deliverance. It is a confession! It is a confession to the patient's
family and friends, to the inmates of the Asylum, and, above all, to
himself, that he has lost his self-control, and cannot get it back
without assistance. He comes here for that assistance. Every one knows
he comes for that. They are all in the same boat. The pot cannot call
the kettle black. False pride, and all the thin disguises of self-love,
are laid aside. The mere fact of a man's being an inmate of an
inebriate asylum is a declaration to all about him that he has been a
drunkard, and even a very bad drunkard; for the people here know, from
their own bitter experience, that a person cannot bring himself to make
such a confession until, by many a lapse, he has been brought to
despair of self-recovery. Many of these men were thinking of the asylum
for years before they could summon courage to own that they had lost
the power to resist a physical craving. But when once they have made
the agonizing avowal by entering the asylum, it costs them no great
effort to reveal the details of their case to hearers who cannot
reproach them; and, besides relating their own experience without
reserve, they are relieved, encouraged, and instructed by hearing the
similar experience of others. All have the same object, the same peril,
the same dread, the same hope, and each aids the rest as students aid
one another in the same college.
In a community like this, Public Opinion is the controlling force. That
subtle, resistless power is always aiding or frustrating the object for
which the community exists. Public Opinion sides with a competent
superintendent, and serves him as an assiduous, omnipresent police.
Under the coercive system once attempted here, the public opinion of
the Asylum applauded a man who smuggled a bottle of whiskey into the
building, and invited his friends into his room to drink it. An inmate
who should now attempt such a crime would be shunned by the best two
thirds of the whole institution. One of their number, suddenly overcome
by temptation, who should return to the Asylum drunk, they would all
receive as cordially as before; but they would regard with horror or
contempt a man who should bring temptation into the building, and place
it within reach of those who had fled hither to avoid it.
The French have a verb,--_se dépayser_,--to uncountry one's self, to
get out of the groove, to drop undesirable companions and forsake
haunts that are too alluring, by going away for a while, and, in
returning, not resuming the old friends and habits. How necessary this
is to some of the slaves of alcohol every one knows. To many of them
restoration is impossible without it, and not difficult with it. To all
such, what a refuge is a well-conducted asylum like this! Merely being
here, out of the coil of old habits, haunts, pleasures, comrades,
temptations, which had proved too much for them a thousand
times,--merely being away for a time, so that they can calmly survey
the scenes they have left and the life they have led,--is itself half
the victory.
Every Wednesday evening, after prayers, a kind of temperance meeting is
held in the chapel. It is the intention of the superintendent, that
every inmate of the Asylum shall become acquainted with the nature of
alcohol, and with the precise effects of alcoholic drinks upon the
human system. He means that they shall comprehend the absurdity of
drinking as clearly as they know its ruinous consequences. He
accordingly opens this meeting with a short lecture upon some one
branch of the subject, and then invites the patients to illustrate the
point from their own experience. At the meeting which I happened to
attend the subject of Dr. Day's remarks was suggested (as it often is)
by an occurrence which had just taken place at the institution, and had
been the leading topic of conversation all that day. At the last
meeting, a young man from a distant State, who had been in the Asylum
for some months and was about to return home, delivered an eloquent
farewell address to his companions, urging them to adhere to their
resolution, and protesting his unalterable resolve never, never, never
again to yield to their alluring and treacherous foe. He spoke with
unusual animation and in a very loud voice. He took his departure in
the morning, by the Erie Road, and twelve hours after he was brought
back to the Asylum drunk. Upon his recovery he related to the
superintendent and to his friends the story of his lamentable fall.
When the train had gone three hours on its way, there was a detention
of three hours at a station that offered little entertainment to
impatient travellers. The returning prodigal paced the platform; found
it dull work; heard at a distance the sound of billiard-balls; went and
played two games, losing both; returned to the platform and resumed his
walk; and there fell into the train of thought that led to the
catastrophe. His reflections were like these: "How perfect is my cure!
