Midnight has come, and though one or two of the weaker ones have already succumbed, and are lying prone upon the floor, still the song goes bravely on. And now is the landlord’s time to make his money. As a matter of business form or semblance, change must be returned after every treat has been paid for, and they are now all so “fou’” that not one of them can count straight. Perhaps out of a one-pound note ($4) given the landlord for a treat, only three shillings or so are returned; or out of three or four shillings handed him for the next treat, only a few pence are returned for change; and so the landlord dilutes his whiskey and keeps the cash, until daylight comes upon the bouters, when they disperse, with sore heads and stomachs, while the landlord has the money.
This is a fair representation of an ordinary drinking bout of fifty years ago, as told me by those who then participated in them. And they were so common that one was usually going on at one of the hotels every night of the week—but, let us hope, excepting the Sabbath night. During the day these men were about their ordinary avocations, for even if they did drink, they worked. Were this fact not so, our country would not be what it is to-day, for downright hard work alone has made it.
Those drinkers and midnight revellers were young, or not more than middle-aged men, and often lived fast lives. The consequence was that not one in a hundred of them lived to be sixty, and hardly one to any advanced age.
It is usually supposed that delirium tremens can only be produced by long years of constant and excessive drinking; but authentic information comes to me of a widow woman who, about the period of which I write, began keeping hotel near the village of ——, and who had two or more sons, young men. These young men, strong and burly up to that time, now spent most of their time drinking. As soon as the effects of one glass of whiskey had in a measure passed off, they would ask their mother for more.
“Indeed, you shall have all you want to drink, for you are your mammy’s own boys.” And this was said in the spirit of the greatest kindness. So the boys drank, and drank again, keeping themselves stupid from day to day. In six months those two boys, who had never before drank to any excess, had the delirium tremens and died. All this in six months!
Allow me to here describe one of my most vivid boyish impressions of thirty-five years or so ago:—
At the rear of a hotel in Oshawa was a garden enclosed by a high tight-board fence, in which black currant bushes mostly were planted. A young Englishman had been boarding about two months at the hotel, drinking constantly and spending money freely. It is only fair to add that this young man had been drinking just as heavily, apparently, before he came to this hotel; and it is more than probable that a fond father and loving mother had sent him out from England in the vain hope of reforming him, for from his dress and manner he had evidently belonged to a good family. It was noticed that he had the “blues” slightly, and got to spending considerable of his time in the stable. From the stable he finally made his way into the garden enclosure, and somehow possessed himself of a club.
It was summer time, and I remember most vividly, as a little urchin, looking through a knot-hole of the fence, and seeing this poor fellow, after remaining quiet for a moment, with his eyes fixed, make a sudden bound and strike with his club with all his might, killing imaginary snakes among the currant bushes. A period of rest would follow, when he would sit or stand in a contemplative mood for a few minutes, and as suddenly almost as gunpowder explodes, strike behind him with his club at some snake which would persist in stealthily approaching him from the rear. Perhaps it is superfluous to add that all this was fun for us boys, with the stout board fence between us and the man with the club.
It was known in the hotel what the trouble was with him, and it was also generally recognized that nothing could be done for him. For four days he ran his course, killing snakes, demons and hobgoblins in that garden, and finally died, literally while engaged in the imaginary battle with the enemy out in the garden. To-day he fills a nameless grave.
Indeed, so common were cases of delirium tremens in those days that I might go on and multiply instances—tell, indeed, of a man climbing up into a hayloft in the dark, catching the teamster who came for hay, frightening him into a fit of sickness, and dying there before morning, curled up on the hay like a dog. Again, I might instance the case of another unfortunate, who started and ran from the “Corners,” then constituting Oshawa, directly in the course of the mill-ponds, with the whole village chasing him, making past the ponds and into the woods a mile and a half away, before being caught—like a man running amuck. But perhaps I have said enough on so unpleasant a feature of early life in Ontario.