do him justice. Here once when the Micks got to throwing stones through the Methodist Sunday-school windows, Buck Fanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon, and took a couple of six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sundayschool. Says he, 'No Irish need apply.' And they did'nt. He was the bulliest man in the mountains, pard; he could run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and hold more tanglefoot whiskey without spilling it than any man in seventeen counties. Put that in, pard; it'll please the boys more than anything you could say. And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother." "Never shook his mother?" "That's it-any of the boys will tell you so." "Well, some that averages pretty so-so." "In my opinion, a man that would offer personal violence to his mother, ought to—” "Cheese it, pard; you've banked your ball clean outside the string. What I was a-drivin' at was that he never throwed off on his mother-don't you see? No indeedy! He give her a house to live in, and town lots, and plenty of money; and he looked after her and took care of her all the time; and when she was down with the small-pox, I'm cuss'd if he did'nt set up nights and nuss her himself! Beg your pardon for saying it, but it hopped out too quick for yours truly. You've treated me like a gentleman, and I ain't the man to hurt your feelings intentional. I think you're white. I think you're a square man, pard. I like you, and I'll lick any man that don't. I'll lick him till he can't tell himself from a last year's corpse! Put it there!” [Another fraternal handshake-and exit.] The obsequies were all that "the boys" could desire. Such funeral pomp had never been seen in Virginia. The plumed hearse, the dirge-breathing brass bands, the closed marts of business, the flags drooping at half-mast, the long plodding procession of uniformed secret societies, military battalions and fire companies, draped engines, carriages of officials and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attracted mul titudes of spectators to the sidewalks, roofs and windows; and for years afterward, the degree of grandeur attained by any civic display was determined by comparison with Buck Fanshaw's funeral. From "Roughing It." ONLY SIXTEEN. "When last seen, he was considerably intoxicated, in the highway." and was found dead Only sixteen so the papers say, Yet the rum fiend conquered him-so he died. Oh! it were sad he must die all alone; Rumseller, come view the work you have wrought! Ye free-holders who signed the petition to grant When the elements, melting with fervent heat, Christian men! rouse ye to stand for the right, To action and duty; into the light Come with your banners, inscribed “Death to rum!” Let your conscience speak. Listen, then, come; Strike killing blows; hew to the line; Make it a felony even to sign A petition to license; you would do it I ween, THE YEAR THAT IS TO COME. FRANCES DANA GAGE. What are we going to do,dear friends, To baffle that fearful fiend of death Shall we fold our hands and bid him pass, As he has passed heretofore, Leaving his deadly-poisoned draught At every unbarred door? What are we going to do,dear friends? Then bind the bruises, and heal the wound, Let the fiend still torture the weary wife, Still poison the coming child, Still break the suffering mother's heart, Still drive the sister wild? Still bring to the grave the gray-haired sire, Drag down to the very depths of hell The highest and proudest name? Is this our mission on earth, dear friends, If not, let us rouse and do our work There is not a soul so poor and weak, But against this evil a word may speak, And lift a warning hand, dear friends, And the weak and wavering shall hear, And the true, and good, and great, and wise Till a barrier of bold and loving hearts, That no spirit of rum can overleap, Then the spirit of rum shall surely die; And only on hourly sacrifice The demon lives and thrives. And can we not do this, dear friends, Then the ransomed soul shall send to heaven A song without alloy, And "the morning stars together sing, And God's sons shout for joy." THE REFORM WILL GO ON. Intemperance is not a mere local affair, but strikes at the very vitals of the nation. The liquor traffic is the fruitful source of woe, crime, misery, taxation, pauperism, and death. Bear me witness if I exaggerate when I say that the country is rapidly becoming one vast grog-shop, to which half a million of its youth are yearly introduced, and over whose thresh old sixty thousand are annually carted to a drunkard's grave. The streets of our cities echo to the shouts and oaths of drunken revellers, from whom society seeks protection through police regulations; and within hovel and mansion alike, not entirely smothered either by physical fear or social pride, is heard the sound of insane violence and wailing. There are some who say the temperance movement is a sentimental affair, and that the reform will not go on. The reform will go on. Point me to a reform which ever stopped. Why, reform is motion, and motion ceaselessly acted upon by the impulse of acceleration; so is it with the temperance movement. From whatever standpoint you look at it, it is seen to be in exact harmony with the age;-nay, it is a part of the age itself. The great civil revolution is to be supplemented with a great social revolution. God has so written it down. He has blessed the efforts of its friends until it has already taken a strong hold on the popular heart. Its champions are not fanatics; they are not sentimentalists;-only terribly in earnest. Back of them are memories which will not let them pause. Broken circles, and ruined altars, and fallen roof-trees, and the cold, sodden ashes of once genial fires, urge them on. No fear such men and women will falter, until you can take out of the human mind painful recollection; until you can make the children forget the follies and vices of the parents, over which they mounted to usefulness and to honor; until the memory will surrender from its custody the oaths of drunken blasphemy and the pains of brutal violence; until you can do these things, no man, no combination of men, can stop this reform. Its cause lies deep as human feeling itself. It draws its current from sources embedded in the very fastnesses of man's nature. The reform, then, will go on. It will go on because its principles are correct and its progress beneficent. The wave which has been gathering force and volume for these fifty years will continue to roll, because the hand of the Lord is under and back of it, and the denunciations of its opponents, and the bribed eloquence of the unprincipled, cannot check,-no, nor retard,—the onward movement of its flow. Upon its white crest thousands will be lifted to virtue and honor, and thousands more who put themselves in front of it will be submerged and swept away. |