, or even
like. For not one in fifty of those who take "nips" and "coolers,"
cared for the taste of the perilous stuff at the first or twentieth
trial. He proved himself a man, one of the stronger parts of creation,
by pouring liquid fire down his quailing throat until he could do so
without winking. He swears and smokes cigarettes at street corners for
the same reason.

"I _love_ a dog!" exclaimed a lively young girl, patting a big St.
Bernard.

"Would I were a dog!" sighed an amorous dude.

"Oh, you'll grow!" retorted the fair one, consolingly.

I feel like plagiarizing the saucy hit, in witnessing the desperate
efforts aforementioned on the part of our mistaken boy. Sometimes (let
us thank a merciful heaven that this is so!) he does grow out of the
folly, and into manly self-contempt at the recollection of it.
Often--ah!--the pity and the shame of it!

If somebody were to make it fashionable to take belladonna, aconite or
prussic acid in "safe" doses, three, or six, or a dozen times a day in
defiance of all the medical science in the world, the would-be man
would never be content until he had overcome natural repugnance to the
"bitters," and rate himself as so much higher in the scale of being by
the length of time his constitution could hold out against the deadly
effect of the potation--plume himself upon his superiority to men who
killed themselves by taking a like quantity. To drink one glass of
wine or spirits a day is to venture upon thin ice; when the one glass
has become the three that our boy _must_ have, it is but a question of
time how soon the treacherous crust will give way.

Clearly, then--so clearly that it is difficult to see how anybody,
however blinded by self-conceit, can fail to perceive it--the only
safe thing is to let liquor as a beverage alone. The practice is, at
the best, like kindling the kitchen fire every morning with kerosene.
Insurance agents are slow to take risks upon property where this is
the rule.

Nobody is so besotted as to ask, "Does dram-drinking pay?" There is
not a sane man or woman in America who would hesitate in the reply,
and the answers would all be the same.

If he is a fool who tempts the approach of appetite that may--that
does in seventy-five times out of one hundred--become deadly and
incurable disease, what shall we say of the "strong head" that espies
no sin in social convivialities with the weak brother? Let me tell one
or two stories of the score that