larger mortality from the use of liquor alone than the mortality from all known causes (liquor included), can be verified by taking the trouble to consult the files of the (New York) City Record. As for the part which drinking wine has to do with this official summary, I may mention the difficulty of approximating to the sales of what may be properly called "light wines." But I have been able to ascertain (as some indication of it, perhaps) that in the fifty-two weeks of this same year (1893) there were consumed in the same city 265,414 cases of champagne! So it would appear that even champagne is a mitigant, rather than an aggravator, of at least the public horrors of drunkenness. [Footnote 4: Perhaps for convenience of reference the figures heretofore found so startling may be repeated. Of 4,234 deaths collected by the British Medical Association, divided for reference into five classes--namely: _a_, total abstainers; _b_, habitually temperate; _c_, careless drinkers; _d_, free drinkers; _e_, habitual drunkards--the ages of death of those in each class were registered, together with the causes of death; and the average of death for each class computed with the following result: Total abstainers lived on an average 51.22 years; Habitually temperate lived on an average 62.13 " Careless drinkers lived on an average 59.67 " Free drinkers lived on an average 57.59 " Habitual drunkards lived on an average 52.03 " To cancel such a statement as this, some industry is required on the other side; at least a collection of 4,234 other cases. Anybody can say that a laboriously tabulated statement is false. But it requires patience to demonstrate it.] I am not unconscious of the fluent answer to these figures. It will be of course urged by the prohibitionist that they only show deaths the "direct" cause of dram-drinking. But such answer is correspondingly unsafe. For, since death, albeit normal to us all comes from some cause (notably from old age, for example), a better formula would be that, since many deaths are caused by old age, and as old age is caused by living too long, we should be careful not to live too long. Hence, as life is prolonged by eating, as well as shortened by drinking (granting that contention), to abstain from the use of food is the only course of wisdom!