Drunkard

“ The young man stooped for an instant over the girl, and then turned fiercely round upon his father, who had reeled against the wall, and was gazing on the group with drunken stupidity.
‘Listen to me, father,’ he said, in a tone that made the drunkard’s flesh creep. ‘My brother’s blood, and mine, is on your head: I never had kind look, or word, or care, from you, and alive or dead, I never will forgive you. Die when you will, or how, I will be with you. ”

“ If you are a moderate drinker, oh beware, beware, for the one cause of drunkenness is drinking, and " he that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little." The drink-habit partakes of the nature of a snake and of a tiger. It may steal on you silently and slowly wind itself around you and crush you in its embrace; or in the day of trouble or sorrow or mental anxiety it may come upon you at a single bound and destroy you in an instant. But if you are a habitual drunkard, oh for the love of God and your own soul abandon your sinful folly while there is yet time. ”

“ A drunkard is the annoyance of modesty, the spoil of civility, his own shame, his children’s curse, his neighbour’s scoff, the alehouse man’s benefactor, the devil’s drudge, a walking swill-bowl, the picture of a beast, and monster of a man. ”

“ No, you're not a drunkard, Will Sears, more's the pity. When it comes to choosing between a man who gets openly drunk and staggers down Main Street in drunken penitence to his wife and children and the man who drinks just enough to be a surly, selfish brute and yet look half-way respectable on the outside, why, give me the drunk every time. ”

“ I make it a rule, the drunkard says, always to treat when I meet another man; and when I am alone and take one glass I feel like another man and so I treat myself to a second and so on. Go to the asylums and prisons, and many of the wretched inmates will tell you they are there through drunkenness whose first cause was a drunkard's example. Read the records of the fearful sacrifice of human life in shipwrecks, collisions, fires, and explosions, and you will find that drink was at the bottom of most of them. ”

“ These persons call a thing made up of impure matter a face, and drink its charms as a drunkard swallows the inebriating liquor from his cup. The blind, infatuated beings! Why should I be pleased or displeased with this body, composed of flesh and blood? ”

“ The daily life of one of the steady drunkards is like this: upon getting up in the morning, after a heavy, restless, drunkard's sleep, he is miserable beyond expression, and almost helpless. In very bad cases, he will see double, and his hands will tremble so that he cannot lift to his lips the glass for which he has a desire amounting to mania. Two or three stiff glasses of spirituous liquor will restore him so far that he can control his muscles, and get about without betraying his condition. ”

“ So that the more one approaches to perfect sobriety the wiser he becomes, the nearer he comes to habitual drunkenness the greater his folly. For what position in God's fair creation does the drunkard hold? An angel is a pure creature that enjoys God; a man is a creature that thinks and reasons; a brute is a creature that follows his appetites, but never to excess; a tree is an ornament of the earth and useful to man; but the drunkard, what is he? The drunkard is only a drunkard, with nothing like him in all God's creation. ”

“ A German I knew once told me the difference between Old-World drinking and American drinking was that the German, for example, drinks for the pleasure of the drink, while the American drinks for the alcohol in it. That may be so; but very few men who have any sense or any age set out deliberately to get drunk. Such drunkenness as there is among men of that sort usually comes more by accident than by design.
My definition of a drunkard has [Pg 30] always been this: A man is a drunkard when he drinks whisky or any other liquor before breakfast. ”

“ Examine the drunkard’s body after death, and you see in the stomach, in the liver, in the heart and brain signs of a diseased condition. At the same time, I am ready to admit that there are many who drink out of mere cussedness or who are so wretched that they take to it for temporary relief; or who just drink because they live in a drunken set, and like to do as others around them do. Whatever p. 232the immorality, the vice, or the sin of drunkenness, in a very large number of cases the drunkard is more to be pitied than blamed, as the subject of disease. ”

“ The drunkard is, indeed, thus often exposed to the peril of his life; for an accident of itself not great, or a stroke, may suddenly put an end to his life.
The poet represents the drunken man as now speaking to himself. ”

“ The drunkard, as suggested, deprived of his liquor, represents furiously to himself in imagination the act of drinking: he dreams a gullet a yard long and an endless swallow—and in doing so he actually moulds and modifies his swallowing apparatus. ”

“ The drunkard is destined to suffer in the drunkard's eternity, as you have suffered; the enticement of drink is evanescent, the agony to follow is eternal. You have seen that the sub-regions of earth supply an intoxicant. Taste not again of any intoxicant; let your recent lesson be your last. Any stimulant is an enemy to man, any narcotic is a fiend. It destroys its victim, and corrupts the mind, entices it into pastures grotesque, and even pleasant at first, but destined to eternal misery in the end. Beware of the eternity that follows the snapping of the [Pg 276] life-thread of a drunkard. ”

“ For the purposes of the acts the term “habitual drunkard” means “a person who, not being amenable to any jurisdiction in lunacy, is notwithstanding, by reason of habitual intemperate drinking of intoxicating liquor, at times dangerous to himself or herself, or incapable of managing himself or herself and his or her affairs.” ”

“ We will mention here only one of these effects: alcohol prepares the way for sins against chastity; the enemy of innocence is present in alcohol.
2. The Wise Man in Holy Writ thus addresses the drunkard: "Thine eyes shall look after strange women and thy heart - speak perverse things." And Sirach remarks: "Wine and women make wise men fall off." And in Proverbs it is expressly Stated: "Wine is a luxurious thing, and drunkenness riotous." ”

“ While it may be true that an adult, of his own free will, and without incentive, or predisposing causes, does occasionally become a drunkard, I am convinced that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every one thousand individuals who become drunkards are made so in embryo, infancy, or childhood, by the use of alcoholic decoctions, soothing syrups, opiates, calomel, etc. ”

