The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-09-11
Tales Of the Jim.Jams.

| q chat once had with one who might
be termed professional drunkard. He
had suffered terribly from excessive
drinking he knew its evils far better
than one could tell him, and he realized
his position thoroughly, yet he clung to
the habit and avowed himself drunk
ard. Said he: I have gone too far and
too long on this road. My stomach has
been made over and adapted to rum.
The organ can't be revolutionized again.
It's too old to leave off whiskey. To
change its feed would kill me in fort
night. 1t isn't so good stomach as the
natural one was, but it stands pint or
more of brandy per day. I've trained it
to that during these many years, and you
can't teach an old stomach new tricks.
Delirium tremens7 Snakes7 JIM jams?
Yes, I've had touches of them. You
want to know how it feels7 I'll tell you,
although I never 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 ceases 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 thinking, yet the tired brain will
think. You lie down, drop into doze
for moment, and wake up with shock
as if touched by an electric wire. You
are covered with perspiration. You get
up and walk the room, walk the streets
walk, walk, walk, and then fling yourself
down, praying for ever so few minutes
sleep. All this for days with people
about you, and through nights, whose
lone, silent dreary hours drag, drag, drag,
while thus you lie down and get up, and
merely to kill the time you dress and un-
dress, 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 in 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 relent-
less vigilance than your abused nerves.
They are mad. They have mutinied.
They have borne and borne the loads of
alcohol you have imposed upon them
until, frenzied 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 unseen
power within you. breads indescribable
seize upon you. Your hands have sem
sation of being of an enormous size.
They do not look it. They feel it.
Your head in like manner feels as if
enormously puffed out. Then your breath
comes spasmodically, hot fushes strike
at the region of the heart, all the blood
seems at times to rush in that direction,
and you fight aimlessly for life and ex-
pect to fall dead. This is the commence
ment of the horrors. Now you are fixed
for seeing rats, and snakes, and vermin.
How many attacks can man stand?
How many? I've known men who
weren't wholly free from the jim.jams for
months. They saw the things contin-
ually. Didn't mind them at all. Got
used to them. There was Greenwood, q
lawyer in Sonora, Tuolumne County,
CAL, he lived on whiskey as nearly as a
man could live on it for years. Some
times 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 drawing up some legal
document as straight and correct as the
soberest legal head in the county, and all
time curse the crows (jim.jam crows, you
know forgetting 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 mass of bloat, yet he'd
serve customers to the last, and all the
time see string of monkeys Gim;j jam
monkeys) running round the cornices of
his saloon. "They amuse me-" lie would
say, "and besides they are not so mis-
cbievous rs real monkeys"
There's man living in that same town
| to-day to whom phase of mania potu
| is of no more inconvenience, apparently,
than severe cold. I'll call him Don
caster, which isn't his real name, but
comes pretty near it. That man is liv-
ing contradiction of the theory that whis.
key in excess will kill people. He has
for twenty years drank lakes of it, and
the poorest whiskey in the world at that.
After bowling drunk at night, he will
do hard days work and keep up both
the work and modified sort of spree on
more whiskey, seeing all the time men
around him, (jim,jam men, who talk
some at 6rst," said he, "but l told 'em to
| git and they got. One night l heard a
lot of fellers under my window plotting
to rob and kill me. thought to myself,
if that's your game III take 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 one
hundred yards ahead in the darkness,
and one hundred yards ahead they kept
for two miles, nor could I get any nearer
to them. So l travelled, and they trav-
elled, out of the camp all that distance,
until all at once they seemed to make a
straight scoot off the road, and I heard
'em next talking on Graveyard Hill.
Then saw it all, and says I, Snakes, by
- and I turned about and came
home" Then there was DR.. D. of the
same. camp. He knew for years that he
was drinking himself 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 be-
fore the real horrors got hold of him, he
never saw rat or heard cats squall in
the dark, but he'd inquire of those about
him if they heard them, too, in order to
find out whether they were real rats and
cats or jim,jam rats and cats. The boys
detected this dread at last, and used to
frighten the doctor by asserting they
heard nothing, while the cats were sing
ing their highest notes. At last the real
article got hold of him. Not in the
shane of cats or rats. though. Worse.