It was known in the hotel what the trouble was with him, and it was also generally recognized that nothing could be done for him. For four days he ran his course, killing snakes, demons and hobgoblins in that garden, and finally died, literally while engaged in the imaginary battle with the enemy out in the garden. To-day he fills a nameless grave.
Indeed, so common were cases of delirium tremens in those days that I might go on and multiply instances--tell, indeed, of a man climbing up into a hayloft in the dark, catching the teamster who came for hay, frightening him into a fit of sickness, and dying there before morning, curled up on the hay like a dog. Again, I might instance the case of another unfortunate, who started and ran from the “Corners,” then constituting Oshawa, directly in the course of the mill-ponds, with the whole village chasing him, making past the ponds and into the woods a mile and a half away, before being caught--like a man running amuck. But perhaps I have said enough on so unpleasant a feature of early life in Ontario.
The “One-Thousand-and-One Society” of those days was an organization formed among those who habitually drank and spent nights at bouts, and was a recognized order among them. Probably there never was any written constitution or by-laws to govern them; still the rules of the society were as well known and as fully recognized as if there were such. The fundamental rule which they were to observe in their drinking was that no one must drink more than two gallons at one sitting without rising and reporting the matter to the recognized chiefs of the order.
We must, in all charity, believe that the liquid in this case would be beer--in any case it could hardly be spirits; still I am led to believe, in many instances, before the great goal of the two gallons was reached, the beer would be frequently mixed with spirits.
The landlord in those bouts of the Thousand-and-One Society never forgot to make his quota, not only in the matter of change, as before enlarged upon, but some of them used to boast that a landlord ought to be worth $5 per day to his own house by his own drinking--that is to say, he would take all the treats the company would offer him, and thus imbibe his own liquor and keep the pay therefor at twopence per glass to the amount of $5 per day.