feeling better.

I will examine for a moment the effect, the immediate effect of ardent
spirits upon the man. I will take a man in health, and give him a glass
of ardent spirits. The effect is, to produce mental derangement and
false notions and conceptions. But one glass will not have much effect.
I will give him another, and, if he loves rum, he feels better; another,
and he feels better; another, better yet. By this time he has got to
feel pretty well; quite happy. He has no fear or shame. He can curse,
and swear, and break things. "He is fit for treason, stratagems, and
spoils." He fears no consequences, and can accomplish impossibilities.
If he is a cripple, he fancies he can dance like a satyr; if he is slow
and unwieldy, he can run like a hart; if he is weak and feeble in
strength, he can lift like Samson, and fight like Hercules; if he is
poor and pennyless, he is rich as Croesus on his throne, and has money
to lend. This is all a correct representation. It is what happens
universally with the drunkard. I know one man who is intemperate, who is
poor, and never known to have five dollars at a time, who, when he is
intoxicated, has often, and does usually, offer to lend me a thousand
dollars. Poor, miserable, and deluded man! But he feels well; he is one
of those who feel better to drink. He is mentally deranged; his
imagination is disordered. He fancies bliss, and felicity, and plenty,
and abundance, which do not exist; and he awakes to misery, and poverty,
and shame, and contempt. Yet this is the exact feeling of all those who
feel better to drink spirits. He who drinks but a glass, has not the
same degree, but precisely the same kind of feeling with the one I have
described.

And this is all--this is all that rum does to make a man feel better. If
his wife and children are starving, he feels it not. He feels better. If
his affairs are going to ruin, or are already plunged into ruin, he is
not sensible to his condition. If his house is on fire, he sings the
maniac's song, and regards it not. He feels better.

Let him who likes this better feeling enjoy it. Enjoy it, did I say? No.
Reclaim him, if possible. Convince him that he labors under a delusion.
Restore him to truth, and to reason; banish the cup from his mouth, and
change the brute into the man.

And now, need any more be said to persuade mankind to abandon the use of
ardent spirits? the appalling facts, in relation to them, are known to
all. Experie