If there is an old toper present, or a young toper, let 'em take the warning of an old man who has been awatching the gradual down fall of moderate drinkers for threescore years. I've seen 'em live, and I've seen 'em die. _Die_ ain't no name fur the last struggle I've seen 'em go through with. Jest picture tu yourself a grapery, stretchin miles away, and in that air grapery is walkin men of every age and condition, and all are a pluckin them are big purple grapes. Some eat many, some, few; some grow red and portly, some grow pale and thin, (them air pale ones take the longest strides and get to the end fust.) They hev all been warned that that air fruit hes been pisened, and some of them git a leetle frightened at seein the strange way it effects companions, and they turn back, but the most on 'em go on, plucking and eating, heedless of the cries of them without. O, they know jest how many fur tu eat and not die. Their friends needn't worry: they ken take care of theirselves. 'Mother,' says a youth, lookin through the lattices, with a glow upon his cheek, 'I'm all right, don't bother about me. See Mr. Moderate Drinker ahead there,--see how hale he looks--he'll live longer than any of ye outside.' But afore long that air smart youth goes reeling past Mr. Moderate Drinker, toward the end.--It is too late now--let his mother cry to heaven and wring her hands and lie in the ashes upon the hearth. It is all in vain.--'My boy, oh, my boy!' rings unheeded in his ear. A mother's voice, a mother's tears, a mother's anguish, what are they compared with the fruit, which he has lost the power to resist, and which his companions are constantly urging upon him? But look! He suddenly starts back pale and fearful. He has seen the precipice and the black gulfs with open jaws jest afore him? No, ah no, the heavy clusters and the interlaced vines hide that. But he heard the despairing shriek of a feller traveller as he plunged in; and for a moment he tremblingly questions, what is there? Ah, there is no clusters, no leaves, no vines, between that spot and his devoted mother's eye. She has long looked fearfully towards it, and, just upon the verge, she sees him falter. A faint hope springs up within her, and, with the courage of desperation, she cries out in a voice that might pierce the skies, 'Turn, oh, my boy, turn, flee fur yer life--one step forward and ye are lost!' Her last words are drowned in the jeers of his companions, and his senses are deadened by the odors of the purple cluster just ahead, and to reach it he takes the fatal step. Fur a moment he hangs suspended over the abyss, clutchin the vines whose roots take hold on hell, and as with bloodshot eyes and fearful shrieks, he tugs and strains to regain his footin, a foul sarpent winds its way among the leaves, and stealthily strikes his fangs inter the branch to which he clings, and gnaws his last refuge. That air is the way they die.