LENT. Is it the fast which God approves, Do angels smile and count it gain As buying privilege of song; By projects for to-morrow's fun, I cannot think that God will care But if I keep a truer Lent, Not heeding what I wear or eat, Not balancing the sour with sweet Evenly abstinent, And lay my soul with all its stain Of travel from the year-long road, Between the healing hands of God To be made clean again; And put my sordid self away, Forgetting for a little space Praying God's quickening grace to show If so I do it, starving pride, Fasting from sin instead of food, God will accept such Lent as good And bless its Easter-tide. -Susan Coolidge in the Independent. THE ALCOHOL HABIT. The Creator has not intrusted our physical welfare to accident or the tardy aid of science, and, in spite of the far-gone degeneration of our race, our children still share nearly all the protective instincts of the Natureguided animals. Children abhor the vitiated air of our city tenements; they need no lecturer on practical physiology to impress the necessity of out-door exercise; their instinct revolts against the absurdities of fashion and the unnatural restraints of our sedentary modes of life. And the same inner monitor warns them against dietetic abuses. Long before Bichat proved that our digestive organs. are those of a frugivorous animal, children. preferred apples to sausages, and sweet-meats to greasy made dishes; they detest rancid cheese, caustic spices, and similar whets of our jaded appetites. No human being ever rėlished the first taste of a "stimulant." To the palate of a healthy child, tea is insipid; the taste of coffee (unless disguised by milk or sugar) offensively bitter, laudanum acrid, caustic; alcohol as repulsive as corrosive sublimate. No tobacco smoker ever forgets his horror at the first attempt, the seasick-like misery and headache. Nature's protest against the incipience of a health destroying habit. Of lager beer "the grateful and nutritive beverage which our brewers are now prepared to furnish at the rate of 480,000 gallons a day "the first glass is shockingly nauseous, so much so, indeed, as to be a fluid substitute for tartar emetic. Nor do our instincts yield after the first protest; nausea, nervous headaches, and gastric spasms, warn us again and again. But we repeat the dose, and nature, true to her highest law of preserving existence at any price, and feeling the hopelessness of the life endangering struggle, finally chooses the alternative of palliating an evil for which she has no remedy, and adapts herself to the abnormal condition. The human body becomes a poison engine, an alcohol machine, performing its vital functions only under the spur of a specific stimulus. In order to distinguish a poison stimulant from a harmless and nutritive substance, nature has furnished us three infallible tests: 1. The first taste of every poison is either insipid or repulsive. 2. The persistent obtrusion of the noxious substance changes that aversion into a specific craving. 3. The more or less pleasureable excitement produced by a gratification of that craving is always followed by a depressing reaction. The first drop of a wholesome beverage (milk, cold water, cider fresh from the press, etc.) is quite as pleasant as the last; the indulgence in such pleasures is not followed by repentance, and never begets a specific craving. Pancakes and honey we may eat with great relish whenever we can get them, but if we can't, we won't miss them as long as we can satisfy our hunger with bread and butter. In mid-winter when apples advance to six dollars a barrel, it needs no lectures and midnight prayers to substitute rice pudding for apple pie. A Turk may breakfast for thirty years on figs and roasted chestnuts, and yet be quite as comfortable in Switzerland, where they treat him to milk and bread. Not so the dram drinker; his "thirst" cannot be assuaged with water or milk, his enslaved appetite craves the wonted tipple-or else a stronger stimulant. Natural food has no effect on the poison hunger; nature has nothing to do with such appetites. The first choice of any particular stimulant seems to depend on such altogether accidental circumstances as the accessibility or cheapness of this or that special medium of intoxication. Orchard countries use distilled or vinous tipples; grain lands waste their products on malt liquors. The pastoral Turkomans fuddle with koumiss, or fermented mare's milk, the Ashantees with sorgho-beer, the Mexicans with pulque (aloe-sap), the Chinese and Persians with opium and hasheesh (Cannabis Indica), the Peruvians with the acrid leaves of the coca-tree. Even mineral poisons have