love, and it was about to consume me. No word After of rebuke ever came from either of them. some days of this chastening silence, father said to me: "Rodney, I had rather bury my boy, than to know that he would live to become a drunkard." Mother said: "If you want to kill your mother, take another drink in Lanning's grocery." I told them that if they could trust me at all, they should never have another hour's anxiety about that. Then the shadows fled from that home, and the coming days brought a blooming paradise. The man who sells liquor is a scamp. The man who buys and drinks it is a scamp. That drinkers are simply unfortunate people, with good, clever hearts, is sickly sentimentalism. Drinking, when its consequences are known, is always the product of a bad principle. Not long ago I was in conversation with a famous physician, who had come from the sickroom, and he said: "I have just been trying to patch up the body of an old toper." I said: "Do you prescribe alcohol?" "I seldom use it in my practice." "Why?" It has "Well, there is no place for it as a necessity of life. It supplies no force to matter. no new matter for organized tissue. The animal tissues can not assimilate alcohol. It is a product of death, not of life. It is one of the ghosts of putrefaction and decay." "What is the first effect of alcohol on the system?" "It quickens the action of the heart. This it does by weakening the contractile force of the arteries and minute blood-vessels; but languor always follows this increased and unnatural work. Chloroform will do the same thing. Alcohol is only slower." "What is the next effect of alcohol on the system?" "Functional muscular change. The lower lip usually gives the first sign. Then there is loss of use of the limbs. The most effective way to ruin the muscular power is to introduce alcohol into the system." "What do you regard as the next stage?" "The mind is in chaos. Reason is off duty. The stomach also revolts, and there is vomiting. The animal instincts are supreme, and there is finally insensibility." "What gives the toper his red nose?" "That is a delicate question; some people have red noses who are not addicted to alcohol." "I am aware of that, doctor; I am after a diagnosis of the toper's nose. The other folks never neglect an opportunity for explanation. Each one of them tells you how his proboscis came to be in that condition; and he tells it glibly, as if he had familiarized himself with it." "Then I will tell you. It is the effect of alcohol on the blood corpuscles. The frequent weakening of the contractile force of the small blood-vessels affects them so that they do not return to their normal condition after the immediate effect of the alcohol is gone. The bloodvessels become irregular and congested. Cutaneous excitation passes away at first; but finally the vascular supply remains to tell the tale of a constant debauch. The abiding effects of intoxicants shows on the nose first because the circulation in the nose is feebler than in most other parts of the body. Alcohol has done its damage elsewhere. "The reduction of arterial tension by alcohol is also the cause of roaring in the head, often experienced by drinkers. Indeed, the permanent effects of the alcoholic life are the most serious. It were serious, but not so greatly so, if surface excitement, and uncertain muscular action, and the maudlin foolishness of a crazed brain, were the only results. Alcohol produces an excess of fatty globules, causing fatty degeneration of the heart. It also produces an excess of the connecting tissues—affects the liver, and brings on abdominal dropsy. It is also the fruitful cause of Bright's disease; and of course delirium tremens and death." Ο CHAPTER XV. AN INDIAN LEGEND. Over wide and rushing rivers NE bright, brisk morning in June we turned the cattle out of the pound in the edge of the timber, and drove them westward more than a mile to the sweet grass on the high ground of Fort Harrison Prairie. We started them north |