Sanitary and Social Lectures, etc Part 6

"So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high pressure, the waste, which is terrible now-some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted-begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved.

If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had not come home, man and house would have been washed away."

"But if it saves money, why do not the water companies do it?"

"Because-and really here there are many excuses for the poor old water companies, when so many of them swerve and gib at the very mention of constant water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he feels is too heavy for him-because, to keep everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken people, there must be officers with lawful authority-water-policemen we will call them-who can enter people's houses when they will, and if they find anything wrong with the water, set it to rights with a high hand, and even summon the people who have set it wrong. And that is a power which, in a free country, must never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to the officers of a corporation or of the Government."

"And what shall we do with the rest of the water?"

"Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at least do this: In each district of each city, and the centre of each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all, because they will not-and ought not, if they be hard-worked folk-bathe in cold water during nine months of the year. And there they shall wash their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at home, either under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the children into the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease. And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well as merely useful. Nay, we will even, I think, have in front of each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains-though they are great and needful boons-which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, and light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the sweetest of all earthly songs-save the song of a mother over her child-the song of 'The Laughing Water.'"

"But will not that be a waste?"

"Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people, will have our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that they all-save Her Majesty the Queen-are our servants, and not we theirs; and that we choose to have water, not only to wash with, but to play with, if we like. And I believe-for the world, as you will find, is full not only of just but of generous souls-that if the water-supply were set really right, there would be found, in many a city, many a generous man who, over and above his compulsory water-rate, would give his poor fellow-townsmen such a real fountain as those which enn.o.ble the great square at Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be 'a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.'"

"And now, if you want to go back to your Latin and Greek, you shall translate for me into Latin-I do not expect you to do it into Greek, though it would turn very well into Greek, for the Greeks know all about the matter long before the Romans-what follows here; and you shall verify the facts and the names, etc., in it from your dictionaries of antiquity and biography, that you may remember all the better what it says. And by that time, I think, you will have learnt something more useful to yourself, and, I hope, to your country hereafter, than if you had learnt to patch together the neatest Greek and Latin verses which have appeared since the days of Mr. Canning."

I have often amused myself, by fancying one question which an old Roman emperor would ask, were he to rise from his grave and visit the sights of London under the guidance of some minister of state. The august shade would, doubtless, admire our railroads and bridges, our cathedrals and our public parks, and much more of which we need not be ashamed. But after awhile, I think, he would look round, whether in London or in most of our great cities, inquiringly and in vain, for one cla.s.s of buildings, which in his empire were wont to be almost as conspicuous and as splendid, because, in public opinion, almost as necessary, as the basilicas and temples: "And where," he would ask, "are your public baths?" And if the minister of state who was his guide should answer: "Oh great Caesar, I really do not know. I believe there are some somewhere at the back of that ugly building which we call the National Gallery; and I think there have been some meetings lately in the East End, and an amateur concert at the Albert Hall, for restoring, by private subscriptions, some baths and wash-houses in Bethnal Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be two or three more about the metropolis; for parish vestries have powers by Act of Parliament to establish such places, if they think fit, and choose to pay for them out of the rates." Then, I think, the august shade might well make answer: "We used to call you, in old Rome, northern barbarians. It seems that you have not lost all your barbarian habits. Are you aware that, in every city in the Roman empire, there were, as a matter of course, public baths open, not only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often gratuitously?

Are you aware that in Rome itself, millionaire after millionaire, emperor after emperor, from Menenius Agrippa and Nero down to Diocletian and Constantine, built baths, and yet more baths; and connected with them gymnasia for exercise, lecture-rooms, libraries, and porticoes, wherein the people might have shade, and shelter, and rest? I remark, by-the-bye, that I have not seen in all your London a single covered place in which the people may take shelter during a shower. Are you aware that these baths were of the most magnificent architecture, decorated with marbles, paintings, sculptures, fountains, what not? And yet I had heard, in Hades down below, that you prided yourselves here on the study of the learned languages; and, indeed, taught little but Greek and Latin at your public schools?"

