42435	----	ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BRAIN. BY REV. JOSEPH COOK. NEW YORK: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 58 READE STREET. 1879. ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BRAIN. BY REV. JOSEPH COOK. Cassio's language in Othello is to-day adopted by cool physiological science: "O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should, with joy, revel, pleasure and applause, transform ourselves into beasts! To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unbless'd, and the ingredient is the devil."--Shakespeare, _Othello_, Act II., Scene iii. Central in all the discussion of the influence of intoxicating drink upon the human brain is the fact that albuminous substances are hardened by alcohol. I take the white of an egg, and, as you see, turn it out in a fluid condition into a goblet. The liquid is a viscous, glue-like substance, largely composed of albumen. It is made up of pretty nearly the same chemical ingredients that constitute a large part of the brain and the nervous system, and of many other tissues of the body. Forty per cent of the matter in the corpuscles of the blood is albumen. I am about to drench this white of an egg with alcohol. I have never performed this experiment before, and it may not succeed, but so certain am I that it will, that I purpose never to put the bottle to my lips and introduce into my system a fiend to steal away my brain. Edmund Burke, when he heard William Pitt say in Parliament that England would stand till the day of judgment, rose and replied; "What I fear is the day of _no_ judgment." When Booth was about to assassinate Lincoln, his courage failed him, and he rushed away from the theater for an instant into the nearest restaurant and called for brandy. Harden the brain by drenching it in alcohol and you harden the moral nature. If you will fasten your attention on the single fact, that alcohol hardens this albuminous substance with which I place it in contact, you will have in that single strategic circumstance an explanation of most of its ravages upon the blood and nerves and brain. I beg you to notice that the white of an egg in the goblet does not become hardened by exposure to the air. I have allowed it to remain exposed for a time, in order that you may see that there is no legerdemain in this experiment. [Laughter.] I now pour alcohol upon this albuminous fluid, and if the result here is what it has been in other cases, I shall pretty soon be able to show you a very good example of what coagulated albumen is in the nervous system and blood corpuscles. You will find this white of an egg gradually so hardened that you can take it out without a fork. I notice already that a mysterious change in it has begun. A strange thickening shoots through the fluid mass. This is your moderate drunkard that I am stirring up now. There is your tippler, a piece of him, [holding up a portion of the coagulated mass upon the glass pestle]. The coagulation of the substance of the brain and of the nervous system goes on. I am stirring up a hard drinker now. The infinitely subtle laws of chemistry take their course. Here is a man [holding up a part of the coagulated mass] whose brain is so leathery that he is a beast, and kicks his wife to death. I am stirring up in this goblet now the brain of a hardened sot. On this prongless glass rod, I hold up the large part of the white of an egg which you saw poured into this glass as a fluid. Here is your man [holding up a larger mass] who has benumbed his conscience and his reason both, and has begun to be dangerous to society from the effects of a diseased brain. Wherever alcohol touches this albuminous substance, it hardens it, and it does so by absorbing and fixing the water it contains. I dip out of the goblet now your man in delirium tremens. Here is what was once a fluid, rolling easily to right and left, and now you have the leathery brain and the hard heart. Distortions of blood discs taken from the veins of drunkards have been shown to you here by the stereopticon and the best microscope in the United States. All the amazing alterations you saw in the shape, color, and contents of the blood discs are produced by the affinity of alcohol for the water in the albuminous portion of the globules. I am speaking here in the presence of expert chemists. You say I have no business to know anything about these topics. Well, the new professor in Andover on the relations between religion and science has no business to know them. The new professor at Edinburgh University and in Princeton has no business to know them. The lectureship at the Union Theological Seminary in New York has no right to teach on these themes. There is getting to be a tolerably large company of us who are intending to look into these matters at the point of the microscope and the scalpel. In a wiser generation than ours the haughty men who will not speak themselves of the relations of religion and science, and will not allow others to speak--veritable dogs in the manger--will be turned as dogs out of the manger. I speak very strongly, for I have an indignation that can not be expressed when it is said that men who join hands with physicians, and are surrounded by experts to teach them the facts, have no right to make inferences. Men educated and put into professorships to discuss as a specialty the relation of religion and science have no right to discuss these themes! We have a right as lawyers to discuss such topics before juries, when we bring experts in to help us. I bring experts before you as a jury. I assert the right of Andover, and Princeton, and New Haven, and Edinburgh, and even of this humble platform to tell you what God does in the brain, and to exhibit to you the freshest discoveries there of both His mercy and wrath. My support of temperance reform I would base upon the following propositions: 1. Scars in the flesh do not wash out nor grow out, but, in spite of the change of all the particles of the body, are accurately reproduced without alteration by the flux of its particles. Let us begin with an incontrovertible proposition. Everybody knows that the scars of childhood are retained through life, and that we are buried with them. But we carry into the grave no particle of the flesh that we had in youth. All the particles of the body are in flux and are changed every few years. There is, however, something in us that persists. I am I; and therefore I am praiseworthy or blameworthy for things I did a score of years since, although there is not a particle of my body here now that was here then. The sense of the identity persisting in all the flux of the particles of the system, proves there is something else in man besides matter. This is a very unsubstantial consideration, you say; but the acute and profound German finds in this one fact of the persistence of the sense of identity in spite of the flux of the particles of the body, the proof of the separateness of matter and mind. Something reproduces these scars as the system throws off and changes its particles. That something must have been affected by the scarring. There is a strange connection between scars and the immaterial portion of us. It is a mysterious fact, right before us daily, and absolutely incontrovertible, that something in that part of us which does not change reproduces these scars. Newton, when the apple fell on his head--according to the fable, for I suppose that story is not history--found in it the law of the universe; and so in the simple fact that scars will not wash out or grow out, although the particles of the flesh are all changed, we find two colossal propositions; the one is that there is somewhat in us that does not change, and is not matter; the other is, that this somewhat is connected mysteriously with the inerasability of scars, which, therefore, may be said to exist in some sense in the spiritual as well as in the material substance of which we are made. 2. It is as true of scars on the brain and nervous system as of those on any less important parts of the body, that they will not wash out, nor grow out. 3. Scars on the brain or nervous system may be made by physical or mental habits, and are the basis of the self-propagative power of habits. 4. When the scars or grooves in which a habit runs are made deep, the habit becomes automatic or self-acting and perhaps involuntary. 5. The grooves worn or scars made by good and bad habits may be inherited. Physical identity of parent and offspring, spiritual identity of parent and offspring--these mysteries we have discussed here; and this two-fold identity is concerned in the transmission of the thirst for drink. When the drunkard who has had an inflamed stomach, is the father of a child that brings into the world with it an inflamed stomach, you have a case of the transmission of alcoholic scars. 6. While self-control lasts, a bad habit is a vice; when self-control is lost, a bad habit is a disease. 7. When a bad habit becomes a disease, the treatment of it belongs to physicians; while it is a vice, the treatment of it belongs to the Church. 8. In probably nine cases out of ten, among the physical difficulties produced by the use of alcohol, and not inherited, the trouble is a vice and not a disease. 9. Alcohol, by its affinity for water, hardens all the albuminous or glue-like substances in the body. 10. It thus paralyzes the small nerves, produces arterial relaxation, and deranges the circulation of the blood. 11. It produces thus an increased quickness in the beating of the heart, and ruddiness of countenance which are not signs of health, but of disease. Pardon me if I dwell a moment on this proposition, which was not made clear by science until a a few years ago. You say that moderate drinking quickens the pulse and adds ruddiness to the countenance, and that, therefore, you have some reason to believe that it is a source of health. I can hardly pardon myself for not having here a set of the chemical substances that partially paralyze the small nerves. I have a list of them before me, and it includes ether and the whole series of nitrites, and especially the nitrite of amyl. If I had the latter substance here, I might, by lifting it to the nostrils, produce this flushing of the face that you call a sign of health in moderate drinking. There are five or six chemical agents that produce paralysis of the vessels of the minute circulation, and among them is alcohol. A blush is produced by a slight paralysis of the small nerves in the interlacing ends of the arteries and veins. If I had ether here, and could turn it on the back of my hand and evaporate it, I could partially freeze the skin, and then, removing the ether, you would see a blush come to the back of the hand. That is because the little nerves that help constrict and keep up the proper tone of the circulating organs, are temporarily paralyzed. A permanent blush in the face of a drunkard indicates a permanent injury to the blood vessels by alcohol. The varicose vein is often produced in this way by the paralysis of some of the nerves that are connected with the fine parts of the circulatory organs. When the face blushes permanently in the drunkard the injury revealed is not a local one, but is inflicted on every organ throughout the whole system. After moderate drinking you feel the heart beating faster, to be sure, but it beats more rapidly because of the paralysis of the delicate nerves connected with the arteries, and because of the consequent arterial relaxation. The blood meets with less resistance in passing through the relaxed circulatory organs, and so, with no additional force in the heart, that organ beats more rapidly. It beats faster simply because it has less force to overcome. The quickened pulse is a proof of disease and not of health. (_See_ Dr. Richardson, Cantor Lectures on Alcohol.) 12. Alcohol injures the blood by changing the color and chemical composition of its corpuscles. In the stereopticon illustrations, you saw that the red discs of blood are distorted in shape by the action of alcohol. You saw that the arrangement of the coloring matter in the red discs is changed. You saw that various adulterations appeared to come into the blood, or at least into visibility there, under the influence of alcohol. Lastly, you saw, most terrible of all, an absolutely new growth occurring there--a sprout protruding itself from the side of the red corpuscle in the vital stream. Last year I showed you what some of the diseases of leprosy did for the blood, and you see how closely alcoholism in the blood resembles in physical effects the most terrific diseases known to man. Here are the diseases that are the great red seal of God Almighty's wrath against sensuality; and when we apply the microscope to them, we find in the blood discs these sprouts, that greatly resemble each other in the inebriate and in the leper. Dr. Harriman has explained, with the authority of an expert, these ghastly growths. These sprouts shoot out of the red discs, and he tells you that, after having been called before jury after jury as an expert, sometimes in cases where life was at stake, he has studied alcoholized blood, and that a certain kind of spore, a peculiar kind of sprout, which you have seen here, he never saw except in the veins of a confirmed drunkard. I think the day is coming when, by microscopic examination of the blood discs, we can tell what disease a man has inherited or acquired--if it be one of that kind which takes hold of the circulatory fluid. This alcohol, with its affinity for water, changes the composition of every substance in the body into which water enters, and there are seven hundred and ninety parts of water in every thousand of blood. The reason alcohol changed this white of an egg into hardness, that if it had been put in whole I could have rolled it across the platform, was that the fierce spirit took the water out of the albumen. If I had a plate of glass here, and could put upon it a solution of the white of an egg, and could sprinkle upon it a little finely-powdered caustic soda, I could very soon pick up the sheet of gelatinous substance and should find it leathery, elastic, tough. Just so this marvelous white matter folded in sheets in the brain is drenched with a substance that takes out the water, and the effect on the brain is to destroy its capacity to perform some of its most delicate actions. The results of that physical incapacity are illustrated in all the proverbial effects of intemperance. 13. The deteriorations produced in the blood by alcohol are peculiarly injurious to the brain on account of the great quantity of blood sent to that organ. The brain weighs only about one twenty-eighth of the rest of the body, and yet into it, according to most authorities, is sent from a tenth to a sixth of all the blood. If you adopt fiat money, where will the most harm be done? What part of this land shows first of all the effect of a debased condition of the currency? Wall Street? Why? Because there the circulation is most vigorous. The blood of the land, to speak of money under that title, is thrown into Wall Street as the blood of the body is thrown into the head, and so in Wall Street, we have our men on the watch to tell us whether the currency is in a healthy or unhealthy state. The slightest alteration is felt there, because the currency there is accumulated, and so in the brain the slightest injury of the blood is felt first, because here is accumulated the currency of the system. 14. Most poisons and medicines act in the human system according to a law of local affinity, by which their chief force is expended on particular organs, and sometimes on particular spots of particular organs. 15. All science is agreed that the local affinity of alcohol, like that of opium, prussic acid, hashish, belladonna, etc., is for the brain. 16. The brain is the organ of the mind, and the temple and instrument of conduct and character. 17. What disorganizes brain disorganizes mind and character, and whatever disorganizes mind and character disorganizes society. 18. The local affinity of alcohol for the brain, therefore, exempts it, in its relations to Government, from the list of articles that have no such affinity, and gives to Government the right, in self-defence, to interfere by the prohibitory regulation of its sale as a beverage. 19. It is not sufficient to prove that alcohol is not a poison to overthrow the scientific basis of its prohibitory laws. 20. Intemperance and cerebral injury are so related that even moderate indulgence is inseparably connected with intellectual and moral disintonement. 21. In this circumstance, and in the inerasibility of the scars produced by the local affinity of alcohol for the brain, the principle of total abstinence finds its justification by science. Nothing in science is less questioned than the law of local affinities, by which different substances taken into the system exert their chief effect at particular localities. Lead, for example, fastens first upon the muscles of the wrist, producing what is known among painters and white-lead manufacturers as a wrist-drop. Manganese seizes upon the liver, iodine upon the lymphatic glands, chromate of potash upon the lining membrane of the eyelids, mercury upon the salivary glands and mouth. Oil of tobacco paralyzes the heart. Arsenic inflames the mucous membranes of the alimentary passages. Strychnine takes effect upon the spinal cord. Now, as all chemists admit, the local affinity of alcohol is for the brain. Dr. Lewis describes a case in which the alcohol could not be detected in the fluid of the brain cavities, nor, indeed, in any part of the body, but was obtained by distillation from the substance of the brain itself. Dr. Percy distilled alcohol in large quantities from the substance of the brains of animals killed by it, when only small quantities could be found in the blood or other parts of the systems of the same animals. Dr. Kirk mentions a case in which the brain liquid of a man who died in intoxication smelt very strongly of whisky, and when some of it was taken in a spoon, and a candle put beneath it, the flame burned with a lambent blue flame. But brain is the organ of the mind. Dr. Bucknell (Habitual Drinking) quotes Forbes Winslow as having testified before a Committee of Parliament that the liquid dipped from the brain of an habitual inebriate can thus be burned. Whatever is a disorganizer of the brain is a disorganizer of mind, and whatever is a disorganizer of mind is a disorganizer of society. It is from this point of view that the right of Government to prevent the manufacture of madmen and paupers can be best seen. I care not what men make of the famous recent experiments of Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, of France, by which half of the medical profession, including Dr. Carpenter, has been carried over to the support of the propositions that alcohol is eliminated from the system in totality and in nature; is never transformed and never destroyed in the organism; is not food; and is essentially a poison. I care not, on the other hand, what men make of the proposition Mr. Lewes defends, that alcohol may be a negative food. The local affinity of alcohol for the brain! This is a great fact. It is a fact uncontroverted. It is a fact sufficient. It is a fact to be heeded even in legislation. Among the well known authorities on the influence of alcohol on the human brain, Dr. W. B. Carpenter and Dr. B. W. Richardson, of England, are now in entire accord with Prof. Youmans and Dr. W. E. Greenfield, of the United States, in recommending total abstinence. Dr. Richardson's Cantor lectures have been followed by a volume on "Total Abstinence," and he gives to Dr. Carpenter's views on this subject his full assent and final adhesion, having learned at last, he says, "how solemnly right they are." In 1869 Dr. Richardson began to abstain from wine, by limiting his use of it to festal occasions, but still more recently he has abandoned its use altogether. The graduates of Amherst College met at the Parker House, in Boston, some years ago, and, although a wine glass was placed at the side of each plate, not one of them was filled. Niagara itself, a recent traveler in the United States says, is not as worthy of description to Englishmen as the pure array of goblets with ice-water at the usual dinners at hotels. Mrs. Hayes has expelled intoxicating beverages from the Presidential mansion. The latest investigators of the influence of alcohol on the brain are Schulinus, Anstie, Dupré, Labottin, and Binz. The latter in a series of remarkable articles published in the _Practitioner_, in 1876, maintains that a portion of every dose of alcohol is burned in the system, and yet he considers the use of alcohol in health as entirely superfluous. The experimenters agree with the majority of physicians that, in the army and navy, and for use among healthy persons, alcohol, even as a ration strictly limited to a moderate quantity, is physiologically useless and generally harmful. Upon different portions of the brain the action of alcohol can be distinctly traced by medical science and even by common observation. The brain, it will be remembered, is divided into three parts. The upper, which comprises the larger part, and which is supposed to be the seat of the intellectual and moral faculties, is called the _cerebrum_. Below that, in the back part of the organ, is another mass, called the _cerebellum_, parts of which are believed to control the contractions of the muscles in portions of the body. Still lower is the _medulla oblongata_, which presides over the nerves of respiration. Now the action of alcohol can be distinctly marked upon the different parts of the brain. The moral and intellectual faculties are first jarred out of order in the progress of intoxication. The tippler laughs and sings, is talkative and jocose, coarse or eloquent to almost any degree according to his temperament. The cerebrum is first affected. His judgment becomes weak; he is incapable of making a good bargain, or of defending his own rights intelligently, but he does not yet stagger; he is as yet only a moderate drinker. The effect of moderate drinking, however, is to weaken the judgment and to destroy the best powers of the will and intellect. But he takes another glass, and the cerebellum which governs several of the motions of the body is affected, and now he begins to stagger. He loses all control of his muscles, and plunges headlong against post and pavement. One more glass and the _medulla oblongata_ is poisoned. This organ controls the nerves which order the movements of the lungs, and now occurs that hard breathing and snoring which is seen in dead drunkenness. This stoppage is caused by impure blood so poisoning the _medulla oblongata_ that it can no longer perform its duties. The cerebrum and cerebellum now seem to have their action entirely suspended, and sometimes the respiratory movements stop forever, and the man dies by asphyxia in the same manner as by drowning, strangling, or narcotic poisoning by any other substance. (_See_ Prof. Ferrier. The Localization of Cerebral Disease. London, 1878.) Who shall say where end the consequences of alcoholic injury of the blood and of the substance of the brain? Here within the cranium, in this narrow chamber, so small that a man's hand may span it, and upon this sheet of cerebral matter, which, if dilated out, would not cover a surface of over six hundred square inches, is the point of union between spirit and matter. Inversions of right judgment and every distortion of moral sense legitimately follow from the intoxicating cup. It is here that we should speak decidedly of the evil effects of moderate drinking. Men may theorize as they please, but practically there is in average experience no such thing as a moderate dose of alcohol. People drink it to produce an effect. They take enough to "fire up," as they say, and unless that effect is produced they are not satisfied. They will have enough to raise their spirits, or dissipate gloom. And this is enough to impair judgment, and in the course of years perhaps to ruin fortune, body, and soul. The compass is out of line in life's dangerous sea, and a few storms may bring the ship upon breakers. It is to be remembered that, by the law of local affinity, the dose of alcohol is not diffused throughout the system, but is concentrated in its chief effects upon a single organ. When a man drinks moderately, though the effects might be minute if dispersed through the whole body, yet they may be powerful when most of them are gathered upon the brain. They may be dangerous when turned upon the intellect, and even fatal when concentrated upon the primal guiding powers of mind--reason, and moral sense. It is not to the whole body that a moderate glass goes; it is chiefly to its most important part--the brain; and not to the whole brain, but to its most important part--the seat of the higher mental and moral powers; and not to these powers at large, but to their helmsman and captain--Reason and Conscience. "Ship ahoy! All aboard! Let your one shot come," shouts the sailor to the pirate craft. Now, one shot will not shiver a brig's timbers much, but suppose that this one ball were to strike the captain through the heart, and the helmsman through the skull, and that there are none to fill their posts, it would be a terrible shot indeed. Moderate drinking is a charmed ball from a pirate craft. It does not lodge in the beams' ends. It cuts no masts. It shivers no plank between wind and water. It strikes no sailor or under-officer, but with magic course it seeks the heart of the captain and the arms of the helmsman, and it always hits. Their leaders dead, and none to take their place, the crew are powerless against the enemy. Thunders another broadside from pirate alcohol, and what is the effect? Every ball is charmed; not one of the crew is killed, but every one becomes mad and raises mutiny. Commanders dead, they are free. Thunders another broadside from the pirate, and the charmed balls complete their work. The mutinous crew rage with insanity. Captain Conscience and Steersman Reason are picked up, and, lest their corpses should offend the crazy sailors, pitched overboard. Then ranges Jack Lust from one end of the ship to the other. That brave tar, Midshipman Courage, who, in his right mind, was the bravest defender of the ship, now wheels the cannon against his own friends and rakes the deck with red-hot grape until every mast totters with shot-holes. The careful stewards, seamen Friendship and Parental Love, whose exertions have always heretofore provided the crew seasonably with food and drink, now refuse to cook, furnish no meals, unhead the water-casks, waste the provisions, and break the ship's crockery. The vessel has wheeled into the trough of the sea; a black shadow approaches swiftly over the waters, and the compass and helm are deserted. That speculating mate, Love of Money, who, if sober, would see the danger, and order every rag down from jib to mainsail, and make the ship scud under bare poles before the black squall, now, on the contrary, orders up every sail and spreads every thread of canvas. The rising storm whistles in the rigging, but he does not hear it. That black shadow on the water is swiftly nearing. He does not see it. In the trough of the sea the ship rocks like a cockle shell. He does not feel it. Yonder, before the dense rush of the coming blow of air rises a huge wave, foaming, and gnawing, and groaning on high. He does not hear it. With a shock like the opening of an earthquake it strikes the broadside; with a roar it washes over the deck; three snaps like cannon, and the heavily-rigged masts are gone; a lurch and sucking in of waves, and the hold is full of water, and the sinking ship just survives the first heavy sea. Then comes out Mirthfulness, and sits astride the broken bowsprit, and ogles a dancing tune. The crew dance! It were possible, even yet, to so man the pumps and right the helm as to ride over the swells and drive into port, but all action for the right government of the ship is ended. Trumpeter Language mounts the shattered beams of the forecastle, and makes an oration; it is not necessary to work, he tells the crew, but to hear him sputter yarns. It is fearful now to look upon the raging of the black sea. Every moment the storm increases in fury. As a giant would toss about a straw, so the waves handle the wrecked timbers. Night gathers her black mists into the rifted clouds, and the strong moaning sound of the storm is heard on the dark ocean. By that glare of lightning I saw a sail and a life-boat! Men from another ship are risking their lives to save the insane crew whose masts are gone. They come nearer, but the boat bounds and quivers, and is nearly swamped upon the top of a wave. Jack Courage and Independence see the boat coming. "Ship ahoy," shout the deliverers. "Life-boat from the ship Temperance! Quit your wreck and be saved." No reply. Independence grinds his teeth and growls to Jack Courage that the offer of help is an insult. "I will tell you how to answer," says Jack, stern and bloody. There is one cannon left with a dry charge. They wheel that upon the approaching boat, and Independence holds the linstock over the fuse-hole. "Life-boat for sailors on the wreck," shouts Philanthropy from the approaching boat. "What answer, ship Immortal?" Then shoots from the ringing gun a tongue of flame, and ten pounds of iron are on their way. The Temperance boat rocks lower from the wave-top, and the deadly reply just grazes the heads of the astounded philanthropists and buries itself heavily in their own ship beyond. It was an accident, they think, and keep on board the ship and stand upon its deck. Then flash from their scabbards a dozen swords; then click the locks of a dozen muskets; then double the palms of a dozen fists; then shake the clubs of a dozen maniac arms, and the unsuspecting deliverers are murdered on the deck they came to save. As the lightning glares I see them thrown into the sea, while thunders are the dirge of the dead and the damnation of the murderers. The drunken ship is fast filling with water. Not a man at the pumps, not an arm at the helm. Having destroyed their friends, the crew fall upon each other. Close under their bow rave the breakers of a rocky shore, but they hear it not. At intervals they seem to realize their condition, and their power even yet to save themselves, but they make no effort. Gloom, and storm, and foam shut them up against hell with many thunders. In this terrible extremity Independence is heard to refuse help, and boasts of his strength. Friendship and Parental Love rail at thoughts of affection. Language trumpets his easy yarns and grows garrulous as the timbers crack one after another. Rage and Revenge are now the true names of Firmness and Courage. Silly Mirth yet giggles a dance, and I saw him astride the last timber as the ship went down, tossing foam at the lightning. Then came a sigh of the storm, a groaning of waves, a booming of blackness, and a red, crooked thunderbolt shot wrathfully blue into the suck of the sea where the ship went down. And I asked the names of those rocks, and was told: "God's Stern and Immutable Laws." And I asked the name of that ship, and they said: "Immortal Soul." And I asked why its crew brought it there, and they said: "Their captain, Conscience, and helmsman, Reason, were dead." And I asked how they died, and they said: "By one single shot from the pirate Alcohol; by one charmed ball of Moderate Drinking!" On this topic, over which we sleep, we shall some day cease to dream. ADVERTISEMENTS _THE BEER QUESTION._ The National Temperance Society has published the following books, tracts, and pamphlets upon the beer question, which should have a wide circulation. The following are adapted to Sunday-school libraries, as well as for family reading and general distribution. +Brewer's Fortune, The.+ By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 12mo, 425 pp +$1.50+ This takes up and discusses the entire beer question; the writer having carefully studied the subject from every point of view, and it is worthy of the widest circulation. It is one of the best volumes ever written by this popular author, and shows that wealth can not compensate for evil-doing, and that the sins of the fathers are often visited upon the children. +Brewery at Taylorville, The.+ By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 12mo, 445 pp +1.50+ This book shows how much evil was wrought by the establishment of a brewery in a hitherto prosperous town, and how it brought ruin and disgrace upon those who indulged in what are called the lighter drinks. It is one of the strongest books in favor of total abstinence from everything that can intoxicate. +Firebrands; a Temperance Tale.+ By Mrs. J. McNair Wright. 12mo, 357 pp +1.25+ It is the story of an orphaned boy, adopted by a distant relative, and subsequently the inheritor of a small fortune from an uncle, which he is then induced to invest in brewing in a country village, with an unhappy sequel alike to himself and the community. The lesson against tampering with beer or strong drink, either the drinking, making, or vending of it, is of a most impressive character, and is admirably adapted to win and hold the reader's interest, and to create and strengthen good resolutions. +Beer as a Beverage.+ An address by G. W. Hughey. 12mo, 24 pp +10+ A very able reply to the assumptions by the brewers at their late congress at St. Louis, that beer is a harmless, wholesome, "temperance" beverage. It deals very effectively and conclusively with the sophistries and falsehoods of the brewers, and is a most valuable document for general circulation by the friends of temperance in all parts of the country. +History and Mystery of a Glass of Ale.+ By J. W. Kirton. 12mo, 24 pp +10+ Showing what ale is, and what it does, and why it should be let alone. EIGHT-PAGE TRACTS, $6.00 per 1,000. +The Evils of Beer Legislation.+ By J. B. Dunn, D.D. +Malt Liquors, their Nature and Effects.+ By Wm. Hargreaves, M.D. FOUR-PAGE TRACTS, $3.00 per 1,000. +Why I Did Not Become a Brewer.+ By J. B. Dunn, D.D. +That Glass of Ale.+ By Rev. E. H. Pratt. +The Sabbath and the Beer Question.+ By Geo. Lansing Taylor, D.D. +Shall we Use Wines and Beer?+ By Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton. +A Glass of Ale.+ By T. S. Arthur. +Not Poverty, but Beer.+ By Mary Dwinell Chellis. UNION HAND-BILLS, $1.00 per 1,000. +A Crusade Against Beer.+ +What Is Malt Liquor?+ +What Brewers Think about Beer.+ +What! Deprive a Poor Man of his Beer?+ +What Beer Costs.+ +What Have You to Show for It?+ Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, _58 Reade Street, New York_. _SCIENCE AND TEMPERANCE._ By BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., _Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London; etc._ The National Temperance Society has published the following new and valuable works on alcohol, from a scientific stand-point, written by Dr. Richardson, one of the foremost scientists of the age. +On Alcohol.+ With an introduction by Dr. Willard Parker, of New York. 12mo, 190 pages. Paper covers, 50 cents; cloth +$1.00+ This book contains the "Cantor Lectures" recently delivered before the Society of Arts. These justly celebrated lectures, six in number, embrace a historical sketch of alcoholic distillation, and the results of an exhaustive scientific inquiry concerning the nature of alcohol and its effects upon the human body and mind. They have attracted much attention throughout Great Britain, both among physicians and general readers, and are the latest and best scientific expositions of alcohol and its effects extant. +The Temperance Lesson-Book.+ A series of 52 short Lessons on Alcohol and its Action on the Body. Adapted for public and private schools, and supplies a great educational need. 12mo, 220 pages. School edition, per dozen, $6.00; singly +75+ It is the mature result of most careful and extended research on the part of its gifted author, whose attainments place him in the front rank of the ablest scientists of the world. There are fifty-two lessons, each followed by a series of questions for examination and review. They are free from labored and wearisome details, cover a wide range of physiological and hygienic information, and in style are simple and attractive, admirably adapted to win and retain to the end the interest of students. 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Paper +20+ Two able and important lectures, the result of careful and extended researches as to the results of alcohol from a scientific stand-point, and are among the ablest contributions to this branch of the subject. +The Medical Profession and Alcohol.+ An Address before the British Medical Association. 12mo, 33 pages. Paper +10+ It is a scientific plea for total abstinence, of great power. It embodies also a very earnest appeal to members of the medical profession to join in the pending vitally important warfare against alcoholic beverages. It is a most valuable publication to place in the hands of the physicians of this country, among whom it should have the widest possible circulation. Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, _58 Reade Street, New York_. 
28576	----	CUTTING IT OUT _In Press_ _By the Same Author_ THE FUN OF GETTING THIN CUTTING IT OUT HOW TO GET ON THE WATERWAGON AND STAY THERE BY SAMUEL G. BLYTHE [Illustration: (publisher's symbol)] CHICAGO FORBES & COMPANY 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY FORBES AND COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Why I Quit 9 II. How I Quit 21 III. What I Quit 31 IV. When I Quit 45 V. After I Quit 57 PUBLISHER'S NOTE This work originally appeared in _The Saturday Evening Post_ under the title "On the Water-Wagon." CUTTING IT OUT CHAPTER I WHY I QUIT First off, let me state the object of the meeting: This is to be a record of sundry experiences centering round a stern resolve to get on the waterwagon and a sterner attempt to stay there. It is an entirely personal narrative of a strictly personal set of circumstances. It is not a temperance lecture, or a temperance tract, or a chunk of advice, or a shuddering recital of the woes of a horrible example, or a warning, or an admonition--or anything at all but a plain tale of an adventure that started out rather vaguely and wound up rather satisfactorily. I am no brand that was snatched from the burning; no sot who picked himself or was picked from the gutter; no drunkard who almost wrecked a promising career; no constitutional or congenital souse. I drank liquor the same way hundreds of thousands of men drink it--drank liquor and attended to my business, and got along well, and kept my health, and provided for my family, and maintained my position in the community. I felt I had a perfect right to drink liquor just as I had a perfect right to stop drinking it. I never considered my drinking in any way immoral. I was decent, respectable, a gentleman, who drank only with gentlemen and as a gentleman should drink if he pleases. I didn't care whether any one else drank--and do not now. I didn't care whether any one else cared whether I drank--and do not now. I am no reformer, no lecturer, no preacher. I quit because I wanted to, not because I had to. I didn't swear off, nor take any vow, nor sign any pledge. I am no moral censor. It is even possible that I might go out this afternoon and take a drink. I am quite sure I shall not--but I might. As far as my trip into Teetotal Land is concerned, it is an individual proposition and nothing else. I am no example for other men who drink as much as I did, or more, or less--but I assume my experiences are somewhat typical, for I am sure my drinking was very typical; and a recital of those experiences and the conclusions thereon is what is before the house. I quit drinking because I quit drinking. I had a very fair batting average in the Booze League--as good as I thought necessary; and I knew if I stopped when my record was good the situation would be satisfactory to me, whether it was to any other person or not. Moreover, I figured it out that the time to stop drinking was when it wasn't necessary to stop--not when it was necessary. I had been observing during the twenty years I had been drinking, more or less, and I had known a good many men who stopped drinking when the doctors told them to. Furthermore, it had been my observation that when a doctor tells a man to stop drinking it usually doesn't make much difference whether he stops or not. In a good many cases he might just as well keep on and die happily, for he's going to die anyhow; and the few months he will grab through his abstinence will not amount to anything when the miseries of that abstinence are duly chalked up in the debit column. Therefore, applying the cold, hard logic of the situation to it, I decided to beat the liquor to it. That was the reason for stopping--purely selfish, personal, individual, and not concerned with the welfare of any other person on earth--just myself. I had taken good care of myself physically and I knew I was sound everywhere. I wasn't sure how long I could keep sound and continue drinking. So I decided to stop drinking and keep sound. I noticed that a good many men of the same age as myself and the same habits as myself were beginning to show signs of wear and tear. A number of them blew up with various disconcerting maladies and a number more died. Soon after I was forty years of age I noticed I began to go to funerals oftener than I had been doing--funerals of men between forty and forty-five I had known socially and convivially; that these funerals occurred quite regularly, and that the doctor's certificate, more times than not, gave Bright's Disease and other similar diseases in the cause-of-death column. All of these funerals were of men who were good fellows, and we mourned their loss. Also we generally took a few drinks to their memories. Then came a time when this funeral business landed on me like a pile-driver. Inside of a year four or five of the men I had known best, the men I had loved best, the men who had been my real friends and my companions, died, one after another. Also some other friends developed physical derangements I knew were directly traceable to too much liquor. Both the deaths and the derangements had liquor as a contributing if not as a direct cause. Nobody said that, of course; but I knew it. So I held a caucus with myself. I called myself into convention and discussed the proposition somewhat like this: "You are now over forty years of age. You are sound physically and you are no weaker mentally than you have always been, so far as can be discovered by the outside world. You have had a lot of fun, much of it complicated with the conviviality that comes with drinking and much of it not so complicated; but you have done your share of plain and fancy drinking, and it hasn't landed you yet. There is absolutely no nutriment in being dead. That gets you nothing save a few obituary notices you will never see. There is even less in being sick and sidling around in everybody's way. It's as sure as sunset, if you keep on at your present gait, that Mr. John Barleycorn will land you just as he has landed a lot of other people you know and knew. There are two methods of procedure open to you. One is to keep it up and continue having the fun you think you are having and take what is inevitably coming to you. The other is to quit it while the quitting is good and live a few more years--that may not be so rosy, but probably will have compensations." I viewed it from every angle I could think of. I knew what sort of a job I had laid out to tackle if I quit. I weighed the whole thing in my mind in the light of my acquaintances, my experiences, my position, my mode of life, my business. I had been through it many times. I had often gone on the waterwagon for periods varying in length from three days to three months. I wasn't venturing into any uncharted territory. I knew every signpost, every crossroad, every foot of the ground. I knew the difficulties--knew them by heart. I wasn't deluding myself with any assertions of superior will-power or superior courage--or superior anything. I knew I had a fixed daily habit of drinking, and that if I quit drinking I should have to reorganize the entire works. CHAPTER II HOW I QUIT This took some time. I didn't dash into it. I had done that before, and had dashed out again just as impetuously. I revolved the matter in my mind for some weeks. Then I decided to quit. Then I did quit. Thereby hangs this tale. I went to a dinner one night that was a good dinner. It was a dinner that had every appurtenance that a good dinner should have, including the best things to drink that could be obtained, and lashings of them. I proceeded at that dinner just as I had proceeded at scores of similar dinners in my time--hundreds of them, I guess--and took a drink every time anybody else did. I was a seasoned drinker. I knew how to do it. I went home that night pleasantly jingled, but no more. I slept well, ate a good breakfast and went down to business. On the way down I decided that this was the day to make the plunge. Having arrived at that decision, I went out about three o'clock that afternoon, drank a Scotch highball--a big, man's-sized one--as a doch-an-doris, and quit. That was almost a year ago. I haven't taken a drink since. It is not my present intention ever to take another drink; but I am not tying myself down by any vows. It is not my present intention, I say; and I let it go at that. No man can be blamed for trying to fool other people about himself--that is the way most of us get past; but what can be said for a man who tries to fool himself? Every man knows exactly how bogus he is and should admit it--to himself only. The man who, knowing his bogusness, refuses to admit it to himself--no matter what his attitude may be to the outside world--simply stores up trouble for himself, and discomfort and much else. There are many phases of personal understanding of oneself that need not be put in the newspapers or proclaimed publicly. Still, for a man to gold-brick himself is a profitless undertaking, but prevalent notwithstanding. When it comes to fooling oneself by oneself, the grandest performers are the boys who have a habit--no matter what kind of a habit--a habit! It may be smoking cigarettes, or walking pigeontoed, or talking through the nose, or drinking--or anything else. Any man can see with half an eye how drinking, for example, is hurting Jones; but he always argues that his own personal drinking is of a different variety and is doing him no harm. The best illustration of it is in the old vaudeville story, where the man came on the stage and said: "Smith is drinking too much! I never go into a saloon without finding him there!" That is the reason drinking liquor gets so many people--either by wrecking their health or by fastening on them the habit they cannot stop. They fool themselves. They are perfectly well aware that their neighbors are drinking too much--but not themselves. Far be it from them not to have the will-power to stop when it is time to stop. They are smarter than their neighbors. They know what they are doing. And suddenly the explosions come! There are hundreds of thousands of men in all walks of life in this country who for twenty or thirty years have never lived a minute when there was not more or less alcohol in their systems, who cannot be said to have been strictly and entirely sober in all that time, but who do their work, perform all their social duties, make their careers and are fairly successful just the same. There has been more flub-dub printed and spoken about drinking liquor than about any other employment, avocation, vocation, habit, practice or pleasure of mankind. Drinking liquor is a personal proposition, and nothing else. It is individual in every human relation. Still, you cannot make the reformers see that. They want other people to stop drinking because they want other people to stop. So they make laws that are violated, and get pledges that are broken and try to legislate or preach or coax or scare away a habit that must, in any successful outcome, be stopped by the individual, and not because of any law or threat or terror or cajolery. This is the human-nature side of it, but the professional reformers know less about human nature, and care less, than about any other phase of life. Still, the fact remains that with any habit, and especially with the liquor habit--probably because that is the most prevalent habit there is--nine-tenths of the subjects delude themselves about how much of a habit they have; and, second, that nine-tenths of those with the habit have a very clear idea of the extent to which the habit is fastened on others. They are fooled about themselves, but never about their neighbors! Wherefore the breweries and the distilleries prosper exceedingly. However, I am straying away from my story, which has to do with such drinking as the ordinary man does--not sprees, nor debauches, or orgies, or periodicals, or drunkenness, but just the ordinary amount of drinking that happens along in a man's life, with a little too much on rare occasions and plenty at all times. A German I knew once told me the difference between Old-World drinking and American drinking was that the German, for example, drinks for the pleasure of the drink, while the American drinks for the alcohol in it. That may be so; but very few men who have any sense or any age set out deliberately to get drunk. Such drunkenness as there is among men of that sort usually comes more by accident than by design. My definition of a drunkard has always been this: A man is a drunkard when he drinks whisky or any other liquor before breakfast. I think that is pretty nearly right. Personally I never took a drink of liquor before breakfast in my life and not many before noon. Usually my drinking began in the afternoon after business, and was likely to end before dinnertime--not always, but usually. CHAPTER III WHAT I QUIT I had been drinking thus for practically twenty years. I did not drink at all until after I was twenty-one and not much until after I was twenty-five. When I got to be thirty-two or thirty-three and had gone along a little in the world, I fell in with men of my own station; and as I lived in a town where nearly everybody drank, including many of the successful business and professional men--men of affairs--I soon got into their habits. Naturally gregarious, I found these men good company. They were sociable and convivial, and drank for the fun of it and the fun that came out of it. My business took me to various parts of the country and I made acquaintances among men like these--the real live ones in the communities. They were good fellows. So was I. The result was that in a few years I had a list of friends from California to Maine--all of whom drank; and I was never at a loss for company or highballs. Then I moved to a city where there isn't much of anything else to do but drink at certain times in the day, a city where men from all parts of the country congregate and where the social side of life is highly accentuated. I kept along with the procession. I did my work satisfactorily to my employers and I did my drinking satisfactorily to myself. This continued for several years. I had a fixed habit. I drank several drinks each day. Sometimes I drank more than several. My system was organized to digest about so much alcohol every twenty-four hours. So far as I could see, the drinking did me no harm. I was well. My appetite was good. I slept soundly. My head was clear. My work proceeded easily and was getting fair recognition. Then some of the boys began dropping off and some began breaking down. I had occasional mornings, after big dinners or specially convivial affairs, when I did not feel very well--when I was out of tune and knew why. Still, I continued as of old, and thought nothing of it except as the regular katzenjammer--to be expected. Presently I woke up to what was happening round me. I looked the game over critically. I analyzed it coldly and calmly. I put every advantage of my mode of life on one side and every disadvantage; and I put on the other side every disadvantage of a change in procedure and every advantage. There were times when I thought the present mode had by far the better of it, and times when the change contemplated outweighed the other heavily. Here is the way it totted up against quitting: Practically every friend you have in the United States--and you've got a lot of them--drinks more or less. You have not cultivated any other line of associates. If you quit drinking, you will necessarily have to quit a lot of these friends, and quit their parties and company--for a man who doesn't drink is always a death's-head at a feast or merrymaking where drinking is going on. Your social intercourse with these people is predicated on taking an occasional drink, in going to places where drinks are served, both public and at homes. The kind of drinking you do makes greatly for sociability, and you are a sociable person and like to be round with congenial people. You will miss a lot of fun, a lot of good, clever companionship, for you are too old to form a new line of friends. Your whole game is organized along these lines. Why make a hermit of yourself just because you think drinking may harm you? Cut it down. Take care of yourself. Don't be such a fool as to try to change your manner of living just when you have an opportunity to live as you should and enjoy what is coming to you. This is the way it lined up for quitting: So far, liquor hasn't done anything to you except cause you to waste some time that might have been otherwise employed; but it will get you, just as it has landed a lot of your friends, if you stay by it. Wouldn't it be better to miss some of this stuff you have come to think of as fun, and live longer? There is no novelty in drinking to you. You haven't an appetite that cannot be checked, but you will have if you stick to it much longer. Why not quit and take a chance at a new mode of living, especially when you know absolutely that every health reason, every future-prospect reason, every atom of good sense in you, tells you there is nothing to be gained by keeping at it, and that all may be lost? Well, I pondered over that a long time. I had watched miserable wretches who had struggled to stay on the waterwagon--sometimes with amusement. I knew what they had to stand if they tried to associate with their former companions; I knew the apparent difficulties and the disadvantages of this new mode of life. On the other hand, I was convinced that, so far as I was concerned, without trying to lay down a rule for any other man, I would be an ass if I didn't quit it immediately, while I was well and all right, instead of waiting until I had to quit on a doctor's orders, or got to that stage when I couldn't quit. It was no easy thing to make the decision. It is hard to change the habits and associations of twenty years! I had a good understanding of myself. I was no hero. I liked the fun of it, the companionship of it, better than any one. I like my friends and, I hope and think, they like me. It seemed to me that I needed it in my business, for I was always dealing with men who did drink. I wrestled with it for some weeks. I thought it all out, up one side and down the other. Then I quit. Also I stayed quit. And believe me, ladies and gentlemen and all others present, it was no fool of a job. I have learned many things since I went on the waterwagon for fair--many things about my fellowmen and many things about myself. Most of these things radiate round the innate hypocrisy of the human being. All those that do not concern his hypocrisy concern his lying--which, I reckon, when you come to stack them up together, amounts to the same thing. I have learned that I had been fooling myself and that others had been fooling me. I gathered experience every day. And some of the things I have learned I shall set down. You have all known the man who says he quit drinking and never thought of drink again. He is a liar. He doesn't exist. No man in this world who had a daily habit of drinking ever quit and never thought of drinking again. Many men, because they habitually lie to themselves, think they have done this; but they haven't. The fact is, no man with a daily habit of drinking ever quit and thought of anything else than how good a drink would taste and feel for a time after he quit. He couldn't and he didn't. I don't care what any of them say. I know. Further, the man who tells you he never takes a drink until five o'clock in the afternoon, or three o'clock in the afternoon, or only drinks with his meals, or only takes two or three drinks a day, usually is a liar, too--not always, but usually. There are some machine-like, non-imaginative persons who can do this--drink by rote or by rule; but not many. Now I do not say many men do not think they drink this way, but most of these men are simply fooling themselves. Again, this proposition of cutting down drinks to two or three a day is all rot. Of what use to any person are two or three drinks a day? I mean to any person who drinks for the fun of it, as I did and as most of my friends do yet. What kind of a human being is he who comes into a club and takes one cocktail and no more?--or one highball? He's worse, from any view-point of sociability, than a man who drinks a glass of water. At least the man who drinks the water isn't fooling himself or trying to be part one thing and part another. The way to quit drinking is to quit drinking. That is all there is to that. This paltering along with two or three drinks a day is mere cowardice. It is neither one thing nor the other. And I am here to say, also, that nine out of every ten men who say they only take two or three drinks a day are liars, just the same as the men who say they quit and never think of it again. They may not think they are liars, or intend to be liars; but they are liars just the same. Well, as I may have intimated, I quit drinking. I drank that last, lingering Scotch highball--and quit! I decided the no-liquor end of it was the better end, and I took that end. CHAPTER IV WHEN I QUIT For purposes of comprehensive record I have divided the various stages of my waterwagoning into these parts: the obsession stage; the caramel stage; the pharisaical stage, and the safe-and-sane stage. I drank my Scotch highball and went over to the club. The crowd was there; I sat down at a table and when somebody asked me what I'd have I took a glass of water. Several of my friends looked inquiringly at me and one asked: "On the wagon?" This attracted the attention of the entire group to my glass of water. I came in for a good deal of banter, mostly along the line that it was time I went on the wagon. This was varied with predictions that I would stay on from an hour to a day or so. I didn't like that talk, but I bluffed it out--weakly, to be sure. I said I had decided it wouldn't do me any harm to cool out a bit. Next day, along about first-drink time, I felt a craving for a highball. I didn't take it. That evening I went over to the club again. The crowd was there. I was asked to have a drink. This time I rather defiantly ordered a glass of water. The same jests were made, but I drank my water. On the third day I was a bit shaky--sort of nervous. I didn't feel like work. I couldn't concentrate my mind on anything. I kept thinking of various kinds of drinks and how good they would taste. I tried out the club. I may have imagined it, but I thought my old friends lacked interest in my advent at the table. One of them said: "Oh, for Heaven's sake, take a drink! You've got a terrible grouch on." I backed out. I did have a grouch. I was sore at everybody in the world. Also, I kept thinking how much I would like to have a drink. That was natural. I had accustomed my system to digest a certain amount of alcohol every day. I wasn't supplying that alcohol. My system needed it and howled for it. I knew a man who had been a drunkard but who had quit and who hadn't taken a drink for twelve years. I discussed the problem with him. He told me an eminent specialist had told him it takes eighteen months for a man who has been a heavy drinker or a steady drinker to get all the alcohol out of his system. I hadn't been a heavy drinker, but I had been a steady drinker; and that information gave me a cold chill. I thought if I were to have this craving for a drink every day for eighteen months, surely I had let myself in for a lovely task! I stuck for a week--for two weeks--for three weeks. At the end of that time my friends had grown accustomed to this idiosyncrasy and were making bets on how long I would last. I didn't go round where they were much. I was as lonesome as a stray dog in a strange alley. I had carefully cultivated a large line of drinking acquaintances and I hardly knew a congenial person who didn't drink. That was the hardest part of the game. I wasn't fit company for man or beast. I don't blame my friends--not a bit. I was cross and ugly and hypercritical and generally nasty, and they passed me up. However, the craving for liquor decreased to some degree. There were some periods in the day when I didn't think how good a drink would taste, and did devote myself to my work. I discovered a few things. One was that, no matter how much fun I missed in the evening, I didn't get up with a taste in my mouth. I had no katzenjammers. After a week or so I went to sleep easily and slept like a child. Then the caramel stage arrived. I acquired a sudden craving for candy. I had not eaten any candy for years, for men who drink regularly rarely take sweets. One day I looked in a confectioner's window and was irresistibly attracted by a box of caramels. I went in and bought it, and ate half a dozen. They seemed to fill a long-felt want. The sugar in them supplied the stimulant that was lacking, I suppose. Anyhow, they tasted right good and were satisfactory; and I kept a box of caramels on my desk for several weeks and ate a few each day. Also I began to yell for ice cream and pie and other sweets with my meals. Along about this time I developed the pharisaical stage. I looked with a great pity on my friends who persisted in drinking. I assumed some little airs of superiority and congratulated myself on my great will-power that had enabled me to quit drinking. They were steadily drinking themselves to death. I could see that plainly. There was nothing else to it. I was a fine sample of a full-blown prig. I went so far as to explain the case to one or two, and I got hooted at for my pains; so I lapsed into my condition of immense superiority and said: "Oh, well, if they won't take advice from me, who knows, let them go along. Poor chaps, I am afraid they are lost!" It's a wonder somebody didn't take an ax to me. I deserved it. After lamenting--to myself--the sad fates of my former companions and pluming myself on my noble course, I woke up one day and kicked myself round the park. "Here!" I said. "You chump, what business have you got putting on airs about your non-drinking and parading yourself round here as a giant example of self-restraint? Where do you get off as a preacher--or a censor, or a reformer--in this matter? Who appointed you as the apostle of non-drinking? Take a tumble to yourself and close up!" That was the beginning of the safe-and-sane stage, which still persists. It came about the end of the second month. I had lost all desire for liquor; and, though there were times when I missed the sociability of drinking fearfully, I was as steady as a rock in my policy of abstaining from drinks of all kinds. Now it doesn't bother me at all. I am riding jauntily on the wagon, without a chance of falling off. At the time I decided it was up to me to stop this pharisaical foolishness, I took a new view of things; decided I wasn't so much, after all; ceased reprobating my friends who wanted to drink; had no advice to offer, and stopped pointing to myself as a heroic young person who had accomplished a gigantic task. Friends had tolerated me. I wondered that they had, for I was a sad affair. Surely it was up to me to be as tolerant as they had been, notwithstanding my new mode of life. So I stopped foreboding and tried to accustom my friends to my company on a strictly water basis. The attempt was not entirely successful. I dropped out of a good many gatherings where formerly I should have been one of the bright and shining lights. There are no two ways about it--a man cannot drink water in a company where others are drinking highballs and get into the game with any effectiveness. Any person who quits drinking may as well accept that as a fact; and most persons will stop trying after a time and seek new diversions; or begin drinking again. CHAPTER V AFTER I QUIT I had a good lively tilt with John Barleycorn, ranging over twenty years. I know all about drinking. I figured it this way: I have about fifteen more good, productive years in me. After that I shall lose in efficiency, even if I keep my health. Being selfish and perhaps getting sensible, I desire the remaining productive years of my life to be years of the greatest efficiency. Looking back over my drinking years, I saw, if I was to attain and keep that greatest efficiency, that was my job, and that it could not be complicated with any booze-fighting whatsoever. I decided that what I might lose in the companionship and social end of it I would gain in my own personal increase in horsepower; for I knew that though drinking may have done me no harm, it certainly did me no good, and that, if persisted in, it surely would do me harm in some way or other. Sizing it up, one side against the other, I conclude that it is better for me not to drink. I find I have much more time that I can devote to my business; that I think more clearly, feel better, do not make any loose statements under the exhilaration of alcohol, and keep my mind on my number constantly. The item of time is the surprising item. It is astonishing how much time you have to do things in that formerly you used to drink in, with the accompaniment of all the piffle that goes with drinking! When you are drinking you are never too busy to take a drink and never too busy not to stop. You are busy all the time--but get nowhere. Work is the curse of the drinking classes. Any man who has been accustomed to do the kind of drinking I did for twenty years, who likes the sociability and the companionship of it, will find that the sudden transition to a non-drinking life will leave him with a pretty dull existence on his hands until he gets reorganized. This is the depressing part of it. You have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Still, though you may miss the fun of the evening, you have all your drinking friends lashed to the mast in the morning. _By the Same Author_ THE FUN OF GETTING THIN Another delightful book by Mr. Blythe, in which he discusses surplus avoirdupois. It tells fat people how to get thin, and thin people will get fat laughing over its delicious humor. Some extracts from the book "A fat man is a joke; and a fat woman is two jokes--one on herself and the other on her husband." "Half the comedy in the world is predicated on the paunch." "Fat, the doctors say, is fatal. I move to amend by striking out the last two letters of the indictment. Fat is fat." Attractively bound. Price, 35c _For sale wherever books are sold or supplied by the publishers_ FORBES & COMPANY, CHICAGO 
