"A goot physician, a clever man--I
only have drank twelve drams a-day, and he tells me to take sixteen. I
have taken one oath when I was drunk, and I keep it; now dat I am sober
I take anoder, which is, I will be very sick for de remainder of my
days, and never throw my physic out of window."

There was a _cold water_ celebration at Boston, on which occasion the
hilarity of the evening was increased by the singing of the following
ode. Nobody will venture to assert that there is any _spirit_ in the
composition, and, judging from what I have seen of American manners and
customs, I am afraid that the sentiments of the last four lines will not
be responded to throughout the Union.

Ode.

In Eden's green retreats
A water-brook that played
Between soft, and mossy seats
Beneath a plane-tree's shade,
Whose rustling leaves
Danced o'er its brink,
Was Adam's drink,
And also Eve's.

Beside the parent spring
Of that young brook, the pair
Their morning chaunt would sing;
And Eve, to dress her hair,
Kneel on the grass
That fringed its side,
And made its tide
Her looking-glass.

And when the man of God
From Egypt led his flock,
They thirsted, and his rod
Smote the Arabian rock,
And forth a rill
Of water gushed,
And on they rushed,
And drank their fill.

Would Eden thus have smil'd
Had _wine_ to Eden come?
Would Horeb's parching wild
Have been refreshed with _rum_
And had Eve's hair
Been dressed in _gin_
Would she have been
Reflected fair?

Had Moses built a still
And dealt out to that host,
To every man his gill,
And pledged him in a toast,
How large a band
Of Israel's sons
Had laid their bones
In Canaan's land?

Sweet fields, beyond Death's flood,
Stand dressed in living green,
For, from the throne of God,
To freshen all the scene,
A river rolls,
Where all who will
May come and fill
Their crystal bowls.

If Eden's strength and bloom
_Cold water_ thus hath given--
If e'en beyond the tomb,
It is the drink of heaven--
Are not _good wells_,
And _crystal springs_,
_The very things_
For our hotels?

As I shall return to the subject of intemperance in my examination of
society, I shall conclude this chapter with an extract from Miss
Martineau, whose work is a strange compound of the false and the
true:--"My own convictions are, that associations, excellent as they are
for mechanical