Col. Higginson and Gen. Swift speak on Temperance.

Last evening the Total Abstinence League was addressed in Sever Hall by Gen. John L. Swift and Col. T, W. Higginson. The meeting was fairly well attended. President Webster introduced the speakers of the evening.

Col. Higginson began by saying that he wanted to speak for a few moments on the question of temperance on its moderate side and in a rational manner. Men of to-day, the writers and thinkers who had to deal with this question and also the men whom those agitating the cause of temperance wanted to reach, were rational beings who could see the errors of overstatement; and any influence over them would be lessened thereby. There was sanity in moderation in the use of intoxicants as much as in the total abstinence from them. He did not want it understood that he advocated moderation in the place of total abstinence. Far from it But we could not be blind to the fact that many people, who were by no means degraded, used it. He spoke at length of the tendency of science and of society to-day toward the total disuse of liquor. He then said that in college the probable cause of indulgence in intoxicants was due, not to the fear of saying "no," as is popularly imagined, but to the supposed loss or sacrifice in a social way which would be incurred. He said that he could not speak so much for college life, but he could testify for all after life that no social pleasure could ever be hindered by the non use of liquors. A man who doesn't drink in college is like a man who is restricting his expenses somewhat in order to take a life insurance policy. The greatest claim to be urged for abstinence is that the student will enter the struggle of life with one handicap the less.

General Swift then spoke for a half an hour in his characteristic pointed manner, interspersing his remarks with numerous anecdotes. He said that there were two schools of temperance, the wet and the dry. He preferred the dry, as did Dickens' young lady on board the vessel in the case of the fifth lover who wouldn't jump overboard to save her, because he was the most practical. In taking a stand against liquor there were too heresies to be met. The personal heresy, where people of high standing used liquor moderately and had it on their sideboards for all; and the heresy in regard to license. The only way in which the terrible power of the liquor organizations in our country could be fought was in having the young men take a decided stand against it from the start.