35270	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive.) HABITS THAT HANDICAP HABITS THAT HANDICAP _The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the Remedy_ BY CHARLES B. TOWNS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916 Copyright, 1915, by THE CENTURY CO. _Published, August, 1915_ PREFACE It is interesting to note that a year or more ago a few deaths from bichlorid of mercury poisoning caused within a period of six months a general movement toward protective legislation. This movement was successful, and after the lapse of only a short time the public was thoroughly protected against this dangerous poison. It will be observed that the financial returns from the total sale of bichlorid of mercury tablets could be but small. Had the financial interests involved been of a magnitude comparable with those interested in the manufacture and promotion of habit-forming drugs, I have often wondered if the result would not have been less effective and as prompt. Bichlorid of mercury never threatened any large proportion of the public, and those falling victims to it merely die. Opium and its derivatives threaten the entire public, especially those who are sick and in pain, and with a fate far more terrible than death--a thraldom of misery, inefficiency, and disgrace. Lest somewhere there be found within the pages of this book remarks that may lead the reader to suppose that I unduly criticize the doctor, and therefore that I am the doctor's enemy, I feel that it behooves me to add that in the whole community he has not one admirer more whole-souled. PREFACE Some years ago, Mr. Charles B. Towns came to me with a letter from Dr. Alexander Lambert and claimed that he had a way of stopping the morphia habit. The claim seemed to me an entirely impossible statement, and I told Mr. Towns so; but at Dr. Lambert's suggestion, I promised to look into the matter. Accordingly, I visited Mr. Towns's hospital, and watched the course of treatment there at different times in the day and night. I became convinced that the withdrawal of morphine was accomplished under this treatment with vastly less suffering than that entailed by any other treatment or method I had ever seen. Subsequently, I sent Mr. Towns several patients, who easily and quickly were rid of their morphia addiction, and have now remained well for a number of years. At that time I had the impression that the treatment was largely due to the force of Mr. Towns's very vigorous and helpful personality, but when subsequently a similar institution was established near Boston, I became convinced by observation of cases treated in that hospital that Mr. Towns's personality was not an essential element in that treatment. His skill, however, in the actual management of cases, from the medical point of view, was very hard to duplicate, and Mr. Towns generously came from New York, when called upon, and showed us what was wrong in the management of cases which were not doing well. I do not hesitate to say that he knows more about the alleviation and cure of drug addictions than any doctor that I have ever seen. All the statements made in this book except those relating to tobacco I can verify from similar experiences of my own, since I have known and used Mr. Towns's method of treatment. I do not pretend to say how his treatment accomplishes the results which I have seen it accomplish, but I have yet to learn of any one who has given it a thorough trial who has obtained results differing in any considerable way from those to which Mr. Towns refers. The wider applications and generalizations of the book seem to me very instructive. The shortcomings of the medical profession, of the druggists, and those who have to do with the management of alcoholics in courts of law seem to me well substantiated by the facts. Mr. Towns's plans for legislative control of drug habits also seem to me wise and far-reaching. He is, I believe, one of the most public-spirited as well as one of the most honest and forceful men that I have ever known. I am glad to have this opportunity of expressing my faith and confidence in him and my sense of the value of the book he has written. RICHARD C. CABOT. INTRODUCTION There is only one way by means of which humanity can be relieved of the curse of drug using, and that is to adopt methods putting the entire responsibility upon the doctor. Until the present legislation was passed in New York State, no one had ever considered the doctor's responsibility; this most valuable medical asset and most terrible potential curse had been virtually without safeguard of any effective kind. Discussion of the drug problem in the press dealt wholly with those phases which make themselves manifest in the underworld or among the Chinese. I am reasonably certain that until very recently the world had heard nothing of the blameless men and women who had become drug-users as the result of illness. This seems strange, since there are in the United States more victims of the drug habit than there are of tuberculosis. It is estimated that fifteen per cent, of the practising physicians in the country are addicted to the habit, and although I think this is an exaggeration, it is nevertheless true that habit-forming drugs demand a heavy toll from the medical profession, wrecking able practitioners in health and reputation, and of course seriously endangering the public. I have elsewhere explained the fact that the medical man himself is ignorant of the length to which he can safely go in the administration of drugs to his patients. If he is ignorant of what quantity and manner of dosage constitutes a peril for the patient, is it not reasonable to suppose that similar ignorance exists in his mind with regard to his own relations with the drug habit? As a matter of fact, I know this to be the case; many physicians have come to me for help, and ninety-nine per cent. of them explained to me that their use of drugs was the direct outgrowth of their ignorance. If the man who practises medicine is unaware of what will bring about the habit, what can be expected of the medically uneducated citizen who is threatened by those in whom he has most confidence--his doctors? The wide extent of the drug habit in this country has not been apparent. The man suffering from a physical disease either shows it or makes it known; the man suffering from the drug habit presents unfamiliar and unidentified symptoms, and far from being willing to make his affliction known, through shame he tries to conceal it at all hazards. Until legislation forced the victims of drug habits by hundreds into Bellevue Hospital in New York, this great institution rarely had one as a patient. The sufferer from tuberculosis would seek this hospital, feeling that there he might find measurable relief; the drug-user shunned it, for he was doubtful of receiving aid, and above all things he dreaded deprivation without relief. No man or woman will go to any institution for relief from the drug habit where the only treatment offered is that of enforced deprivation, for he or she knows perfectly well that deprivation means death. No human longing can compare in intensity with that of the drug-user for his drug. Unrelieved, he will let nothing stand between him and it; neither hunger, nakedness, starvation, arson, theft, nor murder will keep him from the substance that he craves. Clearly humanity must be protected against such an evil. And the physician must be saved from it, for saving him will fulfil in a large measure the demand for the protection of the public. After the experience of the medical profession of New York State with the workings of the Boylan Act, it is scarcely probable that strong opposition to similar legislation will be made in other States. Even if other States delay in the enactment of right legislation, the Boylan Act may be considered not only a protective measure for the profession and the people of New York State, but it may be safely accepted as an educational pronouncement for the benefit of the medical profession everywhere. It establishes for the first time the danger-line. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE PERIL OF THE DRUG HABIT 3 II THE NEED OF ADEQUATE SPECIFIC TREATMENT FOR THE DRUG-TAKER 27 III THE DRUG-TAKER AND THE PHYSICIAN 46 IV PSYCHOLOGY AND DRUGS 61 V ALCOHOLICS 76 VI HELP FOR THE HARD DRINKER 87 VII CLASSIFICATION OF ALCOHOLICS 113 VIII THE INJURIOUSNESS OF TOBACCO 140 IX TOBACCO AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 162 X THE SANATORIUM 174 XI PREVENTIVE MEASURES FOR THE DRUG EVIL 194 XII CLASSIFICATION OF HABIT-FORMING DRUGS 215 XIII PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION 227 APPENDIX 265 HABITS THAT HANDICAP HABITS THAT HANDICAP CHAPTER I THE PERIL OF THE DRUG HABIT It is human nature to wish to ease pain and to stimulate ebbing vitality. There is no normal adult who, experiencing severe pain or sorrow or fatigue, and thoroughly appreciating the immediate action of an easily accessible opiate, is not likely in a moment of least resistance to take it. Every one who has become addicted to a drug has started out with small occasional doses, and no one has expected to fall a victim to the habit; indeed, many have been totally unaware that the medicine they were taking contained any drug whatever. Thus, the danger being one that threatens us all, it is every man's business to insist that the entire handling and sale of the drug be under as careful supervision as possible. It is not going too far to say that up to the present time most drug-takers have been unfairly treated by society. They have not been properly safeguarded from forming the habit or properly helped to overcome it. It has been criminally easy for any one to acquire the drug habit. Few physicians have recognized that it is not safe for most persons to know what will ease pain. When an opiate is necessary, it should be given only on prescription, and its presence should then be thoroughly disguised. A patient goes to a physician to be cured; consequently, when his pain disappears, he naturally believes that this is due to the treatment he has received. If the physician has used morphine in a disguised form, the patient naturally believes that the cure was effected by some unknown medicine; but if, on the other hand, he has received morphine knowingly, he realizes at once that it is this drug which is responsible for easing his pain. If he has received it hypodermically, the idea is created in his mind that a hypodermic is a necessary part of the treatment. Thus it is clear that the physician who uses his syringe without extreme urgency is greatly to be censured, for the patient who has once seen his pain blunted by the use of a hypodermic eagerly resorts to this means when the pain returns. Conservative practitioners are keenly aware of this responsibility, and some go so far as never to carry a hypodermic on their visits, though daily observation shows that the average doctor regards it as indispensable. The conservative physician employs only a very small quantity of morphine in any form. One of the busiest and most successful doctors of my acquaintance has used as little as half a grain a year, and another told me he had never gone beyond two grains. Both of these men know very well that only a small percentage of drug-takers have begun the practice in consequence of a serious ailment, and that even this small percentage might have been decreased by proper medical treatment directed at the cause rather than at its symptom, pain. An opiate, of course, never removes the cause of any physical trouble, but merely blunts the pain due to it; and it does this by tying up the functions of the body. It is perhaps a conservative estimate that only ten per cent. of the entire drug consumption in this country is applied to the purpose of blunting incurable pain. Thus ninety per cent. of the opiates used are, strictly speaking, unnecessary. In the innumerable cases that have come under my observation, seventy-five per cent. of the habitual users became such without reasonable excuse. Beginning with small occasional doses, they realized within a few weeks that they had lost self-control and could not discontinue the use of the drug. FORMING THE HABIT A very common source of this habit lies in the continued administration of an opiate in regular medical treatment without the patient's knowledge or consent, or in the persistent use of a patent medicine, or of a headache or catarrh powder that contains such a drug. The man who takes an opiate consciously or unconsciously, and receives from it a soothing or stimulating or pleasant effect, naturally turns to it again in case of the same need. The time soon arrives when the pleasurable part of the effect--if it was ever present--ceases to be obtained; and in order to get the soothing or stimulating effect, the dose must be constantly increased as tolerance increases. With those who take a drug to blunt a pain which can be removed in no other way, it is fulfilling its legitimate and supreme mission and admits of no substitute. Where it was ever physically necessary, and that necessity still continues, an opiate would seem inevitable. But the percentage of such sufferers, as I have said, is small. The rest are impelled simply by craving--that intolerable craving which arises from deprivation of the drug. But whether a man has acquired the habit knowingly or unknowingly, its action is always the same. No matter how conscientiously he wishes to discharge his affairs, the drug at once begins to loosen his sense of moral obligation, until in the end it brings about absolute irresponsibility. Avoidance and neglect of customary duties, evasion of new ones, extraordinary resourcefulness in the discovery of the line of least resistance, and finally amazing cunning and treachery--this is the inevitable history. The drug habit is no respecter of persons. I have had under my care exemplary mothers and wives who became indifferent to their families; clergymen of known sincerity and fervor who became shoplifters and forgers; shrewd, successful business men who became paupers, because the habit left them at the mercy of sharpers after mental deterioration had set in. But the immediate action of morphine by no means paralyzes the mental faculties. Though when once a man becomes addicted to the drug he is incapacitated to deal with himself, yet while he is under its brief influence his mind is sharpened and alert. Under the sway of opium a man does venturesome or immoderate things that he would never think of doing otherwise, simply because he has lost the sense of responsibility. I have had patients who took as much as sixty grains of morphine in a single dose, an overdose for about one hundred and fifty people, and about fifty grains more than the takers could possibly assimilate or needed to produce the required result--an excellent illustration of how the habit destroys all judgment and all sense of proportion. Against this appalling habit, which can be acquired easily and naturally and the result of which is always complete demoralization, there is at present no effective safeguard except that provided by nature itself, and this is effective only in certain cases. It happens that in many people opium produces nausea, and this one thing alone has saved some from the habit; for this type of user never experiences any of the temporarily soothing sensations commonly attributed to the drug. Yet this pitiful natural safeguard, while rarely operative, is more efficacious than any other that up to the present has been provided by man in his heedlessness, indifference, and greed. DANGERS OF THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE I have seen over six thousand cases of drug habit in various countries of the world. Ninety-five per cent. of the patients who have come to me taking morphine or other alkaloids of opium have taken the drug hypodermically. With few exceptions, I have found that the first knowledge of it came through the administration of a hypodermic by a physician. It is the instrument used that has shown the sufferer what was easing his pain. I consider that among those who have acquired the habit through sickness or injury this has been the chief creator of the drug habit. This statement does not apply to those who have acquired the habit through the taking of drugs otherwise. My work has been carried out almost entirely in coöperation with the physician, and I have not come in contact with the under-world drug-takers. I consider that the syringe has been the chief creator of the drug habit in this country. In 1911 I made this statement before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States Congress, then occupied with the matter of regulating the sale of habit-forming drugs, and I personally secured the act which was passed by the New York legislature in February, 1911, to restrict the sale of this instrument to buyers on a physician's prescription. Before that time all drug stores and most department stores sold hypodermic instruments to any one who had the money. A boy of fifteen could buy a syringe as easily as he could buy a jack-knife. If a physician refused to give an injection, the patient could get an instrument anywhere and use it on himself. This bill has passed only a single legislature, but I am arranging to introduce a similar bill before all the others, and hope to have the State action confirmed by a Federal bill. At present in Jersey City, or anywhere out of New York, any one may still buy the instrument. It is inconceivable that the syringe should have gone so long without being considered the chief factor in the promotion of a habit which now alarms the world, and that as yet only one state legislature should have seen fit to regulate its sale. Restricting the sale of the syringe to physicians, or to buyers on a physician's prescription, is the first step toward placing the grave responsibility for the drug habit on the shoulders of those to whom it belongs. HABIT-FORMING DRUGS IN PATENT MEDICINES The second step to be taken is to prevent by law the use of habit-forming drugs in patent and proprietary medicines which can be bought without a physician's prescription. Prior to the Pure Food and Drugs Act, created and promoted by Dr. H. W. Wiley, druggists and patent-medicine venders were able, without announcing the fact, to sell vast quantities of habit-forming drugs in compounds prepared for physical ailments. When that act came into effect, these men were obliged to specify on the label the quantities of such drugs used in these compounds, and thus the purchaser was at least enabled to know that he was handling a dangerous tool. Except in a few States, however, the sale of these compounds was in no way restricted, and hence the act cannot be said to have done much toward checking the formation of the drug habit. Indeed, it has probably worked the other way, for there is perhaps not an adult living who does not know that certain drugs will alleviate pain, and people who have pains and aches are likely to resort to an accessible and generally accredited means of alleviation. Yet the difficulties in the way of passing the Pure Food and Drugs Act are a matter of scandalous history. What, then, would be the difficulties in passing a Federal bill to restrict the sale of patent medicines containing habit-forming drugs? It is of course to the interest of every druggist to create a lasting demand for his article. There is obviously not so much profit in a medicine that cures as in one that becomes indispensable. Hence arises the great inducement, from the druggist's point of view, in soothing-syrups and the like. In this country all druggists, wholesale and retail, are organized, and the moment a bill is brought up anywhere to correct the evil in question, there is enormous pressure of business interests to secure its dismissal or satisfactory amendment. To show the essential selfishness of their position, it is only necessary to quote a few of the arguments used against me before the Congressional Ways and Means Committee when I was making a plea for the regulation of the traffic in habit-forming drugs. They claimed that registration of the quantities of opiates in proprietary medicines would entail great bother and added expense, that these drugs are usually combined with others in such a way as to result in altering their effect on the user, and that, anyway, so small an amount of these drugs is used that it cannot create a habit. Now, as a matter of fact, the combination of medicines in these remedies makes not the slightest difference in the physiological action of the drug; further, it is found that, just as with the drug itself, the dose of these compounds must be constantly increased in order to confer the same apparent benefit as in the beginning; and finally, it is well known that what creates the craving is not the quantity of the drug, but the regularity with which it is taken. A taker of one eighth of a grain of morphine three times a day would acquire the habit just as surely as a man who took three grains three times a day, provided the latter could tolerate that quantity. The average opium-smoker consuming twenty-five pills a day gets only the equivalent of about a quarter grain of morphine taken hypodermically or of a half grain taken by the mouth. A beginner could not smoke a quarter of that quantity, but still he acquires the habit. Any amount of the drug which is sufficient to alleviate pain or make the taker feel easier is sufficient to create a habit. A habit-forming drug having no curative properties whatever is put into a medicine merely for the purpose of making the taker feel easier. One wholesale house alone prepares and sells six hundred remedies containing some form of opiate. Most of the cases of the cocaine habit have been admittedly created by so-called catarrh cures, and these contain only from two to four per cent. of cocaine. In the end, the snuffer of catarrh powders comes to demand undiluted cocaine; the taker of morphine in patent medicines, once the habit is formed, must inevitably demand undiluted morphine. This easy accessibility of drugs in medicinal form is more dangerous than moralists care to admit. The reason why opium-smoking has been, up to the present, less prevalent in the United States than in China and some other countries is probably that the preparation of it and the machinery for taking it are not convenient. If opium-smoking had been generally countenanced in America, if the sale of the pure drug had been for generations permitted here, as it has been in China, if houses for its sale and preparation had been found everywhere, if its social aspects had been considered agreeable, if society had put the stamp of approval upon it, opium-smoking would be as prevalent here as it has been in China. Our human nature is essentially little different from that of the Chinese, but lack of opportunity is everywhere recognized as a great preservative of virtue. Due allowance being made for the difference of moral concepts, our standards of morality and honesty and virtue are certainly no higher than those of the Chinese. Thus, were the conditions the same in both cases, there is no reason to suppose that opium would not be smoked here as much as there; but fortunately it has not yet become thus easy, convenient, and agreeable, and consequently that particular phase of the evil has not yet reached overwhelming proportions. On the other hand, the alkaloids of opium administered hypodermically or as ingredients in many patent medicines _are_ thus convenient, and as a result this phase of the evil _has_ reached overwhelming proportions. Nor have we any cause for congratulation upon our particular form of the vice, for opium-smoking is vastly less vicious than morphine-taking. THE TRAFFIC IN OPIUM Something more is needed, however, than mere restriction of the sale of hypodermic syringes and patent medicines by any one legislature or country. All persons who handle habit-forming drugs should be made to give a strict accounting for them, otherwise the traffic can never be properly regulated. Four years ago, by special act of Congress, all importation of prepared opium and of crude opium designed for smoking purposes was prohibited. In the ample interval between the passage of the bill and its going into effect the importation of opium was simply phenomenal. By the time it went into effect the American dealers had learned the secret process of preparing opium for smoking, which had hitherto been known only in the Orient. Thereafter it was found that since responsible importing houses were still at liberty to import crude opium in any quantity for general medicinal use, the retailers could buy and were buying from importers all the crude opium they wished and preparing it themselves without having in any way to account for the use they meant to make of it, although that use had now become illegal. The result was that the smoker could get opium more easily than before, since the secret process of preparing it had become known; and having no longer to pay the enormous tax on prepared opium, he got it much cheaper. In short, the only difference was that the Government lost about one million five hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, while the vice was greatly increased. Thus the act had worked in precisely the opposite way from the intention of the framers, and all because men are permitted to handle opium without accounting for it. Until there is such an accounting, there can be no real regulation of the opium trade. Congress has just passed a bill aiming to regulate the traffic in habit-forming drugs. I wish to go on record here as saying that this bill will not accomplish its purpose, and should be further amended to prove effective. But it will be only a matter of time when there will be amendments proposed, which, if adopted, will create legislation on this subject worth while. The history of the Opium Commission appointed by Mr. Taft is sufficient to show how any less comprehensive regulation would act. When Mr. Taft was Governor-General of the Philippines, he found that an enormous quantity of opium was being smoked by the natives and the large Chinese settlement, of whom it was estimated that fifty-five thousand were smokers. He appointed a commission headed by Bishop Brent, now stationed at Manila, who has since headed two international opium conferences, at Shanghai in 1909 and at The Hague in 1911. Mr. Taft sent the commission into the most important opium-producing countries to find out how they were dealing with the problem and what progress was being made toward decreasing the use of the drug. The nearest approach they found to a reform was the method of the Japanese in their newly acquired island of Formosa. Japan, with the most stringent regulation of the sale of opium in the world, had made it a government monopoly in Formosa, had compelled the registration of all smokers, and was gradually lessening the amount which each smoker could buy. After the exhaustive report of the commission, our Government adopted the same tactics in the Philippines. To the surprise of the officials, they found that out of the fifty-five thousand opium-smokers they could obtain a registration of only from ten to twelve thousand, which meant that the great majority were getting smuggled opium. By special act of Congress the authorities at Manila were allowed to stop the importation of opium entirely. But this, while it meant a great loss of revenue to the local government, apparently did not lessen the amount smoked. After the sale was stopped, there were virtually no voluntary applications for opium treatment, as there must have been if anybody's supply had been cut off, which conclusively showed that nobody had discontinued the habit merely because importation had been discontinued. Stopping importation, then, is a farce, unless at the same time there is rigid governmental control in those countries that produce or import the drug. And, therefore, unless there should be a coöperation of all governments, it is futile to try to regulate the traffic. As long as people can get opium, they will smuggle it. It has been demonstrated to be quite practicable for all the opium-producing countries to make the drug a government monopoly; it would be equally practicable for them to sell directly to those governments that use it for governmental distribution. The only obstacle to an international understanding is that the producing countries know very well that government regulation would materially lessen the sale of the drug. Within the borders of our own country such a system would simplify rather than complicate present conditions. We have to-day along our frontier and in our ports inspectors trying to stop the illicit traffic in opium, and the money thus spent by our Government would be more than sufficient to handle and distribute all of the drug that is needed for legitimate purposes. Any druggist could of course continue to buy all that he wished, but he would have to account for what he bought. The drug would serve only its legitimate purpose, because the druggist could sell it only on prescription. This would at once eliminate the gravest feature of the case, the indiscriminate sale of proprietary and patent medicines containing small quantities of opium. The physician would thus have to shoulder the entire responsibility for the use of any habit-forming drug. With the Government as the first distributor and the physician as the last, the whole condition of affairs would assume a brighter aspect, for it would be a simple matter to get from the physician a proper accounting for what he had dispensed. Thus the new crop of users would be small, and less than ten per cent. of the opium at present brought into this country would be sufficient to meet every legitimate need. THE HABIT-FORMING DRUGS The important habit-forming drugs are opium, cocaine, and the small, but dangerous, group of hypnotics. These last--trional, veronal, sulphonal, medinal, etc.--are chiefly coal-tar products, and are not always classified as habit-forming drugs, but they are such, and there are many reasons why the sale of them should be scrupulously regulated. The opium derivatives go under the general head of narcotics. Morphine is the chief active principle, and codeine and heroin are the chief derivatives of morphine. Codeine is one eighth the strength of morphine; heroin is three times as strong as morphine. Though the general impression is otherwise, the users of heroin acquire the habit as quickly and as easily as if they took morphine. Many cough and asthma preparations contain heroin, simply for temporary alleviation, since, like opium, it has no curative power whatever. From time to time I have had to treat cases of heroin-taking in which the victims had thought to satisfy their need for an opiate without forming a habit. In the cases where it was given by prescription, it was so given by the physician in the sincere belief that it would not create a habit. All this despite the fact that heroin is three times stronger than morphine, and despite the fact that physicians know that anything which will do the work of an opiate is an opiate. Codeine, notwithstanding the fact that it is weaker than morphine, is likewise habit-forming; yet doctors prescribe it on account of its relative mildness, even though they know that it is the cumulative effect of continued doses, and not the quantity of morphine in the dose, which results in habit. As with morphine, to use either of these drugs effectively means in the long run the necessary increase of the dose up to the limit of physical tolerance. The most harmful of all habit-forming drugs is cocaine. Nothing so quickly undermines its victim or provides so short a cut to the insane asylum. It differs from opium in two important ways. A man does not acquire a habit from cocaine in the sense that it is virtually impossible for him to leave it off without medical treatment. He can do so, although he rarely does. On withdrawal, he experiences only an intense and horrible depression, together with a physical languor which results in a sleepiness that cannot be shaken off. Opium withdrawal, on the other hand, results in sleeplessness and extreme nervous and physical disorder. In action, too, cocaine is exactly the opposite of opium, for cocaine is an extreme stimulant. Its stimulus wears off quickly and leaves a corresponding depression, but it confers half an hour of capability of intense effort. That is why bicycle-riders, prize-fighters, and race-horses are often doctored, or "doped," with cocaine. When cocaine gives out, its victim invariably resorts to alcohol for stimulus; alcoholics, however, when deprived of alcohol, generally drift into the use of morphine. The widespread use of cocaine in the comparatively short period of time since its discovery has been brought about among laymen entirely by patent-medicine preparations containing small quantities of it. These have been chiefly the so-called catarrh cures, which of course cure nothing. With only a two or four per cent. solution, they have created a craving, and in the end those who could do so have procured either stronger solutions or the plain crystal. As with the other drugs, in order to maintain the desired result the dose must be increased in proportion as tolerance increases. Wherever the sale of patent medicines has been restricted to those presenting a physician's prescription, the consumption of cocaine has at once been lessened. A man cannot afford to get a physician's prescription for a patent medicine; and even if he could, the reputable physician refuses to prescribe one that contains cocaine. When an overseer in the South will deliberately put cocaine into the rations of his negro laborers in order to get more work out of them to meet a sudden emergency, it is time to have some policy of accounting for the sale of a drug like cocaine. It is also extremely important to regulate the sale of the hypnotic coal-tar derivatives. All the group of hypnotics should be buyable only on a physician's prescription. They all disturb heart action and impoverish the blood, thereby producing neurotics. No physician, without making a careful examination, will assume the responsibility of prescribing for a man who comes to him in pain, yet a druggist does so constantly. He knows nothing of the customer's idiosyncrasy; that, for instance, an amount of veronal which would not ordinarily affect a child may create an intense nervous disorder in a particular type of adult. To the average druggist a headache is only a headache; he does not know that what will alleviate one kind of headache is exceedingly bad for another kind, and furthermore it is not his business to warn the customer that a particular means of headache alleviation may perhaps make him a nervous wreck. The patient usually has the same ignorance. In a case which was once brought to my attention, a girl swallowed nine headache powders within one hour. Had there been ten minutes' delay in summoning a doctor, she would have died; as it was, she was seriously ill for a long time. These, then, the narcotics, cocaine, and the hypnotics, are the chief habit-forming drugs. They form habits because it is necessary to increase the dose in order to continue to derive the apparent benefit obtained from them in the beginning, and because, when once the habit is set up, it cannot be terminated without such acute discomfort that virtually no one is ever cured without medical help. In drug addictions the condition of the patient is not mental, as is generally supposed, but physical. Definite medical treatment to remove the effects of the drug itself is imperative, whether the victim be suffering from the drug habit alone or from that habit in a body otherwise physically disordered. With regard to the cure of the habit, as in the case of the conditions which permit of its being acquired, it may justly be said that the victims have been unfairly treated. THE NEED OF CONTROL BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BY PHYSICIANS The prevalence of the drug habit, the magnitude of which is now startling the whole civilized and uncivilized world, can be checked only in one way--by controlling the distribution of habit-forming drugs. With the Government as the first distributor and a physician as the last, drug-taking merely as a habit would cease to be. If physicians were made accountable, they would use narcotics, hypnotics, and cocaine only when absolutely necessary. Nobody should be permitted to procure these drugs or the means of using them or any medicines containing them without a doctor's prescription. By such restriction the intense misery due to the drug habit would be decreased by nine tenths, indeed, by much more than this; for when a physician dares no longer to be content with the mere alleviation of pain, which is only nature's way of announcing the presence of some diseased condition, he will seek the more zealously to discover and remove its cause. CHAPTER II THE NEED OF ADEQUATE SPECIFIC TREATMENT FOR THE DRUG-TAKER The Internal Revenue Reports are the only index to the extent of the drug consumption in the United States. They show for years past an annual increase in the importation of opium and its derivatives and cocaine, and for last year a very marked increase over that of any preceding year. This is not due to the increase in population; our immigrants are not drug-takers. Among the thousands of drug-users that I have treated or known, I have never seen an Italian, a Hungarian, a Russian, or a Pole. Moreover, I have met with only four cases of drug-taking by Hebrews. Few Jews--except in the under-world--acquire the habit knowingly. It may become fastened upon them through the use of a medicine the danger of which they do not realize, but, once freed, they will not again come under its power. The practical sagacity of their race is their surest safeguard. What is commonly spoken of as the "American type," highly nervous, living under pressure, always going to the full limit, or beyond, is peculiarly liable to disorders that lead to the habitual use of drugs. We are all hypochondriacal by nature, prone to "take something" whenever we feel badly. Lack of opportunity alone, of knowledge of what to take and how to procure it, has saved many a person under severe physical or mental strain from recklessly resorting to drugs. Since the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, which was intended to protect the public by requiring the express statement of any dangerous ingredients in a compound, the sale of preparations containing habit-forming drugs has preceptibly increased. It seems a just inference that the information given, instead of serving as a warning to the unwary, has been chiefly effective in pointing out a dangerous path to many who otherwise would not have known where to find it. Women, it should be said, though constitutionally more liable than men to feel the need of medicines, form the lesser portion of the drug-taking class. In the beginning their addiction is due almost exclusively to a physician's prescription, except in the under-world. The habitual users of drugs in the United States come from every grade of society. Professional men of the highest responsibility and repute, laborers wearying of the dullness in a mining-camp, literary men, clergymen, newspaper men, wire-tappers, shoplifters, vagrants, and outcasts--all are among the number. Strangely assorted as they are, they become yet more strangely alike under the influence of the common habit. Shoplifting is not confined to the professional thief; it is noticeable in many a drug-user who has had every moral and worldly advantage. The major part of the habit-forming drugs used in the United States is consumed by the under-world. It would be impossible to calculate the extent of their influence. Many a record of heinous crime tells of the stimulus of a drug. But when the school-children in some of our larger cities are found to be using cocaine, and able to buy it at will, the limit of tolerance has surely been reached. THE DRUG-TAKING PHYSICIAN, NURSE, AND PHARMACIST Among the widely varying classes of drug-users, three in particular are a source of the gravest danger: the drug-taking physician, nurse, and pharmacist. To realize this, one has merely to recall that the drug-taker is a confirmed evader of responsibility; and the physician, of all men, is in a responsible position. He must not forget or break his appointments; he must realize the effects of the medicines he is prescribing; if a surgeon, his work must never be below its best. But the proportion of physicians that I have treated, or consulted with, suggests one specially grave danger. It is a characteristic of the drug-taker, no matter who he is or how he acquired the habit, on the smallest excuse to advise others to take the drug whenever pain or fatigue gives the slightest occasion for it. While he grows callous to everything else, he has an abnormal sympathy with suffering. Thus it will readily be seen that there are few more dangerous members of society than the physician who is addicted to a drug. The fact that there are not more drug-taking doctors speaks volumes for the high character of the profession. The physician has such drugs constantly at hand. The more a man knows of their insidious action and the more he handles them, the more cautious he feels himself to be, and the more confident that he can discontinue the use of them whenever he chooses. Any fear that the layman may have of them is due less to the dread of being personally overcome than to the mystery which surrounds them; but for the physician they have no such mystery. Furthermore, by the nature of his calling he is peculiarly exposed to the need of such drugs. He is often under excessive physical and nervous strain not only because he is unable to arrange his work so as to prevent periods of too great pressure upon his time and strength, but also because in a unique manner he puts his heart into it. An even greater danger, in some respects, is the drug-taking professional nurse. Whatever has been said of physicians both in the way of extenuation and of warning may be repeated of nurses. They have the same exposure to the habit, and, once addicted, are likely to exhibit signs of irresponsibility. They are more dangerous in that their opportunity for mischief is greater, since they are closer to the patient and able to thwart the doctor's orders with perfect freedom. "I have had several nurses on this drug case," a doctor once said to me, "and I find that they have all smuggled morphine to my patient." This was, no doubt, an exceptional case, but the fact remains that nurses, because of their close alliance with druggists and doctors, find it comparatively easy to purchase drugs and hypodermics at any drug store without causing the slightest suspicion or reproof. Nor should one censure them too severely for clandestine compliance with the demands of a patient. It should not be overlooked that the nurse, in being paid by the patient and not by the doctor, is ordinarily subjected to great pressure when the patient clamors for morphine. In such circumstances the protection of a physician's monopoly of the drug would be most welcome. But how much worse is the pressure when the well-intentioned nurse also is a drug-taker! The morphinist has an abnormal sympathy with those who have undergone or are undergoing experiences similar to his own, and there is no stronger bond than that which unites two morphine victims. As a matter of the most elementary precaution for all concerned, no nurse should under any conditions be allowed to buy habit-forming drugs. Another kind of drug-taker against whom physicians' distribution would be a safeguard, and the only safeguard that can be devised, is the pharmacist. The contingency of a drug-taking pharmacist, perhaps more than anything else, will bring sharply home to the average man the menace of morphine when used by a professional person. By reason of closer and more personal observation one may feel rashly confident of his ability to detect when a doctor or a nurse is "queer," but generally the patron of a drug store has no such opportunity for observation. Addiction to a drug incapacitates the pharmacist for filling prescriptions. Often the slightest deviation from a precise formula in either quantity or ingredient is of the gravest consequence, and hence the utmost care should be used to insure the scrupulousness of one on whom such responsibility rests. As long as he is accountable to no one, or even accountable to the Government only on a business basis, there can be no safety for the public. If he may sell to any purchaser other than a physician, he may always supply his own wants. But if he has to account to a physician for the entire amount of habit-forming drugs that he distributes, any leakage may quickly be detected by the man who more than any one else can be relied upon to stop such a leakage promptly and sternly. A pharmacist should be allowed to dispense habit-forming drugs only on a physician's prescription. The physician should be limited as to his authority not only for prescribing such drugs, but, as the Boylan Act provided, there must be a careful accounting on his part for all such drugs administered or given away. In other words, he must account for all such drugs which he buys for office use, and he cannot prescribe such drugs except under certain definite limitations. METHODS OF TREATMENT: "THE HOME CURE" For many years only two methods of dealing with the drug habit were known. They continue to be the only ones in general use to-day. They are the "home cure" and the sanatorium method. Neither is in any proper sense a treatment or anything more than a process of substitution and deprivation. In many of the periodicals and daily papers are carefully worded advertisements setting forth that a man may be cured of a drug habit quickly, secretly, painlessly, and inexpensively. These are written by people who thoroughly understand the mental and physical condition of the drug-taker. In almost all cases he wishes to be freed from the habit, but at the same time to avoid the disgrace of being classed with "drug-fiends"; he is unwilling that even his family or his intimates should know of his condition. He has an exaggerated sensitiveness to pain, upon which also the advertisement relies. Furthermore, attention is directed to the fact that the patient may take the alleged remedy without spending much more money than he has been spending for the drug itself, naturally a powerful appeal to a man of limited means. Moreover, the people who take these "cures" are generally those who are unable to consider the expense of leaving home. That the advertisement is very alluring to the average drug-taker is shown by the fact that in my entire practice I have encountered few patients who have not at some time or other taken a home cure. A minister wrote to me the other day begging me to cure a fellow-minister of the cure habit. His friend had had occasional attacks of renal colic, and a physician had eased their acuteness with a hypodermic. The patient of course knew what he was taking, and since he was forced to consider the cost of the physician's visits for the mere administration of the hypodermic, he naturally procured his own outfit, and in a short time was using it regularly upon himself. When he found that he could not leave off the practice he entered into correspondence with a succession of "home-cure" advertisers, whose clever use of the word "privacy" offered a hope that his condition might be concealed from his congregation. For ten years he had been undergoing the cures, and during all this time had been forced to take a regular dosage of the so-called remedies. Before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act the ingredients of such remedies were not stated. The patient seems never to have suspected the truth--that the bottle contained the very drug he had been taking, its presence disguised by added medicines. In certain instances the makers boldly advertised that a trial bottle would be sufficient to prove clearly that the taker could not get along without using his drug. Now that the law compels a list of dangerous drugs on the label, the cures proceed admittedly by a reductive principle. The patient graduates from a number one bottle to a number two, containing less opium, and so on, until finally he is supposed to be cured. The proprietors of these cures make a great deal of capital out of the fact that the reduction is so gradual that the taker experiences no discomfort. This consideration is highly effective, for while it irresistibly appeals to the morbidly sensitive morphinist, it also makes him comprehend, as time goes on, why the process of cure is so slow. It is hardly necessary to state that the final stage is almost never reached. Almost without exception, the basis of restoration to health is the perfect elimination of the effects of the drug. It should go without saying that it is impossible to eliminate the effects of opium with opium or to find any substitute for opium that is not itself opium. At the International Opium Conference in China I exhibited seventy-six opium-cures which I had had analyzed and found to contain opium; and as a consequence of the Pure Food and Drugs Act all the American "cures" announced on their labels that they also contained it. Thus it is easy to see why the sale of these cures had always greatly increased wherever the rigid enforcement of anti-opium enactments had closed up the customary sources of habit-forming drugs. Up to the passage of the act, however, the presence of opium in the American cures was concealed, and their formulas were kept secret; and hence all of them, by the very nature of the case, were put forth either by irresponsible persons or by persons outside the pale of the profession; for one of the pledges given by a physician is that he will not patronize or employ any secret treatment, and that he will give to the profession whatever he finds to be of benefit to his fellow-men. In very rare cases these home cures have been able to relieve a man of strong will power, with the added assistance of a regimen for building up his bodily tone. But these cases have been so infrequent as to be virtually negligible, for to administer the treatment successfully demands from the patient the exercise of precisely that power of self-control the loss of which drove him to the cure in the first place. If there ever was any curative property in one of these so-called cures, a man could not be benefited unless he were under constant supervision. A treatment of this sort must, except in case of a miracle, be administered by another and under continuous medical surveillance. A man addicted to a drug, be he physician or longshoreman, in a short time becomes utterly unable to deal justly with himself, for it is the nature of the drug to destroy his sense of responsibility. THE SANATORIUM TREATMENT Besides the home cure there was, and is, the sanatorium treatment. Unlike the former, this was first established and carried on by trustworthy medical men, who depended for their support upon the patients of reputable doctors. A physician who had a morphine patient was obliged to send him to a sanatorium because there was nothing else to be done with him; elsewhere no course of treatment under constant surveillance could be given. It afforded the only opportunity of carrying the patient through the long period of gradual reduction which was then the only known treatment. Thus there was nothing optional about the matter; the physician could not recommend a home cure, and the only means of approximating systematic treatment was the sanatorium. Furthermore, those relatives and friends who knew of the patient's condition were anxious that he should go to one, since they realized the increasing awkwardness of keeping him at home. In many cases, indeed, they even went so far as to resort to means of commitment, if they failed to get his voluntary coöperation. It is due to the ease with which this type of patient can be committed that the State of Connecticut, for instance, abounds in sanatoriums. In that State, when a patient has entered one of them, he can often be detained there virtually at the pleasure of his relatives and friends. The method of treatment at most of the sanatoriums is like the home cure, except that it is under surveillance; that is, it is merely one of gradual reduction accompanied by an upbuilding of bodily tone. The morphine-taker with means and time at his disposal will stay in a sanatorium as long as he can be made comfortable. This shows that whatever reduction he has undergone is extremely slight; for gradual reduction, when it is carried to any extent, sets up a highly nervous state, together with insomnia and physical disturbance. The patient, as is often said, has an exaggerated dread of discomfort, and will not, if he can help it, endure it at all. Unless he is committed, he transfers himself to another sanatorium the moment he ceases to be made comfortable. I had one patient whose life had been a continuous round of sanatoriums. He would stay in one place until the point was reached where discomfort was in sight, and then remove to another, remaining there for a similar period, and then to another, and so on, until he had finished a long round of sanatoriums to his taste in America and Europe. Then he would begin all