The Portland daily press., 1879-06-11
The Jimjams.
A Good Temperance Lecture.

Zola's story of ''L'Assommoir" recalls chat
l once had with one who might be termed
professional drunkard. He had suffered ter
ribly 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 drunkard
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 revolu-
tionized again. It's too old to leave off whis-
key. To change its feed would kill me in a
fortnight. 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 dur
ing these many years, and you can't teach an
old stomach new tricks. Delirium tremens?
Snakes? Jim-iams? Yes, I've 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 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 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.
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 a 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, pray
ing for ever so few minutes 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 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
stifed, 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 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 real
ize this. You feel yourself borne on from hor-
ror to horror by this unseen power within you.
breads undesirable seize upon you. Your
hands have a sensation 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 spasmod-
ically, 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 no foil ;c; ;ot 81,
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 continually. Didn't mind them at
all. Got used to them. There was Green
wood, lawyer in Sonora, Tuolumne county,
Cal, he lived on whiskey, as nearly a 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 drawing up
| some legal document as straight and correct as
the soberest legal head in the country, and all
| the time curse the crows (jim-jam crows) for
getting on the paper There was French Louis,
| who kept a saloon at jamestown, in the same
| couney, 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 Cim-iam monkeys)
running round the cornices of his saloon.
| "They amuse me-" he would say, 'and besides
| they are not so mischievous as real monkeys"
There's 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 it, That man
is living contradiction of the theory that
whiskey in excess will kill people. He has for
| 20 years drank lakes of it and the poorest
whiskey in the world at that. After howling
drunk at night, he will do hard days work
and keep up both the work and modified sort
ofCr1
men around him Gim-jam mem who talk and
| threaten him. "They plagued me some at
| FIRST" said he, "but told 'em to git and they
| got. One night heard lot of fellers under
my window plotting to rob aud kill me. 1
thought to myself, if that's your game I'll take
| hand i'll it myself. So L 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 travelled, out
| of the camp all that distance, until all at once
| they seemed to make STRAIGHT scoot off the
road, and heard 'em next talking on Graveyard
hill. Then saw it all, and says 1, Snakes,
by - and turned about and came home"
| Then there was DR.. ID. 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 before the
real horrors got hold of him he never saw a rat
| or heard cats squall in the dark but he'd in
| quire OF those about him If they heard them,
too in order to find out whether they were real
rats and cats or jim-jim rats and cats. The
boys detected this dread at last and used to
frlghten the doctor by asserting 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 club himself and ran down the main
street screaming and beating 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 trying to soothe him after he was
stopped was one Dave Horton, an ignorant but
consequential person, and not at any time q
particular favorite of the doctor. "There's
nothing after you, doctor, nothing at all" said
Horton, much in the tone he would use toward
frightened child, when all at once the doctor
hit him lively rap on the head with his club.
At this, Horizons benevolence turned all to
gall and bitterness, and he wanted to fight the
mad physician. Well, d. recovered from this
fit, and friend, at his request told him how
he had raved and acted. But when he alluded
to Horton, the doctor remarked, with curious
expression "Oh, yes; L recollect that part of
it. The fool annoyed me and wanted TO get
rid of him.. AS was his wont, the doctor
kept strictly sober 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 quiet spells, he turned to his init
mate friend and said: cts no use; salt can
the quicker go the better I'm suited
Are not these good temperance lectures?
WiSca SSet,es Dabt