George Barrell Cheever: Deacon Giles' distillery (1844)

"Inquire at Amos Giles' Distillery."

Upon its appearance in the Salem Landmark of Feb., 1835, the public excitement was tremendous. A spear had pierced and extinguished the eye of the horrid Cyclop.

"Clamorem immensam tollit, quo pontus et omnes
Intremuere undae, penitusque exterrita tellus
Italiae, curvisque immugiit Mtna. cavernis."*

Every distiller and importer, every vender and moderate drinker, almost the entire community, believing that what was legally right must yet be respected and honored, how horrid soever might be its moral results, cried against it as an outrage upon society With one accord, they rushed to the halls of justice for protection. Among the four distilleries of the place, one was singled out as answering more directly to the description; and the proprietor, himself a Deacon of a Christian Church, and a man of unexceptionable character, feeling aggrieved and injured in his person and property, a prosecution was commenced by the Commonwealth for a libel. MrCheever pleaded not guilty to the charge, solemnly averring that it was never written or intended as an attack upon any individual; the object of the piece was to portray, in as forcible a light as possible, through the medium of the fiction he had conceived, the real nature and consequences of the manufacture of ardent spirits. Such, however, was the state of the public mind that he was condemned, and, on making his defence, he submitted meekly to the sentence of the Court. But the whole procedure gave wings to the production of his cenius, and caused it to become one of the great instruments of opening the eyes of a suffering community to the true character of distillation.

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*"--- he roared aloud, the dreadful cry
Shakes earth, and air, and seas; the hillows fly
Before the bellowing noise, to distant Italy;
The neighboring iEtna trembling all around.
The winding caverns echo to the sound;
His brother Cyclops hear the yelling roar,
And rushing down the mountains, crowd the shore.

Dryden's Tran.