“How, over-doing it?” asked the wife.

“There is a danger of over-doing it in many ways.  And I am by no means sure that the pledge of perpetual abstinence is not an instance of this.”

“The pledge of perpetual abstinence!  Why, husband, what do you mean?”

“My remark seems to occasion surprise.  But I think that I can make the truth of what I say apparent to your mind.  The use of the pledge, you will readily admit, is to protect a man against the influence of a morbid thirst for liquor, which his own resolution is not strong enough to conquer.”

“Well.”

“So soon, then, as this end is gained, the use of the pledge ceases.”

“Is it ever gained?  Is a man who has once felt this morbid thirst, ever safe from it?”

“Most certainly do I believe that he is.  Most certainly do I believe that a few years of total abstinence from everything that intoxicates, will place him on the precise ground that he occupied before the first drop of liquor passed his lips.”

“I cannot believe this, Jonas.  Whatever is once confirmed by habit, it seems to me, must be so incorporated into the mental and physical organization, as never to be eradicated.  Its effect is to change, in a degree, the whole system, and to change it so thoroughly, as to give a bias to all succeeding states of mind and body—­thus transmitting a tendency to come under the influence of that bias.”

“You advance a thing, Jane, which will not hold good in practice.  As, for instance, it is now two years since I tasted a drop of wine, brandy, or anything else of a like nature.  If your theory were true, I should still feel a latent desire, at times, to drink again.  But this is not the case.  I have not the slightest inclination.  The sight, or even the smell of wine, does not produce the old desire, which it would inevitably do, if it were only quiescent—­not extirpated—­as I am confident that it is.”

“And this is the reason why you think the pledge should not be perpetual?”

“It is.  Why should there be an external restraint imposed upon a mere nonentity?  It is absurd!”

“Granting, for the sake of argument, the view you take, in regard to the extirpation of the morbid desire, which, however, I cannot see to be true,” Mrs. Marshall said, endeavouring to seem unconcerned, notwithstanding the position assumed by her husband troubled her instinctively,—­“it seems to me, that there still exists a good reason why the pledge should be perpetual.”

“What is that, Jane?”

“If a man has once been led off by a love of drink, when no previous habit had been formed, there exists, at least, the same danger again, if liquor be used;—­and if it should possibly be true that the once formed desire, if subdued, is latent—­not eradicated—­the danger is quadrupled.”

“I do not see the force of what you say,” the husband replied.  “To me, it seems, that the very fact that he had once fallen, and the remembrance of its sad consequences, would be a sure protection against another lapse from sobriety.”