He Drank Beer
Anonymous
Professor (examining a student): “And how do you protect yourself against impure water?”
(more…)Wine When It Is Red
G. K. Chesterton
I suppose that there will be some wigs on the green in connection with the recent manifesto signed by a string of very eminent doctors on the subject of what is called “alcohol.”
(more…)This Strenuous Age
Stephen Leacock
Something is happening, I regret to find, to the world in which we used to live. The poor old thing is being “speeded up.” There is “efficiency” in the air. Offices open at eight o’clock. Millionaires lunch on a baked apple. Bankers eat practically nothing. A college president has declared that there are more foot pounds of energy in a glass of peptonized milk than in—something else, I forget what. All this is very fine. Yet somehow I feel out of it.
(more…)Most Of The Savages Are Much Addicted To Drunkenness
A Voice From The Past
John Lawson, an English writer and explorer, describes the effects of alcohol on the Red Indians, observed during his travels in North Carolina (1700-1708).
(more…)The Pint Flask
O. Henry
A prominent Houston colonel, who is also a leading church member, started for church last Sunday morning with his family, as was his custom. He was serene and solid-looking, and his black frock coat and light gray trousers fitted him snugly and stylishly.
(more…)
They Fell
Bill Nye
Two delegates to the General Convocation of the Sons of Ice Water were sitting in the lobby of the Windsor, in the city of Denver, not long ago, strangers to each other and to everybody else. One came from Huerferno county, and the other was a delegate from the Ice Water Encampment of Correjos county.
(more…)A Study In Still Life — The Country Hotel
Stephen Leacock
The country hotel stands on the sunny side of Main Street. It has three entrances.
There is one in front which leads into the Bar. There is one at the side called the Ladies’ Entrance which leads into the Bar from the side. There is also the Main Entrance which leads into the Bar through the Rotunda.
(more…)The Untraveled Stranger
Irvin S. Cobb
Back in those sinful days which ended in January, 1919—that is, officially they ended then—a group of congenial spirits were gathered one Saturday night in a local life-saving station on the principal corner of a small Kentucky town, engaged in the quaint old pastime of pickling themselves.
(more…)Portrait Of An Ideal World
H. L. Mencken
That alcohol in dilute aqueous solution, when taken into the human organism, acts as a depressant, not as a stimulant, is now so much a commonplace of knowledge that even the more advanced varieties of physiologists are beginning to be aware of it.
(more…)The New Galahad
H. L. Mencken
My agents in attendance upon the so-called moving pictures tell me that persons who frequent such shows begin to tire of Western films—that they are no longer roused to clapper-clawing by the spectacle of actors in patent-leather jack-boots murdering Indians and Mexicans.
(more…)My Battle With Drink
P. G. Wodehouse
I could tell my story in two words—the two words “I drank.” But I was not always a drinker. This is the story of my downfall—and of my rise—for through the influence of a good woman, I have, thank Heaven, risen from the depths.
(more…)Mencken On Alcohol
H. L. Mencken
Envy, as I have said, is at the heart of the messianic delusion, the mania to convert the happy sinner into a “good” man, and so make him miserable. And at the heart of that envy is fear—the fear to sin, to take a chance, to monkey with the buzzsaw.
(more…)