fuse to take ice-cream or cake, but drink four glasses of
punch, with many jests as to her fondness for the same, apparently
without any glimmering of the thought that she was drinking to excess,
although her flushed face and loudness of manner were proof of this to
those who were witnesses. Many people have an idea that the finer
drinks, such as wine and its various disguises, do not intoxicate, but
in this they are mistaken. All alcoholics are intoxicating in just the
degree that they contain alcohol. The exhilaration of wine is but the
first step of intoxication, and that means always an accompanying lack
of judgment, a lessening of the sense of propriety.

One young woman who, under ordinary circumstances, was most modest in
deportment, drank at her wedding in response to the toasts to her
health, and grew very jovial, until at last she danced a jig on the
platform at the railway station amid the applause of her exhilarated
friends, who had accompanied the young husband and wife to the train,
as they started on their wedding-journey. What a sorrowful and
undignified beginning to the duties of marriage!

There is no absolute safety for either man or woman except in total
abstinence. The _debauche_ knows the effect of wine, and uses that
knowledge to lead astray the young girl who, if herself, would find no
charm in his blandishments, but who, after the wine supper, has no
will to resist his advances.

A young husband exacted of his bride a promise that she would never
take a glass of wine except in his company, and when asked the reason,
replied that he knew that no woman's judgment was to be trusted after
taking one glass of wine.

Another cause of inebriety in women is found in the patent medicines
advertised as a panacea for all pain, which chemical analysis shows to
be largely alcoholic. Many temperance women would be horrified to know
that they are taking alcohol in varying quantity, from 6 to 47 per
cent., in the bitters, tonics and restorative medicines they are
using, many of which are especially advertised as "purely vegetable
extracts, perfectly harmless, sustaining to the nervous system," etc.

The result of inebriety of parents in inflicting injury upon offspring
has not been well understood in the past, but is becoming recognized.
Dr. McMichael says:

"In every form of insanity the disease is more dangerous in the mother
than in the father, as far as the next generation is concerned. This
is a goo