Some drunkards have attempted to cure themselves by the assumption of voluntary oaths. They go before a magistrate, and swear that, for a certain period, they shall not taste liquors of any kind; and it is but just to state, that these oaths are sometimes strictly enough kept. They are, however, much oftener broken—the physical cravings for the bottle prevailing over whatever religious obligation may have been entered into. Such a proceeding is as absurd as it is immoral, and never answers the purpose of effecting any thing like a radical cure; for, although the person abides by his solemn engagement, it is only to resume his old habits more inveterately than ever, the moment it expires. Many men become drunkards from family broils. They find no comfort at home, and gladly seek for it out of doors. In such cases, it will be almost impossible to break the habit. The domestic sympathies and affections, which oppose a barrier to dissipation, and wean away the mind from the bottle, have here no room to act. When the mother of a family becomes addicted to liquor, the case is very afflicting. Home, instead of being the seat of comfort and order, becomes a species of Pandemonium: the social circle is broken up, and all its happiness destroyed. In this case, there is no remedy but the removal of the drunkard. A feeling of perversity has been known to effect a cure among the fair sex. A man of Philadelphia, who was afflicted with a drunken wife, put a cask of rum in her way, in the charitable hope that she would drink herself to death. She suspected the scheme, and, from a mere principle of contradiction, abstained in all time coming, from any sort of indulgence in the bottle. I may mention another American anecdote of a person reclaimed from drunkenness, by means not less singular. A man in Maryland, notoriously addicted to this vice, hearing an uproar in his kitchen one evening, felt a curiosity to step without noise to the door, to know what was the matter, when he beheld his servants indulging in the most unbounded roar of laughter at a couple of his negro boys, who were mimicking himself in his drunken fits, showing how he reeled and staggered—how he looked and nodded, and hiccupped and tumbled. The picture which these children of nature drew of him, and which had filled the rest with so much merriment, struck him so forcibly, that he became a perfectly sober man, to the unspeakable joy of his wife and children.