—A man really needs very little spirituous liquors in the course of a year. And many there are among the active, clear-headed men of the day who have never in the course of their lives tasted a drop. The present secretary of the United States treasury, Mr. Boutwell, used to say, before he attained his fortieth year, that he had never tasted ardent spirits, and he should not till he was forty. At forty, he said he should defer beginning the use of liquor till he was forty-five. At forty-five he declared he would never use them till he was fifty. And when fifty came he resolved that he would drink no liquors until he was sixty; and he is now working out that problem of abstinence from all kinds of intoxicating liquors, and has nearly ten years in which to do it. Meantime others—cultured, brilliant, affluent—who have not thus prudently deferred and postponed the practice, have dwarfed their intellects, and muddled their brains, and soured their dispositions, and have debilitated their bodies, and have impaired their usefulness, and have sunk out of sight, even before they have arrived at the fiftieth year of their lives, by the use of—I will not write by the abuse of—spirituous liquors.