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Tag Archives: priests

THE BEST SINNER

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in Short Stories

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

and others, Nietzsche, priests, Sinners, Sins

This is short story that I am moving here from another blog of mine.

 

 

The following is a true story. However, due to my sacred vows, I am required to keep the details secret. The incident occurred somewhere in upstate New York. There are three main actors in this revelation; a young priest (with minimal experience), a parish priest (with great experience) and a male confessor who appeared frequently in the confessional booth. Well, in reality, he was not a frequent visitor in the confessional (at first) but he tried diligently to increase his lackluster performance in that respect. Likewise, in reality and initially, he was not an extremely good sinner; but he worked very hard at becoming one. It will soon become apparent to the reader how much effort he put into this goal.

Let us begin the story.

It was about 8:00 P.M. on a Saturday night when the young priest returned to the parish house. The older parish priest noticed that he was quiet and pre-occupied with something.

“How did you do in confessions tonight?” the older priest asked; hoping to start a conversation regarding whatever was bothering the younger one.

“Oh, OK. Nothing special” was the short, but not terse, reply.

The remainder of the evening wore on rather quietly. Something was eating at the young priest but the older one could not seem to break open the conversation. They watched the remainder of a basketball game together and then repaired to their individual sleeping quarters.

The next morning there were two masses scheduled. The young priest was on tap for celebrating both masses and the parish priest was responsible for coming up with a homily and helping to serve the Eucharist at communion. The older one noticed that the young priest seemed somewhat agitated during communion.

The actions of the young priest had bothered the parish priest over the last two days. He thought about attempting to open the conversation again but hesitated to do so. Remembering that the two of them had planned an early tee time for golf on Monday the older priest decided to let it go; hoping that a more opportune time would arise.

They awoke at the scheduled hour and consumed a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, home fries and English Muffins with butter and strawberry jam. The parish priest warned the younger one “If you are not careful you will look just like me in a few years.”

The younger one joked back “Well, as long as I don’t start acting like you; asking everyone to pledge $600 for repairs every year; I will manage.”

They both had a big laugh at each others expense and that was just fine with both of them. The diocese was amazed at how well the two were getting along. After all, the last six new priests assigned to this parish had all asked to be transferred as soon as possible. One young priest had even abandoned the priesthood when his transfer was delayed for twelve months.

The diocese could not seem to put their finger on any specific problem that may have been causing these rifts between the older parish priest and the new younger ones. The parish priest was one of those people who had been hard on himself and therefore very hard on the new incoming priests. It was that age old problem of one generation not being able to get along with the other generation. The diocese had warned the current new young priest but he indicated that he could find a way to make it work; and he apparently did.

During the Monday morning golf outing the two priests were swinging and hacking and making a terrible mess of the greens (but having a lot of fun picking on each other). An opening came up for the parish priest to quiz the young one about last Saturday’s confessions.

“You seemed troubled last Saturday night. Something was apparently occupying your mind but you were not ready to talk about it. Would it be less troubling for us to discuss it today?”

“You know Tom (of course that was the older parish priest’s name, Tom), I am glad that you asked. Something did happen in the confessional Saturday night and I did not, and I still do not, know what to make of it. Someone could be having a lot of fun with me but I hope not.”

“Bill, (likewise, the younger priest was William) I surely am not asking you to give me any specific names or sins but whatever you can talk about, I am willing to listen to.”

Father Bill opened up like the safety valve on a nuclear plant. He related to Father Tom what had been bothering him.

“I just don’t know what to make of it! It was a typical Saturday night of confessions; kids were telling me the sins of kids and husbands were telling me the sins of husbands. Wives, I think, were making up sins because they really had none. The last person in the confessional, he must have waited to be last in line, told me a deeply disturbing story and an even stranger plan.”

“This man, I think he was quite young, told me that he had studied the Catechism during his years as a parochial school student. He was convinced of the validity of what he had learned during that twelve year period. He had, and still has, the deepest faith in one of our Christian beliefs. That is, if he was absolved of sin, in the confessional, then God would also absolve him.”

Father Tom responded to the younger priest “Bill, that does not seem to strange to me. In fact it is a belief of all of us who partake in confession. You know that.”

