A certain Woman had a Drunken Husband, whom she had endeavoured to reclaim by several ways, without effect. She, at last, tried this stratagem: when he was brought home one night dead drunk, she ordered him to be carried to a burial-place, and there laid in a vault, as if he had been dead indeed. Thus she left him, and went away till she thought he might be come to himself, and grown sober again. When she returned, and knocked at the door of the vault, the man cried out, who’s there? I am the person, says she, in a dismal tone of voice, that waits upon the dead folks, and I am come to bring you some victuals. Ah, good waiter, says he, let the victuals alone and bring me a little drink, I beseech thee. The Woman hearing this, fell to tearing her hair, and beating her breast in a woeful manner: Unhappy wretch that I am, says she, this was the only way that I could think of to reform the beastly sot; but instead of gaining my point, I am only convinced that his drunkenness is an incurable habit, which he intends to carry with him into the other world. APPLICATION. This Fable is intended to shew us the prevalence of custom; and how by using ourselves to any evil practice, we may let it grow into such a habit as we shall never be able to divest ourselves of. “O! that men should put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains!” There is no vice which gains an ascendant over us more insensibly, or more incurably, than drunkenness: it takes root by degrees, and comes at length to be past both remedy and shame. Habitual drunkenness stupifies the senses, destroys the understanding, fills its votaries with diseases, and makes them incapable of business. It cuts short the thread of life, or brings on an early old age, besides the mischief it does in the mean time to a man’s family and affairs, and the scandal it brings upon himself: for a sot is one of the most despicable and disgusting characters in life. After he has destroyed his reasoning faculties, and thus shewn his ingratitude to the giver of them, he flies to palliatives as a remedy for the diseases which his intemperance has caused, and goes on in a course of taking whets and cordials, and more drink, till he falls a martyr to the vice, to which through life he has been a slave. [Illustration] [Page 123] THE LIONESS AND THE FOX.