TEETOTALISM. 157 



an open sign of the delightful influence that it exerts upon the en- 

 tire work of assimilation. Ancient habitudes might be imitated in 

 these respects. The hospitalities of other times enabled the guests 

 to digest hard things for which their successors have no stomachs : 

 courage and clanship and bold ambition haunted the boars' heads 

 and smoking beeves, and horns of mead and of wine. The re- 

 velers were firmer in friendship, brighter in honor, softer in love, 

 and stronger in battle, for the spirits which descended upon the hall. 

 We, too, must dine as our forefathers, only the board should be 

 newly laid to invite down the later graces of labor, justice, and 

 peace. Our fight for to-day is not with men, but with the enemies 

 and difficulties of all men. Our honors are the extensions of the 

 tone of peace, disarming the world by the dispersion of offences. 

 It is a new supper of gathered rich and poor that will refresh 

 us in this second epoch. Nor on grounds of mere utility should 

 the song of the bard and the replication of the jester be absent 

 from a work in which a merry complacency is the springtide of the 

 season, and the oil and smoothness of the whole machine. 



Let us remember, therefore, in passing from the subject, that this 

 intestine public question implies the dispensation to all of the due 

 quantity of the proper quality of food, subject to the law of variety, 

 and under the best circumstances, internal and external, or mental 

 and convivial ; and further that precarious modes of life, to many 

 temperaments, are incompatible with a healthy assimilation. 



We have postponed to this place the subject of wine as a part of 

 diet, because the case of stimulants rests on human life, and not 

 otherwise on physiological laws. Alcohol in its various forms acts 

 specifically upon the brain and animal nature, themselves the stimu- 

 lants of the other systems of the body. Teetotalism on this ac- 

 count takes rank with vegetarianism, as both of them tend to reduce 

 the animal powers. 



What is called " total abstinence" has claims which deserve to be 

 admitted. The abstainer on principle is generally workful to an 

 extraordinary degree; has his senses about him, such as they are; 

 is equally cool and collected at all parts of the day ; feels little ir- 

 ritability from current events, but bears and forbears well. This is 

 while health and strength last. And if he be capable of fanaticism, 

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