“But Tom” continued Bill, “That is not even the beginning of the story. The confessor went on to inform me that after twelve years of Catholic parochial school he attended a college in the New York State University system. During his second year there he read an essay by one Frederich Nietzsche, ‘The Anti-Christ.’  I was surprised that we had not been exposed to this story while we were studying for the priesthood. It seems as though it would have helped me to understand this confused young man.”

“Bill, you should not bother yourself to much about not having that background. The young man will soon find his way through all the literature that is thrown at him. I just wish it was a more balanced set of literature that the University was offering these young people.”

“But Tom” continued Bill (it always seems as though Bill had to use a ‘BUT TOM’ in his attempts to override Tom’s interruptions). “I am hardly into the beginning of Saturday night’s story. The young fellow told me that after reading the first forty-five sections of the ‘Anti-Christ’ he was convinced that there were some troubling questions about Saint Paul. He also stated that from section 46 and on, in that same essay, Nietzsche appeared a little too strident.”

“Listen Bill” interrupted Tom again, “This will not be the last time you get blind-sided in the confessional. These young people are reading and talking about things that neither you nor I would have been exposed to in a lifetime.”

“But Tom” echo-interrupted Bill (on a regular basis by this time) “Hear me out. There is a lot more to this.”

By this time both of the men had put their clubs aside and sat on a bench located at the fourth tee. Other players were building up behind them as they talked. It seemed like a good idea to let the others play through. This would also give Bill a chance (hopefully) to finish the story without interruptions.

Father Bill continued, “Tom, this young man has a good Catholic education and is earning what I hope is a good university education. He thought so and I had to agree with him. However, now that the two educations are, at times, opposing each other on the subject of morality he has a dichotomy of his ‘self’.”

“It sounds like this young fellow is quite the philosopher” responded Father Tom.

“Yes. I think you have hit the nail on the head. However, I think the nail has hardly been hammered enough” responded Father Bill.

“Why do you say such a thing?” asked the older priest. “Is there more?”

“Yes, more, a lot more” answered the younger one.

“Glory be to Jesus! What more could there be?” wondered Father Tom aout loud.

Father Bill continued. “He has also read another of Nietzsche’s essays. This one is called the ‘Genealogy of Morals’. This essay told him that humankind is on the trajectory of a downward spiral. Guess who Nietzsche places the blame on? We Christians; especially the organized church. He claims that self denial is the cause of this degeneration and this asceticism turns humanity’s individualism into anger against itself. This leads to the premise that instinct may be better than morals. Can you see where this young confessor is going with this?”

“To be perfectly frank, Bill, it scares the hell out of me” responded Father Tom. “I hope there is not more to this confession; IS THERE?”

Father Bill continued on. “Oh yes, a lot more. This young man now has to prove his Catholic faith to himself but he is convinced that he has to play the game with Nietzsche’s rules. It looks like an impossible task to me. The young fellow is very logical about the whole situation. Here is his plan; by the numbers.”

“One; Each week he will break one commandment.”

“Two; After breaking this commandment he will make extensive notes regarding:

“how he felt about it as he was breaking the commandment”

“how well he slept that night; this would be an indicator of guilt, if any”

“how he felt about the act the next day”

“how he thought about sin just prior to confession”

“and how well he thought the sin was forgiven in the confessional”

The young priest was not yet done with the story. “In this way he feels that he can judge what was learned in the catholic schools versus what he has learned by reading Nietzsche.”

“But this leaves so many open questions how could he ever make a decision?” blurted out Father Tom.

“He seems very comfortable with his decision to carry this risky plan out to the end” said Father Bill. “He will have tested Nietzsche by avoiding self denial and committing sins. On the other hand he will have tested God by determining if his sins have been absolved in the confessional booth. This puts me in a very uncomfortable position because I know that he is intentionally committing a sin but on the other hand it may stop him from ever committing that sin again. He may turn out to be the best Catholic instead of the best sinner.”

“Be careful Father Bill, be very careful. This young man may be quite unbalanced” said Father Tom.

“Well, if he is, he is also a very good sociopath. He has me convinced that his plan is logical and that he really believes in the test of God versus Nietzsche” answered Father Bill.

“BUT .  ..   …” interrupted Father Tom with one of his best interruptions ever. “You said in the beginning that he wishes to break ALL of the commandments. Did you really think that he meant all of them? God bless both of us if that is the case.”

