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soup, and fish? The object is defeated. The true purpose of these introductory trifles is to appease the appetite in a slight degree, so as to enable us to take sustenance with composure and dignity, and dispose the company to conversation. When a properly constituted person has eaten six oysters, a plate of soup, and the usual portion of fish, with the proper quantity of potatoes and bread, he has taken as much sustenance as nature requires. All the rest of the banquet is excess; and being excess, it is also mistake; it is a diminution of the sum-total of pleasure which the repast was capable of affording. But when Mr. Delmonico had brought us successfully so far on our way through his book; when we had consumed our oysters, our cream of asparagus in the Dumas style, our kettle-drums in the manner of Charles Dickens, and our trout cooked so as to do honor to Queen Victoria, we had only picked up a few pebbles on the shore of the banquet, while the great ocean of food still stretched out before us illimitable. The fillet of beef after the manner of Lucullus, the stuffed lamb in the style of Sir Walter Scott, the cutlets à la Fenimore Cooper, the historic pâtés, the sighs of Mantalini, and a dozen other efforts of Mr. Delmonico's genius, remained to be attempted.

No man would willingly eat or sit through such a dinner without plenty of wine, which here plays its natural part, -supporting us in doing wrong. It is the wine which enables people to keep on eating for three hours, and to cram themselves with highly concentrated food, without rolling on the floor in agony. It is the wine which puts it within our power to consume, in digesting one dinner, the force that would suffice for the digestion of three.

On that occasion Mr. Dickens was invited to visit us every twenty-five years" for the rest of his life," to see how we are getting on. The Coming Man may be a guest at the farewell banquet which the Press will give to the venerable author in 1893. That banquet will consist of three courses; and, in

stead of seven kinds of wine and various brands of cigars, there will be at every table its due proportion of ladies, the ornaments of their own sex, the instructors of ours, the boast and glory of the future Press of America.

Wine, ale, and liquors, administered strictly as medicine, - what of them? Doctors differ on the subject, and known facts point to different conclusions. Distinguished physicians in England are of the opinion that Prince Albert would be alive at this moment if no wine had been given him during his last sickness; but there were formerly those who thought that the Princess Charlotte would have been saved, if, at the crisis of her malady, she could have had the glass of port wine which she craved and asked for. The biographers of William Pitt-Lord Macaulay among them - tell us, that at fourteen that precocious youth was tormented by inherited gout, and that the doctors prescribed a hair of the same dog which had bitten his ancestor from whom the gout was derived. The boy, we are told, used to consume two bottles of port a day; and, after keeping up this regimen for several months, he recovered his health, and retained it until, at the age of forty-seven, the news of Ulm and Austerlitz struck him mortal blows. Professor James Miller, of the University of Edinburgh, a decided teetotaler, declares for wine in bad cases of fever; but Dr. R. T. Trall, another teetotaler, says that during the last twenty years he has treated hundreds of cases of fevers on the coldwater system, and "not yet lost the first one"; although, during the first ten years of his practice, when he gave wine and other stimulants, he lost "about the usual proportion of cases." The truth appears to be that, in a few instances of intermittent disease, a small quantity of wine may sometimes enable a patient who is at the low tide of vitality to anticipate the turn of the tide, and borrow at four o'clock enough of five o'clock's strength to enable him to reach five o'clock. With regard to this daily drinking of wine and whiskey,

by ladies and others, for mere debility, it is a delusion. In such cases wine is, in the most literal sense of the word, a mocker. It seems to nourish, but does not; it seems to warm, but does not; it seems to strengthen, but does not. It is an arrant cheat, and perpetuates the evils it is supposed to alleviate.

The Coming Man, as before remarked, will not drink wine when he is well. It will be also an article of his religion not to commit any of those sins against his body the consequences of which can be postponed by drinking wine. He will hold his body in veneration. He will feel all the turpitude and shame of violating it. He will not acquire the greatest intellectual good by the smallest bodily loss. He will know that mental-acquisitions gained at the expense of physical power or prowess are not culture, but effeminacy. He will honor a rosy and stalwart ignoramus, who is also an honest man, faithfully standing at his post; but he will start back with affright and indignation at the spectacle of a pallid philosopher. The The Coming Man, I am firmly persuaded, will not drink wine, nor any other stimulating fluid. If by chance he should be sick, he will place himself in the hands of the Coming Doctor, and take whatever is prescribed. The impression is strong upon my mind, after reading almost all there is in print on the subject, and conversing with many physicians, that the Coming Doctor will give his patients alcoholic mixtures about as often as he will give them laudanum, and in doses of about the same magnitude, reckoned by drops.

