little bridge
to the parade-ground. The feet of his pursuer were heavy, and when he
came to the bridge he paused, reflected a moment, and deliberately tore
it up, and returned with a very satisfied expression of countenance,
remarking:

"I've cu-cut off 'is communications off, anyhow."

This little episode of camp life seems to reach a very flat conclusion.
But the facts leave no alternative. It required about two days' diligent
labor to clean up and repair, to say nothing about Dunn's head, stomach,
and general constitution. The working of prohibition was well
illustrated in the army. If the traffic had been "regulated" as it is
throughout a large portion of our country, the effectiveness of the army
would have been destroyed within six months. As it was, the officers in
charge of the commissary department were prohibited from selling to the
privates. They tell us now that there is no use of trying to reduce
drunkenness in this way. We cite the army as an illustration of
successful prohibition. If men had been inclined to evade the law, they
could have obtained liquor as readily as in civil life. If the evil had
become manifest, a remedy could have been applied more directly than in
civil life. But it was not necessary. If intoxicating liquors are made
difficult to obtain, multitudes who would otherwise use them and become
drunkards will not take the trouble to procure them. We affirm that this
was demonstrated in the Army of the Potomac. There was very little
drunkenness. A few would secure whisky, and become intoxicated.
Sometimes it was accomplished by forging the name of an officer to an
order. In the revel just described one of the men disguised himself in
the uniform of an officer, and bought the whisky.

I never knew whisky to do the men any good. It was certainly one of the
strangest of follies to issue whisky rations, as was sometimes done on
occasions of peculiar exposure. The men who never tasted stimulants had
the most endurance, and suffered the least from cold or exposure of any
kind. We wonder at the delusions of witchcraft, and can scarcely
comprehend how men could so abandon common sense as to give credence to
such folly; but the absurdity of the use of alcoholic stimulants is not
less puerile. The time will come when it will be told with pitying
wonder how men of this day stupidly ignore the ghastly results of the
liquor traffic to themselves and others, and with supine meanness bow
their necks to