The same mistaken people also talk too much about the allurements and pleasures of drink; of the gilded palaces where drink is sold, and of its pleasing effects, causing young men and boys who would otherwise never have thought of it to be seized with an uncontrollable desire to try the experiment for themselves, although there is nothing more certain than that all of this is untrue. They visit these places, to begin with, because they have been warned so frequently against them, and before they find out--which they are certain to, sooner or later--that whiskey is man’s enemy in every particular, and his friend in nothing; that the “gilded palaces” in which it is sold are low dens kept by men whose company is not desirable; that the reputed pleasure in the cup is a myth; and that drinking is an evidence of depravity as plainly marked as idleness and viciousness,--they form the habit, and become saloon loafers. I firmly believe that hundreds of young men become drunkards by misrepresentation of this sort, whereas the truth is easier told, and would prove more effective in keeping them away. The first step in a career of dissipation is not the first glass, as is sometimes asserted, but a cultivation of saloon society. There is nothing to do in a place where drink is sold, no other amusement or excuse for being there, than to drink, gamble and gossip, and when a man learns to relish the undesirable company common to such places, the liquor habit follows as a matter of course, but not before. It is an effort for most men to drink whiskey, even after they have become accustomed to its use; it is naturally disgusting to every good quality, and every good thought; it jars every healthy nerve as it is poured down the throat; it looks hot and devilish in the bottle, and gurgles like a demon’s laugh while it is being poured out, and until the young men of the country are taught that drinking is low and vicious rather than intellectual, we cannot hope for a reform in this grave matter. I believe that familiarity with it breeds contempt, for I have noticed that very few drunkard’s sons follow in the footsteps of their fathers, and the men who sell it seldom drink it. Most drunkards are such notorious liars that little can be told from their confessions, but if accurate statistics could be collected, it would no doubt turn out that most men having the habit formed it because they were particularly warned against it. To say to a man that he shall not drink creates within him a strong desire to drink to excess, and prohibitory laws generally increase rather than decrease the consumption of liquor, because of this strange peculiarity. We regulate other evils, and admit they cannot be blotted out, but with strange inconsistency we insist that liquor of every kind must be driven from the face of the earth; that to regulate such a horrible evil is a compromise with the Devil, and that efforts for its extermination only are worthy of temperate men and women.