In an enterprise for the management of which no precedents exist, everything of course depends upon the chief. When you have got the right man at the head, you have got everything; and until you have got the right man there, you have got nothing. Albert Day, the superintendent for nine years of the Washingtonian Home at Boston, and during the last year and a half the superintendent of the Asylum at Binghamton, has originated nearly all that is known of the art of curing the mania for alcohol. He struck into the right path at once, guided by instinct and sympathy, rather than by science or reflection. He was not a professional person; he was simply a business man of good New England education, who had two special qualifications for his new position,--first, a singular pity for drunkards; and, secondly, a firm belief that, with timely and right assistance, a majority of them could be restored to self-control. This pity and this faith he had possessed for many years, and they had both grown strong by exercise. When he was a child upon his father's farm in Maine, he saw in his own home and all around him the evils resulting from the general use of alcoholic liquors, so that when the orators of teetotalism came along he was ready to receive their message. He is one of the very few persons now living in the world who never partook of an alcoholic beverage,--so early was he convinced of their preposterous inutility. Losing his father at thirteen, he at once took hold of life in the true Yankee way. He tied up his few worldly effects into a bundle, and, slinging it over his shoulder, walked to a farmer's house not many miles away, and addressed to him a plain question, "Do you want to hire a boy?" to which the farmer with equal directness replied, "Yes." From hoeing corn and chopping wood the lad advanced to an apprenticeship, and learned a mechanical trade; and so made his way to early marriage, decent prosperity, and a seat in the Legislature of Massachusetts. From the age of sixteen he was known, wherever he lived, as a stanch teetotaler, and also as one who would befriend a drunkard after others had abandoned him to his fate.