Excerpt from Address Before the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, Delivered May 27, 1833

The wearer's infamy. The accomplished gentleman, the man of letters, of taste, of fashion, staggering under the influence of the more costly stimulus, his old particular, or Joly's brand, reeling homeward from his Bacchanalian revel, stumbles over the bloated carcass of the common drunkard, who lies upon the foot-path, before the door of that amiable citizen, the vender of drarns having contrived to be as happy as his more courtly neighbor, at a cheaper rate, upon New England mm. The bmrdless candidate for bachelor's degree, rushing forth from his riotous debauch, is arrested in his progress to the billiard-room or other scenes of dissipation, and, in despite of his classical irn provisations in Greek and Latin, consigned for reformation to the watch-house. The wretched and ragged vagabond, who, in the phraseology, emblazoned on the sign board of Hogarth's gin-shop, may be drunk for a penny, and dead drunk for sirpence who is sober only to steal, and steals only to be drunk; who has yielded his last farthing to that honest Christian, the dram-seller, and is now turned out of the work shop of destruction, to slumber in the gutter - when rebuked for his abominable life, may make his selection and justify his practice, by the example of the lawyer, the physician, the very judge upon the bench, or the public officer, who has dine'd out, in the way of his duty, and is drunk ex oficio. The public firnctionary, conscious of his own obliquities, passes his cc-ordi n'ate, the' more vulgar drunkard, with a nod of recognition, and a feeling of sympathy. The man of business, who has not yet acquired the habit of restoring his drooping faculties at eleven, and whose ideas are not in a state of confusion before two, may fi'equently be seen, when the hours of occupation are past, bearing, in his bewildered eye, and unsteady step, and that expression of defiance, which seems to anticipate contempt, his post meridian testimony in favor of the potency of alcohol. The father, under the influence of the drunkard's draught, stag gers in the presence of his child; the mother catches the conta gion from the husband; and the example of both parents becomes, at last, irresistible before their children. These are the simple realities of life. Disgusting as they are, they are the lighter.

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