THE SOBERING MACHINE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2172, 10 March 1903, Page 3

THE SOBERING MACHINE.

The Odd Institution That Character*i»«d a Sleepy Old Pennsr*ffl vania Town. “The “Tattler,” of the Philadelphia Ledger, recently met ft quaint and amusing old gentleman, who said; “A portion of my life was spent in a sleepy Pennsylvania town, which has grown little in the course of a haifcentury, and still preserves many of the quaint customs of its earliest days. You will find in this idyllic retreat counterparts of all the celebrities who figure so delightfully in Miss Mitford’s ‘Our Village.’ In my boyhood it had an institution which distinguished it from all sister villages'—an institution quite unknown to modern communities. It was called the sobering machine. This consisted of a rude, springless, two-wheoled vehicle, with a board body, drawn by a motlej r assembly of bummers and roysterers, old and young, who can always be summoned in a country place on the slightest signal when anything exciting is in the wind. “When one of the rather numerous town drunkards was discovered in a favorable position, the sobering machine was slyly backed up to the curb, the victim was quickly pushed into the cart, and then pulled through the streets, over every possible obstacle, by the jeering mob that manned the ropes. The victim, it was assumed, was julted, jerked and thumped into semisobriety by this rough riding. At any rate, few of the town loafers who had tested the tonic virtues of the sobering machine yearned for a second dose. Many of the noisy, ragged crowd who helped to drag the sobering machine over its devious route had themselves taken similar trips.

The rude apparatus, I suspect, did more for the cause of temperance in its day than the more gentle and respectable methods of promoting the reform. The appliance was carefullj housed, and all the bloods in the town knew where it was to be found. Sometimes it figured in parades, and. when bedecked and bedizened with flowers, flags and ribbons, it attracted almost as much notice as the little, sputtering hand engine which was supposed to do duty at haystack fires.”