East Providence Eagle

TEMPERANCE DEPARTMENT

The Midnight Toiler.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not achieved by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

The red-nosed bibulous adept,
A drunkard was not made outright
But he while his companions slept.
Was drinking whisky in the night
—Boston Courier.

Poverty in Germany.

A Massachusetts young man, now in Germany as a student, writes home of the distressing poverty which he sees in Germany; of the way women have to work to keep their little ones from starving: that they are glad to do a man's work, but cannot always find it to do, and in that case must beg; that women bear heavy burdens of produce to market, and in addition to the load on their backs is frequently a nursing babe in their arms; and he adds: "The question arises, where is the father? Most likely in some beer-garden, with a mug of beer before him, without thought of the hungry mother and child, who are wandering through the dark and narrow streets crying for bread." He says: "Everybody drinks beer in Germany, even the clergy, and I do not care to associate with any of the young men, as the great and all-important question with them is: Where is the best beer sold? * * * There is no home sociability here. What sociability there is is found in the restaurants, where women and children, high and low, meet together, and the children learn to drink before they learn to walk." Again he says: I have become convinced that it is the temperance principle that makes the homes of America, the happy, prosperous homes which so many of them are, and that the intemperance of Germany makes German homes what they are." And yet the brewers of America would, if they could, transform the American into the German type of home life, and have everybody here, as in Germany, drink beer.
—Temperance Advocate.