APPLICATION.
Many and great are the injuries of which men are guilty towards each other, for the sake of gratifying some base appetite: for there are those who would not scruple to bring desolation upon their country, and run the hazard of their own necks into the bargain, rather than balk a wicked inclination, either of cruelty, ambition, or avarice. But it were to be wished, that all who are hurried on by such blind impulses, would consider a moment before they proceed to irrevocable execution. Injuries and wrongs not only call for revenge and reparation with the voice of equity itself, but oftentimes carry their punishment along with them; and, by an unforeseen train of events, are retorted on the head of the actor, who not seldom, from a deep remorse, expiates them upon himself by his own hand.
THE DRUNKEN HUSBAND.
A certain Woman had a Drunken Husband, whom she had endeavoured to reclaim by several ways, without effect. She, at last, tried this stratagem: when he was brought home one night dead drunk, she ordered him to be carried to a burial-place, and there laid in a vault, as if he had been dead indeed. Thus she left him, and went away till she thought he might be come to himself, and grown sober again. When she returned, and knocked at the door of the vault, the man cried out, who’s there? I am the person, says she, in a dismal tone of voice, that waits upon the dead folks, and I am come to bring you some victuals. Ah, good waiter, says he, let the victuals alone and bring me a little drink, I beseech thee. The Woman hearing this, fell to tearing her hair, and beating her breast in a woeful manner: Unhappy wretch that I am, says she, this was the only way that I could think of to reform the beastly sot; but instead of gaining my point, I am only convinced that his drunkenness is an incurable habit, which he intends to carry with him into the other world.
APPLICATION.
This Fable is intended to shew us the prevalence of custom; and how by using ourselves to any evil practice, we may let it grow into such a habit as we shall never be able to divest ourselves of. “O! that men should put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains!” There is no vice which gains an ascendant over us more insensibly, or more incurably, than drunkenness: it takes root by degrees, and comes at length to be past both remedy and shame. Habitual drunkenness stupifies the senses, destroys the understanding, fills its votaries with diseases, and makes them incapable of business. It cuts short the thread of life, or brings on an early old age, besides the mischief it does in the mean time to a man’s family and affairs, and the scandal it brings upon himself: for a sot is one of the most despicable and disgusting characters in life. After he has destroyed his reasoning faculties, and thus shewn his ingratitude to the giver of them, he flies to palliatives as a remedy for the diseases which his intemperance has caused, and goes on in a course of taking whets and cordials, and more drink, till he falls a martyr to the vice, to which through life he has been a slave.