their votaries. There are thousands of arsenic eaters in the southern Alps. Arseneous acid, antimony, cinnabar, and acetate of copper, are mistaken for digestive tonics by Spanish and South American miners. By the process of fermentation, rice, sago, honey, sugar, durrha (Sorghum vulgaris), dates, plums, currants, and innumerable other berries and fruits have been converted into stimulants. If intoxication were a physiological necessity it would, indeed, be folly to buy the stimulant at the dram shops since cheaper poisons would serve the same purpose. A dimes worth of arsenic would protract the stimulant fever for a week, with all the alter nate excitements and dejections of an alcohol revel. A man might get used to phosphorous and inflame his liver with the same lucifer matches he uses to light his lamp; we might gather jimson weed or aconite, or fuddle with mushrooms, like the natives of Kamchatka, who prepare a highly intoxicating liquor from a decoction of the common fly-toadstool (Agaricus maculatus). These facts teach us two other valuable lessons, viz., that every poison can become a stimulant, and that the alcohol habit is characterized by all the symptoms which distinguish the poison hunger from a natural appetite. One radical fallacy identifies the stimulant habit in all its disguises; its victims mistake a process of irritation for a process of invigoration. The self deception of the dyspeptic philosopher, who hopes to exercise his blue devils with the fumes of the weed that has caused his sick headaches, is absolutely analogous to that of the pot-house sot who tries to drown his care in the source of all his sorrows; and there is no reason to doubt that it is precisely the same fallacy which formerly ascribed remedial virtues to the vilest stimulants of the drug-store, and that with few exceptions, the poisons administered for "medicinal" pur poses have considerably increased instead of decreasing the sum of human misery. The milder stimulants (light beer, cider and narcotic infusions), would be comparatively harmless, if their votaries could confine themselves to a moderate dosis. For sooner or later the tonic is sure to pall, while the morbid craving remains, and forces its victims either to increase the quantity of the wonted stimulant, or else resort to a stronger poison. A boy begins with ginger beer and ends with ginger rum; the medical" tonic " delusion progresses from malt extract to Munford's elixir. Wherever the nicotine habit has been introduced the alcohol habit soon follows. The Spanish Saracens abstained from all poisons, and for seven centuries remained the teachers of Europe, in war as well as in science and the arts of peace-freemen in the fullest sense of the word, men whom a powerful foe could at last expel and exterminate but never subdue. The Turks having learned to smoke to bacco, soon learned to eat opium, and have since been taught to eat dust at the feet of the Muscovite. When the first Spaniards came to South America they found in the Patagonian highlands a tribe of warlike natives who were entirely ignorant of any stimu lating substance, and who have ever since defied the sutlers and soldiers of their neighbors, while the tobacco smoking red skins of the North succumbed to fire-water. In the South Sea Islands, too, European poisons have done more mischief than gunpowder; wherever the natives had been fond of fermented cocoa-milk, their children became still fonder of rum; while the Papuans, whose forefathers had never practiced stimulation, have always shown an aversion to drunkenness, and in spite of their ethnological inferiority have managed to survive their aboriginal neighbors. International statistics have revealed the remarkable fact that the alcohol vice is most prevalent-not in the most ignorant or most despotic countries (Russia, Austria and Turkey), nor where alcoholic drinks of the most seductive kind are cheapest (Greece, Spain and Asia Minor), but in the commercial countries that use the greatest variety of milder stimulants-Great Britain, western France and eastern North America. Hence the apparent paradox that drunkenness is most frequent among the most civilized nations. The tendency of every stimulant habit is toward a stronger tonic. Claude Bernard, the famous French physiologist, noticed that the opium-vice recruits its female victims chiefly from the ranks of the veteran coffee drinkers. In Savoy and the adjoining Swiss cantons, kirschwasser repares the way for arsenic. In London and St. Petersburg, many ether drinkers have elinquished high wines for a more concenrated poison; and in Constantinople the Persian opium shops have eclipsed