W. C. T. U. Column

The Baltimore and Ohio raih-oad recently discharged some of lts traicmen, not for drunkness, but beuause thoy "took a glass novv and then.1' -'A poliey of thiá nature is isevere," says the Rallway Age, but it needs only i momont's tnought to seo that it is foundcd in reasou. Tho railroad business is oue of exceeding rosponsibility..lenul olüftiness is all i.nportant in the performance of its dutlog, and strong drink tonds to confuse the faculties. " This tiie rallway managers evident.' v believe, for we are told that on moot roads In America at the presstit tiiiK', knou-ledsre that an employé toueuea Btroag drink in any form or at auv time, is sure to cost him his position. Now if an occasional {rlass of liqnor tends tü the confession.of the faculties of trammen, does It not also tend to befog the inontal preception of men in ether responsible positions. Edward Everet Halo preaches a mighty temperance sermón in the close of an article on the poet, Robet-t Burns. He says: "And he died in his thirty-sevenfrh yoai-, ana so young! And we should havo had so many more treasures from that warm heart and ready pen, that sympathetic friend of everybody who desired a friend, if- " jf "If he had been able to resist the temptation of liquor. Let it be remembered then, that men of his gift, men who have shown theinselvcs poworful of brain and sympathy of heart are the special prey of this special devil. And let it be remembered that 'taste not; touch not; handle not;' seemes not to have been known, even by pure and températe men in Scotland, in their elïarts to suppress drunkenness. Such men, if they selled poor Burns, only counsolled moderation. - "As if thcro could be moderation in playing with fire ! Jt would seem that no man, woman or child, not even the father who loved him nor the raother who bore him, no one but his poor wlfe, ever begged him or evenasked him to give up whiskey, wine and all iutoxicating liquor. " "What would this page of literature be today, had Robert Barns been taup:üt in his childhood of the dansers to which peots are the nearest? What would it be had the ready salo of the social glass been prohibited by law? What would it be, had he lived in a social order where gentlemen hate and dispise drunkonness'? Where would t be, had not all Seotland combined to defeat his prayer when hu asked the good God that he might not be led into emptation?"