will bring a fearful retribution. Years hence, a thousand woes will blossom in the footprints now made in young life. A false light gilds the deadly miasma which dogs their footsteps.

They see not the smoking altar towards which they are tending. A host of shadowy phantoms of vice and crime are flitting on before.

Red-handed murder laughs at their folly, and death is waiting at the fresh-opened grave. There are tears to shed by those who at this hour dream not of the sorrow which these false steps shall bring upon them.

Take a drink! All the uncounted host of drunkards whose graves in every land mark the pathway of intemperance, took a drink. They took drinks and died. Three out of four of the murderers of 1855 took a drink.

They wither like the grass under the sirocco breath of the plague they nourish.

Another day, and the storm of their life is told by a rude, stoneless grave in the Potter's Field.

We involuntarily shudder when we see young men crowding the deeply-beaten path to the dram shop. They are all confident in their own strength. With the glass in hand where coils the deadly adder, they ha-ha, about the fools that drink themselves to death!

Don't take a drink! Shun the Dead Sea fruits which bloom on the shore where millions have died. The bondage of iron galls but the limbs. That of the dram fetters the soul.

-- Cayuga Chief

Note: Editor T.A. Goodwin was also a minister and he was constantly railing about the evils of alcohol.