THE TEETOTALER.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.

SEVERAL months have elapsed since the discovery of the real remedy for all the evils of existence. We allude to the institution of the Society for the Encouragement of Starvation. This, however, was not the title by which the association sought to be known on the imperishable scroll of fame. Its name was (and is, if it be living) the "Total Abstinence Society." It was established, according to the public journals, at Bishopswearmouth. "Wearmouth!" "Mouth!" Um! Let not the syllables, however, be voted superfluous, or inconsistent with the objects of total abstinence. How could the principles, the purposes of the society, be made known, save by the medium of that part of the mortal machine, which, ever since the first apple was plucked, has been misemployed by men, and perverted to forbidden uses. At Bishopswearmouth, the panacea for all the “ills that flesh is heir to" was detected and proclaimed. It was found out that good living had been the bane of it. There it was demonstrated (and there the demonstration is recorded in various forms of verse, longs and shorts, in the most ostentatious situations of the churchyard), that if a man will simply resolve to abandon entirely the custom and ceremony of eating and drinking, he will, in due season, relieve himself of all the cares, trials, and sorrows of this life. The College of Physicians has not yet attempted to contravene this important principle; but, then, "abstinence" must be the word (or rather, as the society said, to prevent the possibility of equivocation, "total abstinence"). Let a man be ever so expert in his drinking; let him imbibe, as an illustrious lady-friend of ours once said, only "the idea of a dew-drop;" the principle must be held to be destroyed. Let him indulge his immoral appetite by dining only upon a moth's antennæ, or the wing of a grilled bluebottle, and the spell of starvation is broken. Extreme principles, it was contended, were alone suited to the extremities of our condition. This is not a time, certainly, when customs are to be observed, merely because they are old. This, then, may be no age for dining and drinking.

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