Debauchee

“ Debauches not only destroy all capacity for usefulness while they last, but they demand the vital strength which has wisely been gathered in the system for days of possible need, when sickness and natural infirmities will lay hands on the mind or body. The debauch of to-day will borrow from to-morrow or from next week, or month, or year, that which can not be restored. The bloated face, the dull, glassy eye, the furtive glance of fear and shame, the trembling gait, all speak of ravages produced by other causes than those of time. ”

“ Here was the man of high birth, who, rich from his earliest youth, had given up his body to debauchery for the sake of extravagant enjoyment. And debauchery had destroyed the human being and made another after its own image. ”

“ To learn anew, after losing all caste, after dismissal from the army in disgrace and dishonor, to learn a bread-winning calling and to have to work like everybody in that despised throng of perspiring, vulgar toilers—surely, that was not at all to his taste. From infancy up he had been reared in disdain of labor—had acquired, one by one, tastes and habits of thought that seemed irreconcilable with a life of sober, plain living and thinking, with a life where his part would be that of a subordinate. ”

“ When they have done a successful job, they are in such a state of prostration that they immediately rush into the debaucheries they crave for; they get drunk on wine and spirits, and throw themselves madly into the arms of their women to recover composure by dint of exhausting their strength, and to forget their crime by forgetting their reason. ”

“ I've done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog in a ditch. I have used the strength Thou hast given, Thou knowest I did not shirk; Threescore years of labor — Thine be the long day's work. And now, Big Master, I'm broken and bent and twisted and scarred, But I've held my job, and Thou knowest, and Thou will not judge me hard. Thou knowest my sins are many, and often I've played the fool — Whiskey and cards and women, they made me the devil's tool. ”

“ Debauchery, of wine and women, entered not at all into his private life although, in public, he encouraged it in others for the simple reason that it weakened men who otherwise might turn on him. He was never guilty of excesses that might undermine his strength or shake his nerves ”

“ After the endurance of a week's delirium, madness, and unconsciousness, they generally find themselves, when robbed of the greater portion of their hard-got earnings, thrust upon the world penniless, wretched, dispirited, and sick, to seek employment and re-enact the same scenes of solitary penance and wild debauchery. ”

“ Job was not conscious to himself of any extraordinary guilt, and yet fell under extraordinary afflictions, v. 17, 18. Every man must expect the wind to blow upon him and ruffle him, but Job was broken with a tempest. Every man, in the midst of these thorns and briers, must expect to be scratched; but Job was wounded, and his wounds were multiplied. Every man must expect a cross daily, and to taste sometimes of the bitter cup; but poor Job's troubles came so thickly upon him that he had no breathing time, and he was filled with bitterness. ”

“ Melancholy, dejection, despair, and often self-murder, is the consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state of body. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise or labour; and labour is a surmounting of difficulties, an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles; and as such resembles pain, which consists in tension or contraction, in everything but degree. Labour is not only requisite to preserve the coarser organs in a state fit for their functions ”

“ The loss of health and the loss of character are the certain consequences; and the debauch of the evening is followed by pains and sickness in the morning, when that which was before poison, is administered as the cure! Practice becomes habitual, and thus a whole life is frequently wasted in debauchery ”

“ This short and apparently informal ceremony is the most momentous in one’s future career, and though unaware of it at the time, I was not surprised later on at the importance attached to it by the experienced criminal. By it one’s future treatment is entirely guided, and the class of labour is carefully selected in accordance with its decision. A card, then and there signed by the surgeon, and which is always fixed on one’s cell door, decides one’s future vocation; and “Hard labour,” or “Light labour and bed,” bear a significance incredible to the uninitiated. ”

“ Gathering heart somewhat after a time, I again went to work on the door with my broken knife; labouring on, hour after hour, with wearying persistency, but making such small progress that had I not felt that my life depended on the success of my efforts, I should have given up the task a hundred times in despair. ”

“ AVENUE OF MOSS-COVERED OAKS, NEAR ORMOND, FLORIDA.—Laying aside the question as to whether the command to work, that was imposed upon our first parents, was a curse or a blessing, it is easy to conceive that one reared among such scenery as this, where there are but few wants which the spontaneous growth of nature does not supply, would naturally regard hard labor as the greatest curse that could be pronounced against mankind. ”

“ More than one aged, toil-spent laborer, broken at the loom in the service of his insatiable master, fell prone in the drifts and lay there till his thin life-current froze and his tired heart stopped. ”

“ I began by taking the abuses in "discipline"—chiefly fines for being late and talking and "fooling" during work-hours. Many I abolished; others I reduced to merely nominal sums, even for the old wages received. A low, strong buzzing, distinctly favourable in character, greeted me at the conclusion of the list. ”

“ Whoever has remarked the different effects of some strong exercise, and some little piddling action, will understand why a teasing, fretful employment, which at once wearies and weakens the body, should have nothing great; these sorts of impulses, which are rather teasing than painful, by continually and suddenly altering their tenor and direction, prevent that full tension, that species of uniform labor, which is allied to strong pain, and causes the sublime. ”

“ What has been talk'd of some late actions at sea, of a kind unknown to our ancestors, gives me occasion to say, that debauchery sinks the courage of men; and when dissoluteness has eaten out the sense of true honour, bravery seldom stays long after it. ”

“ The disturbance is most frequent in waiters, store clerks, tailors' cutters and fitters, bench men in the trades, and in all those who have to spend much time on their feet. I have seen many such ready to give up their occupations, though they had no other resource and the future looked very blank, indeed, away from their work. It was difficult at first to persuade them that a slight yielding of the arch had so changed mechanical conditions in the use of the muscles of the leg as to produce such pains. ”

