p. 213 | A FOOLISH CUSTOM

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 12, 1881

A FOOLISH CUSTOM.

ONE of the most absurd of all foolish customs is that of inviting a crowd of friends or strangers up to the bar “to take something at my expense.” Some one has sensibly said:—

“Now, boys, if you want to be generous, and treat each other, why not select some other place besides the liquor shop? Suppose as you go by the post-office, you remark, ‘I say my dear fellow, come in and take some stamps;’ these stamps will cost no more than drinks all around. Or go to the clothier’s and say, ‘Boys come in and take a box of collars.’ Walk up to a grocer’s, free and generous, and say, ‘What kind of coffee will you have?’ Why not treat to groceries by the pound as well as liquors by the glass? Or take your comrades to a cutler’s and say, ‘I’ll stand a good pocket-knife all around.’” This would be thought a strange way of showing friendship; but would it not be better than to offer to your friends a maddening, poisonous, deadly draught?

Suppose a man should keep a den of rattlesnakes, and allow men to come in and be bitten at sixpence a bite: would it be a sensible thing for a man to invite all his friends in to be bitten at his expense? Is it worth our while to turn our friends into brutes, maniacs, and murderers, and their homes into hells of trouble and distress, by giving them “something to drink at my expense?” “At last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”