The younger priest said in a low and very sad voice, “Yes, .  ..   … every last one of them”

The two men finished their game of golf with little discussion, no humor and deeply saddened hearts. Both of them were silent on the drive back to the parish.

The following Saturday evening each of the priests knew what the other was thinking. Confessions came and went that evening but Father Bill was afraid to speak and Father Tom was afraid to ask. Sunday morning brought the same anxiousness for Father Bill. Father Tom knew that the young confessor’s plan had been put into motion.

During next Monday’s golf outing Father Tom was informed by Father Bill of the outcome. “Well, he broke the first commandment. He deliberately had other Gods before him. He built alters to three gods of ancient religions and executed their sacraments. The young man said that two of the gods had no hold over him but the third god awoke some unknown emotion in him. He felt that it was a ‘good’ emotion. He also said it was a strong, almost instinctive, feeling to do something great; almost like he was on the edge of greatness himself.”

“And was he deeply sorry for his sin?” asked Father Bill.

“Well . ..   … he was sorry that he had to break a commandment” responded the younger priest.

“And .  ..   … did you absolve him of his sin?” Father Tom asked rather testily.

“I did” stated the younger priest rather strongly.

“And .  ..   … what is the agenda for next week” asked the older priest quite stridently.

“He is going to ‘make for himself an idol’.”

“And are you going to absolve him for that also?” asked Father Tom incredulously.

“We will see, we will see” responded Father Bill.

I relate this story to you in quite an appended form. You do realize, don’t you, that this process took at least ten weeks. And that is the way it went week after week, the young priest, the young confessor, and the older priest as the second guesser. All three beings of this strange play acted in real human terms, in real human time and real human agony. All of them played their own parts in this hideous test of God versus Nietzsche.

The young man was absolved of “making for himself an idol”.

“But a singer named ‘MADONNA?’ Of all that is sacred why select her for an idol?” asked the older priest.

The young priest shrugged his shoulders and raised his palms upward as if to say “It is beyond me, but hardly a great sin.”  Then out loud he re-stated (as if it were even necessary) “I absolved him of his sin.”

The third week the young man tested “using Gods name in vain.”

He was absolved.

Score; Nietzsche three – God three.

Week four and five; the young man skipped Sunday mass and therefore “did not keep the Sabbath holy.” Likewise he missed his opportunity for Holy Communion. The absolution he had received for “not honoring his father and mother” was wiped out.

Score; Nietzsche three – God five.

No hits, no runs, two errors.

Week six; he stole goods from the university. Absolved

Week seven; he falsely blamed the crime on a secretary.  Absolved

Week eight; he coveted his student advisor’s wife.  Absolved

Week nine; he slept with his advisor’s wife.  Absolved

Father Tom had finally lost his patience with the young priest. “Absolved, absolved, absolved! Have you thought this through? Did you talk to him? Did you council him? Did he seem repentant? This has gone on long enough. Are you going to absolve him of that greatest sin .  ..   …    …. ‘Thou shalt not commit murder’?”

Father Bill was at a loss for words. They completed holes four and five without speaking. Father Bill was three and four over par on the two holes (respectively). Father Tom was six over par on each of the two holes.

Father Tom spoke first. “Listen Bill, this young confessor is on the edge of doing something that will ruin the rest of his life. If he is caught at the crime then he will surely ruin his life. If not, he won’t be able to live with himself.”

“What do you suggest I do?” asked Father Bill.

“With all due respect, Bill, I think I need to take this situation out of your hands” responded Father Tom.

“You can’t do that. Really, you just can’t rip this situation away from me. I have worked on it for ten weeks now.” But this plea of Father Bills was ignored by the older priest.

“I am sorry Bill, but this is the way it will have to be” responded Father Tom. “I do not know if even I, with my greater experience and determination, can handle this one correctly”

And so it was. The next Saturday night Father Tom took Father Bill’s place in the confessional booth. The normal sins were heard from the kids, the fathers and the wives.

Father Tom had to wait for some time before the last confessor entered the other side of the booth. As hard as Father Tom studied the face in the darkness he could not make it out.

The man in the other side of the booth finally said “Bless me Father, for I am about to sin!”

Father Tom thought to himself, “Yes, this is the young man, he is ‘about to sin!”

The priest then said to the young man “You have not committed the sin yet?”

“No Father, not yet.”

