the deadly agent was other than poisoned air,--excessive exertion, very
bad food, gluttony, deprivation. During the war I knew of a party of
cavalry who, for three days and three nights, were not out of the
saddle fifteen minutes at a time. The men consumed two quarts of
whiskey each, and all of them came in alive. It is a custom in England
to extract the last possible five miles from a tired horse, when those
miles _must_ be had from him, by forcing down his most unwilling throat
a quart of beer. It is known, too, that life can be sustained for many
years in considerable vigor, upon a remarkably short allowance of food,
provided the victim keeps his system well saturated with alcohol.
Travellers across the plains to California tell us that, soon after
getting past St. Louis, they strike a region where the principal
articles of diet are saleratus and grease, to which a little flour and
pork are added; upon which, they say, human life cannot be sustained
unless the natural waste of the system is retarded by "preserving" the
tissues in whiskey. Mr. Greeley, however, got through alive without
resorting to this expedient, but he confesses in one of his letters
that he suffered pangs and horrors of indigestion.
All such facts as these--and they could be collected in great
numbers--indicate the real office of alcohol in our modern life: _It
enables us to violate the laws of nature without immediate suffering
and speedy destruction_. This appears to be its chief office, in
conjunction with its ally, tobacco. Those tailors would have soon died
or escaped but for the gin; and those horsemen would have given up and
perished but for the whiskey. Nature commanded those soldiers to rest,
but they were enabled, for the moment, to disobey her. Doubtless Nature
was even with them afterwards; but, for the time, they could _defy_
their mother great and wise. Alcohol supported them in doing wrong.
Alcohol and tobacco support half the modern world in doing wrong. That
is their part--their _rôle_, as the French investigators term it--in
the present life of the human race.
Dr. Great Practice would naturally go to bed at ten o'clock, when he
comes in from his evening visits. It is his cigar that keeps him up
till half past twelve, writing those treatises which make him famous,
and shorten his life. Lawyer Heavy Fee takes home his papers, pores
over them till past one, and then depends upon whiskey to quiet his
brain and put him to sleep. Young Bohemian gets away from the office of
the morning paper which enjoys the benefit of his fine talents at three
o'clock. It is two mugs of lager-bier which enable him to endure the
immediate consequences of eating a supper before going home. This is
mad work, my masters; it is respectable suicide, nothing better.
There is a paragraph now making the grand tour of the newspapers, which
informs the public that there was a dinner given the other evening in
New York consisting of twelve courses, and keeping the guests five
hours at the table. For five hours, men and women sat consuming food,
occupying half an hour at each viand. What could sustain human nature
in such an amazing effort? What could enable them to look into one
another's faces without blushing scarlet at the infamy of such a waste
of time, food, and digestive force? What concealed from them the
iniquity and deep vulgarity of what they were doing? The explanation of
this mystery is given in the paragraph that records the crime: "There
was a different kind of wine for each course."
Even an ordinary dinner-party,--what mortal could eat it through, or
sit it out, without a constant sipping of wine to keep his brain
muddied, and lash his stomach to unnatural exertion. The joke of it is,
that we all know and confess to one another how absurd such banquets
are, and yet few have the courage and humanity to feed their friends in
a way which they can enjoy, and feel the better for the next morning.
When I saw Mr. Dickens eating and drinking his way through the
elegantly bound book which Mr. Delmonico substituted for the usual bill
of fare at the dinner given by the Press last April to the great
artist,--a task of three hours' duration,--when, I say, I saw Mr.
Dickens thus engaged, I wondered which banquet was the furthest from
being the right thing,--the one to which he was then vainly trying to
do justice, or the one of which Martin Chuzzlewit partook, on the day
he landed in New York, at Mrs. Pawkins's boarding-house. The poultry,
on the latter occasion, "disappeared as if every bird had had the use
of its wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The
oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs,
and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest
pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man
winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice
before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see." Of course,
the company adjourned from the dining-room to "the bar-room in the next
block," where they imbibed strong drink enough to keep their dinner
from prostrating them.
