Bismarck weekly tribune., 1888-07-20
BISMARCK WEEKLY TRIBUNE: FRIDAY. JULY 20 1883

eoMeJnng now Ior MIN TO go TO bed at 10
O'Clock each night, rise at 6, breakfast half
an hour later and attend lectures and re-
ligious services in the chapel sat down to
dinner one day, at the invitation Of Superin-
tendent Wilkins, with eighty drunkards
They were 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 deacons is more than ] can understand.
In the dining room I noticed that all of these
men had ravenous appetites, and were .
CHEEKY, sociable lot, cracking many Jokes
with each other, and the most intellectual and
cultured apparently content to admit that
their common enemy had leveled them all to
the same rank.
Talk to these men, and ninety-nine out of
hundred will 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 tremens and the dark room, but the
rewards of temperance and the horrors of
drink have been set before them day bv dav
with all the ingenuity and force of the ven
cradle superintendent and his assistants.
Every one OF these drink victims knows
how he 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 a
more CHASTITY 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 will never drink again
Which the older boarders have made
over and over again. The walls
OF the chapel are covered with a 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 are 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
ivers all covered with the hob nails of cir
rhosis; kidneys all black and discolored from
drink, and stomachs which resemble nothing
else SO much as half bushel of soap grease.
"Ihls, says the professor, with Just a lit
tie pride in the completeness of his object
lesson, "was taken from prominent board
of trade man who had been a persistent beer
drinker."
land this, he continues, taking his class
IN horrible examples to another CHASTITY OBJ.
ject, "is the liver of government officer
who died with the tremens."
The professors audience look at him and
at the glass jars as if they had just such livers
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 Of
the real disease of intenperance, which
has Its seat in the mind. The floors
OF the homo are paved with good resolutions.
but, alas for the vows of the drink slave! OF
800 men admitted to the home last year 1850
were there for the second time, 175 for the
third time, so for the fourth time, Is for the
fifth time. : for the sixth time, z for the sew
enth time, 5 for the eighth time, and each
for the ninth, tenth and eleventh times,
while one grizzled veteran came in for his
dozenth visit the day was there. He had
the delirium tremens, too, as he had had
them many times before. There are rich
men in Chicago who make periodical visits
to the home. paying their way, keeping close
to their rooms and eating their meals there,
while their families and business associates
think they are out of town on a journey.
WALTER WELLMAN.