A recent orator gives this incident:
I think the subject has been kept back very much by the
merriment people make over those slain by strong drink. I
used to be very merry over these things, having a keen sense
of the ludicrous. There was something very grotesque in the
gait of a drunkard. It is not so now; for I saw in one of the
streets of Philadelphia a sight that changed the whole subject
to me. There was a young man being led home. He was very much
intoxicated--he was raving with intoxication. Two young men were
leading him along. The boys hooted in the street, men laughed,
women sneered; but I happened to be very near the door where he
went in--it was the door of his father’s house. I saw him go
up-stairs. I heard him shouting, hooting and blaspheming. He had
lost his hat, and the merriment increased with the mob until he
came up to the door, and as the door was opened his mother came
out. When I heard her cry, that took all the comedy away from
the scene. Since that time, when I see a man walking through the
street, reeling, the comedy is all gone, and it is a tragedy of
tears and groans and heartbreaks. Never make any fun around me
about the grotesqueness of a drunkard. Alas for his home!
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