Test for Sobriety

In Missouri, a town marshal develops a plan to test if his people have been drinking; he required “questionable” prisoners to navigate a stepping stone path.

Missouri town Marshal has an original scheme for gauging his people’s capacity.
Kansas has produced the magistrate who decides on a man’s condition of sobriety, or the reverse, by making him walk a crack. Cape Girardeau, Mo., has done better and produced a flight of stepping stones along which supposedly intoxicated persons must walk to insure their freedom from incarceration.
“Coon Hollow” is a bit of low ground lying south of the courthouse at Cape Girardeau. Beyond it live the poorer darkies and the less useful portions of the local population. The hollow is something of a sing hole, and in times of heavy rains becomes considerable of a morass.
To the inhabitants of the trans hollow region the stepping stones across have always been a source of trouble. They were so necessary that their removal has never been seriously considered, for without them any man who attempted to walk through the hollow in the mud would probably stick fast till help came. Even with them there enough of the inhabitants fall off in the mud and have only the stones to cling to for safety.
Charlie Armagard is town marshal of Cape Girardeau. He has many a bit of trouble with the settlers beyond the stepping stones, and has often debated with himself whether or not to “run in” some of them who seemed to have had a drink too much. One night he was escorting home one who pretended he was sober. They reached the stepping stones all right, but there the assistee’s troubles began. He could go a couple of steps and then he would miss, sway off and pitch into the mire. Marshal Armgard’s patience was soon exhausted. After the fourth or fifth attempt he hailed his prisoner away to jail.
That was how he got the idea. Now when he has a questionable prisoner from beyond Coon Hollow he takes him forthwith to the stepping stones, stands him on the first block, and sits down on the bank to watch him go home. If the suspect goes steadily across the line he is all right and can stay on the other side. If he wavers a little and still keeps on the stones, he is still all right. But if he staggers and plunges off, if he misjudges the distance between his foot and the stones and falls or trips- woe to him.

“Test for Sobriety,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed May 12, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/65.