MRS. CARLTON was a favorite in the circle where she moved; and when
it became known that she would have to submit to a serious operation
in order to save her life, she became an object of painful interest
to her many friends. Among the most intimate of these was Mrs.
Birtwell, who, as the time approached for the great trial, saw her
almost every day.
It was generally understood that Doctor Hillhouse, who was the
family physician, would perform the operation. For a long series of
years he had held the first rank as a surgeon. But younger men were
coming forward in the city, and other reputations were being made
that promised to be even more notable than his.
Among those who were steadily achieving success in the walks of
surgery was Doctor Kline, now over thirty-five years of age. He
held a chair in one of the medical schools, and his name was growing
more and more familiar to the public and the profession every year.
The friends of Mrs. Carlton were divided on the question as to who
could best perform the operation, some favoring Doctor Kline and
some Doctor Hillhouse.
The only objection urged by any one against the latter was on
account of his age.
Mr. and Mrs. Carlton had no doubt or hesitation on the subject.
Their confidence in the skill of Doctor Hillhouse was complete. As
for Doctor Kline, Mr. Carlton, who met him now and then at public
dinners or at private social entertainments, had not failed to
observe that he was rather free in his use of liquor, drinking so
frequently on these occasions as to produce a noticeable
exhilaration. He had even remarked upon the fact to gentlemen of his
acquaintance, and found that others had noticed this weakness of
Doctor Kline as well as himself.
As time wore on Doctor Hillhouse grew more and more undecided. No
matter how grave or difficult an operation might be, he had always,
when satisfied of its necessity, gone forward, looking neither to
the right nor to the left. But so troubled and uncertain did he
become as the necessity for fixing an early day for the removal of
this tumor became more and more apparent that he at last referred
the whole matter to Mr. Carlton, and proposed that Doctor Kline,
whose high reputation for surgical skill he knew, should be
entrusted with the operation. To this he received an emphatic "No!"
"All the profession award him the highest skill in our city, if not
the whole country," said Doctor Hillhouse.
"I have no doubt of his skill," replied Mr. Carlton. "But--"
"What?" asked the doctor, as Mr. Carlton hesitated. "Are you not
aware that he uses wine too freely?"
Doctor Hillhouse was taken by surprise at this intimation.
"No, I am not aware of anything of the kind," he replied, almost
indignantly. "He is not a teetotaller, of course, any more than you
or I. Socially and at dinner he takes his glass of wine, as we do.
But to say that he uses liquor too freely is, I am sure, a
mistake."
"Some men, as you know, doctor, cannot use wine without a steady
increase of the appetite until it finally gets the mastery, and I am
afraid Doctor Kline is one of them."
"I am greatly astonished to hear you say this," replied Dr.
Hillhouse, "and I cannot but hold you mistaken."
"Have you ever met him at a public dinner, at the club or at a
private entertainment where there was plenty of wine?"
"Oh yes."
"And observed no unusual exhilaration?"
Dr. Hillhouse became reflective. Now that his attention was called
to the matter, some doubts began to intrude themselves.
"We cannot always judge the common life by what we see on convivial
occasions," he made answer. "One may take wine freely with his
friends and be as abstemious as an anchorite during business-or
profession-hours."
"Not at all probable," replied Mr. Carlton, "and not good in my
observation. The appetite that leads a man into drinking more when
among friends than his brain will carry steadily is not likely to
sleep when he is alone. Any over-stimulation, as you know, doctor,
leaves in the depressed state that follows a craving for renewed
exhilaration. I am very sure that on the morning after one of the
occasions to which I have referred Doctor Kline finds himself in no
condition for the work of a delicate surgical operation until he has
steadied his relaxed nerves with more than a single glass."
He paused for a moment, and then said, with strong emphasis:
"The hand, Doctor Hillhouse, that cuts down into her dear flesh must
be steadied by healthy nerves, and not by wine or brandy. No, sir; I
will not hear to it. I will not have Doctor Kline. In your hands,
and yours alone, I trust my wife in this great extremity."
