The advocates of moderate drinking of intoxicants are among the most
persistent and audacious of advisers of their own various deleterious
decoctions, but they constantly supply, involuntarily enough, the most
appalling contradiction of their own commendations.
A gentleman riding on a car noticed on the advertising spaces,
placarded in immense type, the words: “Pure Rye Whisky--Tones
up the Body, Brightens the Intellect, Invigorates the Soul.”
This kind of “puffing” advertisement is common enough and the
gentleman might have paid very little attention to it but his
eyes happened to drop to a seat underneath the advertisement
on which was lounging a drunken man. The eyes of this wretched
being were bleared, his face bloated, with the lines of
dissipation deeply engraven in it, and his body slouched
down in the collapsing style characteristic of the habitual
inebriate. That drunken man was a lurid illustration of the
absolute falsehood of the advertisement. He as a ruined victim
constituted the true advertisement of the effects of alcoholic
indulgence.
(952)