Temperance Stories and Sketches (1879)
The 1870s were a decade flooded with temperance literature in America. “Moral suasion” — the attempt to appeal to people through stories, arguments, and threats — was the usual strategy. Probably there is no better way to introduce Edward Carswell’s highly morally suasive Temperance Stories and Sketches — aimed at young readers and published in 1879 — than to quote its opening lines:
This intensity about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, and gambling underlies the verse, the stories, and the illustrations that follow — all of them apparently created by Carswell. “Old Rye Makes a Speech” gives a very good idea of his usual approach:
I was made to be eaten, And not to be drank; To be thrashed in a barn, Not soaked in a tank. I come as a blessing When put through a mill; As a blight and a curse When run through a still. Make me up into loaves, And your children are fed; But if into a drink, I will starve them instead.
“The Bird’s Conundrum” follows a similar pattern. In it, a young girl asks why her pet bird was so rude to her cousin and uncle, only to have the bird tell her it was because they were drinking and smoking, which he found both physically and morally repugnant.
