“Few will agree with you in that conclusion,” returned Doctor Hillhouse.

“On the contrary,” replied Mr. Carlton, “I think that most people, after looking at the subject from the right standpoint, will see it as I do.”

“Men who take a glass of wine at dinner and drink with a friend occasionally,” remarked Doctor Hillhouse are not given to idleness, waste of property and abuse and neglect of their families, as we find to be the case with common drunkards.  They don’t fill our prisons and almshouses.  Their wives and children do not go to swell the great army of beggars, paupers and criminals.  I fear, my friend, that you are looking through the wrong end of your glass.”

“No; my glass is all right.  The number of drunken men and women in the land is small compared to the number who drink moderately, and very few of them are to be found in places of trust or responsibility.  As soon as a man is known to be a drunkard society puts a mark on him and sets him aside.  If he is a physician, health and life are no longer entrusted to his care; if a lawyer, no man will give an important case into his hands.  A ship-owner will not trust him with his vessel, though a more skilled navigator cannot be found; and he may be the best engineer in the land, yet will no railroad or steamship company trust him with life and property.  So everywhere the drunkard is ignored.  Society will not trust him, and he is limited in his power to do harm.

“Not so with your moderate drinkers.  They fill our highest places and we commit to their care our best and dearest interests.  We put the drunkard aside because we know he cannot be trusted, and give to moderate drinkers, a sad percentage of whom are on the way to drunkenness, our unwavering confidence.  They sail our ships, they drive our engines, they make and execute our laws, they take our lives in their hands as doctors and surgeons; we trust them to defend or maintain our legal rights, we confide to them our interests in hundreds of different ways that we would never dream of confiding to men who were regarded as intemperate.  Is it not fair to conclude, knowing as we do how a glass of wine too much will confuse the brain and obscure the judgment, that society in trusting its great army of moderate drinkers is suffering loss far beyond anything we imagine?  A doctor loses his patient, a lawyer his case, an engineer wrecks his ship or train, an agent hurts his principal by a loose or bad bargain, and all because the head had lost for a brief space its normal clearness.

“Men hurt themselves through moderate drinking in thousands of ways,” continued Mr. Carlton.  “We have but to think for a moment to see this.  Many a fatal document has been signed, many a disastrous contract made, many a ruinous bargain consummated, which but for the glass of wine taken at the wrong moment would have been rejected.  Men under the excitement of drink often enter into the unwise schemes of designing men only to lose heavily, and sometimes to encounter ruin.  The gambler entices his victim to drink, while he keeps his own head clear.  He knows the confusing quality of wine.”