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134
WITTY, WISE AND OTHERWISE.
A man can hardly expect to L>ecorne a good all-rouuu bar te11<.ler who works
a lifetime in one house, because be gets into one rut and goes to sleep there, as
it were.
'l'here is also a great deal of luck attending the success of some popular
bai;tenders; some climb up rapidly because they begin in a house that allows
the boys the privilege of ma king friends, while others a re broke in under a
system whereby one cannot popularize himself under any circumstances. Some
bluff their way along on no pair, with little actual knowledge, and others with
unlimited experience a nd ability haven't enough confidence or are too unfortu–
nate · to succeed.
lt's a funny game any way you look at it, but the main requisite to success
is common sense a nd lots of
it.
'
According to the old hieroglyphic inscriptions and papyrus found in Egypt,
prohibitive agitation is at least four thousand years old.
As early as the year 2,000
B.
C. the Egyptian people were convulsed
because certain hig h-handed persons attempted to abolish the beer shops (the
Egyptian beer or "hek" was brewed from barley without hops) .
So the prohibition propaganda is no new thing. History is full of it.
There is nothing desirable in prohibition per se, but only as a means to
temperance, and nothing shows the futility of such agitation so well as a
study of its history as far back as you may care to trace it-always chimerical,
always impracticable, always impossible I The development of a taste for
milder beverages is succeeding where prohibition has always failed-that is,
is advancing the cause of rational temperance.
The recent heavy increases in the consumption of beer which contains a
very slight percentage of alcohol (much less than cider, by the way) is one of
the most hopeful temperance indications of the times.
Compulsory interference with generalized food customs beyond certain
reasonable limits must have disastrous consequences, and any attempt to sup–
press the use of alco
0
hol in this .country would,
I
believe, lead to an enormous
extension of the drug babit.-already deplorably prevalent-which, being prac–
ticed in secret and outside social restraints, is more insidious in its inroads
and more detrimental in its effects tha n indulgence in wine, beer or spirits.
A large majority of the medical profession is,
I
f eel sure, convinced of
the value of alcohol in the treatment of disease, and prescribe it with caution
and discrimination in suitable cases and as occasion requires. But the dis·
sentients are more noisy and aggressive, as disseutients are wont to be, than·
the adherent!!.-of the established faith, and so erroneous notions have got about
as to the attitude of the medical men toward the alcohol question.
It
seemed
time to enter a caveat.
Medica l men are the steadfast friends of temperance and have done much
to promote it. They note with satisfaction the diminished consumption of