“Can we talk about the sin and perhaps avoid this near occasion of sin?” requested the old priest.

“No Father.” responded the voice on the other side of the booth.

And with that the young man aimed a pistol at the priest and pulled the trigger; four times.

The silencer did its job; “Piff, piff, piff, piff.”

The old priest slumped in a pile on his side of the confessional booth.

The young man walked out of his side of the booth.

The church was empty except for Father Bill standing about five pews away.

Father Bill said (quite calmly) “Congratulations on getting your revenge against him for making you abandon the priesthood.”

The young man said “And congratulations to you on your new position of parish priest.”

They shook hands, smiled (knowingly), and went their separate ways.

 

 

 

22. THE INEBRIATE; Hereditary and Grandma

04 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Ability to pay, Admission Form, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, bar graph, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Committed patients, confined, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, criminal, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Free Patients, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Involuntary Patients, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Legal Status, Legislative Body, Literary Exercises, Lunatic, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Paying Patients, Phenomena, Philanthropic Societies, physicians, poets, police, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Report to NY State, Room and Board, Rules of Admission, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Vine Hall, Wit, writers

I have elsewhere stated my own case with but slight reserve, because, out of the mystery of this iniquity, one may not with safety speak positively of another’s. I have described myself as a “congenital periodical” inebriate, and have endeavored to make it clear to the reader as to myself that my tor­ment was inherited.

There is a little Dionysus in all of us

And yet I am of a family scrupulously abstemious in both sexes for several generations. Here is an apparent contradiction, apt to mislead the common mind, because it overlies a grave fact in our American social system. There is a disease of the nervous organism, almost peculiar to this people, which sprang from seeds of self-indulgence sown in the moral, social, and physical lives of our great- grandparents, and ‘which has acquired fearful aggravations of extension and virulence with each succeeding genera­tion. It assumes a form painfully fa­miliar to the physician and the moralist, in that craving for intellectual and physical “sensation ” which expresses itself; without a blush or a tremor, in the pop­ular performances, displays, and dis­closures, of the pulpit and the theatre, literature and art, the press and the criminal courts, the costumes of the women, the prodigality and license of private entertainment, and the graphic eccentricities of popular sports.

It does not necessarily take the direction of rum, – it may find relief in the intemperate, passionate pursuit of a vocation or an agitation. Its form of expression may be determined by the bent of the intellectual twig, or an early peep into “openings.” If God, in his mercy, had not suffered me to escape by the stormy Jordan of rum, I might have been a spasmodic editor, a fanatical dema­gogue, a champion revivalist, a plug- ugly, a lecturer for the Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society, or a – Fe­nian martyr.

If you would abolish the inebriate, you must begin with his grandmother.

Even a little Dionysus in Grandma

THANK YOU TO THE INEBRIATE – – – Whoever he was

 

 

 

 

 

21. THE INEBRIATE; Waiting for Family

02 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Ability to pay, Admission Form, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, bar graph, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Committed patients, confined, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, criminal, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Free Patients, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Involuntary Patients, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Legal Status, Legislative Body, Literary Exercises, Lunatic, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Paying Patients, Phenomena, Philanthropic Societies, physicians, poets, police, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Report to NY State, Room and Board, Rules of Admission, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Vine Hall, Wit, writers

April 1869 Atlantic Monthy Article

An Article Previously Written by our treasured author.
From THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, April 1869

In my paper preliminary to the present, in the April number of this magazine, I have entered my weary protest against that “sagacious pharisaism of the fam­ily, which consigns the poor prodigal heart, that has nothing left but its remnant of imperishable love, to the isolation of a Refuge such as this; and then, maintaining a savage silence, keeps it for weeks on the red-hot grid­iron of a longing suspense, in one pro­tracted nightmare and horror of devilish fancies and fears.”

Dispair

Dispair

Since that was printed, one poor prodigal heart, – the gentlest, humblest, among us, impatient only with itself, – robbed of its remnant of imperishable love, and given over by that same savage silence to its loneli­ness and longing and despair, has taken its pitiful tax and trouble in its hand, and fled from the cruel respectability of fastidious Pharisees to the indiscrim­inate consolations of the Publican’s Christ.

