p. 165 | Temperance

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 5, 1883

Temperance.

Cider and Cider Drunkards.

MANY persons call themselves "total abstainers," but will not refuse "a little" or a great deal "good old cider." It is cider that stands between many families and temperance principles. It is not our intention to excommunicate the man who takes "a little very hard cider for billiousness," nor to grieve the spirit of the venerable old gentleman who finds it a good "phlegm-cutter." What we want to show is that "hard cider" is a very intoxicating and destructive sort of liquor. It contains from eight to ten per cent. of absolute alcohol, that is, a glass full of cider is equal to a glass of the same size one-fourth full of brandy, which contains less than fifty per cent. But it is not the alcohol alone that accounts for the different sorts of drunkenness. A marked difference often exists between beer, wine, rum, gin, brandy, and whisky drunkards; in the general condition of the habitual toper; and in the actions of the drunkards when drunk.

Cider drunkards are, generally speaking, the most morose, the crossest, ugliest, and most unmanageable of all; and when drunk, they stay drunk the longest, and sober up the most slowly.

An eminent physician, speaking of one of those men who had been virtually drunk all winter, said, "He has drunk so much cider that it has turned what milk of human kindness he had into vinegar." One of the best farmers in New England broke his wife's heart by continued ugliness and abuse, and came at last to poverty through cider. In being taken by him through his cellar, and shown seven varieties of cider, the writer said, "Just the number of evil spirits that made the last state of a certain man worse than his first." "O," said the victim, "a little good cider does nobody any harm." But in a short time it ruined him. A few years ago, when apples were unusually plenty, a farmer in Rhode Island put down for home use forty barrels of cider. Before the spring three of the six of which his family was composed had drunk themselves to death, and one of the survivors was injured in a drunken melee.

We are stirred to write on "cider and cider drunkards" just now, by the testimony recently given before Surrogate Coffin at White Plains, N. Y. Westchester County is famous for cider, and the daughter of the testator, who was a farmer, testified that her father was in the habit of drinking excessively, being frequently intoxicated with cider. On one occasion he lighted a number of candles, placed them on the table, and dared any one to blow them out. On another occasion, he filled a barrel full of hay and placed it on the floor of the barn, and then set the hay on fire. At another time he filled a stove with ashes, and then said he would like to see any one of his family kindle a fire in it. Once he attempted to cut the throat of one of his daughters. He was arrested in 1868 and again in 1870, on complaint of his wife, for cruel treatment. He was sent to the county jail, and subsequently to the penitentiary.

There is plenty of evidence that the song of a "little more cider too," is often the song of the drunkard.—Christian Advocate.