JOSH BELLINGS ON BEER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 635, 25 February 1879, Page 2

JOSH BELLINGS ON BEER.

I hev finally cum to the konklusion that lager beer az a beverage iz not intoxicating. ....... I hev been told by a German who sed he had drunk it all nite long jeat tu try the experiment, and wuz obleeged to go home entirely sober in the morning. I hev seen this same man drink eighteen glasses, and ef he wuz drunk it was in German, arid nobody could understand it. It is proper enough to state that this man, who kept the lager beer saloon, could have no object in stating what was not strictly tru. .: I believe him to the full extent of my ability. I never drank but three glasses of lager in my life, and that made my head untwist as though it hung on the end of a string, but J was told it was owing to my bile being out of place ; and I guess that it was so, for I never biled over wus.than I did when I got home that nite. My wife thot I was goin' to die, and I was afraid that I shouldn't, for it seemed as tho everything I had eaten in my life was coming to the surface, and I believed, that if my wife hadn't pulled off my boots just as she did they would have cum thundering up, too. Oh, how sick I waz ! Fourteen years ago, and kan taste it now. I never hed. so much experience in so short a time. If a man shud tell me that lager beer wuz not intoxicating, I shud believe him ; but ef he should tell me that I wuzn't drunk that nite, but that my stomach wuz out uv order, I shud tell him tu state over in a few words just how a man feels and acks when he wuz set up. ■ • If I wuzn't intoxicated that nite, I hed sum uv the most natural symptoms a mau ever hed and stade sober. In the first place I wuz about eight rods wide from where I had the lager to mi house, and I wuz jest over two hours on the road, and a hole bursted thro each one of my pantaloon neez, and didn't ha V >mi hat, and tried to ,open the door by the bellpull, and hiccupped awfully, and saw everything in the room trying to get around on the back side of me, and sitting down on a chair, I did not wait long ehuff for it to get exactly under me when' I was going round, and I sab down a little to soon, and missed the chair about twelve inches, and could not get up soon enuff to take the next one that came along ; and . that ain't awl, my wife sed I wuz drunk as a beast, and as I sed before, I begun to spin . up things freely. If lager is not intoxicating, it used me almost almighty mean, that I know. Still I hardly believe that lager beer is intoxicating, for I hev been told so ; and I am probably the only man living who ever drunk eny when his liver wuz not plumb. ■ I don't want to say anything against a harmless temperance beverage, but if ever I drink eny more it will be with my hands tied behind and my mouth pried open. I don't believe lager beer iz intoxicating but if I. remember rite, I think it tasted to me like a glass of soapsuds that a pickle had been put tew soak in. [Josh evidently got treated to some stale and doctored lager ; that is, pro-' bably, next to Jersey lightning, the meanest Btuff that Josh or anybody else ever got drunk with.] :