TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 870, 2 November 1888, Page 7

TEMPERANCE.

AS QUICK AS THE TELEPHONE. Onenight a well-known citizen of a Western oity, who had been walking for some time in the downward path, came out of his house and started down town for a night of carousal with some old companions he had promised to meet. His young wife had besought him with imploring eyes to spend the evening with her, and had reminded him of the time when evenings passed in her company were all too short. His little daughter had clung about his knees, and coaxed, in her pretty, wilful way, for ‘ papa’ to tell her some bed-time stories ; but habit was stronger than love for child and wife, and he eluded her tender questions by the deceits and excuses which are the convenient refuge of the intemperate, and so went on his way. When he was some blocks distant from his home, he found that ini changing his coat, he had forgotten to remove his wallet; and he could’ not go out on a drinking bont without money, even though he knew his family needed it and his wife was economising, everyday more and more, in order to make up his deficits. So he hurried back and crept softly, past the window of his little home, m order that he might staal in and obtain it without running the gauntlet of either questions cr caresses. But, as he looked through the window, something stayed his feet. There was a fire in the grate within—for the night was chill —and it lit up the little parlour and brought out in startling effect the pictures on the wall. But the?e were nothing to the pietures on the hearth. There in ihe soft glow of the firelight, knelt His child at her mother’s feet,, its small hands clasped in prayer, its fair head bowed ; and as its rosy lips whispered each word with childish distinctness; the father listened, spell-bound, ,to the words which be himself had so often uttered at his mother’s knee— ‘ Now I lay me down to sleep.’ His thoughts ran back to his boyhood hours ; and, as he compressed his bearded lips, he could see in memory the face of that mother, long since gone to her rest, who taught his own infant lips prayers which he had long ago forgotten to utter. The child went on, and her little verse, and then, as prompted by the mother, continued : ‘ God bless mamma, papa, and my own self ’ —then there was a pause, and she lifted her troubled blue eyes to her mother’s face.

‘ God bless papa,’ prompted the mother softly. ■ ‘ God bless papa,’ lisped the little one. * And —please send him home sober.’ He conld not bear the mother a 3 she said this ; but the child followed in a clear, inspired tone : ‘God —bles3 papa—and please—send him —home—sober. Amen.’ Mother and child sprang to their feet in alarm, when the door opened so suddenly ; but they were not afraid when they saw whp it was returned so soon. Bat that night, when little Mary was heing tucked bed, after suoh a romp with papa, she said, in the sleepiest and most contented' of Voices : ‘ Mamma, God answers moat as quick as the telephone, doesn’t He ?'

(FROM our own CORRESPONDENT.) Auckland, October 26. The New Zealand Herald does not approve Mr A. Saunders' scheme of state distillation, and sayß, apart from the unseemliness of the State identifying itself with a traffic which is popularly charged with .producing the greatest unhappiness in personal, domestic, and social life, the establishing of the Government as the greatest distiller of the country would make infinitely remote the hopes of those who, like Mr Saunders, hope to see the trade in alcoholic drinks sooner or later abolished. The fact. that the Customs duty on wines and spirits is the principal stay of the publio Treasury is known to present the greatest of all difficulties in the Way of restrictive legislation on the trade, and if this is so now, what would temperance reformers have in prospect if the Government itself became the great and sole purveyors of whisky, and if the proceeds of the traffic in ardent spirits became more indispensable than ever to the financial arrangements of the Colonial Treasurer.