"That is for you to decide," returned Dr. Hillhouse. "I felt it to
be only right to give you an opportunity to avail of Doctor Kline's
acknowledged skill. I am sure you can do so safely."
But Mr. Carlton was very emphatic in his rejection of Dr. Kline.
"I may be a little peculiar," he said, "but do you know I never
trust any important interest with a man who drinks habitually?--one
of your temperate drinkers, I mean, who can take his three or four
glasses of wine at dinner, or twice that number, during an evening
while playing at whist, but who never debases himself by so low a
thing as intoxication."
"Are not you a little peculiar, or, I might say, over-nice, in
this?" remarked Doctor Hillhouse.
"No, I am only prudent. Let me give you a fact in my own experience.
I had a law-suit several years ago involving many thousands of
dollars. My case was good, but some nice points of law were
involved, and I needed for success the best talent the bar afforded.
A Mr. B----, I will call him, stood very high in the profession, and
I chose him for my counsel. He was a man of fine social qualities,
and admirable for his after-dinner speeches. You always met him on
public occasions. He was one of your good temperate drinkers and not
afraid of a glass of wine, or even brandy, and rarely, if ever,
refused a friend who asked him to drink.
"He was not an intemperate man, of course. No one dreamed of setting
him over among that banned and rejected class of men whom few trust,
and against whom all are on guard. He held his place of honor and
confidence side by side with the most trusted men in his profession.
As a lawyer, interests of vast magnitude were often in his hands,
and largely depended on his legal sagacity, clearness of thought and
sleepless vigilance. He was usually successful in his cases.
"I felt my cause safe in his hands--that is, as safe as human care
and foresight could make it. But to my surprise and disappointment,
his management of the case on the day of trial was faulty and blind.
I had gone over all the points with him carefully, and he had seemed
to hold them with a masterly hand. He was entirely confident of
success, and so was I. But now he seemed to lose his grasp on the
best points in the case, and to bring forward his evidence in a way
that, in my view, damaged instead of making our side strong. Still,
I forced myself to think that he knew best what to do, and that the
meaning of his peculiar tactics should soon become apparent. I
noticed, as the trial went on, a bearing of the opposing counsel
toward Mr. B----that appeared unusual. He seemed bent on annoying
him with little side issues and captious objections, not so much
showing a disposition to meet him squarely, upon the simple and
clearly defined elements of the case, as to draw him away from them
and keep them as far out of sight as possible.
"In this he was successful. Mr. B----seemed in his hands more like a
bewildered child than a strong, clear-seeing man. When, after all
the evidence was in, the arguments on both sides were submitted to
the jury, I saw with alarm that Mr. B----had failed signally. His
summing up was weak and disjointed, and he did not urge with force
and clearness the vital points in the case on which all our hopes
depended. The contrast of his closing argument with that of the
other side was very great, and I knew when the jury retired from the
court-room that all was lost, and so it proved.
"It was clear to me that I had mistaken my man--that Mr. B----'s
reputation was higher than his ability. He was greatly chagrined at
the result, and urged me to take an appeal, saying he was confident
we could get a reversal of the decision.
"While yet undecided as to whether I would appeal or not, a friend
who had been almost as much surprised and disappointed at the result
of the trial as I was came to me in considerable excitement of
manner, and said:
"'I heard something this morning that will surprise you, I think, as
much as it has surprised me. Has it never occurred to you that there
was something strange about Mr. B----on the day your case was
tried?'
"'Yes,' I replied, 'it has often occurred to me; and the more I
think about it, the more dissatisfied am with his management of my
case. He is urging me to appeal; but should I do so, I have pretty
well made up my mind to have other counsel.'
"'That I should advise by all means,' returned my friend.
"'The thought has come once or twice,' said I, 'that there might
have been false play in the case.'
