Part 33

LORD NELSON.

Horatio Nelson was born at Norfolk, England, September 29, 1758. He reached his manhood at a time when the nations of Europe were engaged in deadly strife. A love of adventure and a daring spirit, which developed during his earliest years, inclined him to follow the sea. From his first entrance into this calling, genius and opportunity worked together to make him the leading factor in Great Britain's prominence as a naval power.

For several centuries, previous to the time of Nelson, Great Britain had been rapidly advancing her commerce. In the protection of this commerce many a naval hero won renown; but the tide of influence and of power found in Nelson its perfect fulfillment. He was a man of extraordinary genius. He saw clearly; acted vigorously. He felt that it was his business and his duty to watch over England's interests upon the sea; and both men and women felt perfectly safe while Nelson had command. The pure flame of patriotism burned brightly in his heroic soul. He believed, with Lord Sandon, that nothing could be nobler than a first-rate English sailor; and he acted in strict accord with this belief. He attained one victory after another, until the battle of the Nile, one of his most brilliant successes, made the navy of England a terror even to its bravest enemies. The superiority of the English fleet was mainly due to his genius; and the dread his name inspired was one of the principal causes, that, a few years later, kept Napoleon from carrying out his threatened invasion of England.

His high sense of duty, and what he expected of those under his command, is well illustrated by his signal to the English fleet, when they were about to engage the French in the great naval battle at Trafalgar. When all were ready for the attack, Nelson said, "I will now amuse the fleet with a signal." Turning to the signal officer he exclaimed, "Send this message,--'England expects every man to do his duty.'" When the signal was comprehended by the men, cheer after cheer rang out upon the air, and under its inspiration they won a glorious and a decisive victory.

This message was characteristic of Nelson. Upon his entering into this engagement, which proved to be his last, he is said to have remarked, "I thank God for this great opportunity of doing my duty." While in the thick of the engagement, Nelson was struck down by a cannon ball, and lived but a few hours afterward; but long enough to hear the English shouts of triumph. He had left to the world a type of single-minded self-devotion, that can never perish.

XXXI.

TEMPERANCE.

MEMORY GEMS.

Rum will brutalize the manliest man in Christendom.-J. B. Gough

Rum excites all that is bad, vicious, and criminal in man.-J. S. White

There may be some wit in a barrel of beer, but there is more in leaving it alone.-C. Garrett

Sobriety is the bridle of the passions of desire, and temperance is the bit and curb of that bridle; a restraint put into a man's mouth; a moderate use of meat and drink.-Jeremy Taylor

Temperance is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body.-Theodore Parker

Temperance may, in its narrower sense, be defined as the observance of a rational medium with respect to the pleasures of eating and drinking. But it has also a larger meaning. The temperate man desires to hold all his pleasures within the limits of what is honorable, and with a proper reference to the amount of his own pecuniary means. To pursue them more is excess; to pursue them less is defect. There is, however, in estimating excess and defect, a certain tacit reference to the average dispositions of men, and the law of usage or custom of the times.

The word temperance has, we repeat, become narrowed and specialized. We mean by it, not exactly temperance, but abstinence. The word does not convey the full force of its older meaning. That signifies, "the right handling of one's self,--that kind of self-control by which a man's nature has a chance to act normally;" and this aspect of our subject must not be overlooked, for it is of great importance.

Instead of being the secondary thing which some think it to be, temperance is really a much higher virtue than patience or fortitude. It is the guardian of reason, the bulwark of religion, the sister of prudence, and the sweetener of life. Be temperate; and time will carry you forward on its purest current till it lands you on the continent of a yet purer eternity, as the swelling river rolls its limpid stream into the bosom of the unfathomable deep.

But even in the more general meaning now given to the word, temperance is worthy of our most careful study.

Consider what it is to gain the mastery over a single passion! And think, also, what it is for the mind to be ruled by an appetite! Look at S. T. Coleridge--a poet who might have sung for all time, a philosopher capable of teaching and molding generations, skulking away from the eye of friends and of servants to drink his bottle of laudanum, and then bewailing his weakness and sin with an agony, the bare recital of which, makes our hearts bleed with pity. Our task is not only to subdue a serpent, to tame a lion,--there is a whole menagerie of evil passions to be kept in subjection, and when the drink habit prevails, we shall soon become too weak for such a task.

