They will resort to the most ingenious, mean and degrading contrivances and practices to procure and conceal liquor, and this, too, while closely watched; and will succeed in deception, although fabulous quantities are daily swallowed." Dr.John Nugent gives a case which came within his own knowledge, of a lady who had been A MOST EXEMPLARY NUN for fifteen or twenty years.

In consequence of her devotion to the poor, attending them in fevers, and like cases, it seemed necessary for her to take stimulants; these stimulants grew to be habitual, and she had been compelled, five or six times, to place herself in a private asylum.

In three or four weeks after being let out, she would relapse, although she was believed to be under the strongest influences of religion, and of the most virtuous desires.

There had been developed in her that disposition to drink which she was unable to overcome or control.
The power of this appetite, and the frightful moral perversions that often follow its indulgence are vividly portrayed in the following extract, from an address by Dr.Elisha Harris, of New York, in which he discusses the question of the criminality of drunkenness.
"Let the fact be noticed that such is the lethargy which alcoholism produces upon reason and conscience, that it is sometimes necessary to bring the offender to view his drunken indulgence as a crime.

We have known a refined and influential citizen to be so startled at the fact that he wished to destroy the lives of all persons, even of his own family, who manifested unhappiness at his intemperance, that seeing this terrible criminality of his indulgence, instantly formed, and has forever kept, his resolutions of abstinence.