(1654)
In medieval times the farmers brewed good brown ale and took it to the churchyard in barrels, which were tapped on the spot. The neighbors then said to one another: “Come hither; there be a church-ale toward yonder.” They paid for the beer, and the rector’s churchwarden kept the tale of incoming moneys. Easter-ales, Whitsun-ales, church-ales, even bride-ales to help a penniless marriage—all were merry meetings in churchyard or church which all the inhabitants were bidden to attend at a charge of one penny. Tho they had grown to unruly revels, they were not finally supprest till the time of the Commonwealth.—Edward Gilliat, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.”
(1655)
INTEMPERANCE IN SONS
Rev. W. F. Crafts says:
Recently, in a New England manufacturing city, we noted a change that bodes no good for business or politics or religion. We found that the old men who founded and developed the mills were all total abstainers and had been from youth, but their sons, who were succeeding to these great responsibilities, had nearly all of them come back from college with drinking habits.
Intemperate Living—See [Longevity Accounted for].
INTENSITY
In the concluding chapters of Ellen Terry’s memoirs (McClure’s Magazine), she writes of the last days of Henry Irving. The doctor had warned Irving not to play “The Bells” again after an illness that attacked him in the spring of 1905. He saw the “terrible emotional strain ‘The Bells’ put upon Henry”—how he never could play the part of Matthias “on his head,” as he could Louis XI, for example. Miss Terry goes on in words almost implying that Matthias killed him. We read: