AS COMMISSIONER AT PARIS -1878 517 



they were decidedly the worse for their celebration of the 

 day ; and the whole thing led me to reflect seriously on the 

 drink problem, and to ask whether our American solution 

 of it is the best. I have been present at many large fes- 

 tive assemblages, in various parts of Europe, where wine 

 was offered freely as a matter of course ; but never have 

 I seen anything to approach this performance of my 

 countrymen. I have been one of four thousand people at 

 the Hotel de Ville in Paris on the occasion of a great 

 ball, at other entertainments almost as large in other 

 Continental countries, and at dinner parties innumerable 

 in every European country; but never, save in one in- 

 stance, were the festivities disturbed by any man on ac- 

 count of drink. 



The most eminent of American temperance advocates 

 during my young manhood, Mr. Delavan, insisted that he 

 found Italy, where all people, men, women, and children, 

 drink wine with their meals, if they can get it, the most 

 temperate country he had ever seen; and, having made 

 more than twelve different sojourns in Italy, I can con- 

 firm that opinion. 



So, too, again and again, when traveling in the old days 

 on the top of a diligence through village after village in 

 France, where the people were commemorating the patron 

 saint of their district, I have passed through crowds of 

 men, women, and children seated by the roadside drinking 

 wine, cider, and beer, and, so far as one could see, there 

 was no drunkenness ; certainly none of the squalid, brutal, 

 swinish sort. It may indeed be said that, in spite of light 

 stimulants, drunkenness has of late years increased in 

 France, especially among artisans and day laborers. If 

 this be so, it comes to strengthen my view. For the main 

 reason will doubtless be found in the increased prices of 

 light wines, due to vine diseases and the like, which have 

 driven the poorer classes to seek far more noxious bev- 

 erages. 



So, too, in Germany. Like every resident in that 

 country, I have seen great crowds drinking much beer, 



