Josiah Robbins occupied a store at the head of Robbins’ wharf. In looking over the files of the OLD COLONY MEMORIAL to verify my recollection of Water street, I find that he was there as early as 1827, and in that year advertised the sale of old currant wine. The temperance movement began in the above year, and I think in the sale of wines the lines must have been drawn at the product of currants, as the following officers of the Temperance Society organized in 1827 were chosen: Nathaniel Russell, President; Zabdiel Sampson, Vice-President; Wm. Thomas, Secretary; and Ichabod Morton, Nathan Hayward, Jacob Covington, Josiah Robbins, Thomas Atwood, John Russell, Thomas Russell and Isaac L. Hedge, Executive Committee. It is probable that up to that time every grocery store contained ardent spirits in its stock, and on the 8th of September, 1827, I. & E. Morton, whose senior partner was one of the above executive committee, advertised concerning their store at Wellingsley that “that prolific mother of miseries, that giant foe to human happiness, shall no longer have a dwelling place under our roof.” The movement was followed up by temperance lectures delivered in the church at Training Green by Mr. Daniel Frost, and total abstinence pledges were signed by nearly one quarter of the entire population of the town. Though the grocers as a body abandoned the sale of spirits, obedience to popular sentiment was by no means universal. Family use and individual consumption were largely diminished, and with the erection in 1835 of the frame of the double house on the corner of Howland street, the practice of using liquor at “raisings” ceased. In the ship yards, however, for some years after that date, work was regularly knocked off every day at eleven and four o’clock for the distribution among the men of New England rum. Public opinion, however, without its re-inforcement by law, finally prevailed, and I should say that from 1835 to 1840 it would have been impossible to buy either ardent spirits or wines, except at the hotels, and that there were less than a dozen houses in which they could be found. I am inclined to think that even under the operation of stringent laws there has been a reaction, and that they are now more generally, though not excessively used than they were sixty-five years ago. It cannot, however, be denied, that if total abstinence less widely prevails, intemperance is less common, and more severely condemned. May it not be true that public opinion is more potent than law?