The hero, Colonel Jack, is giving an account of his third wife:—
I was infinitely satisfied with my wife, who was, indeed, the best-humoured woman in the world, and a most accomplished beautiful creature—indeed, perfectly well bred, and had not one ill quality about her; and this happiness continued without the least interruption for about six years. But I at last had a disappointment of the worst sort even here. She caught cold, and grew very sickly. In being so continually ill and out of order, she very unhappily got a habit of drinking cordials and hot liquors.
Drink, like the devil, when it gets hold of any one, though but a little, goes on by little and little to their destruction; so in my wife, her stomach being weak and faint, she first took this cordial, then that—till, in short, she could not live without them; and from a drop to a sup, from a sup to a dram, from a dram to a glass, and so on to two, till at last she took, in short, to what we call drinking.
As I likened drink to the devil in its gradual possession of the habits and person, so it is yet more like the devil in its encroachment on us, where it gets hold of our senses. In short, my beautiful, good-humoured, modest, well-bred wife, grew a beast, a slave to strong liquor, and would be drunk at her own table, nay, in her own closet by herself, till she lost her beauty, her shape, her manners, and at last her virtue.
Oh! the power of intemperance! And how it encroaches on the best disposition in the world; how it comes upon us gradually and insensibly, and what dismal effects it works upon our morals, changing the most virtuous, regular, well-instructed, and well-inclined tempers into worse than brutal! Never was a woman more virtuous, sober, modest, and chaste, than my wife. She never so much as desired to drink anything strong. It was with the greatest entreaty that I could prevail with her to drink a glass or two of wine, and rarely, if ever, above one or two at a time; even in company she had no inclination to it. Not an immodest word ever came out of her mouth, nor would she suffer it in any one else in her hearing without resentment.
But during her illness and weakness, her nurse pressed her, whenever she found herself faint, and a sinking of her spirits, to take this cordial, and that dram, till it became necessary to keep her alive, and gradually increased to a habit, so that it was no longer her physic but her food. Her appetite sunk and went quite away, and she ate little or nothing, but she came at last to a dreadful height, that, as I have said, she would be drunk in her dressing-room before eleven o’clock in the morning, and, in short, at last was never sober.
Let any one judge of my case now; I, that for six years thought myself the happiest man alive, was now the most miserable distracted creature. As to my wife, I loved her well and pitied her heartily. I almost locked her up, and set people over her to take care of her; but her health was ruined, and in about a year and a half she died.
Rightly did the poet Gay in his Court of Death make Death give the palm to intemperance amongst the claimant diseases:—
Merit was ever modest known.
What, no physician speak his right!
None here! but fees their toil requite.
Let then Intemperance take the wand,
Who fills with gold their zealous hand:
You, Fever, Gout, and all the rest—
Whom wary men as foes detest—
Forego your claims. No more pretend;
Intemperance is esteemed a friend;
He shares their mirth, their social joys,
And as a courted guest destroys.
The charge on him must justly fall,
Who finds employment for you all.
Amongst the many who shortened their days through excess, must be mentioned the name of Thomas Parnell. Dr. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, observes:—