DANGER TO MORALS. 237 



Consequently a greater opportunity is afforded for holi- 

 days. Indeed, it is claimed that the drinkers live the 

 longest, owing to their more frequent absence from work. 

 We might wish that Ebenezer Elliott's character of the 

 grinder applied better to that class in his time than now : 



" There draws the grinder his laborious breath ; 



There, coughing, at his deadly trade, he bends ; 

 Born to die young, he fears nor man, nor death ; 

 Scorning the future, what he earns, he spends ; 

 Debauch and riot are his bosom friends." 



As our young men drift into the cities, they come into 

 contact, not with the once denounced and degraded bar- 

 room, but with the respectable " beer palace," where 

 every thing is made as attractive and entertaining as 

 possible. To-day, as compared with twenty years ago, 

 the selling of intoxicating liquors is an eminently re- 

 spectable occupation, and consequently the tendency is 

 to make the habit of drinking equally so. These " beer 

 palaces " are gilded traps for our country boys, when 

 they come to change country for city life. The city of 

 New York alone has seven thousand of these legalized 

 life- and soul-destroying dispensaries of sin and ruin, 

 some of them being most costly and gorgeous in their 

 appointments. 



That the cities contain a larger proportion of excessive 

 drinkers than the country, is proved by the much larger 

 ratio of deaths in them from this cause, as compared with 

 the country. In the city of London, one to 12,800 of 

 the population dies from the use of alcohol, while of the 

 whole kingdom, only one to 26,000 dies from its use. 



In fact, the ruralists of our country can hardly realize 

 how much the cause of temperance depends upon them 



