The Washington times., 1894-11-05
PLEADING FOR INEBRIATES
DR.. Godding Makes an Eloquent Ap-
peal for an Asylum fer Them.
HIS EFFORT so FAR FRUITLESS
Alcohol and It's Compounds Denounced as
Food Fit Only for Devils-Drunkennes
as Disease Acquired and Inherited
Some Sad Pictures of Wrecked Youth Cited.

An eloquent plea for the establishment of
an inebriate asylum in the District of Colum-
bia was made last evening by DR.. w. w. God
ding, superintendent of the Government Hos
pital for the Insane, during his very ablo
lecture before the temperance society of the
North Presbyterian Church, on street, be-
tween Ninth and Tenth sire cts northwest.
Washington has a workhouse and an aims
house." he said. 81 would to God also that
it had an inebrlate home. II you will pardon
the egotism, l have dreamed of such home.
l have labored for it in season and out of sea-
son; have assisted in drafting bills have
pleaded with Congressional committees, and
seen laws enacted in one House only 10 be
swallowed up and lost in the hopeless maze of
bills waiting for passage in the other. The
way has been long and it is hope deferred
that maketh the heart sick Yet when l re-
fleet that this asylum or home, this eddy out
Of the maelstrom, is all that is left for the vic
tins of strong drink, the only shetering arms
that can save them, | still feel that Congress
VIII grant II, ana lIul even may i've 70 Seo
here in the District of Columbia an industrial
home where the poor walls OF fortune and dis
ease may come, without money or friends,
find refuge and perchance be healed.
''These burning questions of the inebriate
and his treatment, and who is his keeper, and
who has made him so, demand to be heard,
not alone in public assemblies and crowded
halls, but in the workshop in the stores. on
the street, and wherever men come together,
there fitting word for the great phian-
throphy may well be said. Ii the public
sentiment which already exists in the District
of Columbia can be voiced and that voice be
made to reach the ear of Congress by your
appeal TO each individual Congressman, the
work is done, the refuge will be opened, and
those who between the jail, the asylum,
the workhouse, and the gutter have found no
rest will be gathered home at last.
lis life worth living?' caustcaly asks Nal
lock, and Ingersou, with his plea for suicide,
has satisfied some fools that it is not. Is life
worth living? To that question scientific
agnosticism will hardly venture negative
answer. There is no young man of American
birth, sound in mind and'body, whatever may
be his faith or want of faith, VINO does not
believe that life is worth living and full of
glorious opportunities for him. What young
man for moment doubts that in his indi-
vidual case the possibilities are the probabili-
ties. To the voice OF the future calling TO
him to come and possess the earth. his heart
unhesitatingly makes answer: 1 come.
"In the snbline audacity of faith,
BE thou renowned he 10 the mountain saith,
And with ambitious feet Secure and proud,
Ascends the ladder leaning on the clOUd'
Referring to one OF the maxims of wealthy
Mr.. Worldly Wiseman, which says, Food is
the gift of God, alcohol is food" DR.. God
ding continued:
Here, doubtless, we shall be met by the
modern seeker after exact truth, from whose
crucible in the last analysis nothing escapes
but the real essence of things, which being
spiritual can only be spiritually discerned,
and 80 will never be found in the 'caput nor
tuum' and ashes at the bottom of mis- life
studies, and we shall be asked if it is not true
in q sense that alcohol is a food and recog-
nlzed as such by the highest authorities on
physiology. Psychologists have held and still
maintain the most contradictory views on
this subject but under certain conditions and
in a limited sense we may admit that it is
food. But the mistake made by so many
young men is that OF supposing it food in
the sense in which mothers milk is food
and of imbibing it as freely.
"A food, is it? When we turn to the statis-
ties of poverty and crime. and see what rum
has made them; when we open Darkest Eng
land, and read what that practical Christian
Gen. Booth. says of the rivers OF gin in Lon
don, that like the streams of equatorial At
rica impede human progress in all directions;
when we enter our asylums and hospitals and
stand in the presence of the wrecks Of mind
and body that whisky has made-thenI 1 think
that such nutriment. if it indeed be nutri-
ment, is fit only for devils food"
Referring to drunkenness as a disease the
learned doctor said: "God help the hapless
offspring who come into the world with the
narcotic taint of inherited thirst. for they suf-
fer for the indulgence and sin of another
generation.
1.-The good old homespun virtues of COM
mon honesty and strict sobriety have | am
sorry to say. become rare. and in this age OF
steam and high pressure already command
premium in the labor markets of the world
The man whom we trust to drive the locomo-
tive must have steady nerves and a clear head.
In the storms of life, no less than with ships at
sea, where to swerve a single point may mean
shipwreck, we demand that he who walks the
quarterback shall be sober.
Wealth when it spawns in these latter days
throws off a great many youths who aspire to
be the young men of the period; to set the
fashion for the fools who ape them. They
are but the product of too much money and
too little brains. Their faith and their lives
are both made up of negotiations and in the
self indulgent career which they elect TO fol.
low, their existence in its usefulness rivals
that of the grasshopper. and in its selfshness
becomes libel on creative wisdom.
"Many of the young men OF to-day who in
herit wealth, inherit with it so little of any
thing else The rich mans son of to-day, our
knight errant, is too often only a dude, his
mind being principally exercised over the fit
OF his clothes; his noblest aim to improve the
breed. not of men, but of dogs; his highest
ambition to drive tally-ho coach He is
clever at compounding punch. but better at
imbibing it. Outwardly punctili0us. turn
him inside out he would resemble Lazarus,
his moral nature being full of sores.
''The saddest picture to me is where the
young man, naturally noble, generous and
high-minded, finds himself in the LAGOON
folds cf the alcohol habit at last. He has, in
deed. sinned deeply: yes. yes, and yet
sometimes think mora sinned against by
society than shining. for his nature. always
confldiug and open-hearted, has not learned
to say mo- TO the wine that as a loving bev-
erage we pressed upon him. Perchance,
some vice In the blood, some neurosis that
was q legacy from the past planted the thirst,
and plotting out the will, delivered him,
bound hand and foot. into the burning, fiery
furnace Of appetite Robert Burns, Charles
Lamb. Edgar A. Poe-all literature abounds
in these sad cases.
''It is a disease Of which sin may have laid
the foundation, but the pathological changes
I'm the brain. these lie outside OF the plane of
moral accountability. and are in the nature
OF the wages OF sin rather than the sin itself.
Republicans and Democrats
Alike will want Wednesdays TIMES. It will
contain the best and most complete story of