2. My Mama

It had certainly played the devil with many of my kinsmen and some of the friends I have known best and loved dearest. Today, as I review this long list of casualties, and remember how the gentle, patient mothers, wives and children wept and prayed while their beloved lost their inglorious battle, I feel that something should be said here about these tragedies.

No; I am not purposing to go noisily overboard with a smug preachment. I really have no ticket to do that, for the profession in which most of my life has been spent protected me; and as I survey this long, unhappy procession of wreckage I should be honest enough to confess, as did John Wesley, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

At the moment I shall do no moaning over the shabby, shaggy, lousy bums who trudge back and forth on Skid Row, and sleep on park benches with a discarded newspaper for a blanket. Most of them are displaced persons for whom no tears are shed.

But my heart goes out to the Junior Executive who, because he is bright, handsome and companionable, is given the job of entertaining the Big Accounts when they come to town with their wives for two hours of business consultation and a week’s spree.

If our Junior Executive had this hilarious hosting to do twice a year or once a month, he might attend to it without much damage, but the Big Accounts keep on coming, relentlessly. Our promising young man rises dizzily almost every morning and breakfasts moodily on Bromo-Seltzer.

Nor is his attractive young wife excluded from the merrymaking. She is invited to come along to the party. If she declines and sweats it out at home until 3 a.m., she is in danger of becoming a kill-joy. When her predicament is no longer to be borne, not even for love’s dear sake, she can go to Reno and take the cure.

It is quite obvious that no amount of legislation will relieve this situation. We tried that without success. The problem grows more and more serious daily. Hosts who neglect to serve a cocktail before dinner are funny old fuddy-duddies. Parents who counsel their teenage children on the subject are behind the times.

Well, that will be all, for now. Don’t ask me what should be done about it, for I don’t know. We speeded up our tempo, concentrated all industry and government in huge, crowded cities, where everybody had to hurry, and needed relaxation at the end of the day’s hectic activity. To succeed, to really live, to be in the swim, to be anybody at all, you must find a job in the city.

Of course the problem of dealing with alcohol is of no recent invention. One of the earliest legends recorded in the Holy Scriptures reports that when the world’s wickedness had reached such stunning proportions that God felt it was useless to keep it going, under its current management, He decided to erase the whole thing and make a fresh start. Noah was told to build a boat, gather up pairs of all the animals, and ride out a big storm. After forty days and nights, the navigator landed on a mountaintop, found a laden grapevine—apparently the only living thing on Mount Ararat that had survived the global disaster—and proceeded at once to distill some wine, wherewith he got himself so thoroughly swacked that his own children were embarrassed.

It is not in my heart to rebuke Father Noah too severely for this misdemeanor; for, surely, if anybody ever had an excuse for wanting a pick-me-up, it was this mariner who had spent nearly six weeks in an unventilated zoo.

I mention the event only to show that drunkenness is no new thing. It has been humanity’s Number One plague from the beginning. But not until our own time has the habitual drunkard found a justification for his performances. Whereas drunkenness was heretofore considered a disgrace, it has latterly become a disease.

Doubtless it is nothing else than that in some cases, but it is the opinion of this reporter that in the large majority of instances these unhappy people would make a more courageous effort to reassert their will, and scramble back to sanity, were it not for the popular sentiment which classifies them as invalids.

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