I have not once _thought_ of taking a drink. Not even when I saw men
drinking at the bar did it cross my mind to follow their example. I
have not the least desire for whiskey, and I have no doubt I could take
that 'one glass' which Dr. Day keeps talking about, without a wish for
a second. In fact, no man is perfectly cured till he can do that I have
a great mind to put it to the test. It almost seems as if this
opportunity of trying myself had been created on purpose. Here goes,
then, for the last glass of whiskey I shall take as long as I live, and
I take it purely as a scientific experiment." One hour after, his
friend, who was accompanying him home, found him lying in a corner of a
bar-room, dead drunk. He had him picked up, and placed in the next
train bound for Binghamton.
This was the text of Dr. Day's discourse, and he employed it in
enforcing anew his three cardinal points: 1. No hope for an inebriate
until he thoroughly distrusts the strength of his own resolution; 2. No
hope for an inebriate except in total abstinence as long as he lives,
both in sickness and in health; 3. Little hope for an inebriate unless
he avoids, on system and on principle, the occasions of temptation, the
places where liquor is sold, and the persons who will urge it upon him.
Physicians, he said, were the inebriate's worst enemies; and he advised
his hearers to avoid the tinctures prepared with alcohol, which had
often awakened the long-dormant appetite. During my stay at Binghamton,
a clergyman resident in the town, and recently an inmate of the Asylum,
had a slight indisposition resulting from riding home from a meeting
ten miles in the rain. One of the physicians of the place, who knew his
history, knew that he had been an inebriate of the most pronounced type
(quart of liquor a day), prescribed a powerful dose of brandy and
laudanum. "I dare not take it, doctor," he said, and put the damnable
temptation behind him. "If I _had_ taken it," said he to me, "I should
have been drunk to-day." The case, too, required nothing but rest,
rice, and an easy book. No medicine was necessary. Dr. Day has had
under his care a man who, after being a confirmed drunkard, had been a
teetotaler for eighteen years, and had then been advised to take wine
for the purpose of hastening a slow convalescence. His appetite resumed
its old ascendency, and, after drinking furiously for a year, he was
brought to the Asylum in delirium tremens. Dr. Day expressed a strong
hope and belief that the returned inmate mentioned above had _now_
actually taken his last glass of whiskey; for he had discovered his
weakness, and was in a much more hopeful condition than he had been
before his lapse. The Doctor scouted the idea that a man who has the
misfortune to break his resolution should give up the struggle. Some
men, he said, _must_ fall, at least once, before the last rag of
self-confidence is torn from them; and he had had patients who, after
coming back to him in Boston four times, had conquered, and had lived
soberly for years, and were still living soberly.
When the superintendent had finished his remarks, he called upon his
hearers to speak. Several of them did so. One young gentleman, an
officer of the army during the war, made his farewell speech. He
thanked his companions for the forbearance they had shown him during
the first weeks of his residence among them, when he was peevish,
discontented, rebellious, and had no hope of ever being able to conquer
his propensity, so often had he tried and failed. He would have left
the Asylum in those days, if he had had the money to pay his fare on
the cars. He felt the importance of what Dr. Day had advanced
respecting the occasions of temptation, and especially what he had said
about physicians' prescriptions, which he knew had led men to drink.
"If," he added, "I cannot live without alcohol, I would rather die. For
my part, I expect to have a struggle all my life; I don't think the
time will ever come when it will be safe for me to dally with
temptation, and I feel the necessity of following Dr. Day's advice on
this point." He spoke in a simple, earnest, and manly manner. He was
followed by another inmate, a robust, capable-looking man of
thirty-five, who also spoke with directness and simplicity. He hoped
that fear would help him to abstain. If he could only keep sober, he
had the best possible prospects; but if he again gave way he saw
nothing before him but infamy and destruction. He spoke modestly and
anxiously, evidently feeling that it was more than a matter of life and
death to him. When he had concluded, a young gentleman rose, and
delivered a fluent, flower address upon temperance; just such a
discourse as might precede a lapse into drinking.
