Danbury Times

Horrible. The brutalizing effects of Rum are too well known and too extensively felt here to require foreign evidences of its diabolical influences—and yet we believe that the cause of our only witnessing among the worst of its out-of-door effects, the prostrate form of some one of the universal brotherhood, with limbs stiffened by the combined influences of liquor and the cold, is not attributable to the tender mercies of the rum-dealers in this town. The most abandoned wretch that ever breathed could this day get his body saturated or his bottle filled without leaving Main street, by those whose only plea for "scattering the firebrand," is that it is "their only source of livelihood,"—in other words, they must sell or die!.

Hadn't they better die? If there is no other alternative, wouldn't it be far better, for themselves and all concerned, to quietly shuffle their mortal coil, under the soothing conviction that they are martyrs in the cause of humanity, than to exist a hydra headed excrescence upon society, until, their measure of wickedness filled, they shall draw around them their victims here, to point the finger at men who robbed them of their fond hopes and bright anticipations—a fit object of the indignation of earth, and the wrath of heaven. Rum-sellers, think of this—and the following:

"A horrible affair which occurred about five miles from Albany, on Wednesday night last, affords another proof that the step from drunkenness to murder and suicide is a short one—we had almost said a natural one. On Wednesday, John and Elizabeth Moore, husband and wife, and aged respectively 40 and 30 years drank too freely on their way home from Albany, and were left, very much intoxicated, at their own door. The next morning the wife was found in the garden with her head blown to pieces, and the husband in the house shot through the lungs. Both were dead: and at the father's feet stood two little girls, his children, one five, the other two and a half years old, weeping as if their young hearts were bursting. Moore had never been known to quarrel with his wife, but on this occasion he spoke harshly to her as they entered the house. The inference from the facts disclosed on the inquest is, that in the madness of intoxication, he shot the woman and subsequently himself. No comment could add force to the terrible lesson which this awful catastrophe teaches."