gnant water by his
microscope, and then triumphantly kills them all by a drop or two of
brandy! As if this did not prove the wholesomeness of _eau de vie_ in
such cases. If, for example, my poor friend above, the eminent Dr.
Hodgkin of Bedford Square, had followed his companion's example, the
still more eminent Moses Montefiore, by mixing water far too full of
life with the brandy that killed them for him, he would not have died
miserably in Palestine, eaten of worms as Herod was! Another such
instance I may here mention. When I visited the cemetery of Savannah,
Florida, in company with an American cousin, I noticed it graven on the
marble slab of a relation of ours, a Confederate officer, to the effect
that "he died faithful to his temperance principles, refusing to the
last the alcohol wherewith the doctor wanted to have saved his life!"
Such obstinate teetotalism, I said at the time, is criminally suicidal.
Whereat my lady cousin was horrified, for she regarded her brother as a
martyr.

I cannot help quoting here part of a letter just received from an
excellent young clergyman, who had been reading my "Temperance," quite,
to the point. After some compliments he says, "I need scarcely say I
entirely agree with the scope and arguments of this vigorous poem.
Nothing is more clear, and increasingly so, to my own perception than
the terrible tendency of modern human nature to run into extremes"
(quoting some lines). "Your reference to 'thrift' is especially true. I
have often smiled at the pious fervour with which the heads of large
families with small incomes have embraced teetotalism! I have long
thought that the motto '_in vino veritas_' contains in it far more of
'_veritas_' than is dreamt of in most people's philosophy, and that the
age of rampant total abstinence is the age of special falseness. Of
course, the evils of drunkenness can scarcely be exaggerated,--and yet
they can be and are so when they are spoken of as equal to the evils of
dishonesty: the former is indeed brutal, but the latter is devilish, and
far more effectually destroys the souls of men than the former.
Nevertheless in our poor money-grubbing land, the creeping paralysis of
tricks of trade, &c., is thought little of; and the shopman who has just
sold a third-rate article for a first-class price goes home with
respectable self-complacency and glances with holy horror at the man who
reels past him in the street.

"I desire to say this with revere