St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1881-09-30


tom of their every fear and risk. And
/ happened to know, moreover, that
the water there at Florence was great
deal better water for steady drinking
than the water on which many of those
American travellers had been brought
up in their American western and
southern homes. And as to a substi
tute for the native water of the region,
if they desired to avoid that,-it
didn't seem to occur to them that any
of the many standard bottled mineral
waters which were available there
would be safer and more health giving
than native wine. Here in Philadel-
phia, during the Centennial summer,
when millions came in from outside,
and packed themselves in close quar-
tiers, and wore themselves out with
long days of walking and standing and
bewildering gazing, and overtaxed
their stOmachs with hurriedly eaten in
digestible lunches, whatever pains and
aches anybody from that thrOng of Wis
itors had, in Philadelphia or on the
way home, were almost without excep-
ton attributed to the water. Of course
it was the water
| have travelled not a little in my
lifetime, have averaged nearly twenty
thousand miles year for twenty years
at time, l have been through the
length and breadth of our land from
Maine to California, and from MinnesO-
ia to Florida. l have journeyed also
in Europe and Asia and Africa. Yet
never found the place where it was
necessary for me to drink wine or
brandy, nor yet where | deemed ma
tive wine as safe as the native water,
Judging from the apparent effects on
those who used the one or the other.
| have found some pretty water in
my day, limestone water, brackish wa
ter, muddy water, sulphUrous water,
water well-nigh putrid with decaying
vegetation. | have drunk water
through a little pocket filter, from the
prints of my horses hOofs in the trav-
eled road after a rain storm, as the only
mode of quenching my thirst with wa
ter. | have drunk water from the tan
gled swamps in the sea-islands of the
South Carolina coast, when L had to
hold my breath as l drank because of
the waters stencil. But | was sure, in
all these cases, that that water was
safer, as drink, than wine would be,
and that if added anything to it to
render it innOcuOus there was less rea-
son for my trying whiskey or brandy
than ginger or mustard. Among all
the personal risks that | have been
called to take, i'll my life of varied ex-
periences, really count water-drink-
ing the very least, and of all the per-
sOnal risks have had occasion to note
i'll others, from my earliest recollection
to the present hour, put wine-drink-
ing among the greater.
Several years after our civil war |
was at the Surgeon-GeneraFs office in
Washington, making a call Oh DIR. Otis,
with whom | had been a comrade i'll
army-life, and was now compiling and
tabulating the medical records of the
entire army. In the course of our con
versation he asked me how it was that
my health endured through all the eX-
posures to which | had been liable i'll
army service and in prison life. My
ANSWER was, ''Well, doctor, ] suppose
you will hardly agree with me on that
point. think that my keeping up so
well was due to my letting whiskey
alone. The water we had was bad
enough but | thought it was better
than the whiskey, and | stuck to it all
through the war. think my total alb
stinence was my safety. | never Dor
rowed to-mOrrow's income to pay to-
days expenses with, but | lived on the
days strength every day of the war;
The Doctors prompt response was
"a few years ago | shouldn't have
agreed with you on that point, but now
/ 4 4 \ -
office, the health rolls of regiments
where the surgeons refused to give
whiskey, with those of regiments
where whisley was given freely, l am
so impressed with the proof of gain
from total abstinence that | wonder
how so many of our soldiers lived
through our whiskey treatment OF
them.n And as with whiskey in
America, so with wine in Europe. Sc
distinguished a medical authority as
Sir Henry Thompson has said recently
in letter to the London Times 81
can affirm without hesitation,
that the ordinary traveller need never
run the risk of drinking poisoned wa
ter. | may also add here that it is
equally unnecessary to drink alcoholic
liquor of any kind. During the
last ten years, of which a total of more
than two has been spent IL COntinen-
tai hotels, | have never consumed any
other liquids than tea, coffee and min
eral waters.n
The evil effects of wine drinking |
have seen both at home and abroad.
A large proportion of all those who
were my playfellOws and schOolmates
/ L 1.
are living drunkards. Men of my ac-
quaintance who had larger brain and
stronger will than | could claim have
proved unable to resist the temptation
to excess, which wine-drinking pro-
notes. Even the seeming possession
of Christian character has by nc
means proved a safeguard against this
danger to those who tempered with
the evil. Ministers of the gospel by
the score, within the range of my per-
sOnal acquaintance, have been among
the victims of intemperance. And
wives and mothers, as well as young
ladies, have swelled the list of those
whom | have known as drunkards-
| through counting wine-drinking safe
and necessary. Indeed | have known
but few families in all my life, which
the curse of intemperance had not in
some way blighted. l have in mind
the only son of a widowed Christian
mother who learned to drink while
travelling with his mother, she think
! ing that wine was safer for him than
water. He is a hopeless, worthless
sot. He would better have taken the
risks of native water, as l did when
was his fellow-traveler l have seen
on our ocean steamers and in Euro
mean hotels the Mine-fiuSh on the