20. THE INEBRIATE; One Last Quote from “The Report”

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Ability to pay, Admission Form, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, bar graph, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Committed patients, confined, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, criminal, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Free Patients, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Involuntary Patients, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Legal Status, Legislative Body, Literary Exercises, Lunatic, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Paying Patients, Phenomena, Philanthropic Societies, physicians, poets, police, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Report to NY State, Room and Board, Rules of Admission, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Vine Hall, Wit, writers

 

A Report to NY State from the Inebriate Asylum Trustees

A TYPICAL REPORT TO THE STATE

{The Inebriate quotes from a report to the state of NY}

“In this aspect of the subject it is of vital importance that the enterprise should be kept pure, and true to its original intention, by the exclusion, as far as possible, of involuntary patients, or at least of such as are brutally in‑sensible and rebellious. This Asylum, I take it, is designed to appeal confi­dently to the reason and conscience of a class neither mad nor utterly de­praved ; and, from the best of these, to restore to society and the state so Much of usefulness and ornament, hon­est productiveness and intellectual in­fluence, as will repay the Common­wealth tenfold for the cost of the experiment. To introduce, therefore, the element of confinement and coer­cion is to degrade the Institution from its true character, as a saving and en­nobling home of faith and inspiration, into a mere house of correction or a jail.”

“So, also, to receive within our walls the forced commitments of a court or the common seizures of the police is at once to impair, if not destroy, the phil­osophical value of the experiment, and, what is worse, to embarrass the disci­pline and lower the moral tone of our probationary household.”

 

19. THE INEBRIATE; Protection from the Law

29 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Ability to pay, Admission Form, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, bar graph, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Committed patients, confined, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, criminal, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Free Patients, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Involuntary Patients, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Legal Status, Legislative Body, Literary Exercises, Lunatic, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Paying Patients, Phenomena, Philanthropic Societies, physicians, poets, police, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Room and Board, Rules of Admission, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Vine Hall, Wit, writers

Inmate Quantity

Quantity of Inmates

Therefore the inebriate has his rights; but they are the rights of an occasional madman, however long and lucid his intervals may be ; and no man knows this bet­ter than himself. He knows that, un­der certain distracting circumstances of provocation or temptation, he may first or last almost certainly be­come an offence, if not a fear, to him­self and others, even when at large on his honorable parole, of which, at wiser times, when seated at the feet of the Gamaliel of his own prudence and duty, he is so tenderly jealous. Then the rude hand of the law, insensible to sen­timent and scornful of psychological analyses, will be laid upon him, a policeman’s coarse paw shall bruise the raw of his fierce sensitiveness. Just there his rights begin, and he naturally turns for them to the Asy­lum, which, as a mere matter of money not less than of morals, owes him a rescue; for she is his guardian under bonds, and has accepted in respect of him, for a consideration, certain posi­tive responsibilities and obligations.• Whether he can or cannot be trusted beyond bounds, is a question for the discretion of those having him in moral and medical charge, – a nice question, I grant, its safe decision implying the possession of a rare and fine combina­tion of experience with tact ; and occa­sional errors of judgment are inevitable. But it is certain the decision does not rest with him, nor is he responsible for the consequences of a blunder. His Asylum owes it to his friends, as well as to himself, to stand between him and the police, and to demand that he be restored, the moment his arrest be­comes necessary, to the custody of his appointed guardian and physician, the superintendent, whose demand should be a habeas corpus in this matter, – all charges to be paid by the Asylum, and collected from the patient. Just there his rights cease; he certainly has no right, in reason or feeling, to complain of the preventive punishment he may receive. But if he is not in an Asylum for this very protection, for what, in the name of common sense and busi­ness is he there? A passage from the Report will follow.

 

18. THE INEBRIATE; Gone are the Days

27 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Ability to pay, Admission Form, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Committed patients, confined, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, criminal, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Free Patients, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Involuntary Patients, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Legal Status, Legislative Body, Literary Exercises, Lunatic, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Paying Patients, Phenomena, Philanthropic Societies, physicians, poets, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Room and Board, Rules of Admission, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Vine Hall, Wit, writers

Involuntary

Involuntary Patient of Yore

It is to be hoped that, lest legislative bodies and philanthropic communities, inspired by the assured success of this Binghamton experiment, should become prematurely engaged in this specialty of benevolent enterprise, the legal sta­tus of the inebriate may be clearly de­fined without loss of time. He is no longer to be coerced as a criminal or confined as a lunatic : once for all, that question has been settled, by those who have the matter most at heart, and have given it the most intelligent and anxious consideration ; it is, in fact, the foun­dation upon which the whole amiable structure has been erected.

