Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/685



way. Piety will do it in frequent instances; sabbath, Sunday-school, church, prayer, and bible reading. But all men have not piety, never were trained to it, do not know what it is. Intellectual culture, the mastery of mind over base passion, which leads to reading, thinking, writing, will sometimes accomplish the purpose, but still fewer have these resources within them. To produce self-forgetfulness, the miners resorted to out-door amusements, and generally with good effect; horse-racing, foot-racing, ball-playing, and indoor novel-reading, card-playing, checkers, and chess were common. Lonely and desolate in their self-imposed ostracism, they were neither cynical nor unsocial. They felt the necessity for periods of selfforgetfulness, and did what they could to make themselves boys again. But this was not always sufficient, and with an antidote to every ill always ready at hand, with characteristic directness they too often applied it. During the hours of occupation some sort of stimulant seemed necessary to keep up the steam, and when work was over, the stop must not be too sudden. So, if hot, they drank to get cool, if cold to get warm, if wet to get dry, if dry—and some were always dry—to keep out the wet. When they wanted to get up an appetite for breakfast, they took a drink, and then another to aid digestion. Any shadow of an excuse, any cause except the true cause—which simply was to solace or excite the brain—was readily seized and offered. Thousands thus drank to themselves damnation, thousands are to-day drinking it; noble natures which nothing else could overcome, vanquished at last by the arch-fiend. Often the heart was already broken before the demon was let in.

In the early days of California, however, drunkenness was not the vice so much as drinking. Tippling was common from the becjinningr • the excitements and atmosphere of the country were congenial to it. There were at first no more confirmed drunkards here than elsewhere, nor, indeed, so many, for these were n^t..