“The constant demand upon his intellect gave him a habit of stimulating, and that is a good way toward intoxication.” “But I do not see in his pursuits that kind of demand for stimuli which poets are supposed to have? I think that drinking is rather an effect than a cause.” Such questions and such answers, with such conclusions, were frequent. Accident at length led me to a closer knowledge of the circumstances of one person, whose fame seemed to pale before the effectual fires of some hidden conflagration. Blackstone had taken his place at the bar of his native county, and extended his practice to the various courts of the State, so that he seemed, in a few years, to have got possession of a position for which many had given a life time of labor. The amount of his business at the bar did not hinder him from distinguishing himself in the halls of the legislature, and his commanding eloquence commended him to the people of both parties as a representative in Congress, where his career fulfilled all the expectations of his warmest political friends, and justified the vote in his favor of his political opponents. Years passed away, and the habits of this popular and eminent citizen were less exemplary than the fame of his talents would require, and while his many friends had to confess a bitter disappointment, he seemed dissatisfied with himself, and constantly in need of something which no one seemed able to impart. He lost the high position which he had reached, and the world wondered at the change; all, of course, censured the recusant, and blamed him justly, because there was that in his habits which shocked the temperate. “No man in these days,” it was said with emphasis, “no man can expect to sustain himself in any public position who neglects the proprieties of life by indulging in intemperate use of spirituous liquor.” Here was a cause for the lapse in the upward course. To drink too much is to be unable to ascend—we do not mean a play upon a vulgar designation for inebriety, when we say that he who drinks too much has in him a too heavy load to take with him to the temple of desirable fame. But admitting intemperance as the proximate cause of the change in the man’s conduct—may we not be allowed to suspect that there was a remote cause—some less potent influence working the evil, but producing through the agency of liquor? In other words we did inquire into the circumstances of Blackstone and found that there was a remote cause, and we found also what that cause was: