“ON THE TRACK OF THE SERPENT.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2334, 29 October 1908, Page 7

“ON THE TRACK OF THE SERPENT.”

[To the Editor.] (Sir,—ln your issue of to-day a letter appears from a “Woman to Wo(men.” There is an old saying “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The whole tenor-of the. letter is to be-....-guile, and, it assumes that the pr£i»-

ary man has not sufficient self-res-pect, and' the wife sufficient discernment to understand that if the open bar were closed, the home would be the sweeter and much benefited thereby. This is a- baso insinuation, and a slander on decent men and l women, in dur communities. The ordinary man has too much self-respect and dignity to ever allow his homo to be polluted by the drink evil, and ‘[many ia good resolution has been broken and is being constantly broken by freo access to the open bar. Men from the homo with the sweet breath of.dove upon, their lips, come into contact with their fellows and the open bar breaks down many a good resolution made in the sanctity and love of the home, and it is a slander upon our womanhood and a disgrace to our manhood if such an impeachment is allowed to go unchallenged-. The sacred precincts of the home have always been contaminated from without, and invariably comes from the open bar, a fruitful source of iniquity. The orgies of some vicious and disreputable characters in our communities, that are wliat they are because the open bar lias made them..such, should not he allowed to be pitted against the good repute of the majority of our respected citizens and industrial workers. The beginning of married life is built upon the joys of home lifo, and is invariably commenced under pleasant and promising auspices; but how many women know to their sorrow that the first fruit of the destroyer of that home life has entered from without and not from within. The workman who carries homo his money and gets over the doorstep finds comfort and recompense there; but the one who delays his home-coming at the open bar generally reaches homo minus his money and self-respect; and it is not surprising that he should find his home, not what it should be, but what it is made to be by his familiarity with' the open bar. The disrepute that has been brought upon the families of some of our respected friends has been worked by the open bar, and it would be a foul calumny to say that the germs of any son’s disgrace have emanated from home culture, if the open bar had not been in the background. Immorality and drink are comeomitant evils, and hypocrisy always fuond ready shelter under the open bar, and for “'Total Abstainer”, to assume that her husband will be found in a more disreputable place than the open bar, cannot be placing a very creditable estimate upon the husband’s character for honesty or morality.—l am, etc., “NEW ZEALANDER.”