Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1879-08-29
The Jim-Jams-.-A Good Temperance
Lecture.
tFrom the New York araphic.I

ribly from excessive drinking he knew its
evils far better than any one could tell him,
and he realized his position thoroughly, yet
he clung to the habit and avowed himself a
drunkard. Said he; I've gone too far and
too long on this road. My stomach has been
made over and aqaptod to rum. The organ
! can't be revolutonizcd again. It's too old to
leave off whiskcy. 70 change its food would
kill me in fortnight. 1t isn't 30 good a
stomach rs the natural one was, but it stands
pint or more Of brandy per day. I've train
ed it to that during these many years, and
| you can't teach an old stomach new tricks.
Dolirium tremcns? Snakesy Jim jams
! Yes, I've had touches of them You want to
know how it feels? I'll tell you, although
mover did much more than just pass the jim
| jams frontier. You have drank maybe a
week. maybe more. You have kept extra
"full' during that period. At last liquor ceas-
es to excite, brace up, or tranquilize. You
drink a half pint of brandy and it has no
more effect than so much water. Then you
are close on the horrors. Food won't help
| you. Your stomach rejects it,
Now your punishment commences. You
can't sleep. You are weary, oh, so weary,
but there is no rest. You are tired of think
| ing, yet the tired brain will think. You lie
down, drop into doze for moment and
wake up with a shock as if touched with an
! electric wire You are covered with perspir-
alton. You get up and walk the room, walk
the streets-walk, walk, walk and then fling
! yourself down, praying for ever so few min
utes sleep. All this for days with people
about you, and through nights, whose long,
silent, dreary hours drag, drag, drag, while
thus you lie down and get up, and merely to
/ kill the time you dress and undress, while
! people wonder what uneasy mortal is fussing
in the next room and forever going up and
down stairs. To stay the live-long night in
that lone room is horrible you are stihed,
| buried, in it. To get out into the street is
only to change the horror. Your exhausted
| body pleads for rest. Your brain pleads for
rest. But no Chinese torturer employed in
keeping some miserable criminal awake till
he dies was ever more full of relentless yig-
lance than your abused nerves. They are
mad. They have mutinied They have borne
and borne the loads of alcohol you have I'M
posed upon them until frenzicd with the
strain, they have taken the bit between their
teeth and run away with your body and
brain. You realize this. You feel yourself
borne on from horror to horror by this un-
seen power within you. breads indescrba-
BILE seize upon you. Your hands have a SEN
sation of being of an enormous size. They
do not look it; they feel it. Your head in
like manner feels as if enormously pulled out
Then your breath comes spasmodically, hot
flushes strike at the region Of the heart, all
the blood seems at times TO rush in that di-
rection, and you fight aimlessly for life and
| expect to fall dead. This is the commence
ment of the horrors. Now you are fixed for
seeing rats, and snakes and yermin.
How many attacks can "A man stand How
many? I've known men who weren't Who'll.
ly free from the jim jams for months. They
saw the things continually. Didn't mind them
at all. Got used to them. There was Green.
WOOd "a latyyar in Sonora Ttn1utp,,,a
Cal he lived on whiskey, as nearly as
man could live on it, for years Sometimes he
had the snakes very bad and again they'd
tone down to moderation, yet he had em all
the same. He would sit in his office draw
ing mp some legal document as straight and
correct as the soberest legal head in the
country. and all the time curse the crows
Gim-Jam crows) for getting on the paper.
There was French Louis, who kept saloon
at jamestown, in the same county, who drank
himself to death with his own liquor. He
was n mass of bloat, yet he'd serve custom
ers to the last, and all the time sec q string
OF monkeys running round the cornices of
his saloon. They amuse me" he would say,
'and besides they are not so mischeVous as
real monkeys"
There's a man living in that same town to.
day TO whom phase of mania-a-potu is of
no more inconvenience, apparently than
severe cold. I'll call him Doncaster, which
isn't his real name, but comes pretty near il.
That man is living contradiction of the the
DRY that whiskey in excess will kill people.
He has for 20 years drank lakes of it, and the
poorest whiskty III the world at that. After
a bowling drunk at night, he will do a hard
days work and keep up both the work and
modified sort of spree on more whiskey,
seeing all the while men around him (jim-
jam mem who talk and threaten him. They
tluoug1 M afH Hrlff - said H., Int I tCl1
EN- to git and they got. One night | heard
a lot of fellers under my window plotting to
rob anu kill me- l thought to myself if
that's your game II take a hand in it myself
So got up, took my knife and six-shooter
and put out. When got out of doors they
seemed to me about 100 yards ahead in the
darkness, and 100 yards ahead they kept for
two miles, nor could get any nearer to them.
So travelled and they trav, He'd, out of the
camp all that distance until all at once they
seemed to make a straight scoot off the road,
and heard EN- next talking on Graveyard
hill Then | saw it all, and says l, Snakes,
by and turned about and came home"
Then there was DIR. ID. of the same camp.
He knew for years that he was drinking him
self to death. He was treating cases of the
jim jams all over the country, yet he knew
his turn must come. He feared it, too. For
years before the real horrors got hold of him
dark but he'd inquire of those about him if
they heard them too, in order to find ont
il they were real rats and cats or jim jams
rats and cats. The boys detected this dread
at last and used to frighten the doctor by as
serting they heard nothing, while the cats
were singing their highest notes At last the
real article got hold of him. Not in the shape
of cats or rats, though. Worse. Men with
clubs and pistols He got a club himself and
H.
ing the air, with half the camp after him
An incident in his case shows how, in these
fits, man may be both in and out of his
senses at the same time. Among those try
ing to soothe him after he was stopped was
one Dave Horton, an ignorant but conse-
quental person, and not at any time par
ticular favorite of the doctor. 'Ihers moth
ing after you, doctor, nothing at all, said
Horton, much in the tone he would use
toward a frightened child, when all at once
the doctor hit him a lively rap on the head
with his club. At this, Horizons benevolence
turned all to gall and bitterness and he want
ed to fight the mad physician. Well, ID. re-
covered from this fit, and q friend, at his re-
quest, told him how he had rayed and acted.
But when he alluded to Horton, the doctor
remarked, with curious expression; "Oh,
yes ; l recollect that part of it, The fool an
noyed me and wanted TO get rid of him."
As was his won't the doctor kept strictly So
Der some months, and then he went at it,
and kept himself deluged with whiskey for
weeks, until the men with clubs and pistols
got after him again. That time they settled
him. and the doctor knew it, for, in one of
his spells, he turned 10 his intimate friend
and said "It's no use' salt cannot save me.
l know my case thoroughly, and the quicker
l go the better I'm suited"
Are not these good temperance lecturesp