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and bade me take heed lest all such be numbered with the cursed children which the Apostle did rebuke: ‘Who, as natural brute beasts, speak evil of things they understand not, and shall utterly perish in their corruption.’
My dear Cousin Rebecca here put in a word in my behalf, and told the Deacon that Tom's misbehavior did all grow out of the keeping of strong liquors for sale, and that he was wrong to beat him so cruelly, seeing that he did himself place the temptation before him. Thereupon the Deacon rose up angrily, bidding uncle look well to his forward household.
‘Nay, girls,’ quoth mine uncle, after his neighbor had left the house, ‘you have angered the good man sorely.’ — ‘Never heed,’ said Rebecca, laughing and clapping her hands, ‘he hath got something to think of more profitable, I trow, than Cousin Margaret's hair or looks in meeting.
He has been tything of mint and anise and cummin long enough, and 't is high time for him to look after the weightier matters of the law.’
The selling of beer and strong liquors, Mr. Sewall says, hath much increased since the troubles of the Colony and the great Indian war. The General Court do take some care to grant licenses only to discreet persons; but much liquor is sold without warrant.
For mine own part, I think old Chaucer hath it right in his Pardoner's Tale:— A likerous thing is wine, and drunkenness
Is full of striving and of wretchedness.
O drunken man! disfigured is thy face,
Sour is thy breath, foul art thou to embrace;
Thy tongue is lost, and all thine honest care,
For drunkenness is very sepulture
Of man's wit and his discretion.
Is full of striving and of wretchedness.
O drunken man! disfigured is thy face,
Sour is thy breath, foul art thou to embrace;
Thy tongue is lost, and all thine honest care,
For drunkenness is very sepulture
Of man's wit and his discretion.