“ But when attained to a certain length in debauchery, ah! these vulgar weaknesses must all be soared above; their opinion of themselves is raised in proportion as they can persuade others that they are now above all these fears; they even mock those who appear still to dread: like the wife of Job, they say, with a tone of irony and impiety, " Dost thou still retain thine integrity? ”

“ Why should a housekeeper be allowed to thieve? Why should slovenly and drunken servants exist? Why should a domestic staff be suffered in indulge in bouts of unconscionable debauchery during its leisure time? ”

“ Every strike proves his position to be more and more precarious. The scab becomes more and more of a terror to the skilled laborer, even to the highly skilled laborer, for the scab can so much the more readily now take his place. ”

“ Job declares himself to be physically bruised and broken. The stings and sores of his disease are like arrows shot from every side that rankle in his flesh. He is [Pg 205] like a fortress beleaguered and stormed by some irresistible enemy. His strength humbled to the dust, his eyes foul with weeping, the eyelids swollen so that he cannot see, he lies abased and helpless, stricken to the very heart. But not in the chastened mood of one who has done evil and is now brought to contrite submission. ”

“ The point, the only point that is, in my opinion, now to be considered, is this: the people of this nation have for some time practised a most pernicious and hateful kind of debauchery; against which several laws have been already made, which experience has shown to be so far without effect, that the disorder has every year increased among them ”

“ As they grow up, they show this degeneration by engaging in all kinds of licentious debauchery, and unnatural and perverted indulgences of appetite. In nine cases out of ten, they will spend the fortunes inherited from their parents in riotous debauchery, and [222] will eventually sink, if death does not overtake them, to the level of their fellow degenerates—those who have been brought into existence by poverty and debauchery, and who await them at the foot of the social ladder. ”

“ High and becoming purposes of social life and thoughtful enterprise superseded that eating and painful decay, which has terminated in the annihilation of the red man; and which, among every people, must always result from their refusal to exercise, according to the decree of experience, no less than Providence, their limbs and sinews in tasks of well-directed and continual labor. ”

“ Had Eliphaz felt but the one-half of Job's affliction, he would have said, "It smites me, it wounds me;" but, speaking of Job's afflictions, he makes a mere trifle of it: "It touches thee and thou canst not bear to be touched." Noli me tangere—Touch me not. [2.] He makes too much of Job's resentments, and aggravates them: "Thou faintest, or thou art beside thyself; thou ravest, and knowest not what thou sayest." Men in deep distress must have grains of allowance, and a favourable construction put upon what they say; when we make the worst of every word we do not as we would be done by. ”

“ Nor need we hesitate to assert, that he who, unable to preserve a manly elegance of manners, degenerates into the petit maître, would have been, in any age or condition, equally insignificant and worthless. Some, when they talk of the debauchery of the present age, seem to think that the former ages were all innocence. But this is ignorance of human nature. The debauchery of a barbarous age is gross and brutal ”

“ The first question that presents itself in any discussion of the causes of unemployment is whether it is due primarily to personal causes, as inefficiency or intemperance, or to industrial causes over which the individual has no [Pg 92] control. “Personal causes are those mental, moral, and physical defects which show themselves either in the inability and inefficiency of the workman or in his unwillingness to work. ”

“ Of these the excessive Misery of the Wretches themselves, oppressed with Want, and sunk in every Species of Debauchery, and the Loss of so many Lives to the Public, are obvious and immediate Consequences. ”

“ Unable to maintain his place among brother journeymen, or to render himself worthy of the average wages of his craft, the ill-taught mechanic falls out of regular employment, subsists precariously for a time on occasional jobs, and either, forming idle habits, becomes a vagabond tramper, or, getting into the toils of some rapacious task-master, becomes an enslaved sweater. ”

“ At the same time that we should preserve the health of those unfortunates, we should prevent serious disorders. On the days of relaxation it often happens, that a convict, desirous of a debauch, pledges his allowance for a fortnight for the present advances of some comrades. ”

“ I don't so much blame the surgeon, for there has been a deal of sickness among us, and the doctors have been unable to get their pay. Hundreds of us are nigh akin to starvation; there's scarcely a crust between us and death; we desire only to work honestly, and we can't get work to do. ”

“ The hand-worker, the clerk and the small tradesman, generally insecure in the tenure of their occupations and homes, are anxious and restless, while many classes suffer special and grievous wrongs, such as exhaustion and premature old age, due to the nervous strain of certain kinds of work, death and mutilation from machinery, life in squalid tenements, and the debasement of children by bad surroundings and premature work. ”

“ The labourer, abandoned to his reflections during his work, felt the sharp stimulus of remorse, and quitting his waggon in the midst of his fields, threw himself upon his knees, and while prostrate on the earth, sought for pardon, and took all nature to witness that it was violence alone that he had obeyed. ”

“ In this occupation the organism rapidly becomes shattered, the hair falls out, the gums shrink away from the teeth, the body becomes deformed, the stomach obtrudes abnormally, respiration becomes difficult, the motions become labored, the joints become stiff, the fingers knotted. Others, too feeble in body to endure the fatigues of debauchery, but endowed with the bump of philanthropic discrimination, dry up their brains over political economy, or juridical philosophy in elaborating thick soporific books to employ the leisure hours of compositors and pressmen. ”

“ In the first place, they are standing upon one leg, lifting up one knee a greater part of the day, keeping the ends up from the spindle. I consider that that employment makes many cripples; then there is the heat and dust; then there are so many different forms of cruelty used upon them; then they are so liable to have their fingers catched, and to suffer other accidents from the machinery; then the hours is so long that I have seen them tumble down asleep among the straps and machinery, and so get cruelly hurt ”