DRINK
“Many a good story is told of the old bonanza days,” said a San Franciscan. “I liked especially a whisky story.
“A tenderfoot, the story ran, entered a saloon and ordered whisky. Whisky in those days and in those parts was a very weird drink. Queer effects were sure to follow it. The tenderfoot knew he must expect something out of the common, but, for all that, he was taken aback when the bartender handed him a small whisk-broom along with the bottle and glass.
“Tenderfoot-like, he didn’t care to expose his ignorance by asking what the whisk-broom was for, so he just stood there and fidgeted. He didn’t drink. He waited in the hope that somebody would come in and show him what was what.
“Well, in a few minutes a big chap in a red shirt entered. He, too, ordered whisky, and he, too, got a broom.
“The tenderfoot watched him closely. He poured himself a generous drink, tossed it off, and, taking up his whisk-broom, went over into a corner and carefully cleaned, on the floor, a space about 7 feet by 3. There he laid down and had a fit.”—Detroit Free Press.
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See [Abstainers Live Long]; [Beer, Effect of]; [Alcoholic Bait].
DRINK AND NATIVE RACES
Missionaries are constantly emphasizing the horrors consequent on the drink traffic among the natives of Africa. Bishop Johnson, one of its able native bishops, declared that “European commerce, weighted as this commerce has been for many years with the liquor traffic, has been as great a curse to Africa, a greater than the oceanic slave-trade.” Even still more effective was a statement made by a Christian negro speaking to an audience in England, when he brought out of a bag an ugly idol and said, “This repulsive object is what we worshiped in times past,” and then he added, “Now I will show you what England has sent to be our god to-day,” and produced an empty gin-bottle.—Jesse Page, “The Black Bishop.”