The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-08-21
A COmmOn-Sense Temperance Talk
with Our Boys.

with Our Boys.
There be three things which are too
wonderful for me, yea, four which |
know not" said wise man about the
year 700 b. c.
l, a woman, thinking aloud in the
year of our Lord 1889, might confess to
inability to understand, we will say, to
be well within bounds, some three or
four million things which / should like
to master.
Not one of them puzzles me more
than the problem, "Why do peo-
pie who are we'll drink Intoxicating
liquors?"
The mystery becomes darker when
we see thirsty men pour down their
Threats that which will make them more
thirsty. The friends of the poet Shell
ley excused as eccentricity, and his
enemies quoted as an insane freak, his
habit of eating cayenne pepper to make
a glass of cherry greater luxury to his
tongue. 1t would have been madden
freak had he cultivated taste for pep
per-tea, and added burning to burning,
upon the pretence that what produced
heat would also relieve it,
No intoxicant is palatable to the tyro.
Brandy is like liquid fire. Whiskey is
little more tolerable. Even when mol
lifted by sugar and water, neither is
agreeable to smell or taste.
Champagne makes the tongue Jingle
and chokes the beginner in the act of
tossing off glass; Sherry is astrin-
gent; port and Madeira leave a pecu-
liar and not agreeable taste on the
tongue, which connoisseur in liquors
once defined to me as the I" true cock
roach tarOr-a great charm in fine old
wine"
The expression is not delicate, but
neither is the habit of tippling.
know man who is the laughing
stock of his acquaintance because of
his peripatetc lunches" He always
carries something to eat in his pocket
crackers, cakes, figs, apples, almonds,
raisins, even lump sugar, and munches
continually. | have more than once
met him on the street when his hand
stuck to my glove-a sugary, syrupy
hold both disgusting and diverting. |
do not know that he has dyspepsia. If
he has, the probability is that it does
not deprive him of reason or useful
ness. A man whose stomach is out of
a
citizen. Our glutton harms nobody but
himself.
The same thing is often said, and
arrays falsely, of the man who plunges
into four or five liquor-saloons on his
way to his business in the morning.
"takes a glass - half a dozen times
during the day, and gets thirsty at every
crossing on the way home. The boy who
fiery potion which at first makes his
flesh crawl and facial muscles contract
and grows into love of, and weak de-
pendence upon, what he never needed
and ought never to have relshed, takes
the surest way to hurt his kindred and
friends ever dictated by a tempting
devil.
What is the i" temptation " of which
we hear so much? Why should arden
spirits which our boy does not like, in
cline him to indulgence, more thar
lemonade of which he is fond? Why
not as well buy and devour a sandwich
or cream-puff at every restaurant one
passes, even when he is not hungry, al
invest the same amount in so man,
glasses of what is as poisonous as aeon
ite-and-water, and not more palatable'
There is something back of it all,
something so idiotically weak that i
would never stand alone if foolish, hot
headed boys would get far enough
away from the absurdity to get a cool
steady look at it.
1t is not proof of manliness. o.
knowledge of the world, or fine blooC
and breeding, or even what the Yanke,
approves as smartness," to be able t.
drink distilled liquors without winking
and to make a swill-pai of one
stomach by charging it with fermentet
intoXicants. If these are gentleman,
accomplishments, then have the eX
tremes of arstocracy and democrac
found middle ground where they ma
clasp hands and dwell together in unity
The hod-carrier who gets full" OF
Jersey Lightning at twenty-five cents
quart, exhibits the same symptoms
ache for ache, and qualm for qualm
with the patrician swell who grow
mellow" over French brandy at teI
dollars bottle, and champagne at five
When A" full " and " mellow" they be
have as much alike as if the same pan
ents had given them life and brough
them up. Drink is great leveler i
more senses than one.
" Our boy " who is so young and sill
as to feel more like lord of creatio
when he has befuddled his senses wit
a royal tipple," and made his breat
offensive with cigarettes, is beaten o
his own ground by the scottish loafel
rolling along the wharves, clay pip
filled with bad tobacco in filthy mouth
and his pockets stuffed with pawn
brokers' tickets.