"'There has been,' returned my friend.
"What!' I exclaimed. 'False play? No, no, I will not believe so base
a thing of Mr. B----.'
"'I do not mean false play on his part,' replied my friend. 'Far be
it from me to suggest a thought against his integrity of character.
No, no! I believe him to be a man of honor. The false play, if there
has been any, has been against him.'
"'Against him?' I could but respond, with increasing surprise. Then
a suspicion of the truth flashed into my mind.
"'He had been drinking too much that morning,' said my friend. 'That
was the meaning of his strange and defective management of the case,
and of his confusion of ideas when he made his closing argument to
the jury.'
"It was clear to me now, and I wondered that I had not thought of it
before. 'But,' I asked, 'what has this to do with foul play? You
don't mean to intimate that his liquor was drugged?'
"'No. The liquor was all right, so far as that goes,' he replied.
'The story I heard was this. It came to me in rather a curious way.
I was in the reading-room at the League this morning looking over a
city paper, when I happened to hear your name spoken by one of two
gentlemen who sat a little behind me talking in a confidential way,
but in a louder key than they imagined. I could not help hearing
what they said. After the mention of your name I listened with close
attention, and found that they were talking about the law-suit, and
about Mr. B----in connection therewith. "It was a sharp game," one
of them said. "How was it done?" inquired the other.
"'I partially held my breath,' continued my friend, 'so as not to
lose a word. "Neatly enough," was the reply. "You see our friend the
lawyer can't refuse a drink. He's got a strong head, and can take
twice as much as the next man without showing it. A single glass
makes no impression on him, unless it be to sharpen him up. So a
plan was laid to get half a dozen glasses aboard, more or less,
before court opened on the morning the case of Walker vs. Carlton
was to be called. But not willing to trust to this, we had a
wine-supper for his special benefit on the night before, so as to
break his nerves a little and make him thirsty next morning. Well,
you see, the thing worked, and B----drank his bottle or two, and
went to bed pretty mellow. Of course he must tone up in the morning
before leaving home, and so come out all right. He would tone up a
little more on his way to his office, and then be all ready for
business and bright as a new dollar. This would spoil all. So five
of us arranged to meet him at as many different points on his way
down town and ask him to drink. The thing worked like a charm. We
got six glasses into him before he reached his office. I saw as soon
as he came into court that it was a gone case for Carlton. B----had
lost his head. And so it proved. We had an easy victory."'
"I took the case out of B----'s hands," said Mr. Carlton, "and
gained it in a higher court, the costs of both trials falling upon
the other side. Since that time, Dr. Hillhouse, I have had some new
views on the subject of moderate drinking, as it is called."
"What are they?" asked the doctor.
"An experience like this set me to thinking. If, I said to myself, a
man uses wine, beer or spirits habitually, is there no danger that
at some time when great interests, or even life itself, may be at
stake, a glass too much may obscure his clear intellect and make him
the instrument of loss or disaster? I pursued the subject, and as I
did so was led to this conclusion--that society really suffers more,
from what is called moderate drinking than it does from out-and-out
drunkenness."
"Few will agree with you in that conclusion," returned Doctor
Hillhouse.
"On the contrary," replied Mr. Carlton, "I think that most people,
after looking at the subject from the right standpoint, will see it
as I do."
"Men who take a glass of wine at dinner and drink with a friend
occasionally," remarked Doctor Hillhouse, "are not given to idleness,
waste of property and abuse and neglect of their families, as we
find to be the case with common drunkards. They don't fill our
prisons and almshouses. Their wives and children do not go to swell
the great army of beggars, paupers and criminals. I fear, my friend,
that you are looking through the wrong end of your glass."
