The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-12-07
of going through life at a great race,

OF going through life at q great PACE,
makes it necessary that they should
resort to whip and spurs to maintain
the gait-that is, that having money
they must and will spend it fast, and
spending it fast engenders pleasures
to whose enjoyment the strength
is not equal without the help
of the exciting and stimulating
drink. Another cause is said to be the
prevalent absence of both religious and
moral sentiment, the disdain for every
thing that can not be seen or felt, the
reign of pure reason and realism, the
custom of considering that if one
wants thing one should have it, and
that there should be no restraint upon
ones desire further than the ability to
crafty them. A third cause is given
as the cigarette, it being stated that
many more young and middle-aged
women that we have dreamed of having
acquired fancy or fashion for the
use of this vile little article, and its use
creates thirst, are the thirst which
only strong drink slakes. There are
instances, too, where the dreadful evil
has been brought about by the pre-
scriptions of physicians, the invalid
fore being aware of what is done. But
these instances are few in comparison
to the number of those which result
from the apparently innocent glass
taken at table or elsewhere. The taste
once formed, it may be INDUCED with
all the other tastes. at table or on the
shopping-tour or in the publicity of the
restaurant or in the privacy of the
boudoir, where trouble or depression
of any sort causes the stimulant to be
resorted to with hope that its tenn
porary exhilaration will tide over the
gloom. And then presently its use
creates a craving for its further use,
the morbid appetite is born full
grown, and the fiend has the victim in
hand-she is dipsomaniac; and If she
marries, her son, and perhaps her
grandson, will be n dipsomaniac after
her.
There may be women in middle life
and in old age with whose physician
and whose conscience it may be a
question whether or not they need
the building and sustaining power of
stimulant. But it is evident from facts
to be had at first hand by any who will
investigate them that the young wom-
an, and most especially the young wom-
an of nervous temperament, should
avoid Intoxicating drinks as she would
avoid poison. 1t should again be good
form, as it was fifty years ago, for the
young woman at the dinner table not
merely tostouch her lips to the glass in
courtesy, but to decline it altogether.
These are perilous times; all the cir
cumstances of life are rapid, exhaust
ing, nerve-draining. The great stress
under which we live occasions degen-
Grafton of the nerves, and the swiftest
and easiest resource then is the stmu-
liant. Knowing this, knowing that
young girls are liable to such degener-
alton, it becomes doubly important
that they should be sheltered by the
force of public opinion which may
make it, at any rate, difficult for them
to begin the drinking habit in it's most
insidious and delicate first approaches.
For 1t is to be remembered that it is in
the beginning that the danger lies.
They none of them know what is be-
hind them, what 'heredity from an un-
fortunate ancestor may give them a
fatal impetus once started. But no
heredity can start them on the way If
they refuse to take the first sip, and
make it thus impossible to acquire the
taste or appetite. The first glass may
be harmless except in it's relation to
the last; but there is an incredibly
short space of time, in alas, how many
instances, between the first few drinks
and death from some myterious disease
of the nerves, whose other name is pos
sibly delirium tremens.-Harpsr's Ba-
Ear.