Then, if the minister should make reply: "Oh yes, we know all this. Even since the revival of letters in the end of the fifteenth century a whole literature has been written-a great deal of it, I fear, by pedants who seldom washed even their hands and faces-about your Greek and Roman baths. We visit their colossal ruins in Italy and elsewhere with awe and admiration; and the discovery of a new Roman bath in any old city of our isles sets all our antiquaries buzzing with interest."

"Then why," the shade might ask, "do you not copy an example which you so much admire? Surely England must be much in want, either of water, or of fuel to heat it with?"

"On the contrary, our rainfall is almost too great; our soil so damp that we have had to invent a whole art of subsoil drainage unknown to you; while, as for fuel, our coal-mines make us the great fuel-exporting people of the world."

What a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Constantine as he replied: "Not in vain, as I said, did we call you, some fifteen hundred years ago, the barbarians of the north. But tell me, good barbarian, whom I know to be both brave and wise-for the fame of your young British empire has reached us even in the realms below, and we recognise in you, with all respect, a people more like us Romans than any which has appeared on earth for many centuries-how is it you have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the people clean, which you surely at one time learnt from us?

When your ancestors entered our armies, and rose, some of them, to be great generals, and even emperors, like those two Teuton peasants, Justin and Justinian, who, long after my days, reigned in my own Constantinople: then, at least, you saw baths, and used them; and felt, after the bath, that you were civilised men, and not 'sordidi ac foetentes,' as we used to call you when fresh out of your bullock-waggons and cattle-pens. How is it that you have forgotten that lesson?"

The minister, I fear, would have to answer that our ancestors were barbarous enough, not only to destroy the Roman cities, and temples, and basilicas, and statues, but the Roman baths likewise; and then retired, each man to his own freehold in the country, to live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than that of the swine which were his favourite food. But he would have a right to plead, as an excuse, that not only in England, but throughout the whole of the conquered Latin empire, the Latin priesthood, who, in some respects, were-to their honour-the representatives of Roman civilisation and the protectors of its remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanliness; that they looked on personal dirt-like the old hermits of the Thebaid-as a sign of sanct.i.ty; and discouraged-as they are said to do still in some of the Romance countries of Europe-the use of the bath, as not only luxurious, but also indecent.

At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer might curl the lip of the august shade, as he said to himself: "This, at least, I did not expect, when I made Christianity the state religion of my empire. But you, good barbarian, look clean enough. You do not look on dirt as a sign of sanct.i.ty?"

"On the contrary, sire, the upper cla.s.ses of our empire boast of being the cleanliest-perhaps the only perfectly cleanly-people in the world: except, of course, the savages of the South Seas. And dirt is so far from being a thing which we admire, that our scientific men-than whom the world has never seen wiser-have proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is the fertile cause of disease and drunkenness, misery, and recklessness."

"And, therefore," replies the shade, ere he disappears, "of discontent and revolution: followed by a tyranny endured, as in Rome and many another place, by men once free; because tyranny will at least do for them what they are too lazy, and cowardly, and greedy, to do for themselves. Farewell, and prosper; as you seem likely to prosper, on the whole. But if you wish me to consider you a civilised nation: let me hear that you have brought a great river from the depths of the earth, be they a thousand fathoms deep, or from your nearest mountains, be they five hundred miles away; and have washed out London's dirt-and your own shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a Constantine, or even a Caracalla; for they, whatever were their sins, built baths, and kept their people clean. But do your gymnasia-your schools and universities, teach your youth naught about all this?"

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

THE more I have contemplated that ancient story of the Fall, the more it has seemed to me within the range of probability, and even of experience.

It must have happened somewhere for the first time; for it has happened only too many times since. It has happened, as far as I can ascertain, in every race, and every age, and every grade of civilisation. It is happening round us now in every region of the globe. Always and everywhere, it seems to me, have poor human beings been tempted to eat of some "tree of knowledge," that they may be, even for an hour, as G.o.ds; wise, but with a false wisdom; careless, but with a frantic carelessness; and happy, but with a happiness which, when the excitement is past, leaves too often-as with that hapless pair in Eden-depression, shame, and fear. Everywhere, and in all ages, as far as I can ascertain, has man been inventing stimulants and narcotics to supply that want of vitality of which he is so painfully aware; and has asked nature, and not G.o.d, to clear the dull brain, and comfort the weary spirit.

