TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 761, 1 October 1886, Page 6

TEMPERANCE.

THE WORKING , MAN’S CAPITAL. The working man’s capital is health, not wealth. It does not consist in landed property, but in sinew and muscle ; and if he persist in the use of intoxicating liquors, they will strike at .the very root of his capital—a sound physical constitution. After this is lost he becomes unfit for the workshop, for no master will employ a man who wants capital. He has then to repair to the poorhouse or infirmary.—Hunt. DRINK AND~PATJPERISM. Dr. Rawlings, senior physician to Swansea Hospital, in the course of a long, able, and .eloquent address at Swansea, remarked that his experience as a member of the Board of Guardians taught him that nearly 99 per cent, entered the workhouse directly or indirectly through drink, and that expenditure on intoxicants for workhouse inmates was wholly unnecessary. ‘ Where there’s drink there’s danger.’ How is it that every now and then you hear of a lion tamer being killed ?’ asked the reporter. ‘ Drink, sir,’ said Mr Atherton ; ‘drink. The performer gets a glass too much some day ; enters the cage ; fails to see that the floor is wet and slippery; he makes a false step, and is down on his back before he knows where he is. The lion or tiger is on his chest; and then good-bye. As long as you are erect, have your senses about you, and keep your nerve, you may do anything with the beast ; but if once your nerve is shaken, your eye unsteady, and you slip, the game is up.’ WHAT THE LiaUOR VOTERS ARE LIKEThe following is the description given by the Sydney Bulletin of those who polled against prohibition at the local option vote at Rockhampton ‘The local option poll at Rockhampton has ended in a triumph for those who love to gaze on the frothing porter, and fill high the bowl with shandygaff. The righteous men of the land rolled up in all their force, but they were very few, while the rest of the community rose like one drunkard to demolish them—

And their numbers were like the omnivorous horde That sweeps off the food from the free luncheon board,

All that fateful day the grog-blossomed noses glowed like red ill-omened meteors rolind the polling-booth, and reflected a baleful light, as the sun of the tropics darted down its rays on each crimson beak. Blotchy citizens—dirty, ragged citizens, malodorous citizens—all were there. The distant bushman galvanised his steed into new life, and galloped in to strike for freedom ; the publican and the sinner voted straight for the same cause ; so did the local brewer, and the policeman, and the corner loafer, and the habitual drunk, and the man who uses obscene language, and the party who sleeps on the hotel verandah, and the man with no legs, and the other man with no visible means of support, till the ten just citizens of Rockhampton retired in despair. And now the beery jubilee is in progress in that dreary town on the Fitzroy River, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and it promises to rain whisky for forty days and

forty nights, while the hard shell loafers join . in the chorus, ‘ Let some droppings fall on me.’