The weekly Union times. [volume] (Union C.H., South Carolina) 1871-1894, 1879-09-19
TALES OF THE JIM-JAMs.


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 thor.
oughly, yet he c]ung to the habit and
avowed himself drunkard. Said he {:
have gone too far and too long on this road.
My stomach has been made over and adap-
ted to rum. The organ can't be revolution
lied again It's too old to leave off whis>
key. TO change its feed would kill me in
fortnight. 1t isn't SO good stomach as the
natural one was, but it stands "a pint or
more of brandy per- day. I've trained sif
to that during those many years, and you
cant teach an old stouach new tricks =
Delirium tremens? Snakes Jim.iams /?
Yes, I've had touches of them. You want
to know how it feels? III tell you, al
though l never did much more than Just
pass the jim jams frontier. You have
drank maybe week, maybe more. You
have kept extra "full' during that period
At last liquor ceases to excite, brace up, or
tranquilze. Yon drink half pint of
brandy aud it has no more effect than so
much water. Then you are close on the
horrors. Food won't help you. Your
stomach rc)ects IL.
Now your punishment commences You
cant sleep. You are weary. Oh, Sd wea-
ry, but there is no rest. You are tired of
thinking, yet the tired brain will think
You lie down, drop into doze for mo-
ment, and wake up with shock as if touch
ed by an electric wire. You are covered
with perspiraton. You get up and walk
the room, walk the streets-walk, walk,
walk, and then fling yourself down, pray
ing 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 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 nj ight 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 relentless
vigilance than your abused nerves. They
arc mad. They have mutiniei. They have
borne and borne the load 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 un-
seen power within you. breads indescriba-
BILE seize you. Your hands have sensation
Of being Of an enormous size. They do
not look like it. They feel it. Your head
III like manner feels as if enormously pulled
out. Then Your breath comes spasmodical-
ly, hot flushes 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 expect to fall dead This is the
commencement of the horrors. Now YOU
are fixed for seeing rats, and snakes, aud
vcrmin.
How many attacks can man stand p
How many? I've known men ,ho weren't
wholly free from the jim jams for months.
They saw the things continually. Didn't
mind them at all. Got used to them
There was Greenwood, a lawyer in Sonora,
Tuolumne County, Cal, he lived on whis-
key as nearly as a man could live on it for
years. Sometimes he had the snakes very
pauS 'hu "o"ih lhcy u tOne uOWn 10 mOuCr-
alton, yet he had 'em all the same He
would sit in his office drawing up. some le-
gal document as straight and correct as the
soberest legal head in the county, and all
the time curse the crows Cim,jam crows,
you know for getting on his paper There
was French Louis, who kept saloon at
jamestown, in the same county, who drank
himself to death with his own liquor re
was mass of bloat, yet he'd serve custom.
crs to the last, and all the time sec a string
of monkeys Gim.jam monkeys) running
round the corniccs of his saloon. They
amuse me-" he would say, sand besides
they arc not so mischievous as real mon
keys"
There's man living in that same town
to day to whom phase Of mania potu is
of no more inconvenience, apparently than
a severe cold. I'll call him Doncastcr,
which isn't his real name, but comes pretty
near it. That man is a living contradiction
Of the theory that whiskcy 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 day work and keep
up both the work and q modified sort OF
spree on more whiskey, seeing all the time