Gertrude Winn; A Story from Real Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 Excerpt: ...this way to hell to know that their country is stigmatized by all the nations of the earth for her drunkenness; that her people are being enervated; that her commerce is being retarded, when it might be far greater than it is. Oh, how can they consider these and many more things, and not rise as one man, and demand the abolition of the accursed drink-traffic? Gertrude, I wish I were a man for their sakes I would thunder the truth into their drowsy ears I would make my voice heard through the length and breadth of the land, until the curse were removed O that God would raise up some one fitted for the work--a second Martin Luther--to bring about this grand moral and political reformation " "Your subject warms you," said Gertrude. "It sets me all on fire I find no language to express what I feel Sometimes, I tell you, Gertrude, I find my heart so heaving and burning with grief and indignation, that it is a pain to live It literally pains me here," and she pressed her hand to her chest. She resumed her seat and continued--"Do you ever lay awake at nights, thinking about the world, Gerty? I often do. When the earth is wrapped in darkness--as one has beautifully said, with ' God's shadow' resting upon it--when the lovely stars gem the sky, and all is silent and still, I tliinV of what is going on in the world, in the homes of myriads. There are the streets of towns and cities reeking with the pestilential breath of hundreds of drunken men and women, resounding with blasphemy and bacchanalian song; there are ten thousand times ten thousand homes stifling in sobs, and groans, and oaths, and tears, the result of the drink. There are thousands of drinking dens pouring forth their desperate, loathsome crowds, to gowhere? O Gertrud...