Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 21, 1882

Temperance.

A Revelation.

During the present week an item of business called us to the office of a gentleman in this city who believes that every man has a divine right to take a drink whenever he feels like it, and that the man who does not know enough to stop before he gets drunk is a very inferior specimen of the genus homo, and might as well drink himself to death as not.

During the conversation that ensued, the temperance question came in for its share of attention. Some remarks were made by those present about the exhilarating effects of good lager in hot weather, and the folly of attempting by legislation to stop its manufacture and sale.

A stranger present said: "A little over a year ago I was in Wisconsin. It was harvest-time. A gang of men were employed by a wealthy farmer to gather a large harvest. The table which this farmer spread before his men was richly laden with everything that heart could wish. In addition to all the substantials and delicacies that the faithful housewife could prepare, I was greatly surprised to find a goblet by each plate filled with rye whisky."

The narration of this fact turned the conversation away from beer to whisky, when the gentleman in whose office we were, proceeded to relate the following instance: "Not very long since I was visiting a celebrated distillery not a thousand miles distant from Detroit. The owner of that distillery is professedly a temperance man, and is one of our wealthiest and most influential citizens. The nephew of the proprietor was showing me through the establishment, and taking a good deal of pains to explain everything that I saw. In one part of the institution I noticed two iron tanks about six feet in diameter and four or five feet high. One of these tanks was full and the other about half full of what I supposed to be whisky. Actuated by motives of curiosity, I approached one of the tanks, and was about to examine the contents by touching the surface with my fingers, when the gentleman who was conducting me through the distillery yelled at me at the top of his voice, 'Don't touch that! Don't touch that!' 'Why not,' I said coolly. 'What harm in just touching the surface.' 'Harm,' he ejaculated, excitedly, 'why that will take the end of your finger right off!' 'Take the end of my finger off!' I exclaimed, 'why so? Is that anything more than whisky?' 'Yes,' said he, 'that is something more than whisky. It is fusil oil.' 'Fusil oil!' I ejaculated. 'Fusil oil!' I was startled, for I knew that fusil oil would have done all to my fingers that he had said if I had touched it. It is powerful enough to bite a gun-barrel off. I looked at him somewhat savagely, and said, 'Do you mean to say that you make use of that stuff in the manufacture of your whiskies? Is that the kind of stuff you just offered me to drink?' He had just urged me to try some of his whisky. 'We have some good stuff,' he replied, somewhat meekly. He then went on to explain about as follows: 'To tell you the truth, we have some grain here that is not very good. It was in the warehouse on one of the docks at Chicago at the time of the great fire, and when the dock burned, it ran down into the river. After lying in the river about a year, it was taken out, and we bought it to manufacture into whisky. Of course, after lying in the Chicago River for that length of time, there is not much strength left in it, and we are compelled to make use of fusil oil to tone it up a little.' 'But what do you do with the stuff?' I inquired. 'Oh, we don't know where it is sold,' said he. 'It is all sent East; none of our customers about home get any of it.' 'But,' said I, 'somebody must get it.' 'None of our home customers get any of this,' he repeated. "This," continued our friend, "cured me of whisky drinking."—The Lever.