The weak, the weary, the beaten in Hfe's battle, to say nothing of the lazy and profligate of all ages and climes, seem to crave stimulation or stupefaction. Wine, spirits, beer, and tobacco in Europe and America, hasheesh in Egypt, and opium in China are the chief indulgences, but there are multitudes of minor drinks such as Indian hemp and Aztec pulque of no less deadly intoxicating virtues. All these prevail to a friohtful extent and constitute the national vice. Hasheesh first elates and then depresses, and continued indulgence results in idiocy or death.
Speaking to Boswell of one who urged his quests to drink immoderately at table Johnson said " Sir, there is no more reason for your drinking with him, than his being sober with you."
Little Pope drank his bottle of burgundy every day at dinner, thus warming his diminutive dried-up body into that comfort which made itself known by entertaining gaiety. Sir Joshua Reynolds drank freely, and greatly enjoyed it, but he seldom indulged to excess.
Doctor Johnson observed that "our drinking less than our ancestors was owing to the change from ale to wine." "I remember," said he, "when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of. Ale was cheap, so you pressed strongly. When a man must bring a bottle of wine, he is not in such haste. Smoking has gone out. To be sure, it is a shocking thing, blowingsmoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account why a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out. Every man has something by which he calms himself; beating with his feet, or so."
Thus it was that all along the foothills, and indeed, all over California, coequal with Plutus reigned the god Dionysius, sometimes one and sometimes the other
