“I am sure I know nothing to the contrary, Mrs. Uwins,” replied Mr. Midith. “Your horse works hard, your cow gives milk, your sheep grows wool, and they all live and grow strong on a vegetable diet. Why should not man do the same? The dentition (teeth) of man, too, according to the testimony of some of your most reliable scientific authorities, is vegetarian. It may be shown that a vegetable diet gives great endurance and strength in man. For example, your bark-gatherers of South America, who carry upon their backs, in a rough country, a burden of over two hundred pounds for a distance of thirty miles or more per day, live exclusively on bananas. The Roman soldiers endured the hardest work on a vegetable diet. The hardworking Spaniards live on black bread, onions and melons. The Chinese live almost exclusively on rice, and can endure much harder work than a negro fed on fat meat. “There is one other important reason why we are vegetarians. In our opinion, a flesh diet is degenerating, as well as unwholesome. May it not be possible that a human body, built up on the flesh and blood of a carnivorous brute, cannot be expected to contain within itself genuine purity, love and kindness toward others? “We have also discontinued the use of all intoxicating liquor as a beverage. Experience, not ‘prohibition,’ gradually convinced us that it not only tears down, but never builds up. That the apparent elevated feeling is always followed by a corresponding depression. That an immense amount of unproductive labor has to be expended annually in producing it. That its use caused an untold amount of misery; and that the apparent pleasure of its use is only a slavish desire--an abnormal, physiological derangement--a diseased condition of the system which is continually moving in the direction of _delirium tremens_ in which it will end, if the use is sufficiently excessive and prolonged. “In your present stage of intellectual development, the evils resulting from the use of intoxicating liquor as a beverage are very apparent. Liquor is an incentive to crime because it stupefies the better feelings. It fills your prisons with criminals, who have been urged on to their dark deeds when under its influence. It deprives countless homes of their joy and brightness. It makes a slave of millions of women and children, who are ruled by a lion of terror. It makes slaves of the drinkers themselves. It wrecks constitutions and furnishes victims for countless premature graves. It squanders wealth, kills useful industry, suppresses kindness, invades purity and stifles thought. It causes filth, jealousy, idleness, poverty and pauperism. The evil effects of its use react on the drinker and reflect on his companions. By the presence of a drunkard, the street and society are turned into a saloon and the home is converted into a dungeon. The drinker’s breath even pollutes the very atmosphere his companions are compelled to breathe.