over again. A patient of mine who had visited eight different sanatoriums in the vicinity of New York told me that in America the sanatorium treatment of neurological patients was divided into three great schools: the "forget-it" system, the "don't-worry" system, and the "brace-up" system. Any nervous invalid who has stayed much at sanatoriums will appreciate the humor of this classification. The gravest aspect of these long stays at a sanatorium is the unavoidable colonization. Picture to yourself a group of from half a dozen to fifty morphine patients, eating together, walking together, sitting on the veranda together, day in and day out. In this group are represented many different temperaments and many different stations of life, from the gambler to the clergyman. All the more on this account is there a general and eager discussion of previous history and present situation. For where the alcoholic is quite indifferent, the morphine victim has an insatiable interest in symptoms. He has also an excessive sympathy with all who have been through the same mill with himself. Thus, in a matter where individual and isolated treatment is imperative, most sanatoriums deal with patients collectively. Furthermore, these are peculiarly a class of unfortunates who ought never to become acquainted. Whatever moral restraint the habit has left in a man is completely relaxed when he hears constant bragging of trickery and evasion and has learned to envy the cleverness and resource so exhibited. The self-respect and pride which must be the main factors in his restoration are sometimes fatally weakened. Colonization should be restricted to the hopeless cases, and to them only because it is unhappily necessary. FAILURE OF THE REDUCTION METHOD All this, moreover, is never, or almost never, to any purpose. As the uncomfortable patient will move if possible, it is naturally the business of the sanatorium to keep him from being uncomfortable. The method of reduction, therefore, is rarely carried out to the point where it would do any good, even if good were thus possible. But it is not possible. In the first place, lessening the dose is of little avail; there is as much suffering in the final deprivation of a customary quarter of a grain as of twenty grains. In the second place, it cannot be ascertained by gradual reduction whether there is any disability which makes morphine necessary, since no intelligent diagnosis can be made so long as a patient is under the influence of the smallest quantity of the drug. Obviously, the first step in taking up a case should be to discover whether any such disability is present, and, if so, whether it is one that can be corrected; otherwise it may be a waste of time to try to correct it. The true physical condition of the patient, which should be considered before a long course of treatment is undertaken, can seldom be discovered by the reduction method. The best doctors have always felt that they could not afford to lend their names to any institutions or sanatoriums except those which restricted themselves to mental cases. Yet these home cures and sanatoriums, unscientific and ineffective as they were, have offered to the victims of the drug habit the only hope they could find. The investigations begun by Mr. Taft in the Philippines extended over considerable time and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but, although furthered in every way by the whole world, they failed to discover a definite treatment for the drug habit. It was generally believed by physicians that there was no hope for the victims of it. COST OF THE DRUG HABIT It may be noted that I have not dwelt upon the expense of the habit. This consideration may be omitted from the case. To the average victim, the cost of his drugs, no matter what he may have to pay for them, seems moderate. He is buying something which he deems a vital necessity, and which, moreover, he places, if a choice be required, before food, drink, family, sleep, pleasures, tobacco--every necessity or indulgence of the ordinary man. The real cost is not to the drug-taker, but to the world. If a human life be considered merely as a thing of economic value, an estimate may perhaps be made of the total loss due to the habit. But the loss should not be reckoned in any such way. It should rather be reckoned by the great amount of moral usefulness and good that might be rendered to the world if these unfortunates could be freed from their slavery, and by the actual harm being done by them, especially by those that are now loosely classed as criminals and degenerates. The retrieving of much of the waste of humanity may be accomplished by adequate treatment of the drug habit. CHAPTER III THE DRUG-TAKER AND THE PHYSICIAN The doctor who begins to take the drug in order to whip his flagging energies into new effort finds the habit fastened on him before he realizes what has occurred. His endeavors to reduce his daily dosage fail, and he becomes thoroughly enmeshed. His acquired tolerance for the drug has brought about so great a physical change that deprivation or even reduction of dosage is intolerable. Hundreds of cases where physicians had experimented with the drug with these disastrous results have been brought to my attention. No one shows less foresight, less appreciation of the danger of tampering with drugs, than the physician himself. I am constantly amazed by the fact that any doctor will take even the slightest risk of becoming a drug-user. That many voluntarily incur the peril passes my understanding. I have seen an astonishing number of physicians who for various physical reasons other than exhaustion and the need of stimulant considered themselves eligible to experiment with drugs. It is a curious thing that, as a class, physicians and surgeons are themselves singularly averse to submitting to surgical operation, even when symptomatic indications strongly urge it. Why surgeons, in particular, should so generally dread the application of the knife in their own cases is a puzzle, for of course no class more thoroughly understands the need of surgery. I could mention many cases of this sort, but one in particular recurs to my memory. He was one of the most careful and best-informed doctors in the country, and he was not without a certain special knowledge of the peril involved in habit-forming drugs; but he suffered from a painful rectal trouble, and although he considered himself too intelligent a man to go too far with a dangerous substance, he did go too far. He had thought that he could leave drugs off whenever he desired; he found that he could not. THE PHYSICIAN WHO TAKES DRUGS It is impossible to make even an approximately accurate guess at the proportion of physicians who are drug-users. Everywhere except in New York State physicians can obtain as many drugs as they desire without publicity and without laying themselves open to any penalty whatsoever, even if their purchases are brought to official attention. No medical organization takes any cognizance of drug-taking physicians or provides any medical help for them. It is highly probable that the New York State legislation may uncover some of the drug-taking doctors in that commonwealth, though this is by no means certain, since legislation in force in only one State cannot effectively put a stop to the illegal importation of habit-forming drugs from other States and countries. Proper restrictive legislation of sufficiently wide scope would very quickly disclose every drug-taking doctor in the nation, and either force him to correct his physical condition or drive him from the profession. Proper general regulation of the traffic and consumption of habit-forming drugs will aid tremendously in freeing the medical profession from drug-takers. Until this general regulation exists no general reform will be possible. An exact accounting for every grain of habit-forming drugs which he purchases, possesses, or administers, must be demanded of every physician in the United States before this evil can be entirely abated; and this accounting among physicians will be impossible until a similar accounting is demanded of every grain imported, manufactured, and dispensed by wholesale and retail druggists. Concerning the extent of the hold which the drug habit has upon physicians I have had a rare opportunity to judge. Not only has my dealing with the drug habit been as exclusively as possible through the physician rather than through the patient, but the brevity of my treatment and the privacy that my patients are assured make it possible for many physicians who have become afflicted to come to me for relief without arousing in the mind of any one a suspicion of the real cause for their brief absence. I therefore feel that I have a firm basis for accuracy. It is the fear of disgrace which has driven hundreds of physicians from bad to worse with the drug habit: they have become apprehensive that any effort tending to their relief will uncover their position to their families, associates, or patients, and thus bring ruin; so they have drifted on from bad to worse. Many who have not taken steps in time have reached the irresponsible and hopeless stage. To the medical profession in general, as well as to the public, these men are a dreadful menace. ATTITUDE OF THE PROFESSION I, a layman, have been greatly surprised that the medical world shows so little sympathy for these unfortunates. This seems to me to be specially reprehensible, since by this neglect they imperil the public. No greater service could be rendered to mankind by the medical profession than a concerted movement of the medical organizations toward the care and relief of those among their drug-taking members who are still susceptible to help, and the exclusion from medical practice of those who have already gone too far to be reclaimed. Physicians of this class who are without means are specially entitled to sympathy and help, and this service will be of double value, for it will not only give them necessary aid, but will notably safeguard the public. No physician should be permitted to practise who is addicted to the use of habit-forming drugs or who uses alcoholic stimulants to excess; but whatever is done in regard to these men should be accomplished without publicity and without any loss of pride or standing. A doctor who has used either drugs or alcohol is much more to be pitied than blamed. The worthy practitioners--and there are many--who must resort to the use of drugs in order to enable them to practise despite some physical disability which cannot be eliminated, are no less numerous in proportion to the total number of physicians than similar cases are in relation to the total number of lawyers, merchants, or journalists, but because of the nature of their work, they are far more dangerous to the general public. It seems to me that there is in this fact--the existent, non-elimination of such perilous characters from the practice of medicine, and the obvious, very real necessity for such an elimination--a suggestion for some person of philanthropic mind. If the medical profession will not care for its own, then some one else must care for them. It occurs to me that among the people whose naturally fine impulses are leading them toward the endowment of institutions for the care of the aged maiden lady, or superannuated teachers, or others to whom fate has been unkind, there are many who might well consider this great need for the establishment of a comfortable institution in this country for the care of physicians who through no fault of their own have become unable to practise their profession with profit and efficiency. HOW THE DOCTOR BECOMES A DRUG-TAKER The doctor's yielding to the drug habit is a simple process, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred unaccompanied by any unworthy tendency toward dissipation. In another part of this book I make extensive reference to the fact that nowhere in the text-books by means of which the medical students of the world receive their education is any proper attention paid to the psychology of the drug habit. We may assume that a doctor, having lost sleep because of a difficult case, is confronted on his return to his office by another that demands immediate and skilful attention. He is tired and very likely he himself is ill. He cannot yield to his worries or illness, as he would demand one of his patients to yield. He must "brace up." He knows that in the stock of habit-forming drugs that he uses in his profession lies the material which will brace him up. He tries it; it succeeds. This doctor has begun to nibble at the habit, and he does not know his danger. He himself does not believe that one or two or a few doses will fasten that habit upon him. He finds that a certain dosage produces the necessary desired result upon the first day; he is stimulated to new efforts in behalf of his patients, and because those new efforts are the result of stimulation, they produce abnormal weariness. This exhaustion must be overcome, and the result is another dosage of the drug; and this time the dosage must be larger than the first, for both his toleration for the drug and his weariness have increased. Only a few days of such experiences are necessary to fasten the habit upon him. I have often endeavored to imagine the thrill of horror which must chill a doctor's soul when he finds that this has happened. His position is a dreadful one. He has lost control. He must tell no one, for if he tells, disgrace and the loss of his means of livelihood will be but matters of a short time. He knows nothing of any means of real relief; he cannot help himself; he is familiar with the dangers attendant on the fake cures which are widely advertised. He is confronted by a stone wall. He must either continue his dosage, thus enabling him to keep on with his practice, or he must accept ruin and defeat; and to continue his dosage is the easiest thing imaginable, for the drug has been by law intrusted to his keeping and is close at hand. Another doctor who is specially susceptible to drug addictions is the one who has been accustomed to alcoholic stimulation. Any doctor who drinks alcohol, when he finds himself beset by arduous labor involving loss of sleep, or is confronted by cases of such a complex nature that they involve a great deal of mental worry on his part, is likely to drink more than usual. Thus work and worry, the two things which make him most liable to the evil effects of any stimulation, are likely to drive him directly into over-stimulation. Over-stimulation results in super-nervous excitation. The victim finds himself unable to sleep, he finds his hand tremulous, he finds his thoughts wool-gathering when they should be concentrating with intensity upon his work. In his pocket case there is his little morphine bottle; he knows its action, and when called to see a patient while under the influence of alcoholic stimulants he attempts to steady himself by the administration of a small dosage. The result is virtually instantaneous and at first marvelously effective. He finds himself enabled to do better work than he has done for years, and more of it. The remedy seems magical; he tries it again and again. The man is lost. Such instances as these have produced the most utterly hopeless of the many cases of drug addictions among physicians with which I have come into contact. TYPES OF DRUG-USERS Specially numerous among drug victims are physicians in nose and throat work, where they make daily employment of cocaine solution. Some of the most desperate cases of drug habit that I have ever seen among physicians have come from this class, made familiar with the constant use of the drug by the necessity for continually administering it to their patients. Another physician who is specially liable is the man who suffers severe pain from a physical cause that he knows can be removed only by resorting to surgery. The average doctor will postpone a surgical operation upon himself until his condition has long passed the stage that he would consider perilous to any of his patients. While he postpones it he is suffering, and while he suffers he may be more than likely to continue his practice through reliance upon the stimulation and pain-deadening qualities of habit-forming drugs, concerning the true and insidious nature of which he usually knows no more than the average layman. There have been a few cases of physicians who have yielded unworthily to drugs and opiates as a means of dissipation. I have known some physicians, for example, who have been opium-smokers. In the United States the opium-smoker is invariably unworthy. Not long ago the New York police raided the apartment of a physician where were found thirty or forty opium-pipes and more than a hundred pounds of opium, either crude or prepared for smoking. I have known fewer than half a dozen physicians whose drug vice was purely social, however. The victims of drag habit who achieved it through a tendency toward dissipation are almost invariably denizens of the under-world; and if it were not for the fact that the contagion of their vice may spread, they might well be permitted by society to drug themselves to death as speedily as possible. We shall entirely disregard the physician who becomes addicted to the use of drugs through unworthy tendencies, and consider only the dangers to the profession and the public latent in the case of the physician who becomes addicted in the less reprehensible, but more dangerous, manner that I have indicated. Not only will such a drug addiction injure the doctor's practice and threaten his career, but it will surely constitute a threat against the welfare of his patients not included in the possibility that through it he may miss engagements, write improper prescriptions, and make mistakes of many kinds. THE DRUG-TAKING PHYSICIAN A MENACE A very serious danger lies in the psychology of drug addictions. The person who has taken a habit-forming drug for the purpose of relieving his own pain, and through it has found that relief which he sought, is almost certain to become abnormally sympathetic to the suffering of others. It is a curious fact that this doctor will be more than likely to administer the drug he uses to his patients, not with malicious, but with probably friendly, intent, and that he will feel no scruples whatsoever in acting as a go-between for drug-users in general who find themselves unable to obtain supplies easily. He will do what he can to help confirmed users to obtain their drugs, even if he makes no profit out of it. He will write prescriptions for them in evasion, if not in violation, of the law. It is a curious and tragic fact that the drug-taking doctor will spread the habit in his own family. There have been many instances in my hospital when I have had a physician and his wife as patients at the same time and on the same floor. In every one of these instances the drug addiction of a wife has been the direct result of constant association with the drug-addicted husband. No more dangerous detail exists in the psychology of drug-users than their almost invariable tolerance for the habit in others and their sympathetic willingness to promote its spread among those who suffer pain. In the under-world the drug habit never travels alone. Through it the woman who is a drug-user holds the man whom she desires; through it the male drug-taker holds the woman whose companionship he finds agreeable. It is a curious fact that while in the under-world the drug habit has become a social vice, especially in the case of cocaine, and is frequently a proof of mixed sex-relations, in the upper-world it is accompanied by a secrecy of method and sequestration of administration that characterizes no other form of vice. The difference between the psychology of the doctor's relation to the drug habit and that of the layman to it may be summed up in the statement that while the layman does not at all know what he is getting, the doctor knows what he is taking, but thinks that he can stop taking it whenever he feels ready. It is probable, therefore, that the doctor's primary danger is as great as the layman's, and it is certainly true that his secondary danger--that growing out of the fact that he has drugs and the instrument for their administration always ready to his hand--is very much greater. The unnecessary administration of habit-forming drugs to the sick must be legally prevented as far as possible. No affliction which can be added to an already existing physical trouble can compare in horror with that of a drug habit. Numbers of cases have come under my observation in which physicians have accomplished exactly this addition to the ruin of their patients' health, to the incalculable distress of the sufferers' families, and to the vast loss of society. In the recent legislation written upon the statute-books of New York State the first definite effort is made to provide against this catastrophe. CHAPTER IV PSYCHOLOGY AND DRUGS Drug habits may be classified in three groups: the first and largest is created by the doctor, the second is created by the druggist and the manufacturer of proprietary and patent medicines, and the third, and smallest, is due to the tendency of certain persons toward dissipation. The major importance of the first two groups is due to the fact that they include by far the greater number of cases, and to the pitiful fact that such victims are always innocent. Speaking generally, and happily omitting New York State from our statement, it is safe to say that the manufacturer, the druggist, and the physician are without legal restraint despite their importance as promoters of drug habits, while the comparatively unimportant drug-purveyor in the under-world is held more or less strictly in control by the police, and is subject to severe punishment by the courts in case of a conviction. With few exceptions, the part which the doctor plays in the creation of drug habits is due to lack of knowledge; but the druggist's part in the spread of this national curse is purely commercial, and may justly be designated as premeditated. He always has gone and always will go as far as is permissible toward creating markets for any of the wares that he sells. Regulation of the upper-world in regard to the distribution of habit-forming drugs will automatically regulate the under-world in its similar activities. The amount which will be smuggled by those of criminal tendencies always will be small as compared with the amount improperly distributed through channels now recognized as legitimate until all the States have passed restrictive legislation founded upon, modeled after, and coöperative with New York State's legislation; and all this must be backed and buttressed by Federal legislation of a special kind before real and general good can be accomplished in the United States. Illicit drugs rarely find their way into the possession of users who have acquired drug habits through illness or pain. So it must be admitted that most of the effort that in the past has been made toward restrictive legislation has really been devoted to the interests of the unworthy rather than to those of the worthy. Save in New York State, the man or woman with a sheep-skin--the doctor, the druggist, or the nurse--remains virtually a free-lance, permitted to create the drug habit in others or in himself or herself at will. THE DOCTOR A MEANS OF SPREADING THE DRUG HABIT The man in severe pain is immediately exposed, by the very reason of his misfortune, to the physician with a hypodermic or the druggist with a headache powder; the man who cannot sleep may at any moment be made a victim by the physician whom in confidence he consults, or by the druggist to whom he may foolishly apply for "something" which will help him to secure the necessary rest. Save in New York State, the druggist's shelves are crowded with jars and bottles holding dangerous compounds which he may dispense at will, his drawers are crowded with neat pasteboard boxes containing powders which are potent of great peril. The public will have made a long step toward real safety when it realizes that any drug which brings immediate relief from pain or which will artificially produce sleep is an exceedingly dangerous thing. The sick man's confidence in his doctor is one of the doctor's greatest assets; it has saved innumerable lives. It is of the same general nature as the mysterious mental phenomena which frequently control physical conditions, and which have been capitalized by various bodies, such as Faith Cure and Christian Science; but if this is an asset to the physician, the general public knowledge that he carries in his case or in his pocket drugs which he can use without restraint of law for the relief of pain may become a general peril. In the old days when the doctor's work was a mysterious process, operating by methods of which he alone was cognizant, this peril was less well defined; but now that the spread of education has made everybody a reader and periodical literature of the times has given even children a smattering of knowledge concerning medical matters, the nature of the means by which the doctor works his miracles is well known, and his unrestraint may become a public peril. Of one thousand patients who may consult the average physician, nine hundred and ninety-nine know perfectly well that he can stop their pain if he desires to do so. Pain is unpleasant; naturally their demands that he use his power are insistent. If he refuses, they are likely to call in another and less scrupulous physician. The medical profession is overcrowded, and perhaps the doctor needs the money. Even if he is swayed by nothing but financial need, he is likely to be tempted into the administration of pain-deadening substances when his patient urges him. There is another powerful influence which works upon the most admirable of men--the pity of the temperamental physician for the human sufferer. Most men who choose the medical profession as the avenue for their life-work have the qualities of mercy, pity, and sympathy notably developed in their psychology. This is likely to induce them to stretch points in favor of relieving suffering patients. Even when their previous experience has proved to them the danger lying in narcotics, they are likely to forget it, or to take a chance if a special emergency arises. This may be done without great peril to the patient. DANGER OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF PAIN-RELIEVING DRUGS The physician should exhaust every means known to medical science to prevent his patient from knowing what it is that eases pain when his practice makes it absolutely necessary that a substance of the sort should be administered, and this is very much less frequent than the average doctor realizes, as will be shown in another passage of this book. It is in this necessity for concealment that the great danger of using the hypodermic syringe as an administrating instrument principally lies. The moment the hypodermic syringe is taken from the doctor's or the nurse's kit, the sufferer is made aware of the means which will be used to give him ease. He remembers it, forming a respect and admiration, almost an affection, for the mere instrument, and with the most intense interest gathers such information as he may find it possible to acquire about this wonder-working little tool and the material which is its ammunition of relief. He knows absolutely that the relief which he has found is not due to medical skill, but to the potency of a special drug administered in a special way. He stops guessing as to whether he has been soothed by an opiate; he knows he has been. It is not only those of weak psychology or mental characteristics who are affected by this knowledge and who through it become drug-takers, though it is the general impression that this is the case. No impression was ever more inaccurate. The mentally strong and the morally lofty are as much averse to suffering physical pain as the mentally weak and the morally degenerate. All are in the same class when the drug has been administered until that point of tolerance is reached where its administration cannot be neglected without the indignant protest of the physical body. That this fact should be impressed upon the medical profession as a whole is one of the most needful things I know. Another hazard which the doctor runs, if he passes the point of extreme caution in the administration of drugs to patients, is the possibility, even the probability, that through such an administration he will lose control of his patients. From the moment the patient becomes cognizant of the means which the doctor has successfully used to alleviate his pain, he begins to dictate to the doctor rather than to accept dictation from him. No doctor can control a case successfully unless his judgment is accepted as the supreme law of treatment. A patient who is not susceptible to the doctor's dictation cannot be expected to get the full advantage of the doctor's skill or knowledge. If diagnosis shows that a patient requires some operation, as in certain uterine troubles, or more especially in the case of bladder affections or gall-stones,--cases in which frequently only an operation can give relief,--and if that patient is aware that even if the operation is not performed, the doctor can still ease all suffering, that patient, loath to run the risk of the surgeon's knife, horrified by the thought of hospitals and operating theaters, is likely to demand the relief which opiates offer, and refuse to risk the cure which surgical procedure alone would certainly afford. The conscientious doctor who insists upon the proper course in such a case is seriously handicapped by the presence in the medical profession of many men who are less conscientious, and who may yield more readily to the urgings of the patient. Thus the possibility of unrestricted use of habit-forming drugs by the medical profession becomes a handicap to the conscientious man and a commercial advantage to the unscrupulous practitioner. UNCONSCIOUS VICTIMS OF THE DRUG HABIT Episodes occurring continually in the course of my work add to the strength of my conviction of the physician's responsibility. For years not a week has passed which has not brought me patients with stories of the manner in which they have become victims of drug addiction through the treatment of their physicians. Lying before me as I write is a communication from a young man in Pennsylvania. He had been hurt, and through improper surgical attention a healing fracture had been left intensely painful. The attending doctor, unable to correct his imperfect work, had left with him a box of tablets to be taken when the pain became severe. Promptly and inevitably the youth achieved the drug habit. He felt disgraced, he would not tell his father, his wife, or his sister. His doctor could give him no relief. By some accident he saw an article of mine which was published in the "Century Magazine," and made a pitiful appeal to me. I have received many such communications. A pathetic letter comes to me from a woman suffering with fistula. Having achieved the morphine habit as the direct and inevitable result of taking pain-killing drugs given to her by her family physician, she now feels herself disgraced. Like many sensitive women who in this or some other way become victims of the drug habit, she is obsessed, as her letter clearly shows, with the conviction that her achievement of the habit has been a personal sin, and that her continued yielding to it puts her beyond the pale of righteousness. She writes that she finds herself incapable of going to her church for Sunday services or to prayer meetings because she feels ashamed when in the imminent presence of her Maker. Another woman, evidently animated by a similar psychological phenomenon, writes that having acquired the drug habit, although blamelessly, since it was through the administration of narcotics by her doctor, she finds it a psychological impossibility to kneel at her bedside and offer that prayer to God which it had been her nightly practice to deliver. I could multiply such instances indefinitely. It is impossible to conceive any episodes more pitiful than the cases of this sort which have been detailed to me by drug victims, doctor-made. That feeling of disgrace, that unjustified conviction of sin on the part of absolutely innocent women victims of the drug habit, is apparently among the most terrible of humanity's psychological experiences. If I had the pen of a Zola and the imagination of a Maupassant, I might properly impress the medical world with a sense of its responsibility in this matter. Without it I fear that I may fail to do so; but could I accomplish only this one thing, I should feel that my life had been of use to that humanity which I desire above all things to serve. No work could be of more importance to the world of sufferers than one which would put the use of these potentially beneficent, but, alas! often injurious, drugs upon a respectable basis, so that the man who must be given the relief which they alone can offer may no more hesitate to tell his neighbor that he is taking morphine than he now will hesitate to tell his neighbor that he is taking blue mass pills or citrate of magnesia. RESPONSIBILITY OF THE TRAINED NURSE That the medical world should ever have been so lax in its realization of its proper responsibility as to allow trained nurses to carry hypodermic syringes and to administer habit-forming drugs seems to me to be one of the most amazing things in the world. No physician who has had an extensive experience with drug addiction and who has any conscientious scruples whatsoever will fail to make sure before he leaves a nurse in charge of a patient that the attendant possesses no habit-forming drugs and is without any instrument with which they may be hypodermically administered. If such drugs are to be used, they should be kept in the physician's possession until they are used, and should be administered by means of an instrument which he carries with him. When such drugs are left, the nurse should give an accounting for every fraction of a grain. I have no desire to convey the impression that in my opinion all nurses are untrustworthy or unscrupulous, but it must be remembered of them, as it must be remembered of the doctor, that they are in the employ of the patient, that their income depends upon giving satisfaction to their employer, and that they are likely to make almost any kind of concession and resort to almost any practice in order to make comfortable and profitable assignments last as long as possible. It is impossible not to admit the truth of this statement, and it must be recognized that if it is true, a nurse is under too great a responsibility when she is in possession of a hypodermic kit, particularly if the patient knows that it is _her_ kit, _her_ hypodermic, _her_ drug, and that she will not be called to account by the physician for such drugs as she may administer. It must be rather disconcerting for a physician to reflect upon the fact that a nurse whom he has left in charge of a critical case, through greed or even through the general and admirable quality of mercy, is equipped for, and ignorantly may yield to the temptation of, resorting to a practice that may not only undo all the good his treatment has accomplished, but, in addition, may afflict the patient with suffering more terrible than any which disease could give. This element of mercy, soft-heartedness, and readiness to pity must specially be remembered in considering the relation of the trained nurse to the patient. If men are often induced to enter the medical profession because of its presence in their soul, even more frequently are women led by it to become trained nurses. The sympathetic woman is even more likely to yield to the pleadings of suffering patients than is the sympathetic male doctor. It must also be remembered that, like the doctor, the nurse is human, and neither iron-nerved nor iron-muscled. She is frequently under terrific strain, which makes her tend toward the use of stimulants of any kind. That which she can administer to herself by means of the hypodermic is closest to her hand, is easiest to take, and is least likely to be discovered. Again, too, it must be remembered that the nurse is as susceptible to pain as are the rest of us. Suffering, with the means of alleviation at her hand, and, like the doctor, ignorant of its true peril, what is more natural than that she herself should use the hypodermic for her own relief? Thus it comes about that probably a larger proportion of trained nurses than of doctors are habitual drug-users. This is not a statement which is critical of the profession, for if all mankind knew of drugs, had hypodermics, and knew how to use them, a very large proportion of the human race would resort to this quick and effective, if inevitably perilous, means of finding comfort when agony assailed them. The world does not, the world cannot, understand that while to the normal human being the worst that can come is pain, the worst pain is vastly less terrible than the horrors which at intervals inevitably afflict the habitual drug-user. Not one human being who has become a victim of a drug habit through its use for the alleviation of pain but will voluntarily cry after he has come to realization of the new affliction which possesses him, "save me from this drug habit, and I will cheerfully endure the pain which will ensue." The horror of pain is not so great as the horror of the drug habit. Another very serious reason for extreme caution on the part of the medical profession in regard to the use of habit-forming drugs is that the effect of such drugs upon a patient must almost certainly make accurate diagnosis of his case difficult or even impossible. A patient whose consciousness of pain is dulled or eliminated by the use of drugs cannot accurately describe to a physician the most important symptoms of his ailment. Without the assistance of such a description the physician is so handicapped that all the skill which he has acquired in practice and all the knowledge he has gained from study are apt to be of no avail. Indeed, in the case of habitual drug-users accurate diagnosis of any physical ailment is impossible until the effect of the drug has been so completely eliminated that not one vestige of it remains. CHAPTER V ALCOHOLICS I am not specially familiar with the statistics of insanity, but I am inclined to believe that an appreciable contribution to the total--indeed, one of its largest parts--has arisen from the improper diagnosis of drug and alcoholic cases, followed naturally by improper medical treatment. Lack of definite medical help in cases of chronic alcoholism is likely to bring about brain lesions, which eventually mean hopeless insanity. For that special reason, the chronic alcoholic has been the chief contributor to the army of the insane, and in the asylums his presence is notably frequent among the violent cases. The head of one of the greatest institutions in the United States for the care of the insane assures me that this seems to occur among women to a greater degree than with men. One of the most difficult problems of my work has been to discover ways by which the medical profession can be made to understand the really serious meaning of chronic alcoholism. Most delirium, the primary cause of which lies in alcoholism, is amenable to treatment. EFFECTS OF DEPRIVATION IN CHRONIC ALCOHOLISM It is exhaustion or lack of alcohol which first produces delirium in an alcoholic case, whether that exhaustion is due to the patient's inability to assimilate food or alcohol or whether it is due to the fact that, being under restraint, alcohol is denied him. In most cases there is no form of medication which can be successfully substituted for alcohol, and unless definite medical help is provided for the purpose of bringing about a physical change and thus avoiding delirium, no course remains safe except a long and very gradual process of reduction of alcoholic poisoning. Such a measure as this cannot be successfully applied in the wards of the general hospital, as the mere fact that alcohol was there administered, even in slowly diminishing doses, would make such a ward the chosen haven of innumerable "old stagers," who, having reached that stage of worthlessness which would make it impossible for them to obtain the narcotic elsewhere, would take the treatment for the mere sake of getting the alcohol of which it principally consists. Many friends of alcoholic subjects and many physicians in private practice have believed that they were doing the alcoholic a great service when they put him where he could not get alcohol, and helped him over the first acute stages of the period of deprivation by the administration of bromide and other sedatives. This usually means delirium first and then a "wet brain"; if the patient survives this, his next development is more than likely to be prolonged psychosis, or, in the end, permanent insanity. It is because of this that I consider the chronic alcoholic more clearly entitled to prompt and intelligent medical treatment than most other sick persons. With the alcoholic, as with the drug-taker, the first thing to be accomplished is the unpoisoning of the body. In order to accomplish this, it is first necessary to keep up the alcoholic medication, with ample sedatives, using great care lest the patient drift into that extreme nervous condition which leads to delirium. If delirium does occur, nothing but sleep can bring about an improvement in the patient's condition. This is the point of development at which physicians not properly informed in regard to such cases are likely to employ large quantities of hypnotics, and frequently this course is followed until the patient is finally "knocked out." In many instances an accumulation of hypnotics in the systems of persons thus under treatment has proved fatal. I am rather proud of my ability to state that from delirium tremens I have never lost a single case. NECESSITY OF CLASSIFICATION OF ALCOHOLICS The records show that to-day about forty per cent. of the insane in the asylums of New York State have a definite alcoholic history. In this condition lies one of the greatest opportunities ever offered to the medical profession. Even now a proper classification of the patients thus immured, and their appropriate treatment, would in many instances result in the return to the normal of those affected; proper classification and treatment at the time when the symptoms of mental disorder first appeared would have resulted in the salvation of innumerable cases. As a matter of fact, I earnestly believe that if this course was followed, the number of supposedly permanent cases of insanity arising from alcoholic and drug addictions might be decreased by seventy-five per cent. Certain general rules may be laid down. There are no circumstances in which it is advisable for a physician in private practice to attempt to handle a case of chronic alcoholism in the patient's own environment. Efforts to do this are constantly made, with the result that many needlessly die from lack of alcohol, while an even more tragic result is the unnecessary entrance, first into the psychopathic wards of our hospitals and thence into our asylums for the insane, of innumerable cases which needed intelligent treatment only for alcoholism or drug addiction. If this treatment is neglected, the incarceration of these unfortunates in asylums becomes necessary, for without question their insanity is real enough. UNSCIENTIFIC METHODS IN THE TREATMENT OF ALCOHOLISM During the summer of 1913 I visited a large hospital in Edinburgh and discussed alcoholism and its treatment with the visiting physician. "We do not have many alcoholics here," said he. "Why?" I inquired. "All our hospital work is supported by private subscription," he answered. "Then there is no place whatever in Scotland for the care of the acute alcoholic case?" "No. If an intoxicated person is locked up by the police and develops delirium, he is sent here, and we do what we can for him by the old methods." "You offer no definite medical help along special lines?" "No; we have none to offer." He showed me two cases in the general ward; one man in a strait-jacket was in the midst of delirium tremens, his face terribly suffused. He was in a pitiable state, and nothing was being done for him. "What course shall we follow?" the physician inquired. "Let me see his chart," I requested. After I examined it, it became immediately apparent that the patient's condition was due to lack of his usual drug. It was his third day in the ward. "Nothing but sleep will save him," I said, and suggested medication which was administered. In three or four minutes the patient was relaxed and taken out of the strait-jacket. I made certain suggestions regarding general stimulation for the bowels and the kidneys, and diet. On the next day I found the patient improved after twelve or fifteen hours of sleep, and wholly free from delirium. His case had now become simply a matter of recuperation. Another case had lived through several days of delirium tremens, which had been followed by a "wet brain"; the visiting physician considered this patient a fit subject for the psychopathic ward. I asked the patient questions about himself. He was sure that he had been out the night before and pointed out one of the internes as his companion during the hours of dissipation. His case was regarded at the hospital as almost certain to end in an asylum. I suggested treatment and within two days the man's mind had entirely cleared up. These instances of successful and prompt relief occasioned considerable surprise among the hospital physicians, who frankly admitted that they knew nothing to do except to keep the patients there under restraint, and, if necessary, feed them according to existing rules, to keep their bowels open and their bladders free, and hope for the best. This was an institution which is supposed to represent the best medical learning in the United Kingdom. I found similar conditions existing in the great hospitals of London, Paris, and Berlin, so that the Scotch institution is not an exception to the general European rule. Everywhere I was frankly informed that the medical staff knew of nothing to be done in alcoholic cases beyond deprivation and penalization. Nor have we been more scientifically progressive in the United States. We are following virtually the same unenlightened methods, and it has even been suggested that chronic alcoholism be added to the conditions which in the minds of some sociological thinkers justify sterilization. How important our shortcoming is may be strikingly illustrated by the statement that alcoholic patients comprise one third of all the cases admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York. THE DIFFICULTY OF TREATMENT IN SOME ALCOHOLIC CASES The alcoholic differs notably from the person addicted to drugs. A drug-taker, deprived of his drug, will experience in the early stages only acute discomfort and a natural longing for the drug of which he has been deprived. His unfavorable symptoms can always be relieved by the administration of the drug. The chronic alcoholic, however, deprived of the stimulant, often drifts into a delirium which cannot be relieved by the administration of his accustomed tipple. No more terrible spectacle can be imagined by the human mind than that of an acute case of delirium tremens; no patient needs more careful watching in order that unfavorable developments may be avoided; once delirium sets in, no type of case is medically so difficult to handle. The man who for long periods has been saturated with alcohol, and who is suddenly deprived of it, is, I think, more to be pitied than almost any one I know; yet relatives, friends, and physicians frequently follow exactly this course, and think that by so doing they are rendering the patient a kindly service. CAUSES OF INSANITY In mentioning the causes of insanity, it is, however, impossible to permit the impression to be recorded that alcohol is the only offender. My statement of the part which alcohol plays in supplying the population of our mad-houses has never been denied; but it is also true that the use of headache powders and other preparations commonly sold at our drug stores and as yet slightly or not at all restricted by law, and the use of coffee, tea, and tobacco in unrestricted quantity, also contribute their quota to the insane. A letter from the superintendent of a certain state asylum tells me that he has seen many improvements, sometimes even amounting to cures, result from ten days of fasting. That fasting really was a process of unpoisoning. In such a case the symptoms of insanity may be attributed to auto-intoxication, coming from any one of many causes, of which alcohol, tobacco, or even food improperly selected or unreasonably eaten may be one. The physician can have no means of learning just what method to pursue in any case of auto-intoxication until the patient has been unpoisoned. If any one of the great general hospitals would secure careful histories of one hundred of its patients and apply the proper methods to those who are found to have been poisoned by their habits, surprising results would be achieved. It is specially true that no intelligent mental diagnosis can be made of any patient who has had an unfavorable drug, alcoholic, or even tobacco, tea, or coffee history until he has been freed from the effects of these drugs or stimulants. The first thing that a physician must do when confronted by a case of alcoholic or drug addiction is to learn whether it is acute or chronic. If the case is chronic, the patient must not be suddenly deprived of his stimulants. CHAPTER VI HELP FOR THE HARD DRINKER The people of the world in general, and especially the people of the United States, are asking more questions about the cost of alcohol--not its cost in money, but its cost in men. These are questions which statistics cannot answer, which, indeed, can never be definitely answered; but we know enough to be assured that if answers could be given, they would be appalling. With increasing unanimity the thinkers of the whole world are saying that in alcohol is found the greatest of humanity's curses. It does no good whatever; it does incalculable harm. A dozen substitutes may be found for it in every useful purpose which it serves in medicine, mechanics, and the arts; its food value, of which much has recently been said, is not needed; and it has worked greater havoc in the aggregate than all the plagues. If not another drop of it should ever be distilled, the world would be the gainer, not the loser, through the circumstance. Yet the use of alcohol as a beverage is continually increasing. The number of its victims sums up a growing total. Sentimentalists have failed to cope with it, and the law has failed to cope with it. In combating it, the world must now find some method more effective than any it has yet employed. When we consider excessive drinkers as a class, we find that a large number of alcoholics are born with tendencies which make alcohol their natural and almost inevitable recourse. As a rule they are naturally highly nervous, or, through some systemic defect, crave abnormally the excitation which alcohol confers. For these reasons, granting favorable opportunity and no great counterbalancing check, they are foredoomed to drink to excess. Some are predisposed to alcoholism by an unstable nervous organism bequeathed to them by intemperate parents or other ancestors; others are drinkers because they do not get enough to eat, or fail, for other reasons than poverty, to be sufficiently nourished; and others, possessing just the favorable type of physique, become alcoholics through worry or grief. All these kinds of people are victims of a habit which, properly speaking, they did not initiate, and of which, therefore, censure must be very largely tempered. Yet they are generally treated as though they had perversely brought about their own disease, a course not more reasonable than the punishment of people for developing nephritis or cancer. The demand for a more effective as well as a more logical treatment of alcoholism has even greater urgency than comes out of this injustice. Much of our best material falls victim to this disease. By general admission the alcoholic often possesses many qualities of mind and temperament which the world admires and pronounces of the utmost value when rightly developed. Even the careless weakling who drinks to excess is proverbially likely to be generous, magnanimous, warmly impulsive, even quixotic. The finest sensibilities, the most delicate perceptions, and the most enthusiastic temperaments--from all of which qualities great constructive results may be expected--are notably the most exposed to alcoholism. A far greater number of its victims than the offhand moralist is inclined to concede have admirable sturdiness of will and dogged persistence. With less, perhaps, they would not have become excessive drinkers. They are alcoholics because with the help of stimulants they have habitually forced themselves to overwork, to bear burdens of responsibility beyond their normal strength, or to overcome physical obstacles, like poor health, eye-strain, and insufficient nourishment. The man who drinks is not necessarily depraved; but under the influence of stimulant he is very likely to drift into associations and environments which will lower his standards until he becomes irresponsible, unadmirable, or even criminal. ARE ALCOHOLICS GETTING A FAIR CHANCE? It is perhaps not going too far to say that most alcoholics have not been given a fair chance by their bodies, their temperaments, or the actual conditions of their lives. The question is, Are they getting a fair chance from society--society whose experience has demonstrated that it must in some way protect itself from them? At present the only public recognition of the alcoholic is manifested through some form of penalization. He loses his employment, he is excluded from respectable society, in extreme cases he is taken into court and subjected to reprimand, fine, or imprisonment. Nothing is done to bring about his reform except as the moral weight of the non-remedial punishment may arouse him to his peril and set his own will at work. Instances where this occurs are rare, because the crisis always comes when, through the influence which alcohol has wrought upon him, his brain has been befogged and his will weakened. Society does virtually nothing to awaken that will or to assist its operation. The man whose drinking has so disarranged him physically or mentally that he is obviously ill is, it is true, taken to the alcoholic ward of some hospital, but even there no effort is made to treat the definite disease of alcoholism. For example, Bellevue and Kings County hospitals, where New York's two "alcoholic wards" exist, are institutions devoted specially to the treatment of emergency cases. As a matter of course, the alcoholics taken to them are merely "sobered up." As soon as they are sobered and have achieved sufficient steadiness of nerve to make their discharge possible, they are turned out again into the liquor-ridden city, with their craving for the alcohol which has just mastered them no weaker, with their resolution to resist its urging no whit stronger, than they were before the crisis in their alcoholic history engulfed them. There is as yet no public institution in New York City where a man, either as a paying or as a charity patient, may go for medical treatment designed to alleviate the craving for liquor; no organized charity makes provision for the medical treatment of the alcoholic. Only three States in the Union attempt to provide more competently than New York State does for this class of unfortunates. The provision they make progressively treats men convicted of drunkenness in the courts with surveillance, threat, colonization, and finally perpetual exclusion from society. Massachusetts has a colony for inebriates, New York is developing one, and Iowa has had one for several years. This, then, is at present the treatment accorded by the public to the victims of this serious disease. There are no clinics devoted to the study of alcoholism, although it is the ailment of probably one third of the sick people in the world to-day. Those who feel disposed to question this statement will be convinced that it is reasonable if they but make a count of the private sanatoriums dealing exclusively with alcoholics in and near New York, and, indeed, dotting and surrounding all our large cities. Connecticut, New Jersey, and Illinois will show a startling number. And it must also be remembered that many of the cases of disease other than inebriety treated in all public hospitals have histories more or less alcoholic, and that the insane asylums are crowded with those gone mad through drink. It is the demand of common sense, not of sentiment alone, that this situation should be altered. Provision never has been made really to help even the man who, having lost control, is anxious to regain it. Inquire of the United Charities in New York and of similar organizations in other cities, and you will learn that they are doing most intelligent work in the treatment of tuberculosis, but that alcoholism is getting only condemnation and punishment, not curative methods; yet there probably are forty alcoholics to every consumptive. Neglect is almost universal, and where that charge cannot be brought, there the errors are incredible and continual. Many are charitable toward the drunkard, giving him their dimes when he begs for them, and thus promoting his inebriety; but society as a whole ignores him until he forces its attention through his helplessness or often through some sin, which might be more rightly charged to alcohol rather than to any natural criminal tendency in the man's nature. ALCOHOLICS SHOULD BE TREATED AS INVALIDS The physician, as things are, can do little with the sufferer from any ailment if his system at the time is impregnated with alcohol, for the alcohol may very likely prove an antidote to the medicines, or, if it does not, may prevent the patient from taking them. An alcoholic does not keep engagements; he cannot be expected to take doses as prescribed by his physician. An alcoholic who is also ill of something else is doubly ill, but he usually gets treatment only for his secondary illness. No man who has lost control through stimulants is well, and until he has been definitely treated, he cannot be expected to act normally. The world does not yet know how to deal with him. Sequestration as it is usually practised--trips round Cape Horn, weeks spent in the woods where liquor cannot be obtained--will never do it. Not only must the physical yearning be eliminated, but the mental willingness to drink must be destroyed before reform can be accomplished. It is at this point that the sentimentalists are wont to fail. A promise made by one in whom the craving for the stimulant exists cannot properly be considered binding, for such a one is not responsible for what he promises. If body proves stronger than the mind in such a battle, he is merely an unfortunate, not really a liar or a weakling. The world's loss through alcohol has been incalculable. No community ever existed which could afford to relinquish the services of all its citizens who drink to excess or even of those who frequently get drunk. Yet society has continually maintained that when encountering the alcoholic it has crime, not disease, to deal with. Hence the crudely ineffective idea of penalization as a preventive. In general the nearest approach which has been made toward physiological treatment--beyond, of course, the mere "sobering up" in an occasional hospital of patients made delirious by drink--has not been through medicine, but regimen, and this regimen has invariably included sudden enforced abstinence. This remedy is worse than the disease. It rarely helps and sometimes kills. I have seen many men who had been pronounced insane after they had been deprived of alcoholic beverages, without proper treatment, but whose minds became perfectly clear as the result of the definite medical care their cases really required. Numbers of far from hopeless alcoholics are yearly being sent to our insane asylums, where there is little chance of their recovery, I think. Furthermore, by merely depriving an alcoholic of alcohol without eliminating his desire for it, we are likely to force him into