Litchfield enquirer., 1873-05-01

1 AfC PHySiciaHS. SlmIlar pfOpOfClOn would give New Haven six hundred law yers and three hundred physicians Bridgeport, two hundred lawyers and one hundred physicians. Now, both these professions, from the nature of the work they involve, are specially liable to in- duce habits of intemperance. The lawyer in full practice is overworked in court time till his nerves cry for some stimulus to give them temporary firmness. Expo sure and irregular hours have a like effect on the doctor. Then come for both sea- sons of comparative idleness, inclining to dissipation from mere lack of excitement We shall attempt no estimate of the pro- portion of physicians and lawyers that be- come incorporate. It might be supposed that we were gathering our facts too near home. We only venture the opinion that from the peculiarities, both or their work and leisure, fewer professional men are | steady drinkers without becoming drunk ards, than are to be found in avocations where constant labor without overwork does not stimulate to excess.
 The chief inducement to dissipation in quiet New England village, however, is the lack of steady employment and of rational amusement. Many sons of the soil, lacking the enterprise of those who have emigrated to the cities of the West, find inadequate employment at home. i Time hangs heavy on their hands and habits of lounging lead often to habits of indulgence. The grand wave of the old Temperance reform that has happily driv- en so many of the better class of men out of the village bar-rooms and saloons, had the evil effect of destroying much of the sociability the old drinking habits kept up. In old times, as we read in Cooper's Pioneers, in Mrs. Stowe's Old Town Folks, and as old people tell us, the men of the village aristocracy and the men of the village democracy could meet on com mon ground at the village bar-room. There. every social grade was represented, and learned to know something, at least, of each others thoughts and views, and to have something of that mutual regard that usually springs from such acquain- tance.
 Now, tie class who do not frequent bar rooms and saloons, lead that domestic life and that restricted intercourse with each other that springs up between those who have business but not social relations. We judge, in short, that in abandoning the old jollity of the bar-room, the New Englander has become a better, but a less social man. Our higher class of citizens respect each other more, but love each other less, than did the men of the rollick ing old times, that, in spite of all we hear of the grimness of Puritanism, certainly prevailed in New England before the temperance reform. Much as We should dislike to see the bar-room resume its former social importance, both from the danger of intemperance and from the un- domestic habits engendered, we must nevertheless confess that the social place 1t once held has never been supplied. Society is now. divided by tho vertical lines of relig- ious difference and by the horizontal lines of social difference into squares like a checker-board. All Episcopalians, all Methodists, all Congregationalists, all Catholics, have more or less soclal deal ! ings with each other All families of similar income, of similar cultul@s and of similar style of living, also have more or less social dealings with each other. Hence all persons have more or less in- timate relations with the vertical or re- igious line of squares, and with the hori zontal or social line of squares, in which circumstances have placed them but with the people who live out of their yer tical or their horizontal line, or, in other words, belong neither to their sect nor their ''set," they have no social relations. The men of these sets and sects may do busi- ness together, but the women do nothing together. .a -'
 This brings us to the real point of diff erence between the new and the old social forms. Under the old form men had much social intercourse together, apart from women. Our Masonic societies are based on that idea. The later forms of secret association admit woman; but Masonry, the oldest of all, excludes her. l One of the earliest demands of the Wo- man Question, assisted by the Temper ance reform, has resulted ill the abandon ment, by man, of most of these forms of separate social enjoyment. The change has certainly been on the whole an advan- tageous one. It has wrought great im- provement in habits and manners. But unfortunately in narrowing mans social sphere, woman has not enlarged her own. To this short-coming, we confidently be- leve, must be attributed the failure of the old temperance reform to work all the good which was expected of it. and it is that i which has crippled atertemperance efforts in villages like Litchfeld, New Milford and others we could name
 In our next number wo shall endeavol
 to trace further the causes of an evil vii.
 lage society must remedy before it can
 fight the saloon on anything like equa
 terms
 The agent of the EAST CANAAN depo has removed his lodgings to the pleasant