The whiskey in that bottle destroys balance, mental and physical.
It substitutes dreaming and foolish self-confidence for real effort.
It presents all of life's problems and duties in a false light.
It makes those things seem unimportant which are most important.
IT DULLS THE CONSCIENCE, WHICH ALONE CAN MAKE MEN DO THEIR DUTY IN SPITE OF TEMPTATION, AND STRUGGLE ON TO SUCCESS IN SPITE OF EXHAUSTION.
Keep away from this bottle, and keep away from those who praise it. He who hands it to his fellow man is a criminal, and he who hands it to a young man is a worse criminal and a villain. ——
It is a well-established fact that in the usual order of events drunkenness would be handed down from father to son, and hundreds of thousands of families would be ultimately wiped out by whiskey.
It is not true, fortunately, that the son of a drunkard actually inherits drunkenness fully developed. But a drunkard gives to his son weakened nerves and a diminished will power, which tend to make him a drunkard more easily than his father was made a drunkard before him.
The great safeguard of a drunkard's children undoubtedly lies in the warning which they see every day in their home and in the earnest advice which the man who drinks will give to all young people if he have any conscience left.
If the man who drinks would save his own children from the same danger, he can do so better than any other. He need not lose their respect by telling them of his own mistakes, if these mistakes have been hidden from them. Let him simply tell them, without personal reference, what he knows about whiskey, its effects on a man's happiness, success, self-respect and physical comfort.
Whiskey gives a great many things to men. Of these gifts here are a few: