But to my story.  My father, one of the first in his day to set the example of total abstinence “for his brethren and companions’ sake,” had spoke repeatedly in my presence of the harm done by social drinking, and what influence women could exert for or against the custom.  So I declined wine upon general principles when it was offered by the courtly host.  No verbal comment was made upon my singular conduct, but the pert fifteen-year-old son of the house took occasion to drink my health with a dumb grimace, and beckoned the butler audaciously to fill up his glass, and a distinguished clergyman, whose parishioner the host was, looked polite astonishment across the table at the girl who dared.  He took his wine gracefully—­pointedly, it seemed to me—­an example imitated by his curate, a much younger man.  When we returned to the drawing-room, the master of the house sought me out, and began to rally me upon the attentions of a young man in the company to myself, in such a fashion that my cheeks flushed hotly with indignant astonishment.  Lifting my eyes to his, I saw that he was drunk!  The horror and dismay of the discovery were inconceivable.  The rest of the interview, which was ended by his wife’s appearance upon the scene to coax him off to his room, left an indelible impression upon my mind.  The Spartans had a way of “drenching” a helot with liquor, then parading him in his drunken antics before the boys of the town to disgust them with dram-drinking.  My object-lesson was the more striking because I had honored the inebriate.

The eloquent rector read the burial service over him ten years ago.  For over twenty years he had been a hopeless sot, beggared in fortune, wrecked in reputation—­a by-word and a hissing in a town where he had once stood among the best and purest.  He outlived his son, who drank himself to death before he was thirty.

Another and later experience was in a fine old farm-house in the Middle States.  There had been a birthday celebration, and neighbors and friends gathered about a board laden with country dainties, and congratulated the worthy couple who presided over the feast upon the four stalwart sons who, with their wives and children, were settled upon and about an estate that had been for six generations in the family.  Hale, merry fellows they were—­a little more red of face and loud of talk than was quite seemly in a stranger’s eyes, but industrious and “forehanded,” and kind of heart to parents, wives and babies.  After dinner we sat under the cherry trees upon the lawn, and one of the sons brought out a round table, another a tray of glasses, another a monster bowl of milk punch.

Everybody pledged the patriarch’s health in the creamy potation except myself.  Again, I acted upon general principles.  Were I a wine-bibber I should never touch glasses with a young man, or offer him anything “that could make drunk come.”  Disliking spirituous draughts of all kinds, and with the object-lesson of my girlhood branded upon memory, I refused to taste the brimming glass, even when the pastor of the household, a genial “dominie,” rallied me upon my abstinence.  He offered gallantly, when he found me obdurate, to drink my share, and had his glass replenished by the reddest-faced and loudest-mouthed of the farmer-sons.