mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class." "If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than herculean force and precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interests. . . ... "Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers fell, was the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible, and therefore must be turned adrift and damned without remedy in order that the grace of temperance might abound, to the temperate then, and to all mankind some hundreds of years thereafter. There is in this something so repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold blooded and feelingless, that it never did, nor never can enlist the enthusiam of a popular cause. We could not love the man who taught it--we could not hear him with patience. The heart could not throw open its portals to it, the generous man could not adopt it-it could not mix with his blood. It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers overboard to lighten the boat for our security, that the noble-minded shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing. And besides this, the benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be induced to labour exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorise on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves. "What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labour for the temporal happiness of others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal welfare at no more distant day! Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded even in our own cases, and much less in the cases of others. Still, in addition to this, there is something so ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned into ridicule. 'Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; if you don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment.' 'Be the powers, if ye'll credit me so long I'll take another, jist."" While referring to this subject, we must not omit a characteristic paragraph taken from a letter written on the day of the lecture referred to above. This letter is a shrewd and friendly appeal to a young fellow who had apparently given way to drink, now, on the birthday of the great revolutionary leader, to recruit for this, the nobler Revolution, which was destined to break the yoke, not merely of a foreign despotism, but of a moral and civil slavery. The lad had evidently got himself into a scrape, and his friend urged him to make a clean breast of the offence, offering his aid in dealing with an offended uncle. "I never encourage deceit," he writes in earnest playfulness, "and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is, truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are. Notwithstanding this copy-book preamble, my boy, I am inclined to suggest a little prudence on your part. You see, You see, I have a congenital aversion to failure, and the sudden announcement to your Uncle Andrew of the success of your 'lamp-rubbing' might possibly prevent you passing the severe physical examination to which you will be subjected, in order to enter the Military Academy." It was toward the end of this year that Mr and Mrs Lincoln began their married life in a boardinghouse "very well kept by a widow lady of the name of Beck." If the accommodation of her house corresponded with her terms, it must have been of a rigid |