# A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age/Chapter 19

CHAPTER XIX.
WE are again behind the cases, on our way to another alcove.
Admiringly I glance at the beautiful groups of parents and their student children.
We stop before cases labelled "Drink."
Seeing Frederick look amazed, his mother says:
"The word drink had a different signification then to that it has with us. It was generally understood as a term for various mixtures of the poison, alcohol and water, swallowed by people to reduce their mental power until they became—some like young children in understanding, some idiotic, some resembled wild beasts of the most ferocious nature, and others committed acts worse than any beast was ever known to descend to; according to the temperament of the imbiber, were produced those direful effects. So universal was the wish for that deadly poison that the sellers of it accumulated large fortunes."
He indignantly interrupts her with:
"What a degradation to possess wealth obtained by such ignoble means!"
​Veritée looks pleadingly at her mother, as if saying: "Some things are so hard to bear unmoved." And Frederick tells her he will listen to all she has to say, "even if distressing as that last information, without again transgressing."
Smiling kindly at them, she desires Frederick to examine the further case, adding: "And patiently—remember a progressed state of thought is always patient with the ignorant."
Not being of this advanced age myself, I cannot help bitterly contrasting the mechanic's noble "comrade"—so exalted in nature, benevolently reviewing the misdeeds of our time—with some of our fashionable mothers. How are their mornings passed? In dressing, reading silly novels, or otherwise ignobly wasting time in paying and receiving visits. Simply an interchange of communication, without intellect, love or friendship! where, too often, the absent are smirched with the polite filth of scandal-loving tongues, and where the estimable of human kind are judged by their incomes. The children of such poor fools, where are they? If very young, their tender lives are in the care of paid attendants—strangers. If of school age, the daughters are undergoing a veneering of education, and the practice of unnatural attitude—which is supposed by some to be particularly expressive of superfine breeding.
The sons are learning to become Solomons and Davids, both by the quality of their classical studies and their early experience in male liberty—that is, the extensive indulgence shown to all excesses and frivolity—when committed by their sex.
Thus we cling to the disgraceful "morality" of the past, and perform our utmost to preserve what of brute remains ​in us. And, as if to destroy all antidote, we deny access to libraries and places of refining influence on Sundays—the only day the unfortunate many have to recreate their toil-worn minds or bodies. Then we lower the corners of our hypocritical mouths and, with true Pecksniff snuffle, proclaim ourselves "God-fearing people!" Well, too well, we might "fear," after such misdoing, were the Infinite one-thousandth part as ferocious as such persons have represented! For all these young people will have compensation for their week's drudgery; and where have we driven them to seek it? Ah, poor human kind! Tiger, bull and goat relationship will long be discerned in us, under such fatal mistakes as are constantly being committed by the self-styled wisdom of our ignorant legislators.
Frederick is still looking at the drunken scenes degrading human kind. His mother silently reads all that is passing in his humane reflections. Veritée, to whom those models are not new, is thinking the growing general opinion—that all such sights are unnecessary in their era.
Yet they show not a hundredth of the evils resulting hourly from use of alcohol as a stimulant! When he sees one representing a man beating his wife, he returns to his chair saying: "It is sickening. Did persons really so destroy their minds until, it appears to me, their conduct was lower than that of apes?"
"Too truly, my son. Alcoholic drink was one of the most degrading drawbacks of progress that human kind ever suffered from. It was a disease. It fastened itself in the system; and, while corroding every organ, forced its miserable victim to repeat and increase the doses, until dissolution in direst torments ended a wretched life which might have been happy useful and painless. The taint was transmitted to ​our species for thousands of years. When the child of a drunkard commenced to take such drinks, even in very small quantities, the dormant tendency to that noxious disease soon awakened, and became past cure. Alcohol fostered, and even increased, the strength of brute instincts until men's acts were truly, as you say below those of beasts. Under its influence the most revolting of war's horrors were enacted; every sacred feeling cruelly outraged; and human will was fast becoming only a powerful force for creating universal unhappiness—when a brave few, seeing the state of confusion into which all were drifting, made a determined stand against its further use. As I have often had occasion to point out, any combination in the cause of right must succeed. After many centuries of firm resolve, they arrested the evil by legislation; for at last, the many who had objected to what they thought an indignity, had sense enough to agree to it as the only means for saving the weak-minded, who had not force of will to save themselves, and the world, from the baleful effects of their irresolution. Repressive measures were continued for about forty thousand years. In that time the human structure gradually changed to a higher form; then intoxication became impossible, as the introduction of spirits into the system occasioned instantaneous death or agony great as that caused by some other poisons, but not to be relieved by any antidote, as its volatile nature precludes the possibility of extracting it. It flew at once to the brain, and made the poor sufferer feel as if his—I say his, because women left off the habit of drinking alcohol very many years before men had sufficient sense to follow their example—head had suddenly became red-hot metal. (Turning to her daughter.) I perfectly concur with your reflections, my Veritée. Our physical nature being unable ​to sustain, unharmed, even a drop of this powerful poison it is time to utterly destroy all these debasing reminders, and eliminate from our studies this one overwhelming ignorance of the past. In our physiological lectures you will learn some of its frightful effects on the bodily organs—coarse though they were in that crude stage of human growth. Also, you will then see a model of the last medical man who prescribed the use of alcohol. The parliament had him hung by the neck until he was dead."
I think Frederick is about to express approval of that decree, but Veritée says, thoughtfully:
"Yes, dear mother, you are always right. I was so reflecting. Also, whether reversion might not again change our structure to one of a lower type, and so fit us more for those degrading tastes and habits; and if that be possible—pardon nay presuming—as to the advisability of so fearful a risk."
With much tenderness in her voice, the mother replies:
"'Pardon' and 'presuming.' My dear one, you know nothing of the pleasure your words give me. You prove the use made of your reflection hours. You have philosophically entered upon thought of deep import. Only yesterday your dear father was discussing that very view of the subject; but we have not time to-day. Next week it will be debated in full senate, and you shall be present."