The Delmonico banquet was a very different affair. Our public dinners
are all arranged on the English system; for we have not yet taken up
with the fine, sweeping principle, that whatever is right for England
is wrong for America. Hence, not a lady was present! Within a day's
journey of New York there are about thirty ladies who write regularly
for the periodical press, besides as many more, perhaps, who contribute
to it occasionally. Many editors, too, derive constant and important
assistance, in the exercise of their profession, from their wives and
daughters, who read books for them, suggest topics, correct errors, and
keep busy editors in mind of the great truth that more than one half
the human race is female. Mrs. Kemble, who had a treble claim to a seat
at that table, was not many miles distant. Why were none of these
gifted ladies present to grace and enliven the scene? The true answer
is: _Wine and smoke_! Not _our_ wine and smoke, but those of our
British ancestors who invented public dinners. The hospitable young
gentlemen who had the affair in charge would have been delighted, no
doubt, to depart from the established system, but hardly liked to risk
so tremendous an innovation on an occasion of so much interest. If it
had been put to the vote (by ballot), when the company had assembled,
Shall we have ladies or not? all the hard drinkers, all the old
smokers, would have furtively written "not" upon their ballots. Those
who drink little wine, and do not depend upon that little; those who do
not smoke or can easily dispense with smoke,--would have voted for the
ladies; and the ladies would have carried the day by the majority which
is so hard to get,--two thirds.
It was a wise man who discovered that a small quantity of excellent
soup is a good thing to begin a dinner with. He deserves well of his
species. The soup allays the hungry savage within us, and restores us
to civilization and to one another. Nor is he to be reckoned a traitor
to his kind who first proclaimed that a little very nice and dainty
fish, hot and crisp from the fire, is a pleasing introduction to more
substantial viands. Six oysters upon their native shell, fresh from
their ocean home, and freshly opened, small in size, intense in flavor,
cool, but not too cold, radiating from a central quarter of a
lemon,--this, too, was a fine conception, worthy of the age in which we
live. But in what language can we characterize aright the abandoned man
who first presumed to tempt Christians to begin a repast by partaking
of _all_ three of these,--oysters, soup, _and_ fish? The object is
defeated. The true purpose of these introductory trifles is to appease
the appetite in a slight degree, so as to enable us to take sustenance
with composure and dignity, and dispose the company to conversation.
When a properly constituted person has eaten six oysters, a plate of
soup, and the usual portion of fish, with the proper quantity of
potatoes and bread, he has taken as much sustenance as nature requires.
All the rest of the banquet is excess; and being excess, it is also
mistake; it is a diminution of the sum-total of pleasure which the
repast was capable of affording. But when Mr. Delmonico had brought us
successfully so far on our way through his book; when we had consumed
our oysters, our cream of asparagus in the Dumas style, our
kettle-drums in the manner of Charles Dickens, and our trout cooked so
as to do honor to Queen Victoria, we had only picked up a few pebbles
on the shore of the banquet, while the great ocean of food still
stretched out before us illimitable. The fillet of beef after the
manner of Lucullus, the stuffed lamb in the style of Sir Walter Scott,
the cutlets à la Fenimore Cooper, the historic pâtés, the sighs of
Mantalini, and a dozen other efforts of Mr. Delmonico's genius,
remained to be attempted.
No man would willingly eat or sit through such a dinner without plenty
of wine, which here plays its natural part,--supporting us in doing
wrong. It is the wine which enables people to keep on eating for three
hours, and to cram themselves with highly concentrated food, without
rolling on the floor in agony. It is the wine which puts it within our
power to consume, in digesting one dinner, the force that would suffice
for the digestion of three.
On that occasion Mr. Dickens was invited to visit us every twenty-five
years "for the rest of his life," to see how we are getting on. The
Coming Man may be a guest at the farewell banquet which the Press will
give to the venerable author in 1893. That banquet will consist of
three courses; and, instead of seven kinds of wine and various brands
of cigars, there will be at every table its due proportion of ladies,
the ornaments of their own sex, the instructors of ours, the boast and
glory of the future Press of America.
Wine, ale, and liquors, administered strictly as medicine,--what of
them? Doctors differ on the subject, and known facts point to different
conclusions. Distinguished physicians in England are of the opinion
that Prince Albert would be alive at this moment if _no_ wine had been
given him during his last sickness; but there were formerly those who
thought that the Princess Charlotte would have been saved, if, at the
crisis of her malady, she could have _had_ the glass of port wine which
she craved and asked for. The biographers of William Pitt--Lord
Macaulay among them--tell us, that at fourteen that precocious youth
was tormented by inherited gout, and that the doctors prescribed a hair
of the same dog which had bitten his ancestor from whom the gout was
derived. The boy, we are told, used to consume two bottles of port a
day; and, after keeping up this regimen for several months, he
recovered his health, and retained it until, at the age of forty-seven,
the news of Ulm and Austerlitz struck him mortal blows. Professor James
Miller, of the University of Edinburgh, a decided teetotaler, declares
_for_ wine in bad cases of fever; but Dr. R. T. Trall, another
teetotaler, says that during the last twenty years he has treated
hundreds of cases of fevers on the cold-water system, and "not yet lost
the first one"; although, during the first ten years of his practice,
when he gave wine and other stimulants, he lost "about the usual
proportion of cases." The truth appears to be that, in a few instances
of intermittent disease, a small quantity of wine may sometimes enable
a patient who is at the low tide of vitality to anticipate the turn of
the tide, and borrow at four o'clock enough of five o'clock strength to
enable him to reach five o'clock. With regard to this daily drinking of
wine and whiskey, by ladies and others, for mere debility, it is a
delusion. In such cases wine is, in the most literal sense of the word,
a mocker. It seems to nourish, but does not; it seems to warm, but does
not; it seems to strengthen, but does not. It is an arrant cheat, and
perpetuates the evils it is supposed to alleviate.
