Saturday Evening Gazette/June 7, 1856/A Rum Story
A RUM STORY.
Mr. Brick died at sixty, leaving a stop of twenty-five to bear his father’s wealth, honors and appetites, which latter he inherited to their fullest extent, adding to them many of his own. A fatal proclivity for punch made him, at the early age of twenty-five a confirmed toper—a shame to his friends and a living example for three temperance societies in the town of B., who regularly held him up at their weekly meetings as a warning for the young. At the outset of his career, he had been waited upon by many committees who requested him to abstain from his evil practices, the first of which, it was said, he plied so hard with his favorite beverage that they were unable to report until the next meeting, when he was pronounced incorrigible. Remonstrance was of no avail, for whenever expostulated with concerning his habit, he, like the wretched chap in Dibdin’s song, “tipped them a can,” and they turned away sorrowing.
Something must be done to check him, but what? Lucky thought! Young Brick had come home one midnight in a very “glorious” state, according to Burns, and had tumbled up stairs in the most approved manner. Not at the risk of his neck, for the neck of a toper, made supple by the fluids he drinks, is adapted to the most violent circumstances—seen where a series of double somersets is at times thrown from the top of a stair case to the bottom, with no more disadvantage to the individual than the trouble of getting up stairs again. He threw himself upon the floor in a state of half consciousness. What was that? An emphatic thump upon the floor close by his side partially aroused the prostrate Brick, and he lifted his rum and watery eyes to see what it was. A figure in white, larger and terrible, stood by his side.
“Hello!” said he, with a hiccup, “what’s (hic) that?”
“I am thy father’s spirit!” solemnly said the apparition, and throwing out its hands the figure seemed to increase in volume.
“Oh, you are, are you?” said Brick, sobering a little; “you say you are my father’s spirit?”
“Yes!” was the solemn response.
“Then,” said the young reprobate, “as my father was a little man, and you seem to spread over considerable territory, I should judge that his spirit had become terribly diluted.”
The ghost chuckled as it disappeared, and Brick was left to be knocked down by death at thirty-five; a caution to all hard drinkers.