If it causes men to pursue their avocations lazily or
stupidly, it does not cause the irregularities and neglects of American
inebriation. Cases of pawning clothes and impoverishing families from
the appetite for beer may occur, just as from laziness, but not as from
the bewitching appetite for ardent spirits.
The practice of Americans in Bavaria, even of those who never drink a
drop of beer at home, is, so far as I know, to drink a little while in
the country, acting from a supposed necessity in that climate, or
impelled by the want of other beverages. Physicians advise it, and I
suppose that American physicians would do the same in the case of their
countrymen temporarily residing there. In my own family, it was taken
every day at dinner as a kind of prescription, and the children were
disciplined to drink their little glass daily with rather less urging
than would have been necessary, had the dose been castor-oil; and they
always felt that they deserved an expression of approbation as being
"good children," if they drank their entire portion. Our taste for beer
never increased, but rather the contrary; and should I again reside in
that country, notwithstanding the general impression that its use is a
kind of necessity, as a security against the fevers incident to the
climate, I should feel just as secure without a drop.
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