On Monday evening of every week, the Literary Society of the
institution holds its meeting, when essays are read and lectures
delivered. The course of lectures delivered last winter are highly
spoken of by those who heard them, and they were all written by inmates
of the Asylum. Among the subjects treated were: Columbus, a Study of
Character: Goldsmith; The Telegraph, by an Operator; Resources of
Missouri; Early English Novelists; The Age, and the Men for the Age;
Geology; The Passions, with Poetical Illustrations; The Inebriate
Asylum, under the Régime of Coercion. It occasionally happens, that
distinguished visitors contribute something to the pleasure of the
evening. Mrs. Stowe, the newspapers inform us, was kind enough some
time since to give them a reading from Uncle Tom's Cabin; and the copy
of the book from which she read was a cheap double-columned pamphlet
brought from the South by a freedman, now the porter of the Asylum. He
bought it and read it while he was still a slave, little thinking when
he scrawled his name across the dingy title-page that he should ever
have the honor of lending it to the authoress.
Nearly twelve years have now elapsed since Dr. Day began to accumulate
experience in the treatment of inebriates, during which time he has had
nearly four thousand patients under his care. What proportion of these
were permanently cured it is impossible to say, because nothing is
heard of many patients after they leave; but it is reasonably
conjectured that two thirds of the whole number were restored. It is a
custom with many of them to write an annual letter to Dr. Day on the
anniversary of their entering the Home under his management, and the
reading of such letters is a highly interesting and beneficial feature
of the Wednesday evening temperance meetings. The alcoholic mania is no
respecter of persons. Dr. Day has had under treatment twenty-one
clergymen, one of whom was a Catholic priest (who had delirium
tremens), and one a Jewish Rabbi. He has had one old man past seventy,
and one boy of sixteen. He has had a Philadelphia "killer" and a judge
of a supreme court. He has had steady two-quarts-a-day men, and men who
were subject only to semiannual debauches. He has had men whose "tears"
lasted but forty-eight hours, and one man who came in of his own accord
after what he styled "a general spree" of three months' continuance. He
has had drunkards of two years' standing, and those who have been
slaves of strong drink for thirty years.
Some of his successes have been striking and memorable. There was Dr.
X---- of Tennessee, at thirty-five a physician of large practice,
professor in a medical college, happy in an excellent wife and seven
children. Falling into drink, he lost at length his practice, his
professorship, his property, his home; his family abandoned him to his
fate, and went to his wife's father's in another State; and he became
at last a helpless gutter sot. His brother, who heard by chance of the
Home in Boston, picked him up one day from the street, where he lay
insensible, and got him upon the train for the East. Before he roused
from his drunken stupor, he was half-way across Virginia. "Where am I?"
he asked. "In Virginia, on your way to Boston." "All right," said he,
in a drunkard's drunkenest manner,--"all right! give me some whiskey."
He was carried into the Home in the arms of men, and lay for some weeks
miserably sick. His health improved, and the _man_ revived. He clutched
at this unexpected chance of escape, and co-operated with all his heart
with the system. Dr. Day wrote a hopeful letter to his wife. "Speak not
to me of a husband," she replied; "I have no husband; I buried my
husband long ago." After four months' stay in the institution, the
patient returned home, and resumed his practice. A year after, his
family rejoined him. He recovered all his former standing, which to
this day, after nine years of sobriety, he retains. His ninth annual
letter to his deliverer I have read. "By the way," he says in a
postscript, "did you receive my letters each year of the war?" Yes,
they reached Dr. Day months after they were written; but they always
reached him. The secret of this cure, as the patient has often
asserted, was total abstinence. He had attempted to reduce his daily
quantity a hundred times; but never, until he entered the Home, was he
aware of the physical _impossibility_ of a drunkard's becoming a
moderate drinker. From the moment when he had a clear, intellectual
comprehension of that truth, the spell was broken: abstinence was easy;
he was himself again.
