The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1879-07-17
Tales of the Jim-Jams.

1 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 ayowed himself drunk
ard. Said he: I've 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 whisky. 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. Deiirium tremens? Snakes?
Jim-jams? Yes, Pve had touches of
them. You want to know how it feels ?
I'll tell you, although / never did much
more than just pass the jim-jams from
tier. You have drank maybe a we k,
maybe more. Yoa have kept extra
full " during that period. At last
liquor ceases to excite, brace up, or
tranquillize. You drink half pint of
brandy, and it has no more effect than 80
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 a
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
time you dress and undress, while pco-
pie wonder what uneasy mortal is fuss
ing in the next room and forever going
up and down stairs. To stay the live
long night in that lone room is horri-
| BILE; you are stifed, 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 Dread un-
describable seizes upon YOU Your hands
have asensation of being of an enormous
size. They. do not look it. They feel
it. Your head in like manner feels as if
enormously pufed out. Then your
brain comes spasmedically, hot flushes
strike at the region of the heart, all the
blood seems at times to rush in that di-
ection, then you fight aimlsss for life
and expect to fall dead. This is the
commencement Of the horrors. Now
you are fixed for seeing rats, and snakes,
/ and vermin.
How many attacks can man stand
How many? Pve known men who
weren't wholly free from the Jim Jams
for months They saw the things con-
tinually. Don't mind them at ALL Got
used TO them. There was Greenwood, a
lawyer in. Sonora, Tuolumne County,
CAL, he lived on whisky as nearly as
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 Gim-jam crows,
you know, for getting on the paper.
There was French Louis, who kept a
saloon at jamestown, in the same
county, who drank himself to death
with his own liquor. He was mas, Of
bloat, yet he'd serve customers to the
last, and all the time see string OF
monkeys Cim-jam monkeys) running
round the cornices of his saloon. "They
amuse me" he would say, "and beside
they are not so mischievous as real
monkeys" G
There's man living in that same
town to-day to whom phase of mania
a-potu is of no more inconvenience, ap
parently, than severe cold. I'll cal
him Doncaster, which isn't his rea
name. but comes pretty near it. Thai
man is a living contradiction of the
theory that whisky in excess will Kill
people. He has for twenty years drani
lakes of it, and the poorest whisky il
the world at that. After a howlin.
drunk at night he will do hard day'i
work and keep up both the work and
modified sort of spree on more whisky
seeing all the time men around hin
(jim-jam men) who talk and threatel
him. "They plagued me some at first,
said he, "but 1 told 'em to git and the,
got. One night / heard lot Of feller
under my window plotting to rob ant
kill me. thought to myself, if that
your game, Pll take hand in it myself
80 got up, took my knife and six