“ A drunkard clasp his teeth, and not undo 'em,
To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em. ”

“ You may see the drunkard at his home intoxicated, abusing his wife and children but when he is sober he is sorry for the act, and perhaps the next day is found drunk again, he still continues to pour down the intoxicating fire-water, and is sorry again, does he repent? ”

“ It is not the drunkard's appetite that is transmitted, but the bias or proclivity which renders the subject of such an inherited tendency more susceptible to exciting causes, and therefore in greater danger from the use of alcoholic drinks than others. ”

“ The poor drunkard often, in the midst of his dissipation, resolves to put away his cup; but when again he comes in the presence of the bottles and decanters, his mouth begins to feel thus and so, and he can not help drinking. ”

“ He that will be drawn to drink when he hath neither need of it nor mind to it, to the spending of money, wasting of precious time, discredit of the Gospel, the stumbling-block of weak ones, and hardening associates ... is a drunkard. ”

“ But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.
Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt, - sometimes a misfortune, - as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it, - but oftenest of all a punishment. ”

“ Besides this punishment, if a single man, or a bachelor, as he is called, was found drunk three times, he was put in the workhouse and obliged to have his head shaved, and to work at some trade. It is a very rare thing to see a drunkard now. ”

“ Intemperance and crime, lust and idiocy.—The mental and moral states of the drunkard are not only expressed in a desire for more drink; but at one time he is exceedingly lustful; at another time he is quite silly, idiotic and foolish; at still another time he is angry, cruel and dangerous. ”

“ In fact, to write a list of England's greatest men, who lived more than a hundred years ago, would be to make a list of famous drunkards.
To-day the drunkard in public life is practically unknown in England, as well as in America. No legal pressure has been brought to bear upon the prosperous drunkard. ”

“ Many, too many, are drunkards; but every man is not an open drunkard, and hundreds, nay, thousands, would say, 'By attending these meetings of drunken men, I acknowledge myself to be a drunkard also;' hence they will probably decline going through shame, and consequently miss the opportunity of retrieving themselves. ”

“ A visit to places where there are mineral springs is of use, not only from the waters, but from the agreeable society to be met with at such quarters. The great art of breaking the habit consists in managing the drunkard with kindness and address. ”

“ No one unacquainted with the life of a drunkard, but especially of an habitual female drunkard, can form a correct idea of the irrepressible thirst which the constant use of intoxicating liquors imposes. ”

“ A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set up on him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness. ”

“ I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! ”

“ Neither, on the other hand, does a single or an occasional excess make a man an habitual drunkard; but if you find that the habit and rule of a man's life is to indulge e riodically and with frequency, and with increasing frequency and violence, in excessive fits of intemperance, such a use of liquor may properly cause the finding of habitual drunkenness. It is the fact of the certainty of these periodical sprees, accompanied with their frequency, which marks the habit. ”

“ Is the sole cause I drink me drunk with wine.
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Drunkards are doomed to hell, so men declare,
Believe it not, 'tis but a foolish scare;
⁠Heaven will be empty as this hand of mine,
If none who love good drink find entrance there. ”

“ This is (I say) the mischief most dangerous of all the rest: and it may be that the poet covertly would assoil that question which the philosophers have propounded and disputed upon; namely, what difference there might be between liberal drinking of wine and stark drunkenness? in attributing unto the former mirth and jocundness extraordinary, and to the latter much babbling and foolish prattle: for according to the common proverb, that which is seated in the heart and thought of a sober person, lieth aloft in the mouth and tongue of a drunkard. ”

“ Well, upon my soul! You are not ashamed to stand there and confess yourself a disgusting drunkard. ”

“ How we ate that morning, Bill and I, and how we relished our breakfast. Yes, I had a drink, a big drink of whiskey, but not because I had forgotten my resolve of the night before, but because I was yet ignorant. To be quite frank, I have always been a bit cynical about these sudden conversions of confirmed drunkards.
Not long ago I met a man at a rescue mission where I frequently attend, who, as we say on the Bowery, "eats whiskey" and almost subsists on it. ”

“ Let drunkards know from this scripture that, (1.) They ungratefully abuse their bodily strength, which God has given them for good purposes, and by degrees cannot but weaken it. (2.) It will not excuse them from the guilt of drunkenness that they can drink hard and yet keep their feet. (3.) Those who boast of their drinking down others glory in their shame. (4.) How light soever men make of their drunkenness, it is a sin which will certainly lay them open to the wrath and curse of God. ”

“ Worse, if possible, even than this—the licensed dram-shop is instrumental in creating a new generation of drunkards. For thither resort our young men, the future hope of the country, who speedily fall before the seductions of the place, their habits of sobriety are subverted, their moral sense is blunted, their will palsied, and they drift rapidly into the appalling condition of habitual drunkenness. ”

“ The sobriety of the country can be tolerably gauged from a comparison of such contemporary writers as John of Salisbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, and Peter of Blois. The former of these, in a letter to a friend, writes:—‘You know that the constant habit of drinking has made the English famous among all foreign nations.’ In another letter, sent by him to this country: ‘Both nature and national customs make you drunkards. ”

“ It is sad to consider how many will hear this charge for one that will apply it to himself, for confident I am that fifteen of twenty, this city over [London] are drunkards, yea, seducing drunkards, in the dialect of Scripture, and by the law of God which extends to the heart and the affections.... Perhaps by the law of the land, a man is not taken for drunk except his eyes stare, his tongue stutter, his legs stagger; but by God’s law, he is one that goes often to the drink, or that tarries long at it (Prov. xxiii. 30, 31) . ”