rush upon my memory with the approach
to this part of my subject.

Forty years ago I sat down to the dinner-table of a man who stood high
in the community and church. He was a liberal liver, as his father
had been before him. That father had taken his toddy tri-daily for
seventy years, and died in the odor of sanctity. They could do such
things in that day, and never transcend the three-glass limit. My
godly grandfather did the same, and was never one whit the worse for
liquor in his life. _Their sons and grandsons cannot do it without
ruining themselves, body and soul._

I italicize the sentence. I wish I could write it in letters of fire
over the door of every liquor saloon.

It may be the climate; it may be the high-pressure, fever-heated rate
of modern living; it may as well be that those honest men who made
their own apple whiskey and peach brandy, by their daily dram-drinking
transmitted the taste which adulterated liquors, in the generation
following, were to lash into uncontrollable appetite.

But to my story. My father, one of the first in his day to set the
example of total abstinence "for his brethren and companions' sake,"
had spoke repeatedly in my presence of the harm done by social
drinking, and what influence women could exert for or against the
custom. So I declined wine upon general principles when it was offered
by the courtly host. No verbal comment was made upon my singular
conduct, but the pert fifteen-year-old son of the house took occasion
to drink my health with a dumb grimace, and beckoned the butler
audaciously to fill up his glass, and a distinguished clergyman, whose
parishioner the host was, looked polite astonishment across the table
at the girl who dared. He took his wine gracefully--pointedly, it
seemed to me--an example imitated by his curate, a much younger man.
When we returned to the drawing-room, the master of the house sought
me out, and began to rally me upon the attentions of a young man in
the company to myself, in such a fashion that my cheeks flushed hotly
with indignant astonishment. Lifting my eyes to his, I saw that he was
_drunk_! The horror and dismay of the discovery were inconceivable.
The rest of the interview, which was ended by his wife's appearance
upon the scene to coax him off to his room, left an indelible
impression upon my mind. The Spartans had a way of "drenching" a helot
with liquor, then parading him in his drunken antics before the boys
of the town t