LOTH

You may call it so if you please.

HOFFMANN

But how in the world did you get into that kind of thing?

HELEN

Surely, for such a resolution you must have a very weighty cause--it
seems so to me, at least.

LOTH

Undoubtedly such a reason exists. You probably do not know, Miss Krause,
nor you either, Hoffmann, what an appalling part alcohol plays in modern
life ... Read Bunge, if you desire to gain an idea of it. I happen to
remember the statements of a writer named Everett concerning the
significance of alcohol in the life of the United States. His facts cover
a space of ten years. In these ten years, according to him, alcohol has
devoured directly a sum of three thousand millions of dollars and
indirectly of six hundred millions. It has killed three hundred thousand
people, it has driven thousands of others into prisons and poor-houses;
it has caused two thousand suicides at the least. It has caused the loss
of at least ten millions through fire and violent destruction; it has
rendered no less than twenty thousand women, widows, and no less than one
million children, orphans. Worst of all, however, are the far-reaching
effects of alcohol which extend to the third and fourth generation.--Now,