The Folly of Strong Drink
An amusing but pathetic incident happened in New York, many years ago, when a man with a wooden leg became so drunk that when he got home at night he lay down on the floor and dropped into a heavy drunken slumber. He turned over in his troubled stupor, and rested his wooden leg against the stove, and it finally caught on fire. When the policeman broke into the house, after first calling the fire department, he found the poor wretch snoring away while his wooden leg was burning brightly. What stupid fools drink makes of men! A wise man of old said of the drunkard: “Thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.” If Christians have any duty, surely it must be to interpose in behalf of intelligent manhood, and save it from such waste and folly.