Отрывок из книги
Reginald G. Dutton
Published by Good Press, 2020
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Oh, don't you think that is a terrible picture of the influence of drink? Don't you think that at the Day of Judgment God will blame the friends, however kindly they may have meant it, who first advised her to drown her grief in drink? Reader, that is a true story. It is no made-up tale. That poor woman is well known to me; and so far as I can see, the few years more she may have to live, and they cannot be many, must be passed in sorrow, in suffering, and in pain. And, unhappily, this curse of our nation does not end in our own land. Wherever the English tongue is spoken, wherever the English foot treads, there the curse follows. From the swarthy African, who knows the white man's "fire-water," which maddens his brain and dulls his senses, to the red Indian warrior who changes the skins of wild beasts for English gold and English spirits on the shores of Lake Ontario, all men know of the Englishman's curse: and knowing, learn to dread it.
It is drink which destroys our navy and our army alike. It is drunkenness which saps the strength of many of our greatest minds before they have left the university. And what can I say of our country villages,--of our young men, who year by year are growing up and beginning for themselves the labour of life; of the boys who, almost as soon as they leave school, learn, in many cases, to follow the example of their elders, and find the public house a convenient meeting-place?
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