s at one time the literary center of the country, but the
best writers are not living here now. The best novelists of our
country are not far from Boston. Edgar Fawcett lives in New York.
Howells was born, I believe, in Ohio, and Julian Hawthorne lives
in New Jersey or in Long Island. Among the poets, James Whitcomb
Riley is a native of Indiana, and he has written some of the
daintiest and sweetest things in American literature. Edgar Fawcett
is a great poet. His "Magic Flower" is as beautiful as anything
Tennyson has ever written. Eugene Field of Chicago, has written
some charming things, natural and touching.

Westward the star of literature takes its course.

--_The Star_, Kansas City, Mo., May 26, 1892.

INEBRIETY.*

[* Published from notes found among Colonel Ingersoll's papers,
evidently written soon after the discovery of the "Keeley Cure."]

_Question_. Do you consider inebriety a disease, or the result of
diseased conditions?

_Answer_. I believe that by a long and continuous use of stimulants,
the system gets in such a condition that it imperatively demands
not only the usual, but an increased stimulant. After a time,
every nerve becomes hungry, and there is in the body of the man a
cry, coming from every nerve, for nourishment. There is a kind of
famine, and unless the want is supplied, insanity is the result.
This hunger of the nerves drowns the voice of reason--cares nothing
for argument--nothing for experience--nothing for the sufferings
of others--nothing for anything, except for the food it requires.
Words are wasted, advice is of no possible use, argument is like
reasoning with the dead. The man has lost the control of his will
--it has been won over to the side of the nerves. He imagines that
if the nerves are once satisfied he can then resume the control of
himself. Of course, this is a mistake, and the more the nerves
are satisfied, the more imperative is their demand. Arguments are
not of the slightest force. The knowledge--the conviction--that
the course pursued is wrong, has no effect. The man is in the
grasp of appetite. He is like a ship at the mercy of wind and wave
and tide. The fact that the needle of the compass points to the
north has no effect--the compass is not a force--it cannot battle
with the wind and tide--and so, in spite of the fact that the needle
points to the north, the ship is stranded on the rocks.

So the fact that the man knows that he should not