Hush! here comes the speaker of the evening--John B. Gough, supported by Dr. Tyng (who believes in preaching to dear little children, as well as to their fathers and mothers). John says, “Ladies and gentlemen” (not--_Gentlemen_ and ladies, as do some ungallant orators). “Ladies and gentlemen, when the admission tickets are twenty-five cents I feel doubtful of giving you your money’s worth; judge then how a fifty cent ticket embarrasses me.” A very politic preface, John; but ere you had spoken five consecutive sentences, I knew it was mock-modesty. You know very well that no man understands better how to sway a crowd; you know that many an audience, who yawn through addresses that are squared, rounded, and plumb-ed by nicest rules of rhetoric, will sit spell-bound unconscious hours, and laugh and cry at _your_ magnetic will. John, you are a good and a great institution, and right glad am I that the noble cause in which your eloquence is enlisted, has so pleasing and indomitable a defender. But John--it is not all in _you_. Double-edged is the sword wielded in a _just_ cause; and not a man, woman, or child has listened to your burning words to-night who did not know and feel that you spoke God’s truth. Success to the Temperance cause, and all its apostles, both great and small; and above all, _never_ let _woman’s_ lip baptize the bowl, which, for aught she can tell, may sepulcher her dearest hopes this side heaven. WAYSIDE WORDS. I wonder is there a country on the face of the earth, where the Almighty is oftener called upon to send to perdition the souls of those who offend its inhabitants? Everywhere that horrid imprecation, so familiar that it is unnecessary to shock you by writing it, meets the pained ear. I say pained, because I, for one, can not abhor it less on account of its frequency, or consider it less disgusting, because it filters through aristocratic lips. Everywhere it pursues me; in crowded streets, on ferry boats, in omnibusses, and, I am sorry to say, in ladies’ parlors, which should afford a refuge from this disgusting habit. From old men--whose toothless lips mumble it almost inarticulately; from those who would resent to the death any question of their claim to the title of gentlemen; from young men, glorious else, in the strength and vigor of youth; and sadder still--from little children, who have caught the trick, and bandy curses at their sports. _An oath from a child’s lips!_ One would as soon expect a thunderbolt from out the heart of a rose. And yet, there are those who deliberately _teach_ little children to swear, and think it sport, when the rosy lips, with childish grace, lisp the demoniac lesson. An oath from a _woman’s_ lips! With shuddering horror we shrink away, and ask, what bitter cup of wrong, suffering, and despair, man has doomed her to drink to the dregs, ere she could so belie her beautiful womanhood.