Straight Talks.
In the lowest depth there is a lower depth, which not only threatens to devour, but which will infallibly devour the too-persistent roysterer. For such I labour not. The seer of visions, the would-be strangler of serpents, the baffled rat-hunter, and other victims to the over-estimation of human capacity will get no assistance, beyond infinite pity, from the mind which guides this pen. The dog will return to his own vomit; the wilful abuser of the goods sent by a bountiful Providence is past praying for. But to others who are on the point of crossing the Rubicon of good discretion I would urge that there will assuredly come a time when the pick-me-up will lose its virtue, and will fail to chase the sorrow from the brow, to minister to the diseased mind. Throughout this book I have endeavoured to preach the doctrine of moderation in enjoyment. Meat and drink are, like fire, very good servants, but the most oppressive and exacting of slave-drivers. Therefore enjoy the sweets of life, whilst ye can; but as civilised beings, as gentlemen, and not as swine. For here is a motto which applies to eating and drinking even more than to other privileges which we enjoy:
“Wisely, and slow;
They stumble who run fast!”
A resort to extremes is always to be deprecated, and many sensible men hold the total abstainer in contempt, unless he abstain simply and solely because a moderate use of “beer and baccy” makes him ill; and this man is indeed a rarity. The teetotaller is either a creature with no will-power in his composition, a Pharisee, who thanks Providence that he is not as other men, or a lunatic. There can be no special virtue in “swearing off” good food and good liquor; whether for the sake of example, or for the sake of ascending a special pinnacle and posing to the world as the incarnation of perfection and holiness. In the parable, the Publican was “justified” rather than the Pharisee, because the former had the more common sense, and knew that if he set up as immaculate and without guile he was deceiving himself and nobody else. But here on earth, in the nineteenth century, the Publican stands a very poor chance with the Pharisee, whether the last-named assume the garb of “Social Purity,” or “Vigilance,” or the sombre raiment of the policeman. This is not right. This is altogether wrong. The total abstainer, the rabid jackass who denies himself—or claims that he does so—the juice of the grape, and drinks the horrible, flatulent, concoctions known as “temperance beverages,” is just as great a sinner against common sense as that rabid jackass the habitual glutton, or drunkard, who, in abusing the good things of life—the gifts which are given us to enjoy—is putting together a rod of rattlesnakes for his own back.
There is nothing picturesque about drunkenness; and there is still less of manliness therein. There is plenty of excuse for the careless, happy-go-lucky, casual over-estimater, who revels, on festive occasions, with his boon companions. ’Tis a poor heart that never rejoices; and wedding-feasts, celebrations of famous victories, birthday parties, and Christmas festivities have been, and will continue to be, held by high and low, from the earliest times. But there is no excuse, but only pity and disgust, for the sot who sits and soaks—or, worse still, stands and soaks—in the tavern day after day, and carries the brandy-bottle to bed with him. I have lived through two-thirds of the years allotted to man, and have never yet met the man who has done himself, or anybody else, any good by eating or drinking to excess. Nor is the man who has benefited himself, or society, through scorning and vilifying good cheer, a familiar sight in our midst. “Keep in the middle of the road,” is the rule to be observed; and there is no earthly reason why the man who may have applied “hot and rebellious liquors” to his blood, as a youth, should not enjoy that “lusty winter” of old age, “frosty but kindly,” provided those warm and warlike liquors have been applied in moderation.
I will conclude this sermon with part of a verse of the poet Dryden’s imitation of the twenty-ninth Ode of Horace, though its heathen carpe diem sentiments should be qualified by a special caution as to the possible ill effects of bidding too fierce a defiance to the “reaction day.”
“Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own;
He who, secure within, can say;—
To-morrow, do thy worst, I’ve liv’d to-day!”