The Richmond Palladium

A Solemn Warning.

Foster's career affords a terrible commentary upon the growing tendency to imbibe intoxicating drinks. Having a wealthy and fond father, who was willing and happy to furnish him capital, he could have started out in life far in advance of most young men, and pursued a career of usefulness and prominence: but he yielded to the allurements of the cup that intoxicates and maddens, and to-day he awaits in the prison cell the murderer's doom.

In a communication made since his sentence, the condemned man says: "I had been drinking heavily -God knows I can't excuse that I was stupid drunk--mad drunk--and I got into a drunken difficulty with a strange man Without any thought, without any calculation. on an impulse of blind fury. I struck him with the first thing that came to hand. That blow was never intended to kill Mr. Putnam; it was struck with hardly any intention at all. It was the work of a madman not of deliberate murderer. It was struck with no recognized weapon, but the first thing that came to hand."

These words coming from one on the threshold of another world, furnish a most signal warning to those who indulge in the prevailing vice of drinking. The social cup leads to confirmed inebriety, and inebriety to death. Could the young women of our land have witnessed the solemn court scene, when, as Foster received his death sentence, hot tears rushed down his cheeks, and jurors, counsel and spectators wept, they would use their influence in arresting the career of the tens of thousands of young men who are now rushing headlong down the path of intemperance.