seemingly lost to all influences for good. Home life and love is the sun which fructifies all the nobler impulses of man's nature. Few men go from home with the kiss of wife upon their lips and the soft touch of baby fingers lingering in pleasant memories on their neck, but feel more charity for their fellowmen, more love for humanity, and a renewed desire to build themselves up in all that pertains to true manhood. Home is the moral and political conservator of the nation, the antidote of communism, socialism, riot, vice and bloodshed. A man who goes from home with the softening influences of womanhood's homage and childhood's love lingering about him, seldom goes to murder, rob, or excite riot.

Into this garden of American hope the breath of the liquor traffic comes like the hot winds of the desert. By the use of the things sold in the dramshop all the finer feelings of the husband and father are injured, and his passions stimulated, and from being the head-the life of the home, he soon becomes a despot and a terror. The money which should be used to buy pictures, books, carpets, and other things to make home pleasant, is spent to still further lower and degrade him. A drunkard's home! Can there. be any greater mockery of the word home! Any institution of custom which causes such results is a terrible enemy of our liberty and civilization.

The liquor traffic is the enemy of an honest ballot and a fair count. The effect of the dramshop is to destroy the intellectual force and moral character of its patrons, as well as to re

duce them financially, often to beggary. The high moral sense which should govern every voter is lost when a diseased craving for stimulants controls a man. In such a condition, he is open to corrupt influences and comes to regard his vote as a merchantable commodity which ought to bring enough in the markets of corruption to minister to his appetite and supply his wants. The liquor men have always boasted of their political power obtained in this way; and many a candidate has felt it necessary to leave money with the liquor-seller to influence the bummer vote. Look at Chicago, New York and other cities. An honest vote in some parts of those cities is impossible. "In what parts?" Those where the dramshops are most plentiful. Unless the liquor traffic of the country is changed, it will do for the whole nation what it has done for the great centers of population;. and as the life of this government depends largely on the purity of the ballot-box, which can only be guaranteed by the morality and intelligence of the individual voter, the government must destroy the dramshops, or they will destroy the government.

The issue raised is one of simple fact. Guilty, or not guilty? The traffic must plead to the indictment. Standing on the street corners, blowing or bulldozing, does not meet the facts alleged by the temperance advocates.

The record of the liquor business, the creed of the brewers, the admissions of their advocates, show conclusively that the dramshop is a

bulldozer, a rebel, a voluntary, defiant outlaw, which assassinates business, character, or life, as it may deem best, to intimidate opposition and prevent investigation of its record and effects. These cowards are universal bulldozers. Its whole defense is a show of defiance, a show of bravado, show of bulldozing, show of bragadocio; and when these fail, the defense is private, cowardly assassination.

The temperance question was never so dear to me-never seemed so much my own, as it was after the little bright-eyed boy came into my home. When he comes and climbs on my knee, puts his chubby little arms around my neck and calls me "papa," the thought comes to me, will there ever be the time when my boy will reel along the street a drunkard, wear the chains of a criminal, or die in the almshouse, as the result of drink?

A gentleman, some years ago, said to me, "What are the divorce laws of this state?"

I said, "I hope you are not going to apply for a divorce. It is an exceedingly disagreeable kind of litigation."

A couple of ladies had come in with him. One was an old lady with gray hair, the other young, with care lines visible in her face, and a look of mental misery and suffering there.

"Consider, I have just one girl," the man said, and he introduced me to her, "the light of our home; and if she is here, I want to say to you she is just as good a girl as God ever gave a father. She was always kind to her mother.

There never was a time when it was necessary to punish her in our home; if she did wrong she was ready to come and ask forgiveness. She married a man I thought was worthy of her. We did not know he drank, but he did. Five years ago, they were married. God has given them one child. The father drank more and more. My daughter did not tell me for a long time; she would not let us know how she was suffering. One night her husband went home and in a drunken rage knocked her down with a chair.” The old man stepped forward, raised the hair from her forehead and showed the scar. "Struck her," continued the man, "struck her like a brute, the man who had sworn to love and honor her. He took her the light of our home-from our arms, and then abused her like a dog."

Reader, such may be your story some day. The little girl who will come to you tonight with ́bright eyes and loving smile, who will run and bring the slippers to papa for a kiss, may some day return to you with a broken heart, her life ruined by a man who has been wrecked in the saloons. When you make up your verdict, take into consideration your home interests and heart interests.

OUTDOOR AMUSEMENTS.

For the boy or man who lives in the country, the problem of outdoor amusements practically solves itself. In the city it is different. However, what men think a town ought to be, it will be, and they can crowd the people into unwholesome slums, or open up parks and playgrounds, and make it a city of homes, not alone for the wealthy few, but for the masses whose need of comfort and recreation we have discussed. The difficulty of furnishing outdoor amusement for the people of a large city is understood when, for instance, we remember that the roofs of Greater New York are said to furnish more space than the city streets and courtyards. The height of the buildings suggests how many come from under one roof. question with which we are now concerned is, Where are these thousands of people to find outdoor recreation and a "cooling-off place" outside of the beer gardens and saloons?

The

The sights and sounds of the streets constitute an important part of the recreative resources of many crowded districts. Their hold upon the people is shown, not only by the sense of desolation which tenement children feel when they go to the country, but by the hesitancy of their elders to remove to the suburbs. The pa