We drinkers have been in the habit, for many years, of playing off the wine countries against the teetotalers; but even this argument fails us when we question the men who really know the wine countries. Alcohol appears to be as pernicious to man in Italy, France, and Southern Germany, where little is taken except in the form of wine, as it is in Sweden, Scotland, Russia, England, and the United States, where more fiery and powerful dilutions are

usual. Fenimore Cooper wrote: "I came to Europe under the impression that there was more drunkenness among us than in any other country, - England, perhaps, excepted. A residence of six months in Paris changed my views entirely; I have taken unbelievers with me into the streets, and have never failed to convince them of their mistake in the course of an hour..... On one occasion a party of four went out with this object; we passed thirteen drunken men within a walk of an hour, many of them were so far gone as to be totally unable to walk..... In passing between Paris and London, I have been more struck by drunkenness in the streets of the former than in those of the latter." Horatio Greenough gives similar testimony respecting Italy: "Many of the more thinking and prudent Italians abstain from the use of wine; several of the most eminent of the medical men are notoriously opposed to its use, and declare it a poison. One fifth, and sometimes one fourth, of the earnings of the laborers are expended in wine."

I have been surprised at the quantity, the emphasis, and the uniformity of the testimony on this point. Close observers of the famous beer countries, such as Saxony and Bavaria, where the beer is pure and excellent, speak of this delicious liquid as the chief enemy of the nobler faculties and tastes of human nature. The surplus wealth, the surplus time, the surplus force of those nations are chiefly expended in fuddling the brain with beer. Now, no reader of this periodical needs to be informed that the progress of man, of nations, and of men depends upon the use they make of their little surplus. It is not a small matter, but a great and weighty consideration, -the cost of these drinks in mere money. We drinkers must make out a very clear case in order to justify such a country as France in producing a billion and a half of dollars' worth of wine and brandy per annum.

The teetotalers, then, are right in their leading positions, and yet they stand aghast, wondering at their failure

to convince mankind. Mr. E. G. Delavan writes from Paris within these few weeks: "When I was here thirty years since, Louis Philippe told me that wine was the curse of France; that he wished every grape-vine was destroyed, except for the production of food; that total abstinence was the only true temperance; but he did not believe there were fifteen persons in Paris who understood it as it was understood by his family and myself; but he hoped from the labors in America, in time, an influence would flow back upon France that would be beneficial. I am here again after the lapse of so many years, and, in place of witnessing any abatement of the evil, I think it is on the increase, especially in the use of distilled spirits."

The teetotalers have always underrated the difficulty of the task they have undertaken, and misconceived its nature. It is not the great toe that most requires treatment when a man has the gout, although it is the great toe that makes him roar. When we look about us, and consider the present physical life of man, we are obliged to conclude that the whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint. Drinking is but a symptom which reveals the malady. Perhaps, if we were all to stop our guzzling suddenly, without discontinuing our other bad habits, we should rather lose by it than gain. Alcohol supports us in doing wrong! It prevents our immediate destruction. The thing for us to do is, to strike at the causes of drinking, to cease the bad breathing, the bad eating, the bad reading, the bad feeling and bad thinking, which, in a sense, necessitate bad drinking. For some of the teetotal organizations might be substituted Physical Welfare Societies.

The Human Race is now on trial for its life! One hundred and three years ago last April James Watt, a poor Scotch mechanic, while taking his walk on Sunday afternoon on Glasgow Green, conceived the idea which has made steam man's submissive and untiring slave. Steam enables the fifteen mil

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lions of adults in Great Britain and Ireland to produce more commodities than the whole population of the earth could produce without its assistance. Steam, plus the virgin soil of two new continents, has placed the means of self-destruction within the reach of hundreds of millions of human beings whose ancestors were almost as safe in their ignorance and poverty as the beasts they attended. At the same time, the steam-engine is an infuriate propagator; and myriad creatures of its producing creatures of eager desires, thin brains, excessive vanity, and small self-control — seem formed to bend the neck to the destructive tyranny of fashion, and yield helplessly to the more destructive tyranny of habit. The steamengine gives them a great variety of the means of self-extirpation, air-tight houses, labor-saving machines, luxurious food, stimulating drinks, highly wrought novels, and many others. Let all women for the next century but wear such restraining clothes as are now usual, and it is doubtful if the race could ever recover from the effects; it is doubtful if there could ever again be a full-orbed, bouncing baby. Wherever we look, we see the human race dwindling. The English aristocracy used to be thought an exception, but Miss Nightingale says not. She tells us, that the great houses of England, like the small houses of America, contain greatgrandmothers possessing constitutions without a flaw, grandmothers but slightly impaired, mothers who are often ailing and never strong, daughters who are miserable and hopeless invalids. And the steam-engine has placed efficient means of self-destruction within reach of the kitchen, the stable, the farm, and the shop; and those means of self-destruction are all but universally used.

