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TEMPERANCE SELECTIONS.

THE PLEASURE BOAT.

THE course of the inebriate is fearfully rapid when a young man in the prime of life lifts to his lips the poisoned chalice of death and destruction, and laughs and sneers at the admonitions of his friends, his course to ruin and blackness, to the vortex of misery and death, is like the speed of the devastating tornado. To more pathetically illustrate the rapid strides of the drunkard to an untimely grave, I will relate an affecting scene that transpired on the coast of Norway some twenty years ago, and has not to my knowledge ever appeared in print before. We have all heard of the awful whirlpool called the Maelstroom; it is but a few leagues from the west coast of the kingdom above mentioned. Its suction affects the water to many miles around it; and those who are so unfortunate as to come within the circle of its influence, can seldom make an effort so powerful as to escape-they are generally drawn into its funnel and perish. On the shore nearly opposite this whirlpool, one fine afternoon in the month of July, a party of young ladies and gentlemen agreed to take an excursion that evening in a pleasure boat. They were young and thoughtless, and not accustomed to the dangers of the the young men could not ply the oars as effectually as those more accustomed to the water; but they supposed there could be no danger. All nature seemed to smile the sunbeams briskly played upon the bosom of the ocean; calmness had thrown its oily wand upon the billow, and it slept. The water presented a smooth, unruffled surface-it seemed a sea of glass; the most timorous would scarcely have suspected that danger, in its most terrific form, was lurking just beneath the surface but so it was, while the mirrored and glassy surface slept without a ripple. Just beneath, the circling current, formed by the suction of the whirlpool at that state of the tide, swept round and round at the distance of many miles with fearful velocity. The evening come people assembled on the beach. The mellow moonbeam would tremble for a moment and then sleep on the calm, unagitated breast of the ocean. The pleasure boat was unmoored; the party gaily entered; the boat was moved from the shore; it was soon under

sea

the young

way it was rapidly propelled by those at the oars. But it was soon discovered that it would skim gently over the bosom of the deep when the motion produced by the oars had ceased. They allowed the boat to glide gently along-they felt no danger-all was thoughtless hilarity. The motion of the boat became gradually,

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but to them insensibly, more rapid; (mark the progress,) they were moved by the influence of the whirlpool. Their motion was rotary; they were insensibly drawn round in a huge circle with awful rapidity; they soon came round almost to the same spot from which they sailed. At this critical moment, the only one in which it was possible for them to be saved, a number of persons on shore who knew their danger, discovered them, and instantly gave the alarm; they entreated those in the boat to make one desperate effort and reach the shore, if possible. When they talked of danger, the party of pleasure laughed at their fears, and passed along without making one effort to deliver themselves from impending ruin. The boat moved on, the rapidity of its motions continually increasing, and the circle round which it was drawn by its rotary movement becoming smaller. It soon appeared a second time to those on the land. Again they manifested their anxiety for the safety of those whose danger they saw, but who, if delivered at all, must be delivered by their own exertions, for those on shore, even if they launched a boat and rushed into the very jaws of peril, could not save them while they were determined to remain inactive, and be carried by the accelera.ted velocity of the water round this mouth of the sea, ready at once to swallow both themselves and the boat. They still moved along in merriment; peals of laughter were often heard sneers were the only thanks given to those who would with delight have saved them. For a time they continued to move round in all their thoughtlessness. But the tide began to ebb; presently they heard the far-off roar of the tremendous vortex below, like the wails and howlings of demons it sounded like the hoarse, unsteady bellowings of an earthquake, or like a distant sea in a storm. By this time the boat ever and anon would quiver like an aspen leaf, and then shoot like lightning through the now troubled sea. The roar of the awful abyss was the knell of death — solemnity now began to banish mirth from the countenances of those in the devoted pleasure boat. They half suspected danger was near soon they felt it. When they came again in sight of land, their cries would have pierced a heart of stone. O! help, for mercy's sake! were now the exclamations of despair; but alas! no human aid could reach them. A thick black cloud, as if to add horror to this scene of distress, at this moment shrouded the heavens in darkness, forked lightnings gleamed, and the hoarse, rebellious artillery of heaven boomed across the roaring and blackened waters. The oars were plied with every nerve; they snapped, and their fragments were hurried into the yawning abyss. The boat, now trembling, now tossed, now whirled suddenly round, now lashed by the spray, was presently thrown with violence into the jaws of death, opened wide to receive it and the immortals whom it carried. Oh! think of the feelings of those on shore, when, far away upon that awful ocean, by the vivid flashes of lightning, a party of their friends, young and in the morning of life, could be seen hurrying on to that fearful abyss - and at intervals, between the faint

bellowings of far-off thunder, hear their cries of distress! Thus perished the pleasure boat and all that sailed in it. And thus perish thousands in the vortex of dissipation, who at first smoothly sail round the uttermost verge of it; who were scarcely, as they supposed, within the sphere of its influence, and who would laugh at those who were so faithful as to warn them of their danger, and still sail round and round, drawing nearer and more near to the awful precipice, their motion imperceptibly growing more rapid, till at last, when too late, they see their danger, but cannot reform, and they are plunged into the yawning chasm, which opens wide to receive them. I ask those who are young like myself, to lay this sketch up in the store-house of their memory those who thoughtlessly tamper with the hydra monster. It may perhaps save some may it save many may it save all who read it, from a drunkard's untimely death, from filling a drunkard's grave.

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"well! that gin

THE REAL "TEMPERANCE CORDIAL.” “WELL,” said Andrew Furlong to James Lacey, ger cordial, of all the things that I ever tasted, is the nicest and warmest. It's beautiful stuff and so cheap."

"What good does it do you, Andrew? And what want you of it?" inquired James Lacey.

"What good does it do me?" repeated Andrew, rubbing his forehead in a manner that showed he was perplexed by the question; "why no great good to be sure; and I can't say I've any want of it; for since I became a member of the Total Abstinence Society, I've lost the megrim in my head and the weakness I used to have about my heart. I'm as strong and hearty in myself as any one can be, God be praised! And sure, James, neither of us could turn out in such a coat as this, this time twelvemonth."

And that's true," replied James, “but we must remember, that if leaving off whisky enables us to show a good habit, taking to ginger cordial,' or any thing of that kind, will soon wear a hole in it.'

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"You are always full of your fun," replied Andrew, "how can you prove that ??

"Easy enough," said James. "Intoxication was the worst part of a whisky-drinking habit; but it was not the only bad part. It spent TIME, and spent what well managed time always gives, money. Now, though they do say-mind I'm not quite sure about it, for they may put things in it they don't own to, and your eyes look brighter, and your cheek more flushed than if you had been drinking nothing stronger than milk or water-but they do say that ginger cordials, and all kinds of cordials, do not intoxicate. I will grant this, but you cannot deny that they waste both time and money."

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