Temperance is an action; it is the tempering of our words and actions to our circumstances. Sobriety is a state in which one is exempt from every stimulus to deviate from the right course. As a man who is intoxicated with wine, runs into excesses, and loses that power of guiding himself which he has when he is sober or free from all intoxication, so is he who is intoxicated with any passion, led into irregularities which a man in his right senses will not be guilty of. Sobriety is, therefore, the state of being in one's right or sober senses; and sobriety is, with regard to temperance, as a cause to its effect.

The evils resulting from intemperance are so numerous and so destructive of human happiness and life, as to command universal attention. Not only does intemperance greatly increase pauperism and crime, but it often leads to sad calamities which might otherwise be quite largely avoided.

An old English sea-captain relates the following fact, of which he was an eyewitness:--"A collier brig was stranded on the Yorkshire coast, and I had occasion to assist in the distressing service of rescuing a part of the crew by drawing them up a vertical cliff, two or three hundred feet in altitude, by means of a very small rope, the only material at hand. The first two men who caught hold of the rope were hauled safely up to the top; but the next, after being drawn to a considerable height, slipped his hold and fell; and with the fourth and last who venturedupon this only chance of life, the rope gave way, and he also was plunged into the foaming breakers beneath. Immediately afterward, the vessel broke up, and the remainder of the ill-fated crew perished before our eyes.

"What now was the cause of this heart-rending event? Was it stress of weather, or a contrary wind, or unavoidable accident? No such thing! It was the entire want of moral conduct in the crew. Every sailor, to a man, was in a state of intoxication! The helm was intrusted to a boy ignorant of the coast. He ran the vessel upon the rocks at Whitby; and one half of the miserable, dissipated crew were plunged into eternity almost without a knowledge of what was taking place."

There are still a few people who openly ridicule both total abstinence and its advocates, and some, who are wicked enough to endeavor to misrepresent those who labor in this cause. These persons do not always succeed, however, as the following incident will show: Horace Greeley was once met at a railway depot by a red-faced individual, who shook him warmly by the hand. "I don't recognize you," said Mr. Greeley. "Why, yes, you must remember how we drank brandy and water together at a certain place." This amused the bystanders, who knew Mr. Greeley's strong temperance principles. "Oh, I see," replied Mr. Greeley, "you drank the brandy, and I drank the water."

It will be found that abstinence from intoxicants is by far the best rule of living. There is a large amount of genuine wisdom in the words of a middle-aged German who, some years ago, spoke as follows, at a temperance meeting: "I shall tell you how it vas. I put my hand on my head; there was von big pain. Then I put my hand on my pody; and there vas another big pain. There was very much pains in all my pody. Then I put my hand in my pocket; and there vas noting. Now there is no more pain in my head. The pains in my pody are all gone away. I put mine hand in my pocket, and there ish twenty tollars. So I shall shtay mit de temperance."

FATHER MATHEW.

Theobald Mathew was an Irish priest. He was born in 1790, in a great house in Tipperary, where his father was the agent of a rich lord. The delight of his childhood was in giving little feasts and entertainments to his friends. As long as he lived he was fond of this pleasure. Indeed, when, at the very last, his physician had forbidden him to receive company, he was found by his brother giving a dinner to a party of poor boys.

At twenty-three years of age he was ordained, and was known from that time as "Father Mathew." After a short time in Kilkenny, he went to Cork, which was his home for the rest of his life. He was not thought much of as a scholar, nor at first as a preacher; but he had a warm heart and every one liked him. Thus he passed quietly along until he was forty-seven years old; and it did not seem as if the world would ever hear of "Father Mathew."

There was a little band of Quakers in Cork, who had started a total abstinence, or "teetotal society." They interested Father Mathew in their work, and, in 1838, he signed the temperance pledge and enrolled himself as a member.