This has been, and will be perhaps for many a century to come, almost the most fearful failing of this poor, exceptional, over-organised, diseased, and truly fallen being called Man, who is in doubt daily whether he be a G.o.d or an ape; and in trying wildly to become the former, ends but too often in becoming the latter.

For man, whether savage or civilised, feels, and has felt in every age, that there is something wrong with him. He usually confesses this fact-as is to be expected-of his fellow-men, rather than of himself; and shows his sense that there is something wrong with them by complaining of, hating, and killing them. But he cannot always conceal from himself the fact that he, too, is wrong, as well as they; and as he will not usually kill himself, he tries wild ways to make himself at least feel-if not to be-somewhat "better." Philosophers may bid him be content; and tell him that he is what he ought to be, and what nature has made him.

But he cares nothing for the philosophers. He knows, usually, that he is not what he ought to be; that he carries about with him, in most cases, a body more or less diseased and decrepit, incapable of doing all the work which he feels that he himself could do, or expressing all the emotions which he himself longs to express; a dull brain and dull senses, which cramp the eager infinity within him; as-so Goethe once said with pity-the horse's single hoof cramps the fine intelligence and generosity of his nature, and forbids him even to grasp an object, like the more stupid cat, and baser monkey. And man has a self, too, within, from which he longs too often to escape, as from a household ghost; who pulls out, at unfortunately rude and unwelcome hours, the ledger of memory. And so when the tempter-be he who he may-says to him, "Take this, and you will 'feel better.' Take this, and you shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil:" then, if the temptation was, as the old story says, too much for man while healthy and unfallen, what must it be for his unhealthy and fallen children?

In vain we say to man:

'Tis life, not death, for which you pant; 'Tis life, whereof your nerves are scant; More life, and fuller, that you want.

And your tree of knowledge is not the tree of life: it is in every case, the tree of death; of decrepitude, madness, misery. He prefers the voice of the tempter: "Thou shalt not surely die." Nay, he will say at last: "Better be as G.o.ds awhile, and die: than be the crawling, insufficient thing I am; and live."

He-did I say? Alas! I must say she likewise. The sacred story is only too true to fact, when it represents the woman as falling, not merely at the same time as the man, but before the man. Only let us remember that it represents the woman as tempted; tempted, seemingly, by a rational being, of lower race, and yet of superior cunning; who must, therefore, have fallen before the woman. Who or what the being was, who is called the Serpent in our translation of Genesis, it is not for me to say. We have absolutely, I think, no facts from which to judge; and Rabbinical traditions need trouble no man much. But I fancy that a missionary, preaching on this story to Negroes; telling them plainly that the "Serpent" meant the first Obeah man; and then comparing the experiences of that hapless pair in Eden, with their own after certain orgies not yet extinct in Africa and elsewhere, would be only too well understood: so well, indeed, that he might run some risk of eating himself, not of the tree of life, but of that of death. The sorcerer or sorceress tempting the woman; and then the woman tempting the man; this seems to be, certainly among savage peoples, and, alas! too often among civilised peoples also, the usual course of the world-wide tragedy.

But-paradoxical as it may seem-the woman's yielding before the man is not altogether to her dishonour, as those old monks used to allege who hated, and too often tortured, the s.e.x whom they could not enjoy. It is not to the woman's dishonour, if she felt, before her husband, higher aspirations than those after mere animal pleasure. To be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil, is a vain and foolish, but not a base and brutal, wish. She proved herself thereby-though at an awful cost-a woman, and not an animal. And indeed the woman's more delicate organisation, her more vivid emotions, her more voluble fancy, as well as her mere physical weakness and weariness, have been to her, in all ages, a special source of temptation; which it is to her honour that she has resisted so much better than the physically stronger, and therefore more culpable, man.

