The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1904-09-07
THE GREAT DESTROYER
SOME STARTLING FACTS ABOUT
THE VICE OF lNTEMPsRANcE.

to Its Victim.
This is a true story. readers.
The writer first knew the man in Lon
don. He was successful, owned a bank,
had a fine house in the city and another
in the country, had horses and carriages
and a promising family. He belonged to
Some OF those clubs in which membership
means cheap and desired, distinction.
He had ambition. His friends predicted
I that his success and a~t1uence would grow
and his ambitions be realized as the~years
went by.
Among his other possessions, this man
had one to which he attached, then, but
slight Importance. That was a bottle
which was passed to him quite often by a
solemn butler, who always brought with
1t a smaller bottle containing soda water.
The curious part of the story is that
things, all of those which he originally
valued very highly, and that he never lost
that one small, ~unimportant bit of prop
erty-the plain, black bottle of which, in
the beginning, he thought 30 little.
The man was seen again the other day
toward dusk on the sidewalk of a Western
city. 1t was difficult to recognize him, and
he was evidently surprised that any one
should recognize him, and take the trouble
to check him in his shutting march.
His clothes were dirty and actually
ragged. The brim of his hat was torn.
His face was bloated, his look uncertain.
His difident, timid smile, with all the
old self-reliance gone, was very pathetic. .
The man told his story, and as he told
1t in a restaurant, after being asked to eat
and drink, ne whispered to the waiter: "A
little whisky. please" And the waiter
brought him that same dark bottle that
had been brought to him SD often in the
days Of his prosperity.
The story that he told was his story, but
it was not the story.
The real story was very simple; you who
read this can guess quite easily it's main
features. 1t is a story that you can read
IN the faces of men in every barroom,
prison and %poorhouse, in the faces of men
that commit suicide, of those that commit
murder, Of Others that shuttle along as this
man shufaed-poor,, heart broken failures.
The man had gradually lost his mental
keenness and capacity for business. 9th
ers got his banking business away from
him.
But the bottle stayed with him. He
gradually came to rely more and more
upon it and to value its companionship
as his force of character diminished.
His friends left him, and he had to leave
his clubs.
But the bottle still stuck to him. The
dues that it claimed he paid faithfully. 1t
was there at his elbow when his other
friends had disappeared.
He lost his house in the city and his
house in the country, but that bottle,
which represented now his chief posses
sion. was still with him.
His wife and his children had to 60 to
those who could take care OF them. But
they did not take the bottle away with
them. The wife had tried only too often.
to take away that bottle, but she had to
leave it. She could take away the children
the law allowed her to do that. The
sheriff could take away his horses and his
carriages-the law allowed that. The gov.
erning committees could put him out OF
reputation and remaining chances OF EN-.
ployment with a shake of the head.
But no power on earth and nc law could
take away the bottle, that stuck 10 him,
and he stuck to it.
The man who had travelled with his bot
tie from success and fortune to ragged
clothes and pathetic despair, ate his din
ner and drank his whisky, and, with the
drunkard's pitiful self-deception, said
IT don't look like much, do l? / am
afraid I have been drinking pretty hard
since luck went against me-. 1t is not many
of my old friends that speak to me when
they see me now"
Even then the poor man could not see
that it was whisky that had turned fortune
against hm-not i'll luck that had turned
him to whisky.
Whisky conquers men by deceiring them,
by encouraging them to think that their
drunkenness is some one else fault.
Years before this man had deceived him
self when told by anxious wife n friends
that he must give up that bottle, or give
I'D everything else. And now that all but
the bottle had gone he still deceived him
self into the belief that the bottle, which
caused his misery, had come really as a
friend at the end, as a solace in his mistor-
tunes.
How great a benefit it would be If every
young man in this country could have seen
years ago, and one week ago, the whisky
victim that is told about here.
p~erience of others, but no nan could fail
to be impressed by this example.
The man once had everything that he
wanted, and one thing that he did not
want. or need-the whisky bottle.
Had he given up that one unnecessary
thing. he might have kept all the others,
and the remaining years of his life might
have been happy and useful:
But with the power Of self-deceptlon
which that very bottle supplied to him. he
chung to it to the end Of his good fortune,
and he Will cling to it to the end OF his
life, unless a miracle of selt>control should
save him.
In mere sel6shness and the desire for
wealth, success and ease, there are to DE
found powerful temperance arguments.
Young men must make up their minds, IN
this day of competition and of organized,
e~yacting struggle, that a man who would
20 to the top must not try to carry that
bottle with him.
But for the real man, the young man
worthy the opportunities of modern life,
the argument against whisky should be
based, not on selfishness, but on a noble
desire to be q useful and worthy human
being.
Whisky takes away your money, your
houses, your friends, your prospects OF get
ting those things.
But it does worse than that. 1t takes
away your manhood and your courage; 1T
takes away your right to look other men
in the eye, and your power to use the
strength that nature has given to you.
Whisky destroys the will and supplies
The living arguments with which its victims
deceive themselves. 1t atouses the ioWesG
instincts of vice and of dissipation, and
chokes the possibility Of progress toward
better things.
IF whisky controls you. you cannot be a
man. Leave it alone.-New York Amerl-
can.