the popuarity of the Arabian coffee houses. We see then that every poison-habit is progressive, and thus realize the truth that there s no such thing as a harmless stimulant, because the insipience of every unnatural appetite is the first stage of a progressive disease. The facts from which we draw these conclusions have long been familiar to scientific specialists and have separately been commented upon; but in science, as in morals, the progress from special to general inferences is often amazingly slow. More than a hundred years ago Dr. Boerhaave entered an emphatic protest against rum, French high-wines and other "adulterated spirits," but confessed a predilection for a drop of good Schiedam. Dr. Zimmermann objected to all distilled liquors, but recommended a glass of good wine and a plate of beer soup, the latter a Prussian invention and one of those outrages on human nature that embittered the childhood of Frederick the Great. The hygienic reformers of our own country denounce intoxicating drinks of all kinds, but connive at mild ale, cider, opiates, narcotics and patent "bitters." The plan has been thoroughly tried, and has thoroughly failed. We have found that the road to the rum-shop is paved with "mild stimulants," and that every bottle of medical bitters is apt to get the vender a permanent customer. We have found that cider and mild ale lead to strong ale, to lager beer, and finally to rum, and the truth at last dawns upon us that the only safe, consistent and effective plan is total abstinence from all poisons.... Dr. Sewall says, "that such is the sensibility of the stomach of the reformed drunkard, that a repetition of the use of alcohol, in the slightest degree and in any form, under any circumstances, revives the appetite; the blood-vessels of the stomach again become dilated and the morbid sensibility of the organ is reproduced. action the other fever gets a chance, and rarely misses it. The history of epidemics proves that pyretic diseases are from eight to twelve times more destructive among dram-drinkers than among the temperate classes; rich or poor, young or old abstainers are only centesimated by diseases that decimate drunkards. On no other point is the testimony of physicians of all schools, all times, and all countries, more consistent and unanimous. Is alcohol a peptic stimulant? No more than Glauber's salt or castor oil. The system hastens to rid itself of the noxious substance, the bowels are thrown into a state of morbid activity only to relapse into a morbid inac tivity. Does alcohol impart strength? Does it benefit the exhausted system? Alcohol rallies the exhausted energies of the human body. The prostrate vitality rises against the foe and labors with restless energy till the poison is expelled. Then comes the reaction, and, before the patient can recover, his or ganism has to do double work. Nature has to overcome both the original cause of the disease and the effect of the stimulant. Alcohol has no remedial value. But that would be a trifle, if it were not for the posiliable to cause. Four repetitions of the stimutive mischief which the wretched poison is the alcohol-diathesis-and initiate a habit lant may inoculate a child with the germs of which years of anguish and despair will fail to cure. By a single glass of medicated brandy thousands of convalescing topers have lost their hard earned chance of recovery. The only chance of curing the poison habit consists in the hope of guarding its victims against all stimulants. Abstinence is easier, chorites of old knew well why they preferred as well as safer than temperance. The Anthe wilderness to the humblest village: they found it easier to avoid all temptations. Vices, as well as virtues, are co-operative. A In the cure of the alcohol habit, the total renunciation of all stimulants is, therefore, the first and most essential measure. change of diet, a change of climate, of employment and general habits will help to shorten the distressing reaction that must Has alcohol any remedial value whatever? precede the re-establishment of perfect health. Rheumatism can be temporarily relieved by The force of example may partly supply a producing an artificial inflammation; a head-deficiency in moral principles; ambition may ache yields to a severe toothache. For the strengthen their influence. But the effect of same reason the alcohol-fever affords a tem- any secondary stimulant is more than enough porary protection from other febrile symp- to counteract such tendencies.--From the toms, i. e., a man might fortify his system Remedies of Nature.