The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-05-04
DONALD RHUE'S LETTER.

We give editorial prominence in this weeks In
termountain Catholic to the letter of a gentleman
signing himself Donald Rhue. He has mailed us
his card and address as evidence of his sincerity
and as proof of his Identity Donald Rhue has writ
ten remarkable letter; in fact we are not sure
that have caught the full import of it, and would
be glad to hear from him again or from any OF
readers who have gone through like exper-
fence.
A LETTER THAT SHOULD BE READ.
To the Editor: Sir; 1 read, with much inter
est and indeed appreciation last weeks article IN
The Intermountain Catholic on Treating Alcohol
ism as a Disease" I am an old-timer and in thirty
years l have not read on this subject anything as
sympathetic and as sensible 1t carried with it a
note of kindly forbearance or to use the language
of the bell-ringer, ut rang true" We drinking
men, and those of US who go on a spree once or
twice year, and then spend four FIVE days in
hell of mental and physical agony, and then "cut
out the BOOZE" more influenced by temper
ance sermons and lectures, and magazine and news
paper rot on drink than are chorus girls by the
lamentations of Jeremias. The foul and I'M Chris
tian epithets flung at from pulpit and platform,
the coaxing, weening pharasaism of those, who, in
Scotland, we call the "uncogude" and who
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer
And without sneering, teach the rest to sncer,
and the unctious appeals of the "Oily Gamons" of
the ministerial conferences carry no weight with
us. Allow me to explain myself. The sensible men
among us who, from time to time, slip cog or
jump the track do not question the sincerity the
honest hope of these people for our reformation.
We simply are persuaded that they do not under
+l,o &c
call it disease When man rises in meeting of
intelligent men, who assembled to discuss some
subject involving expert knowledge and shows from
his remarks that he has no practical information
to give to the meeting those listening to him may
not mpugn the sincerity of his Intentions but they
will have their own opinion of his good or common
sense.
man who intends to bid on timber limit VIII
either explore the limit himself or send an expert
bush ranger to do it for him. If a bench of the
ablest judges in America waited upon him and of
fered him the sum of their accumulated wisdom to
assist him in his contemplated purchase their adj
wise would have no influence upon his decision He
will be governed in his action by his own knowledge
of the limit or by the report of his ranger. Now
you understand why sermons, lectures and essays
on temperance carry no weight with us. We have
explored the 'limit" and we know it all Bear with
me if I appeal to your indulgence for a further
hearing. When 1 was at Dwight, taking the "Kee-
ley cure" ten years ago. met there and talked with
clergymen. doctors, lawyers and business men, who
like myself were taking the baths" These were
men of practical good sense, some of them of
bust minds and bodies, men who had succeeded in
their callings, many of them. They came here, as
came, after repeated heroic and manly efforts to
fight it down, after falling again and again and
rising again and again. They came here covered
with the garments of humiliation, carrying the
scars and few of them their yet bleeding wounds,
of insult, of abuse, of advice, reprobation, of
scorn and contempt to make despairing attempt
to bid goodbye forever to the damned stuff" These
are the men whom doctors in other days called de-
generates, and now say are diseased. 1t took the
learned gentlemen six thousand years to arrive at
this mile stone of truth. These are they whom
ministers temperance lecturers and pharasacal old
cranks of both sexes, from immemoria times have
been denouncing as "Sons of Belial," Children of
Malediction," and the "Accursed of God" Yet
there was not one of these denounced men that had
not time and again gone through the fires of hell