As for what the tree of knowledge was, there really is no need for us to waste our time in guessing. If it was not one plant, then it was another. It may have been something which has long since perished off the earth. It may have been-as some learned men have guessed-the sacred Soma, or Homa, of the early Brahmin race; and that may have been a still existing narcotic species of Asclepias. It certainly was not the vine.

The language of the Hebrew Scripture concerning it, and the sacred use to which it is consecrated in the Gospels, forbid that notion utterly; at least to those who know enough of antiquity to pa.s.s by, with a smile, the theory that the wines mentioned in Scripture were not intoxicating. And yet-as a fresh corroboration of what I am trying to say-how fearfully has that n.o.ble gift to man been abused for the same end as a hundred other vegetable products, ever since those mythic days when Dionusos brought the vine from the far East, amid troops of human Maenads and half-human Satyrs; and the Bacchae tore Pentheus in pieces on Cithaeron, for daring to intrude upon their sacred rites; and since those historic days, too, when, less than two hundred years before the Christian era, the Bacchic rites spread from Southern Italy into Etruria, and thence to the matrons of Rome; and under the guidance of Poenia Annia, a Campanian lady, took at last shapes of which no man must speak, but which had to be put down with terrible but just severity, by the Consuls and the Senate.

But it matters little, I say, what this same tree of knowledge was. Was every vine on earth destroyed to-morrow, and every vegetable also from which alcohol is now distilled, man would soon discover something else wherewith to satisfy the insatiate craving. Has he not done so already?

Has not almost every people had its tree of knowledge, often more deadly than any distilled liquor, from the absinthe of the cultivated Frenchman, and the opium of the cultivated Chinese, down to the bush-poisons wherewith the tropic sorcerer initiates his dupes into the knowledge of good and evil, and the fungus from which the Samoiede extracts in autumn a few days of brutal happiness, before the setting in of the long six months' night? G.o.d grant that modern science may not bring to light fresh subst.i.tutes for alcohol, opium, and the rest; and give the white races, in that state of effeminate and G.o.dless quasi-civilisation which I sometimes fear is creeping upon them, fresh means of destroying themselves delicately and pleasantly off the face of the earth.

It is said by some that drunkenness is on the increase in this island. I have no trusty proof of it: but I can believe it possible; for every cause of drunkenness seems on the increase. Overwork of body and mind; circ.u.mstances which depress health; temptation to drink, and drink again, at every corner of the streets; and finally, money, and ever more money, in the hands of uneducated people, who have not the desire, and too often not the means, of spending it in any save the lowest pleasures. These, it seems to me, are the true causes of drunkenness, increasing or not.

And if we wish to become a more temperate nation, we must lessen them, if we cannot eradicate them.

First, overwork. We all live too fast, and work too hard. "All things are full of labour, man cannot utter it." In the heavy struggle for existence which goes on all around us, each man is tasked more and more-if he be really worth buying and using-to the utmost of his powers all day long. The weak have to compete on equal terms with the strong; and crave, in consequence, for artificial strength. How we shall stop that I know not, while every man is "making haste to be rich, and piercing himself through with many sorrows, and falling into foolish and hurtful l.u.s.ts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." How we shall stop that, I say, I know not. The old prophet may have been right when he said: "Surely it is not of the Lord that the people shall labour in the very fire, and weary themselves for very vanity;" and in some juster, wiser, more sober system of society-somewhat more like the Kingdom of The Father come on earth-it may be that poor human beings will not need to toil so hard, and to keep themselves up to their work by stimulants, but will have time to sit down, and look around them, and think of G.o.d, and G.o.d's quiet universe, with something of quiet in themselves; something of rational leisure, and manful sobriety of mind, as well as of body.

