“I am very sorry that Ma told you, I think such things should be kept sacred from comment, and I think the woman is wanting in refinement and delicacy of feeling who makes the rejection of a lover a theme for conversation.”

“Now you dear little prude I had no idea that you would take it so seriously but Aunt Emma was so disappointed and spoke of the rejected suitor in such glowing terms, and said that you had sacrificed a splendid opportunity because of some squeamish notions on the subject of temperance, and so of course, my dear cousin, it was just like me to let my curiosity overstep the bounds of prudence, and inquire why you rejected Mr. Romaine."[3]

“Because I could not trust him.”

“Couldn’t trust him?  Why Belle you are a greater enigma than ever.  Why not?”

“Because I feel that the hands of a moderate drinker are not steady enough to hold my future happiness.”

“Was that all?  Why I breathe again, we girls would have to refuse almost every young man in our set, were we to take that stand.”

“And suppose you were, would that be any greater misfortune than to be the wives of drunkards.”

“I don’t see the least danger.  Ma has wine at her entertainments, and I have often handed it to young gentlemen, and I don’t see the least harm in it.  On last New Year’s day we had more than fifty callers.  Ma and I handed wine, to every one of them.”  “Oh I do wish people would abandon that pernicious custom of handing around wine on New Year’s day.  I do think it is a dangerous and reprehensible thing.”

“Wherein lies the danger?  Of course I do not approve of young men drinking in bar rooms and saloons, but I cannot see any harm in handing round wine at social gatherings.  Not to do so would seem so odd.”

“It is said Jeanette[,?] ’He is a slave who does not be, in the right with two or three.’  It is better, wiser far to stand alone in our integrity than to join with the multitude in doing wrong.  You say while you do not approve of young men drinking in bar rooms and saloons, that you have no objection to their drinking beneath the shadow of their homes, why do you object to their drinking in saloons, and bar rooms?”

“Because it is vulgar.  Oh!  I think these bar rooms are horrid places.  I would walk squares out of my way to keep from passing them.”  “And I object to intemperance not simply because I think it is vulgar but because I know it is wicked; and Jeanette I have a young brother for whose welfare I am constantly trembling; but I am not afraid that he will take his first glass of wine in a fashionable saloon, or flashy gin palace, but I do dread his entrance into what you call ‘our set.’  I fear that my brother has received as an inheritance a temperament which will be easily excited by stimulants, that an appetite for liquor once a awakened will be hard to subdue, and I am so fearful, that at some social gathering, a thoughtless girl will hand him a glass of wine, and that the first glass will be like adding fuel to a smouldering fire.”