INTRO
In New London, report says, the young men are falling into drinking habits
as never before. So in New Haven, Bridgeport, and the other cities and
large places of the state. In New York, Mr. Greeley states that 'a much larger proportion of adult
males in the state drink now than did in 1840-44.' After speaking of the
adverse demonstrations all over the country.
The pulse of a person in health beats about seventy strokes a minute, and
the ordinary term of life is about seventy years. In these seventy years,
the pulse of a temperate person beats two billion five hundred and
seventy-four million four hundred and forty thousand times. This application of numbers is given
to show that the acceleration of those forces diminishes the term of human
life."
And no actual
disorganization should happen, a drunken person might live until his pulse
beat this number of times; but by the constant stimulus of ardent spirits,
or by pulse-quickening food, or tobacco, the pulse becomes greatly
accelerated, and the two billion five hundred and seventy-four million
four hundred and forty thousand pulsations are performed in little more
than half the ordinary term of human life, and life goes out in forty or
forty-five years, instead of seventy. This application of numbers is given
to show that the acceleration of those forces diminishes the term of human
life."
"Age dims the lustre of the eye, and pales the roses on beauty's cheek;
while crows' feet, and furrows, and wrinkles, and lost teeth, and gray
hairs, and bald head, and tottering limbs, and limping, most sadly mar the
human form divine. But dim as the eye is, pallid and sunken as may be the
face of beauty, and frail and feeble that once strong, erect, and manly
body, the immortal soul, just fledging its wings for its home in heaven,
may look out through those faded windows as beautiful as the dewdrop of
summer's morning, as melting as the tears that glisten in affection's eye,
by growing kindly, by cultivating sympathy with all human kind, by
cherishing forbearance towards the follies and foibles of our race, and
feeding, day by day, on that love to God and man which lifts us from the
brute, and makes us akin to angels."