THIRD REASON for the disuse of alcohol: It _destroys both body and soul_. It is estimated that _thirty or forty thousand_ died annually in the United States from the intemperate use of ardent spirit before the Temperance reformation began. Thirty or forty thousand! a sacrifice seldom matched by war or pestilence. The blood which flowed from the veins of our martyred countrymen, in the cause of freedom, never reached this annual sacrifice. And the pestilential _cholera_, ruthless as it is, which has marked its desolating track through many of our towns and cities, numbers not an amount of victims like this plague, much as its virulence has been enhanced by ardent spirit. The destructive influence of immoderate drinking upon the bodily powers of men, is painfully apparent, sometimes long before the fatal catastrophe. The face, the speech, the eyes, the walk, the sleep, the breath, all proclaim the drying up of the springs of life. And although abused nature will often struggle, and struggle, and struggle, to maintain the balance of her powers, and restore her wasted energies, she is compelled to yield at length to suicidal violence. The effect of the habitual use of ardent spirit upon the health, is much greater than is generally supposed. An individual who is in the habit of drinking spirits daily, although he may not fall under the character of a drunkard, is undermining his constitution gradually, but certainly; as a noble building, standing by the side of a small, unnoticed rivulet, whose current steals along under its foundation, and carries away from its support sand after sand, has its security certainly though imperceptibly impaired, and finally falls into utter ruin. A large proportion of the inmates of our madhouses are the victims of ardent spirit. Our hospitals and poor-houses speak volumes of the ruin that awaits the bodily powers of those who indulge in even moderate tippling. It exposes the system to much greater ravages when disease attacks it. The powers of nature are weakened, and less able to resist disease; and medicines will never act so promptly and kindly upon those who are accustomed to strong drink as upon those who are not.