I awoke from my reverie, and found myself standing, not in a strange land, but in the streets of my own city, before a fine brick building, ornamented with cut stone, proudly rearing its showy front, and looking down with contempt upon the humble homes of the poor that surrounded it; and glittering in the sunshine shone the gilded sign-board over its doors, "IMPORTED WINES AND LIQUORS."
Yes, the dram-seller lives and thrives with us, too—the vender of the shadow of happiness, and dealer in ignorance, disease, degradation, poverty, ruined reputations, strifes, jealousies, insanity, delirium tremens, and dishonored and early graves. The drunkards whom he makes are wretched enough, and commit, through their intemperance, the most grievous of crimes; but I know not if the sins and miseries of the dram-seller be not worse and far more hopeless of reparation than theirs. For in one it is often the result of weak and uneducated minds, unable to use God's gifts in moderation, or to bear up against the trials and temptations of this life; but the other must be a cold, heartless, calculating, money-worshipping soul, who can thus fatten himself upon the sinful appetites of others, and from year to year defraud his neighbor by the sale of his vile, adulterated trash, and take the hard-earned dollars of his customers in exchange for it without a blush.
The dram-seller and his traffic is a well-known and prominent rock of scandal in the community, whether it be the secret sale from one barrel of beer or liquor in the earth-floored shanty, or the flourishing business of a well-stocked and gilded saloon.
What are the sins of the dram-seller? He sins against justice and against charity.
He sins against justice. To all who have examined the matter, it is a well-established fact that in every case this business is necessarily connected with the sale of false, adulterated articles, and with an unreasonable, unrighteous, and usurious profit. And the only excuse any one connected with it has ever been able to offer is, that they are obliged, if they sell at all, to keep cheap liquors for poor people, or that, if the article is adulterated, it is none of their business, for they sell it, either just as they purchase it from large dealers, or, at the worst, only add a certain modicum of water, as they say the raw spirit might do the poor people harm!
But they know the fact as well as I know it, that scarcely one drop is dealt out by them that is not more or less adulterated; that their so-called wines never saw the juice of the grape; that their brandies, and rums, and cordials are all composed of proof spirit, coloring matter, drugs of the most poisonous character and deadly strength, and water. I am in possession of a document circulated privately among these manufacturers of "imported wines and liquors," which purports to give recipes for making any kind of wine, liquor, or cordial you can name, with the address of certain houses where the drugs I have alluded to may be obtained.
A friend was invited by a dram-seller to visit his vaults. Taking out the bung of a large hogshead, he drew up from the liquor by a cord a gauze bag of very small dimensions, and, with a peculiar wink of his eye, remarked, "You see, that's the way we manage it." "Oh! that's the way you manage it, is it?" the friend replied. "I am very glad to know it."
The cheap materials from which the drink ordinarily sold is manufactured, and the large adulteration with water made on their own premises by the retailers, enables them to make the most exorbitant, usurious profits. The popular wonder is, how so many can carry on the business and make money by it. That is the reason.