I repeat, this is no temperance lecture. I know perfectly well that
some of the strongest men in business and politics and literary life
in this country take wine occasionally at the dinner-table and
elsewhere. Nor are they to be condemned for it. But this paper is
meant to contain vital suggestions to _young men_ with life's
possibilities and difficulties before them.
It is so entirely uncertain whether you have the will in you to keep
your hands very firmly on the reins of the wild horses of habit. It is
so utterly unknown to you whether you may not have inherited from an
ancestor, even very remote, an inflammable blood which, once touched
by stimulant, is ever after on fire.
You risk too much, and you risk it needlessly. My earnest advice is
not to try it. I will leave to the doctors the description of its
effect on nerve and brain, and to common observation the universal
testimony to the peculiar blurring of judgment which stimulant of any
kind usually produces. Besides, it is a very bad thing for a young man
to get a reputation for.
I have concluded, after very careful observation, that there is a
mighty change being wrought in this habit, and that a great majority
of the young men who are now the masters of affairs are abstainers.
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