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“FATHER AND SON.
FATHER.
O, why will you destroy yourself,
And thus become a perfect elf?
Reflect my child, on what’s to come,
E’re you destroy yourself with Rum!
Behold! your lovely weeping wife,
How miserable you’ve made her life:
See! how your babes, in want they pine,
While you’re debas’d beneath the swine.
SON
Dear Father, be not <text loss>
In your reproofs, till first you hear
The excuse I make; perhaps the same,
Will show that you have been to blame.
When I was young, and simple too,
For instruction then I look’d to you,
To guide my steps for years to come:
T’was then you taught me to drink Rum.
You warn’d me, not to lie or swear,
I felt constrained to shun the snare;
And how much good it might have done,
Had you then warn’d me against Rum.
I’d give the world, if mine it were,
If I could break this cursed snare;
And fell no more a thirst for Rum,
Than, when first you gave me some.
FATHER.
Dear child, I really feel the smart,
Your excuse e’en cuts me to the heart;
I’ll do no more as I have done,
But ever be a foe to Rum.”
- Henry Bowen, “Father and Son,” in A Mirror for the Intemperate, 1830 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)