“An ounce of French brandy,” said the old Dutchman, looking at the prescription. “Well, dat is goot; but how much is an ounce?” Nobody who was present could inform him. “I know what a quart, a pint, or a gill of brandy is,” said the Dutchman, “but I never yet have had a customer call for an ounce. Well, my son, go to the schoolmaster; he is a learned man, and tell him I wish to know how much is one ounce.”
The message was carried. The schoolmaster, occupied with his pupils, and not liking the interruption, hastily, and without further inquiries of the messenger, turned over his Bonnycastle, and arriving at the table of avoirdupois weight, replied, “Tell your father that sixteen drams make an ounce.”
The boy took back the message correctly, and when the old Dutchman heard it, his countenance brightened up. “A goot physician, a clever man—I only have drank twelve drams a-day, and he tells me to take sixteen. I have taken one oath when I was drunk, and I keep it; now dat I am sober I take anoder, which is, I will be very sick for de remainder of my days, and never throw my physic out of window.”
There was a cold water celebration at Boston, on which occasion the hilarity of the evening was increased by the singing of the following ode. Nobody will venture to assert that there is any spirit in the composition, and, judging from what I have seen of American manners and customs, I am afraid that the sentiments of the last four lines will not be responded to throughout the Union.
Ode.
In Eden’s green retreats
A water-brook that played
Between soft, and mossy seats
Beneath a plane-tree’s shade,
Whose rustling leaves
Danced o’er its brink,
Was Adam’s drink,
And also Eve’s.
Beside the parent spring
Of that young brook, the pair
Their morning chaunt would sing;
And Eve, to dress her hair,
Kneel on the grass
That fringed its side,
And made its tide
Her looking-glass.
And when the man of God
From Egypt led his flock,
They thirsted, and his rod
Smote the Arabian rock,
And forth a rill
Of water gushed,
And on they rushed,
And drank their fill.
Would Eden thus have smil’d
Had wine to Eden come?
Would Horeb’s parching wild
Have been refreshed with rum
And had Eve’s hair
Been dressed in gin
Would she have been
Reflected fair?
Had Moses built a still
And dealt out to that host,
To every man his gill,
And pledged him in a toast,
How large a band
Of Israel’s sons
Had laid their bones
In Canaan’s land?
Sweet fields, beyond Death’s flood,
Stand dressed in living green,
For, from the throne of God,
To freshen all the scene,
A river rolls,
Where all who will
May come and fill
Their crystal bowls.
If Eden’s strength and bloom
Cold water thus hath given—
If e’en beyond the tomb,
It is the drink of heaven—
Are not good wells,
And crystal springs,
The very things
For our hotels?
As I shall return to the subject of intemperance in my examination of society, I shall conclude this chapter with an extract from Miss Martineau, whose work is a strange compound of the false and the true:—“My own convictions are, that associations, excellent as they are for mechanical objects, are not fit instruments for the achievement of moral aims; that there has been no proof that the principle of self-restraint has been exalted and strengthened in the United States by the Temperance movement while the already too great regard to opinion, and subservience to spiritual encroachment, have been much increased; and, therefore, great as may be the visible benefits of the institution, it may at length appear that they have been dearly purchased.”
Note 1. Not long afterwards a prominent Presbyterian clergyman of Philadelphia thought fit to preach and publish a sermon, wherein it was set forth and conclusively proved, that on such and such contingencies of united religious effort of the religious public, the majority of the American people could be made religious; consequently they might carry their religious influence to the polls; consequently the religious would be able to turn all the profane out of office; and consequently, the American people would become a Christian nation!—Voice from America by an American Gentleman.