Then there was Y----, a Philadelphia street savage,--one of those
firemen who used to sleep in the engine-house, and lie in wait for
rival companies, and make night and day hideous with slaughter. Fearful
beings were those Philadelphia firemen of twenty years ago! Some of
them made a nearer approach to total depravity than any creatures I
have ever seen that wore the form of man,--revelling in blood, exulting
in murder, and glorying in hellish blows with iron implements, given
and received. It was difficult to say whether it gave them keener
delight to wound or to be wounded. In all communities where external
observances and decorums become tyrannical, and where the innocent
pleasures of youth are placed under a ban, there is sure to be a class
which revolts against the invisible despot, and goes to a horrid
extreme of violence and vice. This Y---- was one of the revolters. Once
in many weeks he would return to his decent home, ragged and penniless,
to be reclothed. It is only alcohol that supports men in a life of
_wanton_ violence like this; and he, accordingly, was a deep and
reckless drinker. His sister prevailed upon him, after many months of
persuasion, to go to the Home in Boston, and he presented himself there
one morning, black all over with coal-dust. He explained his appearance
by saying that he had come from Philadelphia in a coal-vessel. Dr. Day,
who had been notified of his coming, received him with that emphatic
politeness which produces such magical effects upon men who have long
been accustomed to see an enemy in every one who behaves decently and
uses the English language in its simplicity. He was exceedingly
astonished to be treated with consideration, and to discover that he
was not to be subjected to any disagreeable process. He proved to be a
good, simple soul, very ignorant, not naturally intelligent, and more
capable, therefore, of faith than of knowledge. The Doctor won his
confidence; then his good-will; then his affection. Something that was
read in the Bible attracted his attention one day, and he asked to be
shown the passage; and this was the beginning of his reading the Bible
regularly. It was all new to him; he found it highly interesting; and,
this daily reading being associated in his mind with his reform, the
book became a kind of talisman to him, and he felt safe as long as he
continued the practice. After a six months' residence, he went to work
in Boston, but always returned to spend the evening at the Home. At the
beginning of the war he enlisted. He was in Colonel Baker's regiment on
the bloody day of Ball's Bluff, and was one of the gallant handful of
men who rescued from the enemy the body of their slain commander. He
was one of the multitude who swam the Potomac amid a pattering rain of
bullets, and walked barefoot seven miles to camp, The first man that
met him there offered him whiskey, Mistaken kindness! Senseless offer!
A man who is sinking with fatigue wants rest, not stimulation; sleep,
not excitement. "Don't offer me _that_," he gasped, shuddering. "I
dread that more than bullets." Instead of the whiskey, he took twelve
hours' sleep, and consequently awoke refreshed, and ready for another
day's hard service. At Antietam he had the glory and high privilege of
giving life for mankind. A bullet through the brain sent him to heaven,
and stretched his body on the field in painless and eternal sleep. It
lies now in a cemetery near his native city; a monument covers it; and
all who were connected with him are proud to point to his grave and
claim him for their own. What a contrast between dying so, and being
killed in a motiveless street-fight by a savage blow on the head with a
speaking-trumpet!
Perhaps, long as this article already is, I may venture to give, with
the utmost possible brevity, one more of the many remarkable cases with
which I became acquainted at the Asylum.
One Sunday morning, a loud ringing of the front-door bell of the Home
in Boston induced Dr. Day himself to answer the summons. He found a man
at the door who was in the most complete state of dilapidation that can
be imagined,--ragged, dirty, his hat awry, torn and bent, spectacles
with one eye gone and the other cocked out of place, the perfect
picture of a drunken sot who had slept among the barrels and
cotton-bales for six months. He was such a person as we thoughtless
fools roar at in the theatre sometimes, about 10.30 P.M., and who makes
the lives of sundry children and one woman a long and hopeless tragedy
up in some dismal garret, or down in some pestilential cellar.
"What can I do for you?" inquired the superintendent.
"My name is A. B----; will you take me in?"
"Have you a letter of introduction from any one?"
"No."
"We must have something of the kind; do you know any one in Boston?"
"Yes; there is Dr. Kirk; _I've preached in his church_; he ought to
know me; I'll see if he does."
In a few minutes he returned, bearing a note from that distinguished
clergyman, saying that he thought he knew the man; and upon this he was
admitted.
