Franklin Evans of The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times. I found the story to be quite dark as has been very often my feelings throughout this course. It is a tale or warning against the use and abuse of alcohol. What I found missing was the lack of mention of other vices in a large city that can lead a farm boy astray. It focused only on alcohol. Whitman’s story of a boy raised out of Long Island who comes to the Big City to stake his claim is often troubling. We follow the young lad through his trials and tribulations with alcohol from his first drink with his buddy Colby to his sobriety with the Temperance movement. Along this journey there was many a grim tale of death, destitution, poor judgement, and the loss of one’s character. The tales at the beginning of the novel were about others. The first spoke of a hale and hearty farmer and his children growing up around him, “Unfortunately, he fell into habits of intemperance. Season after season passed away; and each one, as it came, found him a poorer man than that just before it. Everything seemed to go wrong. He attributed it to ill luck, and to the crops being injured by unfavorable weather. But his neighbors found no more harm from these causes than in the years previous, when the tippler was as fortunate as any of them. The truth is, that habits of drunkenness in the head of a family, are line an evil influence…” (6-7). As they proceeded along their journey a tale was told of alcohol amongst the Native Americans, “‘The greatest curse,’ said he, growing warm with his subject—’the greatest curse ever introduced among them, has been the curse of rum! I can conceive of no more awful and horrible, and at the same time more effective lesson, than that which may be learned from the consequences of the burning firewater upon the habits and happiness of the poor Indians. A whole people – the inhabitants of a mighty continent – are crushed by it, and debased into a condition lower than the beast of the field. Is it not a pitiful thought? The bravest warriors—the wise old chiefs—even women and children—tempted by our people to drink this fatal poison, until, as year and year passed away, they found themselves deprived not only of their lands and what property they hitherto owned, but of everything that made them noble and grand as a nation! Rum has done great evil in the world, but hardly ever more by wholesale than in the case of the American savage.'” (10). I found myself lost by the tale of the Indians as the talk of alcohol left the dialogue and turned to a story of revenge, thereby not only not fitting in with the Native American tale of temperance but the entire book. Upon arrival in New York the story lends itself to Franklin Evans’ own experiences and observations. Colby, who traveled from the country with Franklin Evans, introduced Franklin Evans to the drinking scene, “Those beautiful women-warbling melodies sweeter than I ever heard before, and the effect of the liquor upon my brain, seemed to lave me in happiness, as it were, from head to foot!” (27). He began drinking regularly with Colby. He finds employment and eventually loses it dues to the side effects of intemperance. We find Franklin Evans to marry his landlady’s daughter, Mary, and intemperance ate away at their marriage. Mary was of delicate temperament and could not survive the marriage to a drunkard. Whitman writes, “Then came the closing scene of that act of the tragedy. My wife, stricken to the heart, and unable to bear up longer against the accumulating weight of shame and misery, sank into the grave-the innocent victim of another’s drunkenness” (50). Through the horrors of alcohol he found himself embracing the glorious temperance pledge which is defined as nothing stronger than wine. He found himself taking up or participating in a burglary in which he was readily caught and found himself in jail. He was given reprieve due to his association with the Marchion family of which he saved their child from drowning in the past. Mr. Marchion got him off. The Marchion share with him their own tragic experiences with alcohol. They had pledged temperance. He left the city and went to live in the country in Virginia where, although he was not partaking of alcohol stronger than wine, his judgement was still off. He fell in love with a Creole slave, married her, fell out of love with her, fell in love with a Mrs. Conway, “her light hair, blue eyes, and the delicacy of her skin, formed a picture rarely met with in the region” (84), and nothing but jealousy and rage and ultimately death ensued. Franklin Evans headed back to New York. He visited his first employer, Mr. Lee, who was all too familiar with the dangers of alcohol and, understanding Franklin Evans predicaments and battle with intemperance, being in the city without employment, Mr Lee left him upon his death comfortable property. He still visited the Marchions, as he still considered them friends, and shared his stories with them of his time in Virginia and his marriage to the Creole and the death of Mrs. Conway, and they (the Marchions) had moved deeper into the temperance movement (which was a movement of reformers of which only abstinence would suffice). I find the tale a bit of a stretch as I have first hand knowledge of the disease of alcoholism.