This broad assertion was too much for one of the audience, an old
Wiltshire man, who exclaimed, in his peculiar dialect, "Now, I know
that 'ere be a lie. Can you swear that you did ever see three out of
them three hundred violent deaths you speak on?"

"Well, I have heard and read of them in books and newspapers; and I
once saw a man lying dead on the road, and a jar, half full of whiskey,
beside him, which, I think, you will allow is proof enough."

"I thought your three hundred cases would turn out like the boy's cats
in his grandmother's garden. Now, I will tell thee, that I did know
three men that did kill themselves by drinking of cold water. There was
John H-----, that over-heated hisself, walking from Cobourg, and drank
so much water at the cold springs, that he fell down and died in a few
minutes. Then there was that workman of Elliott's, in Smith, who
dropped in the harvest-field, from the same cause; and the Irishman
from Asphodel, whose name I forget. So, you see, that more people do
die from drinking cold water than whiskey." Then he turned round to a
neighbour, who, like himself, was not over-fond of cold water, and
said, "I say, Jerome, which would you rather have, a glass of cold
water, or a drap of good beer?"

"I know which I would take," exclaimed Jerome; "I would like a drap of
good beer best, I do know."

This dialogue raised such a laugh against the apostle of temperance,
that the meeting was fairly broken up, leaving the Wiltshire man
triumphing in his victory over cold water and oratory, in the person of
the lecturer. The dryness of his arguments prevailed against the