something worse. Thus the attempt to enforce abstinence upon the man who wants to drink is not only ineffective, but destructive. In making this statement I do not wish to be understood as being opposed to the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages; indeed, I should favor the most drastic restrictions prohibiting the sale of alcohol. If there was never another ounce of alcohol manufactured, the world would be none the loser either medicinally or commercially. My reason for making this statement is that prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages has been largely defeated because there have not been the proper safeguards thrown about the manufacture and sale of drug-store concoctions that can be had in any quantity as substitutes for alcoholic stimulants; and I think the most drastic legislation that could possibly be created on this subject should be enacted and enforced against the druggists selling over their counters such concoctions. The late Dr. Ashbel P. Grinnell, for seventeen years dean of the Vermont Medical College, studied this phase of the subject, gathering interesting statistics. After Vermont's adoption of prohibitory legislation, he sent out to wholesale and retail drug stores, general stores, and groceries that carried drugs as a part of their stock a letter in which were inclosed blanks calling for specific information concerning the sale of habit-forming drugs. Such was his personal standing in the State that he received responses from all but two or three of those whom he addressed, and these indicated that such sales had swelled rapidly until they indicated a daily consumption equal to one and one half grains of opium or its alkaloids for every man, woman, and child in the State. This vast increase in the use of dangerous drugs he attributed solely to the prohibition of the sale of liquor. Thus it must be argued that the attempt to enforce abstinence upon the man who wants to drink is not only ineffective, but destructive. Society may thus save itself from a few drunkards, but is likely to get lunatics or "drug-fiends" in their places. REFORM CANNOT BE ATTAINED BY PUNISHMENT At the foundation of the present treatment of the alcoholic is usually the idea that threatening with punishment can be effective. Actual experience and the slightest examination prove this to be preposterous. Many a man who drinks when he knows he should not, does so because he cannot control himself, and he who has lost his self-control is obviously irresponsible. A threat, or the remembrance of a threat, cannot restrain him. A man who had committed a crime while drunk, but whose whole career had otherwise been reputable, was sentenced to life imprisonment. After he had served six years his friends presented so strong a case to the governor that he was pardoned, but with the warning that if he took one drink he might be returned to prison to complete his sentence. An excellent illustration of the slight influence of fear upon the alcoholic is furnished by the fact that within a very short time he was arrested for public drunkenness. Punishment breeds rebellion, and when you make a man rebellious you are most unlikely to reform him. Punishment has never yet cured a disease. The inflamed brain not only carries grudges, but is almost sure to intensify them. If a man is discharged from his employment or arrested at a time when he is in the abnormal alcoholic state, the effect on him cannot be reformatory; it must be to arouse his resentment, not his repentance. The employer who discharges a good man from his position because of drunkenness not only fails to deal intelligently with the man or with the subject, but may very likely be committing a crime against society by robbing it of a useful citizen and at the same time forcing a useless one upon it. A man taken to court for drunkenness should with great care be properly classified. It should be determined whether he is an habitual drunkard, an occasional drunkard, or an accidental drunkard. There may be hope for the occasional drunkard, there is invariably hope for the accidental drunkard. If one of these is found to have employment at the time of his arrest, great care should be exercised not to let the fact that he has been arrested prejudice his employer against him, and as far as possible he should be spared humiliation. Nothing will more quickly unfit a man for anything worth while than humiliation. To punish such a man with a prison term will help no one. Neither should he be sent back to his liberty without some recognition of the fact that he has been drunk and irresponsible. Any police officer, and more especially any police-court reporter, will testify that almost every man who, having been arrested for drunkenness, is discharged from custody without penalty, for one reason or another, social position, political importance, or previous good character record, will find a saloon within two blocks of the court and take a drink on the way home. He will probably not get drunk,--the impression made by his arrest will remain too strong to permit that,--but he will take a drink. And that and other drinks will help time drive from his mind the memory of the arrest, the cell, the court. And what is true of him who has been arrested and discharged is also true of him who has been arrested and imprisoned. Punishment fails utterly to "reform" the alcoholic. Nor is colonization more effective, except for the hopeless cases. It means segregation. A man once said to me: "I want to be helped, but not at the cost of compulsory association with others seeking help. I know that to be thrown into unavoidable contact with those worse than myself would hopelessly degrade me. I should not be willing to risk that, no matter how much good the treatment might do me." Colonization of the occasional alcoholic stamps him only a little less deeply than his stripes are sure to stamp the criminal who is sent to prison, and its effects upon him and his family are not more desirable than they would be if the process made exactly that of him. He is likely to be barred from employment after his discharge from the colony, and thus find it impossible to reëstablish himself. Moreover, during the period of sequestration it is difficult to devise a plan for the care of the wives and children of those sent into seclusion. At a time when nothing in the way of betterment can be expected of him unless he regains confidence in himself, such treatment does not strengthen, but cripples, a man's spirit. Surveillance after his return will work on his imagination, cowing him into morbidness, until that alone will first weaken his will and then break it down. Too great emphasis, therefore, cannot be placed upon the viciousness of colonization for any but the first of the three classes into which I have said that all men charged in court with drunkenness should be carefully separated. Colonization of the hopeless is advisable only because such men, before they have descended to that stage, have cost their friends and society all that it is advisable to spend on them. If the man who is worth while is to be saved, it must be without the application to him of the brand. So much for the existing public methods of dealing with the alcoholic. The most usual private method is for a man's family or friends, when he has lost control, to send him to some place where he can "get a grip on himself." But he often does not receive in such a place, any more than in the hospital or prison, that specialized treatment which can make that regained grip effective. General treatment, accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of stimulant, will restore his bodily strength, with the result, in nine cases out of ten, that when he emerges from the seclusion he is able to drink more than he was before he was sequestered, and will be sure to come to grief more quickly. In most cases his craving and need for stimulant are in no degree decreased, and in consequence he will frequently relapse while going to the railway station on the homeward journey. An even graver danger is that, while still in full possession of the alcoholic habit, he will in addition contract the hypodermic habit, and any drug habit developed in the alcoholic is the most difficult of cases to deal with successfully. If he does relapse, his friends will almost surely hold him blameworthy and impatiently abandon him as hopeless, believing everything to have been done which can be done. In reality nothing at all useful has been done to help him. He is a sick man, and no attack whatever has been made on his disease. COMPLETE MENTAL CHANGE MUST PRECEDE REFORM This brings us to the kernel of the matter. No man who has become addicted to the use of alcohol can possibly abandon it unless he has first undergone a complete mental change, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this alteration of the mental state will not come until he has experienced a physical revolution. The reason for this is simple. Excessive use of alcohol really deteriorates body and brain tissue, and tissue degeneration transforms for the worse the entire physical and mental make-up of a man. The confirmed alcoholic is in the state which, save in rare instances, nothing short of specialized medical treatment can correct. Mere general building up of bodily tone is as ineffective with alcoholics as is enforced deprivation or punishment. I emphasize this point particularly because many men are afraid to take any treatment for alcoholism lest through it they lose their standing with themselves or with their neighbors. Self-respect must be protected at every stage of the struggle as the patient's only hope. My purpose here is to show that the only chance of reforming most alcoholics lies in giving them opportunity through this physiological change to reëstablish confidence in themselves. In setting about the business of treating an alcoholic, the first step is to realize that he is in an abnormal mental state. To moralize or to appeal in the name of sentiment to a warped and twisted mind is, I believe, sheer waste of time. To the man who has lost control, it must be first restored before he can be put to thinking. You cannot expect the distorted alcoholic brain to be honest with you or with itself. I cannot emphasize too strongly the harm that may come out of simply depriving the chronic alcoholic of his stimulant. I know that there are many relatives and friends and even physicians who, out of pure desperation, feel that they have accomplished much when they are able to put a man where he is unable to get his drink, irrespective of the amount which he has been accustomed to take. I consider the chronic alcoholic one of the most important cases in medicine to deal with successfully. Strange as it may seem to the layman,--and it is just as strange to the physician,--to such a case there is absolutely no other form of artificial stimulants that will take the place of alcohol, and when a patient is deprived of his accustomed stimulant, within twenty-four hours he begins to drift into delirium tremens, which means that the patient is a very sick man, and unless he is properly treated, will, if he lives through the active period of delirium, drift into a "wet brain," or, in other words, alcoholic insanity; and even if the patient survives the latter illness, a large percentage of such cases prove in the end to be hopelessly insane, and about eighty per cent. of the delirium tremens cases that do not get proper medical help die. It is a very serious matter dealing with the chronic alcoholic. Something definite must be done for such a case; deprivation is impossible; simple reduction is sometimes a failure; nothing short of definite medical, hospital work will unpoison this sick man and avoid the complications of delirium, "wet brain," or possible hopeless insanity. The second step is to give the patient that definite medical treatment which will correct his physical condition. Once this change has been effected, you have a man whose system is no longer crying out for liquor, with every nerve a-quiver for it, every tissue thirsting for it. There have been reforms from alcoholism which were not preceded by this physiological change, but they have been rare. The physiological metamorphosis may be accomplished from without, by means of treatment, without assistance from the patient other than mere acquiescence. The mental change can be assisted from without; it cannot be accomplished or maintained by any one except the patient. Despite himself a man may be successfully treated for other ailments, but not for alcoholism. By an intelligent subsequent attitude friends or physicians may help to restore self-confidence, but that is all they can do. After the desire for it has once been eliminated, the patient cannot afford to take any alcohol whatever, and after a proper change of mental attitude he will not wish to. From alcohol he must abstain altogether, even in illness. Let no recovered alcoholic risk relapse because alcohol seems to his physician to be desirable as a medicine. Indeed, the most extreme care should be exercised to avoid medicines containing alcohol even in small percentages, and this will bar most of the proprietary remedies. When he is hungry, let the recovered alcoholic eat; when he is weary, let him be sure to rest; when he feels ill, let him be sure to consult without delay a competent physician. None of these conditions indicates a necessity for alcohol. Thus the man who is not hopeless may be saved. Society owes every alcoholic a fair opportunity to reform; it may be questioned if it owes him repeated opportunities. Many alcoholics never have been and probably never could be useful citizens. Waste of money and emotion on them is lamentable to contemplate; the sums at present thus hopelessly thrown away would aggregate enough really to restore every alcoholic actually curable. Sentimentalists do not like to admit the limitations of useful help, but those limitations do exist, and we should reckon with them. If we do, the man really curable will have all the better chance. A TEST OF THE WORTHY It is possible to discriminate between the curable and the incurable by the simplest of expedients. Usually the question, What is this man willing to do in return for help? will, with its answer, also supply the answer to the inquiry as to his future. No man of sufficient mental fiber to make helping him of any actual value is willing to accept charity. Even if he finds himself at the moment unable to repay the debt involved, he will be anxious to make it a future obligation. My fifteen years of experience have proved to me that the sense of personal obligation is of great moment in this matter. Even when it becomes necessary for a relative, employer, or friend to assist a patient by the payment of his bills, it should be regarded a part of the treatment to consider this a loan, which must be repaid, and not a gift. It follows, sadly enough, that the most hopeless alcoholic is the rich young man to whom financial obligations incurred for treatment mean nothing whatsoever, and to whom responsible employment is unknown. Indeed, it seems well-nigh impossible to reform the vagrant rich. The man who thinks that giving up his alcohol is primarily a privation, although he may admit the definite necessity of this privation, is not likely to reform permanently; but there is hope for that one who declares without apology that drinking is a bad business and that he wishes to be helped to stop it. I cannot say with too great emphasis that self-respecting pride is the main hope of the alcoholic. It must not be overlooked, however, that it is the pride of the curable alcoholic which makes him difficult to reach. To try to help such a man when it is too late is a pitiably usual experience, for not until it is too late does the pride of such a man allow him to apply for help. The man who says, "I will not drink to-day," and finds himself compelled to; who promises himself, but cannot keep his promise, is the man who most deserves help, and is most likely to yield some sort of good return on an investment made in him. Indeed, it is the rare alcoholic, curable or incurable, who of his own initiative submits himself to treatment. Friends must assist; but while the importance of such friendly service cannot be overestimated, it must be of the right kind or it will be worse than useless. Friends of alcoholics too often either sentimentalize or bully when they go about the task of helping, or they allow too little time for the accomplishment of the reform. Successful business men are specially likely to act childishly when dealing with the mighty problem of assisting alcoholics to their feet. They are likely to affirm that there is no excuse for any man who yields to drink. If they have given help before, they are prone to call attention to the fact that their beneficiary has not recompensed their kindness by reforming, and declare, for instance, that they will pay his board another week, but that will be the end of their endeavor. This spirit--and it is the usual spirit--can accomplish nothing; and the money spent in this and other ill-considered and half-hearted efforts to save men has not decreased, but has increased, the dissipation it has sought to stop. Even relatives and intimate friends are likely to become weary of a case which shipment to some private institution, deportation to a ranch, or embarkation on a sailing-vessel for a long voyage has failed permanently to help. Such treatment works no reforms, or almost none. Until the cause of drinking is removed, travel from one place to another in an effort to obtain reform by breaking up old associations will be of no avail, but will, instead, repeat the experience of the old woman in the fairy-tale who was bothered by a goblin. When she uprooted herself from her old home and sought another, the goblin, hidden in a churn, went with her. It was the old woman, not the cottage, he was haunting; it is the man, not his environment, in which the alcoholic habit finds its stronghold. When a patient by intelligent treatment has been put into a receptive state of mind, he should be told to look up his old associates and to them declare himself upon the liquor question. If they are friends, they will congratulate him; if they are not, he will have gained by making certain of it. And there is very little danger that, after he has seen them, he will wish again to make intimates of them; that after, in his sober senses, he has examined the surroundings which they frequent, he will be willing to return to them. Being himself normal, he will wish for normal men as friends; being far more fastidious than he was when he was alcoholic, the old haunts will fill him with disgust. This declaration of himself the man must himself make. Good friends may help him otherwise, and chiefly by refraining from the slightest thing which may by any chance tend to decrease his self-respect and his confidence in his own power to stay reclaimed. What a man needs is a new mind on the subject. CHAPTER VII CLASSIFICATION OF ALCOHOLICS Alcoholics are more easily classified than drug-takers. With few exceptions, alcohol-users have their beginnings in social drinking. Not a few women and boys have had their first taste of alcohol, and may even have acquired a definite alcoholic habit, through the small quantities administered as stimulants by physicians; but in a general way it is as easy and just to absolve the physician from responsibility in the matter of alcoholism as it is easy and just to put a heavy responsibility upon him in the case of the use of drugs. THE DEMAND FOR STIMULANTS In these days all mankind searches for exhilaration. The instinctive demand for it is an inevitable result of the artificial social system which we have built up. We work beyond our strength, and naturally feel the need of stimulants; we play beyond our strength, and as naturally need whips for our vitiated energies. The greatest social disaster of all the ages occurred when first alcoholic stimulation, which is only one step in advance of alcoholic intoxication and narcotization, found its place as an adjunct of good-fellowship. All humanity turns in one way or another to artificial stimulants, and while alcohol and narcotics are the worst among these, we cannot slur the fact that many who would shun these agents as they would a pestilence, turn freely to milder, but not altogether harmless, stimulants, such as tea, coffee, and tobacco. I do not purpose to go into a long dissertation upon the chemical peculiarities of alcohol; I do not purpose to discuss the value or peril of alcohol as food; there are plenty of published chapters telling exactly what alcohol is. I feel that it is my mission to do none of these things, but to endeavor to reveal to the student the most effective way of dealing with a patient who has drifted into a definite alcoholic addiction. THE MAN WHO CANNOT BE SAVED It seems impossible to arouse any enthusiasm or sympathy for the human derelict whose natural weakness is inevitably such that one taste of alcohol means a gallon, and final wreck and ruin. The human cipher, plus alcohol or minus alcohol, it matters not which, means nothing. It may be true that alcohol subtracted from nothing leaves nothing, but it is certain that alcohol added to nothing may mean a peril to society and a serious charge upon it. A man who has achieved nothing up to the point where he has become addicted to excessive alcoholism will rarely repay the trouble involved in an effort to preserve him from his folly, although of course his preservation from it might be of general social service as a means of saving the public money that otherwise might be expended in the reparation of the work of his destructive tendencies, besides the public expense involved in police, court, and prison economy that prevents him from the opportunity of indulgence. But thousands of decent men annually yield to alcohol, and are wrecked by it. The decent and potentially valuable citizen who through overwork, worry, sickness, sorrow, or even through a mistaken conception of social amenities or duties, drifts into excessive alcoholism is a victim of our imperfect social system, and repays remedial effort. Furthermore, such a man is invariably savable if he himself applies for salvation, assists with his own will in its application to his case, and pays his own money for the cure. The proportion of the cases that can be saved among the general run of alcoholics who are sufficiently prosperous or have sufficiently prosperous friends to make them likely to come under my direct observation amounts to about one quarter of the whole. It will be observed that this claim for alcoholics is far below the claim which I have made for drug-users. Where it is found that a case of excessive alcoholism has grown out of a lack of a normal sense of responsibility, where excessive alcoholism has reached the point at which deterioration of the moral nature has set in, or where social and financial entanglements already have resulted, a problem is presented which is complicated and even very doubtful. In such a case far more than definite medical treatment must be resorted to before a complete restoration of the unfortunate to social usefulness can be hoped for. The naturally irresponsible person or the person already led into irresponsibility by alcoholism may be regarded as an almost hopeless proposition. This is peculiarly the case where no financial obligation can be imposed upon the patient as a part of the treatment. The very poor for whose treatment some one else must pay, and the very rich to whom the sum paid for treatment is a matter of no moment, are almost equally hopeless. My long experience has taught me that the man who does not feel a financial responsibility for that which is done for him is usually the least promising of all the cases brought to me. I have found it necessary to regard as a definite part of my treatment the imposition of a monetary obligation. If, for example, the employee of a person or a corporation is sent to me for relief from alcoholic tendencies by his employer or employers, I invariably refuse to accept the case unless it is agreed that the sum paid for the patient's treatment shall be held against him as an obligation to be repaid as soon as possible to those who have advanced it. Even the man who is curable will fail in a psychological realization of the misfortune into which he has actually fallen through alcoholic indulgence unless he himself must pay the fiddler. In the case of a working-man who is brought to me for treatment by his employers, I make a minimum charge as a rule, but only on the condition that with all due speed it is deducted from his pay-envelop. In the case of men of a higher order, as professional employees, heads of departments, etc., I insist in a general way upon following the same line of procedure. I cannot too strongly emphasize my absolute conviction that it is invariably a waste of money and time for an employer or an employing company to attempt to help alcoholics by means of free medical treatments. No good will come from this in the long run, as it never will prove to be worth while. Thus we may classify very rich, utterly poor, and irresponsible inebriates as among the hopeless. From every moral, social, and economic point of view the hopeless inebriate is a liability to the world at large. Throw him in the sieve of respectability, and soon or late he will always prove small enough to slip through the meshes. COLONIZATION OF ALCOHOLICS Among such cases will be found fit subjects for colonization, and these are the only ones who should be treated in this way. No greater social mistake is possible than the colonization and segregation, either in sanatoriums or inebriate farms, of other than utterly hopeless alcoholic cases. The next greatest mistake undoubtedly is society's failure to segregate those who are utterly beyond the pale of hope. These men and women will be less of a burden to their friends and the community after segregation; their segregated existence will not constitute a threat against society of the present and future generations. It is my opinion that these people, men and women, rich and poor, should be sterilized and put at work. It is possible that this plan, if properly carried out, might develop some institutional effort worth while. That at present practised means a waste of time and money. It should be borne in mind that deprivation never yet removed the underlying cause of the desire for alcohol, no matter over how long a period this deprivation may have extended, nor has it ever removed the desire itself. These things can be brought about only by the elimination of the poison from the victim's system. All alcoholics, no matter whether they are preferred risks or hopeless cases, whether they are to be returned to society or isolated and sterilized, should be unpoisoned. SUCCESS OF THE SPECIFIC TREATMENT The first exhaustive test of this treatment for alcoholism was made at Bellevue Hospital, and its results were announced in a pamphlet published by Dr. Alexander Lambert. The hospital in which the work was carried on was without ideal facilities; overcrowded wards and an insufficiency of nurses were among the many handicaps. That the results were more hopeful than anything theretofore accomplished is indicated by the following extracts from articles by Dr. Lambert: RESULTS I am often asked as to the success of this treatment and the percentage of patients who remain free from their addiction. This varies enormously with the individual patients and one can only judge from one's experience. My personal experience is that 11 per cent. of the morphinists and 12 per cent. of the alcoholists return for treatment. Doubling this percentage it still gives us 75 per cent. as remaining free from addiction. Of these a very high percentage are known to have stayed free. SCOPE OF THE TREATMENT This treatment is not offered as a cure of morphinism or as a cure of delirium tremens or chronic alcoholism, as I said in the first article. It will, however, obliterate the terrible craving that these patients suffer when, unaided, they endeavor to get off their drugs or are made to go through the slow withdrawal without some medication to ease them. Compared with the old methods of either slow withdrawal or rapid withdrawal, it is infinitely superior. Deprivation of a drug is in no way equivalent to elimination of that drug from the body. Deprivation causes suffering; elimination relieves it. But neither this combination of drugs nor any other combination known to man can prevent persons, after they are free from their addiction--be it alcohol or morphin--from going out and repoisoning themselves by taking again the drug which has poisoned them and led them on to their habitual intoxication. There are many more morphinists who have unconsciously fallen under the spell of the habit through no fault of their own, than can be said of alcoholists. To any one who has ever tried to break off a patient by the old withdrawal methods when they were taking goodly amounts of the drug, and has struggled to keep them free from it after they have ceased taking it, the difference in the picture when undergoing the treatment by this new method is most striking. With this treatment most patients do not suffer more than a bearable amount of discomfort of hot flashes, slight pains, and the discomfort of their cathartics. When properly administered, this is the full extent of suffering with the majority of patients. Some do not go as far as this, a few suffer more. But when improperly administered, they can suffer as much by this method as by any other. No test more exacting than the one made at Bellevue Hospital could be devised. Most of the cases appearing for treatment in the wards of that institution are of the most advanced type, for the nature of the New York hospital system may be said in a general way to select for Bellevue the least hopeful patients coming from the least hopeful classes of society. If, therefore, anything approaching permanent relief was secured for as many as twenty out of every one hundred cases, an extraordinary efficiency was indicated. Of course the intelligent reader will understand that no man with reason can claim for any treatment the power permanently to divorce from alcohol a man who does not wish to be divorced from it. To take a man whose system has reached that degree of craving for alcohol that he would sign away his right to salvation in exchange for a drink after a brief period of deprivation, if he could not otherwise obtain the alcohol, and to unpoison him so that he feels no necessity or even the slightest desire for a drink or for any stimulant, is to accomplish a great deal of good. It means that his nervous system has been restored to something nearly normal, and that he has been given a chance. The man who has not had this help from outside can do nothing for himself; but having been cleared of alcoholic poison, he is brought into a mental state wherein he finds it possible to estimate reasonably the harm which alcohol has done him. The patient is then in a mental state that enables his relatives and friends to deal with him without being forced to estimate and allow for alcoholic abnormalities in his processes of thought. He is in a physical state that, although it apparently may be worse than that in which the alcohol had placed him, is nevertheless one that will enable his physician to work with him intelligently. Such an achievement seems a perfect piece of medical work of its kind. Properly carried out, my treatment will accomplish exactly this in every instance. It will accomplish it within five days and very likely within three days. I have never known it to require a period of more than seven. When this treatment is properly provided for throughout the country, it will be found that neither large nor costly institutions will be necessary. The stay of every patient is so brief that in the average community a small institution containing only a few beds will be found sufficiently large to meet all local needs. THE HABITUAL DRUNKARD IS NOT A CRIMINAL Legislation restrictive of the sale and use of habit-forming drugs is in reality a dangerous experiment until other legislation that provides for the medical help of those who would thus be deprived has first been written upon our statute-books. I am inclined to think that many of the failures which strew the paths of experimentalists in anti-alcohol movements have been due to a lack of similar foresight. The man who is penalized for drunkenness will usually get drunk again the moment he finds himself at liberty to do so; and this will not be due to any natural depravity upon his part, but, rather, to an almost inevitable result of the bodily craving that thrills his every fiber and for the relief of which nothing whatever has been provided. We shall never make any serious progress in dealing with the most serious evils of alcoholism until we waken to the folly of treating the hard and habitual drinker as a criminal, exacting from him penalties and inflicting upon him disgrace. In every instance the passage of restrictive legislation should be accompanied by the passage of remedial legislation; for provision for the relief of suffering caused by prohibitory laws must be provided. The courts should carefully consider the facilities at the disposition of the communities in which they labor, and in imposing sentences they should be careful not to overtax them. It would be better for a community to keep a victim upon a steady diet of alcohol for weeks while he was waiting for a bed in a curative institution than to risk causing the man's death or insanity by depriving him of his alcohol until the means for relieving his system's acute demand for it were at hand. By following a similar plan, it will be found that the evil of habit-forming drugs can be exterminated in the United States. Whether alcoholism, which is a social vice, ever can be similarly exterminated by like methods I do not know; but I am convinced that an intelligent pursuit of such a policy would do more to accomplish the desired results than ever has been done by other means. HOW SOCIETY TREATS THE VICTIM OF ALCOHOL The care of the inebriate who already comes under the law, and who by his habits forces his way into the state and municipal hospitals, forms one of the great burdens upon society of the present day. It should be regarded as one of the most important problems of modern medicine. No other class of the sick includes so great a number of individual cases. We find, for example, the almost incredible fact staring us in the face that more than one third of all the patients admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City are sent there by alcohol, while less than two per cent. are sent there by habit-forming drugs. I am casting no reflection upon this or any other institution when I say that there and elsewhere little understanding is shown in dealing with these cases. As a matter of fact, no intelligence is anywhere shown in this matter. The policeman who finds a drunken man or woman on his beat arrests the unfortunate with as much wrath and probably as much brutality as he would show a burglar or a murderer; the committing magistrate before whom the victim is taken treats him or her precisely as he would treat a criminal; in the various penal institutions to which this man or woman is committed the idea upon which their whole treatment is based is that of punishment. It seems to me that the imperfections of this system might most easily be corrected by the committing magistrates. It is the largest problem which confronts these officials; therefore they might very well afford the time necessary to study it carefully. Concerted action by this group of the judiciary might accomplish worthy results almost immediately. As matters are at present organized, the committing magistrate may do any one of four things with an inebriate who has been brought before him: he can release him without penalty, he can put him on probation, he can fine him, he can imprison him. I have yet to discover any one capable of telling me why measures of this sort can possibly be expected to have a beneficial effect upon a person who through over-indulgence has set up in his system a demand for alcohol. I have no wish to appear publicly as the critic of our petit judiciary, but no class of men is less informed upon this subject--the one subject upon which they should be best informed--than the committing magistrates not only of the United States, but of every other country in the world. A year or two ago I made a somewhat comprehensive European tour, and studied carefully the methods of dealing with inebriety. Nowhere did I find the faintest indication of a tendency for real intelligence in regard to the matter. We insist upon special education for the professors of our colleges; yet the influence of a committing magistrate upon the human life that is brought under his direct sphere of influence may be greater even than that of a college professor or a college student, and of our committing magistrate we make no educational demand whatsoever, and have never established even a minimum standard of intelligent information for our petit bench. It is my belief that expert sociological knowledge should be required of every man considered for the important post of committing magistrate. RESPONSIBILITY OF THE MAGISTRATE The fact that in New York State a colony for inebriates has been established by law makes this special knowledge more necessary there than it was before. Wherever such institutions have been founded, and the courts may contribute to their population by commitment, an unintelligent magistrate finds it within his power not rarely, but every day, to do more harm during one session of his court than he is likely to find it within the scope of his intelligence to do good during the course of a year's sitting. I find it impossible to be otherwise than bitterly pessimistic in regard to the work our courts are doing with alcoholics. Under the New York law, a man taken for the first time before a magistrate and charged with alcoholism must either be fined or told that if he again appears charged with that offense, he will be subject to commitment to the inebriate farm for a period of not less than three months. By this procedure not one thing has been accomplished toward the salvation of the man. If he is not committed, but is only threatened and ordered to report weekly or oftener to the probation officer or the court itself, the greatest of all damage has been done, since the man's pride has been depreciated. After definite medical treatment has been administered to an inebriate, the only other thing that can be done is to make an intelligent appeal to his pride. In this appeal is included at least one half the possibilities of his salvation. Nowhere save in a few instances in New York City is the alcoholic case treated with medical intelligence, and nowhere in the world is the balance of the necessary treatment--the right appeal to pride--carried out with any degree of common sense. I find one system of special horror in this treatment of inebriates--committing a man for three months, then for six months, and then for twelve. No more certain means could be devised to increase the harm done by alcohol to the community. Not only does this course fail to help the man in any measure whatsoever, but it increases the unspeakable harm which his misfortune must inflict upon his family. In most instances such a commitment not only means the man's separation from his means of livelihood for the period of its duration, but his discharge from it as the result of this utterly inefficient and legally inflicted disgrace. The whole effort of society in dealing with the alcoholic should be to prevent those things which at present are the very ones which it accomplishes--mental depression, loss of pride, disgrace, and loss of social position. I am inclined to think that as the world grows older it will be more and more convinced of the inefficiency of punishment, and more and more aware of the necessity of reform through helpfulness. It seems obvious that penalization, probationary influences, or colonization must be utterly useless in removing from a man's physical system the craving for alcohol. Therefore it is equally obvious that their only successful mission must be to remove the victim of drink from contact with society for the length of time during which his sentence is operative. The man who is in all probability incurable is not put permanently out of harm's way by these means, or placed where he can do no harm; the man who has good stuff in him but who has through chance used drugs to excess upon one or more occasion is offered by these methods nothing in the nature of a fair show toward regaining his usefulness. I see the possibility of many serious results in New York's board of inebriety plan. These, I think, have their beginning principally in the fact that nothing along the line of classification has been devised or, as far as I know, has been even suggested. If its work were made efficient by means of the adoption of a plan of classification, this board really might become a great boon to society. Suppose that instead of penalizing the man who has been taken before it for inebriety, the board, after intelligent and detailed investigation has shown that the man is probably curable, should provide for him the necessary definite medical treatment to relieve his system from the ill effects of alcohol, and then should bring him into contact with psychological and analytical minds capable of enforcing upon him a realization of the terrible meaning of alcoholism. Without having affected the man's pride it would send him back to his family and his task with a cool brain and a new point of view. Would not this be a vastly better way of dealing with him than those which are at present followed? There is no reason why some small charge should not be enforced against such beneficiaries of an enlightened public intelligence who might be found able to meet it. This would accomplish two things: it would reduce the public expense of the system and it would add very greatly to the mental impression left upon the mind of the person for whose benefits the State was working. Furthermore, if a magistrate had once formed the habit of feeling personal interest in individual cases probably his first act after a man had appeared before him would be to send for the accused's employer and make the truth of the situation clear to him. The mere fact that a man has once been intoxicated should not justify his discharge from employment in which at normal times he is useful and efficient. Both for his sake and for his employer's, efforts should be made toward reform; for it is not infrequently the case that the man who has lost control through drink is in normal conditions the best man in the office, factory, or workshop. That is one of the chief tragedies of the problem of alcohol. There is no subject upon which society more sadly needs enlightenment. In this educational process it is probable that the magistrate will be the largest factor. He must realize that he is not society's instrument of vengeance, but society's instrument of helpfulness. It should be his aim not to punish, but to protect and preserve. He must realize that scientific knowledge of the problems which confront him is as necessary to his real efficiency as scientific knowledge is to the analytical chemist. The heart of a conscientious magistrate should thrill with a special sympathy, should be aware of a great responsibility, whenever there appears for judgment in his court a man who for the first time has lost control of himself through drink. To mar this man forever is an easy task; to make him may be difficult, but it is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility. The hard drinker who for the first time is haled into court as the consequence of intoxication never is willing to concede either to himself or to others that he needs help. His soul revolts before the mere thought that he has more than temporarily, even momentarily, lost control. He is likely to deny that he has developed a craving for alcohol, and emphatically and indignantly to assert that his drunkenness has been merely incidental to the social spirit, an accident, and in general a thing of no primary importance. The thought that without help there is even a possibility that he may drift from bad to worse is abhorrent to him, and is indignantly repudiated. He will cheerfully admit that many other men of his acquaintance have fallen victims to the effects of alcohol, but he will vehemently deny the possibility of a similar fall on his own part. The magistrate who thoroughly understands all the details of the alcoholic's psychology, and who is sufficiently adroit of mind and speech to take advantage of this understanding, giving the culprit who has been brought before him every benefit of a carefully and intelligently organized knowledge of alcoholism, could not fail to be one of the most useful of society's servants and safeguards. The man or woman taken before a magistrate as the result of alcoholic over-indulgence offers a peculiarly perplexing problem. Society has placed itself in a highly inconsistent position as regards its relation to alcohol. It permits a man to pay it for the privilege to sell alcohol to any one who asks for it, the only restriction being that he may not sell it to a person who already has "had too much." This leaves the decision as to a customer's needs and capacity, as well as perils, to be rendered by the man behind the bar. Thus to an extent we intrust daily the destinies of an appreciable proportion of our public to a class of men who certainly have done little to earn general confidence. In nearly every State, if not in all, laws exist imposing penalties upon the dealer in alcohol who sells drink to a person who is already in a state of intoxication; but a careful study of the records of our courts would fail to reveal any large number of liquor dealers who have been charged with this offense, while it is obvious that most persons found upon the public streets or elsewhere in a state of intoxication must have had alcohol served to them at a time when they had already "had enough." As a matter of fact, the intelligent mind cannot fail to realize that the man who has "had enough" invariably has had too much. This is only one of many reflections which must occur to the inquiring mind occupying itself with this problem. We have made innumerable laws dealing with, and fondly supposed to control, the sale of alcoholic beverages, but as a matter of fact only one sort of law has ever been devised which possibly could control it, and that law provides for absolute prohibition. THE NEED OF AN ORGANIZED EFFORT TO HELP THE ALCOHOLIC If the world wishes to be relieved in any measure from the human waste attributable to alcohol, the time must speedily arrive when municipalities will recognize it as their duty to provide definite medical help for every man who wishes to be freed from the craving for alcohol, and who cannot afford to pay for treatment. It must be recognized that it is society's duty to hold out this helping hand to every man who has a job and is in danger of losing it through the trap which society itself has set for his feet by authorizing, and thereby encouraging, the sale of alcoholic intoxicants. Notwithstanding the presence in our social fabric of innumerable charitable bodies, churches, religious societies, and other groups of people who mean well and work hard to aid the unfortunates, it is a fact that nowhere in the United States or, as far as I know, anywhere else is there a single organization which is effectually working along definite and intelligent lines for the preservation of the endangered man who is still curable. No mother, wife, employer, or magistrate can effectively reason with a man whose brain is befogged by alcohol, for that man cannot reason with himself. Tears, threats of imprisonment, and loss of position do not have upon him their normal reaction. He is a sick man whose mental and physical condition is abnormal; it must be made normal before anything real can be done toward his assistance. There is but one way out of the sad muddle in which alcohol has plunged certain branches of our judiciary. In every city must be established emergency hospital wards to which committing magistrates may send persons with excessive alcoholic or drug histories. Treatment in these emergency wards will be neither difficult nor costly. Once this has been done, the patient may be returned to court, where his clarified brain will greatly assist the magistrate in deciding upon the proper course for his assistance and the protection of society. The commitment of the alcoholic to an ordinary penal institution is a perilous expedient. The experiences which various authorities connected with the Department of Correction in the City of New York have had with drug and alcohol smugglers indicate a condition that exists more or less generally in penal institutions throughout the country. The drug-user or alcoholic who has been locked up in a prison is in no way relieved of his craving for the substance which is harming him, and his efforts to obtain it will be desperate. The class of men who surround him as prison guards is not of a high type. If he has money, they will get it from him if they can; and if he has friends outside, especially if they themselves be drug or liquor addicts, they will attempt to smuggle to him what he craves. Inasmuch as it is much easier to smuggle drugs into a prison than it is alcohol, many alcoholics have been changed in prison to drug-takers, and after this change the metamorphosis for the mere drunkard into an actual criminal has often occurred. The administration of a definite medical treatment should therefore be regarded as imperative in all cases of drug addiction, and in most cases of alcoholic addiction that appear in our prisons. In the cases of alcoholic addictions, imprisonment should end, in the case of first offenders, with the completion of the treatment and the restoration of the subject's mind to normal. I cannot too strongly or too frequently reiterate the statement that there is no more desperate illness than chronic alcoholism. Purification from the physical demand for alcohol at the place of commitment of men taken before the courts upon the charge of intoxication might save the public from a greater burden than any other available medical process. Drunkenness cannot rightfully be considered as a crime as long as society sanctions the sale of alcohol and profits by it; therefore the punishment of alcoholics as criminals is an intolerable injustice. That it is also an economic waste is as clearly apparent. CHAPTER VIII THE INJURIOUSNESS OF TOBACCO When tobacco was first introduced into Europe the use of it was everywhere regarded as an injurious habit, and on this account for a while it made slow progress. It is no less injurious now than it ever was,--we have simply grown used to it,--and it was only when people became used to its injuriousness that the habit began to make great strides. We find nowadays that smokers as well as non-smokers are suspicious of any form of tobacco-taking to which they have not become used. Smokers who for the first time meet chewers or snuffers or those who "dip" tobacco, as in the South, are affected unpleasantly. Smokers keep on finding chewers disgusting, and smokers of pipes and cigars frequently object to the odor of cigarettes. Nothing more strikingly illustrates how addicted people may become to a habit than the smoking and chewing of the traditional Southern gentleman of the old school, whom any other personal uncleanliness would have horrified. Young men most fastidious about their apparel seem quite unaware that it is saturated with the smell of tobacco. The odor of a cigarette is probably as offensive to some of those who do not smoke as any other smell under heaven. Yet such is the power of habit that we tolerate all these things. If we could begin all over again, we should find the same general objection to smoking that existed in Europe when the habit first began. Our chief need, then, is a new mind on the subject. How can we get it? The circumstance of my giving up smoking eighteen years ago may have some slight significance in this connection. I was smoking hard, and began to have a vague feeling that it was hurting me. I had been playing whist at a late hour in my room at a hotel, and when I finally went to bed I could not sleep for a long while. I awoke with a bad taste and a parched mouth in a room heavy with stale smoke and unsightly with cigar-butts lying everywhere. Suddenly a disgust for the whole habit seized me, and I broke off at once and completely. After a week or so, when the first feeling of seediness and uneasiness and depression had worn away, I found my appetite and concentration and initiative increasing. You will observe that it was not until I began to regard smoking as harmful that I saw it was also filthy. I had a new mind on the subject. I am trying to give my readers a new mind on the subject, and if they have not come to suspect the evil of smoking, they will naturally ask me to prove that it is harmful. Let us begin at the bottom. Does it do any one any physical good? Arguments in favor of tobacco for any physical reason are baseless. It does not aid digestion, preserve the teeth, or disinfect, and it is not a remedy for anything. The good it does--and no habit can become general, of course, unless it does apparent good--can only be mental. Let me admit at once that smoking confers mental satisfaction. It seems to give one companionship when one has none, something to do when one is bored, keeps one from feeling hungry when one is hungry, and blunts the edge of hardship and worry. This sums up the agreeable results of tobacco. There are one or two more specialized agreeable results which I exclude at this moment because they are only temporary. The results I mention--let me admit at once--are real, and both immediate and apparent. On the other hand, the injurious results, after one has become inured to tobacco poison, are both unapparent and delayed. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF TOBACCO As to the physiological and toxic effects of tobacco there is much difference of opinion. Everybody knows that the first chew or the first smoke is apt to create nausea; and that no matter how long a man has been smoking, a little lump of the tar which has collected in his pipe will sicken him. Nicotine is in itself highly toxic, but is very volatile and is absorbed only from the portion of the cigar or cigarette held in the mouth. The products of combustion of tobacco are chemical substances which are also toxic, and nausea naturally stops the smoker before symptoms of acute poisoning result. One must look, then, for symptoms of _slow_ poisoning. The popular belief that tobacco stunts growth is supported by the fact that non-smokers observed for four years at Yale and Amherst increased more in weight, height, chest-girth, and lung capacity than smokers did in the same period. Every athlete knows that it hurts the wind; that is, injures the ability of the heart to respond quickly to extra work. It also affects the precision of eye and hand. A great billiard-player who does not smoke once assured me that he felt sure of winning when his opponent was a smoker. A tennis-player began to smoke at the age of twenty-one, and found that men whom he had before beaten with ease could now beat him. Sharp-shooters and riflemen know that their shooting is more accurate when they do not smoke. But you may say: "The athletes and billiard-players and the rest are experts. I am an average man, making average use of my faculties. Besides, I am not contending that excessive smoking isn't injurious, and I will even concede that the limit of excess varies with the man. But is it not true that harmful results of average smoking for the average man are rare?" In answer, let me on my side admit that they are--the _apparent_ harmful results. We are, however, very ignorant of the effect of small, continued doses of the various tobacco poisons. All drugs comparatively harmless, such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, produce a highly injurious effect when taken in repeated small doses. Just what effect the use of tobacco engenders we cannot absolutely know, but no physician doubts that smoking may be a factor in almost any disease from which his patient is suffering. There can be, for instance, no question that smoke simply as smoke irritates the mucous membrane of the bronchial tubes and renders them more susceptible to infections; by irritating the mucous membrane of the nose and throat it tends to produce catarrh and therefore catarrhal deafness. It would therefore seem fair to state that the man who does not use tobacco is less susceptible to disease and contagion, and recovers more quickly from a serious illness or operation. From this we should expect to find that tobacco shows most in later life, when vitality is ebbing and the machinery of the body is beginning to wear. It is in his middle age that a man begins to feel the harm. In short, though we know only the precise or immediate effect of nicotine and only _some_ of the _morbid processes_ which excessive smoking may produce, it is likely that the worst aspect of tobacco is something that we do not know very much about--its tendency to reduce a man's general vigor. The dominant characteristic of tobacco is the fact that it heightens blood-pressure. The irritant action by which it does this sometimes leads to still more harmful results. Its second action is narcotic: it lessens the connection between nerve-centers and the outside world. These two actions account for all the good and all the bad effects of tobacco. As a narcotic, it temporarily abolishes anxiety and discomfort by making the smoker care less about what is happening to him. But it is a well-known law of medicine that all the drugs which in the beginning lessen nerve-action increase it in the end. Thus smoking finally causes apprehension, hyper-excitability, and muscular unrest. Here this inevitable law seems to give contradictory results. Every physician knows that an enormous amount of insomnia is relieved by smoking, even if it is at the expense of laziness the next day; at the same time every physician knows that most excessive smokers are troubled with insomnia. CIGARETTES In using tobacco we take the poison into the tissues. The chewer and the snuffer get the effect through the tissue with which the tobacco comes in contact. The cigarette-smoker almost invariably inhales, and he gets the most harm merely because the bronchial mucous membrane absorbs the poison most rapidly. The tobacco itself is no more harmful than it is in a pipe or a cigar. Indeed, it is often less so in the cheaper grades, for, being less pure, it contains less nicotine. Furthermore, the tobacco is generally drier in a cigarette, and for that reason the combustion is better, for the products of the combustion of dry and damp tobacco are not the same. But since it is a little difficult to inhale a pipe or a cigar without choking, the smoke products of a pipe or cigar are usually absorbed only by the mouth, nose, and throat, whereas the inhaled smoke of the cigarette is absorbed by the entire area of windpipe and bronchial tubes. If you wish to see how much poison you inhale, try the old experiment of puffing cigarette smoke through a handkerchief, and then, having inhaled the same amount of smoke, blow it out again through another portion of the same handkerchief. The difference in the discoloration will be found to be very marked. You will _note_ that in the second case there is hardly any stain on the handkerchief: the stain is on your windpipe and bronchial tubes. If a man inhales a pipe or a cigar, he gets more injury simply because he gets stronger tobacco; but a man never inhales a pipe or a cigar unless he is a smoker of long standing or unless he has begun with cigarettes. Besides allowing one to inhale, a cigarette engenders more muscular unrest than any other kind of smoke. Because of its shortness, cheapness, and convenience, one lights a cigarette, throws it away, and then lights another. This spasmodic process, constantly repeated, increases the smoker's restlessness while at the same time satisfying it with a feeling that he is _doing something_. Yet despite the fact that cigarette-smoking is the worst form of tobacco addiction, virtually all boys who smoke start with cigarettes. It is generally believed that in the immature the moderate use of tobacco stunts the normal growth of the body and mind, and causes various nervous disturbances, especially of the heart--disturbances which it causes in later life only when smoking has become excessive. That is to say, though a boy's stomach grows tolerant of nicotine to the extent of taking it without protest, the rest of the body keeps on protesting. Furthermore, many business men will tell you that tobacco damages a boy's usefulness in his work. This is necessarily so, since anything which lowers vitality creates some kind of incompetence. For the same reason the boy who smokes excessively not only is unable to work vigorously, but he does not wish to work at all. This result, apparent during growth, is only less apparent after growth, when other causes may step in to neutralize it. Tobacco, in bringing about a depreciation of the nerve-cells, brings, together with physical results like insomnia, lowered vitality, and restlessness, their moral counterparts, like irritability, lack of concentration, desire to avoid responsibility and to travel the road of least resistance. If there were some instrument to determine it, in my opinion there would be seen a difference of fifteen per cent. in the general efficiency of smokers and non-smokers. The time is already at hand when smokers will be barred out of positions which demand quick thought and action. Already tobacco is forbidden during working hours in the United States Steel Corporation. Many men were prejudiced against smoking until they went to college. There they found themselves "out of it" because they did not smoke. More than that, they found that the smoke of social gatherings irritated their eyes and throat, and they thought that smoking might keep them from finding other people's smoke annoying. A man who had left off smoking told me that at the first "smoker" he attended afterward he found the air offensive and his eyes smarting intolerably, although when he had been helping to create the clouds in which they were sitting he had not noticed it at all. These two experiences are common. For this reason, the social inducements to smoking are considerably greater than those to drinking. The man who refuses to drink may feel as much "out of it" as the man who refuses to smoke, but he has ordinarily, and in the presence of gentlemen, no other penalty to pay. He undergoes no discomfort in spending the evening in a roomful of drinkers, and he can manage to find things to drink that will have for them the semblance of good-fellowship. It is the social features that attend the acquiring and the leaving-off the habit which make smoking difficult to attack. In its present state, even if a boy were thoroughly familiarized in school with the harm tobacco would do him, he would still be seduced by the social side of it.