But it seems to me also, that in such a state of society, when-as it was once well put-"every one has stopped running about like rats:"-that those who work hard, whether with muscle or with brain, would not be surrounded, as now, with every circ.u.mstance which tempts toward drink; by every circ.u.mstance which depresses the vital energies, and leaves them an easy prey to pestilence itself; by bad light, bad air, bad food, bad water, bad smells, bad occupations, which weaken the muscles, cramp the chest, disorder the digestion. Let any rational man, fresh from the country-in which I presume G.o.d, having made it, meant all men, more or less, to live-go through the back streets of any city, or through whole districts of the "black countries" of England; and then ask himself: Is it the will of G.o.d that His human children should live and toil in such dens, such deserts, such dark places of the earth? Lot him ask himself: Can they live and toil there without contracting a probably diseased habit of body; without contracting a certainly dull, weary, sordid habit of mind, which craves for any pleasure, however brutal, to escape from its own stupidity and emptiness? When I run through, by rail, certain parts of the iron-producing country-streets of furnaces, collieries, slag heaps, mud, slop, brick house-rows, smoke, dirt-and that is all; and when I am told, whether truly or falsely, that the main thing which the well-paid and well-fed men of those abominable wastes care for is-good fighting-dogs: I can only answer, that I am not surprised.

I say-as I have said elsewhere, and shall do my best to say it again-that the craving for drink and narcotics, especially that engendered in our great cities, is not a disease, but a symptom of disease; of a far deeper disease than any which drunkenness can produce; namely, of the growing degeneracy of a population striving in vain by stimulants and narcotics to fight against those slow poisons with which our greedy barbarism, miscalled civilisation, has surrounded them from the cradle to the grave.

I may be answered that the old German, Angle, Dane, drank heavily. I know it: but why did they drink, save for the same reason that the fenman drank, and his wife took opium, at least till the fens were drained? why but to keep off the depressing effects of the malaria of swamps and new clearings, which told on them-who always settled in the lowest grounds-in the shape of fever and ague? Here it may be answered again that stimulants have been, during the memory of man, the destruction of the Red Indian race in America. I reply boldly that I do not believe it.

There is evidence enough in Jacques Cartier's "Voyages to the Rivers of Canada;" and evidence more than enough in Strachey's "Travaile in Virginia"-to quote only two authorities out of many-to prove that the Red Indians, when the white man first met with them, were, in North and South alike, a diseased, decaying, and, as all their traditions confess, decreasing race. Such a race would naturally crave for "the water of life," the "usquebagh," or whisky, as we have contracted the old name now. But I should have thought that the white man, by introducing among these poor creatures iron, fire-arms, blankets, and above all, horses wherewith to follow the buffalo-herds, which they could never follow on foot, must have done ten times more towards keeping them alive, than he has done towards destroying them by giving them the chance of a week's drunkenness twice a year, when they came in to his forts to sell the skins which, without his gifts, they would never have got.

Such a race would, of course, if wanting vitality, crave for stimulants.

But if the stimulants, and not the original want of vitality, combined with morals utterly detestable, and worthy only of the gallows-and here I know what I say, and dare not tell what I know, from eye-witnesses-have been the cause of the Red Indians' extinction, then how is it, let me ask, that the Irishman and the Scotsman have, often to their great harm, been drinking as much whisky-and usually very bad whisky-not merely twice a year, but as often as they could get it, during the whole Iron Age, and, for aught anyone can tell, during the Bronze Age, and the Stone Age before that, and yet are still the most healthy, able, valiant, and prolific races in Europe? Had they drunk less whisky they would, doubtless, have been more healthy, able, valiant, and perhaps even _more_ prolific, than they are now. They show no sign, however, as yet, of going the way of the Red Indian.

But if the craving for stimulants and narcotics is a token of deficient vitality, then the deadliest foe of that craving, and all its miserable results, is surely the Sanatory Reformer; the man who preaches, and-as far as ignorance and vested interests will allow him, procures-for the ma.s.ses, pure air, pure sunlight, pure water, pure dwelling-houses, pure food. Not merely every fresh drinking-fountain, but every fresh public bath and wash-house, every fresh open s.p.a.ce, every fresh growing tree, every fresh open window, every fresh flower in that window-each of these is so much, as the old Persians would have said, conquered for Ormuzd, the G.o.d of light and life, out of the dominion of Ahriman, the king of darkness and of death; so much taken from the causes of drunkenness and disease, and added to the causes of sobriety and health.