Perhaps man has nearly run his course in this world, and is about to disappear, like the mammoth, and give place to some nobler kind of creature who will manage the estate better than the present occupant. Certainly we cannot boast of having done very well

with it, nor could we complain if we should receive notice to leave. Perhaps James Watt came into the world to extinguish his species. If so, it is well. Let us go on, eating, drinking, smoking, over-working, idling, men killing themselves to buy clothes for their wives, wives killing themselves by wearing them, children petted and candied into imbecility and diphtheria. In that case, of course, there will be no Coming Man, and we need not take the trouble to inquire what he will do.

But probably the instinct of self-preservation will assert itself in time, and an antidote to the steam-engine will be found before it has impaired the whole race beyond recovery. To have discovered the truth with regard to the effects of alcohol upon the system was of itself no slight triumph of the selfpreserving principle. It is probable that the truly helpful men of the next hundred years will occupy themselves very much with the physical welfare of the race, without which no other welfare is possible.

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THERE

DE PISCIUM NATURA.

HERE was one woodcut in the primary geography which alone was well worth the price of the book, and that was "Indians spearing Salmon.". There were other woodcuts of decided merit; exempli gratia, the view of a "civilized and enlightened" nation, wherein a severely stiff gentleman is taking off his bell-crowned hat to a short-waisted lady in a coal-scuttle bonnet. But "Indians spearing Salmon" was a great deal better. Two of them there were, with not much clothing save a spear, wherewith they were threatening certain fishes that, like animated shoe-soles, were springing nimbly against a waterfall. An almost mythical romance overspread the scene; for Indians and Salmon are long since lost to us, and only a vanishing form of them still lingers in the half-breeds and the sea-trout of Marshpee, just as the alligator now brings to mind the great fossil saurians he so degenerately represents. Yet our woodcut is not at all mythical, but really historical. Does not excellent Gookin inform us of the notable "fishing-place" at Wamesit, where Reverendus Eliot "spread the net of the Gospel" to fish for the souls of the poor Indian pagans? Alas! all this is replaced by the High Honorable Locks and Canals Company, and the turbine and other not easily understood water-wheels, of Lowell. Not that we have anything against the High Honorable, the only old-fashioned corporation we know of that invites official persons to dine, a praiseworthy custom, followed not even by the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Of fice; although some of the insurance companies keep crackers, and others ginger-nuts, whereby certain worthy old gentlemen, who have not more than a million, or, at the outside, a million and a half, make a clear daily saving (Sundays excepted) in the matter of luncheon. But the High Honorable gives

you a real dinner chez mine host Mr. T., no less a man than the discoverer and owner of the celebrated "Blackhawk," and yet so little puffed up by this distinction, that, with his proper hands, he will bring in the breaded pigs' feet for which his house is noted. Also he has invented a safe, which, like the Union Deposit Vaults, is to be forced nec igne nec ferro; for, being asked how he secured the Oleroso Sherry of the High Honorable, he replied that it was in a place where no harm ever could come to it, to wit, under his bed. Is it not a pity he cannot serve a Salmon taken in its season, glittering, from Pawtucket Falls?

When the apple-trees of our thrifty forefathers were bursting into blossom on the banks of the Merrimack, and the land was furrowed for the corn and the pumpkins, and the pleasant river itself was running swift and full, then the great silver Salmon, fresh from the salt water, would leap and tumble as they drove up stream, bound for the cold brooks of the Pemigewasset, or away beyond it to those of Franconia Notch. With them came great battalions of Shad; and hosts of homely Alewives, that forced themselves through every little rivulet as they crowded to their breeding-ponds. The Shad held soberly to the main stream till they came to the Winnipiseogee River, where they said au revoir to the Salmon, and turned their heads toward the lake. That lake knows them no more, yet there is a fish therein that still is called the Shad-waiter, who perhaps regards his friend as a sort of " Malbrook," and who yearly repeats to himself, “Il reviendra au Pâque ou à la Trinité." Yes! the two Indians of the woodcut have gone, and their Salmon have gone. We don't want the Indians back again, but we should like the Salmon; we should like to stand on the Dracut shore, and hook a twenty-pound fish,

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