THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 5 , 



A great plurality of all beginners underrate the difficulty of control- 

 ling the cravings of a morbid appetite. They remember that their 

 natural inclinations at first opposed, rather than encouraged, the indul- 

 gence ; they feel that at the present stage of its development they 

 could abjure the passion and keep their promise without any difficulty. 

 But they overlook the fact that the moral power of resistance decreases 

 with each repetition of the dose, and that the time will come when 

 only the practical impossibility of procuring their wonted tipple will 

 enable them to keep their pledge of total abstinence. It is true that 

 by the exercise of a constant self-restraint a person of great will-force 

 may resist the progressive tendency of the poison-habit and confine 

 himself for years to a single cigar or a single bottle of wine per day. 

 But, if all waste is sinful, is not this constant pull against the stream a 

 wicked misuse of moral energy a wanton waste of an effort which 

 in less treacherous waters would insure the happiest progress, and pro- 

 pel the boat of life to any desired goal ? 



But, while temperance people, as a class, are apt to underrate the 

 difficulty of a total cure of a confirmed poison-habit, they generally 

 overrate the difficulty of total prevention. The natural inclination of 

 a young child is in the direction of absolute abstinence from all noxious 

 stimulants. I do not speak only of the children of temperate people 

 who strengthen that inclination by moral precepts, but of drunkards' 

 boys, of the misbegotten cadets of our tenement barracks and slum- 

 alleys. All who will make their disposition a special study may repeat 

 the experiments which have convinced me that the supposed effects of 

 hereditary propensities are in almost every case due to the seductions 

 of a bad example, and that the influence of an innate predisposition has 

 been immoderately exaggerated. Watch the young picnickers of an 

 orphan-festival, and see what a great majority of them will prefer 

 sweet cold milk to iced tea, and the lemonade-pail to the ginger-beer 

 basket. Offer them a glass of liquor, and see how few out of a hun- 

 dred will be able to sip it without a shudder. Or let us go a step 

 further, and interview the inmates of a house of correction, or of a 

 Catholic " protectory " for young vagrants. The superintendent of a 

 penitentiary for adults (in Cologne, Germany) expressed a conviction 

 that a - plurality of his prisoners would stretch out their hands for a 

 bottle of the vilest liquor rather than for a piece of gold. In the 

 house of correction I would stake any odds that ninety per cent of 

 all boy-prisoners under fourteen would prefer an excursion-ticket to a 

 bottle of the best wine of Tokay or Johannisberg. At home, in a 

 preparatory school of all vices, they of course imitate their teachers, 

 but only by overcoming almost the same instinctive repugnance which 

 is the best safeguard of the total abstainer's child. At the first at- 

 tempt even the offspring of a long lineage of drunkards abhors the 

 taste of alcohol as certainly as the child of the most inveterate smoker 

 detests the smell of tobacco. 



