ALCOHOLOGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 32, 1 August 1911, Page 7

ALCOHOLOGY.

REMORSE. (Published by Arrangement). | The teetotaller knows nothing of this so far as drink is concerned; that is, 'no one in the end of his life, when looking back, feels regret that he had not been a drinker, On the other hand, many lament over the habit which now binds them, though they at first took it up willingly. Many great geniuses kave been drinkers, had to suffer in consequence, and felt the remorse that follows every evil course. There is no more striking example than Robert Burns. He wrote many a drinking song, yet there were times _ when he wrote against tenary edition of his poems there !b a poem to be found addressed to one of his acquaintances, William Steward. ,It gives the experience of one who knew what it was to suffer the remorse that comes to every drunkard after a debauch. He says:

"In h6nest Bacon's ingle-neuk, Here maun I sit and think, Sic,k o' the warld, and warld's 4)1 k, ' An' sick, damn'd sick, o' drink."

The remainder is in that strain, and to the drink lie applies other condemnatory adjectives. 11l contrast to this we think of what another poet said: "We can make our lives sublime."

The drinker can, and often does, make his life ridiculous; and,.worse, he makes his life disgusting to all who have to do with him. .last let any moderate drinker read the "Daily News" of Saturday, July 29, of what drink can do even in New Zealand. That drunken father had once been a moderate drinker, and it is not to be supposed that he ever intended drifting into the position lie now is in; ho meant, if he had any meaning in his early days, to take a glass and leave it, as all drinkers tell us now, but he did not know his weakness, nor the power of drink to enslave.! No one knows whether he is strong enough to be a drinker all his days: he only find out what he is not when the habit of drinking has been confirmed and he cannot throw it off. It is useless for moderate drinkers to scoff at their ; weaker brothers, and say, "Do as I do, take it in moderation." The only safe plan for oneself is total abstinence. The only safe example to set to our neighbor I is also total abstinence from all,that] intoxicates. Travellers pass along and tell us there is no. drunkenness in our country, but we know - otherwise; eur police court returpg;tell another story; iand even th^y,-only f tell a part. In' 1907 a friend of,,thf. writer in Timaru set a watch. He, had ten persons helping him, and they watched the roads out of town durijig, li four,i evenings, two hours each >cyenip,g„, a..total of eight' hours' watching. '. ,During i that time they noticed 208; persons were perceptibly under the influence of liquor, and yet during-] the;: sranc- period only three persons were arrtstftdli'foi drynk- 1 nnnese,.. 1 During the four days .referred to, parts of which only, yfproroccupied in the watching^),jbh^e,. \vei;R.; the three cases above mentioned, qs taken .in ha ad by the police, -and there was-fl' sui{jde by drink, another death in D.T.'s, and a' drunken brawl a man and a woman. So that out of 1 208 persons visibly, to the watchers, under a measure of alcoholic poisoning, only six were noted by the ; police.apd reported in the Press. . ',,'j In addition to, the remorse that comes to the drun(ca,rd .when his'revel is passing away, there' is, the Remorse that ought to comt|j and.does conic /very often though he will not show it, to the person who enticed thp drunkard into Ills evil wavs. Further, -there is the remorse that ought to come to every one who refrains from using his example, at least, in seeking to.put away this great eause of evil. -In' the- light "of that pitiful case at GltfisUihurcli, and many others, who will is innocent of blame in the ■matter? If is a pity that the prophet cannot Whisper into the car of the man ov Womitn who does not take a hand agaiustrthisvlMiituthe words: "In the day .that lUtauiv stoodest on tjia other sides" •• The»'J>cfhaps'' he,' or she, too, will ftfeltlie remorsfe'ilc or she on<*ht to feel.