He was as complete, though not as hopeless a wreck as he appeared. He
had been a clergyman in good standing and of ability respectable; but
had insensibly fallen under the dominion of a mania for drink. For ten
years he had been a downright sot. He had not seen his family in that
time. A benevolent man who chanced to meet him in New York described to
him the Washingtonian Home, made him promise to go to it, and gave him
money for the purpose. He immediately spent the money for drink; but
yet, in some forgotten way, he smuggled himself to Boston, and made his
appearance at the Home on that Sunday morning. Such cases as this,
hopeless as they seem, are among the easiest to cure, because there are
knowledge, conscience, and pride latent in the man, which begin to
assert themselves as soon as the system is free from the presence of
alcohol. This man was easily made to see the truth respecting his case.
He soon came to understand alcohol; and this alone is a surprising
assistance to a man at the instant of temptation. He remained at the
Home six months, always improving in health, and regaining his former
character. He left Boston twenty-two months ago, and has since lived
with perfect sobriety, and has been restored to his family and to his
profession.
Inebriate asylums, rationally conducted, cannot fail to be worth their
cost. They are probably destined to become as generally recognized a
necessity of our diseased modern life as asylums for lunatics and
hospitals for the sick. It is not necessary to begin with a
million-dollar palace, though it is desirable that the building should
be attractive, airy, and large enough to accommodate a considerable
number of patients. When the building has been paid for, the
institution may be self-sustaining, or even yield a profit. It is
possible that the cure of inebriates may become a specialty of medical
practice, to which men, gifted with the requisite talent, will devote
their lives. The science of the thing is still most incomplete, and
only one individual has had much success in the practice. Albert Day is
a good superintendent chiefly because he is a good Yankee, not because
he is a great scientific healer. It seems instinctive in good Yankees
to respect the rights and feelings of others; and they are accustomed
to persuade and convince, not drive, not compel. Albert Day has treated
these unfortunate and amiable men as he would have treated younger
brothers taken captive by a power stronger than themselves. His polite
and respectful manner to his patients on all occasions must be balm to
men accustomed to the averted look and taunting epithet, and
accustomed, too, to something far harder to bear,--distrust and
abhorrence of themselves. Others, of course, will originate improved
methods, and we shall have, at length, a Fine Art of assisting men to
overcome bad habits; but _this_ characteristic of Dr. Day will never be
wanting to an asylum that answers the end of its establishment.
The disease which such institutions are designed to cure must be very
common; for where is the family that has not a drunkard in its circle
of connections? It is true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure; but not on that account must the pound of cure be withheld.
The railroad which connects New York and Binghamton is the Erie, which
is another way of saying that I was detained some hours on the journey
home; and this afforded me the novel experience of working my way up
town in a New York street-car an hour or two before daylight. The car
started from the City Hall at half past two A.M., and received, during
the first three miles of its course, twenty-seven persons. It so
happened that nearly every individual of them, including the person
coming home from the Asylum, was out of bed at that hour through
alcohol. There were three drunken vagabonds asleep, who were probably
taking a cheap lodging in the car by riding to Harlem and back,--two
hours and forty minutes' ride for fourteen cents. In one corner was
coiled away a pale, dirty, German Jew of the Fagin type, very drunk,
singing snatches of drinking choruses in broken English. Next to him
was his pal, a thick-set _old_ Charley Bates, also drunk, and
occasionally joining in the festive songs. A mile of the ride was
enlivened by an argument between C. Bates and the conductor, on the
subject of a cigar, which Mr. Bates insisted on smoking, in violation
of the rule. The controversy was carried on in "the English language."
Then there were five German musicians, perfectly sober and very sleepy,
with their instruments in their hand, returning, I suppose, from some
late saloon or dance-house. One woman was in the car, a girl of twenty,
who appeared to be a performer in a saloon, and was now, after having
shed her spangles and her ribbons, going home in dirty calico drawn
tight over a large and obvious hoop, under the protecting care of a
nice young man. There were several young and youngish men,
well-dressed, in various stages of intoxication, who had probably been
at the lawless "late houses," singing and drinking all night, and were
now going home to scare and horrify mothers, sisters, or wives, who may
have been waiting five hours to hear the scratch of their latch-key
against the front door.