ASHAMED!

Southern Cross, Volume 5, Issue 40, 8 January 1898, Page 3

ASHAMED!

Yes, ashamed to be known to frequent such a place. Such is evidently the feeling of many respectable young men who have begun to frequent the publichouse. They do not go into it in the manly open way they do into any other place of business. Tailors, drapers, booksellers, butchers and bakers establishments are not provided with side and back doors by which their customers may enter. It has been left to the proprietors of a trade which that plain matter of fact man, the late Lord Randolph Churchill, called ‘ a devilish and destructive traffic,’ to provide such means of access to their premises for those of their customers who are not yet thoroughly demoralised by their liquors, but who have still some regard for their character, and consequently do not like to be seen entering the front door of a public-house, *,nd hence go sneaking into the side or back door which all such houses are provided with. Could anything speak more forcibly as to the disreputable character of such houses than this peculiar habit of those who are just entering on the drunkard’s career. It will not be long in the case of many of these young fellows before they throw off this regard for the opinion of society at large respecting the nature of public-houses, and be found among the number of those whose appetite has become so strong for the maddening cup that, utterly regardless of the opinion of others they will, as a matter of course, enter the wide open door of any drunkery. Young men !be aware of the side and back doors of a publichouse, for like as the wise man says of another house, they are “ the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”