“Am I that brother’s keeper?  He is not an Abel,
    Is strange to my roof, and no guest at my table: 
    I know not his mates, we are not near each other,
    He swills in the pothouse, that dissolute brother!—­
    But there’s your example?—­The drunkards can’t see it,
    And if they are told of it, scorn it and flee it;
    Example?—­Your children!—­No doubt it is right
    To be to them always a law and a light;
    But moderate temperance is the vise way
    To form them, and hinder their going astray;
    Whereas utter abstinence proves itself vain,
    And drunkards flare up because good men abstain.

    “The law of reaction is stringent and strong,
    A youth in extremis is sure to go wrong,
    For the pendulum swings with a multiplied force
    When sloped from its even legitimate course. 
    I have known—­who has not?—­that a profligate son
    Has been through his fanatic father undone;
    Restrained till the night of free licence arrives,
    And then he breaks out to the wreck of two lives!

    “A fierce water-fever just now is red-hot;
    Drink water, or perish, thou slave and thou sot! 
    Drink water alone, and drink more, and drink much—­
    But, liquors or wines?  Not a taste, not a touch! 
    Yet, is not this fever a fervour of thrift? 
    It is wine you denounce, but its cost is your drift;
    The times are so hard and the wines are so bad
    (For good at low prices are not to be had),
    That forthwith society shrewdly shouts high
    For water alone, the whole abstinence cry! 
    And, somehow supposed suggestive of heaven,
    The cup of cold water is generously given,
    But a glass of good wine is an obsolete thing,
    And will be till trade is once more in full swing! 
    I hint not hypocrisy; many are true,
    They preach what they practise, they say—­and they do,
    And used from their boyhood to only cold water,
    Enjoin nothing better on wife, son, and daughter;
    But surely with some it is merely for thrift,
    That they out off the wine, and with water make shift,
    Although they profess the self-sacrifice made
    As dread of intemperance makes them afraid. 
    And so, like a helmsman too quick with his tiller,
    Eschewing Charybdis they steer upon Scylla,
    To perish of utter intemperance—­Yes! 
    The victims of water consumed to excess.

    “To conclude:  The first miracle, wonder Divine,
    Wasn’t wine changed to water, but water to wine,
    That wine of the Kingdom, the water of life
    Transmuted, with every new excellence rife,
    The wine to make glad both body and soul,
    To cheer up the sad, and make the sick whole. 
    And when the Redeemer was seen among men,
    He drank with the sinners and publicans then,