Although it was said that he drank more than was good for him, he did not have the appearance of a drunkard, and it seemed to me that when he was drinking, he was anxious that everybody know it, and that he drank more because it was contemptible and depraved than because he had an appetite. A few of the sentimental people said that were it not for his dissipating, he could greatly distinguish himself, and that he was very talented; therefore I think he drank as an apology for his worthlessness, knowing he could never accomplish what the people said he could if he remained sober. He probably argued that if he kept his breath smelling with liquor, he would only have to answer to the public for that one fault (receiving at the same time a large amount of sympathy, which a better man would have rejected), whereas if he kept sober he would be compelled to answer to the charge of being an insolent loafer, and a worthless vagabond. From a long experience with it, I have come to believe that the question of intemperance has never been treated with the intelligence which has distinguished this country in most other particulars. We pet drunkards too much, and a halo of sentimentality surrounds them, instead of the disgust and contempt they deserve. If a man is a noted liar, or a noted vagrant, society allows him to find his proper level, and reform himself (since no one else can do it for him), but if he drinks too much, great numbers of men and women who are perhaps temperate in nothing except that they do not drink, attempt to reform him with kindness, although that method prevails in nothing else. As a reason why he should not dissipate, he is told what distinguished positions he could occupy but for the habit, and while this is well-intended, the facts generally are that the fellow is entirely worthless whether drunk or sober. The young man who practises temperance in the whiskey and other particulars because it is necessary in his ambition to be of use to himself and to those around him, is entirely neglected that the disgusting pigs who swill that which is ruinous to health, mind, and pocket may be “encouraged,” and who perhaps only drink for the poor kind of attention it insures them, and from being told of it so often, they come to believe themselves that but for their dissipation they would be wonderful fellows, so it often happens that their egotism is even more detestable than their maudlin drunkenness. Many young men are thus led into the false notion that great brains feed on stimulants, and regard an appetite as intellectual.