Every Wednesday evening, after prayers, a kind of temperance meeting is held in the chapel. It is the intention of the superintendent, that every inmate of the Asylum shall become acquainted with the nature of alcohol, and with the precise effects of alcoholic drinks upon the human system. He means that they shall comprehend the absurdity of drinking as clearly as they know its ruinous consequences. He accordingly opens this meeting with a short lecture upon some one branch of the subject, and then invites the patients to illustrate the point from their own experience. At the meeting which I happened to attend the subject of Dr. Day's remarks was suggested (as it often is) by an occurrence which had just taken place at the institution, and had been the leading topic of conversation all that day. At the last meeting, a young man from a distant State, who had been in the Asylum for some months and was about to return home, delivered an eloquent farewell address to his companions, urging them to adhere to their resolution, and protesting his unalterable resolve never, never, never again to yield to their alluring and treacherous foe. He spoke with unusual animation and in a very loud voice. He took his departure in the morning, by the Erie Road, and twelve hours after he was brought back to the Asylum drunk. Upon his recovery he related to the superintendent and to his friends the story of his lamentable fall. When the train had gone three hours on its way, there was a detention of three hours at a station that offered little entertainment to impatient travellers. The returning prodigal paced the platform; found it dull work; heard at a distance the sound of billiard-balls; went and played two games, losing both; returned to the platform and resumed his walk; and there fell into the train of thought that led to the catastrophe. His reflections were like these: "How perfect is my cure! I have not once _thought_ of taking a drink. Not even when I saw men drinking at the bar did it cross my mind to follow their example. I have not the least desire for whiskey, and I have no doubt I could take that 'one glass' which Dr. Day keeps talking about, without a wish for a second. In fact, no man is perfectly cured till he can do that I have a great mind to put it to the test. It almost seems as if this opportunity of trying myself had been created on purpose. Here goes, then, for the last glass of whiskey I shall take as long as I live, and I take it purely as a scientific experiment." One hour after, his friend, who was accompanying him home, found him lying in a corner of a bar-room, dead drunk. He had him picked up, and placed in the next train bound for Binghamton.