LOVE AS AN INTOXICANT?
Seymour, Texas, Nov. 4, 1897.
MR. BRANN: Will you please answer the following question
and thereby settle a dispute in Seymour: Is love intoxicating?
CHAS. E. RUPE.
My correspondent neglects to state whether Seymour
is a Prohibition town. Of course if it is and love is listed
as an intoxicant, the blind god will be expatriated for the
benefit of the makers of Peruna, Hostetter's Bitters and
and other palate ticklers, popular only at blind tigers.
Why the deuce didn't the Seymourites set to work and settle
this vexatious problem for themselves? Must I undertake
a system of scientific experiments in order to obtain
this information for the citizens of Seymour? Suppose
that I do so, find that love makes drunk come, and am run
in by the patrol wagon while supercharged with the tender
passion: don't you see that this would militate against my
usefulness as a Baptist minister? How the hell could I
explain to my congregation that I was full of love instead
of licker? Clearly I cannot afford to offer myself as a
sacrifice upon the altar of science. Should I proceed to
fall in love just to see if it would go to my head, and should
it do so, my Dulcina del Toboso might marry me before
I recovered my mental equipoise, and I would awaken to
find my liberty a has-been and my night-key
non est. Of
course I should mind it ever so little, but it would be
awfully hard on the lady. I have been baptized just to see
if it would soak out any original sin; I've gone up in a
balloon and down in a coal mine in the interest of science;
I've ridden on the pilot of a locomotive for the sake of
the sensation; I've permitted myself to be inoculated with
the virus of Christian charity just to see if it would
"take"; I've tampered with almost every known intoxicant,
from the insidious mescal of the erstwhile Montezumas
to the mountain nectar of Eastern Tennessee, but
I draw the line at love. Will it intoxicate? Prithee, good
sirs, I positively decline to experiment. However, if
hearsay evidence be admissible I'm willing to take the stand.
To the best of my knowledge and belief love will pick a
man up quicker and throw him down harder than even the
double-distilled brand of prohibition busthead. Like
champagne at 2 g.m., it is good to look upon and pleasant
to the palate; but at last it biteth like a serpent and
stingeth like an able-bodied bumble-bee in a pair of blue-jean pants. Like alcoholism, love lies in wait for the
young and unwary—approaches the victim so insidiously
that ere he is aware of danger he's a gone sucker. The
young man goeth forth in the early evening and his patent
leathers. His coat-tail pockets bulge with caramels and
his one silk handkerchief, perfumed with attar of roses,
reposeth with studied negligence in his bosom. He saith
unto himself, "I will sip the nectar of the blind deity but
I will not become drunken, for verily I know when to ring
myself down." He calleth upon the innocent damosel with
soft eyes and lips like unto a cleft cherry when purple
with its own sweetness, and she singeth unto him with a
voice that hath the low sweet melody of an æolian harp,
and squozeth his hand in the gloaming, sigheth just a wee
sigh that endeth in a blush. And behold it cometh to pass
that when the gay young man doth stagger down the door-steps of her dear father's domicile he knoweth not whether
he is hoofing it to Klondyke or riding an erratic mustang
into Mexico. He is drunken with the sweetness of it all
and glad of it. And she? Oh she lets him down easy—
sends him an engraved invitation to her marriage with
some guy with oodles of the long green whom her parent on
her mother's side has corraled at the matrimonial bargain
counter. Then the young man has a case of what we
Chermans call Katzenjammer, and swears an almighty
swore never to do so any more. But he does. When a
man once contracts the habit of being in love there's no
help for him. It is a strange stimulant which acts upon
the blood like the œnanthic of old wine, upon the soul like
the perfume of jasmine buds. He has felt its mighty spell,
more potent than the poppy's juice or the distillation of
yellow corn that has waved its golden bannerets on
Kentucky's sun-kissed hills—more strangely sweet than music
heard at minight across a moonlit lake or the soul-sensuous
dream of the lotus eaters' land. For the spell of the
poppy's dreamy drug and the charm of the yellow corn
whose spirit breeds dangerous lightnings in the blood, the
skill of man has provided a panacea; but "love is strong as
death," says David's wisest son. Will love intoxicate?
Rather! I should say that Solomon was drunk with love
when he wrote the Canticles:
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy
love is better than wine."
When a man is drunken he sees strange varieties of
serpents. That's what ailed Adam and Eve. They kept
intoxicated with their own primordial sweetness until they
got the jimmies and saw a talking snake prancing around
the evergreen aisles of Eden with legs like unto a prima
donna. At least I suppose the Edenic serpent was built
that way, for the Lord cursed it and compelled it to go
on its belly all the days of its life. Hence the Lord must
have pulled its leg. So to speak, or words to that effect.
As an intoxicant love affects one differently from liquor.
A man drunk on bourbon wants to trail his coat-tails down
the middle of the plank turnpike and advise the natives
that he is in town. The man drunk on love yearns to hide
away from the busy haunts of men and write poetry for the
magazines. The one is sentenced to ten days in the bat-cave and the other to pay some woman's board. Verily
the way of the transgressor is hard. Some people manage
to worry through life without ever becoming drunken on
either liquor or love. They marry for money, or to secure
housekeepers, and drink pink lemonade and iced buttermilk
until there's clabber in their blood. They "like" their
mates, but do not love them, and their watery babes grow
up and become Baptists. Their affections are to the real
article what dengue is to yellow fever. Temperance is a
good thing in its way; but the man who is temperate in
love is not to be trusted. The true man or woman can no
more love moderately than a powder magazine can explode
on the installment plan. When the cup once touches their
lips it is drained to the very dregs. The chalice is not
passed by human hands—the gods give and the gods withhold.
Hence it is that we ever find Love's bacchanals beating
against the social bars. We laugh at the man who
flushed with wine disregards the peace and dignity of the
state; but we frown upon the woman who drunk with love
sins against our social laws. Man's brewed enchantments
may be set aside by acts of human will; but the wine of
love creeps like a subtle perfume through all the senses
whether we will or no, filling the brain with madness, the
heart with fire.
