Jack. What is a teetotaler, Tom? I have often heard the term, without fully knowing what it meant.
Tom. A teetotaler, Jack, is one who conscientiously abstains from every description of intoxicating drink: rum, whiskey, brandy, gin, cordials, wine, cider, ale, and even beer.
Jack. What, Tom, you don’t mean to say that you give such a wide berth to beer? Tell that to the marines, for old sailors won’t believe it.
Tom. I do say it, Jack. I give even beer a wide berth. Don’t you know that it contains alcohol? And what is perhaps worse, there is but little beer and ale made for sale that does not contain many hurtful ingredients—poisonous drugs. No, no; nothing for me that can in the slightest degree affect my noble reason, that great gift of Almighty God. Pure cold water—Adam’s sparkling, life-invigorating ale—and coffee and tea, are my beverages. Try them once, Jack, and the word of an honest sailor for it, you will never go back to alcohol, or any of its accursed family.
Jack. Well, Tom, I think I will. The fact is, you seem to be so well in body and happy in mind, so comfortable and respectable in worldly matters, and speak so cheeringly of another world—to which I know that the rapid current of time is hurrying us both—that I’ll follow in your wake, and try to make a little headway in these things myself.
Tom. Well said, my hearty. Give me another shake of your honest fist. Now I begin to recognize my old true-hearted friend and messmate Jack Halyard in his early days, when we swore friendship to each other across the sea-chest, on board the Alert. You are the man for me, Jack; so come up with me at once to the Sailor’s Home, and I’ll rig you out a little more decently—make you look a little more shipshape—and to-night we will go to the great temperance-meeting at the seamen’s bethel chapel, and you shall sign the pledge, which will be the wisest act of your life, Jack, as I’ll wager a barrel of pork against a mouldy biscuit: aye, I’ll warrant me you will say so at some future day. There will be plenty of blue-jackets there that will lend a hand in so good a cause.
Jack. Well, heave ahead, old messmate. I did think of tapering off—quitting by degrees—but perhaps the safest and easiest plan will be, to break off at once.
Tom. That is the way, Jack, the only true way. Tapering off is not what it is cracked up to be. It is very hazardous; for it keeps up excitement, and the taste of the liquor hangs about the palate. Don’t you remember Ben Hawser, one of the best maintopmen of the Alert—he who saved the first Luff from drowning at Port Mahon, when he fell overboard from the cutter?
Jack. Surely I do, Tom. Do you suppose I could forget such a noble-hearted fellow as Ben Hawser—as fine a fellow as ever laid out upon a yard, or stood at the wheel; and such a firstrate marlinespike seaman in the bargain? No, indeed.
Tom. You are right, Jack. He was a noble fellow, and a thorough seaman. There was nothing of the lubber about poor Ben: always the first man at his duty, and ready to share his last copper with a fellow-mortal in distress, whether seaman or landsman. Well, Ben once got into a great frolic ashore, and kicked up such a bobbery that the watchman clapped him in limbo for the night; and the justice next morning gave him such a clapper-clawing with his tongue, and bore down upon him so hard with his reprimands, as I think the lawyers call it, and raked him so severely fore and aft with his good advice, to wind up with, that Ben felt pretty sheepish; and, as he told us afterwards, didn’t know whether he was on his head or his heels—on the truck, or on the keelson. He felt so sore about it, and so much ashamed of himself, that he did not touch a drop for six weeks. He then thought he would take it moderately just enough to keep the steam up—or, as some folks say, he thought he would be a temperate drinker. O, Jack, that temperate drinking is a famous net of old Satan’s to catch fools in. Your temperate drinker treads on slippery ground; for as I verily believe that alcohol is one of the most active imps for the destruction of both body and soul, the temperate drinker is too often gradually led on by the fiend, until the habit becomes fixed and inveterate; and he drags a galling chain, each day riveted more strongly, and the poor wretch hourly becomes more callous to shame, until he sinks into the grave—the drunkard’s grave.