Temperance drive's pathetic pathos

Wednesday, 07 October 2009 00:00

October 7, 1898. The Women's Christian Temperance Union might be accused of pathetic pathos, as it pulls out all the emotional, tearing-jerking stoppers in its relentless campaign against the evils of demon rum. This is from the WCTU column, "For God and Home and Native Land," as it appeared in the Victoria Warder, Lindsay, Ontario.

Once upon a time a temperance reformer was aroused by a clapping on the door by a little blue-eyed, 14-year-old boy. The child, thinly cad, asked the gentleman to visit the jail where the little fellow's father was, and who was to be hanged that day. The gentleman did so, and in the afternoon the body of this father was carried to the hovel of the children.

On the arrival of the body, in a rude pine box, and after lamenting, the boy said, "Come sisters, let's kiss papa before his lips are cold."

Imagine the scene. This father had killed their mother while drunk. The children gathered around the casket, kissing their dead father, and screaming in frantic tones, "O, father; O father, you were good to us, but whisky did it."

And while these children lie on their bed at night, fatherless and motherless, with broken hearts and ruined homes, with no eye to see them and no hand to care for them, save Jehovah's, this nation boasts its full treasury, large churches, and manly statesmanship.

Many a home in Canada has been made sad by strong drink. Its work is only evil, and that continually.