South Carolina Temperance Advocate And Register Of Agriculture And General Literature

A Temperance Argument.—Something less
than three years ago a visitor in New York, at
one of the docks on the East River, might have
seen a young man not much, if any, past the age
of thirty—shabby in his dress—bloated and besotted
in his countenance, and every way the appearance
of an inebriate, sunken below the hope
of reform. This man, fallen so low, yet bearing
in his mien some better traces of fortune, was at
the period alluded to employed as an hour laborer
in the most menial and burdensome task of discharging
the cargoes of vessels at the public
docks—the wages of which occasional employment
were wasted with him in daily drink.
In a fortunate hour for this young man, some
of the companions of his better days, after much
persuasion, induced him to take the temperance
pledge, and to return to his friends and an honorable
profession, in one of the New England
States, which he had forsaken in his maddened
career of intemperance and folly. His reformation
was complete. We have just seen the
name of this gentleman, recorded in the leading
paper of the country, as one of the most talented
and promising of the new members of the present
Congress. This single instance of reformation has
more in it to cheer the heart and nerve
the resolution of a reforming drunkard, than a
thousand essays against the vice.—Det. Adv.