A young man went down to Thomasville, Alabama, and while there was invited to a dress ball--or rather an undress ball, if what I have read about such affairs properly describes the uniforms. A young lady--a young lady with eyes like the dove and with beautiful tresses--came up to him and said to the young man, "Won't you pledge a glass of champagne with me?" The young man thanked her, but said: "No, I don't drink." "Not with me?" she said, and smiled; and he repeated his answer, "No." Then she said: "If I had thought you would refuse me I would not have asked you and exposed myself to the embarrassment of a refusal. I did not suppose you would think me bold for speaking to you in this way, and I thought you might be lonely." A little later she came back to him and repeated her invitation. Again he said: "No." Others came up and laughed. He took it and hesitated. She smiled at him and he gave in and drank the champagne, then drank another glass and another, until he was flushed with it. Then he danced. At two o'clock the next morning a man with a linen duster over his other clothes walked back upon the railroad-station platform, waiting for a train for the North; and as he walked he would exclaim, "Oh God!" and would pull a pint flask from his pocket and drink. "My God," he would say, "what will mother say?" Four months later in his home in Vermont, with his weeping parents by him and with four strong men to hold him down, he died of delirium tremens. The Epworth League's motto is: "Look up, lift up." But you'll never lift much up unless God has hold of your hands. Unless he has, you will never put your hands deep in your pocket, up to the elbows, and bring them up full of money for his cause. A man who was about to be baptized took out his watch and laid it aside; then he took out his knife and bankbook and laid them aside. "Better give me your pocketbook to put aside for you," said the minister. "No," said the man, "I want it to be baptized, too." There's no such thing as a bargain-counter religion. Pure and undefiled religion will do more when God has something besides pennies to work with. God doesn't run any excursions to heaven. You must pay the full fare. Your religion is worth just what it cost you. If you get religion and then lie down and go to sleep, your joints will get stiff as Rip Van Winkle's did, and you'll never win the religious marathon. Denying One's Self