The Cider Curse | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1886

The Cider Curse.

THERE are some who object to drinking rum or brandy, but who think there is no harm in drinking cider. The stimulating and intoxicating principle in cider, wine, brandy, gin, rum, lager beer, and all these other intoxicants, is the same; it is alcohol, and alcohol is the same poisonous and deadly agent wherever it is found. Distill the alcohol out of cider, wine, beer, or brandy, and what is left would be simply dishwater. No man would drink cider if the alcohol were taken out of it.

"But sweet cider does not do any hurt," says one. No; and a man puts a barrel of sweet cider into his cellar; he drinks a glass of it, and it is sweet; he takes another glass, and that is sweeter; he keeps drinking and drinking until the barrel is empty, and the last glass is the sweetest of all; and then he is ready to tap a new barrel. You can no more tell when sweet cider becomes sour than you can tell when a boy becomes a man, or when a pig becomes a hog.

The man who commences with sweet cider is likely to proceed to sour cider, and finish off with rum, gin, brandy, whisky, and all the catalogue of alcoholic poisons which ruin mankind and desolate the world. Boys, let cider alone! —Sel.