Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/642

622 president, upon being elected, rose with a glass of brandy in his hand and gave the toast: "Gentlemen, fill your glasses. Let us show the world that we know how to drink in moderation."

To sum it all up. Why, since we can not set out with a club or a headsman's axe to reform mankind; since there are substantial rights to adjust and innocent parties to protect, why is not the proposition to prevent by law the exposure of adulterated liquors for sale as beverages the best so far suggested? Is there another which at the same time is constitutional, equitable, peaceable, and so conservative of the public safety, which creates no law-breaking class out of honest citizens, sheds no blood (as blood was shed in South Carolina in 1875 because men of Anglo-Saxon breed could not be readily made to concede that a man's house was not his castle), and which imports no new doctrine into American policy?

I, for one, believe that, with it, the solution of the drink problem would be in sight. High license and personal damage laws are two thirds of it. If a man desires to sell liquor let him pay one or two thousand dollars, or other substantial sum of money, to the school or the police or the poor fund of his neighborhood. Let him be liable in damages, as are common carriers or any others who deal in conveniences or commodities in which there is possible risk to the community, for what is injured by his operations. As to the remaining third of the remedy: the sole objections to local option (viz., that it may be abused at the polls, where the total-abstinence interest might be as capable of a wrong use of money or of other undue influence as the liquor interest, or that it might be inconvenient to the public) are fully met by making adulteration impossible and providing for a compulsory, rigid, and universal inspection of liquors exposed for sale as beverages.

And then, besides, it will be unnecessary to burn down our village to roast our pig.

experiment, at Carnot, in the Congo, is described in the journal Le Chasseur Français in the shape of the collection and raising of the animals which the natives bring in from the bush. Large numbers have been taken in. Some of the animals die, some escape. Among those that have stayed are two wild hogs, which roam at liberty, eat from the hand, and follow like dogs. There are a jackal, mangoustes, small rodents, a company of monkeys, and a young tiger cat, "which is the law-giver to the others." None of the animals is confined, except that the jackal is tied, though he follows; but it has been necessary to separate the guinea-pigs from the rest. A large monkey has assumed the office of shepherd's dog, and takes care of the sheep. There are also dogs—"good company, but not of much value"—eight horses, with a colt that will eat at the table if allowed to; forty horned cattle, which are multiplying; and asses, which are also increasing.