My experiences as a moderate drinker, a drunkard and a total abstainer. To which is added 'A rill from the town pump', by N. Hawthorne

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Page 48 - And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares ; for as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.
Page 65 - town treasurer " is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper, without expense to him that pays taxes. I am at the head of the fire department, and one of the physicians to the board of health.
Page 73 - In the moral warfare, which you are to wage — and, indeed, in the whole conduct of your lives — you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have never permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulence and manifold disquietudes of the world around me, to reach that deep, calm well of purity, which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul, it is to cool earth's fever, or cleanse its stains.
Page 19 - Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn.
Page 69 - ... at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But, in the course of time, a Town Pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring ; and when the first decayed, another took its place — and then another, and still another — till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my iron goblet.
Page 71 - ... finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation ! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched, where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then, Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart, and die.
Page 71 - ... the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish, which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise, the cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water...
Page 68 - What ! he limps by, without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine-cellars.
Page 53 - All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient : all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
Page 13 - The live-long night : nor these alone, whose notes, Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain, But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud, The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl, That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.

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