| OCR Text |
Show Temperance Societies Illegal. The clergyman recorded complacently compla-cently the twenty-seventh New Year pledge taking. "Excellent work. A glorious day," ho said. "And yet do you know that there was once a time when all this sort of thing was criminal?" "No!" "Yes. It wns In India, at tho beginning begin-ning of the English occupation. Medical Med-ical men believed in those days that a white man could not live In India without with-out drinking. They thought he needed a half-pint of whisky, or Its equivalent, every day. And they Insisted on his taking It. "Temperance societies, total abstinence ab-stinence and the signing of the pledgo were things forbidden in India. Such things were thought Injurious to the white man's health out there. Hence, . to go In for them was to be arrested, fined, imprisoned, banished. "Hut to-day In India total abstinence is encouraged, for it has been found that the abstainer stands the heat far better than does the man who drinks." |
