But we must repeat that the people of the United States are comparatively sober, and that the low drinking which we have in England is unknown excepting in a few large towns. Intoxicating drinks are very little used in families, and are only offered to visitors. It is only in large towns that “cellars” are kept, and then chiefly by rich men. Tea, coffee, and iced drinks supply the place of wine, beer, or porter at table, and nothing surprises an American so much, when he visits this country, as to see alcoholic drinks always brought out, and present at every lunch and dinner. There is one circumstance which, in the course of his inquiries, has struck the author as being quite as serious as the intemperance amongst the poorer classes which is so much talked and preached about in England, and it is this: In the United States there is no worldly advantage, but the reverse, in being a drinker of alcohol. In many places the minister of religion must be a total abstainer, and it is always a merit in every profession (generally speaking) to refrain from the use of intoxicants. Is it so here? Many ministers, it is true, are abstainers, but how many are there, on the other hand, who dine and drink _freely_ with the wealthier members of their congregations, but who seldom go near the poorer ones, because the former pay the best? The author was discussing this matter with the chief officer of one of the largest steamers sailing from Liverpool, who told him that he had formerly been a total abstainer, but that he had found it absolutely necessary to recommence taking alcohol as it militated against his advancement in life. And if it is a disadvantage to be a drinker in the United States, still more so is it to be a drink-seller. A “grog-seller” there may build any number of churches or endow any number of institutions out of the profits of his trade, but he will be a “grog-seller” still; whilst in England, if he has fifty gin-palaces, and supplies them all from one warehouse and office or from one brewery, he calls himself a wine and spirit merchant, or a brewer, and his vocation presents no obstacle to his being allowed to rank side by side with the inferior orders of our nobility. That drunkenness is not a prevailing vice in the States is best proved by the fact that drunken people are rarely seen in the streets. The author has ascertained this from friends who have travelled over every portion of the States, and a near relative of his who resided about a year in Louisville tells him that during the whole of that time he saw only two instances, the one being an old man who was followed about by a crowd of urchins reviling and mocking at him as they would at a howling idiot in England.