Old Timers
How W. D. Pratt Swore Off Drinking Intoxicants (excerpt)

A little further east than George White's office was the saddle and harness shop of W. D. Pratt. Besides being a saddle and harness maker he had a tanyard on the corner of Marshall and McCarty streets. He also had a house on High between Marshall and Lafayette streets. I don't think he delivered ice. I remember that we had to get our ice before sun up, for at that hour he closed the door, and I don't think he would open it for anyone except for the stork. He was noted for his love of hunting, and always had guns and dogs. He had a large family of boys and girls, but I do not know what became of them. He lived to a good old age and died in this city. He was for many years an auctioneer, and held sales every Saturday evening at his place of business. I have often wondered why some one did not follow that business in these days. You could take any article you did not want to keep any longer and leave it at his place, and the next Saturday he would auction it off for what it would bring. He was a man of very strong will power. A story was told of him which I have no reason to doubt. When he was a young man he drank very hard, and was in the habit of taking his jug to the saloon and getting it filled almost every day. One morning, as was his custom, he left home with his empty jug and proceeded to the saloon. When he reached the place, which was on the corner of a street, he saw three other men approaching from three several directions. He knew them well, and said to himself: "These three men are drinking themselves to death, and in less than five years they will fill drunkard's graves." Then the thought came to him that he was drinking more than any one of them, and that the fate that awaited them would be his, too. He set the jug down where he stood, and went home, and from that day for the forty or more years that he lived afterwards no man even knew of his drinking another drop of anything that would intoxicate. Just a short time before his death he told our mutual friend, Hon. P. T. Miller, that he took no obligation nor did he tell any one that he intended to quit drinking, but just quit and never tasted liquor afterwards. It is refreshing in these degenerate days of so-called whisky cures to know that there lived a man whom many of us knew, that had will power to do what he wanted to do, or rather to quit doing what he did not want to do.