TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 772, 17 December 1886, Page 6

TEMPERANCE.

GOOD WORKThe report of the Liverpool Temperance and Band of Hope Union states that the affiliated societies, numbering 116 had held about 2390 meetings during the year, with an estimated aggregate attendance of 200,000; and it was estimated that 28,000 tracts and periodicals had been circulated. DRINK FOR ATHLETES. The Sydney Morning Herald says Mr Beach, the oarsman, although he was never addicted to stimulants, left Sydney with the determination to continue a staunch teetotaller from the moment of his quitting Circular Quay until the day of his leaving England for Australia. He has arrived at this decision in order that he may be in the fittest possible position whenever he may enter into a race. A REMARKABLE DECISION. The United States Supreme Court has decided that the lowa railroads cannot be compelled to carry liquor, as common carriers have no right to violate the laws of the State. The effect of this judgment is effectually to prevent the transit of liquor through lowa to other States. The dealers will have to dodg e the State, carefully walking round it, nor attempting to set a barrel within its sacred circle. DRINK AND NURSING. A district nurse writing to her fellow nurses in the Temperance Record, says :—I have to thank God that I am a total abstainer, and each day I pray to be kept one. I have had reason a good many times to be thankful for it, because I have seen others fail in their life’s work and vocation through drink alone. They had begun their training well, bidding fair to be most useful members of the nursing body ; but they took a little, then the love of drink overpowered them, then they appeared on duty unable through excess to do it ; then they were discharged, and two poor souls I know, went to ruin. That’s a terrible end to a fair beginning, just because they would drink. And it is a fact that nurses who take stimulants only with their meals are not nearly so well able to do their duty as those who take none. They haven’t so much endurance, they haven’t so much breath, they more easily get irritable, aud they are much more drowsy. I speak from what I know ; and a good doctor once told me that two total abstaining nurses taking a case together, however trying it might he, would, he felt sure, do the work better and brighter altogether than two moderate drinkers. He had noticed it in several cases, and he said he could trust total abstainers better. There is a good reason, then, for us to be abstainers —for to be trusted is half the battle, and this is the opinion of several medical men in these j days.