 | INTEMPERANCE. Saratoga in 1901 |  |
INTEMPERANCE.
After traveling for thirty years among the temperance
societies of Scotland, seeing a few muddled red-nosed Lords in
England and France, and spending some time in Germany where
it is impossible for people to drink enough of her flimsy beer and
sour wine to get drunk on, it was really refreshing for me to drop
down on the shores of our dear native land, and see our
drunk? They had built a new Kursaal for gambling and
drinking in the rear of Congress Hall. There at twelve o'clock
at night every boy went to look upon the bright and shining
example of American intemperance. When I saw the great blue
eyes of the new generation of Americans rolling foolishly—and
listened to their meaningless but loving twaddle, I felt the
impulse of a spell. What was it? It was the power of association.
It carried me back to New York in her younger days—
carried me back to the theatre bar-room at the Grand Opera
House,—carried me back to the Gilsey House and the knights of
the round table, at 11 p. m. Tears came to my eyes, as after my
thirty years absence, I caught a whiff of their whiskey breath—
for it reminded me of the old free-lunch atmosphere of Ford's
and Jerry Thomas'. It reminded me of the lobby rooms in the
capitol at Washington, reminded me of the air about City Hall
in the palmy days of the “ring,” and of the tail end of a Fifth
Avenue wedding reception in 1872. It was a revival of the pure
and lovely associations of my youth, to see a man honestly drunk
all over—drunk in his eyes—legs, in the scowl of his eyebrows,
and the small of his back. But alas! it was a sight that wounded
my personal pride. I thought that the science of sweet and
beautiful intemperance had been carried to perfection in the days
of my youth. It was a sad thought, that in this great work of
civilization the proud 1872 of my youth was indeed behind the
1901 of my old age.
With tears in my eyes I turned away from the sad spectacle—
the eclipse of the early career of American intemperance! In
1901 I found everybody drank—drank steady, and drank like
the Bostonians, between drinks, too. Why Gilsey House
openings, Old Brewery sprees, or the struggles of the regular
army officers with raw Commissary on the frontier were nothing
in the consumption of poor whiskey at the Saratoga Kursaal
or at the Red Lion above the park. The old drinking of my boyhood
officially, the intemperance prestige of our youth will be destroyed,
and with all our glorification, the Republic of Washington, in
the glorious march of intemperance, will have to stand in the
shadow of the hereditary aristocracy of 1901.
| INTEMPERANCE. Saratoga in 1901 | |