Yes, the dram-seller lives and thrives with us, too--the vender of the shadow of happiness, and dealer in ignorance, disease, degradation, poverty, ruined reputations, strifes, jealousies, insanity, delirium tremens, and dishonored and early graves. The drunkards whom he makes are wretched enough, and commit, through their intemperance, the most grievous of crimes; but I know not if the sins and miseries of the dram-seller be not worse and far more hopeless of reparation than theirs. For in one it is often the result of weak and uneducated minds, unable to use God's gifts in moderation, or to bear up against the trials and temptations of this life; but the other must be a cold, heartless, calculating, money-worshipping soul, who can thus fatten himself upon the sinful appetites of others, and from year to year defraud his neighbor by the sale of his vile, adulterated trash, and take the hard-earned dollars of his customers in exchange for it without a blush. {73} The dram-seller and his traffic is a well-known and prominent rock of scandal in the community, whether it be the secret sale from one barrel of beer or liquor in the earth-floored shanty, or the flourishing business of a well-stocked and gilded saloon. What are the sins of the dram-seller? He sins against justice and against charity. He sins against justice. To all who have examined the matter, it is a well-established fact that in every case this business is necessarily connected with the sale of false, adulterated articles, and with an unreasonable, unrighteous, and usurious profit. And the only excuse any one connected with it has ever been able to offer is, that they are obliged, if they sell at all, to keep cheap liquors for poor people, or that, if the article is adulterated, it is none of their business, for they sell it, either just as they purchase it from large dealers, or, at the worst, only add a certain modicum of water, as they say __the raw spirit might do the poor people harm!__ But they know the fact as well as I know it, that scarcely one drop is dealt out by them that is not more or less adulterated; that their so-called wines never saw the juice of the grape; that their brandies, and rums, and cordials are all composed of proof spirit, coloring matter, drugs of the most poisonous character and deadly strength, and water. I am in possession of a document circulated privately among these manufacturers of "imported wines and liquors," which purports to give recipes for making any kind of wine, liquor, or cordial you can name, with the address of certain houses where the drugs I have alluded to may be obtained. {74}