Sever 11 was packed last evening with the audience that througed to hear the great temperance orator, John B. Gough. Mr. Gough's address, while it was filled with vivid stories, brilliant jokes, and the greatest originality, was also powerful in its argument as well as persuasive in its style of oratory-albeit Mr. Gough said at the beginning of his lecture, that in all of the 8,500 addresses he had made, he had never been guilty of logic, unity, or argument. The address is given very briefly below.
"My theme is a well worn, and well hacked one. We now need no argument for it. All are agreed on the first point, at least-that drunkenness is an evil, and an evil that all should seek to avoid. Traffic, or provision in any way encouraging drunkenness, should be discouraged. But people object, and say that there is no sin in moderate drink-Dr. Crosby has even said that temperance is more manly than total abstinence; the temperate man is the manly man, the total abstainer the coward, and the excessive user the beast. The man who can drink and hold a good deal, is sometimes regarded as a noble example of self-control. But, I tell you, drunkenness in itself depends not on the quantity, not on the quality a man can take, but on the effect. Some men can be moderate drinkers, but thousands cannot. My father was, but his son never could, and never can be. You call a man weak-minded because he cannot do what you can. I say, he is not weak-minded-physical infirmity is not weak-mindedness. Whether a man gets drunk or not, depends solely on his temperament. Negatively good, inactive people can be temperate; but the easy going fellow, cheerful in society, never!"
"You laugh at drunkenness-very good; it is often laughable. But also, it is most horrible and terrible. How many drunkards have committed murders How many talented men have been ruined by drink! The drunkard loses all control of himself; character, love, perception, memory, all are gone, and the once man is but a brute."
"Men argue that drink is stimulating, and that what is stimulating is physically beneficial. Very good; but so is a hornet's nest stimulating. Is it physically beneficial?"
"The temperance cause is not what it once was, small and unnoticed. All over the United States and England we have to-day on our side the greatest scholars and thinkers, and men of medical genius. The temperance cause is a right one; its principles are lawful, sensible, sane; and it demands and should receive respectful attention from all who love their fellow men. Very largely it has that attention today."
"Young men, you can make of yourselves what you will; but a thing once done, is done forever. Live, then, that you may have nothing to look back upon, when you are as old as I am, with regret. Your memories will not fail you; and if you err now, you will have never to be forgotten stains on your lives. You are all authors; each of you at the end of each day has written a page; but what you write can never be erased. Write you books clean, then; live that your memories in old age may be sweet."
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