[1] When a habit fosters or traditionally accompanies social intercourse, it is all the harder to uproot. What grounded opium so strongly in China was its social side. The Chinese lacked social occupation, and it was not the custom of the country for a man to find it with his friends and family, though no people are more socially inclined. Smoking opium became their chief social activity; they gathered together in the one heated room of the house to gossip over their pipes. We smoke tobacco as the Chinese smoke opium, "for company" and in company. Thus one must provide strong reasons to make a man give it up. He will not do so because it costs him something; he expects to pay for his pleasures. When a man has actually gone to pieces, it is comparatively easy to convince him that he ought to give up what is hurting him; but the average man has not been excessive enough for that, and has never brought himself to the point of serious conscious injury. Even a physician cannot with any certainty tell the average moderate smoker whether tobacco is hurting him. Consequently, if one would make this man stop smoking, especially when he sees that leaving off has caused some people more apparent discomfort than all their smoking did, one's only chance is to make him change his mental attitude. I hope to assist in doing this by calling attention to the fact that tobacco not only prepares the way for physical diseases of all kinds, as any physician will tell you, but also, as long investigation has shown me, for alcoholism and for drug-taking. TOBACCO, ALCOHOL, AND OPIUM The relation of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and alcohol and opium is a very close one. For years I have been dealing with alcoholism and morphinism, have gone into their every phase and aspect, have kept careful and minute details of between six and seven thousand cases, and I have never seen a case, except occasionally with women, which did not have a history of excessive tobacco. It is true that my observations are restricted to cases which need medical help,--the neurotic temperaments,--but I am prepared to say that for the phlegmatic man, for the man temperamentally moderate, for the outdoor laborer, whose physical exercise tends to counteract the effect of the tobacco and the alcohol he uses--in short, for all men, tobacco is an unfavorable factor which predisposes to worse habits. A boy always starts smoking before he starts drinking. If he is disposed to drink, that disposition will be increased by smoking, because the action of tobacco makes it normal for him to feel the need of stimulation. He is likely to go to alcohol to soothe the muscular unrest, to blunt the irritation, he has received from tobacco. From alcohol he goes to morphine for the same reason. The nervous condition due to excessive drinking is allayed by morphine, just as the nervous condition due to excessive smoking is allayed by alcohol. Morphine is the legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, drink, opium, is the logical and regular series. The man predisposed to alcohol by the inheritance of a nervous temperament will, if he uses tobacco at all, almost invariably use it to excess; and this excess creates a restlessness for which alcohol is the natural antidote. The experience of any type of man is that if he takes a drink when he feels he has smoked too much, he finds he can at once begin smoking all over again. For that reason, the two go together, and the neurotic type of man too often combines the two. Tobacco thus develops the necessity for alcohol. It is very significant that in dealing with alcoholism no real reform can be expected if the patient does not give up tobacco. Again, most men who have ever used alcohol to excess, if restricted voluntarily or involuntarily, will use tobacco to excess. This excess in tobacco produces a narcotic effect which temporarily blunts the craving for alcohol. Another way of saying the same thing is that when smokers are drunk they no longer care to smoke, a fact that is a matter of common observation. This means that there is a nervous condition produced alike by alcohol and tobacco. When a man gets it from drinking, he does not keep on trying to get it from smoking. As well as reacting upon each other, the two habits keep each other going. It is not altogether by haphazard association that saloons also sell cigars; they sell them for the same reason that they give away pretzels--to make a man buy more drinks. This relationship between tobacco and alcoholism is not understood by the public. It has been absolutely demonstrated that the continued use of tobacco is a tremendous handicap upon the man who is endeavoring to free himself from the habit of alcoholic indulgence. Only a man of the strongest character will persist in abstaining from alcohol unless he also abstains from tobacco, even after he has undergone the most intelligent medical treatment. In the system of a man already disposed toward alcoholic stimulation, no one thing will prove so positive a factor toward creating the sense of need as the use of tobacco. Physiological action of tobacco is to create muscular (motor) unrest. Most habitual smokers consume every day more than enough tobacco to carry them far beyond the point where its stimulating effect ends and its narcotic effect begins. Where this habitually occurs, the definitely toxic effect is notable, and this results in a demand for that stimulation which the tobacco itself once furnished, but now does not. Here is an evil effect of tobacco that is rarely understood and almost never admitted. OPIUM AND CIGARETTES IN CHINA Current history affords us a striking proof of the closeness of the relation between tobacco and opium. I have spent a good deal of time in the Orient in the interest of those who were trying to subdue the opium evil, and I may add that there is in China to-day a flourishing American tobacco concern which has grown rich out of the sale of cigarettes. With the extremely cheap Chinese labor, the concern was able to sell twenty cigarettes for a cent of our money. Up to the beginning of this enterprise (about 1900), the Chinese had never used tobacco except in pipes, and in very minute quantities in rolling their own crude cigarettes. The concern was sending salesmen and demonstrators throughout the country to show the people how to smoke cigarettes. Now it is estimated that one half of the cigarette consumption of the world is in China. In trying to lessen the opium evil, in which they have to a considerable extent succeeded, the Chinese are merely substituting the cigarette evil. It is well known to the confirmed opium-smoker that he needs less opium if he smokes cigarettes. _The Chinese to-day are spending twice as much money for tobacco as for opium._ I once said to a Chinese public man: "I can help you to get rid of the opium habit because you have found that you _must_ get rid of it, but I cannot help you to get rid of the evil you are substituting for it, for not even America has yet found out that she _must_ get rid of it. Your cure, I fear, is worse than your disease; and _our_ disease has no cure--until we change our mental attitude." If any one thinks that China is the gainer by substituting the one drug habit for the other, I beg leave to differ with him. The opium-smoker smokes in private with other smokers, and is thus not offensive to other people. He is not injuring non-smokers, or arousing the curiosity of boys, or polluting the atmosphere, or creating a craving in others. In the West the opium habit is generally condemned because the West is able to look with a new and unbiased mind on a drug habit that is not its own. I consider that cigarette-smoking is the greatest vice devastating humanity to-day, because it is doing more than any other vice to deteriorate the race. LIKE ACTION OF THE THREE HABITS The more you compare smoking and drinking and drugging, the more resemblances you see. Opium, like tobacco and alcohol, ceases to stimulate the moment the effect of it is felt: it then becomes a narcotic. The history of the three as a resort in an emergency is precisely the same. At the time when the average man feels that he needs his faculties most, he will, if addicted to any of the three, deliberately seek stimulation from it. He does not intend to go on long enough to get the narcotic effect, since that would be clearly defeating his own aims; he means to stop with the stimulant and sedative effect, but that he is unable to do. The inhaler of tobacco gets his effect in precisely the same way that the opium-smoker gets his--the rapid absorption by the tissues of the bronchial tubes. It may be news to the average man to hear that the man who smokes opium moderately suffers no more physical deterioration than the man who inhales tobacco moderately. The excessive smoker of cigarettes experiences the same mental and physical disturbance when deprived of them that the opium-smoker experiences when deprived of opium. The medical treatment necessary to bring about a physiological change in order to destroy the craving is the same. The effect of giving up the habit is the same--cessation of similar physical and nervous and mental disturbances, gain in bodily weight and energy, and a desire for physical exercise. A like comparison, item for item, may be made with alcohol, but it is the similarity with opium which I wish particularly to emphasize here. TOBACCO AND MORAL SENSITIVENESS Morphine, as is very well known, will distort the moral sense of the best person on earth; it is part of the action of the drug. Since the way morphine gets its narcotic effect is very similar to the way tobacco gets its effect, one would naturally suppose that tobacco would produce in a milder degree something of the same moral distortion. This may seem a startling conclusion, but change your mental attitude and observe. Have not smokers undergone a noticeable moral deterioration in at least one particular? They have a callous indifference to the rights of others. This happens with all habitual indulgence, of course, but is it not carried more generally to an extreme with tobacco than with anything else? Few men quarrel with a hostess who does not offer them drinks, but all habitual smokers expect that, regardless of her own desires, she will let them smoke after dinner. "We gave up the fight against tobacco in our drawing-rooms long ago," said a famous London hostess. "We found it was a case of no smoke, no men." Respectable men in New York City who would not dream of deliberately breaking any other law carry cigars and cigarettes into the subway despite the fact that it is forbidden and that it is vitally necessary to keep the air there as pure as possible. A gentleman is more annoyed at being forced to consult another's preference about not smoking than about anything else that could arise in social intercourse, and is often at small pains to conceal his impatience with old-fashioned people who believe they have rights which should be respected. On all sides the attitude seems to be, "What right has any one to object to my smoking?" The matter is really on just the _opposite_ basis, "What right has any one to smoke when other people object to it?" If a man _must_ get drunk, we say he shall get drunk where he is a nuisance only to himself and to others of the same mind. If a man feels the need of interlarding his conversation with obscenity and grossness, we say he may not compel us to listen to him. But a smoker may with impunity pollute the air, offend the nostrils, and generally make himself a nuisance to everybody in his neighborhood who does not practise his particular vice. Is this not a kind of moral obtuseness? Change your mental attitude and consider. The action of a narcotic produces a peculiar cunning and resource in concealment; it develops, when occasion arises, the desire to deceive and, whether occasion arises or not, the desire to shift obligation and evade direct responsibility. Tobacco does this more mildly than opium, and it does so more appreciably with boys than with men; but, as with opium, it is part of the narcotic effect in all cases. Let it always be remembered that if a man smokes and inhales tobacco excessively he is narcotizing himself more than when he smokes opium moderately. CHAPTER IX TOBACCO AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE Never yet has tobacco done any good to a man. Its direct effect has been harmful to millions, and indirectly it has harmed many other millions by setting up a systematic demand for stimulants. Of all the widely used products of nature, tobacco finds the least excuse in real necessity. Virtually the only medical use to which the active principle of tobacco (nicotine) can be put is the production of nausea, and there are many other drugs that can be used with much better effect for that purpose. If one will study the pharmacopoeia, he will find that, next to prussic acid, nicotine is rated as the most powerful known poison, and is not credited with a single curative property. From a medical point of view it is valueless. The social standing of the man who took it from the tepees of the North American Indians to England is mainly responsible for its taking root there, for the acquisition of the tobacco habit is a painful process. Nature's revolt against it is much more instinctive than her revolt against alcohol. Furthermore, like any other form of poison, its effects are most immediate and evident upon the young and weak; for they are easier to poison than the mature and strong. THE FULL EFFECT OF THE TOBACCO HABIT IS NOT YET APPARENT To one who has made a careful study of the effects of tobacco the prospect for the future is not encouraging. The habit was already widespread before the extensive manufacture, or even knowledge, of cigarettes was introduced into the United States, and this later form of smoking, which is easily the most obnoxious and harmful of all, has not yet had time to disclose its full power for injury. For it is in the inhaling of tobacco that the smoker receives his greatest injury, and the habit of inhalation is peculiar to the cigarette-smoker. While there are smokers of cigars and pipes who inhale their smoke, it will almost always be found upon investigation that they acquired the habit of inhalation through smoking cigarettes. The average man with a cigarette history gets no pleasure out of smoke which he does not inhale. Even if a cigarette is made of the best tobacco, undrugged, and wrapped in the purest of rice-paper, the mere fact that the smoke is almost invariably inhaled suffices to make cigarette-smoking the most harmful form of the tobacco habit. Inhalation is harmful because it not only exposes the absorbent tissues of the mouth and upper throat to the smoke, but thrusts the smoke throughout the throat, lungs, and nose, all of which are lined with a specially sensitive membrane of great absorptive capacity. Thus from the smoke of the cigarette the system takes up many times as much poison as it takes up from the uninhaled smoke of the pipe or cigar. Indeed, it may be added that the purer and higher the grade of the tobacco, the more harmful it is to the smoker, for the more will it tempt him into inhalation. Another danger of certain brands of cigarettes, principally the costly imported and specially flavored brands, is that to the extraordinary dangers of nicotine-poisoning found in all cigarettes are added in these higher grades the perils of their flavoring materials, from which even so dangerous a drug as opium is not always absent. I believe that the evil effects of tobacco will be much more apparent in the next generation than they are in this; for forty years ago, when I was a boy, the lad who decided to begin to smoke knew nothing of cigarettes, and had only the pipe and the cheap cigar to choose between, forms so overpowering that they frequently discouraged him at the start. Thus many were undoubtedly saved from the tobacco habit; but now, with mild cigarettes upon the market, at very low prices, and in most States found on sale in every candy store, the situation has perils undreamed of at that earlier period. It is noteworthy that cigarettes are "doped" expressly to allay nausea, which is the normal effect of tobacco-smoking upon the uninured human system, and at the same time to quiet that motor unrest which is the first symptom to follow the introduction of nicotine into the human system. The narcotic effect of the adulterant drugs is therefore to ease the smoker's first pang and to make him more quickly the victim of the tobacco habit. The smoker of cigarettes gets his narcotic by precisely the same mechanical process through which the opium-smoker gets his. The opium-smoker would find it far too long and expensive a process to obtain the desired effect from opium by taking it into his stomach; but by burning a very much smaller quantity of the drug and bringing it into contact with the sensitive absorbent tissues of the throat and nose, he obtains the narcotic effect that his system craves. THE USE OF TOBACCO DESTROYS MORAL DISCIPLINE I am convinced that the use of cigarettes is responsible for the undoing of seventy-five per cent. of the boys who go wrong. Few boys wait until they are mature and their resistance is at its maximum before they begin the use of tobacco. It would be remarkable if they did wait, for their fathers and their older brothers are constantly blowing smoke into their faces. Even where restrictive laws exist, minors find no difficulty in obtaining cigarettes, so that children of the age that is most easily harmed by the use of tobacco now habitually indulge in its most harmful form. There is another unfortunate effect of the use of tobacco by boys. When they begin to smoke, they do so against the wishes and usually against the orders of their parents. This means broken discipline and deception. The boy who endeavors to conceal the fact that he smokes is started along a path that is even more harmful than tobacco. He has to invent excuses for being absent from home, and to explain away the odor of tobacco that is sure to cling to him; and when a boy begins to lie about these things, he will lie about others. So far as truth goes, the bars are down. Furthermore, he has to spend more money. Unless he is one of those unfortunate youths who are not held to a moderate weekly allowance, too often he will resort to dishonest means to obtain the money to satisfy his newly acquired taste. And that is not all. Boys who spend their time in smoking go where they will find other lads also engaged in the forbidden habit. They find congenial groups in pool-rooms, where they learn to gamble, and in the back rooms of saloons, where they learn to drink. The step from the pool-room or the saloon to other gambling-places and to drinking-places frequented by the unworthy of both sexes is an easy one. Thus the boy whose first wrong-doing was the smoking of cigarettes against the wishes of his parents soon becomes the target for all manner of immoral influences. In these days of advanced sociological study, when the mind of the world is set upon efficiency, it is astonishing that so little attention has been given to the effect of tobacco upon the young. To mankind at the present time nothing in the world is so important as the conservation of the boy. Humanity might well make any sacrifice conceivable in order to keep its boys clean. Keeping boys clean means keeping girls clean, and whatever keeps boys and girls clean purifies humanity as a whole. In other words, the boy is the most important thing in the world, and his cleanliness the most vital issue. Setting aside entirely the deleterious effect of nicotine upon his physical system, early smoking, which usually means the cigarette, is the most harmful single influence that is at present working against his welfare. We can appreciate the terrific total harm which tobacco does to youth, however, only when we add the psychological harm and the physical harm together. Everything considered, the question is an appalling one. THE TEMPTATION TO USE TOBACCO It is impossible to blame most boys very severely for yielding to the smoke-temptation; therefore it becomes a difficult matter to blame them for the wrong-doing which tends to follow it. Their error is only the continuation of a similar error that their fathers have made before them and now tacitly encourage. It is difficult to make any lad believe that he need not be a fool because his father is one. Yet in most cases to save a boy from the demonstrable ills of tobacco-using entails just this course of reasoning. Orators and essayists from the beginning of time have found a stumbling-block in preaching to their followers virtues they admire and value, but do not themselves possess. The father who forbids his son to smoke because it is harmful and expensive, while his own person reeks with it, is not likely to impress the lad very vividly with either the force or the honesty of his argument. More than one parent has found himself abashed in such circumstances by a son with logic and intelligence. For such a parent there is only one really honest course--to admit to his son that he himself has been a fool, but that he does not wish his son to follow in his footsteps. THE NECESSITY OF EDUCATION CONCERNING THE DANGER OF TOBACCO There is no question in my mind that this matter of tobacco should be made the basis of a very thorough educational campaign among the youth of the United States. The shocking spread of the tobacco habit among the women of American cities indicates, moreover, need for extending this instruction to girls as well. If cleanliness of body is next to godliness, then cleanliness of mind is godliness, and cleanliness of mind, real cleanliness, is impossible while ignorance exists. Nothing in education is more generally neglected than the enlightenment of the young--an enlightenment which can come only from the mouths of elders who are themselves clean--as to the deadly nature of alcohol, habit-forming drugs, and tobacco. I should very much dislike to send a young and impressionable son for instruction in any subject to any teacher, male or female, who used cigarettes. Thousands upon thousands of parents in this country feel as I do on this subject; but while they realize the danger which might result from the influence of a teacher who smokes, they utterly neglect the far more dangerous and powerful influence of a father who smokes. To my mind, however, it is essential that parents should seriously consider the personal character of the men to whom they intrust the education of their boys. But the use of tobacco reaches far beyond the home circle and the schools and even pollutes the atmosphere of the church itself. There are few clergymen in the United States who do not use tobacco, and so a clean father who rears a clean son is under the tragic necessity of urging his attendance at a dirty church, and later on sending him to be a student in a dirty college, for the simple reason that there are no clean ones. Society seems to have been viciously organized for the destruction of the boy, in whom lies its chief hope of preservation and improvement. The boy who keeps clean does so against tremendous odds, to which frequently his father, his school-teacher, and his clergyman are the chief contributors. A dozen times during every day of his life he is subjected to the third degree of temptation, and twice out of three times this ordeal is thrust upon him by the very persons who really should do most to safeguard and protect him. And now that society has set its sanction upon the use of tobacco by the women of the nation, he is confronted with the further peril of a mother who smokes. It seems to me that this tobacco question detracts enormously from that very vivid hope we might feel for the rising generation, which is also handicapped with alcohol and drugs. TOBACCO ADDICTION MORE DANGEROUS THAN DRUG HABIT OR ALCOHOLISM I have no desire to moralize upon the subject of tobacco. I am not a moralist, but a practical student of cause and effect, urging the elimination of bad causes so that bad effects may be eliminated in turn. A very wide experience in studying the result of the use of narcotics has convinced me that the total harm done by tobacco is greater than that done by alcohol or drugs. Nothing else at the present time is contributing so surely to the degeneration of mankind as tobacco, because, while its damage is less immediately acute than that done by alcohol or habit-forming drugs, it is, aside from its own evil effects, a tremendous contributory factor to the use of both. There is nothing to be said in its favor save that it gives pleasure, and this argument has no more force in the case of tobacco than in the case of opium. Any man who uses tobacco poisons himself, and the very openness and permissibility of the vice serve to make the process of self-poisoning dangerous to the public as well. To sum up, the tobacco habit is useless and harmful to the man who yields to it; it is malodorous and filthy, and therefore an infringement upon the rights and comforts of others. Its relation to alcohol is direct and intimate. When an alcoholic comes to me for treatment, I do not regard my chances of success with him as good unless I can make him see that to abandon smoking is a necessary step in his treatment. My deductions concerning the intimate relationship between the use of tobacco and liquors are the result of years of observation and study. And if it is true that no man whose system is alcoholic is fit to be the father of a child, it is no less true that the habitual smoker is also unworthy to be a guardian of his kind. The alcoholic fiend almost invariably becomes the parent of children provided with defective nervous systems, of children as definitely deformed nervously as they would be physically if born with club-feet or hare-lips. CHAPTER X THE SANATORIUM There is no class of patients in the world to whom the physician, and especially the physician who conducts a sanatorium, can offer so good an excuse for long-continued treatment as to those addicted to the use of drugs. It is certain that the person who makes a weekly charge to such patients is rarely honest with them or tries to shorten their stay. Several years ago I freely and without reservation gave all the details of my treatment to the medical world, and though many institutions have endeavored to install it as a part of their own curative policy, most have failed. The failure may be attributed principally, if not wholly, to the fact that few have also adopted the necessary principle of a fixed charge, without regard to the length of time the patient is under treatment. The weekly charge, with its attendant temptation to keep the patient as long as possible, has invariably defeated all possibilities of success. There is also a class of institutions in which the "cure" for the drug habit consists in the administration of the drug itself in a disguised form. In such surroundings a patient will contentedly stay indefinitely, for the chains of his habit bind him to the spot. The very fact that he wishes to stay may be accepted as a proof that he has not been benefited by it. For the man who has been freed from a drug habit desires a normal life in the world; indeed, only his reëntrance into its turmoil and bustle can set him surely on his feet. The average sanatorium, accustomed to the time-honored and thoroughly established system of making its patients comfortable,--in other words, pampering and coddling them,--finds it difficult, if not impossible, to conform in every detail to the necessities of a system like mine. Even if the institution is equipped with every possible facility, it is highly probable that the physicians in charge may be mentally unfitted to the work. Inured by every detail of their training to methods that make a successful treatment of drugs impossible, they find themselves incapable of changing when confronted by specific cases that demand a radically different treatment. The institutions themselves are equally inadaptable. The sanatorium, it must be remembered, is really a boarding-house or hotel, and the business of boarding-house or hotel, whether it presents an epicurean or "sanitary" bill of fare, or whether its staff is supplemented by trained nurses and physicians or not, remains a boarding-house or hotel. Its main province is to keep its paying guests and to make them comfortable. The whole sanatorium situation so far as it relates to the "cure" of those addicted to the use of drugs and alcohol may be summed up in a few words. The average sanatorium is merely a small colony of drug-users. No one can deny that. Now, no man who has been freed from his desire for drugs and no one who is being made uncomfortable by deprivation will remain in such surroundings for any length of time. The natural conclusion is that such institutions are not accomplishing what they have promised to be able to accomplish. The inmates are still drug-users. This is not true of American institutions alone. Within a few months I have had as an eleven-day inmate of my own institution a very wealthy man who has made three European journeys to find relief from the drug habit, on each journey going the rounds of six or eight celebrated institutions, and taking the treatment of each without result. Successful treatment is brief treatment, and no establishment operating upon a system of a weekly charge to patients will make an earnest effort to release these patients as soon as possible. In their desire to make their patients comfortable, and so prolong their stay, their usual quantity of drugs is supplied to them, though of course in some disguised form. There is no other way of accomplishing this. Moreover, so long as a patient is thus kept comfortable, he is unable to describe his symptoms, for he does not feel them. The drug, therefore, hides exactly those details of a man's condition that it is essential for the attending physician to know. In a normal man the presence of pain is always a guide for a physician, but in a drugged case this is always absent. The constant drugging that conceals the symptoms of organic ailment may permit one of comparative insignificance at the time a patient entered a sanatorium to become incurable before he leaves. Thus the result of his stay may mean in the end a serious or even fatal deterioration. And the prolonged stay becomes a means, intentional or unintentional, of mulcting the patient or his friends of money. The sum annually spent in the United States upon useless sanatorium treatment must certainly amount to millions. I have had patients come to me from such institutions to which they had paid sums as large as $10,000. Wealthy people are specially likely to become victims of this form of rapacity, and a mere glance at some of the receipted bills that I have seen in their possession is enough to stagger a modest financial imagination. The ingenuity with which a sanatorium manager devises "extras" is worthy of the name of genius. And the physically incurable patient is often retained in the sanatorium till his money or the money of his friends is exhausted in a needless sacrifice to greed. THE PHYSICIAN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE DRUG-USER It is also necessary to direct attention to some of the errors of the general medical practitioner who deals with cases of this sort. It is not unnatural for a doctor to hesitate at the thought of surrendering his patient into strange hands. There may be unselfish as well as purely mercenary reasons for this hesitation. The doctor may hope that he himself can aid the sufferer, and may therefore endeavor to administer this treatment either in the patient's home or possibly in his own residence or private hospital. The patient is likely to be as much inclined to this course as the doctor, for the doctor is his friend and confidant, and he dislikes intensely the idea of revealing what he regards as the shameful secret of his enslaved soul to strangers' ears. Treatment in the doctor's or the patient's own environment must of necessity be an expensive matter, but if the patient can afford it, he is likely to desire it. This is most natural, especially if the patient is one of the tens of thousands who have tried the treatment offered by a sanatorium and found it not only valueless, but horrifying. There are, too, many patients who from sheer lack of funds naturally desire a home administration of the treatment as a means of saving expense. Of course many of the most worthy cases are to be found among people of moderate or small means. The drug habit is itself impoverishing. Even so I find myself irresistibly impelled to advise against any attempt to treat such cases in their own environment, or in any environment improvised by a local doctor. This I do only because I have known so many cases of utter failure, so many cases where the sufferer's final hope has been destroyed by such experiments. PRIVATE ADMINISTRATION OF TREATMENT NOT SUCCESSFUL The friendship existing between a physician and his patient must often disarm the former and incapacitate him for the strict dealing that is required in a treatment like mine. The mere fact that in caring for a friend or one of his regular patients the doctor feels unwilling to exact a definite charge in advance is a certain handicap here, as is also the fact that each patient needs continual watching, and no doctor can afford to devote his entire time and constant medical attention to one patient. The average doctor in private practice, moreover, finds it impossible to secure upon demand nurses of sufficient moral responsibility and medical assistants of sufficient technical training to coöperate with him in the work. Above all, I find that only when the patient is on premises other than his own, in unfamiliar surroundings where he is subject to a strict and inviolable discipline, can the best results be obtained. The doctor who administers this treatment, if he is to win, must have every advantage. Hospital surroundings, unfamiliar nurses, and strange assistant doctors are of great value; but payment in advance may be regarded as the most effective means for inducing the patient to complete the necessary course. An amazing number of people have come to me who have confessed that while they have from time to time tried other treatments, they have never completed one of them. Others come in a skeptical frame of mind. I can mention one such who had been three times to Europe, each time on the advice of the very doctor who, as the patient was aware, had been responsible for his forming the habit. No physician in private practice should ever attempt to relieve a patient from a drug habit in a manner incidental to the conduct of his practice, though it is nevertheless true that the temptation for doctors to attempt this are extraordinary. A patient who becomes aware that his physician knows of a treatment which will bring relief is likely to bring to bear upon the physician every possible pressure in the effort to induce him to administer it. The doctor must be liberal indeed who, having made such an attempt and failed to achieve good results with it, will acknowledge that he was mistaken at the start. THE NECESSITY OF A FIXED CHARGE FOR TREATMENT The advantage of a definite charge, paid in advance, was a discovery that I made early in my work. With a large proportion of my patients it would otherwise have been impossible for me to obtain the definite medical result which has characterized my work. It is quite impossible to make an intelligently satisfactory mental or physical diagnosis of any patient brought to me until he has been entirely freed from the drug which he has been taking. As soon as this has been fully accomplished, it is possible to consider the case carefully. It is also necessary to make an invariable rule that no person entering my institution for treatment shall be permitted to come into contact with any other person who is there for treatment, for there can be nothing psychologically worse than the discussion of symptoms and the exchange of experiences among people under treatment. It is also a rule that in the institution physicians employed in the establishment shall not become intimate with the patients or spend with them any time not necessarily devoted to professional investigation and attendance. Nurses also must be as businesslike as possible in all their relationships with patients, and must do as little hand-holding and sympathizing as possible even in the cases of ultra-nervous women patients. It is a principle of the average sanatorium to encourage the "sympathetic" nurse. Wittingly or unwittingly, the old-time sanatorium made a practice of manufacturing habitual sanatorium inmates. The most hopeless cases I have ever seen have been those who have become inured to wearing sanatorium stripes. Such will never change their tailor till their pocket-book becomes empty. Another detail of my treatment not easily compassed in the average sanatorium is to consider every case as an individual case, to be dealt with individually. In private practice this is often overlooked, and to this I also attribute many failures in treatment. The individuality of every case must be borne in mind not only throughout the treatment itself, but afterward, during the period of recuperation. The case itself is sure to indicate in some measure the further treatment which should be followed in the period immediately succeeding the patient's discharge from my institution, and very frequently indicates, in fact, the necessity for consultation with other specialists and for a surgical operation. After the patient has been relieved of drugs comes the time to begin the necessary physical upbuilding by means of exercise. Although I may have seemed to condemn the sanatorium, I must add now that some institutions are specially qualified to assist in this building-up process. Some health-building institutions that devote their entire attention to strengthening their patients by means of physical exercise are doing wonderfully good work. The fact that my methods in treating these cases have prevented me, and will prevent me, from becoming directly or indirectly interested in any institution other than my own, in New York City, gives me a freedom in offering advice to patients concerning what they should do after they have left my care that I should not feel if my institution were operated upon the old-time keep-them-as-long-as-you-can plan. I find it possible to suggest physical exercise and even professional training to those who especially need it with entire disinterestedness, just as I find it possible to suggest to some an investigation of some religious influence. It must be laid down as an axiom that the patient must have a mental as well as a physical change before the treatment can accomplish all the good of which it is capable. Such a mental change is highly improbable in the comfortable surroundings of the average sanatorium. No man or woman ever achieved it by sitting on a pleasant veranda in an easy-chair exchanging tales of symptoms with other invalids. THE REASON FOR THE FIXED CHARGE The principal consideration which has influenced me in shaping my policy of a definite charge and limiting the length of stay of my patients has been the fact that I find it impossible when the effect of the drug has been perfectly eliminated to hold most of the patients under restraint. The man who has won freedom from his habit feels sure of himself; he desires to get away, and he is not afraid to go out into the world, where it may be possible for him to get the drug again. He will not yield to the temptation to get it, partly because he will not want it, and partly because he knows the horror of the habit and does not wish to become involved in it again. As a matter of fact, one of the hardest tasks I have is that of inducing people to stay as long with us as we think necessary, although their prolonged stay means no additional payment to us and no additional expense to them. That is one of the principal arguments against colonization; and it is as much an argument against the average municipal or state institution as it is against the average sanatorium. The theory of colonization in this matter is all wrong. The question of a definite charge has as much influence on my own attitude as on that of the patient. From the fact that I know when a patient enters my house that I can get no further money from him or her beyond the advance payment I gain a distinct advantage. I do not feel it necessary to cater to my patient's whims, nor do I feel it necessary to sacrifice any portion of the necessary routine of the treatment because the patient may be rich or influential and may make extraordinary demands upon me. All that I have to do is to go ahead along those lines which I know are effective and which will gain results. The effect of this system is equally admirable upon the members of my medical staff, for our efforts are devoted not to keeping the patient as long as possible for the purpose of increasing revenue but to getting rid of him as quickly as possible, so that the profit will be relatively large. That it is to his advantage as well as to mine to see that the treatment is complete and effective before the patient leaves is obvious. These methods take into consideration my own and my patient's psychology. A man who deals with this type of patient needs every advantage which he can get, for invariably he is dealing with abnormalities. PHYSICAL DEFECTS REVEALED BY TREATMENT The treatment itself is certain to uncover these abnormalities, revealing whether or not they are due to physical causes. It becomes very quickly evident if there is any real physical reason why a patient is not eligible for treatment, as in the case of an incurable and painful physical ailment. No matter how careful and frank a patient's statements may be or how elaborate the diagnosis that his physician has transmitted to me, no matter how elaborately careful are the preliminary examinations made by my own physician, it is not until the drug has been entirely eliminated that we find it possible to make a really intelligent diagnosis. The symptoms of disease, however, are sure to appear before the first part of the treatment is completed. It is a standard policy of my hospital at once to inform a patient who has proved to be physically ineligible, and to return to him his fee. This method of procedure has made us careful before accepting patients to study their histories, for, naturally, we do not wish to do even preliminary work and then return the fee in full. We accept no patient for treatment until we are provided with a careful and detailed history of his case, and it is upon a large collection of such histories that I have based many of the theories embodied in the subject matter of this book. It is especially these detailed histories which have enabled me to fix with some accuracy of judgment the circumstances leading up to the formation of most drug habits. In our invariable practice of returning the fee and discharging the patient whom we find ineligible for treatment we have surely taken a step in advance. There is scarcely an institution of this sort in the United States to which a patient might write, "I am taking drugs," without receiving in reply the invitation, "Come to us, and we will treat you," implying that they will give the treatment whether or not an examination of the patient shows that he is one who can benefit from it. THE DUTY OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION The victim of drugs, whether he is rich or poor, old or young, good or bad, deserves the public sympathy in a measure scarcely equaled by any other class. These folk are sick folk in every way I can possibly think of. I am attempting to see to it that they are protected by every safeguard from being victimized. It is my hope that through continual and untiring education I may force the state medical institutions throughout the country to assume their rightful responsibility in providing proper care for drug victims who have slight means or none. I purpose to work toward the awakening of the medical profession to its responsibility not only in regard to the growth of new crops of drug-users, but to the care and relief or sequestration from medical practice of those among its own members whose condition warrants action. Perhaps this last step should be the first one to be taken. I have given it much thought, and can see only one way out of the veritably infernal tangle in which the medical profession has enmeshed itself. That would involve a conference between delegates from the medical societies of the various States to form a plan whereby the medical profession as a whole or in groups might establish and support an institution or a number of institutions. These should be backed by the most eminent and conscientious men in the profession. They should be managed by men fully competent, and should be open not only to physicians who need treatment and are unable to pay for it at a private institution, but to all patients, in the certainty that there they will receive the proper treatment, properly administered, and at a reasonable charge. I purpose furthermore that every institution under private management in the United States shall by law be held responsible for its methods of treatment. LEGISLATION TO REGULATE SANATORIUMS There should be the most drastic legislation compelling all physicians and institutions accepting this class of patients for treatment to report periodically to the board of health which has jurisdiction in their district whenever, after a three weeks' medical supervision, they still require the administration of habit-forming drugs. It is only reasonable that any institution accepting a patient for this treatment, and failing to secure favorable results within a period of twenty-one days, should report the case to the authorities, giving detailed reasons for the failure of the patient to respond to treatment. The general adoption of this rule of procedure would mean that a class of unfortunates who have never had any protection from any source would be immediately provided with definite medical help. An accompanying provision would insist that patients who for physical reasons are found to be ineligible for treatment--unable, that is, to exist in comfort without regular doses of their drug--will be relieved of all sense of disgrace arising from this necessity, and will be preserved from victimization, and will find it possible to get the drug without difficulty and at reasonable prices, if necessary, from the boards of health themselves. If this plan accomplished nothing more than to prevent the operation of medical fraud against sufferers for a period longer than three weeks, it would even then have accomplished an extraordinary good. I have in my present hospital only fifty beds, and as a rule I receive and discharge about four patients a day. Were my institution operated along the colonization lines which are common in the United States, the volume of business which I handle in a year, running well above a thousand patients, would require not fifty, but at least five hundred beds, and rooms in proportion. This statement of the exact situation in my own institution may possibly explain existing conditions in some others. It must not be understood that I attribute all the efforts at colonizing drug-users to unworthy motives. Much of it has been due to the complete ignorance of the medical profession in regard to this form of affliction. Finding itself unable intelligently to cope with conditions, it seeks the line of least resistance and adopts the colonizing sanatorium, with all its evils, as the best plan that can be found. When I first took up this work I went for information and assistance not to the humble members of the medical profession, but to the most eminent men whom I could find. Even these men invariably admitted their ignorance of the nature of the drug habit and the means for its relief. I was told by some of the best-known neurologists in the world that out of thousands of patients whom they and their confrères had sent to the best-known and most conscientiously operated institutions in the country not one had really been helped. They assured me that if I had found something which would give actual and material aid in any degree to even five per cent. of the drug victims who were sent to me for treatment, I would be doing more than any man had ever done before. CHAPTER XI PREVENTIVE MEASURES FOR THE DRUG EVIL Early in my investigations into the proper facilities for the medical treatment of drug-users it became apparent that this could not be properly carried out in the patient's own environment, in a general hospital where new facilities had not been introduced, or in the usual sanatorium. It became necessary for me then to outline some system by which the medical profession might properly take up the work and to suggest some basis on which the medical men of various States might combine in an effort to remove the treatment of these sufferers from the hands of the irresponsible. Some, if not the majority, of the worthiest subjects of the drug habit are people who cannot pay large sums or travel long distances in their search for relief. It seemed clear, therefore, that state institutions should be equipped with facilities and knowledge for dealing with this affliction. THE NEED FOR PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION At the present time there is in existence no clinic or other practical place of demonstration where a doctor can get competent instruction in this important branch of medical work. I hope the time will come when it may be possible for me to offer to the medical profession a clinic where the professional student may prepare for this line of effort as effectively as he may now prepare himself for any special work, like nose and throat diseases. This can come about only through some arrangement in which I have no financial interest. SKEPTICISM OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION I am fully aware that I must first overcome a strong undercurrent of skepticism among the members of the medical profession. The efficacy of the treatment must be proved. Even among the best-informed physicians it is a popular belief that the treatment which I announce as simple is really an impossibility. No matter what the doctor has hoped that he might do, he has been told by text-books and articles in medical periodicals that it cannot be done. This fallacious teaching must be counteracted before much can be accomplished, and in the progress of the work many traditions of the profession must be violated. Before he can hope to accomplish anything of importance in the administration of my method of treatment, the physician must understand that the length of time a drug-user has been taking the drug, the quantity that he has taken, and the manner of its administration are matters of no consequence. Short histories and small amounts, long histories and large amounts, are all one when it comes to the administration of this treatment. I went to Dr. Richard C. Cabot of Boston with a letter of introduction from Dr. Alexander Lambert of New York, whom he knew well and admired. He listened to my statement of the facts which I have just set forth. "I have heard what you say, but I shall not believe it until it has been demonstrated to me," he declared. I demonstrated it, and convinced him. A similar skepticism remains general throughout the medical profession. The experience that the medical profession has already had in New York State as the result of prohibitive legislation indicates the many problems that arise immediately after the drug is put beyond the reach of those who have acquired the habit. It is only natural that the unscrupulous should seek to take advantage of the opportunities created by this situation. Without proper treatment, an habitual drug-user cannot endure the agony of deprivation until a definite physiological change has occurred; so that unless the medical profession is informed of this fact, and the community at large is provided with facilities for the administration of the required treatment, it is almost inevitable that restrictive measures will be followed immediately by the victimization of the unfortunate by the unscrupulous. One detail of the peril to society which may accrue from a general cessation of the drug traffic without the provision of proper facilities for the care of those who have been its victims is that those who are accustomed to drugs, on being suddenly deprived of them, almost invariably turn to alcohol for stimulation and, without being the least relieved of the drug habit, with abnormal speed become alcoholics. Modern society presents few spectacles of suffering more acute than that endured by the drunken drug-fiend. Few persons, moreover, are so dangerous to its welfare. MEDICAL ETHICS Constantly I must lay emphasis upon the responsibility of the physician in regard to drug habits. This phase of the subject must be an ever-recurring one, because the whole unpleasant situation has grown out of medical ignorance. While treatment for drug-users is at last making headway, for a long time experimentation had no chance save with a small number of broad-minded and bright-minded doctors who were able to shake off the shackles that held the less intelligent members of their profession. When I made public the formulas of my treatment, I did not understand this phase of medical ethics. I assumed that certain dangers might arise from the probable activities of the omnipresent medical faker, who without any genuine effort to administer my treatment properly would advertise it widely, and thus victimize the innocent. I also assumed that the medical profession would eagerly grasp the idea, put the treatment into operation, to their own benefit and that of the world at large, and by the very beneficence of their work far more than offset the harm the charlatans would do. Both of these assumptions proved incorrect. The fakers avoided even counterfeiting my treatment, because the articles which had announced it in the medical and lay press had made its brevity clear to the public; they did not care to promote any treatment in which their victims would be justified in demanding immediate relief. From that real peril the community was thus saved. But the general indifference of the medical profession was equally surprising and at first somewhat discouraging. I have since decided, however, that this was perhaps fortunate; for as the work develops, it becomes more and more apparent that it is a strictly hospital treatment, and cannot often be successfully administered in the environment of the home or in the regular course of a general practitioner's daily work. In another part of this book I shall have more to say about the medical buzzards who, working outside of medical ethics and in defiance of the usually admirable spirit of the profession as a whole, without regard to financial or ethical honesty, indulge in whatever practices seem to promise them the greatest profit. How dangerous these men are not only to the patient, but to the profession has many times been illustrated. Various medical discoveries imported from abroad or achieved and announced by eminent American medical men have brought flocks of unscrupulous practitioners to New York, not with the progressive desire to study and honestly apply these new theories for the benefit of their patients, but with the idea of learning barely enough about them to enable them to offer credulous sufferers cheap and worthless counterfeits at exorbitant rates. Where secret methods have been heralded, they have bid against one another frantically to secure locality privileges, working to this end with all the fierce competitive enthusiasm shown by eager commercialists seeking county rights to a practical and popular patent flat-iron. It is my earnest hope that the wave of reform which has begun in New York State, and which undoubtedly will carry new and effective drug legislation into every State of the Union before it loses its forward impulse, may not revitalize these unworthy schemers. It was partly the hope of preventing this evil that led to the writing of this book. The progress of intelligent legislation will fill the land with much suffering from the tortures of drug deprivation. Therefore events have placed a solemn obligation upon the medical profession to satisfy itself of the efficacy of my treatment, even though a new organization for that purpose should be necessary. After the profession is assured of the value of the treatment, many should achieve competence in its administration. Then it will become a matter of duty to see that every community is provided with facilities and a staff of experts sufficient to meet the special needs that may arise there. If such an organization should be formed, I should be glad to devote my services to it. THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE WITH THE DRUG HABIT My opportunities for observation in this field have extended over fourteen years of constant study. They have included investigations in the Orient and Europe as well as in the United States, and have dealt with patients of every class. Early in my work I found it difficult to secure subjects, and presently saw that I could do so only by personally searching the under-world for them. It was a complicated task, full of unexpected problems. As I could not engage salaried people for the carrying out of the details of the treatment, it became necessary for me to do everything except the medical work, and to assume all except the medical responsibility. But what I at first deemed a hardship proved in the end to be an advantage, for if I had had plenty of money with which to carry on my work, I should never have mastered its details. It may be that the need for making the work strictly self-supporting from the start led to one of my first important psychological discoveries: that any person worth saving is either able to pay a reasonable amount for treatment or can make the price of it a deferred obligation of such a character that it will certainly be met. The experience from which this and other statements in this book have been deduced is not an experience gained from casual or even regular daily calls of a few minutes or a few hours upon the patients under treatment, but is due to years in which I have frequently spent twenty-two hours out of every twenty-four in the same building with them, and subject to their constant call. After having proved the efficacy of treatment at home it seemed advisable to make a journey to the Orient, where drug habits were notoriously more common than elsewhere. It was the desire to study them at first hand and literally by wholesale which led me to China, where I opened three hospitals, and in the course of eleven months supervised the treatment for the opium habit of over four thousand Chinese. During this period I treated all who presented themselves, the ages of those to whom relief was given ranging from eighteen to seventy-six. Among the four thousand patients not one fatality occurred, although many of them were extreme cases, and I was able to obtain the assistance of only one foreign physician who could be considered responsible. The rest of the work was done by untrained Chinese boys, who administered the capsules at stated hours, and not one of whom was capable of intelligently counting a patient's pulse. I have said that not one fatality occurred. It is pleasant for me to add that during the whole fourteen years of my practice, although I have had thousands under treatment, many of them in exceedingly bad physical condition at the time the treatment was begun, with their drug symptoms complicated by various and serious physical ailments and often accented by alcoholism, only four cases have died. SUCCESSFUL ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CURE OF DRUG-USERS A new precedent has been established with cases of this character in the course of my hospital experience. For the first time the treatment has been reduced to a definite hospital system, during which the resident physician is never divorced from his patient, and in the course of which complete and elaborate bedside histories and charts are kept. I have in my possession at the present moment the complete bedside notes of every patient to whom my treatment has ever been administered. I call attention to this fact because it shows that the work has not been hit or miss, but has been as carefully systematized and made as highly scientific as it has been possible to make it. A second precedent has been set, as is proved by the fact that within a brief time any case of drug or alcoholic habit that is not complicated by physical disabilities due to other causes can be successfully treated in a few days without heroic methods and without risk. This has at once proved the fallacy of old methods. It has demonstrated how false, for instance, is the principle of colonization. As I have said, drug cases should never be colonized, and among alcoholics only the absolutely hopeless inebriate should be subjected to this method of treatment. With the latter, of course, there is no chance of real relief, so that here colonization offers a means of relieving society of all of the burden upon the police which the inebriate's freedom necessarily implies, and from a large part of the economic burden which his existence entails upon the community. MAKING SANATORIUM CONVICTS For drug-users colonization is the worst possible treatment that can be followed. From what I know of the conduct of the average sanatorium at this time in the United States, I feel absolutely certain that no person could possibly be helped if sent there, and I am convinced that definite and virtually incalculable harm would be the almost inevitable result of following such a course. Drug-users, as well as alcoholics, who are sent officially or otherwise to institutions of this character become what are called "sanatorium convicts." These cases are virtually hopeless, and are little less pitiable than that of the "lifer" in a prison. There are in the United States many people of the better class who through no fault of their own have became afflicted with the drug-habit, and who have drifted from bad to worse until a sanatorium has been the only recourse left. Treatment for drug and alcoholic habits and treatment tending toward the recuperation of the patient cannot be carried out together with one patient or even simultaneously with several patients in the same institution. An understanding of this fact has placed me in an advantageous position for giving advice about whatever remains to be done when a patient is ready to leave my hospital. I have always worked in the closest and most perfect harmony with physicians who have sent cases to me and have never permitted any of the doctors employed in my institution to visit a patient who has left my care. On the other hand, no physician who has brought a patient to my hospital has ever been divorced from him as a result of his stay with us. ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS POSSIBLE AFTER TREATMENT Physical revelations which follow the unpoisoning of patients frequently startle the patients themselves as well as the physicians who have their well-being in charge for long periods. Nor are the mental revelations less astonishing. There have been many cases, after the unpoisoning was complete, in which a man or woman has been found to be as seriously ailing mentally as others have been found ailing physically. Drugs and alcohol, especially drugs, have frequently been responsible for extraordinary mental and moral twists. But it must be maintained that the use of drug or liquor is usually the result rather than the cause of such conditions. There are many cases in which no type of medical help will bring about satisfactory permanent results, though other victims, after the elimination of alcohol or narcotics, quickly take their places as useful and admirable members of society. The problem confronting the physiologist after a patient has been relieved of a drug or drink habit is comparatively simple. If this relief makes diagnosis possible and reveals the existence of an unsuspected, but curable, ailment, the course to follow is obvious. With the psychologist the problem is frequently far more complicated. The useless citizen who becomes a drug- or drink-user will remain a useless citizen after the drug or drink habit has been eliminated. To this class belong most of those who readily relapse into their old habits after their systems have been thoroughly cleared of the physiological demand for the substance of their habit. Thus perhaps the most important query the psychologist interested in this work must ask after the treatment of a patient is, What is left of value, and what can be done with it? It is a curious fact that usually more is left in the case of a poor than in the case of a rich patient. No one is so hopeless as the vagrant rich. No man will ever make a reputation in work of this character who deals wholly or even principally with people to whom money has no value. UNPOISONING THE USER IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP My work has brought me to the conclusion that few physicians seem able accurately to classify their own patients. Even the specialist in psychology, who should be able to weigh all the details of men's mental and moral as well as physical being, seems likely to go astray when he considers a psychology that has been affected either by drink or drugs. Many physicians seem to be imbued with the idea that after a patient has once been through the process of treatment for a drug or drink habit he will be entirely made over; but the fact is that the elimination of drugs or drink from a degenerate will not eliminate degeneracy. Nothing, in fact, will eliminate it except stopping the breeding of degenerates. In my work I have found it necessary sometimes to seek advice from as many as half a dozen physical and psychological specialists in connection with one case. While instances have been very numerous in which several specialists have been really required for the welfare of the patient, the need had been so thoroughly concealed by the patient's drug habit that it was not apparent until the effect of the drugs was thoroughly eliminated. NECESSITY FOR CAREFUL PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY In most instances expert treatment for the mental condition after drug or drink elimination is as essential as expert attention from the doctor of medicine, and if success is to be achieved, must be regarded as an entirely separate task. Habitual users of drugs or drink are literally human derelicts. The symptoms of their true condition are submerged, and to clear them of their concealed weaknesses it is necessary to lift them like a barnacle-ridden hulk into the dry-dock for investigation and repair. I regard as a preferred risk among the victims of the drug habits those who have acquired it through the administration of a narcotic by physicians in time of pain or illness. Such a case, if treated before too great a deterioration has taken place, may be considered almost certain of relief, provided no other ailment discloses itself. On the other hand, where the drug habit is the direct or indirect result of alcoholic dissipation or sexual excesses, or is a social vice, the case is extra-hazardous. Here the lack of moral standards and the loss of pride are serious handicaps. These matters are of extreme importance to the physician who is considering the care or treatment of cases of a drug habit. That he should classify his subjects of investigation, recognizing the hopeful ones and admitting the hopeless to be hopeless, is essential to successful work. He must know the material with which he has to work; familiarity with his material is as necessary to him as it is to the carpenter. Many cases have been brought to us that we have declined to accept because we could hope to accomplish nothing with them. Not long after I began my work I tried to help a man against my better judgment; I felt reasonably sure that he lacked the worthy qualities that would make him cling to and appreciate whatever advantages the treatment might afford. My estimate of his character proved to be correct; the man relapsed, and became a traveling liability on me, a reproach against my institution and my treatment. THE HOPELESS CASE I have already said that the idle rich to whom money has no value cannot usually be classed among hopeful subjects for treatment. The same may be said of those for whom others take financial responsibility, paying the cost of their treatment. If such cases do not already belong in the human scrap-heap, this mistaken kindness is very likely to place them there. However, I believe that those among this class who have become public charges and refuse to work should be forced to do so by state or municipal authority. Society or their own families should not bear the burden of their useless existence. They should be segregated in some place where they will be physically comfortable, where they may be made industrious and useful, and where a separation of the sexes will prevent the increase of their worthless kind. My judgment is that the man or woman who through the vagaries of his or her own disposition has once been forced to wear the stripes of disgrace is likely to employ the same tailor during the rest of his or her life. Such persons will become permanent boarders at one or another of the places provided for the seclusion of the worthless. It is well that where they are first sequestrated there they should be permanently kept. Through this course alone society will be spared the periodical havoc they will be sure to work during their intervals of freedom. IMPERSONAL RELATIONS BETWEEN PHYSICIAN AND PATIENT NECESSARY Certain dangers inevitably arise where an intimacy exists between doctor and patient, since few physicians are morally so constituted that they will order a prosperous patient to do this or that or find another physician. In other words, instances have not been uncommon where the toleration of physicians for unfortunate practices among their patients has had its basis, and perhaps one not entirely inexcusable in these days of high pressure from professional competition, in self-interest. Social relations also have often led physicians to tolerate practices that they knew to be harmful to their patients and to the community. A patient who is a member of an influential club or a fashionable church is likely to be an asset of exceptional value to the physician whom he patronizes, for he is likely to recommend him to his friends. Good business management on the physician's part leads him to keep such a patient good natured and comfortable, and to keep him comfortable means, among other things, to keep him free from pain. Where the patient suffers from an incurable malady, the use of drugs is not only excusable, but commendable; but instances are all too frequent where the malady is not incurable, but only puzzling and beyond the average practitioner's power of diagnosis, so that he covers up his ignorance by the administration of pain-deadening substances. Patients who invariably and promptly pay their bills are sometimes in a position where they can tell a doctor what to do; whereas it should be the doctor's unalterable resolution to retain the upper hand. Instances of this kind are far less grave in connection with the use of alcohol than in connection with the use of drugs; the physician may be said almost never to play any part in the establishment of an alcoholic habit among his patients, while he has surely played a most important part in the spread of drug habits. CHAPTER XII CLASSIFICATION OF HABIT-FORMING DRUGS Opium is the basis of almost all the habit-forming drugs. There is no other drug known to the pharmacist that has a similar action or can be used as a substitute when a definite tolerance of it has been established. The chemists have given us more than twenty different salts or alkaloids of opium in various forms and under as many different trade names, and I regret to say that they are busy working in their laboratories to put upon the market injurious drugs under various supposedly harmless disguises, but intended in the end only to deceive. MORPHINE Morphine is the active principle of opium, and until a few years ago only crude opium or morphine was used for medical requirements. Morphine is intrinsically far worse than opium itself, for opium has certain properties which partly counteract the effect of the morphine that it contains. But morphine is not only the active principle, but the actively evil principle, of the drug. The user of morphine always retains his faculties. He is usually capable of intelligent conversation. Unlike the alcoholic's brain, his is not inflamed. It is impossible for the physician intelligently to discuss his symptoms with an alcoholic; with a victim of drugs, on the other hand, he can thresh out every detail of the case. Later codeine was placed upon the market, supposedly an innocent alkaloid of opium, non-habit-forming, but still capable of eliminating pain and suffering due to illness or injury. After taking up this work, my investigations soon led me to realize that it was not the quantity of the drug taken which produced the drug habit, but the regularity of the dosage. I also found from my clinical comparisons that codeine has only one eighth the strength of morphine, yet in the end just as surely a producer of the drug habit similar to that of morphine itself. HEROIN At this writing the most harmful form of opiate with which we have to deal is heroin. This preparation of morphine was first put upon the market by German chemists about fifteen years ago, the word "heroin" being nothing more than a trade name. It was first used in cough mixtures, and was widely discussed in the medical and pharmaceutical press, where it was claimed that all the harm of morphine had virtually been eliminated in this product, which, without having the depressing effect of morphine, at the same time preserved its stimulating effect. A great number of physicians themselves have acquired the habit of taking opiates in this form, believing at the outset that they were not harmful drugs. My investigations soon showed me that heroin is three times as strong as morphine in its action, and for that reason its use sets up definite tolerance more quickly than any other form of opiate. For the same reason it shows more quickly a deleterious effect upon the human system, the mental, moral and physical deterioration of its takers being more marked than in the case of any other form of opiate. Until the Federal Pure Food Law was passed we did not know that many of the well-known, advertised medical preparations contained quantities of various salts or alkaloids of opium. The unsuspecting users of patent medicine were making themselves confirmed drug-users unwittingly, and did not realize how necessary the habit had become to them until for one reason or another they had been deprived of their usual daily dosage. The reader may imagine my surprise when, although a layman, I found that the physician, to whom we had looked for guidance in administering and prescribing these drugs, knew nothing about them beyond their physiological action; that their medical training both in college and in clinics had left them in virtual ignorance of the whole question. The physician freely prescribed or administered these various drugs, while laymen were able to buy over the counters of druggists prescriptions containing definite quantities of them. Unknowingly, the doctor and the druggist were creating great numbers of drug-fiends. Physicians do not yet know over how long a period such drugs can be administered in regular daily dosage without setting up a tolerance, after which the patient cannot be deprived of the drug. If the public had been better advised on this subject, it would have been able to protect itself, and would have been more careful about what it took. COCAINE Outside the opium group, there is at present only one other drug that must be considered as habit-forming, and that is cocaine. The prostitution of this drug from its proper uses is absolutely inexcusable. It was first used medicinally about thirty years ago, and as an anesthetic only. Its administration upon the nose by specialists in that field of surgery soon established the fact that it not only deadened tissue, but set up a certain stimulation which for the time being made one feel abnormally strong or mentally active. This was the beginning of its common use in the shape of so-called catarrh cures. Only a small quantity--from five to ten per cent.--was used. The tissue of the nose is very susceptible to the action of drugs. When it is applied in this way, the circulation takes up the drug as quickly as if taken hypodermically. Unscrupulous chemists and physicians have unloaded upon the world a drug which is beneficial when taken medicinally, but one that has reaped a harvest of irresponsible victims, in which murder, all forms of crime, and mental and moral degeneracy have conspicuously figured, and all for financial gain. The habit was first generally spread through the medium of catarrh-cures. Cocaine contracts and deadens the tissue with which it comes in contact, and thus, as in the case of catarrh, relieves the patient from discomfort, making him feel, indeed, as if there were no nose on his face. Its effect, however, lasts only from twenty to thirty minutes. This is one of the reasons why the cocaine habit is so easily formed. A man taking any powerful stimulant is sure to feel a corresponding depression when the effect of that stimulant has died away, and it then becomes necessary for him to take more of the drug in order to buoy himself up and restore himself to the point of normality. It is among cocaine-users, therefore, not a yearning for any abnormally pleasurable sensation which sends them back again and again to their dosage, but merely their desire to be measurably restored to the comfort which is natural to the normal state. It must be apparent, however, that as soon as it has become necessary for any one to resort to the use of a drug in order to rise to the normal there has been a marked depreciation, physical or mental, and probably both. This explains the fact that many criminals are found to be cocaine-users. No drug so quickly brings about a mental and physical deterioration. It is virtually certain to be a short cut to one of two public institutions, the prison or the madhouse. It will send the average person to the prison first because it is an expensive drug, and the craving for it is more than likely to exhaust his financial resources and then drive him to theft. It is the most expensive of all drug habits. I have known victims who habitually used one hundred and twenty grains a day, at a cost of about seventy dollars a week. This undoubtedly explains the great number who have been made criminals by using cocaine. One who uses it thereby diminishes his earning capacity; while, on the other hand, one who must have it must have money, and much of it. It may be that this matter of cost explains why the under-world has suddenly taken up heroin instead of cocaine. The former is much cheaper. HYPNOTICS While I have only touched upon the opium group and cocaine, I wish to put myself on record now as saying that there is no class of drugs so sure in the end to bring about a deterioration of the physical being as the frequent use of the hypnotic group, or coal-tar products, the sleep-producers. I have never seen more pitiable cases than those who have come to me after they had been taking regularly, during a considerable period, some cure for sleeplessness. This habit not only produces an extreme neurotic condition, but changes the entire temperament of a person. It will turn the most beautiful character into an extreme case of moral degeneracy. Insomnia, headaches, and such ailments spring from a disorganized physical condition. Trying to alleviate them by the use of powerful drugs does not remove the cause, but compounds the physical disabilities which produce these unfortunate physical results. Some day I hope to see as stringent a legal regulation of the sale of these drugs, used for this common purpose, as there now is of opium and its products and cocaine. SLEEPING-POWDERS, OR HYPNOTICS The time cannot be far distant when both Federal and State governments will recognize the danger that lies in the unrestricted sale by druggists and the uncurbed administration by physicians of sleeping-powders, or hypnotics. It cannot be denied by any one who is thoroughly familiar with the subject of habit-forming drugs that in such substances may lie a peril comparable to that inherent in cocaine and opium compounds. Hypnotics of many varieties can be obtained at any drug store in the United States without a doctor's certificate. The sale of bromides is absolutely unrestricted. The many and varied coal-tar products, of which veronal is the leader, with trional, suphonal, medinal, as close followers, and the numerous proprietary remedies, such as somnose, neuronidia, bromidia, Peacock's bromides, etc., may be mentioned as preparations which are widely advertised and openly and energetically sold, and all of which are definitely dangerous. COAL-TAR PRODUCTS Preparations for headaches and neuralgia are notably dangerous. There can be no doubt of the necessity for legal restriction of the sale of anti-kamnia, phenalgin, orangeine, Koehler's headache remedy, shac, all coal-tar products notable for their production of anemia and depression, and undoubtedly responsible for the presence of many men and women in the mad-houses of the land. The chemist whose genius is responsible for the introduction of caffeine to overcome the depressing effect of some of the other component parts of these preparations has put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of the manufacturing druggists and has saddled the world with a great and unnecessary weight of physical and mental degeneration. THE PERIL OF THE DRUG-STORE Not least among these preparations that have most importantly contributed to the tragic army of drug-users in the United States have been various diarrhea remedies and other bowel correctives containing a large amount of straight opium. Morphine, opium, and heroin appear in many cough-mixtures in habit-forming quantities and are offered for sale everywhere save in New York State, where recent legislation somewhat restricts the traffic. Indeed, in every State except New York there are few druggists who do not make up and sell preparations of their own containing codeine, morphine, heroin, or some of the derivatives of opium. No druggist has a right to prescribe any of these powerful drugs. The American public has fallen into the bad habit of trusting the druggist when it should go to the physician. A dozen times every day in the experience of the average American druggist a customer enters who says, "I want something to make me sleep," or, "I want something to cure my headache." Without hesitation, and without blame, for with him the custom has probably been unconsciously built up, the druggist reaches to his shelf and dispenses preparations in which the utmost peril lurks--preparations containing ingredients which should be sold only on the prescription of a physician. Under the present law, as I think it exists in every State, druggists cannot prescribe, but they can advise customers to purchase advertised preparations and those which they themselves compound. Only a very powerful drug can stop a headache as quickly and completely as Americans have come to demand. The preparation must be strong enough to deaden disordered nerves, and being chosen because it will be generally effective, not selectively effective, as in the case of a remedy chosen after an intelligent diagnosis has revealed the nature of the trouble to be treated, it is virtually certain to have no curative qualities whatever. Hundreds of deaths have resulted from unwisely experimenting with such preparations. Most of us have peculiar idiosyncrasies with regard to certain drugs. I have seen patients who could not take so much as two grains of veronal or trional without flushing, itching, and similar symptoms. With such people large doses might bring about serious results and even death. CHAPTER XIII PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION The common idea that one who is struggling with a drug or alcohol habit needs sympathy and psychological encouragement is totally at variance with the facts. No one has ever accomplished anything worth while by holding the hand of an alcoholic, and any one who is endeavoring to help a case of this sort will find himself instantly and seriously handicapped if he puts himself in intimate personal relationship with his patient. Social intercourse in any degree should be tabooed. The physician should never take a meal with any of his patients, or visit a theater with them, or take a drive with them. I have never made a friend of one of my patients, although among them have been many whom I should be glad to number among my friends; and no man would go further to help them than I. Personally, I have never been an excessive alcoholic. It is an interesting fact that many men endeavoring to deal with people of this class use as a bait the statement that they themselves have been victims. Their usual claim is that they first cured themselves, and then took up the work of curing others. I remember a meeting of social-service workers in Boston that I was invited to address. I made a statement to this effect in the course of my talk and greatly offended a previous speaker who had emitted the usual professional patter concerning his original self-cure. I was quite willing to compare with him the results of our methods of treatment, but had no opportunity so to do. HEREDITARY TENDENCIES TOWARD ADDICTION AN IMPOSSIBILITY It is absolutely essential that the man who wishes to help another who has lost control must first accurately understand not only his mental imperfection, if there is any, but his general psychological state. The line between sobriety and drunkenness in the man who has once lost control is almost indistinguishable; it is impossible when talking with him to be sure whether you are talking with the normal mind or with the alcoholic mind. Having once made certain that it is the normal mind to which you are presenting your arguments, your next necessary step is to strip away every mental reservation. Thousands of men who have honestly desired to leave off alcohol have been prevented from doing so by their own secretiveness; it is this mental reservation which has been responsible for many of the failures of my treatment. While the absolute inheritance of a craving for alcohol is, in my experience, a rare thing--so rare as to seem almost negligible, there is no doubt, on the other hand, that many men and women inherit imperfect nervous systems. An imperfect nervous system, if it knew the reason for its own imperfections, might naturally crave alcohol; but inasmuch as such an imperfect system is not naturally accompanied by this instinctive knowledge, the theory of hereditary alcoholic craving must be set aside as untenable. I absolutely deny, therefore, the possibility of such hereditary tendencies. I know that by so doing I may cause acute mental discomfort to those who have made of heredity an excuse for their errors not only to their friends, but in their own minds. The old cloak of heredity has been worn to tatters and must be discarded. Who among us cannot follow up the branches of his family-tree and find somewhere upon one side or the other a person of alcoholic tendencies? In ninety families out of a hundred any one who looks can find such an excuse for his own weakness. In thousands of instances physicians have taken seriously such excuses offered by their patients, but the doctor who listens to his patient's babble of heredity is sure to be misled, and the patient who believes this too commonly accepted theory robs himself of his strongest weapon against alcohol--his own conviction of his personal responsibility and power for self-help. ALCOHOLISM AS A DISEASE We hear much sympathetic talk of the "disease of alcoholism." This is only in a sense true. It is not a case of helpless chance, for the difficulty has been manufactured and developed by man himself. The alcoholic, mentally weakened by the reaction of the stimulant, is of all people most likely to exhibit that most striking evidence of weakness--a craving for sympathy rather than for blame. Habitual alcoholics continually plead for sympathy with mothers, fathers, wives, and friends; and too often they are granted not only pity, but, what is worse, toleration. The sanatorium promoters and proprietors of fake cures continually harp on alcoholism as a disease; and even a few scientists, who should know better, have been misled into an acceptance of this theory. Doctors should be the first to knock from under their patients the psychologically harmful props of the heredity theories. The first thing a physician must do when dealing with an alcoholic is to cut every string of excuse which lies between him and his habit. He must leave nothing of this sort to which the drinker may cling. Sickness, worry, unhappy circumstances of whatever sort must immediately be eliminated as excuses for alcoholic indulgence. If they are not, the patient, although he may gain for a time the mastery over his habit, will presently be certain to find an excuse in his own mind to justify a return to it. Then will come a new downfall. There must be no reservations either in the attitude of the doctor or his patient or in the mental attitude of the patient toward himself. MENTAL ATTITUDE A VITAL CONSIDERATION The possibilities of medical help for the alcoholic have been exhausted when the patient has been freed from the effect of the stimulant and put in a physical condition wherein he feels no inclination toward more alcohol. Great psychological assistance may accompany this definite medical treatment when the patient's physical craving for alcohol has once been eliminated if the physician brings him into a mental state which gives him confidence in his own ability to keep away from stimulants in the future. I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact that no cure exists, or ever will exist, for alcoholism. Its effects may be eliminated, and the victim's physical condition become so greatly improved that weakness will not make him yearn for stimulation; but this does not constitute a cure. Nothing except a man's own mind, whether the treatment extends over six weeks, six months, or six years, can ever relieve him of the danger of a relapse into alcoholism. In most cases a definite medical treatment is the intelligent beginning of help, but no medical treatment, no matter how successful, can compass that victory which a man must win by means of his own determination. THE CHRONIC ALCOHOLIC The physician still regards such cases only from the point of view of physical hazard. It is my opinion that in alcoholic cases the physical hazard is the matter of least importance, and that the world at large has devoted altogether too much effort to its endeavors to preserve chronic alcoholics, just as it has devoted far too little effort to rescue the victims of drugs. It is my opinion that among alcoholics, no matter how worthy they may have been before they lost control, not more than twenty-five per cent. of those whose addiction has become chronic are curable; that is to say, promise any reward whatever for salvage work. The world must remember that the inflamed brain leads to everything on earth which is not worth while, and therefore that the man whose brain has for any considerable period of time been in this condition must have enormously deteriorated. It must also be remembered that at least one half of the world's chronic alcoholics have syphilitic histories. The alcoholic is usually susceptible to the advances of any woman whatsoever, and as a rule devotes less than the normal attention to his own wife. To set out to reclaim a chronic alcoholic is, therefore, to set out to reform a man who has been weakened morally and mentally as well as physically. In dealing with such people, were the matter left entirely to me, drastic measures would be taken. It is my belief that the hopeless inebriate should be unsexed, not because of the danger that, if left sexually normal, he might transmit his alcoholic tendencies by heredity to his offspring, but because he is a liability at best, and to leave him normal adds to his potentiality for waste and evil. Children born of alcoholic-tainted parentage are not specially likely, I think, to yield to alcoholic and tobacco tendencies; but they are apt to lack vitality and mental stamina, so that the probability of their making worthy records is small. If we go one step beyond syphilis and consider other venereal diseases, we shall undoubtedly discover that not twenty-five, but ninety, per cent. of chronic alcoholics, excluding women, have been victims of gonorrhoea. I am told that modern science is recognizing this disease, which was once regarded as of slight importance, an inevitable experience of youth, and something to be accepted and regarded lightly, as an ailment of nearly as vicious an influence upon the race as is syphilis. Therefore I have become convinced that the salvage of alcoholic derelicts is of vastly less importance than prevention at the outset. This principle is being more and more generally recognized throughout the world; it stands behind sanitation and all preventive medicine, and it will before long be recognized in connection with the problem of alcohol. Thus the battle against alcohol will become, as the battle against tuberculosis has become, a campaign of education. It is my belief that every community should have an institution in which hopeless inebriates may be kept away from their cups and away from sexual association. There they should be put at useful occupations; full advantage should be taken of whatever productive capacity alcohol may have left in them; and they should be maintained in a state as happy as their capabilities may permit until they mercifully die. Their segregation would not prevent hereditary drunkenness, for there is, as I have said, no such thing as an hereditary drunkard, but it would prevent the transmission of imperfect nervous systems, and depleted intellect and will power. SELF-CONFIDENCE NECESSARY Involved in helping these cases, my investigations have shown me that when once it is determined on reasonable evidence that a man is curable, the first effort should be devoted to reëstablishing his confidence in himself. He should be "given a new mind" upon the subject of drink and general self-indulgence. It does little good to free a man from alcohol if his mental state is so poor that he will celebrate this boon by again making himself a voluntary victim of the habit. It is for this reason that I have found the least hopeful work in reclamation to be that which is conducted among the idle rich. The alcoholic idle poor are virtually hopeless; the alcoholic idle rich are absolutely hopeless. To the reform of the drunkard mental and physical occupation and some sense of moral responsibility are imperative. It is because of these things that I have deliberately and persistently refused to use the word "cure" in connection with my treatment. A man cannot be cured of alcoholism. He can be given medical aid which will restore his self-control. The ordinary methods in vogue for the reclamation of alcoholics are pitifully futile. The greatest mistake of all is that workers never finish with those whom they are endeavoring to help. One must finish with the alcoholic promptly and conclusively. I have found that alcoholics taking treatment at my hospital must understand that I do not wish to hear from them after they have left my care; that I do not wish to know if they have yielded to new madnesses and relapsed into alcoholism. It is specially important for an alcoholic to learn that at a certain point society will have had enough of him. Fathers must break with alcoholic sons and daughters, mothers must break with alcoholic children, wives and husbands must be freed from alcoholic mates, charitable institutions must be rid of alcoholic derelicts. Society itself must be rid of this waste material, after it has ascertained that their cases are hopeless and has provided comfortable sequestration for them. THE DRUNKARD WHO CAN BE SAVED Now let us turn to the vast army of people who are worth while, but who, nevertheless, have, through mistakes common to our society, become victims of the alcoholic habit. It would almost seem that the incurables among alcoholics have received more consideration from the kindly minded, and even from the scientifically inclined, than have the curables. The curable among alcoholics are intense and pitiable sufferers. They have never had real help. They have been penalized. The poor among them have been colonized in harmful state institutions by the public authorities; the rich among them have been placed in equally harmful private institutions by their relatives and friends. The alcoholic who is punished by incarceration in a cell is harmed, not helped, by it; the man who, on the mythical chance of reform is shunted off to a state establishment, or who is sent by prosperous friends to board at some expensive sanatorium, stands to lose, not gain, by his experience. These methods merely beg the question. They recognize the drunkard as a liability and put him out of sight; they do nothing toward his real regeneration. The inebriates' farm is based on the same utter misconception as the fashionable sanatorium to which the rich man's son may be committed. An intelligent handling of this subject would close or entirely reform ninety-nine per cent. of the public institutions devoted to the care of inebriates, and would depopulate one half of the sanatoriums between the Atlantic and the Pacific. To put a poor man to sober up on a farm where the State will pay his board and expect him not to become an active menace to society as soon as the period of his sequestration comes to an end is no more foolish than to put the rich man's son into a private institution where he will be petted, coddled, and retained at the highest rates as long as possible, and from which he will be eventually permitted to return to his old haunts freed from the immediate physical discomforts of his past alcoholism and therefore provided with a fresh capacity for strong drink and rejuvenated powers for evil-doing. Placing a drunken young man in a sanatorium where some one will pay his board while he lives in utter idleness is certain not to correct, but to complete, the evil work which has been started in him; and thus in many cases the very means adopted by friends and parents for the benefit of those they love are likely to increase rather than to decrease their ultimate tendency toward dissipation. Nothing can be much more pitiful than the spectacle of a youngster led into an alcoholic addiction through the influence of older men. I am by no means accepting the theory of hereditary drunkenness when I say that many young drunkards are only faithfully following their fathers' footsteps, and cannot be justly blamed for their error. Too often it is true that they literally find themselves unable to catch up with their fathers in alcoholic exploits, because their constitutions, depleted by vicious parental habits, prove too weak to stand the pace. Even where boys are not unfortunately influenced by vicious examples offered by their parents, there are circumstances of our modern life that are likely to work havoc with the rising generation. The youth who up to his twenty-first birthday has been permitted to "have his own way" is not likely to have formed the habit of traveling in a very good way; nor will he be likely to change it for a better one when it is proved to him and to his friends and to society that it is bad; for habits form early. Association with thousands of those who have gone wrong has proved many social facts to me, one of which I mention here despite its apparent irrelevance. The boy who has never known the value of money, on whom the responsibilities of life have never been impressed, is as seriously uneducated as he would be if lack of common schooling had left him illiterate. CHAPTER XIV RELATION OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL TO INSANITY The habitual drug-taker and the confirmed alcoholic are puzzles that baffle the alienist. The man with the "wet brain" is a contradiction of all the rules of normality. In many criminal trials men have been adjudged insane who were merely in abnormal states due to the habitual use of drugs or alcohol, of which, without proper treatment, they have been suddenly deprived. In one of the largest hospitals in the United States I once ran across an old woman crooning while she rocked an imaginary baby. She had been formally and legally adjudged insane by the State's experts. As a matter of fact, she was suffering only from an hallucination due to alcoholic deprivation. I suggested definite medical treatment for this case when I discovered that she was about to be transferred from the alcoholic ward to the insane pavilion. In two days after the administration of this treatment she had lost all her hallucinations, and on the third day was dismissed from the institution. Not long ago I observed a similar case in a foreign hospital. It is my belief that commitments for insanity in the United States might be decreased by one third if in every case where insanity was suspected, but where an alcoholic or drug history could be traced, the patient should be subjected to the necessary medical treatment before the final commitment was made. The sudden deprivation of drugs and alcohol which follows the imprisonment of alcoholics and drug-users upon disorderly or criminal charges has produced thousands of cases of apparent insanity sufficiently marked for the subjects to be placed in insane asylums. There, as in the prison, no intelligent note is made of their condition, nor is any proper treatment applied, the result being that they become really insane--insane and hopeless. If we had any means of securing accurate knowledge of the number of such incurable maniacs who are now confined in our asylums, we should find in it a startling evidence of the lack of knowledge on the part of the medical world of what deprivation means to the habitual victim of drugs or alcohol. GENERAL IGNORANCE OF THE RELATION OF ADDICTION TO INSANITY The necessity for educating the public in regard to the very definite relation between alcoholism and insanity should no longer be overlooked. There lies a public peril of unappreciated magnitude in the fact that mere deprivation, the only method so far followed, has been, and if it is not corrected, will continue to be, one of the principal feeders of our insane asylums. Alcoholism will lead to insanity eventually even without deprivation. The case is somewhat different with drug victims. Ordinarily they will not become insane unless deprived of their drug, although in the final stages of the habit they are likely to become incompetent and subject to certain hallucinations, imagining the existence of plots against them, suspecting unfairness on every hand, taking easy offense, exhibiting, in fact, a general distorted mental condition. It is true, indeed, that in some instances the drug victim who is deprived of his drug may become definitely insane, but death is the more frequent result. I have before me a clipping from a newspaper published in Columbus, Ohio. There, after the enforcement of restrictive legislation, the authorities found it necessary to ask the governor for some special procedure which would authorize them to supply drug victims with their drugs until proper medical treatment was provided. This did not relate to those victims who had come exclusively from the under-world, but referred specially to those habitual drug-users whose habits had been acquired through illness. It can scarcely be expected that restrictive legislation will entirely prevent the sale and use of drugs in the under-world any more than restrictive legislation has been able to prevent the practice of burglary or any other type of crime or lawlessness. It is highly probable that the under-world will always be able to get its drugs; but it is nevertheless true that the passage of restrictive legislation and the enforcement of such laws will tend to prevent the descent of many into the criminal class. Even this is comparatively unimportant. Those who suffer most are those who have been given the habit by physicians. These are honest drug-users, and to them at this writing no helping hand is anywhere held out save in New York State. I have been somewhat disgusted--I am sure that is the word I wish to use--by the continual outpouring of sympathy and constant manifestations of anxiety on the part of good people in regard to the under-world, when these same good people regard with indifference or classify as criminal the involuntary victim toward whom the most intense and understanding sympathy should be extended. MENTAL ATTITUDE OF THE DRUG-TAKER AND THE ALCOHOLIC The victim of drugs psychologically differs very materially from the victim of drink. Until his trouble has reached an acute stage, the alcoholic feels little interest in any of the methods advertised as remedial for alcoholism. Many men deny to their friends and even to themselves that they are alcoholics until they have reached a point akin to hopelessness in their friends' eyes and their own. The drug-user, on the other hand, knows that he is a victim as soon as he becomes one; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he is immediately filled with an intense longing to be relieved of his habit. Thousands of alcoholics will defend their vice. A library might be filled with books, fictional and other, glorifying alcohol and the good-fellowship and conviviality that it is supposed to promote. One might search a long time for a victim of any drug habit who would speak with affection of the material which has enthralled him. No poet has ever written any song glorifying morphine. There is no drug-user in the world who would not hail with joy any opportunity that might lead to his relief. The drug-victim investigates every hint of hope with eager interest, reading, intelligently questioning, experimenting. He shrinks from publicity with a horror that is backed by an acute consciousness of his condition, while the victim of alcohol becomes so mentally distorted or deadened that he takes no thought of consequences, cares nothing for publicity, and finds himself unable to avoid public exhibitions of a kind that put him into the hands of the police. Public hospitals do not tempt the drug-user for, having investigated them, he knows that they are not competent to give him real relief. EXPEDIENTS OF DRUG-TAKERS Nothing but really enforced restrictive legislation, fashioned after the model of the present New York State law, will bring to light the drug-victims in any community. The New York law uncovered thousands of them, and within two weeks forced Bellevue and other hospitals to devote many beds to sufferers from drug-deprivation. Similar restrictive legislation would uncover every sufferer from drugs in the country and thus accomplish more good than could be achieved by any other similarly simple means. No man on earth is more pitiably affected than the drug-taker; no suffering is more intense than his when deprived of his drug. The fact that rather than undergo such suffering men and women will resort to the most desperate expedients has been proved a thousand times. When confronted by the terrible prospect of deprivation, they invented plans worthy of the mental agility of the most famous fictionist. Drugs were smuggled into prison hidden in the heels of visitors' shoes. One wife who knew the agony her husband must endure if deprived of his regular morphine dosage took to him clean linen which was admitted to the prison without question, but which, as an accident revealed, had been "starched" with morphine. Another ingenious wife or sweetheart devised the expedient of sending in to a prisoner oranges from which the juice had been cleverly extracted and which had been filled hypodermically with a morphine solution. If there is no length to which a drug victim will not go rather than find himself deprived of his drug, there is no length to which he will not go in order to obtain relief from a habit the existence of which fills him with horror. This has often been illustrated in the course of my practice, but perhaps never more strikingly than when I learned of the experiences of a certain judge in Jacksonville, Florida. This far-sighted, merciful, and progressive jurist had come in contact with one or more pitiable cases of the drug habit to which he wished to give relief. He communicated with me, and I was very glad to coöperate in aiding with definite medical relief several drug-victims taken before him. This procedure was commented upon in the public press, and presently the judge found himself importuned for help by those who had committed no crime, but expressed themselves as quite willing to be sent to prison as the only way in which they could get the treatment that was being administered under his auspices. DRUG-TAKING MORE OFTEN THE CAUSE THAN THE RESULT OF CRIMINALITY A careful study of the histories of drug-takers who upon one charge or another find themselves caught in the meshes of the law will reveal that in most cases, or at least in many cases, the drug habit has led to crime rather than the reverse. If an efficient treatment for the drug habit were established in a prison almost anywhere in the United States where such a treatment did not elsewhere exist, it would result, I am sure, in the actual commission of crimes by a certain number of people willing to endure the misery and disgrace of incarceration for the mere sake of securing treatment for their affliction. Any drug-user will tell you that no punishment recorded in the course of human history, no torture visualized by the most inventive imagination, can compare with the unspeakable agony of deprivation. FALLACY OF IMPRISONING DRUG-TAKERS That imprisonment should rarely, if ever, result in freeing a person from the drug habit can mean only one thing: that drugs are obtainable in every prison. Guards and other employees in such institutions are of a low class, for men and women of a high type are unlikely to seek such employment. I fear that this fact will prove one of the most serious stumbling-blocks in the path of those who are endeavoring to make a success of inebriety-farm experiments. In the first place, they will not be able to find men of a high type anxious to serve in the subordinate positions provided at such places; and in the second place, even if such men can be found, they will be unlikely to obtain positions because persons of an inferior type will be certain to be pushed forward by political influence. Such places would be used as means wherewith to pay political debts, and this would be more or less complacently tolerated, because society has always underrated and still underrates the terrific complications of the task of working for the reclamation of, or even caring for, the down-and-out. Such work is not employment for the saloon-keeper, the ward heeler, or the ex-prize-fighter, and of such is the personnel of most prison staffs made up. The reclamation of the alcoholic wreck means far more than physical rehabilitation. It means moral and psychological regeneration, and such work can be done only by people of understanding and delicate sensibility. The alcoholic from the city who has been perhaps an office employee or a professional man and who is sent to an inebriate farm will find there nothing curative save deprivation. Even if outdoor work will harden his muscles, it must be admitted that the surroundings in which this is accomplished may well ossify his brain. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DRUG HABIT Nothing could more clearly indicate the popular ignorance concerning the drug habit than the general belief that it is usually accompanied by moral deterioration. Where the habit is an accompaniment of life in the under-world, moral deterioration of course exists, though this is due rather to the under-world than to the drug habit. In the thousands of histories where the habit has been acquired by the administration of drugs by physicians it results in moral deterioration no more than drinking tea does. As a matter of fact, that portion of society which holds a drug victim blamable is woefully mistaken and inhumanely unmerciful, the truth being that the man or woman who is not taking drugs is lucky. THE NECESSITY OF DEFINITE MEDICAL TREATMENT IN DEALING WITH ANY FORM OF ADDICTION It is impossible for me to conclude this book without discussing further the question of treatment for those afflicted with habits or addictions. My taking up this work in 1901 was due almost entirely to an investigation into the methods employed to restore those who had lost control through the use of habit-forming drugs, whether they had acquired the habit through dissipation or from the administration of the drug by a physician on account of illness or injury. At that time such cases were supposed to be hopelessly incurable, and the victims only drifted from bad to worse until they had been accounted for either in a mad-house or in the morgue. I found, on making inquiries from some of the leading medical men who had been dealing with the various types of mental and nervous diseases, that they were virtually unable to name any case of a confirmed drug-user who had been permanently benefited by institutional or any other means of treatment. This was very difficult to understand, particularly in the case of drug-users who had acquired the habit through the administration of the drug by a physician, and who earnestly desired to be freed from the habit. It seemed incredible that a skilled physician could not eliminate the craving or desire for the drug, or restore these unfortunates to the point where their systems would not demand or feel the need of it. I soon found out why this was so. My investigation showed me that the drug habit is a mental as well as a physical condition; that the physiological action of an opiate is to tie up the functions, resulting in a deterioration of the vital organs when the victim has taken the drug sufficiently long to set up a definite tolerance. The medical world had apparently been unable or had not attempted to bring about a definite physiological change, and to place such patients where they would not crave drugs and where their systems would not demand them. To my further surprise, I found that the medical world had been depending entirely on deprivation as a means of treating such cases. They would immediately send patients to an institution where they were put under surveillance and guarded by attendants, or they would attempt by gradual reduction of the dosage to eliminate the habit. CURE BY DEPRIVATION IMPOSSIBLE This investigation led me into some very interesting discoveries. I found that old, confirmed subjects of the drug habit were sent to such institutions. Where they were taking large daily doses of opiates the institutions were able to reduce these people, when there was no underlying physical disability, within a few weeks or a few months, according to the temperament of the patient, to a very small daily dosage, often as low as one half or one eighth of a grain a day. When they had reached this dosage it was often found absolutely impossible to limit them further. In some cases where the patient was confined and finally deprived of the drug entirely I found that when he had reached this minimum dosage he would suffer just as much physical discomfort in the end as if he had been suddenly deprived of a very much larger quantity of the drug taken daily. This led up to the further interesting fact that even where patients were finally deprived of the drug and lived through the horrible suffering inevitably accompanying the deprivation, although they outlived the tremendous depression and lassitude which followed, and for long periods of weeks and months after that time had the best of care and attention until they showed marked improvement in their physical condition, nevertheless, with too few exceptions, they never lost the desire for the drug. Always the need of some stimulant returned, and on the slightest excuse or opportunity they were taking their drug again. My investigation finally proved to me that deprivation did not remove the cause of the drug habit, because it did not remove the physical craving for the drug. No matter how long a period the deprivation had been, the needed physical and mental change had never taken place. EFFICACY OF THE AUTHOR'S TREATMENT During the first two years of my work, after finding in various ways patients from the under-world to use as subjects for demonstration, I was finally able to treat any case of drug habit which came to me unless it was complicated by underlying physical disability. After a period of from three to four days these patients would not feel the slightest craving or desire for any form of opiate, whether their addiction had been cocaine, alcoholic stimulants, or tobacco. When the efficacy of this treatment was assured, it began to attract the attention of some of the best-known medical men in the country--men who were interested in this line of study. They followed carefully the medical administration of the new treatment of these cases. It was only a matter of time before the value of the work was thoroughly established and became a medical fact. After hundreds of definite clinical histories had been recorded, the formula was publicly announced, first, at the International Opium Conference at Shanghai in 1909, and a month later to the medical world. Since the complete information concerning my work has been given to the medical profession, and after all these years of study and investigation and medical comment, I have never yet had from any physician an entirely satisfactory explanation as to why or how we were able successfully to unpoison these cases in this short period. At present this treatment is, so far as I know, the only one known to medical science that will bring about this definite physiological change. The intelligent beginning of help in these cases is to unpoison the patient, put him physically on his feet, where he does not want drugs or drink, and where he does not feel the slightest desire or craving for them, and has no dread of ever drifting into these habits again. When you have brought about this definite physical change, you are invariably able to get a definite mental change. You cannot hope to get the mental change until you have first cleared the system of poison, for in this state the patient is in a most responsive condition to deal with. If physical building up, change of environment, change of surroundings in any way whatever are necessary, they can then be taken up intelligently. LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS The knowledge I gained from dealing medically with those afflicted with habits and addictions led me to take up personally the movement to bring about definite legislation with a view to subordinating as much as possible the traffic and consumption of drugs to legitimate medical needs; and to put an end to the criminal negligence by which such drugs have been permitted to be imported, manufactured, and distributed. In contact with the afflicted of this class, I discovered the laxity with which drugs were dealt in, and began in 1912 to try and bring about some restrictive legislation with regard to the evil before the New York legislature. I had first found that in the medical use of the drug the principal evil had sprung from the knowledge of what would ease pain, and that the principal means used for this purpose was the hypodermic syringe. At that time there was no restriction placed upon the sale of this instrument; it could be bought in any drug store just as easily as a package of chewing-gum. The department stores that carried drug supplies advertised hypodermic outfits as low as twenty-five cents. A physician's instrument permitted to be manufactured and sold in this way! Through the bill which was introduced in the New York legislature in 1912, for the first time in the history of the medical world it became possible to purchase this instrument only on a physician's prescription. In 1913 I was the author of a drastic law regulating the sale of habit-forming drugs in New York State, but because of severe pressure brought by physicians and druggists, I was unable to put it through. In 1914 I tried again, and after a hard fight I was able to have enacted a bill, which was introduced by Senator John J. Boylan, and which bears his name. For the first time there was put upon the statute-books of a State real restrictive drug legislation. Other States are taking up this matter, and, as the intention was, the New York bill has been the means of establishing a legislative precedent. I regret very much that the aim and purpose of Federal legislation has been largely defeated by the powerful drug interests, but I predict that it is only a matter of time before public sentiment will defeat this powerful drug lobby, as it has always defeated other lobbies of a similar kind, and that the country will be largely freed from the illegal habit-forming drug traffic. Until there is some international understanding between the countries that produce these drugs and the countries that consume them, we shall have to submit to more or less smuggling of these drugs into our country. Smuggled goods rarely, if ever, find their way into channels for legitimate medical needs, and for that reason it is only the under-world that would be affected by their use and abuse. It is only a matter of time before the commissioners of health for the various States will be given authority enabling them to issue rules and regulations governing the health of the people that will wipe out the quacks and charlatan venders of all common advertised fake medicine cures. THE NEED FOR REGULATING THE ADMINISTRATION OF DRUGS I have been told that to require a consultation of physicians before the administration of a habit-forming drug would put upon the patient a financial burden which he should not be asked to bear. No fallacy could be more complete. There is in the United States to-day not one victim of the drug habit who, knowing as he does the intense suffering it entails, would not rather have given up ten years of his life and been forced to put a mortgage on his soul than to have had this habit fastened on him. Money? Money is nothing! The cost of a consultation is a small price to pay for the possible difference between life-long thralldom and free manhood or womanhood. And let me add in regard to the physician who objects to the legal establishment of a danger-point in drug administration that the physician who feels big enough to accept personally the responsibility of creating a drug habit is too small to be intrusted with that power. PERCENTAGE OF THOSE TO WHOM THE PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION OF DRUGS IS A NECESSITY The percentage of sick people to whom the administration of habit-forming drugs is a necessity for the preservation of life or comfort is smaller than is generally supposed even by the medical profession. When I was drafting my restrictive bill to be introduced into the New York legislature, I was asked by my lawyer to enumerate those physical troubles which demanded the constant use of habit-forming drugs. I found this to be impossible. I have known many instances in which to deprive of drugs patients suffering incurable illness would have been little less than criminal. This alone enabled them to live in comparative comfort. I have known of many cases of drug habit which have grown out of the administration of morphine for recurring troubles, such as renal colic. Such a disorder as this, however, should never give rise to a drug habit, because those suffering from it are subject to such brief periods of pain that a physician could administer the necessary drug without their knowledge. I have had many cases of women who, acquiring the habit through the administration of drugs at the time of their monthly periods, became habitual users, although each recurrence of the pain lasted only three or four days. When this problem is thoroughly understood, such cases will be impossible, for legislation will not only prevent the layman from securing habit-forming drugs, but will prevent the doctor from the indiscriminate administration of them. Of course the general reader may think this book merely a clever advertisement. In it I state that it is wrong to stop the use of morphine and alcohol unless the victims can be treated for the habit, and next I condemn doctors and sanatoriums for their useless methods of treatment, while lauding my own. Naturally, my reader may assume that my only motive is the selfish one of money. Well, one may suppose what he likes, but the truth is that I urge every city and State to establish places that will drive me out of business. I urge physicians to take up this treatment and cure their own colleagues. I have no secrets. My methods have been published, and I am now devoting most of my time to legislative work from which I do not profit a cent. APPENDIX THE RELATION OF ALCOHOL TO DISEASE BY ALEXANDER LAMBERT, M.D. Visiting Physician to Bellevue Hospital; Professor of Clinical Medicine, Cornell University Author of "Hope for the Victims of Narcotics" In the simple heading of the subject-matter of this article there are contained such possibilities of facts and fancies, truths and errors, and wide differences of opinion, that it seems wise to define not only its meaning, but some of the words themselves. What is disease? To many people it is a definite, concrete thing which seizes one in its clutches, holds one captive or possesses one for a second time, and then if overcome releases its grip and one is free and in good health again. But disease is not an entity, even though some agents, as bacteria, are living organisms. It is the lack of some processes which these agents overcome, and others which they set in motion, as manifested by disturbances of various functions of different organs in the body that make up some of our diseases. Our bodies are often in a state of delicate equilibrium, and if some one gland fails to secrete, or secretes too abundantly, the resulting condition may become a disease. As health is a harmonious relationship between the various functions of different parts of the body, so disease is a disturbance of this harmony. The question of the relation of alcohol to disease becomes a question as to whether or not this narcotic if taken into the body can react on the various tissues and organs of the body to such a degree as to disturb the equilibrium of health. And, furthermore, can this disturbance of healthy equilibrium be permanent and the body acquire a lasting diseased condition? HOW IT AFFECTS DIFFERENT MEN Alcohol is classed here as a narcotic and not a stimulant, because we shall see later that alcohol is rather a paralyzer of functions, even when it seems to stimulate, than a producer of increased output from any organ. The time honored idea that alcohol is a stimulant and that, if used in moderation, it is a tonic, is so ingrained in the average mind that it is with the greatest difficulty that men can be made to realize that even in what seems moderate doses it may injure them. This is especially true as one sees men who all their lives have indulged moderately in alcoholic beverages from which seemingly no harm has resulted. The truth, perhaps, is best summed up by the old adage that what is one man's meat is another man's poison, and there is no question that the effects of alcohol in small or moderate doses is vastly different from its effects in large doses, or in long continued, excessive use. Different human beings react differently to similar amounts of alcohol, and conversely, identical amounts of alcohol will affect different individuals in different ways, even when it poisons all of them. For instance, if alcohol sets different processes in motion which bring about damage to the individual, we find that in some persons it has injured the heart and arteries, in others it has affected the liver or stomach, leaving the brain and nervous tissues free from damage, while in still others the body in general seems to be untouched and the brain and nervous tissues suffer the injuries. It is not uncommon to see a man who has partaken freely of alcoholic beverages all his life with neither he nor his friends conscious that his intellect has suffered or deteriorated thereby, to find suddenly that his circulatory and digestive systems are seriously and permanently damaged. On the other hand, many a drunkard has become a burden to his family and the community, with his personality deteriorated, his intellect rendered useless, while his circulation and digestion remain unimpaired, and he lives long years a nuisance and a burden to his environment. Since I have made the distinction between moderation and excess in the use of alcohol, it will be well to define what is regarded as excess, and what moderation, in order that the effects of both may be considered. Physiologic excess, it seems to me, has been best defined by a brilliant Frenchman named Duclaux, who says that any one has drunken alcohol to excess who one hour after he has taken it is conscious in any way of having done so. If after a drink of any alcoholic beverage has been taken, wine, whiskey, or whatever it may be, an hour later we feel ourselves flushed, tongue loosened, or if we are heavy and drowsy, or, if we find our natural reserve slightly in abeyance, if the judgment is not as sternly accurate as before partaking of the beverage, if the imagination is unusually active and close consecutive reasoning not as easy as before, if we think we do our work much better, but next morning realize we haven't accomplished quite as much or done it as well as we expected, then we have shown a physiologic excessive intake of alcohol, and an amount which if continued will produce damage somewhere in the body. Moderation in the use of alcohol means that it be taken in amounts of which one remains unconscious. This may seem a narrow and hard line to draw, and may seem to confine the amount of alcohol that may be consumed to much less than many people wish to indulge in. How much in actual amount this should be with any given individual depends upon that individual alone, and no one can be a law to any other individual than himself. If a man be engaged in severe manual labor or muscular exercise, he can consume more alcohol without detriment than when leading a sedentary life, although the character of the work that he will do may not be as good as if no alcohol were taken. THE MODERATE USE OF ALCOHOL The above definition, however, must suffice. We must fix some standard between moderation and excess, and the more accurately we define moderation, the more narrowly do we confine it. Judge by the above standard, alcohol taken in moderate doses does not seem more than to stimulate the digestive processes of the stomach, increase the flow of blood through the heart, increase the circulation in the periphery and skin, dilate the capillaries, and make it easier for the circulation to complete its cycles. When absorbed into the body in such doses, it can act as a food, and, in fact, as much as is burnt up by the body does act as a food, although it differs from other foods in that it is never stored up. It can replace in energy-giving properties sugars or fats, and being burnt up by the body can give out the equivalent of sugar and fat in muscular energy, and heat generated and given out by the body. Its effect is similar to that obtained by sugar and fats which are taken up by the body when needed and in the amounts requisite to the body at the moment, and it seems to be treated as far as can be seen as other foods for fuel. But it is not an economical fuel because the human organism does not perform its work as well as when there is no alcohol in the ration. Simultaneously when being consumed as food it is exerting its drug action. In this process it is the more easily available, and thus the sugar and fats are stored up while the alcohol is burnt up; it spares the fat consumption, often causing an increase of bodily weight through the putting on of fat. To those who are accustomed to its use, it seems also to spare the protein consumption of the body, but to those unaccustomed to its use it has the opposite effect, increasing the destructive breaking down of proteins. DANGER SIGNALS UNHEEDED Moderate indulgence in alcoholic beverages adds to the pleasures of existence with a great many men, and while it seems to increase their pleasures and broaden the extent of their mental experiences, it cannot be said to increase their powers of accurate mental activity, though it temporarily increases the imaginative flow of ideas. It relieves the feeling of both body and mental fatigue for the time being, an effect which may be an advantage or may be a distinct disadvantage, for fatigue is Nature's warning when to stop, and if we dull ourselves to this feeling and leave the warning unheeded, we may easily go on to harmful excesses of overwork and overexertion. It is doubtful if the moderate drinking of alcohol, as we have defined moderation, sets in motion processes which may so disturb the equilibrium of the body as to cause disease. Broadly speaking, the excessive use of alcohol injures the body in two ways. It injures the functional cells of the different organs for alcohol is distinctly a cellular poison, and it further disturbs the nutrition of the organs by its injurious action on the blood vessels which supply nutrition to the various parts of the body. Whether to replace the destroyed cells or as a result of the congestion there is also an increase in the connective tissue framework of the various organs. The action of alcohol on the circulation is one of the earliest effects which is shown after it is taken into the body. The flushing of the skin is a beginning paralysis of the minute capillary blood vessels. If habitually indulged in, the effect is a continuous dilatation of the vessels, although it seems for a while in the early stages that there is a toning up of the circulation. Yet excessive indulgence brings with it always a lowering of the blood pressure and finally the chronic congestions in the internal viscera. The action of the heart at first is to make it beat fuller and stronger, but if continued, the effect is also one of paralysis of its muscle and a diminution of the output of work done, and finally it is a paralyzer of the heart's action. In some persons, through its injury to the cardiac blood vessels and intrinsic muscle of the heart, it sets in motion those morbid processes which result in angina pectoris. Beginning with the stomach, we find that when alcohol is taken in excess it not only disturbs the processes of digestion that are then going on, if it is taken in greater amount than five per cent. of the stomach content, but it also acts directly on the mucous membrane, producing an irritant action. We have formed here a chronic congestion of the mucous membrane which produces swollen cells, and the digestive glands of the stomach produce an excess of mucus which interferes with digestion, and the resulting congestion interferes with the gastric secretions. It ends in producing a swollen, inflamed mucous membrane, often with hemorrhages. These processes may go on to an atrophic form of gastritis, in which the mucous membrane may be so atrophied that it is unable to secret sufficient gastric juice. The acid of the gastric juice, combining with certain substances in the intestine, is one of the stimulants which causes the production of the pancreatic secretion. The pancreas not alone digests the meats and other proteids, but it changes starch into sugar, and also has a fat splitting ferment. Thus we see that pancreatic digestion is a most important function, and does much more in the digestive work than the stomach. When therefore the acids of the gastric juice are lacking, there is an insufficient stimulus to the pancreas to pour out its complex juices and complete digestion. THE ATTACK UPON THE LIVER Alcohol is so rapidly absorbed from the stomach and the upper intestine, that it does not as a rule produce much change in the small intestines. The absorption of the digested food from the intestinal tract by alcoholics when recovering from a debauch is greater than normal, provided they have ceased from their alcohol. The absorbing powers of the intestine remain a long time, and is the reason that so many alcoholics appear so well nourished. The acids of the gastric juice also stimulate the excretion of bile from the liver, and combining with the same ferment, the secretion, being taken up by the blood, stimulates the liver to an increased secretion of bile. If therefore one has so injured the stomach with the taking of alcohol that the mucous membrane is unable to secrete a proper gastric juice, it is readily seen that the proper stimulation to the liver and the pancreas are lacking, and the equilibrium of the entire digestive process of the body is upset. The blood from all the intestines goes directly to the liver, the circulation of this organ being so arranged that the blood must filter through and bathe the liver cells before it is gathered into a central vein and returns into the general circulation. In fact the liver is the great chemical laboratory of the body, and the complex processes that go on there are as yet but little understood. The processes which I have described as generally characteristic of alcohol are seen to a very marked extent in the liver. There is a chronic congestion, and there is very frequently various forms of degeneration in the hepatic cells, and in many cases an increase in the connective tissue to such an extent as to cause the disease known as cirrhosis of the liver. Alcohol may also under certain circumstances produce such excessive fatty degeneration in the liver, as in itself to be a menace to existence, for if the liver ceases to do its proper work, the whole minute nutritive chemistry, the metabolism of the body, breaks to pieces. The liver stands an enormous amount of use and abuse, and it is one of the last organs to give way under great strain, but when its functional processes do break down, the existence of the individual is not much further prolonged. The liver can consume and break down a certain amount of alcohol, but when more is poured into it than it can assimilate, some of it must go through into the general circulation and over the body, flowing to the brain and poisoning this organ, and the other nervous tissues. The action of alcohol on the nervous tissues constitutes, in the eyes of the majority, the main injury that alcohol does to a human being. Certain it is that the action of alcohol on the brain does more to distort and pervert a man's relationship with his environment than any other action which alcohol has on the body. It is through the poison of this organ that the personality of the individual is so changed and so poisoned that a degeneration of the individual in character and morals is brought about. It is here, too, that the widest differences of tolerance and intolerance to alcohol are shown. Some men may consume enormous quantities and their mental balance apparently remain intact. Other individuals cannot take a single glass of wine without being distinctly affected by it, or rendered unmistakably drunken. The gross injuries found in the brain of those dying from the effects of alcohol are partly due to the effect of alcohol on the circulation and the injury to the blood vessels, thus diminishing the nutrition of the brain and injuring the brain tissue itself, and besides, as we have seen in other viscera, to the increase in connective tissue. It is not necessary here to go into the details of the minute formation of the cells, how each cell is formed of a cell body and many branches, as one may conceive, growing like a tree or bush with the many branches stretching out and touching other branches of related and adjacent cells. When these dendrites or branches are in contact, there is an interrelationship between the processes of the two cells. Alcohol causes a retraction of the tiny branches one from another and the cells are dissociated, so that the mental processes become dissociated from each other, and the cells themselves degenerate and are unable to carry on their functions; thus we see the functions of memory and of the reproduction of images by memory prevented, the inability of the mind to reason, through the inability of the mind to call up former experiences, feelings and ideas, and a weakening of the power of each cell to take in impressions. Every person who drinks alcohol to excess will not show every form of mental deterioration that may be produced by excessive indulgence, and the degree of deterioration in intelligence which goes to make up the sum total of mentality varies greatly in different individuals. All who drink alcohol to excess, however, show some diminution in their judgment. Judgment means the power of recalling various memories of perceptions through the senses, which have come in from the outside world, memories of ideas, memories of emotions, and all the complicated association of ideas that these bring up, and in the recalling of them weigh each one with the other and judge of the value between them. This also means reasoning and decision for action. This power of reasoning and judging is weakened in the alcoholic, and in any brain long poisoned by alcohol it is an impossibility to exercise it. Memory itself is also weakened. There is excessive forgetfulness of the recent past, and in some cases of advanced alcoholism there is absolute forgetfulness of wide gaps of years; a man may be unable to remember anything from the last five minutes back for twenty years, and then remember back to childhood. The memories of childhood are more easily stamped on the brain than are those of adult life, both because it takes less to impress a child, and because there is not the complexity of ideas crowding into the brain, nor the complexity of association of ideas to be recorded. Therefore memories of childhood make a deeper impress and last longer, and so the complex memories of the adult are the first to be forgotten in the alcoholic, and those of childhood remain. EFFECT UPON MEMORY AND JUDGMENT Besides the absolute forgetfulness, there is another form of forgetfulness in the alcoholic which often produces a ludicrous result. This is a perversion of memory. The person may be in a perfectly strange place and meet strangers, and yet be convinced that he has seen the place and met the strangers before, and greet them as old friends. This feeling of having been there before occurs in normal, healthy people, and may be simply the expression of momentary fatigue, or proceed from some unknown cause; but it is grossly exaggerated in the alcoholic, and cannot as easily be straightened out as in the normal mind. The imaginative faculties of the mind are at first heightened by alcohol, and this often produces bright, witty remarks in those who have taken enough alcohol to have their imaginations stimulated and their judgment slightly inhibited, so that their ideas crowd readily to their minds and their tongues are loosened. Often, however, they say things which though bright and witty had better be left unsaid, and this is an indication of the beginning paralysis of their judgment. The imaginative faculties, however, are not constructively increased by alcohol, and it does not conduce to reproduction and creative ability, which requires memory and constructive thought. In this connection Kraeplin's experiments have shown that alcohol makes easy the liberation of movements from the cortical areas of the brain, that is, the transformation of ideas and memories of movements into deeds, but no real mental power is given; for while a man may feel that he is doing things better with than without alcohol, as a matter of fact he is not doing them so well. This sense of self-approbation is very characteristic of the alcoholic. His judgment is gone, not only in regard to his mental processes, but very essentially regarding himself, and it may be truly said that while alcohol shrinks the judgment, it swells the self-conceit. This abnormally good opinion of his diminished abilities renders the alcoholic exceedingly complacent; he is persuaded that at any time he can give up drinking if he chooses, and he is unable to appreciate the rapid deterioration of his intellect. One cannot separate the will of an individual from his personality, and the weak-willed individuals, while they may possess many other agreeable characteristics, are lacking in the progressive force which strong characters possess. Alcohol weakens the will, causes the personality itself to deteriorate, and there is a lack of initiative; there is the ever ready specious explanation why nothing is ever done; there is a boastful conceited estimation of what can be done. With the judgment perverted the alcoholic cannot act at the proper time in the right way, no matter how much he may be willing to admit the necessity for correct action, and on the other hand he is equally powerless to prevent wrong action on his part, especially when such action has anything to do with a further indulgence in his alcohol. The emotional side of the personality shows the same deterioration from the higher to the lower, as do the other intellectual processes. It is the same story that the last to come are the first to go, and the first to come are the last to go. All emotions of refinement, those of the esthetic development, disappear the earliest. The sense of affection and moral responsibility, duty to family and friends deteriorate and vanish. There is nothing left but the consideration of what affects the self, and an alcoholic is the most studied, selfish soul that exists. The remaining emotions of anger, fear and nutritional reaction for food and drink remain to the last, as these are the most primitive of the emotions. With the weak will preventing action, and with the loss of memory and inability for continuity of thought, we find the emotion of fear predominating to a very noticeable extent. This is true whether the alcoholic be delirious or not, for in all forms of alcoholic delirium, fear is a very predominant symptom. In some forms of delirium tremens, the intensity of the fear is a fair criterion of the degree of the poisoning. The various senses of sight, hearing and taste are dulled, because the cells producing the mental perceptions are equally poisoned with the rest of the mind. WEAKENING THE MORAL FIBER With the inaccuracy of sense perception and loss of memory and diminished judgment, one cannot be surprised to find that alcoholics are notoriously inaccurate, unreliable and untruthful. They cannot tell the truth even with assistance. But often what is credited to them as untruthfulness is mere inability to perceive things accurately, to remember accurately, and therefore to state things accurately. With the deterioration of the personality, that is, of the will, one would naturally expect that the deterioration of morals would go hand in hand. One cannot remain moral or virtuous without sufficient will to do so, and without sufficient will to make a struggle for self-control, and this is so in the case of a mind poisoned by alcohol. I do not claim that lack of morals is a disease, but moral development has appeared late in the development of the race, and such racial development is expressed by the individual. With the deteriorated mentality of the alcoholic, we must expect that the characteristics of late development will be the first to go, and for this reason we must realize that alcoholism naturally tends to immorality and crime. As a matter of fact, it is claimed that fifty per cent. of the crimes in France and forty-one per cent. in Germany are due to alcoholism, and no doubt in England and America the percentage is equally high. As might be expected, the offenses are principally those of disregard of the rights of others, contempt of law and order, assault, disturbances of domestic peace and robbery, and to all these crimes the habitual drunkard is particularly prone. But it is not my purpose to discuss the effect of alcohol in any way except as it pertains to the human body, nor to go into the reasons why men so poison their bodies as to bring about these deleterious results. The deterioration that we have been considering, when occurring in the mind, would naturally cause one to infer that insanity must also be common in those who are addicted to alcohol, and such is indeed the case. In New York State alone I believe it can be safely said that fully ten per cent. of the women and thirty per cent. of the men confined in the state asylums are there through forms of insanity caused by alcohol. It will not profit us to go into the various forms of alcoholic insanity, but when we realize that one-third of the men in the insane asylums to-day in New York are there because of excessive indulgence in alcohol, and also that the State spends annually over six million dollars to care for them, we realize both the terrible ravages that alcoholic poison has made on the mentality of men and the enormous cost that it entails upon the community. As to the alcohol circulating in the blood, there is an endeavor naturally to get rid of it as with all poisons, and the kidneys in this endeavor show the same processes that are elsewhere seen, of destruction of the specific cells, congestion, and increased connective tissue growth. Whether it is that these cells are destroyed in an endeavor to eliminate various substances for which they are not fitted and break down under the strain, or whether they are directly poisoned by the alcohol itself, the resultant factors are those best understood in the lay mind as acute and chronic Bright's disease. Whether or not alcohol produces these various processes in the kidneys which result in these diseased conditions, there is no question but that certain of these diseased conditions appear more frequently in alcoholics than in others. Besides the destructive processes about which we have been speaking in the various viscera, there are certain results of alcohol that may be said to affect the general condition of the individual. By this I mean the general resistance to bacterial infection, the resistance to injury to the body, and the ability to repair such injuries. Alcohol diminishes the power of the body to resist bacterial infection. The alcoholic is more prone to acquire bacterial diseases, and when these are acquired he is infinitely less able to resist them. In Bellevue Hospital in 1904 there were 1,001 patients with lobar pneumonia. Of these, 667 gave a history of alcoholism; 334 were non-alcoholics, which means that there were twice as many alcoholics suffering from this disease as non-alcoholics. Among the alcoholics the mortality was fifty per cent., and among the non-alcoholics, 23.9 per cent. Here again the mortality among the alcoholics was more than double that which prevailed among those who had not taken this narcotic. The same is true of other infectious diseases. When injuries occur to the body, such as broken legs or arms, there is a very wide difference in the picture produced in those who have drunk to excess, and those who have been sober. The shock produced in these instances is greater in the weakened nervous system of the alcoholic, and among those who have habitually taken alcohol there is a very great tendency after broken bones to develop delirium tremens, and when this occurs in these patients, the outlook is always very grave. A broken leg or arm does not bring with it any such danger to those who have led sober lives. The process of recovery from disease and accident, owing to the deteriorated nervous system and the poisoned circulatory system, is much slower in alcoholics than in others. WEAK WILLS INHERITED Unfortunately, the injury which alcohol does, and the processes of deterioration which it sets on foot, do not end with the individual. Alcohol poisons and injures the germ cells of both sexes, and the offspring of those addicted to its use may inherit a weakened and injured nervous system. The taste for alcohol, the craving, so called, is not inherited. This idea that, because a man has an alcoholic father or mother, he inherits the taste for alcohol, is a superstition that has been used by the weak as an excuse both for overindulgence in alcohol, and as a further excuse why no attempt should be made to check their indulgence. What is inherited is a weak, unstable intellect and personality, prone to excesses in all things, one that is weak-willed and weak in resistance to temptation, and one more easily affected by alcohol than the ordinary normal individual. There is also often inherited a lack of moral perception and moral sense, causing the individual to do things which make one doubt his sanity; yet he can not be called insane, but really wanders in the border line between mad and bad, which is often worse than insanity itself. Alcoholic inheritance does not stop at instability of the nervous system or weakness of the personality, and one is rather staggered to realize the high percentage of imbecile, epileptic and weak-minded children that may be born to alcoholic parents. A detailed study of the imbecile school-children throughout all Switzerland showed that fifty per cent. of them were born in the days nine months after the periods of greatest alcoholic indulgence, such as the New Year, the Carnival, and the grape harvest, and that the births of the other half of the imbeciles were evenly scattered through the remaining thirty-eight weeks of the year. It has been shown that in France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland, from twenty-eight to seventy per cent. of the epileptics in some of the institutions were the descendants of alcoholics. Demme, in comparing the results of the health and death rates between ten alcoholic families and ten non-alcoholic families, found that in the alcoholic families out of fifty-seven children, twenty-five were still-born or died in the first month of life; twenty-two were designated as sick, and ten as healthy--while in the non-alcoholic families, five were still-born or died early, six were sick, and fifty were healthy. Thus only 17.5 per cent. in the alcoholic families were healthy, while eighty-two per cent. in the non-alcoholic families were healthy, and only eighteen per cent. not healthy. The percentages, therefore, were almost exactly reversed. These statistics mean that not alone may the chronic alcoholic bequeath his poisoned nervous system to posterity, but from the statistics in Switzerland of the imbecile children, we must realize that even a temporary debauch may leave a curse upon the innocent child; they also mean that alcohol produces those processes in the individual which tend to the degeneration of the race, and tend after a few generations to extinction, and thus does Nature benefit the race by turning a curse into a blessing through the extinction of the degenerate. Footnote: [1] I have heard of a New Yorker who gave up his attendance as a member of the executive committee of a prominent and very useful reform association because, though an occasional smoker, he could not endure the tobacco-laden atmosphere of the room where the committee met. To this day his associates probably think him a very lukewarm worker in the cause! Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. The following misprints have been corrected: "merly" corrected to "merely" (page 156) "dangerout" corrected to "dangerous" (page 199) "coedine" corrected to "codeine" (page 216) Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. 
6752	----	STUDY AND STIMULANTS; OR, THE USE OF INTOXICANTS AND NARCOTICS IN RELATION TO INTELLECTUAL LIFE, AS ILLUSTRATED BY PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS ON THE SUBJECT, FROM MEN OF LETTERS AND OF SCIENCE. EDITED BY A. ARTHUR READE. INTRODUCTION. The real influence of the intoxicants and narcotics in common use has been a matter of fierce and prolonged controversy. The most opposite opinions have been set forth with ability and earnestness; but the weight they would otherwise carry is lessened by their mutually contradictor-y character. Notwithstanding the great influence of the physician's authority, people are perplexed by the blessings and bannings bestowed upon tobacco and the various forms of alcohol. What is the real influence of stimulants and narcotics upon the brain? Do they give increased strength, greater lucidity of mind and more continuous power? Do they weaken and cloud the intellect, and lessen that capacity for enduring a prolonged strain of mental exertion which is one of the first requisites of the intellectual life? Would a man who is about to enter upon the consideration of problems, the correct solution of which will demand all the strength and agility of his mind, be helped or hindered by their use? These are questions which are asked every day, and especially by the young, who seek in vain for an adequate reply. The student grappling with the early difficulties of science and literature, wishes to know whether he will be wiser to use or to abstain from stimulants. The theoretical aspect of the question has perhaps been sufficiently discussed; but there still remains the practical inquiry,--"What has been the experience of those engaged in intellectual work?" Have men of science--the inventors, the statesmen, the essayists, and novelists of our own day--found advantage or the reverse in the use of alcohol and tobacco? The problem has for years exercised my thoughts, and with the hope of arriving at _data_ which would be trustworthy and decisive, I entered upon an independent inquiry among the representatives of literature, science, and art, in Europe and America. The replies were not only numerous, but in most cases covered wider ground than that originally contemplated. Many of the writers give details of their habits of work, and thus, in addition to the value of the testimony on this special topic, the letters throw great light upon the methods of the intellectual life. To each writer, and especially to Dr. Alex. Bain, Mr. R. E. Francillon, Mark Twain, Mr. E. O'Donovan, Mr. J E. Boehm, Professor Dowden, the Rev. Dr. Martineau, Count Gubernatis, the Abbe Moigno, and Professor Magnus, who have shown hearty interest in the enquiry, I tender my best thanks for contributing to the solution of the important problem of the value of stimulants; also to Mr. W. E. A. Axon for suggestive and much appreciated help. I should, however, be glad of further testimonies for use in a second edition. _January_, 1883. CONTENTS. I. Introduction II. LETTERS FROM: Abbot, The Rev. Dr. Allibone, Mr. S. Astin Argyll, The Duke of, F. R. S. Arnold, Mr. Matthew Ayrton, Professor Bain, Dr. Alexander Ball, Professor Robert S., LL. D., F. R. S. Bancroft, Mr. Hubert Howe Baxendell, Mr. Joseph, F. R. A. S. Beard, Dr. G. M. Bert, Professor Paul Blackie, Professor John Stuart Blanc, M. Louis Boehm, Mr. J. E., R. A. Bredencamp, Dr. Brown, Mr. Ford Madox, R. A. Buchanan, Mr. Robert Buddenseig, Dr. Burnaby, Captain Fred Butler, Lieut. Col. W. F. Burnton, Dr. Lauder, F. R. S. Camp, Madame du Carpenter, Dr. W. B., C. B., LL. D., F. R. S. Chambers, Mr. William, LL. D Childs, Mr. George W. Claretie, M. Jules Clarke, Mr. Hyde, F. S. S. Collins, Mr. Wilkie Conway, Mr. Moncure D., M. A. Dallenger, Rev. W. H., F. R. S Darwin, Professor Dawkins, W. Boyd, M. A., F. R. S., F. G. S. D'Orsey, The Rev. Alex. J. D., B. D. O'Donovon, Mr. Edmund Dowden, Professor, LL. D. Edison, Professor Ellis, Mr. Alex. J., F. R. S., F. S. A. Everett, Professor Fairbairn, Professor R. M. Francillon, Mr. R. E. Freeman, Mr. Edward A., D. C. L., LL. D. Furnivall, Mr. F. J., M. A. Gardiner, Mr. Samuel R., Hon. LL. D. Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., M. P. Greville, Mdlle. II Gubernatis, Count Guenin, M. L. P. Guy, Dr. William Haeckel, Professor Ernst Hamerton, Mr. Philip Gilbert Hardy, Mr. Thomas Harrison, Mr. Frederic Henty, Mr. G. A. Holmes, Mr. Oliver Wendell Holyoake, Mr. George Jacob Hooker, Sir J. D., F. R. S. Howells, Mr. W. D. Joule, Dr. J. P. Lansdell, The Rev. Henry Leathes, Rev. Stanley, D. D. Lecky, W. E. H. Lees, Dr. F. R. Levi, Mr. Leone, F. S. A. Lubbock, Sir John, Bart. M. P. Magnus, Professor Maitland, Mr. Edward, B. A. Martin, Sir Theodore, K. C. B. Martineau, The Rev. James, D. D. Maudsley, Dr. Henry May, Sir Thomas Erskine, K. C. B., D. C. L. Mayor, Rev. John E. B., M. A. Moigno, The Abbe Morrison, Rev. J., D. D. Mongredien, Mr. Augustus Murray, Dr. J. A. H. Murray, Mr. D. Christie. Newman, Professor Pattison, The Rev. Mark, B. D. Payn, Mr. James Pitman, Mr. Eizak Plaute, M. Gaston Plummer, The Rev. A. Pocknell, Mr. Edward Rawlinson, Professor George Reade, Mr. Charles Reed, Mr. Thomas Allen Rodenberg, Dr. Julius Russell, Dr. W. H. Ruskin, Mr. John Sen, Keshub Chunder Simon, M. Jules Skeat, Professor St. Hilaire, M. Barthelemy Spottiswoode, Mr. W., D. C. L., LL. D. Siemens, Dr. C. W., D. C. L., F. R. S. Smith, Mr. G. Barnett Taine, M. Trollope, Mr. Anthony Thomson, Sir William, M. A., LL. D., D. C. L., F. R. S. Trantmann, Professor Tyndall, Professor, LL. D., F. R. S. Tourgueneff, Mr. Ivan Twain, Mark Walford, Mr. Cornelius, F. S. S., F. I. A. Watts, Mr. G. F., R. A. Wilson, Professor Andrew, Ph. D., F. R. S. E. Winser, Mr. Justin Wurtz, M. III. APPENDIX TESTIMONIES OF: Bennett, Dr. Risdon Brooke, The Rev. Stopford A., M. A. Bryant, William C. Chambers, Dr. King Fraser, Professor Thomas R. Herkomer, Hubert, A. R. A. Higginson, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Howitt, William Kingsley, The Rev. Charles Martineau, Harriet Miller, Professor Proctor, Mr. R. A., F. R. S. Richardson, Dr. B. W., F. R. S. Sala, Mr. George Augustus Temple, Bishop Thompson, Sir Henry, F. R. C. S. Williams, Mr. W. Mattieu, F. R. A. S., F. C. S. Yeo, Dr. Bumey, M. D. IV. CONCLUSION STUDY AND STIMULANTS THE REV. DR. ABBOT, EDITOR OF THE "CHRISTIAN UNION," NEW YORK. I have no experience whatever respecting tobacco: my general opinion is adverse to its use by a healthy man; but that opinion is not founded on any personal experience, nor on any scientific knowledge, as to give it any value for others. My opinion respecting alcohol is that it is a valuable and necessary ingredient in forming and preserving some articles of diet--yeast bread, for example, which can only be produced by fermentation--and that its value in the lighter wines, those in which it is found in, a ratio of from 5 to 10 per cent., is of the same character. It preserves for use other elements in the juice of the grape. As a stimulant, alcohol is, in my opinion, at once a deadly poison and a valuable medicine, to be ranked with belladonna, arsenic, prussic acid, and other toxical agents, which can never be safely dispensed with by the medical faculty, nor safely used by laymen as a stimulant, except under medical advice. As to my experience, it is very limited; and, in my judgment, it is quite unsafe in this matter to make one man's experience another man's guide: too much depends upon temperamental and constitutional peculiarities, and upon special conditions of climate and the like. 1. I have no experience respecting distilled spirits; I regard them as highly dangerous, and have never used them except under medical advice, and then only in rare and serious cases of illness. 2. Beers and the lighter wines, if taken before mental work, always--in my experience--impair the working powers. They do not facilitate, but impede brain action. 3. After an exceptionally hard day's work, when the nervous power is exhausted, and the stomach is not able to digest and assimilate the food which the system needs, a glass of light wine, taken with the dinner, is a better aid to digestion than any other medicine that I know. To serve this purpose, its use--in my opinion-- should be exceptional, not habitual: it is a medicine, not a beverage. 4. After nervous excitement in the evening, especially public speaking, a glass of light beer serves a useful purpose as a sedative, and ensures at times a good sleep, when without it the night would be one of imperfect sleep. I must repeat that my experience is very limited; that in my judgment the cases which justify a man in so overtaxing his system that he requires a medicine to enable him to digest his dinner or enjoy his sleep must be rare; and that my own use of either wine or beer is very exceptional. Though I am not in strictness of speech a total abstinence man, I am ordinarily a water drinker. LYMAN ABBOT. March 11, 1882. MR. S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE, NEW YORK. I have no doubt that the use of alcohol as a rule is very injurious to all persons--authors included. In about 17 years (1853-1870), in which I was engaged on the "Dictionary of English Literature and Authors," I never took it but for medicine, and very seldom. Moderate smoking after meals I think useful to those who use their brains much; and this seems to have been the opinion of the majority of the physicians who took part in the controversy in the _Lancet_ about ten or twelve years since. An energetic non-smoker is in haste to rush to his work soon after dinner. A smoker is willing to rest (it should be for an hour), because he can enjoy his cigar, and his conscience is satisfied, which is a great thing for digestion; the brain is soothed also. S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE. March 27, 1882. THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, F. R. S. In answer to your question, I can only say that during by far the greatest part of my life I never took alcohol in any form; and that only in recent years I have taken a small fixed quantity under medical advice, as a preventive of gout. Tobacco I have never touched. ARGYLL. October 2, 1882. MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD. In reply to your enquiry, I have to inform you that I have never smoked, and have always drunk wine, chiefly claret. As to the use of wine, I can only speak for myself. Of course, there is the danger of excess; but a healthy nature and the power of self-control being presupposed, one can hardly do better, I should think, than "follow nature" as to what one drinks, and its times and quantity. As a general rule, I drink water in the middle of the day; and a glass or two of sherry, and some light claret, mixed with water, at a late dinner; and this seems to suit me very well. I have given up beer in the middle of the day, not because I experienced that it did not suit me, but because the doctor assured me that it was bad for rheumatism, from which I sometimes suffer. I suppose most young people could do as much without wine as with it. Real brain-work of itself, I think, upsets the worker, and makes him bilious; wine will not cure this, nor will abstaining from wine prevent it. But, in general, wine used in moderation seems to add to the _agreeableness_ of life--for adults, at any rate; and whatever adds to the agreeableness of life adds to its resources and powers. MATTHEW ARNOLD. November 4, 1882. PROFESSOR AYRTON Has no very definite opinions as to the effects of tobacco and alcohol upon the mind and health, but as he is not in the habit of either taking alcohol or of smoking, he cannot regard those habits as essential to mental exertion. April 21, 1882. DR. ALEXANDER BAIN, LORD RECTOR OF ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY. I am interested in the fact that anyone is engaged in a thorough investigation of the action of stimulants. Although the subject falls under my own studies in some degree, I am a very indifferent testimony as far as concerns personal experience. On the action of tobacco, I am disqualified to speak, from never having used it. As to the other stimulants--alcohol and the tea group--I find abstinence essential to intellectual effort. They induce a false excitement, not compatible with severe application to problems of difficulty. They come in well enough at the end of the day as soothing, or cheering, and also as diverting the thoughts into other channels. In my early intercourse with my friend; Dr. Carpenter, when he was a strict teetotaler, he used to discredit the effect of alcohol in soothing the excitement of prolonged intellectual work. I have always considered, however, that there is something in it. Excess of tea I have good reason to deprecate; I take it only once a day. The difficulty that presses upon me on the whole subject is this:--In organic influences, you are not at liberty to lay down the law of concomitant variations without exception, or to affirm that what is bad in large quantities, is simply less bad when the quantity is small. There may be proportions not only innocuous, but beneficial; reasoning from the analogy of the action of many drugs which present the greatest opposition of effect in different quantities. I mean this--not with reference to the inutility for intellectual stimulation, in which I have a pretty clear opinion as regards myself--but as to the harmlessness in the long run, of the employment of stimulants for solace and pleasure when kept to what we call moderation. A friend of mine heard Thackeray say that he got some of his best thoughts when driving home from dining out, with his skin full of wine. That a man might get chance suggestions by the nervous excitement, I have no doubt; I speak of the serious work of composition. John Stuart Mill never used tobacco; I believe he had always a moderate quantity of wine to dinner. He frequently made the remark that he believed the giving up of wine would be apt to be followed by taking more food than was necessary, merely for the sake of stimulation. Assuming the use of stimulants after work to aid the subsidence of the brain, I can quite conceive that tobacco may operate in this way, as often averred; but I should have supposed that any single stimulant would be enough: as tobacco for those abstaining entirely from alcohol, and using little tea or coffee. ALEXANDER BAIN. March 6, 1882. PROFESSOR ROBERT S. BALL, LL. D., F. R. S., ANDREWS PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, AND ROYAL ASTRONOMER OF IRELAND. I fear my experience can be of little use to you. I have never smoked except once--when at school; I then got sick, and have never desired to smoke since. I have not paid particular attention to the subject, but I have never seen anything to make me believe that tobacco was of real use to intellectual workers. I have known of people being injured by smoking too much, but I never heard of anyone suffering from not smoking at all. ROBERT S. BALL. February 13, 1882. MR. HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, SAN FRANCISCO. In my opinion, some constitutions are benefited by a moderate use of tobacco and alcohol; others are not. But to touch these things is dangerous. H. H. BANCROFT. May 6, 1882. MR. JOSEPH BAXENDELL, F. R. A. S. I fear that my experience of the results of the use of stimulants will not aid you much in your enquiry. Although I am not a professed teetotaler or anti-smoker, practically I may say I am one: and when I am engaged in literary work, scientific investigations, or long and complicated calculations, I never think of taking any stimulant to aid or refresh me, and I doubt whether it would be of any use to do so. JOSEPH BAXENDELL. February 20, 1882. DR. G. M. BEARD, FELLOW OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE. In reply to your enquiries, I may say--first: I do not find that alcohol is so good a stimulant to thought as coffee, tea, opium, or tobacco. On myself alcohol has rather a benumbing and stupefying effect, whatever may be the dose employed; whereas, tobacco and opium, in moderate doses, tea, and especially coffee, as well as cocoa, have an effect precisely the reverse. Secondly: there are many persons on whom alcohol in large or small doses has a stimulating effect on thought: they can speak and think better under its influence. The late Daniel Webster was accustomed to stimulate himself for his great speeches by the use of alcohol. Thirdly: these stimulants and narcotics, according to the temperament of the person on whom they are used, have effects precisely opposite, either sedative or stimulating; while coffee makes some people sleepy, the majority of persons are made wakeful by it. Some are made very nervous by tobacco in the form of smoking, while on others it acts as a sedative, and induces sleep. General Grant once told me 'that, if disturbed during the night, or worried about anything so that he could not sleep, he could induce sleep by getting up and smoking a short time--a few whiffs, as I understood him, being sufficient. If I were to judge by my own experience alone--which it is not fair to do--I should say that coffee is the best stimulant for mental work; next to that tobacco and quinine; but as I grow older, I observe that alcohol in reasonable doses is beginning to have a stimulating effect. GEORGE M. BEARD. March 13, 1882. PROFESSOR PAUL BERT. My views on tobacco and alcohol, and their action on the health, may be summed up in the following four propositions:-- 1.--Whole populations have attained to a high degree of civilization and prosperity without having known either tobacco or alcohol, therefore, these substances are neither necessary nor even useful to individuals as well as races. 2.--Very considerable quantities of these drugs, taken at a single dose, may cause death; smaller quantities stupefy, or kill more slowly. They are, therefore, poisons against which we must be on our guard. 3.--On the other hand, there are innumerable persons who drink alcoholic beverages, and smoke tobacco, without any detriment to their reason or their health. There is, therefore, no reason to forbid the use of these substances, while suitably regulating the quantity to be taken. 4.--The use of alcoholic liquors and of tobacco in feeble doses, affords to many persons very great satisfaction, and is altogether harmless and inoffensive. We ought, therefore, to attach no stigma to their consumption, after having pointed out the danger of their abuse. In short, it is with alcohol and tobacco as with all the pleasures of this life--a question of degree. As for myself, I never smoke, because I am not fond of tobacco: I very seldom drink alcoholic liquors, but I take wine to all my meals because I like it. PAUL BERT. March 1, 1882. PROFESSOR JOHN STUART BLACKIE. My idea is, that work done under the influence of any kind of stimulants is unhealthy work, and tends to no good. I never use any kind of stimulant for intellectual work--only a glass of wine during dinner to sharpen the appetite. As to smoking generally, it is a vile and odious practice; but I do not know that, unless carried to excess, it is in any way unhealthy. Instead of stimulants, literary men should seek for aid in a pleasant variety of occupation, in intervals of perfect rest, in fresh air and exercise, and a cultivation of systematic moderation in all emotions and passions. J. S. BLACKIE. February 9, 1882. M. LOUIS BLANC. In answer to your letter, I beg to tell you that I do not know by experience what may be the effects of tobacco and alcohol upon the mind and health, not having been in the habit of taking tobacco and drinking alcohol. LOUIS BLANC. March 9, 1882. MR. J. E. BOEHM, R. A. It will give me great pleasure if I can in any way contribute to your so very interesting researches, and I shall be glad to know whether you have published anything on the subject you have questioned me on. I find vigorous exercise the first and most important stimulant to hard work. I get up in summer at six, in winter at seven, take an hour and a half's hard ride, afterwards a warm bath, a cold douche, and then breakfast. I work from ten to seven generally; but twice or thrice a week I have an additional exercise--an hour's fencing before dinner, which I take at 8 p.m. I take light claret or hock to my dinner, but never touch any wine or spirits at any other times, and eat meat only once in twenty-four hours. I find a small cup of coffee after luncheon very exhilarating. I smoke when hard at work--chiefly cigarettes. After a long sitting (as I do not smoke while working _from nature_), a cigarette is a soother for which I get a perfect craving. In the evening, or when I am in the country doing nothing, I scarcely smoke at all, and do not feel the want of it there; nor do I then take at evening dinner more than one or two glasses of wine, and I have observed that the same quantity which would make me feel giddy in the country when in full health and vigour, would not have the slightest effect on me when taken after a hard day's work. I also observed that I can work longer without fatigue when I have had my ride, than when for any reason I have to give it up. I have carried this mode of life on for nearly twenty years, and am well and feel young, though forty-eight. I never see any one from ten to three o'clock; after that I still work, but must often suffer interruption. I found that temperament and constitution are rarely, if ever, a legitimate excuse for departure from abstinence and sober habits. I have the conviction that in order to have the eye and the brain clear, you ought to make your skin act vigorously at least once in twenty-four hours. J. E. BOEHM. February 20, 1882. DR. BREDENCAMP, ERLANGEN. In reply to your letter, I am accustomed to smoke. If I do not smoke, I cannot do my work properly; and it is quite impossible to do any work in the morning without smoking. Strong drink I do not need at all, but I drink two glasses of Bavarian beer, which contains very little alcohol. E. BREDENCAMP. April 18, 1882. MR. FORD MADOX BROWN, R. A. I have smoked for upwards of thirty years, and have given up smoking for the last seven years. Almost all my life I have taken alcoholic liquors in moderation, but have also been a total abstainer for a short period. My experience is that neither course with either ingredient has anything to do with mental work as capacity for it; unless, indeed, we are to except the incapacity produced by excessive drinking, of which, however, I have no personal experience. F. M. BROWN. Feb. 28, 1882. MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN. I am myself no authority on the subject concerning which you write. I drink myself, but not during the hours of work; and I smoke-pretty habitually. My own experience and belief is, that both alcohol and tobacco, like most blessings, can be turned into curses by habitual self-indulgence. Physiologically speaking, I believe them both to be invaluable to humankind. The cases of dire disease generated by total abstinence from liquor are even more terrible than those caused by excess. With regard to tobacco, I have a notion that it is only dangerous where the vital organism, and particularly the nervous system, is badly nourished. ROBERT BUCHANAN. March 7, 1882. DR. BUDDENSEIG, DRESDEN. I have no decided opinion whatever as to the question you ask. I can only say that I am a very small smoker, taking one or two cigars daily, and I drink Rhine wine, but not daily, as most scholars or those working with their brains generally do. There can be, I should think, no question that immoderate use of alcohol produces most destructive results. E. BUDDENSEIG. Feb. 20, 1882. CAPTAIN FRED BURNABY. In my humble opinion, every man must find out for himself whether stimulants are a help to his intellectual efforts. It is impossible to lay down a law. What would, perhaps, enable one man to write brilliantly would make another man write nonsense. I myself, although not an abstainer, should think it a great mistake to seek inspiration in either tobacco or alcohol. F. BURNABY. March 2, 1882. LIEUT.