Meanwhile one thing is clear: that if this present barbarism and anarchy of covetousness, miscalled modern civilisation, were tamed and drilled into something more like a Kingdom of G.o.d on earth, then we should not see the reckless and needless multiplication of liquor shops, which disgraces this country now.

As a single instance: in one country parish of nine hundred inhabitants, in which the population has increased only one-ninth in the last fifty years, there are now practically eight public-houses, where fifty years ago there were but two. One, that is, for every hundred and ten-or rather, omitting children, farmers, shop-keepers, gentlemen, and their households, one for every fifty of the inhabitants. In the face of the allurements, often of the basest kind, which these dens offer, the clergyman and the schoolmaster struggle in vain to keep up night schools and young men's clubs, and to inculcate habits of providence.

The young labourers over a great part of the south and east, at least of England-though never so well off, for several generations, as they are now-are growing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes, instead of their grandfathers' smock-frocks.

And if it be so in the country, how must it be in towns? There must come a thorough change in the present licensing system, in spite of all the "pressure" which certain powerful vested interests may bring to bear on governments. And it is the duty of every good citizen, who cares for his countrymen, and for their children after them, to help in bringing about that change as speedily as possible.

Again: I said just now that a probable cause of increasing drunkenness was the increasing material prosperity of thousands who knew no recreation beyond low animal pleasure. If I am right-and I believe that I am right-I must urge on those who wish drunkenness to decrease, the necessity of providing more, and more refined, recreation for the people.

Men drink, and women too, remember, not merely to supply exhaustion, not merely to drive away care; but often simply to drive away dulness. They have nothing to do save to think over what they have done in the day, or what they expect to do to-morrow; and they escape from that dreary round of business thought in liquor or narcotics. There are still those, by no means of the hand-working cla.s.s, but absorbed all day by business, who drink heavily at night in their own comfortable homes, simply to recreate their over-burdened minds. Such cases, doubtless, are far less common than they were fifty years ago: but why? Is not the decrease of drinking among the richer cla.s.ses certainly due to the increased refinement and variety of their tastes and occupations? In cultivating the aesthetic side of man's nature; in engaging him with the beautiful, the pure, the wonderful, the truly natural; with painting, poetry, music, horticulture, physical science-in all this lies recreation, in the true and literal sense of that word, namely, the re-creating and mending of the exhausted mind and feelings, such as no rational man will now neglect, either for himself, his children, or his workpeople.

But how little of all this is open to the ma.s.ses, all should know but too well. How little opportunity the average hand-worker, or his wife, has of eating of any tree of knowledge, save of the very basest kind, is but too palpable. We are mending, thank G.o.d, in this respect. Free libraries and museums have sprung up of late in other cities beside London. G.o.d's blessing rest upon them all. And the Crystal Palace, and still later, the Bethnal Green Museum, have been, I believe, of far more use than many average sermons and lectures from many average orators.

But are we not still far behind the old Greeks, and the Romans of the Empire likewise, in the amount of amus.e.m.e.nt and instruction, and even of shelter, which we provide for the people? Recollect the-to me-disgraceful fact, that there is not, as far as I am aware, throughout the whole of London, a single portico or other covered place, in which the people can take refuge during a shower: and this in the climate of England! Where they do take refuge on a wet day the publican knows but too well; as he knows also where thousands of the lower cla.s.ses, simply for want of any other place to be in, save their own sordid dwellings, spend as much as they are permitted of the Sabbath day. Let us put down "Sunday drinking" by all means, if we can. But let us remember that by closing the public-houses on Sunday, we prevent no man or woman from carrying home as much poison as they choose on Sat.u.r.day night, to brutalise themselves therewith, perhaps for eight-and-forty hours. And let us see-in the name of Him who said that He had made the Sabbath for man, and not man for the Sabbath-let us see, I say, if we cannot do something to prevent the townsman's Sabbath being, not a day of rest, but a day of mere idleness; the day of most temptation, because of most dulness, of the whole seven.