Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/205

 thing that's good for anything is dangerous. But really now, what is the point of all this?"

"It has a point," I replied; "it has a point at both ends. It bristles with points; and all of them are dangerous to you and your remedy for our discontents—your moderate drinking. The first point is this: that customary drinking in America, whatever it may be in Greece, has been and is, on the whole, not beautiful but ugly, disgusting, and destructive. The second point is this: that customary drinking in America is so inveterately intemperate that your proposal to institute a custom of temperate drinking is really far more visionary and impractical than prohibition. Your remedy is not conceived with an eye to the essential facts in the case."

"And these are—" prompted His Excellency.

"These are," I said, "that Americans of both upper and lower classes are temperamentally hard to stop when they are started. Ninety out of every hundred Americans feel a curious pride in 'seeing the whole show'; in 'going the whole hog'; in 'sticking the thing out'; in 'going the limit'; in 'getting results'; and in 'getting there first.' This temperament shows in their drinking as in everything else. They care nothing for taste or