MY FRIEND AND BROTHER--You are poor and wretched. A horrid appetite hurries you on in the road to ruin. Abroad you are despised. Home is a desolation. A heart-broken wife weeps over you, yet does not forsake you. She hopes, she waits for your reform and for better days. Conscience bids you stop. But appetite, companions, and custom say, _One glass more_. That is a fatal glass. You rise but to fall again, and you feel that you can never reform. But you CAN REFORM. Thousands and thousands around you have reformed, and would not for worlds go back to drinking. They are happy at home; respected abroad; well dressed; well employed; have no thirst for the dreadful cup. They feel for you. They say, "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good." Come _sign the pledge_, the pledge of total abstinence. In this is your only hope. This is a certain cure. Touch not, taste not, handle not rum, brandy, whiskey, wine, cider, beer, or any thing that intoxicates, and you will be a new man, a happy man. Begin now. Try it now in the strength of the Lord. From this good hour resolve that none of these accursed drinks shall ever enter your lips. The struggle may be severe, but it will soon be over. Say then, "Come life, come death, by the help of God I will be free." PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. TOM STARBOARD AND JACK HALYARD. A NAUTICAL TEMPERANCE DIALOGUE. [Illustration: Tom Starboard and Jack Halyard] JACK. Halloo, shipmate; what cheer? Mayhap, however, you don't choose to remember an old crony. TOM. Why, Jack, is that you? Well, I must say, that if you hadn't hailed me I should have sailed by without knowing you. How you're altered! Who would have supposed that this weather-beaten hulk was my old messmate Jack Halyard, with whom I've soaked many a hard biscuit, and weathered many a tough gale on old Ocean? and then you used to be as trim in your rigging as the Alert herself; but now it's as full of ends as the old Wilmington brig that we used to crack so many jokes about at Barbadoes. Give me another grip, my hearty, and tell me how you come on. JACK. Bad enough, Tom--bad enough. I'm very glad, however, to overhaul you again, and to find you so merry, and looking so fat and hearty. The world must have gone well with you, Tom. TOM. You may well say that, Jack, and no mistake. The world has gone well with me. My appetite is good, my sleep sound; and I always take care to have a shot in the locker, and let alone a snug little sum in the seamen's savings-bank, that I've stowed away for squally times, or when I get old, so as to be independent of hospitals and retreats, and all that sort of thing. And what's more to the purpose, Jack, I try to have a clean conscience--the most comfortable of all; don't you think so? JACK. Why yes, Tom, I do think that a clean conscience must be a very comfortable thing for a man to have. But I can't brag much of mine now-a-days; it gives me a deal of trouble sometimes.