A Tramping Experience.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2500, 31 October 1922, Page 6 (Supplement)

A Tramping Experience.

Some years ago, a party of which I was a member, set out to climb a certain mountain. At the foot of the mountain a small creek crossed the path, and in a pool in this creek we deposited a dozen bottles of English ale for consumption on our return. We duly carried out the mountaineering programme, on return to our cache were joyfully engaged in patting the ale to the purpose for which it is best suited when a couple of young men of well known prohibitionist proclivities hove in sight on thedr return from a similar expedition. As the ale-bottles were now minus labels as a result of their immersion a member of our party suggested that the approaching pilgrims hej invited to partake “as they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from hop-beer.”

The invitation was duly extended, accepted and consummated with a surprisingly humanising effect on the ci-devant total abstainers. We remained in company for the.balance of the tramp, and our two new friends (formerly merely acquaintances) usually taciturn, > dogmatic, and selfrighteous, under the benign influence of the good ale, 'unwittingly consumed, became talkative, companionable, and likeable.' i « ) s "

The moral of’this is that’if all the wowsers in the country were forced‘each to drink a quart of ale -oer day (or a month, a goodly percentage of them would thenceforth ofease to be Wowsers, and become instead normal human beings

If Prohibition is “just common sense,” perhaps some reverend gentleman will explain the miracle of the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee; and also how it was that He to whom so many look up as ■God, and many more consider the Greatest Teacher of all jtime, was not a total abstainer P, Also it would be interesting to have a reply to Milton’s argument which he calls the “Prescription and Compulsion” of mankind. —C.S.P-