The Coming Man, as before remarked, will not drink wine when he is
well. It will be also an article of his religion not to commit any of
those sins against his body the consequences of which can be postponed
by drinking wine. He will hold his body in veneration. He will feel all
the turpitude and shame of violating it. He will not acquire the
greatest intellectual good by the smallest bodily loss. He will know
that mental acquisitions gained at the expense of physical power or
prowess are not culture, but effeminacy. He will honor a rosy and
stalwart ignoramus, who is also an honest man, faithfully standing at
his post; but he will start back with affright and indignation at the
spectacle of a pallid philosopher. The Coming Man, I am firmly
persuaded, will not drink wine, nor any other stimulating fluid. If by
chance he should be sick, he will place himself in the hands of the
Coming Doctor, and take whatever is prescribed. The impression is
strong upon my mind, after reading almost all there is in print on the
subject, and conversing with many physicians, that the Coming Doctor
will give his patients alcoholic mixtures about as often as he will
give them laudanum, and in doses of about the same magnitude, reckoned
by drops.
We drinkers have been in the habit, for many years, of playing off the
wine countries against the teetotalers; but even this argument fails us
when we question the men who really know the wine countries. Alcohol
appears to be as pernicious to man in Italy, France, and Southern
Germany, where little is taken except in the form of wine, as it is in
Sweden, Scotland, Russia, England, and the United States, where more
fiery and powerful dilutions are usual. Fenimore Cooper wrote: "I came
to Europe under the impression that there was more drunkenness among us
than in any other country,--England, perhaps, excepted. A residence of
six months in Paris changed my views entirely; I have taken unbelievers
with me into the streets, and have never failed to convince them of
their mistake in the course of an hour.... On one occasion a party of
four went out with this object; we passed thirteen drunken men within a
walk of an hour,--many of them were so far gone as to be totally unable
to walk.... In passing between Paris and London, I have been more
struck by drunkenness in the streets of the former than in those of the
latter." Horatio Greenough gives similar testimony respecting Italy:
"Many of the more thinking and prudent Italians abstain from the use of
wine; several of the most eminent of the medical men are notoriously
opposed to its use, and declare it a poison. One fifth, and sometimes
one fourth, of the earnings of the laborers are expended in wine."
I have been surprised at the quantity, the emphasis, and the uniformity
of the testimony on this point. Close observers of the famous beer
countries, such as Saxony and Bavaria, where the beer is pure and
excellent, speak of this delicious liquid as the chief enemy of the
nobler faculties and tastes of human nature. The surplus wealth, the
surplus time, the surplus force of those nations, are chiefly expended
in fuddling the brain with beer. Now, no reader needs to be informed
that the progress of man, of nations, and of men depends upon the use
they make of their little surplus. It is not a small matter, but a
great and weighty consideration,--the cost of these drinks in mere
money. We drinkers must make out a very clear case in order to justify
such a country as France in producing a _billion and a half of
dollars'_ worth of wine and brandy per annum.
The teetotalers, then, are right in their leading positions, and yet
they stand aghast, wondering at their failure to convince mankind. Mr.
E. G. Delavan writes from Paris within these few weeks: "When I was
here thirty years since, Louis Philippe told me that wine was the curse
of France; that he wished every grapevine was destroyed, except for the
production of food; that total abstinence was the only true temperance;
but he did not believe there were fifteen persons in Paris who
understood it as it was understood by his family and myself; but he
hoped from the labors in America, in time, an influence would flow back
upon France that would be beneficial. I am here again after the lapse
of so many years, and in place of witnessing any abatement of the evil,
I think it is on the increase, especially in the use of distilled
spirits."
The teetotalers have underrated the difficulty of the task they have
undertaken, and misconceived its nature. It is not the great toe that
most requires treatment when a man has the gout, although it is the
great toe that makes him roar. When we look about us, and consider the
present physical life of man, we are obliged to conclude that the whole
head is sick and the whole heart is faint. Drinking is but a symptom
which reveals the malady. Perhaps, if we were all to stop our guzzling
suddenly, _without_ discontinuing our other bad habits, we should
rather lose by it than gain. Alcohol supports us in doing wrong! It
prevents our immediate destruction. The thing for us to do is, to
strike at the causes of drinking, to cease the bad breathing, the bad
eating, the bad reading, the bad feeling and bad thinking, which, in a
sense, necessitate bad drinking. For some of the teetotal organizations
might be substituted Physical Welfare Societies.