17. THE INEBRIATE; Classifications – Voluntary or Incarceration?

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Ability to pay, Admission Form, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Committed patients, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Free Patients, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Involuntary Patients, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Literary Exercises, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Paying Patients, Phenomena, physicians, poets, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Room and Board, Rules of Admission, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Vine Hall, Wit, writers

Asylum Rules

Rules for Voluntary and Involuntary Entry

It can be honestly claimed for any well-managed Inebriate Asylum that it “reforms ” a man by helping him to reform himself ; it presupposes in him a sincere longing and an earnest effort, and it offers him wise moral conditions of patience, encouragement with kindly admonition, trust with well-timed warn­ing, refuge from care and from tempta­tion, cheerful and sympathetic compan­ionship, improving and diverting mental exercise, and all the devices of sagacity and tact which his temper or his trou­ble demand; sound physical conditions, also, of rest (for there’s no such tired wretch as your worn-out inebriate), reg­ularity of habit, wholesome and substan­tial diet, pure air, free motion, animating games, hearty songs, and jolly laughter. And that is all – that is not humbug.

Admission to Asylum

APPLICATION FOR ADMISSION

Such are they whom it truly helps and such the means whereby it helps them. For the incorrigible minority, the puerile, and the stupid, who remain “deaf to the voice of warning, and de­fiant of the claims of affection,” – the unstable and the stolid, who are yet to be “dead-beat,” – these are they whom the Asylum merely harbors. To the former it is, in very truth, a House of Refuge, rest, and redemption; to the latter, but a House of Detention and control. In this Institution, which, in all that is external to the personal feel­ings of the inmate, partakes notably of the freedom of a superior country hotel, we are fortunate in being able to meet on an equal footing of confidence and respectful consideration. But for causes seemingly inseparable from the experi­mental character of the enterprise, our social status is exceptionally superior and it is not to be expected that, when the plan and operation of inebriate re­form shall have become popularized, and every State shall have opened its asylums, kindred establishments will be commonly so fortunate. I think it will be found necessary to impart to their discipline a duplicate discretion, and to classify patients, however simply, as to character and privileges.

16. THE INEBRIATE; Shared Emotions and Concoctions

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 6 Comments

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1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Literary Exercises, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Phenomena, physicians, poets, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Vine Hall, Wit, writers

An example of the beautiful woodwork in the asylum

Emphatically, this clarifying machine is run by the force necessarily liberated from the impure material to be clarified nor can the experiment of inebriate reform, by communities associated in institutions such as this, be ever other­wise conducted to a satisfactory conclu­sion. It is in the very nature of the case, and a logical result of the progress toward success, that the inebriate in these conditions, as he yields to the process of reconstruction, shall become an agent in that process, and a law of reform unto himself and others. En­gineer the apparatus as they may, the superintendent and trustees must de­rive their motive-power from the multi­plied and concentered magnetism of the patients. Without this, the mech­anism, however complete, must be as insensible and dumb under their hands as a telegraphic key-board without a battery. It is the very merit of their theory of sympathy that this should be so; and this must be the measure of all the genuine, abiding good they can ever hope to do. To their honor, be it said, they claim no more. If I were asked wherein lies the peculiar healing of this place, I should answer in the profound impressions of its sympathet­ic intercourse ; for here my trembling trouble is met with unstudied appeals transcending the eloquence of Gough, and confronted with pictures of pain beyond the eager, tearful utterance of Vine Hall.

THE ABOV FROM “CLICK AMERICANA”

This anxious little world of ours is moved by the moral power of its own public opinion; and that finds expression in the purpose and character of the Ollapod Club.

