That the prescription of alcohol for remedial purposes will ultimately be abandoned, like bleeding, blue-pill dosing and other medical anachronisms, is as certain as that the Carpathian peasants will cease to exorcise devils by burning cow dung, and we can somewhat promote the advent of that time by patronizing reform physicians in preference to “brandy-doctors,” as Benjamin Rush[5] used to call them, and by classing alcoholic “bitters” with the prohibited beverages. It is mere mockery to prohibit the sale of small beer and permit quacks to sell their brandy as a “digestive tonic,” and obviate the inconveniences of the Sunday law by consigning their liquor to a drug-store. Does the new name or the admixture of a handful of herbs change the effects of the poison? We might as well prohibit gambling and permit musical lottery drawings under the name of sacred concerts. Till we can do better we should permit druggists to sell alcoholic bitters only on the certified prescription of a responsible physician, all such prescriptions to be duly registered and periodically reported to the Temperance Commissioner of a Board of Health. Nostrum-mongers[6] will probably continue to fleece the ignorant to the end of time, but they must cease to decoy their victims by pandering to the alcohol vice. 3. HEALTHIER PASTIMES.—There is no doubt that a lack of better pastimes often tends to promote intemperance. In thousands of our country towns, equidistant from rural sports and the amusements of the metropolis _ennui_ rather than ignorance[C] or natural depravity leads our young men to the dram shop, and in recognizing that fact we should not delude ourselves with the hope that reading-rooms alone could remedy the evil.[D] The _craving after excitement_, in some form or other, is an instinct of human nature which may be perverted, but can never be wholly suppressed, and in view of the alternative we would find it cheaper—both morally and materially—to gratify that craving in the comparatively harmless way of the Languedoc[9] peasants (who devote the evening hours to singing contests, trials of skill, round dances, etc.), or after the still better plan of the ancient Greeks. Antiquity had its Olympic Games, Nemean and Capitoline arenas, _circenses_, and local festivals. The Middle Ages had their tournaments, May days, archery contests, church festivals and guild feasts. The Latin nations still find leisure for pastimes of that sort—though in modified, and not always improved, forms; but in Great Britain, Canada and the United States, with their six times twelve hours of monotonous factory work, and Sunday laws against all kinds of recreations, the dreariness of existence has reached a degree which for millions of workingmen has made oblivion a blest refuge, and there is no doubt that many dram-drinkers use alcohol as an anodyne—the most available palliative against the misery of life-weariness. We would try in vain to convert such men by reproofs or ostracism.