The Strayed Prohibitionist
and the good ones which sparkle in Scotch and English verse, have any illustrative value. They come under the head of special pleading, and are apt to be a bit defiant. In them, as in the temperance lecture, "that good sister of common life, the vine," becomes an exotic, desirable or reprehensible according to the point of view, but never simple and inevitable, like the olive-tree and the sheaves of corn.
American letters, coming late in the day, are virgin of wine. There have been books, like Jack London's "John Barleycorn," written in the cause of temperance; there have been pleasant trifles, like Dr. Weir Mitchell's "Madeira Party," written to commemorate certain dignified convivialities which even then were passing silently away; and there have been chance allusions, like Mr. Dooley's vindication of whisky from the charge of being food: "I wudden't insult it be placin' it on the
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