Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/209



drunk. Then it looks as if I'd never get sober any more. Yes, sir," he said in reply to the doctor, "I'll be glad to go. I hate to leave mother," nodding his head toward the frail creature who sat silent while the tears literally rolled down her face; "but I'm willing to do anything to get right."

Months passed. I was there again. Meeting the doctor one day in the street, I stopt him.

"Tell me about the poor woman, doctor, and her boy," I asked. "Get into my buggy, and we will take a drive, and you shall see for yourself." We drove along, talking as we went; but he did not explain. He continued his drive out of the city, and finally turned his horse's head into what I saw was the cemetery. Passing monuments and vaults and richly carved marble, we went on to the very outer edge. "Now we will get out and walk a few steps," he said. I followed him, knowing now, of course, what it meant; but I knew only in part. Stopping at two unmarked graves, not a stone or board or flower, desolate in death as in life, he pointed to one, and said: "That's the son. He came back from the asylum, and we thought he was cured; but he fell in with his old companions, and a few days later his body was found in a pond near the city, and a bottle half filled with whisky in his pocket. And that's the mother. She survived him only a few days. When they brought his body into her little home, she sank under her weight of grief, and never rallied. She had cried herself to sleep."—, Christian Endeavor World.

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DRINK, HERITAGE OF

The jovial, genial drunkard of the Anglo-Saxon times is a rare personage nowadays, and tho there may be men as fond of sack as Falstaff himself, they seem to have lost the intense sociability which was the characteristic of the burly knight. Nearly all the great men of the Napoleonic era were drinkers—Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Wellington himself. Napoleon's marshals had the soldier's pet failing, and it is said of stern old Blücher that he slept in his boots and went to bed in a more or less pronounced condition of intoxication for thirty years. Byron boasted of having drank a dozen bottles of wine in a day, and his "Don Juan" was composed under the influence of gin. Thackeray loved the bottle, so did Dickens. The children suffer for the failings of their sires, and many of the nervous symptoms and morbid cravings which perplex physicians in the young men and women of to-day are in reality legacies bequeathed by overbibulous ancestors. (Text.)—Baltimore Herald.

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DRINK, PERIL OF

A number of years ago a certain firm of four men in Boston were rated as "A1." They were rich, prosperous, young and prompt.

One of them had the curiosity to see how they were rated, and found these facts in Dun's and was satisfied, but at the end these words were added: "But they all drink."

He thought it a good joke at the time, but a few years later two of them were dead, another was a drunkard, and the fourth was poor and living partly on charity.

That one little note at the end of their rating was the most important and significant of all the facts collected and embodied in their description. (Text.)

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DROUGHT, RESPONSIBILITY FOR

When the electric trolley-cars were first set running in Seoul, a peculiar result manifested itself in the nation. We quote from The Outlook:

Little by little the heavens grew dry and the earth rolled up clouds of dust; day followed day with no signs of rain, and the caking paddy-fields grinned and gasped. What could be the cause of it? The geomancers and ground-prophets were consulted, and their answer was, "The devil that runs the thunder and lightning wagon has caused the drought." Eyes no longer looked with curiosity but glared at the trolley-cars, and men swore under their breath and curst the "vile beast" as it went humming by, till, worked up beyond endurance, there was a crash and an explosion, one car had been rolled over, and another was set on fire, while a mob of thousands took possession of the streets foaming and stamping like wild beasts.

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DRUDGERY

It may be that even the work of "holystoning" the deck of a ship could become an act of devotion if done in the right spirit, notwithstanding this seaman's aversion to it:

"This is what you call the sailor's prayer