--F. L. Oswald, M. D., against chills and ague by keeping himself in Pop. Science Monthly. constantly under the stimulating influence of alcohol. But sooner or later stimulation is MAKE life a ministry of love and it will followed by depression, and during that re- always be worth living.—Interior. Do your individual duty. You cannot make a sky of sunshine, but you can shed one ray, and one ray is the sign of a new day breaking.-Christian at Work. ITEMS. IT is said that the Government of India has bought up nearly the whole of the pottery and fine-art specimens in the Calcutta exhibition, in order to provide models for the schools of design which it is intended to establish in all parts of India. ON the morning of the 26th ult., a terrible dynamite explosion occurred in a cloak room at the Victoria Railway station in London. A large portion of the roof was blown off and nearly all the glass work in the station was destroyed. Extensive damage was done to surrounding property. All trains had ceased running and only a few persons were in the station. IT is said, according to the Christian Register, "that a brisk demand for books upon the subject of slavery has sprung up in some parts of the South during the last two or three years, and that volumes which formerly cumbered booksellers' shelves, and would have been gladly sold for a song, are fetching large prices. A dealer in second-hand books has thus disposed of 200 copies of a defense of slavery by a prominent Southern clergyman, which he bought for 5 cents apiece." THE death roll from the cyclone in the Southern States is already unusually long and may be increased. There are reports of the killing of six hundred persons in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, and the destruction of property was also very great. It was probably the most disastrous wind storm that has visited this country in recent years, but the casualties being distributed over a wide range of country do not make it appear so bad as the more localized storms have been. SHOSUKI SATO, who was graduated from the Imperial College of Sapporo, Japan, with the highest honors in natural science, has received an appointment from his country as a special commissioner to study the land laws of the United States, the immigration and other questions. He has been studying at the Johns Hopkins University since September in the Department of Historical and Political Science, and will continue his studies there for two years longer. the Annex has sent a graduate to Montana as head of a classical school."-N. Y. Post. ONE of the most interesting and valuable features of the Johns Hopkins University l brary is the newspaper bureau. A trained editor and a staff of assistants read all the representative dailies, mark superior article upon economic, political, social, educational legal, and historical subjects. These are afterwards clipped, arranged in newspaper budgets kept in large envelopes or oblong boxes whic are marked with labels. The list of subjects includes everything of value that finds its way into the columns of the press. Bulletin boards are covered daily with the best clippings from, the latest papers, arranged under the leading heads of current topics.-N. Y. Post. NOTICES. A Conference of the Yearly Meeting Committee, with Friends generally, to consider the state of Society, will be held at 3 P. M. or First-day, Third month 9th (time of Baltimore Quarterly Meeting), at Lombard Street Meeting-house, in Baltimore. It is especially desired that Friends interested in the welfare of Society make an earnest effort to attend this meeting. A meeting of the Committee will be held at 8 o'clock on Seventh-day, 8th prox. Any Friends feeling a concern to do so, are invited to meet with the Committee at this time. SENECA P. BROOMELL, Clerk of Committee. The "Committee on Education of Philadel phia Yearly Meeting of Friends," will hold their Third Conference with Teachers, School Committees and others interested, on Seventhday, Third month 15th, 1884, at Fifteenth and Race Streets, Philadelphia, commencing at 10 o'clock. The subjects for consideration are: 1st. What are the objects sought in teaching Drawing and Moulding, and what are the best methods of pursuing these studies? 