Evening journal., 1888-07-10

something new for him to go to bed at 10
O'Clock each night, rise at G, breakfast half
IN hour later and attend lectures and re-
ligions services in the chapel | sat down to
dinner one day, at the invitation Of Superin
tendent Wilkins, with eighty drunkards.
They we're queer lot Sailors from the lake
and laborers from the streets sat side by side
with lawyers and ministers Of the Gospel Yes,
priests and ministers, for the home is rarely
without an inmate of this sort. One clergy
man has been in the home no fewer than six
times, and has the delirium tremens every
time he comes. His visits are about six
months apart, and meantime he fills pulpit
not far from Chicago, and fills it acceptably.
How he manages to conceal his habits from
his dsacons is more than l can understand
In the dining room / noticed that all of these
men had ravenous appetites, and were a
CHEEKY, sociable lot, cracking many jokes
with each other, and the most intellectual and
cultured apparently content to admit that
their common enemy had leyeled them all to
the same rank. -
Talk to these men, and ninety-nine out Of
a hundred viii declare to you, with an en-
phasis SO earnest that you are led to place
implicit confidence in them, that never again
will they touch intoxicants.
They mean it, too.
And no wonder they are in earnest Not
only have they just emerged from the terrors
Of the trenens and tho dark room, but the
rewards OF temperance and the horrors Of
drink have been set before them day by day
with all the ingenuity and forco Of the ven
erable superintendent and his assistants
Every one Of these drink victims knows
how be feels after debauch, but Superin-
tendent Wilkins goes him one better and
shows him why he feels that way and how
his liver and his stomach appear when the
poison is in him. Perhaps there never was
more ghastly object lesson than that which Is
spread before these men each afternoon OF
their stay in the home. The new patient
shudders with horror, and renews the prom
ise that he viii never drink again
which the older boarders have made
over and over again. The walls
| of tho chapel are covered with series Of
paintings showing the internal organs Of de
ceased drunkards, many of them made from
photographs taken at the autopsies This is
cheerful for the drink victim. But that is
not all. Besides the paintings there arc a
dozen glass jars containing in pickle the or
gans themselves. They are simply awful in
their deformity. The boarders gather around
them in undisguised excitement There. are
livers all covered with the hob nails of cir
rhosis; kidneys all black and diseolored from
drink, and stomachs which resemble nothing
else SO much as half bushel of soap grease.
'This,n says the professor, with just lit
tie pride in the completeness Of his object
lesson, "wns taken from a prominent board
Of trade man who had been persistent beer
drinker.H
And this, he continues, taking his class
in horrible examples to another CHASTITY OBJ.
ject, ''is the liver OF a government officer
who died with the tremens."
The professors audience look at him and
at the glass jars as If they had just such liver
themselves and did not know what to do with
them, and renew their VOWS Of total abstin,
ence.
Yet the result Of all this ghastly object
teaching, and of the moral and religious
training which accompanies It, is anything
but satisfactory to the friends Of the home
The home can build up the demoralized body
but it is not SO successful in its treatment o.
the real disease Of intemperance, which
has its seat in the mind. The floor
Of the home nre paved with good resolutions
but, alas for the VOWS Of the drink slavel O
500 men admitted to the home last year 15l
were there for the second time, 175 for thl
third time, so for the fourth time 10 for TIN
6fth tiIne Q for the sixth time, for the sew
enth time, 5 for the eighth time and ! eacl
for tho ninth, tenth and eleventh times
while one gI'izzled veteran came ia for hi
do2enth visit the day was there. He ha,
the delirium tremens, too, as he had ha
them many times before. There are ric
men in Chicago who make periodical visit
to the home, paying their way, keeping clos
J to their rooms and eating their meals there
while their families and business associate
think they are out of town on journey.
WALTER WELLNAN.