young and old, rich and poor, men and women, fell victims to the great scourge. The colleges were not immune. At Yale, wine and liquors were kept in the rooms of many of the students and intemperance was one of the commonest of student faults. 1 Clergymen, though generally restraining themselves from gross indulgence, were accustomed to feel that the spirit of conviviality and the discussion of the affairs of church and state went hand in hand; 2 and now and then the bounds of propriety were overstepped.
Other unfavorable aspects of the situation may be found in the habits of card-playing and gambling which everywhere prevailed, and in the frequent allusions to instances of social vice and illegitimacy with which the pages of the diary of such a careful observer as the Reverend William Bentley were laden. 3
- 1 Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher, vol. i, p. 30.
- 2 Ibid., p. 24. The description of the meeting of the Consociation, pp. 214 et seq., is unusually vivid: "... the preparation for our creature comforts in the sitting-room of Mr. 'Heart's house, besides food, was a broad sideboard*, covered with decanters and bottles, and sugar, and pitchers of water. There we found all the various kinds of liquors then in vogue. The drinking was apparently universal. This preparation was made by the society as a matter of course. When the Consociation arrived, they always took something to drink round; also before public services, and always on their return. As they could not all drink at once, they were obliged' to stand and wait, as people do when they go to mill. There was a decanter of spirits also on the dinnertable, to help digestion, and gentlemen partook of it through the afternoon and evening as they felt the need, some more and some less; and the sideboard, with the spillings of water, and sugar, and liquor, looked and smelled like the bar of a very active grog-shop. None of the Consociation were drunk; but that there was not, at times, a considerable amount of exhilaration, I can not affirm." It was Beecher's judgment that "the tide was swelling in the drinking habits of society." Ibid., p. 215.
- 3 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 133, 138, 163, 255, 256, 371; vol. ii, pp. 294, 328 et seq.