The Human Race is now on trial for its life! One hundred and three
years ago last April, James Watt, a poor Scotch mechanic, while taking
his walk on Sunday afternoon on Glasgow Green, conceived the idea which
has made steam man's submissive and untiring slave. Steam enables the
fifteen millions of adults in Great Britain and Ireland to produce more
commodities than the whole population of the earth could produce
without its assistance. Steam, plus the virgin soil of two new
continents, has placed the means of self-destruction within the reach
of hundreds of millions of human beings whose ancestors were almost as
safe in their ignorance and poverty as the beasts they attended. At the
same time, the steam-engine is an infuriate propagator; and myriad
creatures of its producing--creatures of eager desires, thin brains,
excessive vanity, and small self-control--seem formed to bend the neck
to the destructive tyranny of fashion, and yield helplessly to the more
destructive tyranny of habit. The steam-engine gives them a great
variety of the means of self-extirpation,--air-tight houses,
labor-saving machines, luxurious food, stimulating drinks, highly
wrought novels, and many others. Let _all_ women for the next century
but wear such restraining clothes as are now usual, and it is doubtful
if the race could ever recover from the effects; it is doubtful if
there could ever again be a full-orbed, bouncing baby. Wherever we
look, we see the human race dwindling. The English aristocracy used to
be thought an exception, but Miss Nightingale says not. She tells us
that the great houses of England, like the small houses of America,
contain great-grandmothers possessing constitutions without a flaw,
grandmothers but slightly impaired, mothers who are often ailing and
never strong, daughters who are miserable and hopeless invalids. And
the steam-engine has placed efficient means of self-destruction within
reach of the kitchen, the stable, the farm, and the shop; and those
means of self-destruction are all but universally used.
Perhaps man has nearly run his course in this world, and is about to
disappear, like the mammoth, and give place to some nobler kind of
creature who will manage the estate better than the present occupant.
Certainly we cannot boast of having done very well with it, nor could
we complain if we should receive notice to leave. Perhaps James Watt
came into the world to extinguish his species. If so, it is well. Let
us go on eating, drinking, smoking, over-working, idling, men killing
themselves to buy clothes for their wives, wives killing themselves by
wearing them, children petted and candied into imbecility and
diphtheria. In that case, of course, there will be no Coming Man, and
we need not take the trouble to inquire what he will do.
But probably the instinct of self-preservation will assert itself in
time, and an antidote to the steam-engine will be found before it has
impaired the whole race beyond recovery. To have discovered the truth
with regard to the effects of alcohol upon the system was of itself no
slight triumph of the self-preserving principle. It is probable that
the truly helpful men of the next hundred years will occupy themselves
very much with the physical welfare of the race, without which no other
welfare is possible.
INEBRIATE ASYLUMS, AND A VISIT TO ONE.
There are two kinds of drunkards,--the Regular and the Occasional. Of
each of these two classes there are several varieties, and, indeed,
there are no two cases precisely alike; but every drunkard in the world
is either a person who has lost the power to refrain from drinking a
certain large quantity of alcoholic liquor every day, or he is one who
has lost the power to refrain from drinking an uncertain enormous
quantity now and then.
Few get drunk habitually who can refrain. If they could refrain, they
would; for to no creatures is drunkenness so loathsome and temperance
so engaging as to seven tenths of the drunkards. There are a few very
coarse men, of heavy, stolid, animal organization, who almost seem
formed by nature to absorb alcohol, and in whom there is not enough of
manhood to be ashamed of its degradation. These Dr. Albert Day, the
superintendent of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, sometimes calls
Natural Drunkards. They like strong drink for its own sake; they have a
kind of sulky enjoyment of its muddling effect upon such brains as they
happen to have; and when once the habit is fixed, nothing can deliver
them except stone walls and iron bars. There are also a few drunkards
of very light calibre, trifling persons, incapable of serious
reflection or of a serious purpose, their very terrors being trivial
and transitory, who do not care for the ruin in which they are
involved. Generally speaking, however, drunkards hate the servitude
into which they have had the misfortune to fall; they long to escape
from it, have often tried to escape, and if they have given up, it is
only after having so many times slidden back into the abyss, that they
feel it would be of no use to climb again. As Mrs. H. B. Stowe remarks,
with that excellent charity of hers, which is but another name for
refined justice, "Many a drunkard has expended more virtue in vain
endeavors to break his chain than suffices to carry an ordinary
Christian to heaven."