ALCOHOLIC ILLUSIONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 133, 19 November 1875, Page 16

ALCOHOLIC ILLUSIONS.

(From the ' Alliance News.' "Thb effect upon the thoughts," we are told, "is peculiar and "grateful. It gently anoints them, so that they move more noiselessly and sleekly, getting over much ground with little jar. It draws a transparent screen between us and our mental processes — as a window shuts out the noise of the street without obstructing our view of what is going on. Upon this scene are projected luxurious fancies, coming and going we know not whence or whither, and we become lost in following them. Slight matters acquire large interest ; with what profound speculation do we mark the course of yonder leaf earthwards floating from its twig ; overweighted by the consideration we have bestowed on it. The striking of a church clock a mile away echoes through vast halls of arched fantasy. The babble of these good people at a neighboring table foregoes distinctive utterance, and is resolved into a dreamy refrain. Our own voices seem to come from far away; our prosaic thoughts take on the hues of poetry and We seem to chant rather than speak our sentences, and we perceive a subtle melody' in them. We feel comfortable, peaceful, yet heroic and strong; surely there is something superb and grand about us, •which, till now, has been but half appreciated. We sit full-orbed and complete, and regard our fellow-men with a sweet-tempered contempt of superiority." This very clever piece of description is from the pen of Mr. Julian Hawthorne, son of the late famous American novelist, writing in the * Contemporary Review.' The effect described is that of Saxon beer on the thoughts and feelings of the drinker of that "beverage. Bub the same is more or less the effect of the drinking of any kind of alcoholic drink. It is chiefly for this sort of result that all such drinks are sought by their consumers. This is the peculiar happiness into -which, for some brief minutes, they enter, or seek to enter, who frequent the wine-vault, the gin- palace, or the ale-house. And -what does it professedly amount to ? There is, we see, first, a gentle anointing of the thoughts, so that they move more noiselessly and sleekly. The conceptions, befilmed with a sort of mental grease, glide smoothly and easily along. And, so gliding, they slip away, leaving nothing valuable behind them. They disappear and are forgotten, "as a dream does at the opening day." Not so thoughts the genuine product of the undrugg-ed mind. These, not summoned into a bastard being by alcoholic witchcraft, but lawful children of effort and freewill, have an enduring quality, and move on ploughing grooves, and leaving results, with added power to tie faculties, and with value added as they go. Compared with such honest scions of the mind, futile and worthless indeed are all the cheap but evanescent creations of the sorceries of beer-spirit or of wine.