Part 72 (1/2)
”Point to the better land, Home of the blest, Where she has pa.s.sed away, Gone to her rest.
O'er the departed one Memory will yearn; G.o.d, in his mercy, grant He may return.”
FATAL ERRORS.
Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man's imperfections than those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,--vice for virtue,--and copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.
”General Grant smokes!”
”_President_ Grant drinks!”
These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth, have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of life than all other texts in the English language. General or President Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be sure; but if ”great men” will persist in bad habits, young men should be taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their desired haven,--the port of their ambition,--and nothing but a worthless wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The voyage ended cannot be re-commenced.
A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of liquor to our room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.
”Pshaw! It's only a pint of wine. Dr. Abernethy, the great English surgeon, bought one hundred and twenty-six gallons at once, and he did not _die a drunkard_,” was his contemptuous reply.
”But you must remember that Abernethy lived in the days of _good_ port wine, when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality produced of his popular beverage. The doctor, who never was intemperate, was very hospitable.
”'Honest John Lloyd!'--what an anomaly when applied to a rum-seller--was a great wine merchant of London, a particular friend of Abernethy's, and of all great men of his day, who loved wines and brandies.
”One day I went to Lloyd's just as Dr. Abernethy left.
”'Well,' said Mr. Lloyd, 'what a funny man your master is.'
”'Who?' said I.
”Why, Mr. Abernethy. He has just been here and paid me for a pipe of wine, and threw down a handful of notes and pieces of paper, with fees. I wanted him to stop to see if they were all right, and said, 'Some of those fees may be more than you think, perhaps.' 'Never mind,' said he; 'I can't stop; you have them as I took them,' and hastily went his way.
”In occasional habits we may most safely recollect that faults are no less faults (as Mirabeau said of Frederick the Great) because they have the shadow of a great name; and we believe that no good man would desire to leave a better expiation of any weakness than that it should deter others from a similar error.”
In fact, the doctor was opposed to drunkenness, and also gluttony, although he himself ”was a good liver,” as the following anecdote will show:--
A wealthy merchant who resided in the country had been very sick, and barely recovered, when, from the same cause, he was again threatened with a return of the like disease.
”I went to see him at home, and dined with him. He seemed to think that if he did not drink deeply, he might _eat like a glutton_,” said the doctor.
”Well, I saw he was at his old tricks again, and I said to him, 'Sir, what would you think of a merchant, who, having been prosperous in business and ama.s.sed a comfortable fortune, went and risked it all in what he knew was an imprudent speculation?'
”Why, sir,” he exclaimed, ”I should say he was a great a.s.s.”
”'Nay, then, thou art the man,' said Abernethy.”
The leopard does not change his spots. For the truth of this read the life and fall of Uniac.
O, it is a fearful thing to become a drunkard.
The habit once acquired is never gotten entirely rid of. It sleeps--it never dies, but with the death of the victim.