Mr. Parton next indicts alcohol on the ground that it is not a strength-giver. "On this branch of the subject," he observes, "_all_ the testimony is against alcoholic drinks."[15] Yet in his own statement of the case may be found contradictions enough. On the one hand he cites Tom Sayers, Richard Cobden and Benjamin Franklin in support of his opinion;[16] and he tells us how Horace Greeley, teetotaler, coming home the other day, and finding terrible arrears of work piled up before him, sat down and wrote steadily, without leaving his room, from ten A.M. till eleven P.M.--no very wonderful feat for a healthy man. But on the other hand, it appears from some of his own facts that when a supreme exertion of strength is requisite, then we must take alcohol. "During the war I knew of a party of cavalry who, for three days and three nights, were not out of the saddle fifteen minutes at a time. The men consumed two quarts of whisky each, and all of them came in alive. It is a custom in England to extract the last possible five miles from a tired horse, when those miles _must_ be had from him, by forcing down his most unwilling throat a quart of beer." (p. 86.) From these unwelcome facts Mr. Parton draws the sage inference that alcohol, like tobacco, supports us in doing wrong! "It enables us to violate the laws of nature without immediate suffering and speedy destruction." Now there is one much abused faculty of mankind, which nevertheless will sometimes refuse to be insulted,--that faculty is common sense. And in the present case, common sense declares that when we are taxing our strength, no matter whether "laws" are violated or not, we do not keep ourselves up by drinking a substance which can only weaken us. It may be unfortunate that alcohol is a strength-giver; but the fact that we can travel farther with it than without it shows that, unfortunate or not, the thing is so. But Mr. Parton believes that Nature is even with us afterward. "In a few instances of intermittent disease, a small quantity of wine may sometimes enable a patient who is at the low tide of vitality to anticipate the turn of the tide, and borrow at four o'clock enough of five o'clock strength to enable him to reach five o'clock." This is sheer nonsense. There is no such thing as borrowing at four o'clock the strength of five o'clock. The thing is a physiological absurdity. The strength of to-morrow is non-existent until to-morrow comes; it is not a reserved fund from which we can borrow to-day. If Mr. Parton's notion were correct, his patient ought to be weaker at five o'clock by just the same amount that he is stronger at four o'clock. If the strength has been borrowed, it cannot be used over again. You cannot eat your cake and save it. In an hour's time, therefore, the patient should be weaker than if he had contrived to get along without the wine. But this is not found to be the case: he is stronger at four and he is stronger at five, he is stronger next