2d. What are the best methods to be pursued with negligent and inattentive pupils, and how can we keep all of the children profitably employed when they are not engaged in reci tation. WM. WADE GRISCOM, Clerk. The Joint Committee on the subject of Temperance have appointed a Confererce to be held at Medford, N. J., on First-day, the 9th inst., at 2 o'clock P. M. The train leaves Market Street Ferry, Philadelphia, for Medford, at 9.30 A. M. Returning, leaves Medford at 3.50 P. M. GEORGE T. HAINES, Clerk. THE Boston Gazette says: "There are now forty-eight lady students in the Harvard Annex, and it is the testimony of some of the Harvard professors that the average scholarship of the classes in the Annex is above that of the classes in the College. Over fifty courses are open to the pupils, and of these Greek, Latin, English, German, and mathematics attract the largest numbers. This year thirty-five out of the forty-eight ladies have chosen Greek electives. Two enthusiastic girls from Texas sold lands and traveled two thousand miles for Third mo. 10th, Baltimore, Lombard Street. Philadelphia First-day School Union. The Stated Meeting will occur on Sixth-day evening, Third month 14th, at 8 o'clock, in Girard Avenue Meeting-house. Reports from the various organizations are desired, and the general attendance of Friends is invited. privileges which Harvard University could afford beyond any woman's college. In return Jos. M. TRUMAN, JR.,} Clerks. EDWIN L. PEIRCE. QUARTERLY MEETINGS. 13th, Haddonfield, N. J. Moorestown, "TAKE FAST HOLD OF INSTRUCTION; LET HER NOT GO; KEEP HER; FOR SHE IS THY LIFE." L. XLI. PHILADELPHIA, THIRD MONTH 15, 1884. No. 5. CONTENTS. TED AND PUBLISHED BY AN ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS. UNICATIONS MUST BE ADDRESSED AND PAYMENTS MADE TO JOHN COMLY, AGENT, PUBLICATION OFFICE, No. 1020 ARCH STREET. TERMS: TO BE PAID IN ADVANCE. he Faper is issued every week. he FORTY-FIRST Volume commenced on the 16th of Second th, 1884, at Two Dollars and Fifty Cents to subscribers reng it through mail, postage prepaid. SINGLE NUMBERS SIX CENTS. is desirable that all subscriptions should commence at the ning of the volume. EITTANCES by mail should be in CHECKS, DRAFTS, or P. O. ET-ORDERS; the latter preferred. MONEY sent by mail will be be risk of the person so sending. AGENTS:-Edwin Blackburn, Baltimore, Md. Benj. Strattan, Richmond, Ind. ered at the Post-Office at Philadelphia, Penna. as second-class matter For Friends' Intelligencer. E ANTIQUITY AND UNIVERSALITY OF OUR FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. le left not Himself without witness."-Acts xiv, 17. Six hundred years before the coming of sus Christ, when Israel, sunk in superstin and moral corruption, had drunken of cup of national desolation and of captivity, remiah the Prophet was permitted to see a ure of glory and of joy, and a time of uilding on everlasting foundations. Among blessed assurances which were given was t of a period of greater spirituality of h and of worship. (Jer. xxxi, 33, 34.) fter those days, saith the Lord, I will put law in their inward parts, and write it in r hearts; . . . . and they shall teach no e every man his neighbor, and every man brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for y shall all know Me, from the least of m unto the greatest." lot yet was Israel ready for such grand lofty cult; but the divinely illuminated in this time of sorrow, while not able see any deliverance from the desolations his own day, could pierce the gloomy which then was cast over his nation, and cern a better age, when God's beneficent would be inscribed on man's heart--a e of peace and righteousness-a day of an lasting covenant. But before this vast ancement, must come defeat, captivity, ery. His king dooms him to the dun geon for his testimony; but the warning of the seer is justified by the event, and the conqueror who blinds the king, slays all his sons, and bears him over the deserts to hopeless captivity-liberates and honors the persecuted prophet. He writes his sad words of solemn warning and his glad vision of a better age in a roll, which in time is recognized as a part of the sacred literature of his nation, and this mystic roll is opened before us in this age that we may gather from it the corroborative testimony we so value as to the spirituality of true religion, and as to the great truth that the Eternal will indeed be the teacher of His people when they seek Him with the full purpose of a pure heart. A century and a half later, when a remnant returned once more to the land of their fathers, and rebuilt their sacred city, a solemn fast of repentance was held in Jerusalem, and as a grand chorus of voices chaunted the story of Israel's wondrous annals, and of the national deliverance from Egyptian slavery, they declare, with holy exultation, "Thou gavest also Thy good Spirit to instruct them." Even in the far off age of the patriarch Job, the youthful Elihu could declare, from his own experience (?), "Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." The penitent prayer of the Psalmist King, after his heart had been stirred by the minis |