In honor of Keillor’s line about non-smokers living longer and dumber, here’s an early review by Mencken on the benefits of alcohol (the inflamed may want to avert their eyes):
Dr. Williams’s proofs that total abstinence is necessary to extreme longevity are convincing without being impressive. Before the human race will accept the conclusions he draws from them, it must first accept the theory that the usefulness and agreeableness of life are to be measured by its duration, and by its duration only. No such theory is held today by sane men. We estimate an individual life, not by length, but by its breadth. Fifty years of Shakespeare were worth more to the world than the innumerable hundreds of all the centenarians that ever lived. . . .
[The anti-rum crusaders] forget that there is such a thing as an art of life — that civilization, at bottom, is really a successful conspiracy to defy and nullify the simple laws which secure the perpetuation of the protozoa. The physical act of reading a book obviously shortens life, for it not only strains the eyes but also tends to compress the lungs and other viscera and to atrophy the disused muscles of leg and arm; but the man of thirty who has read many books is more creditable to the race, all other things being equal, than the man of ninety who has merely lived ninety years. (“To Drink or Not to Drink,” H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set Criticism, 159-160)
Old Life 