Still less is alcohol a strength-giver. Every man that ever trained for a supreme exertion of strength knows that Tom Sayers spoke the truth when he said: "I'm no teetotaller: but when I've any business to do, there's nothing like water and the dumb-bells." Richard Cobden, whose powers were subjected to a far severer trial than a pugilist ever dreamed of, whose labors by night and day, during the corn-law struggle, were excessive and continuous beyond those of any other member of the House of Commons, bears similar testimony: "The more work I have to do, the more I have resorted to the pump and the teapot." On this branch of the subject, _all_ the testimony is against alcoholic drinks. Whenever the point has been tested,--and it has often been tested,--the truth has been confirmed, that he who would do his _very_ best and most, whether in rowing, lifting, running, watching, mowing, climbing, fighting, speaking, or writing, must not admit into his system one drop of alcohol. Trainers used to allow their men a pint of beer per day, and severe trainers half a pint; but now the knowing ones have cut off even that moderate allowance, and brought their men down to cold water, and not too much of that, the soundest digesters requiring little liquid of any kind. Mr. Bigelow, by his happy publication lately of the correct version of Franklin's Autobiography, has called to mind the famous beer passage in that immortal work: "I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers[1] of beer. On occasion I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands." I have a long list of references on this point; but, in these cricketing, boat-racing, prize-fighting days, the fact has become too familiar to require proof. The other morning, Horace Greeley, teetotaler, came to his office after an absence of several days, and found letters and arrears of work that would have been appalling to any man but him. He shut himself in at ten A.M., and wrote steadily, without leaving his room, till eleven, P.M.,--thirteen hours. When he had finished, he had some little difficulty in getting down stairs, owing to the stiffness of his joints, caused by the long inaction; but he was as fresh and smiling the next morning as though he had done nothing extraordinary. Are any of us drinkers of beer and wine capable of such a feat? Then, during the war, when he was writing his history, he performed every day, for two years, two days' work,--one from nine to four, on his book; the other from seven to eleven, upon the Tribune; and, in addition, he did more than would tire an ordinary man in the way of correspondence and public speaking. I may also remind the reader, that the clergyman who, of all others in the United States, expends most vitality, both with tongue and pen, and who does his work with least fatigue and most gayety of heart, is another of Franklin's "water Americans."