Of course, the experienced drinker can buy liquor in a
prohibition State like Maine. Let me say to any old toper
present, going to Portland for his summer vacation, that he
can find a drink by going into a side street, slipping down
a dark alley, rapping three times at a door, wriggling up a
back stairway, and by much twisting, convolution and squirming
like a serpent, find what he desires. But boys and girls will
grow up without the temptation of the open saloon. Of course,
prohibition is not ideal. Making man temperate by law is a
makeshift. There are men who have not been drunk for ten
years--they are in Sing Sing.
Perhaps, however, if you can not keep some men from committing
crime in any other way, it is best to build a stone wall
around them. The ideal thing is law enthroned in the heart, an
automatic commandment in the brain and will. But the necessary
thing for poorly born people may be legal restraints.--N. D.
HILLIS.
(2540)
* * * * *
An English writer refers thus to some impressions of a brother
Englishman, traveling through the United States:
When traveling through the United States some years ago, he was
much struck with the difference in appearance of the houses in
districts where the Maine liquor law was in force, and soon
learned to distinguish where it was adopted, by the clean,
cheerful look of the workmen’s dwellings, the neatness of the
gardens, and the presence of trees and flowers which, in other
districts, were wanting. He was not a teetotaler himself,
and was not advocating such restrictions; but he could not
help noticing the contrast; and he felt sure that in all our
large towns great progress in civilization and morals would
be effected if such an attraction were offered to the working
classes.
It is another of the long line of illustrations showing the intimate
connection between moral and material weal.
(2541)