Through by Daylight by Oliver Optic

After we had sufficiently discussed the explosion and my father's financial affairs, Christy Holgate took from under the seat where he sat a curiously-shaped black bottle and a tumbler. I would rather have seen him take a living rattlesnake from the box, and place it at my feet -- or rather at my father's feet, for it was on his account that I shuddered when I heard the owner of the bottle declare that it contained "old rye whiskey. " Christy told a tedious story about the contents of this "vial of wrath" -- where it was distilled in the State of Kentucky; how a particular friend of his had procured two quarts of it, and no more of that year's manufacture could be had in the whole nation, either for love or for money.

One would have supposed, from the eloquent description of its virtues, that it was the nectar of the gods, instead of the fiery fluid which men put into their mouths to take their brains away. I was disgusted with the description, and I shuddered the more when I saw that my father was interested in it, and that he cast longing glances at the queer-shaped bottle. I had heard that my father lost his situation at the town on the Hudson by drinking to excess, and I trembled lest the old appetite should be revived in him. If he had been a man like Christy Holgate I should not have trembled, as I viewed the case, for he had drunk liquor all his lifetime to moderation, and no one had ever known him to be intoxicated. It was not so with my father. He had struggled manfully against the insidious appetite, and, with only a couple of exceptions, he had always done so successfully. Twice, and twice only, had he been under the influence of liquor since he came to Centreport. I feared, if he tasted the contents of the strange-looking bottle, that the third time would have to be added to the list.