"No; my glass is all right. The number of drunken men and women in
the land is small compared to the number who drink moderately, and
very few of them are to be found in places of trust or
responsibility. As soon as a man is known to be a drunkard society
puts a mark on him and sets him aside. If he is a physician, health
and life are no longer entrusted to his care; if a lawyer, no man
will give an important case into his hands. A ship-owner will not
trust him with his vessel, though a more skilled navigator cannot be
found; and he may be the best engineer in the land, yet will no
railroad or steamship company trust him with life and property. So
everywhere the drunkard is ignored. Society will not trust him, and
he is limited in his power to do harm.
"Not so with your moderate drinkers. They fill our highest places
and we commit to their care our best and dearest interests. We put
the drunkard aside because we know he cannot be trusted, and give to
moderate drinkers, a sad percentage of whom are on the way to
drunkenness, our unwavering confidence. They sail our ships, they
drive our engines, they make and execute our laws, they take our
lives in their hands as doctors and surgeons; we trust them to
defend or maintain our legal rights, we confide to them our
interests in hundreds of different ways that we would never dream of
confiding to men who were regarded as intemperate. Is it not fair to
conclude, knowing as we do how a glass of wine too much will confuse
the brain and obscure the judgment, that society in trusting its
great army of moderate drinkers is suffering loss far beyond
anything we imagine? A doctor loses his patient, a lawyer his case,
an engineer wrecks his ship or train, an agent hurts his principal
by a loose or bad bargain, and all because the head had lost for a
brief space its normal clearness.
"Men hurt themselves through moderate drinking in thousands of
ways," continued Mr. Carlton. "We have but to think for a moment to
see this. Many a fatal document has been signed, many a disastrous
contract made, many a ruinous bargain consummated, which but for the
glass of wine taken at the wrong moment would have been rejected.
Men under the excitement of drink often enter into the unwise
schemes of designing men only to lose heavily, and sometimes to
encounter ruin. The gambler entices his victim to drink, while he
keeps his own head clear. He knows the confusing quality of wine."
"You make out rather a strong case," said Doctor Hillhouse.
"Too strong, do you think?"
"Perhaps not. Looking at the thing through your eyes, Mr. Carlton,
moderate drinking is an evil of great magnitude."
"It is assuredly, and far greater, as I have said, than is generally
supposed. The children of this world are very wise, and some of
them, I am sorry to add, very unscrupulous in gaining their ends.
They know the power of all the agencies that are around them, and do
not scruple to make use of whatever comes to their hand. Three or
four capitalists are invited to meet at a gentleman's house to
consider some proposition he has to lay before them. They are
liberally supplied with wine, and drink without a lurking suspicion
of what the service of good wine means. They see in it only the
common hospitality of the day, and fail to notice that one or two of
the company never empty their glasses. On the next day these men
will most likely feel some doubt as to the prudence of certain large
subscriptions made on the previous afternoon or evening, and wonder
how they could have been so infatuated as to put money into a scheme
that promised little beyond a permanent investment.
"If," added Mr. Carlton, "we could come at any proximate estimate of
the loss which falls upon society in consequence of the moderate use
of intoxicating drinks, we would find that it exceeded a
hundred--nay, a thousand--fold that of the losses sustained through
drunkenness. Against the latter society is all the while seeking to
guard itself, against the former it has little or no
protection--does not, in fact, comprehend the magnitude of its power
for evil. But I have wearied you with my talk, and forgotten for the
time being the anxiety that lies so near my heart. No, doctor, I
will not trust the hand of Doctor Kline, skillful as it may be, to
do this work; for I cannot be sure that a glass too much may not
have been taken to steady the nerves a night's excess of wine may
have left unstrung."
Doctor Hillhouse sat with closely knit brows for some time after Mr.
Carlton ceased speaking.
"There is matter for grave consideration in what you have said," he
remarked, at length, "though I apprehend your fears in regard to
Doctor Kline are more conjectural than real."
"I hope so," returned Mr. Carlton, "but as a prudent man I will not
take needless risk in the face of danger. If an operation cannot be
avoided, I will trust that precious life to none but you."