“Well,” said the great lawyer, “a young man who has enough self-restraint to deny himself as that young man did, and who at the same time is so scintillating in speech, so genuine and original in thought, and so charming in manner, has in him simply tremendous possibilities.  I have not been so impressed in a long time as I was by his refraining from drinking.”

This incident is related simply to show that a young man loses nothing in the esteem of those who themselves drink by declining to join them.

I repeat, this is no temperance lecture.  I know perfectly well that some of the strongest men in business and politics and literary life in this country take wine occasionally at the dinner-table and elsewhere.  Nor are they to be condemned for it.  But this paper is meant to contain vital suggestions to young men with life’s possibilities and difficulties before them.

It is so entirely uncertain whether you have the will in you to keep your hands very firmly on the reins of the wild horses of habit.  It is so utterly unknown to you whether you may not have inherited from an ancestor, even very remote, an inflammable blood which, once touched by stimulant, is ever after on fire.

You risk too much, and you risk it needlessly.  My earnest advice is not to try it.  I will leave to the doctors the description of its effect on nerve and brain, and to common observation the universal testimony to the peculiar blurring of judgment which stimulant of any kind usually produces.  Besides, it is a very bad thing for a young man to get a reputation for.

I have concluded, after very careful observation, that there is a mighty change being wrought in this habit, and that a great majority of the young men who are now the masters of affairs are abstainers.  In short, drinking will soon be out of style, and very bad form.

Consider these illustrations:  I know a young man who is just forty years of age and who is practically the head of one of the greatest business institutions in the world.  He has worked his way to that position by ability, character, and untiring industry, from the very humblest position in his company’s service.  He is a total abstainer.

I know another, also just forty, who is president of one of the largest banks in America.  When I first knew him, very many years ago, he occupied the position of cashier in a comparatively obscure financial house.  Merit alone has placed him where he is now.  He had no friends when he began, no “influence,” hardly an acquaintance.  But he had himself, clear brained and steady pulsed—­and that was enough.  He, too, does not touch stimulants of any kind.

Or, to get out of that class of occupations—­one of the most successful political “bosses” in this country, a man who makes politics his profession, and who, just past forty, is in control of the political machine of one of our great cities, rose to that position, by ability alone, from the occupation of a street-car driver.  He also is a total abstainer.