Unusual Antique Sunday School Temperance Pledge: Wine, Beer, Cider, Tobacco--and Opium! boy with bicycle It features pretty incised detailing

It features pretty incised detailing around the perimeter of the top

or in direct sun

as I believe is the case with this painting

"which surely was the cost of it

" told here to have been found on the dead body of pioneer and Texas folk hero James Bowie at the Battle of the Alamo

Unusual Antique Sunday School Temperance Pledge: Wine, Beer, Cider, Tobacco--and Opium! boy with bicycle It features pretty incised detailingThis just struck me as a fun little bit of history a Sunday School temperance pledge, c. 1880s I believe, which not only includes abstention from alcohol (wine, beer and cider) but also from tobacco and, most uncommonly, opium! These were a important component of the temperance movement in the 19th and early 20th century, and were often signed in public settings and organizational contexts, Sunday schools among them, to heighten accountability. I