In fact, it was one of the most popular places in town, and gradually became a permanent institution.

The sheriff walked by the hotel half a dozen times a day, and kept his own counsel, nodding to Lambert as one of the enterprising citizens who had attracted good business to town.

One day Joe was coming out of the shop after a halfday's surly idleness in it, when he was met at the door by one of the principal business contractors of the county. "Hello, Joe! Just coming in to see you! Got something for you."

They went back into the shop, and in a few minutes closed the contract, which meant several weeks' good work for Joe.

"Come on down to Lambert's and let's have a drink to bind it."

Joe drew back. "I can't. I've promised not to drink any more."

"Just a glass of beer. That's all I ever take. Come on, old man; 'twon't hurt you."

"I'll go in and see you drink."

"All right."

Arm and arm they walked down to the hotel and went in.

Norah was sitting up when Joe came home that night. He entered the house; she knew at once the whole of the worst. He stumbled into the room and was reeling blindly over towards the place where the baby lay when she rose and stood up in front of him.

"You-Joe!" All her love for him on the instant was swept out of her at the sight of him. "Don't you dare go near that baby! Oh, God! Have mercy on me! Have mercy!"

"Mush shee baby," he muttered, and, staggering to the baby's bed, he stooped over it, and before Norah realized what he was going to do he had taken the baby up and had him in his arms.

Her heart stood still as he came back to the bed and sat down on it, still clasping the baby to his breast.

Then Norah went up to him, and, trembling all over with indefinable fear, cried: "Give him to me, Joe! You'll hurt him."

"No, won't; we're going to shleep together."

Norah suddenly felt her puny weakness and the horror of his drink-crazy power, and she ran out, screaming, into the other room, flung open the door and shrieked, "Help!" running as far down the yard as the little walk to the road. It does not sound like a long time in telling it, but while Norah was gone Joe had fallen back on the bed and rolled over, still clasping the baby, and as he fell he unconsciously clasped the baby's neck in his great fist.

When she came in, Norah tore at him like a wild beast and rolled him over, untwisting the rough, knotted fingers, and when she had the baby at last in her arms she could not believe even then what had happened. But as the truth dawned upon her, she shrieked as she ran into the other room: "He's killed the baby! Oh, my God! He's killed him!"

The sheriff strode in at the open door and somewhat roughly pushed by her. One look at the baby told him the story. Joe still lay full length on the bed. Two or three other men came in and helped the sheriff get Joe to his feet.

The county jail was just one block beyond Lambert's hotel. The sheriff, with two deputies, finally succeeded in getting Joe down there.

In the morning the sheriff went and sat down in the corridor in front of Joe's cell.

Joe had waked up quite sober after a very long sleep. "Good-morning, sheriff."

"Morning."

"I 'spose I'll get out pretty soon?"

"I don't know. People that kill other people don't get out very soon.”

"Kill other people?"

"That's what I said."

"Did you say kill other people? Good God, Bowe! Tell me what you mean! I've been crazy drunk-tell me-what I did.”

"You rolled over on your baby and

"No! Oh, God, no! Not that! I didn't-I couldn't do that!"

"You did, though-ask your wife. You choked your baby to death.”

"Not dead, sheriff! Not dead?"

"Yes, he is."

"Sheriff, God knows-God knows, of course, it was an accident. But tell me-tell me-and Norah?"

"Your wife is in the hospital. Brain fever."

"The drink crazed me. The drink made me do it! I was all right before Lambert opened up. We had a happy home, wife and children. Oh, God, I shall go mad!"

Early next morning they found Joe in the farther corner of his cell quite dead. He had torn a bar out of one of the fastenings of his bed, had fixed it in the corner, and, by tying the bedclothes into a rope, had strangled himself.

Joe and the baby were put in a coffin together. Joe's arm lay about the baby protectingly, and the little face looked peaceful as it lay on the big father's breast. But, who killed Joe's baby?

Stand up before God's judgment seat, all ye officers of the law who have sworn to enforce it and have perjured yourselves, and answer.

Stand up, all ye men who, for the lust of gain, sell and buy the stuff that turns brains into murder and tortures love of man and wife into hatred, and leaves to children the heritage of life-long shame.

Stand up, ye business men who claim the advantages of the liquor traffic as a commercial factor.

Stand up before God and tell us who killed Joe's baby. Stand up; yes, stand up, Joe, yourself, and give answer to God for your share in the death of the sweet life you said you loved.

Stand up, ye men who vote and work with party interests through thick and thin, regardless of the character of the men whom ye elect.

Stand up, all ye moderate drinkers, who claim your personal liberty to drink, regardless of the weaker brother.

Stand up, all of you, in church and out of it. Make answer before God Almighty-"Who killed Joe's baby?"

The Temperance Revolution*

W

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

HETHER or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now an open question. Threefourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues; and, I believe, all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts. Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what the good of the whole demands? . . . There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice-the demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a victim to his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now be arrested in his desolating career?... If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen. Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud.

. . But . . . it . . . had its evils, too. It breathed forth famine, revolution. In it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed-in it more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged; by it no orphan's starving, no widow's weeping. . . . And what a natural ally this to the cause of political freedom; with such an aid its march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect liberty. . . . And when the victory shall be complete, when there shall be neither a slave

* From an address before the Washingtonian Society of Springfield, Ill., on Feb. 22, 1842.

nor a drunkard on the earth, how proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and cradle of both those revolutions that shall have ended in that victory! How nobly distinguished that people who shall have planted and nurtured to maturity both the political and moral freedom of their species!

W

The Liquor Traffic

BY E. L. CHAPMAN.

E cannot compare the liquor traffic with arson, theft or robbery, for it is the prolific parent of these. We cannot compare it with treason, for it is itself high treason and the instigator of disloyalty and disobedience to the most benign human government. We cannot compare it with piracy. Piracy is conducted for plunder only, and as far as possible without the sacrifice of human life.

We cannot compare it with slavery, which has long since been placed under the ban of civil government and passed out of existence.

As was said by Seward, half a century ago, "there is a power higher than human law, and that power delights in justice. Rulers, whether despots or elected rulers of a free people, are bound to administer justice for the benefit of society." And long before these memorable words were uttered, even before the beginning of the Christian era, the purport of that "higher law" was stated by the old Roman motto, "The public welfare is the supreme law."

The supreme crime of individual transgression is the crime of drunkard-making, with all its far-reaching and eternal consequences. Can there be a greater crime than this? Yes, one and only one, and that is the complicity of civil government in this, the darkest and most damning crime of individual transgressors. It is a well