“When Homer smote his bloomin’ stump,” the latest version of Kipling’s famous line, originated recently in Tampa, Fla., when a 20th century namesake of the famous blind bard introduced a new wrinkle in the ancient art of intoxication. Mr. Volstead will be relieved and at the same time worried to learn that this Homer belongs to none of the strange classes of people known as old soaks, booze artists, or opium eaters, but represents an entirely new species of a recently discovered genus, the ether addict.
Homer’s history has been a colorful one. When Uncle Sam assembled the brave youth of the land in 1917, he was among the first to answer the call. For months he marched through rain and slept in the mud in the trenches of France. One day Homer’s regiment went over the top to meet the enemy. When the smoke of battle cleared away, Homer was found on the field with one leg missing.
Emergency treatment in the field hospital the weary passage across the Atlantic to America on a hospital ship followed by days and nights of torture made up the second chapter in his strange story. Finally he was dismissed from the hospital with instructions to bathe the stump of his leg frequently with ether.
Homer was quick to discover that the bathing of his wounded member was one of the most pleasant sensations in his drab life. The thick pungent fumes of the anesthetic floating into the nostrils of the man would so benumb his senses that all pain was forgotten in a beautiful sensation of release from bodily ills and mental cares. There came to him a realization of unutterable bliss and a joy comparable only to the aesthereal rapture of a skylark soaring in a world of blue sky and happy sunshine.
With each passing day the charm of these brief periods of release from this vale of tears grew mor patent. All the meagre income the crippled man could get went into the purchase of this wonderful drug that could so translate him into the realm of beauty and happiness.
The denouement of the pitiful tragedy came one afternoon when he hobbled into the Red Cross office at Tampa and asked for food and lodging. This was provided him. Early the next morning the authorities were startled and concerned to hear that the wounded man had attempted to commit suicide. Even more startled where they to learn later from the “suicide’s” own lips that he had merely taken a whiff of ether and subsequently a brief vacation in the happy hunting grounds.
The unfortunate ex-soldier appeared anxious to tell his story and to get help in ridding himself of the ether inhaling habit. He gladly consented to undergo an examination by a specialist provided by the Red Cross, and later submitted to expert treatment in an institution to which the organization got him admitted.
Latest reports declare Homer greatly improved, and well on the way to a normal, healthy existence, free from excursions into the lands of ghosts and angels.
From the editorial page of the Tri-City Daily Gazette, Leaksville, N.C., Saturday, March 1, 1924; Murdoch E. Murray, editor.
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