Hurrying back, I found the wound bleeding freely.
Prompt treatment was required. Ether was again administered. But you
know the rest, Mr. Elliott. It is all too dreadful, and I cannot go
over it again. Mrs. Carlton fell another victim to excess in wine.
This is the true story. I was not blamed by the husband. The real
cause of the great calamity that fell upon him he does not know to
this day, and I trust will never know. But I have not since been
able to look steadily into his dreary eyes. A guilty sense of wrong
oppresses me whenever I come near him. As I said before, this thing
is breaking me down. It has robbed me, I know, of many years of
professional usefulness to which I had looked forward, and left a
bitter thought in my mind and a shadow on my feelings that can never
pass away.
"'Mr. Elliott,' he continued, 'you have a position of sacred trust.
Your influence is large. Set yourself, I pray you, against the evil
which has wrought these great disasters. Set yourself against the
dangerous self-indulgence called "moderate drinking." It is doing
far more injury to society than open drunkenness, more a
hundred--nay, a thousand--fold. If I had been a drunkard, no such
catastrophe as this I have mentioned could have happened in my
practice, for Mr. Carlton would not then have trusted his wife in my
hands. My drunkenness would have stood as a warning against me. But
I was a respectable moderate drinker, and could take my wine without
seeming to be in any way affected by it.
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