A PLEA FOR INEBRIETY.
Is that ancient and honorable institution, the New York Chamber of Commerce, becoming frisky and convivial in its old age? Will it in its ripe judgment recommend that the proper course for one to pursue is to tread the perfumed paths of Bacchus? Does the Chamber, as a body, indorse the able and thoughtful article in the OctoberForum, by Mr. Louis Windmuller, one of its honored members, in which that gentleman makes a strong plea for inebriety and drunkenness? Mr. Windmuller is certain that the policy of Mr. Roosevelt toward the liquor interests in New York will sap the lifeblood of our institutions, and he sends up a cry of alarm. It may be gathered from Mr. Windmuller’s well considered paper that there can be no true happiness in this life without strong drink, and plenty of it. Contentmentand peace of mind will slink under the bed unless there be a flagon on the table. Domestic felicity will be a hollow mockery, a failure and a fraud if there be not a keg in the cellar and a case of Culmbacher on the ice.
Our gifted author does not say it in so many words, but it is clearly his view that man’s faculties are at their best only when the gentle glow of intoxication steals over the brain and articulation thickens and halts by the way. He goes even further. He firmly believes that ours is a land to hastening ills a prey, unless we speedily go to Bavaria for our excise laws and fling Roosevelt over the Battery wall.
Only a lack of space prevented Mr. Windmuller from giving the Sunday schools a side wipe, and he comes very near it as it is. Evidently he looks upon them as a blot or something equally unpleasant. They have no bars, and, moreover, their teaching is all the other way. This makes our author a prey to melancholy and his brow is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.
But what the Philistines are anxious to know is, does the ancient and honorable New York Chamber of Commerce believe that man reaches his best estate only when he has a jag on?
R. W. Criswell.