LETTER XXXIV.
Dear Charles,—Hem!—pray are you not interested in
some manufactory of the creature? Or has not Deacon Giles
sent you a barrel of something nice? Are you quite certain
you did not write after dining out? Or is there no fear of
some spirit-selling church-officer before your eyes?
Why, please your reverence, what's the matter? Have
you gone back to the fathers and the dark ages? Look here,
sir: if some folks in the old purchase get hold of your precious
document, if you do not smoke for it I am no prophet!
Seriously, Charles, some reformers would almost depose
you from the ministry for such a letter—they would Grahamize
you. Besides, we have funny fellows in these latitudes
that can take you off to a fraction! They would act
you, calling your reverence Mr. Claret, making sermons and
prayers all to match the character bestowed upon you! * *
* * * * * They would roll, not merely public opinion
against your side, but they would, in western parlance, “go
over you rough-shod,” and handle your dignity “without
gloves!”
We thought matters at Woodville occasionally tempestuous;
why, sentiments like yours have power to raise a storm
in civilized places. Even a layman of eminence dares not always
hint in public meeting at certain abuses, without provoking
an audible whisper, “Kick him out!” So, sir, if you are not
partial to the argument
à posteriori, keep heterodoxy to yourself.
Why, Charles, in here we have, in addition to Sunday
lectures in many parts of our purchase, temperance and negro
operas; temperance tableaux; temperance theatres;
temperance eating-houses, and temperance every thing, and
our whole population, in places, is soused head-over-ears in
temperance; and when a wearied chap emerges for an occasional
sniffle of air, he drips like a water-spaniel that
swims out of a canal with a stick or apple in his mouth.
With many, temperance is here, as there, the whole of
virtue. A man not pledged is often suspected and deemed
void of all excellence; if pledged, he is equal to the best of
men, if not a little superior! Moderates and conservatives
are often worse than even rum-sellers; and rum-sellers are
occasionally called “imps of hell!” We have, too, itinerants,
who wander about in very eccentric orbits and narrate their
rum days at so much per diem, as if their experience was
needed to enlighten the world as to the evils of drunkenness!
So once thought the Moral Reform Society, till their disgustful
and corrupting books were presented as a nuisance.
Some folks are silly enough to imagine that the life and
death of the temperance reformation hang on these worthies!
Their lapses and relapses create a sensation, as if with their
almost unavoidable backslidings the cause itself of temperance
had gone back for ever!
Charles, is it surprising that these men should play their
antics before the eyes of the world, and then fall away till
the last state is worse than the first? What clergyman, even,
who is well educated, and accustomed to good society, and to
moderate attention and respect, and who is a truly good man;
what clergyman but would be endangered by a popularity
and applause and adulation, so sudden and universal as often
surrounds an itinerant lecturer? Alas! how often have excellent
clergymen fallen from a giddy pinnacle! What, then,
must be the result when a reformed inebriate, with moderate
education, never before known and not moving in what are
deemed the better circles, with no excellence except his bare
reformation from beastly drunkenness to mere sanity; what
the result, when such a man is raised on the shoulders of better
men—carried in triumph from one end of a purchase to
another—his name in grand staring capitals of sixteen-lines
pica, at every corner, and in every mouth—the Sabbath and
the church ceded to his nauseating history of debauchery and
cruelty, while ministers, and elders, and deacons, and evangelists
are in his train, and who quote his words, retail his
anecdotes and line his pockets—what must be the result?
Is it a wonder that this man is intoxicated with fame?
that he enlarges to his new sphere, filling it with himself?
Is it a wonder he deems all temperance to be embodied in
him, and when a treacherous calm arises in this bewildering
tempest of popularity, that the man subsides into ennui
and goes back to his cups? Believe me, Charles, it is always
perilous to elevate men suddenly above their former selves;
and great folly, when a wanderer returns simply to what he
was, to make that return the sole reason for manufacturing,
and from the raw material, a prince!
But, Charles, notwithstanding these and many other
very disagreeable and objectionable matters, I have been
a member of a temperance society; and unless I see
reasons stronger than you have advanced, I shall remain a
member.