15. THE INEBRIATE; Kindred Women

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1849 gold rush, 1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Female kin, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Literary Exercises, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Mrs. Frank Ward, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Phenomena, physicians, poets, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Sages, San Fran Cisco, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Wit, writers

That romantic deference and deli­cacy of sentiment, with which the natu­ral American, whom untoward circum­stances of birth and association have not rendered positively uncouth and morally deformed, never fails to ap­proach every tolerable woman, is devel­oped here, from even the most latent inclination, by the peculiar craving of our minds and hearts, and the rarity of its gratification. The presence of a true lady among us as potently refines our imaginations and elevates our as­pirations, as the lovely apparition of the “First Lady “(Mrs. Frank Ward) rebuked and calmed the fierce, turbulent selfishness of San Francisco in 1849:

We all know that rum, when it has usurped the kingdom of a mind, reduces it to the slavery of ignoble passions and gross imaginations ; but we also know that the minds and hearts it most easily invades, finding them miserably defenseless, are precisely those which under happier circumstances are most sensitively susceptible  to emotions of grace and chivalry. By the hand of every gentle woman who brings her subtle sympathy among us, we reach back toward the hearts of our mothers and sisters and wives. “Our sched­ule,” says the Report, “will show that of the whole number admitted since the 1st of May, 1867, one hundred and forty-six have been married men. The moral advantage, the chance of life­long abstinence, is decidedly with the married, arteris paribus,

 {NOTE on meaning of arteris paribus: “on its face” or “as an accepted fact” or “through observations}

and the marriage being happy; for I need hardly say that there is no more po­tent, nor comparatively more common provocative to reckless debauchery than an ill-assorted, incompatible, wrang­ling marriage: nor any such incentive and inspiration to reform, any such support and cheer in the struggle of self-denial and self-control, any such source of fortitude and hope in the hour of temptation, as the devotion of a for­giving, faithful, patient wife, clinging fast to the wreck that the crew of self­ish kindred and friends have aban­doned. The women who have followed their husbands to this Asylum, and lin­gered near at hand, to watch and help and applaud them, are the pride of their own sex, and the prize of ours.”

14. THE INEBRIATE; Getting Along (During an Election)

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by Waldo "Wally" Tomosky in THE INEBRIATE

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1868 Presidential Election, A list of patients, A School for Scandal, Albert Day, artists, asylum, Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthy 1869, bankers, Billiards, Binghamton, Blair, Bowling, brokers, chess, clerks, Cornell's Making of America, cribbage, Curiosities, divines, Dr. Albert Day, Dr.Edward Turner, dramatists, Ethiopian Minstrel, euchre, Exercise Room, farmers, Honorable Ausburn Birdsall, Humor, Inebriates, Isaac Perry, Joseph Surface, Lady of Lyons, lawyers, Lectures, Literary Exercises, Macbeth, Meeting Room, merchants, Music, musicians, novelists, NY State Inebriate Asylum, Old presidential posters, Old Woodcuts, Opera, Pantomime, Phenomena, physicians, poets, priests, printers, Prodigal Son, Reading Room, Sages, scholars, Schuyler Colfax, Scientific American, Seymour, Still Water Runs Deep, teachers, Temperance, The Ollapod Club, Ulysses S. Grant, Wit, writers

Here is a free school of manners, equal rights, and common sense, where are taught the fair play of the Golden Rule, and the decorous deference of the Hindoo Vedas. Send hither your roughs, rustics, and boys, and we will teach them to keep their knives out of the mouths of their best behavior, and to stand on no toes but their own.

To the end of avoiding that danger­ous ground of debate in which “unpleasantnesses” are apt to grow, poli­tics and all forms of sectarianism are ignored with a unanimity which is al­ways cheerful and sometimes comical. We had an amusing example of the practical effect of this thoughtful blend­ing of prudence and delicacy on the day of the last Presidential election.

Schyler vs Colfax Poster

There were polls, with judges and clerks, who omitted no natural touch of brow-beat­ing or corruption ; there was a ballot-box, indiscriminately stuffed by such a run-mad compost of parties as would have defied the nomenclature of the “Pewter Mug”; there was a station house, with a “patent police,” delight­fully brutal and partial; there were free and independent voters, native or naturalized, in the familiar state of ig­norance, beer, imbecility, and helpless­ness; there were rough sport, and shouts of laughter, and sharp sallies of wit, and boisterous burlesque; but not one coarse buffet, nor an unkind word, although there were Radicals here dear to the heart of Ben Butler, and Copperheads lovely in the sight of Brick Pomeroy, Rebels who had raided with Mosby, and good sense have been enacted anywhere and Federal scouts who had followed in the hoof-prints of Sher­idan’s Ride. Could such a scene of generosity, on that day, but at an Inebriate Asylum?

Seymour and Blair Poster

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