The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1908-01-02
GIVES PASSES TO
THE WATER WAGON
Busy Season fer a Washington
Notary
DRINKS J0LLIED ALONG
Swear-off Pledges Duly Recorded Are
Priced BY Drunkards' Wives AS
Cherished New Year
Presents.

From the, Washington Post
The head man of a typewritng bureau
downtown is notary public. Probably
during the next few days he will be the
busiest notary in Washington. He always
is right at this season. He catches, COM
ing and going, the business and notarial
fees of a large percentage of Washing
tons swearers-off.
He was busy stacking in a drawer
freshly printed lot of blanks couple of
afternoons ago.
"Of the rum blanks of the usual kind
he explained, exhibiting one of them.
'Filled in and duly signed and stamped
and sealed they'll be going like hot
tamales presently.
What proportion of them stick it out?
l don't know. I'm not a statistican.
start 'em off on the right road for them
selves. But | can't keep tab on how
or where they finish
of course often I'm there with a bit
of advice if they look as if they'll take
advice. For instance, the great majority
of them want to swear off drinking with
the beginning of the New Year. Now
that isn't any good scheme, in this town
where there's so much doing on New
Years Day. If there's ever a day when
an earnest and jealous rummy wants to
drink, it's on New Years Day in Wash
ington
Usually l call the attention of my
swearers-off to this phase of it. l advise
them that the better day to swear off
in this town is January 2. Few of
them seem to have thought it out this
way themselves. But nearly all of them
see it, and see it at once, when the thing
is pointed out to them. 1t gives them
one final blowout on one of Washing
tons chief blowout days.
IF they look as if they are amenable
to reason l frequently offer them a bit
of advice, too, as to the length of time
they'd better embrace In their swear
papers. You see most men, when they
reach the sweak-off stage, are so low
spirited from remorse and alcoholic de-
preston and things that they demand
that they be sworn off for life, or for
five or 10 or 20 years, or other unreason-
able periods of time.
" Say, fix it up these say to me
hoarsely, so that 1 can never take an
other drop as long as l live without max
ing DANCED perjurer of myself
Drunks Must Be Jolied Along.
well, these chaps have got to be rea-
soned with You see, a rummy who ties
himself up for life that way has really
got small chance to stick at all
has sworn off only for a year, say. The
job doesn't look so Internally difficult.
He always has the fun he's going to
have at the windup of his abstinent year
to look forward to.
He has no excuse whatever to make
for himself for taking a drink. The for
lifer can and does say to HIMSELF Well,
as long as I'm tied up for life and there
isn't a chance on earth of my sticking
for life, why, | might just as well be-
gin again right now as any other time,
and then resumes his habit just as soon
as his gloom wears off. The man who
is pinned merely for a year, of course,
hasn't that sort of oil wherewith to un-
loose the wheels of his indetermina-
ton.
He has a far better chance to win
out by sticking throughout the year NOM
mated in the bond, and, while I'm not
giving out statistics, | don't mind saying
that the chaps who stick to their swearing
off paper for a year very often come
right back and put up their eassqds for
another year. They're in shype| to do
that you see W
4 put it in the same way to the fellows
who come rushing and saying that they
want to swear off for five or ten or some
other unreasonable sum of years.
"A great many of the swearers off who
take out their water-wagon papers at
this season say that they want those
documents as New Years gifts for their
wives. The women folks are behind most
of the swear-offs.
1.-The women whose husbands are
drinking too much for their own or any
body else's good connected with them tell
their spouses that they'd appreciate a
duly recorded and witnessed swear-off
paper more than any other New Years
gift that could be made them. This gets
the over-drinkers to thinking, and the
more conscientious chap thinks about
the spc< and spanness and the binding
ness of a swear-off paper the more like
ly he is to fall for one of them.
Plenty of fellows do the swear-off
thing at the instgation of their sweet
hearts. They're forced up to the be-good
bench by the girls, and they take their
medicine like little men, particularly
when circumstances are so framed thar
they've got to. BY that l mean that
there are chaps whose sweethears force
them to take the drinking pledge for
a year and sometimes for longer periods.
on peril that if they don't stick to the
oath there'll be no wedding bells.
Wifey Comes With Hubby.
II have yet to see one of these fellows
thus bound to fall down. Men may-do, L
grieve to say, break promises to. the
wives of their bosoms in a matter of
this sort, but not to their fiances if |
know anything about the swear-off bust
ness, and I've been filling in those blanks
for long time now.
mot infrequenty mans wife will ac-
company him when he drops in to swear
off. / never considered that good bust
ness You can make a jumping horse
hop a hedge, even IL he's balky, but you
can't make him win a race. A swear-off.
to have any of the good gravy of abso-
lutte intent in it, has got to be volun-
tary.
"a chap who's led up to the swear-off
line by his wife always has the grouchy
hold-out to excuse lapse that heswore
off under wifely duress The fellow who
swims right in, all on his own hook and
initiative, without having told his wife a
word of it, is the boy who's most likely
to stick.
II never have mace out swear-off pa
partially intoxicated. You see. while
swearing off is a thing that we talk about
lightly enough it really isn't much of a
laughing matter when you look it over.
The man who go-S to the swearing-off
stage always has hurt himself and hurt
others heap, or he wouldn't be meditat-
ing swearing off And swearing off is
Job for sober man, not for fellow
whose senses are obfuscated.
mo determination framed up under the
influence of a strong emotion, much less
while under the influence of drink ever
can amount to very much. That's my
view, anyhow Swearing qs is matter
for man to lie in bed and think over
for bunch of nights in row. and while
his thinking apparatus is in regular work.