Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1871-08-23
A Remarkable Speech and a Terrible
Commentary,

/ A Remarkable Speech and a Terrible
Commentary.
The memory of the late Senator
McDOugall is doubtless fresh in the
minds of many. Gifted, eloquent,
affable and accomplished, thelife and
soul of social parties, he had one fail
ing which clung to him like the Nes-
sus, and bore him to his doom. What
/ it was, the following remarkable
speech, delivered in the United States
Senate during q debate on Senator
| Wilson's resolution to prohibit the
sale of intoxicating liquors in the
Capitol, will show. Here is the
speech -
Mr. President 1T was once said
that there are as many mindsas men,
and there is no end to wrangling. 1
had occasion some years since to dis
course with a reverend Doctor Of Di-
vinity from the State which has the
honor to be the birthplace, l think, of
the President of this body. While 1
was discoursing with him, Lotto vile
rapscallions invited me to join them
at the bar. I declined out Ofrespect to
the reverend gentleman in whose
presence I then was. As soon as the
occasion had passed 1 remarked to
the reverend doctor: "DO not un-
derstand that I decline to 90 and join
those young men at the bar because I
have any objections to that thing, for
| it is my habit to drink always in the
front, and not behind the door. He
looked at me with a certain degree of
Interrogation. 1 then asked him,
doctor, what was the first miracle
worked by our great Master?" He
/ hesitated, and 1 said to him, "Was it
not at Cana, in Galilee, where he con-
verted water into wine at a marriage
feast?" He assented. L asked him
then, "After the ark had foated on
| the tempestuous seas for forty days and
nights, and as it descended upon the
dry land, what was the first thing
done by Father Noah;" He said he
did not know that exactly. 'Well,"
said 1, 'did he not plant a vine ?n--
Yes, he remembered 1t then.
I asked him. "Do you remember
any great poet that ever illustrated the
higher fields of humanity that did
not dignity the use of wine, from old
Homer down ?" He did not. I ask
ed, "Do you know any great philo-
sepher that did not use it for the
exaltation of his intelligenceH "DO
you think, Doctor, that a man who
lived upon pork and beef and corn
bread, could get up into the superior
regions-intO the ethereal?" No, he
must
Take nectar on high Olympus,
And ighty mead in Nalhalla,
said to him again: doctor, you
are scholarly man, of course-a doc
tor of divinity, graduate of Yale;
do you remember PlatOis Symposi-
um ?" Yes, he remembered that. I
referred himst to the occasion when
Agatho, having won the prize of
Tragedy at the Olympic games at Cor
| inth, on coming back to Athens was
feted by the nobility and aristocracy
of that city, for it was a proud tri-
umph to Athens to win the prize of
Tragedy They got together, at the
house of Phedrus, and they said.-
"Now we have been every night for
these last six nights drunk; let US be
sober tonight, and we win start a
theme, which they passed around the
| table as the sun goes round, or as they
drank their wine, or as men tell a
story. They started a theme, and
| that was love-not love in the vulgar
sense, but in its high sense-loVe of
J all that is beautiful. After they had
gone through, and after Socrates had
pronounced his judgment about the
true and beautiful, in came Aleibiades
with a drunken body of Athenian
| boys, with garlands around their
heads to crown old Socrates, and they
said to those assembled: "This will
/ Il. haawa -
YOU have not" and after Alcibiades
had made his talk in pursuaneeOf the
argument, in which he undertook to
dignity Socrates, as 1 remember it,
they required (after the party had
agreed to drink, it being quite late in
the evening, and they had finished
their business in the way of discus
sion) that Socrates should drink two
measures for every other mans one,
because he was better able to stand it.
And so, one after another, they were
laid down on the lounges in the Athe-
nian style, all except an old physician
named Aristodemus, and Plato makes
him the hardest-headed fellow except
Socrates. He and Socrates stuck at it
until the gray of morning, and then
Socrates took his bath and went down
to the groves and talked academic
knowledge.
After citing this instance I said to
this divine: "Do you remember that
Lord Bacon said that a man should
get drunk at least once a month, and
that Montaigne, the French philoso-
pher, indorsed the proposition ?"
These exaltations that bring us up
above the common measure of the
brute-wine and oil-elevate US, ena-
BILE US to seize great facts, inspirations
which, once possessed, are ours fOrev-
er; and those who never go beyond
the mere beastly means of animal sup
port never live in the high planes Of
life, and cannot achieve them.
L believe in women, wine, whisky
and war.
Now comes the commentary on his
Bacchanalian philosophy. A year
or twoafter the delivery of this speech
the brilliant orator and polished
Statesman died a wretched rum
crazed pauper in one of the interior
towns of the State of New York
What more is there left to be said?