-COL. W. F. BUTLER. In reply to your communication, asking for a statement of my experience as to the effects of tobacco and alcohol upon the mind and health, I beg to inform you that as I have not been in the habit of using the first-named article at any period of my life, I am unable to speak of its effects, mental or otherwise. With regard to alcohol, I have found that although the brain may receive a temporary accession to its production of thought, through the use of wine, etc., such increased action is always followed by a decided weakening of the thinking power, and that on the whole a far greater amount of _even_ mental work is to be obtained without the use of alcohol than with it. W. F. BUTLER. Feb. 18, 1882. DR. LAUDER BURNTON, F. R. S. I am unable to give you personal experience as to the use of tobacco, inasmuch as I do not use it in any form. From observation of others it appears to me that, when not used to excess, it is serviceable both as a stimulant during work, and as a sedative after work is over. LAUDER BURNTON. Feb. 9, 1882. MAXIME DU CAMP. I have never been able to make any experiences on the influence of alcohol upon the mind. I never drink it, and have never been tipsy. I smoke very much, but only the pipe and cigarette. I take two meals every day--one at eleven, consisting of a mutton chop, vegetables, and a cup of tea. I make a hearty dinner at seven, and drink a bottle of Bordeaux wine. I never work in the evening; and go to bed at half-past ten. I think the use of tobacco very useless and rather stupid. As to alcohol, I consider it very hurtful for the liver, and highly injurious to the mind. The life of mental workers should be well regulated and temperate in all respects. Bodily exercises, such as riding, walking and hunting, are very necessary for the relaxation of the mind, and must be taken occasionally. In my opinion, all intellectual productions are due to a special disposition of the cerebro-spinal system, upon which tobacco and alcohol can have no salutary action. I fear that my answer will be of little help to you; for in these matters I esteem theory nothing. There are, as the Germans say, _idiosyncrasies_. MAXIME DU CAMP. Feb. 17, 1882. DR. W. B. CARPENTER, C. B., LL. D., F. R. S. In reply to your enquiry, I have to inform you that I have never felt the need of alcoholic stimulants as a help in intellectual efforts; on the contrary, I have found them decidedly injurious in that respect, except when used with the strictest moderation. For about eleven years of the hardest-working period of my life, that in which I produced my large treatises on Physiology, edited the Medical Quarterly Review, and did a great deal of other literary work, besides lecturing, I was practically a total abstainer, though I never took any pledge. I undoubtedly injured myself by over-work during that period, as I have more than once done since under the pressure of official duty; but the injury has shown itself in the failure of appetite and digestive power. After many trials, I have come to the practical conclusion that I get on best, while in London, by taking with my dinner a couple of glasses of very light Claret, and simply as an aid in the digestion of the food which is required to keep up my mental and bodily power. But when "on holiday" in Scotland, or elsewhere, I do not find the need of this. I have never smoked tobacco, or used it in any form. I need scarcely say that I have never used any other "nervine stimulants." You are at perfect liberty to make use of this communication. WM. B. CARPENTER. Feb. 17, 1882. MR. WILLIAM CHAMBERS, LL. D. In reply to your note, I have only time to say that I never used tobacco in any form all my life, and I can say the same thing regarding my brother, Robert. WILLIAM CHAMBERS. February 10, 1882. MR. GEORGE W. CHILDS, PHILADELPHIA. I fear I shall be unable to add to your fund of information. Never having used spirituous or vinous stimulants, or tobacco in any form, I have no personal "experience" of the way they affect the mental faculties of those who use them. G. W. CHILDS. Sept. 30, 1882. M. JULES CLARETIE, PARIS. I should have been glad to reply to your question from my personal experience, but I do not smoke, and have never in all my life drunk as much as a single glass of alcohol. This plainly shows that I require no "fillip" or stimulant when at work. Tobacco and alcohol may cause over-excitement of the brain, as does coffee, which I am very fond of; but, in my opinion, that alone is thorough good work which is performed without artificial stimulant, and in full possession of one's health and faculties. The reason we have so many sickly productions in our literature arises probably from the fact that our writers, perhaps, add a little alcohol to their ink, and view life through the fumes of nicotine. M. JULES CLARETIE. Feb. 26, 1882. MR. HYDE CLARKE, F. S. S. As I am not an adherent of the teetotal abstinence movement, I beg that everything I write may be accepted with this reservation. I have never seen that any great thinker has found any help or benefit from the use of stimulants-either alcohol or tobacco. My observations and experiences are unfavourable to both classes of stimulants. In my own case, I gave up smoking before my scientific work began. Alcoholic drinks I used moderately, but I was a water drinker chiefly. Of late years, from illness, I have given up alcoholic drinks; but were I in full health, I should use them moderately. In the course of a public life of about forty years, I have seen the ill-effects of drinking upon many journalists and others; but it appears to me that smoking produces still greater evil. A man knows when he is drunk, but he does not know when he has smoked too much, until the effects of accumulation have made themselves permanent. To smoking are to be traced many affections of the eyes, and of the ears, besides other ailments. I have heard much said in favour of smoking and drinking, but never saw any favourable result. The communication of the evil results of these stimulants to offspring appears to me to constitute a further serious objection to them, I approve fully of your object, but as I do not go to the length of total abstinence advocates, I am desirous not to be misunderstood. Several years of my life were spent in the East, and my experience there only confirms me the more. I have known many drunkards among literary men, and the stimulants they took never helped their work; and it was only because they were men of exceptionally strong brain that their excesses did not incapacitate them. There are many excesses of this kind that are equally misunderstood by those who indulge in them, and by temperance writers. There are, in fact, many men of enormous power, who can smoke and drink all day long. They constitute no standard: so far as I have seen, the consequences show themselves only in the offspring, though in this case it must be taken into account, that the children are sometimes born before a man's health has been seriously injured. A man of exceptional strength misleads and encourages others to indulge. HYDE CLARKE. October 14, 1882. MR. WILKIE COLLINS. When I am ill (I am suffering from gout at this very moment) tobacco is the best friend that my irritable nerves possess. When I am well, but exhausted for the time by a hard day's work, tobacco nerves and composes me. There is my evidence in two words. When a man allows himself to become a glutton in the matter of smoking tobacco, he suffers for it; and if he becomes a glutton in the matter of eating meat, he just as certainly suffers in another way. When I read learned attacks on the practice of smoking, I feel indebted to the writer--he adds largely to the relish of my cigar. WILKIE COLONS. February 10, 1882. MR. MONCURE D. CONWAY, M. A. My experience of stimulants has been insufficient to enable me to give any important opinion about them. As to tobacco, my strong hope is that my own sons will never use it; but if they should develop peculiar and excitable nerves, or become very emotional, or have much trouble, it is so likely that they might take to some worse habit that I would prefer they should smoke. M. D. CONWAY. February 22, 1882. REV. W. H. DALLINGER, F. R. S. I am not a pledged abstainer: I have used both tobacco and alcohol in various forms. Neither is at all necessary to my vigour of either body or mind. My use of tobacco has been but slight. I have never Used alcohol for years. I could never think deeply after the use of tobacco; I have felt a quickening of thought at times after a slight use of good wine; but I know, from physiological evidence, what practice has certainly proved, that no permanent benefit to either body or mind must be sought from its use. I have employed it with great benefit at times--that is, where it was better to afford the exhaustion following a mere stimulant, than to submit to an exhaustion which the stimulant could for the moment counteract. This is the only advantage, save to the palate, that I have known to be derived personally from the use of alcohol. W. H. DALLINGER. February 11, 1882. PROFESSOR DARWIN. I drink a glass of wine daily, and believe I should be better without any, though all doctors urge me to drink wine, as I suffer much from giddiness. I have taken snuff all my life, and regret that I ever acquired the habit, which I have often tried to leave off, and have succeeded for a time. I feel sure that it is a great stimulus and aid in my work. I also daily smoke two little paper cigarettes of Turkish tobacco. This is not a stimulus, but rests me after I have been compelled to talk, with tired memory, more than anything else. I am 73 years old. CH. DARWIN. February 9, 1882. W. BOYD DAWKINS, M. A., F. R. S., F. G. S. PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY, OWENS COLLEGE, MANCHESTER. I have received your note asking about the effect of alcohol on my health and work. I cannot say that they influence either; I find, however, that I cannot drink beer when I am using my brain, and, therefore, do not take it when I have anything of importance to think about. I look upon tobacco and alcohol as merely luxuries, and there are no luxuries more dangerous if you take too much of them. I find quinine the best stimulant to thought. W. BOYD DAWKINS. February 16, 1882. The Rev. ALEX. J. D. D'ORSEY, B. D., LECTURER ON PUBLIC READING AND SPEAKING AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. For my own part, I am decidedly averse to the use of tobacco and stimulants. I am myself a total abstainer (not pledged), and I have never smoked in my life. I always do my utmost to dissuade young and old alike to abstain from even the moderate use of tobacco and stimulants, as in the course of a long and laborious life, speaking much and preaching without notes, I have always felt able to grapple with my subject, with pleasure to myself and with profit, I trust, to my hearers. A. J. D. D'ORSEY. March 17, 1882. MR. EDMUND O'DONOVAN, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE "DAILY NEWS." As far as my experience goes, the use of stimulants enables one at moments of severe bodily exhaustion to make mental efforts of which, but for them, he would be absolutely incapable. For instance, after a long day's ride in the burning sun across the dry stony wastes of Northern Persia, I have arrived in some wretched, mud-built town, and laid down upon my carpet in the corner of some miserable hovel, utterly worn out by bodily fatigue, mental anxiety, and the worry inseparable from constant association with Eastern servants. It would be necessary to write a long letter to the newspapers before retiring to rest. A judicious use of stimulants has, under such circumstances, not only given me sufficient energy to unpack my writing materials, lie on my face, and propped on both elbows, write for hours by the light of a smoky lamp; but also produced the flow of ideas that previously refused to come out of their mental hiding places, or which presented themselves in a flat and uninteresting form. I consider, then, the use of alcoholic and other stimulation to be conducive to literary labours under circumstances of physical and mental exhaustion; and very often the latter is the normal condition of writers, especially those employed on the press. Perhaps, too, in examining into the nature of some metaphysical and psychological questions the use of alcohol, or some similar stimulant, aids the appreciation of _nuances_ of thought which might otherwise escape the cooler and less excited brain. On the other hand, while travelling in the East during the past few years, and when, as a rule, circumstances precluded the possibility of obtaining stimulants, I found that a robust state of health consequent on an out-door life, made the consumption of alcohol in any shape quite unnecessary. In brief, then, my opinion is, that at a given moment of mental depression or exhaustion, the use of stimulants will restore the mind to a condition of activity and power fully equalling, and in some particular ways, surpassing its normal state. Subsequently to the dying out of the stimulation the brain is left in a still more collapsed situation than before, in other words, must pay the penalty, in the form of an adverse reaction, of having overdrawn its powers, for having, as it were, anticipated its work. E. O'DONOVAN. Feb. 17, 1882. PROFESSOR DOWDEN, LL. D. I distinguish direct and immediate effect of alcohol on the brain from its indirect effect through the general health of the body. I can only speak for myself. I have no doubt that the direct effect of alcohol on me is intellectually injurious. This, however, is true in a certain degree, of everything I eat and drink (except tea). After the smallest meal I am for a while less active mentally. A single glass even of claret I believe injures my power of thinking; but accepting the necessity of regular meals, I do not find that a sparing allowance of light wine adds to the subsequent dulness of mind, and I am disposed to think it is of some slight use physically. From one to two and a half _small_ wine glasses of claret or burgundy is the limit of what I can take--and that only at dinner--without conscious harm. One glass of sherry or port I find every way injurious. Whisky and brandy are to me simply poisons, destroying my power of enjoyment and of thought. Ale I can only drink when very much in the open air. As to tobacco, I have never smoked much, but I can either not smoke, as at present, or go to the limit of two small cigarettes in twenty-four hours. Any good effects of tobacco become with me uncertain in proportion to the frequency of smoking. The good effects are those commonly ascribed to it: it seems to soothe away small worries, and to restore little irritating incidents to their true proportions. On a few occasions I have thought it gave me a mental fillip, and enabled me to start with work I had been pausing over; and it nearly always has the power to produce a pleasant, and perhaps wholesome, retardation of thought--a half unthinking reverie, if one adapts surrounding circumstances to encourage this mood. The only sure brain stimulants with me are plenty of fresh air and tea; but each of these in large quantity produces a kind of intoxication: the intoxication of a great amount of air causing wakefulness, with a delightful confusion of spirits, without the capacity of steady thought; tea intoxication unsettles and enfeebles my will; but then a great dose of tea often does get good work out of me (though I may pay for it afterwards), while alcohol renders all mental work impossible. I have been accustomed to make the effects of tea and wine a mode of separating two types of constitution. I have an artist friend whose brain is livelier after a bottle of Carlowitz, which would stifle my mind, and to him my strong cup of tea would be poison. We are both, I think, of nervous organization, but how differentiated I cannot tell. My pulse goes always rather too quickly; a little emotional disturbance sets it going at an absurdly rapid rate for hours, and extreme physical fatigue follows. My conviction is that no one rule applies to all men, but for men like me alcohol is certainly not necessary, and at best of little use. I have a kindlier feeling towards tobacco, though I am only occasionally a smoker. P.S.--Since writing the above, I have asked two friends (each an intellectual worker of extraordinary energy) how alcohol affects them. Both agreed that a large dose of alcohol stimulated them _intellectually_, but that the subsequent _physical_ results were injurious. E. DOWDEN. March 3, 1882. PROFESOR EDISON. I think chewing tobacco acts as a good stimulant upon anyone engaged in laborious brain work. Smoking, although pleasant, is too violent in its action; and the same remark applies to alcoholic liquors. I am inclined to think that it is better for intellectual workers to perform their labours at night, as after a very long experience of night work, I find my brain is in better condition at that time, especially for experimental work, and when so engaged I almost invariably chew tobacco as a stimulant. THOS. A. EDISON, April 4, 1882. MR. ALEX. J. ELLIS, F. R. S., F. S. A., PRESIDENT OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY. I am 67 3/4. I never took tobacco in any shape or form. For twenty-five years I have taken no sort of stimulant, not even tea or coffee. But for eight years in and amongst these twenty-five, but not part of them, I took a little wine. This is eight years ago. I did not find wine increased my power of work. I have led a working literary life, always occupied, except when obliged to rest from over work. The longest of these rests was three years, from 1849, while I was still drinking wine. It is possible that wine may whip one up a bit for a moment, but I don't believe in it as a necessity. I am not a teetotaler or temperance man in any way, and my rejection of all stimulants (my strongest drink being milk and much water) is a mere matter of taste. A. J. ELLIS. February 22, 1882. PROFESSOR EVERETT. In reply to your letter, I have to say that I think all stimulants, whether in the form of alcoholic drinks, tea or coffee, or tobacco, should be very moderately used. For my own part, I have never smoked or snuffed, and my daily allowance of alcoholic drinks is a so-called pint bottle of beer or two glasses of wine. I have more frequently suffered from nervous excitability due to tea or coffee, than from any other kind of stimulant. I can compose best when my brain is coolest and my digestion easiest. I do not believe in artificial stimulus to literary effort. J. D. EVERETT. February 22, 1882. PROFESSOR R. M. FAIRBAIRN, CHAIRMAN OF THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. I cannot say anything as to the effects of tobacco and alcohol upon the health. I never use either, and so can only say that in my case work has been done without their help. In the absence of data for comparison as to the effects of indulgence and abstinence, it would be foolish in me to express any comparative judgment; but it is only fair to say that so far as I am capable of forming any opinion on the matter, the abstinence has been altogether beneficial. R. M. FAIRBAIRN. February 16, 1882. MR. R. E. FRANCILLON. It so happens that your question belongs to a class of topics in which I have taken much theoretical interest. For my general views, I cannot do better than refer you to a paper of mine in the Gentleman's Magazine of March, 1875, called "The Physiology of Authorship;" but I fully agree with you that the settlement of the question can only depend upon the collection of individual experience. I have consciously studied my own, and can state it shortly and plainly. I am a very hard, very regular, and not seldom an excessive worker; and I find that my consumption of tobacco, and my production of work are in 'almost exact pro-portion, I cannot pretend to guess whether the work demands the tobacco or whether the tobacco stimulates the work; but in my case they are inextricably and, I believe, necessarily combined. When I take a holiday, especially if I spend it in the open air, I scarcely smoke at all; indeed, I find that bodily exercise requires no stimulant of any kind whatever. If I read, I smoke little; but if I produce, tobacco takes the form of a necessity, I believe--for I am indolent by _nature_, and tobacco seems to me to be the best machine for making work go with the grain that I can find. [Footnote: The wisdom of occasionally using these various stimulants for intellectual purposes is proved by a single consideration. Each of us has a little cleverness and a great deal of sluggish stupidity. There are certain occasions when we absolutely need the little cleverness that we possess. The orator needs it when he speaks, the poet when he Versifies, but neither cares how stupid he may become when the oration is delivered and the lyric set down on paper. The stimulant serves to bring out the talent when it is wanted, like the wind in the pipes of an organ. "What will it matter if I am even a little duller afterwards?" says the genius; "I can afford to be dull when I have done." But the truth still remains that there are stimulants and stimulants. Not the nectar of the gods themselves were worth the dash of a wave upon the beach, and the pure cool air of the morning.-- Philip G. Hamerton, in _Intellectual Life_, p. 21.] I have a very strong suspicion that if I did not smoke (which I find harmless) I should have to conquer really dangerous temptations. As things are, though I am a very moderate wine-drinker (spirits I never touch, and abhor), alcohol, practically speaking, bears no appreciable part in my life's economy. I believe that to some people tobacco is downright poison; to some, life and health; to the vast majority, including myself, neither one thing nor the other, but simply a comfort or an instrument, or a mere nothing, according to idiosyncrasy. My general theory is, that _bodily_ labour and exercise need no stimulant at all, or at most very little; but that intellectual, and especially creative, work, when it draws upon the mind beyond a quickly reached point, requires being a non-natural condition non-natural means to keep it going. I cannot call to mind a single case, except that of Goethe, where great mental labour has been carried on without external support of some sort; which seems to imply an instinctive knowledge of how to get more out of the brain machine than is possible under normal conditions. Of course the means must differ more or less in each individual case; and sometimes the owner of a creative brain must decide whether he will let it lie fallow for health's sake, or whether for work's sake he will let life and health go. I always insist very strongly upon brain work-beyond an uncertain point-being _non-natural_, and, therefore, requiring non-natural conditions for its exercise. I can quite believe the feat of the Hungarian officer [Footnote: The surprising endurance of the Hungarian officer, who lately swam a lake in Hungary, a distance of eleven miles, is ascribed to his abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.-- _Thrift_, for February, 1882.] would be impossible to a man who smoked or drank. But I cannot at all believe in that officer's powers of writing, instead of swimming, with a mind at full stretch, for the half of eleven hours. As to economy, tobacco costs me a good deal; but I look upon it as the investment of so much capital, bearing better interest than any other investment could bear. R. E. FRANCILLON. April 4, 1882. MR. EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D. C. L., LL. D. I can tell you nothing of the effects of smoking tobacco, having had no experience. I tried once or twice when young, but, finding it nasty, I did not try again. _Why_ people smoke, I have no notion. If I am tired of work, a short sleep sets me up again. I really have nothing to say about alcohol--I have never thought about it. I drink wine like other people, and I find brandy an excellent medicine on occasion. I used to drink beer, but some of the doctors say it is not good for me, and some have recommended whisky instead; but I really have no views on the subject. I have drunk wine and beer, as I have eaten beef and mutton, without any theories one way or another. E.A. FREEMAN. October 29, 1882. MR. F. J. FURNIVALL, M. A. Though I have no claim to be considered as one of the great thinkers and popular authors, I am a small thinker and a decidedly unpopular author, who has nevertheless done some work, I answer, that I have been a teetotaler since the summer of 1841, when I was 16, and I have never smoked except as a lark at school. I was a Vegetarian for about 25 years. I believe alcohol to be highly detrimental to head work. Tobacco has, I think, done good in only one case that has come under my notice during 40 years; it quieted an excitable man. My father, who was a medical man of wide practice, was very strong against much use of tobacco. He knew two cases of speedy death from the oil in the bowl of a tobacco-pipe being applied to aching teeth. He had several cases of much impaired digestion from smoking. F. J FURNIVALL. March 8, 1882. MR. SAMUEL R. GARDINER, HON. LL. D. PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN KING'S COLLEGE. In reply to your letter, I beg to say that I never smoked in my life, and don't intend to begin. I take beer at luncheon and dinner, and occasionally a glass or two of wine, but very often I am four or five days without doing that. SAMUEL R. GARDINER. March 9, 1882. RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M. P. In answer to your questions, I beg to say that Mr. Gladstone drinks one glass or two of claret at luncheon, the same at dinner, with the addition of a glass of light port. The use of wine to this extent is especially necessary to him at the time of greatest intellectual exertion. Smoking he detests, and he has always abstained from the use of very strong and fiery stimulants. HERBERT J. GLADSTONE. November 29, 1882. MDLLE. H. GREVILLE. Being a lady, though my _nom de plume_ be a man's, I have little experience of either alcohol or tobacco. I must fairly say that though claret agrees with my constitution when properly mixed with water, wine without water, and every kind of liqueurs, makes me very ill, especially when taken between my meals, which are only two in number-- breakfast at twelve, and dinner at seven. I never use any stimulant. My sleep being scanty, I want sedatives rather than stimulants. I must add, nevertheless, that once or twice in a year, when I felt very tired, and had some work to conclude, especially at night, I happened to smoke one cigarette or Russian papyrus, which revived me promptly, and enabled me to finish my work. If you may be interested in my fashion of working, I may inform you that I work very fast, two hours at once, and then take a rest, or dinner. After resting two hours, I can write two hours again. I write without scratching, or blotting, about 100 lines of any French newspaper feuilleton, not the _Temps_, which is larger, but the _Figuro_, or any similar paper, in half-an-hour's time. I don't think that any-body could write more quickly; I seldom make any corrections, and never copy my work, which is sent to the printer as I write it. I use no stimulants of any kind, but sometimes eat an orange or two. After working towards midnight, I sometimes feel hungry, but I never eat for fear of spoiling my night's rest. I lived many years in Russia, and my experience is, that people who smoke too much suffer from their throat. Emile Augrer has been very ill with his stomach, from smoking too many strong cigars. He ceased, and has been completely healed. H. GREVILLE. April 28, 1882. COUNT GUBERNATIS. In reply to your favour of the 28th ult., I have the honour to inform you that I do not smoke, because nicotine acts upon my system as a most powerful poison. At the age of ten I had a Havana cigar given me to smoke; after smoking it I fainted and did not come to myself till after a _deep sleep, which lasted twenty-four hours._ When I was twenty, the third part of a cigar was given me to smoke as a remedy for the toothache. I could not finish it. A cold perspiration attended with vomiting and fainting ensued. I therefore judge from the effects of tobacco upon myself that it cannot be such a benefactor of mankind as people have tried to make it out. I am convinced that in any case, smoking lulls the mind to sleep, and when carried to excess tends to produce stupefaction or idiotcy. Perhaps you are aware that in Little Russia, the people call tobacco the _Devil's herb_; and it is related that the devil planted it under the form of an idolater. For my part I am quite prepared to adopt the opinion of the Russian people. Before the time of Peter the Great, smoking was strictly prohibited in Russia. The Poet Prati sang one day: Fuma, passagia e medita E diverrai poeta. (Smoke, ramble alone and think, and thou will soon become a poet.) That is what he himself does, but my belief is that owing to the abuse of cigars, he so frequently raves (dotes) and his poetry is often cloudy. As for alcohol, I take it to be proved beyond all doubt, that when taken in very small quantities it may, in certain cases, do good, but that taken in large quantities it kills. After having burnt the stomach, it deprives it of its power of digestion. I have seen a great many persons begin to use alcoholic beverages in the hope of acquiring tone, and afterwards get so accustomed to their use, that the best Chianti wine passed into their stomach like water. In this case, as in so many other cases, it is a question of measure. Alcohol has a like injurious effect upon the brain as upon the stomach. I am by no means an authority on the question which you have been good enough to address to me, and can therefore only give you briefly a statement of my own personal experience. Speaking of stimulants, I would mention, for instance, the strange effect produced upon my rather sensitive organism by a single cup of coffee. If I take a cup of coffee at six o'clock in the evening I cannot get to sleep before six in the morning. If I take it at noon I can get to sleep at midnight I know that many people take coffee to keep awake when working through the night. My own opinion is that you cannot work any better with these stimulants. There is a sort of irritation produced by drinking coffee which I do not consider helpful to serious and sustained work. It is possible, however, that works of genius may be produced sometimes in a state of nervous excitement, I suppose when the shattered nerves begin to relax. Manzoni wrote his master pieces when in a state of painful nervous distraction, but alcohol had nothing to do with it; perhaps he had recourse to other stimulants. (1) When we read that literary producers of any power have gone on working up to the last, even in the near approach of death, we usually find the work done has been of a not unwelcome kind, and often that it has formed part of a long-cherished design. But when the disease of which the sufferer is dying is consumption, or some disease which between paroxysms of pain leaves spaces of ease and rest, it is nothing wonderful that work should be done. Some of the best of Paley's works were produced under such conditions, and some of the best of Shelley's. Nor, indeed, is there anything in mere pain which necessarily prevents literary work. The late Mr. T. T. Lynch produced some of his most beautiful writings amid spasms of _angina pectoris_. This required high moral courage in the writer.... It is a curious, though well-known fact, however, that times of illness, when the eyes swim and the hand shakes, are oftentimes rich in suggestion. If the mind is naturally fertile--if there is stuff in it--the hours of illness are by no means wasted. It is then that the "_dreaming_ power" which counts for so much in literary work often asserts itself most usefully.--_The Contemporary Review_, vol. 29, p. 946. (2) When the poet Wordsworth was engaged in composing the "White Doe of Rylstone," he received a wound in his foot, and he observed that the continuation of his literary labours increased the irritation of the wound; whereas by suspending his work he could diminish it, and absolute mental rest produced perfect cure. In connection with this incident he remarked that poetic excitement, accompanied by protracted labour in composition, always brought on more or less of bodily derangement He preserved himself from permanently injurious consequences by his excellent habit of life.--Hamerton. _The Intellectual Life_. I know that certain authors think they can write better when taking artificial stimulants. I do not, however, believe that an artificial irritation of the nerves can have any good effect upon our faculty of apprehension. I am even inclined to think that when we write best, _it is not owing_ to nervous _excitement_, but rather because our nerves, after a period of extreme irritation, _leave us a few moments respite_, and it is during these moments the divine spark shines brightly. When creative genius has accomplished its task, the nerves once more relapse into their former irritability and cause us to suffer; but at the time of creation there is a truce of suffering. I never use any stimulant to help me in my labours; yet when I have been writing works of fiction, for instance my Indian and Roman Plays, I have nearly always been subject to great nervous agitation. When I suffered most from spasms, I had short intervals of freedom from pain, during which I could write, and those around me asked in astonishment how I could, in the midst of such suffering, write scenes that were cheerful, glowing and impassioned. I have occasionally in my time enjoyed these luminous intervals. I do not know whether those who use alcohol as a stimulant have experienced the same. No doubt they have succeeded in exciting their nervous sensibilities; but I assert that the real work of creative genius is accomplished in the intervals of this purturbation of the nerves which by some is deemed so essential to intellectual labour. When the nerves are excited to the highest pitch, they occasionally suffer, the transitory cessation from which is the divine moment of human creation. It seems to me, however, that this ought to be left to nature, and that every attempt to produce artificial excitement, for the purpose of producing creations of a higher class, is futile and beset with danger. ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS. March 4, 1882. M. L. P. GUENIN, REVISING STENOGRAPHER TO THE FRENCH SENATE. I thank you for having asked my opinion upon the effects of tobacco and alcohol on the mind and the health of men who give themselves up to intellectual work; and hasten to comply with your request. I am not a very resolute adversary of tobacco, because I must admit that I smoke, and at home use wine also: but if their use appears useful or agreeable, I ought to add that whenever I have to undertake any long arduous work, and above all, the reproduction of stenographic law or parliamentary reports, of which the copy is required without delay, I then make use of nothing but pure water. I limit myself as to stimulant to the use of coffee, which enables me to pass whole days and nights without feeling any want of sleep and, so to say, without fatigue, notwithstanding the labour of the stenographic translations. As you see, I consider that tobacco and alcohol do not act as stimulants, but rather as narcotics. With me they induce after the first moment of excitement a sort of calm and somnolence altogether incompatible with severe work; and I prefer coffee, always on the condition that as soon as the effort to be accomplished is finished the use of it must cease. I will not invoke the precedents of the celebrated men who have been led to make great use of coffee without impairing their health. It is after many years' experience that I have acted as I have indicated. L. P. GUENIN. March 11, 1582. DR. WILLIAM GUY. In answer to your enquiry, I may state the result of my personal experience and observation thus :-1. Alcoholic liquors, when taken in such quantity as to excite the circulation, are unfavourable to all inquiries requiring care and accuracy, but not unfavourable to efforts of the imagination. 2. Tobacco taken in small quantities is not unwholesome in its action on mind or body. When taken in excess it is not easy to define or describe its action, the chief fact relating to it being that it increases the number of the pulse, but lessens the force of the heart. 3. My personal experience of such quantities of wine as two or more glasses of port a day at my age (72) is that it produces no perceptible or measurable effect when taken for, say, three weeks or a month at a time, when compared with the like period of total abstinence. 4. It may be said in favour of temperance or even of extreme abstinence, that some of those men who have done most work in their day--John Howard, Wesley, and Cobbett, for example--have been either very moderate, or decidedly abstemious. But on the other hand, such men as Samuel Johnson, who was a free liver and glutton, and Thackeray, who drank to excess, have also got through a great amount of work. WILLIAM A. GUY. Feb. 25, 1882. PROFESSOR ERNST HAECKEL, JENA. I find strong coffee very useful in mental work. Of alcohol, I take very little, because I find it of no value as a stimulant. I have never smoked. E. HAECKEL. November 4, 1882. MR. PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON. I am quite willing to answer your question about tobacco. I used to smoke in moderation, but six years ago, some young friends were staying at my house, and they led me into smoking more in the evenings than I was accustomed to. This brought on disturbed nights and dull mornings; so I gave up smoking altogether--as an experiment--for six months. At the end of that time, I found my general health so much improved, that I determined to make abstinence a permanent rule, and have stuck to my determination ever since, with decided benefit. I shall certainly never resume smoking. I never use any stimulants whatever when writing, and believe the use of them to be most pernicious; indeed, I have seen terrible results from them. When a writer feels dull, the best stimulant is fresh air. Victor Hugo makes a good fire before writing, and then opens the window. I have often found temporary dulness removed by taking a turn out of doors, or simply by adopting Victor Hugo's plan. I am not a teetotaler, though at various times I have abstained altogether from alcoholic stimulants for considerable periods, feeling better without them. I drink ale to lunch, and wine (Burgundy) to dinner; but never use either between meals, when at home and at work. At one time I did myself harm by drinking tea, but have quite given up both tea and coffee. My breakfast in the morning is a basin of soup, invariably, and nothing else. This is very unusual in England, but not uncommon in France. I find it excellent, as it supports me well through the morning, without any excitement. My notion of the perfect physical condition for intellectual work is that in which the body is well supported without any kind of stimulus to the nervous system. Thanks to the observance of a few simple rules, I enjoy very regular health, with great equality and regularity of working power, so that I get through a great deal without feeling it to be any burden upon me, which is the right state. I never do any brain work after dinner; I dine at seven, and read after, but only in languages that I can read without any trouble, and about subjects that I can read without any trouble, and about subjects that are familiar to me. P.G. HAMERTON. February 13, 1882. MR. THOMAS HARDY. I fear that the information I can give on the effect of tobacco will be less than little: for I have never smoked a pipeful in my life, nor a cigar. My impression is that its use would be very injurious in my case; and so far as I have observed, it is far from-beneficial to any literary man. There are, unquestionably, writers who smoke with impunity, but this seems to be owing to the counterbalancing effect of some accident in their lives or constitutions, on which few others could calculate. I have never found alcohol helpful to novel-writing in any degree. My experience goes to prove that the effect of wine, taken as a preliminary to imaginative work, is to blind the writer to the quality of what he produces rather than to raise its quality. When walking much out of doors, and particularly when on Continental rambles, I occasionally drink a glass or two of claret or mild ale. The German beers seem really beneficial at these times of exertion, which (as wine seems otherwise) may be owing to some alimentary qualities they possess, apart from their stimulating property. With these rare exceptions, I have taken no alcoholic liquor for the last two years. T. HARDY. Dec. 5, 1882. MR. FREDERIC HARRISON. Frederick Harrison never has touched tobacco in any form, though much in the society of habitual smokers, but finds many hours in a close smoking room rather depressing. Has always taken a moderate amount of alcohol (pint of claret) _once_ in the day, and finds himself rather stronger with than without it. Age fifty, health perfect; accustomed to much open-air exercise, long sleep, and little food. Reads and writes from eight to ten hours per diem, and never remembers to have been a day unfit for work. March, 1882. MR. G. A. HENTY. In answer to your question, certainly in my own case I should find stimulants destructive to good work. I get through an immense deal of literary work in the course of the day. I rise at eight, and seldom put out my light until three in the morning. With lunch and dinner I drink claret and water, and never touch stimulants of any kind except at meals. On the other hand, I smoke from the time I have finished breakfast until I go to bed, and should find it very difficult to write unless smoking. I have a great circle of literary friends, and scarce but one smokes while he works. Some take stimulants--such as brandy and soda water-while at work; some do not, but certainly nineteen out of twenty smoke. I believe that smoking, if not begun until after the age of twenty-one, to be in the vast majority of cases advantageous alike to health, temper, and intellect; for I do not think that it is in any way deleterious to the health, while it certainly aids in keeping away infectious diseases, malaria, fever, &c. While I consider a moderate use of wine and beer advantageous-except, of course, where beer, as is often the case, affects the liver, I regard the use of spirits as wholly deleterious, except when medically required, and should like to see the tax upon spirits raised tenfold. A glass of spirits and water may do no harm, but there is such a tendency upon the part of those who use them to increase the dose, and the end is, in that case, destruction to mind and body. G. A. HENTY. February 22, 1882. MR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Prefers an entirely undisturbed and unclouded brain for mental work, unstimulated by anything stronger than tea or coffee, unaffected by tobacco or other drags. His faculties are best under his control in the forenoon, between breakfast and lunch. The only intellectual use he could find in stimulants is the quickened mental action they induce when taken in company. He thinks ideas may reach the brain when slightly stimulated, which remain after the stimulus has ceased to disturb its rhythms. He does not habitually use any drink stronger than water. He has no peremptory rule, having no temptation to indulgence, but approaching near to abstinence as he grows older. He does not believe that any stimulus is of advantage to a healthy student, unless now and then socially, in the intervals of mental labour. MR. GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. I never took enough of stimulants to tell whether it is good or ill for "thinking and working." Tobacco is only good when you have a habit of working too much, as it makes you lazy-minded. G. J. HOLYOAKE. April 3, 1882. SIR J. D. HOOKER, F. R. S. I have had no experience on the subject of the use of tobacco and alcohol that is of any value, or you should be welcome to it. Jos. D. HOOKER. Feb. 13, 1882. MR. W. D. HOWELLS. If you will allow me to count myself out of the list of "great thinkers "and _very_ "popular authors," I will gladly contribute my experience in the points you publish. I never use tobacco, except in a very rare, self-defensive cigarette, where a great many other people are smoking; and I commonly drink water at dinner. When I take wine, I think it weakens my work, and my working force the next morning. W. D. HOWELLS. March 2, 1882. DR. J. P. JOULE. I am afraid that my experience can be of little use to you, because I have lived a very uniform life; and am therefore unable to compare the consequences from following various _regimes_.. I use alcoholic beverages moderately. I do not think they ever assisted or retarded my mental work. As for tobacco, it is the object of my aversion, as it must be to all non-smokers to whom the habits of the consumers of the weed must always appear more or less as an impertinence. Besides, it is difficult to imagine how the use of narcotics can be indulged in with impunity to the health. J. P. JOULE. February 11, 1882. THE REV. HENRY LANSDELL. In reply to your note, I beg to say--1st, that I have never been a smoker. 2nd, that I became a total abstainer from alcoholic liquors before I had attained the age of twenty. 3rd, that I have never kept my bed, I am thankful to say, for a day, in my life. 4th, that up to the age of twenty-four I rose at seven; and up to the age of twenty-seven, at six; since twenty-seven, at five a.m. 5th, that it is a common occurrence for me to have been (for some years past) at mental employment from six a.m., to seven p.m. 6th, that I do not find the least necessity for stimulants in the form either of tobacco or of alcohol. HENRY LANSDELL. March 13, 1882. REV. STANLEY LEATHES, D. D. I am not an habitual smoker, and therefore cannot speak about its effects; I find it an irritant rather than a sedative. But I am quite sensible of the virtue of an occasional glass of good wine, and am certain I can work better with than without it. STANLEY LEATHES. April 15, 1882. W. E. H. LECKY. I am not a smoker, and am therefore unable to give you any evidence on the subject. W. E. H. LECKY. February 7, 1882. DR. F. R. LEES. I have travelled in various parts of the world, from Greece to the Pacific, and from the Coasts of Labrador to the Southern States of North America, perhaps as much as any man living, and have never, in heat or cold, felt any inconvenience from my forty-eight years of abstinence. I have lectured for many nights consecutively on various topics during the intervals of that time, and have written thousands of articles on philosophy, temperance, physiology, politics and criticisms in papers and magazines, and published pamphlets and volumes equal to 25 octavos of small print; but have never required anything stronger than tea or coffee as a stimulant. The Alliance _Prize Essay_ (100 guineas) of 320 pages was composed and written in 21 days. I never smoke, snuff, or chew. I have known _many_ literary men ruined by smoking, and in all cases the continued use of tobacco is most injurious to the mind, as well as to the body. It _slays_ the nervous recuperative energy. F. R. LEES. November 17, 1882. MR. LEONE LEVI, F. S. A., BARRISTER-AT-LAW, Professor of the Principles and Practice of Commerce and Commercial Law, King's College, London. I have no hesitation in saying that I have never found the need of either tobacco or alcohol, or any other stimulants, for my intellectual efforts. I have never used tobacco in any form, and though occasionally, when my physical forces are much exhausted, I have derived benefit from a single glass of wine or ale, as a rule, and in my ordinary diet, I use nothing whatever but fresh water. This is my personal experience, and though I have worked very hard-often sixteen hours a day of continuous labour--I have always enjoyed, thanks to Providence, the best of health. LEONE LEVI. SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART. M. P. I beg to say that in my opinion the use of tobacco is, in the great majority of cases, prejudicial. As to alcohol, I would rather not express any opinion. JOHN LUBBOCK. February 17, 1882. PROFESSOR MAGNUS. In reply to your enquiry respecting the use of tobacco and alcohol, I shall be glad to give you all the information I possess on this subject; though, of course, I am not in a position to judge whether my few remarks will be of any service to you. In the first place, as regards the influence of tobacco and alcohol upon the health in general, it is clearly ascertained that under certain circumstances, it may become highly injurious. Apart from the disturbance produced in the whole nervous system, there are serious diseases affecting certain organs of the body, which arise solely from the abuse of both these stimulants. We note a serious affection of the visual organs, which we plainly designate by the name of: "Emblyopia ex abusu nicotiano et alcoholico." The symptoms of this complaint consist chiefly in a gradual and steady decline of the power of sight, coupled with partial colour blindness. I cannot here enter into details as to the manner in which the range of sight is affected as regards each of the different colours, and can only refer to the characteristic weakening of the power to distinguish red from other hues. It will not be necessary, I presume, to extend my remarks to the evil effects of tobacco and alcohol upon the human body, as you are sufficiently acquainted with them, especially as far as alcohol is concerned. Now as to the relation in which both stand to mental work. If I may be allowed to state first of all the result of observations in my own case, I must tell you that I have not found these drugs to be in any degree helpful in the performance of mental labour. I find it absolutely impossible to put any sensible thoughts on paper when I am smoking. In former years I frequently tried to smoke a pipe or a cigar over my work, but had always to give it up; I only got into proper working condition after putting tobacco aside. Indeed, of late years I have felt a growing antipathy to tobacco, so that, whilst I was formerly passionately fond of smoking, I new, very rarely, indeed, indulge in the practice. My experience with regard to alcohol is precisely similar. I am very fond of a little beer, but not when at work. The current of my thoughts flows much more clearly and rapidly when I have had no drink. I have a special aversion for wine, which, indeed, I do not drink at all. Generally speaking, I can therefore say, that, in my own case, tobacco and alcohol have a disturbing effect, when doing mental work. This you will, of course, take as applying to myself alone. I know some very respectable scholars in this town and neighbourhood who are only capable of thinking and working properly when under the influence of tobacco. MAGNUS. Breslau, February 28, 1882. MR. EDWARD MAITLAND, B. A. In reply to your enquiries, I have to say that my experience of the effects of alcohol and tobacco upon intellectual work is a very limited one, owing to the very moderate use I have made of either. So far, however, as my experience goes, my conclusions are as follows: tobacco, though it may, indeed, give a momentary fillip to the faculties, lessens their power of endurance; for by lowering the action of the heart, it diminishes the blood supply to the brain, leaving it imperfectly nourished, and flaccid, and unable, there-fore, to make due response to the demands of its owner, the man within, who seeks to manifest himself through the organism. Of an organism thus affected, as of an underpitched musical instrument, the tones will be flat. Of stimulants, the effect is the contrary. Owing to the over-tension of the strings, the music will be sharp. It is apt also to be irregular and discordant, owing to the action set up in the organism itself--an action which is not that of the performer or man. That which alone ought to find expression, is the central, informing spirit of the individual; and for both idea and expression to be perfect, the first essential is purity, mental as well as physical. Hence, however great a man and his work may be, under the influence of alcohol or tobacco, or on a diet of flesh, they would be still greater on pure natural regimen. Of course, there are cases in abundance in which persons have become so depraved by evil habits, as to be utterly incapacitated through the disuse of that to which they have been accustomed. But no sound argument in favour of the abuse can be founded on this. EDWARD MAITLAND. March 20, 1882. SIR THEODORE MARTIN, K. C. B. To myself tobacco is simply poison, and I believe it is so to very many who use it. I have seen proofs that it is so among the friends of my youth, who certainly hurt their health and shortened their lives by smoking. But, on the other hand, I have known others who smoked with impunity, and even with benefit to their nervous system. These, however, are, in my experience, exceptional cases. Wine in moderation is, I am sure, beneficial to brain workers; and I feel confident that it is far better, as a rule, to assist the system by this, than by food without wine or alcohol, which, in my experience, seems always to lead to eating to an extent that is very apt to cause derangement of the functions of the body. But, really, I have not made my observations either with such care or on so wide a scale as to give them any value. THEODORE MARTIN. February 18, 1882. THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU, D. D. Having kept no record of my dietary and health, I can give you no more exact report than my memory supplies. Of tobacco, I have nothing to say, except that my intense dislike of it has restricted my travelling to a minimum, and kept me from all public places where I am liable to encounter its sickening effects. My first prolonged experience of abstinence from wine and malt liquor ran through about seven years, dating, I think, from 1842. The change was not great in itself, and I always thought it favourable in its effects. At no time of my life did I sustain a heavier pressure of work and of anxiety. But in the spring of 1849, when I was living with my family in Germany, I fell into a low state of health, indicated by fluttering circulation in going upstairs, or up-hill; and, under medical advice, I adopted the habit of taking, daily, I suppose about half-a-pint bottle of _Vin ordinam._ I recovered completely, and adhered for several years to the allowance (or its equivalent) which had been prescribed to me. Under this regimen, however, I became, after a time, subject to occasional slight attacks of gout, and to some disturbance of digestion and of sleep. In spite of medical advice, I determined to revert to the abstinence in which I had never lost faith. For a time of, I suppose, from twelve to fifteen years, I have persisted in this rule; not, indeed, being under any vow, but practically not taking more than half-a-dozen glasses of wine per annum. During this time, I have escaped, apparently, all tendency to gouty affections; have returned to untroubled sleep and digestion; and, notwithstanding the advance of old age (I am now 77), have retained the power of mental application, with only this abatement perceptible to myself, that a given task requires a somewhat longer time than in fresher days. Though the sedentary life of a student is not very favourable to the maintenance of muscular vigour, it has not yet forbidden me the annual delight of reaching the chief summits of the Cairn Gorm mountains during my summer residence in Inverness. I will only add that I have never found the slightest difficulty, physical or moral, in an instantaneous change of habit to complete abstinence. Instead of feeling any depressing want of what I had relinquished, I have found a direct refreshment and satisfaction in the simpler modes of life. Few things, I believe, do more, at a minimum of cost, to lighten the spirits and sweeten the temper of families and of society, than the repudiation of artificial indulgences. JAMES MARTINEAU. December 1, 1882. DR. HENRY MAUDSLEY. I don't consider alcohol or tobacco to be in the least necessary or beneficial to a person who is in good health; and I am of opinion that any supposed necessity of one or the other to the hardest and best mental or bodily work, by such a person, is purely fanciful. He will certainly do harder and sounder work without them. I am speaking, of course, of a person in health; by a person not in health they may be used properly, from time to time, as any other drug would be used. HENRY MAUDSLEY. February 13, 1882. SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, K. C. B., D. C. L. In reply to your inquiries, I can give you my experience in a few words. I can offer no opinion as to the effects of tobacco, as I have never been a smoker. My experience of many years favours the view that moderation in food and drink is the great secret of physical health, mental activity and endurance. On several occasions while working twelve and fourteen hours a day, I tried total abstinence, but I found myself dyspeptic and stupid, and was obliged to resume my accustomed potations. I have found that any unusual amount of alcohol, while stimulating mental activity for a time, soon produced lassitude and sleepiness. T. ERSKINE MAY. February 23, 1882. REV. JOHN E. B. MAYOR, M. A. FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. When I was a school-boy of eight or nine, I was persuaded to buy some cigars and put one to my mouth for a moment. I threw it away, and have never touched tobacco since. I compute that I must have saved some 1500 pounds by abstaining from this narcotic. My two brothers--one 3rd wrangler, the other 2nd classic--have also abstained for life. I know no indulgence which leads people to disregard the feelings of others so utterly as smoking does; nor can I believe a deadly poison can be habitually taken without great injury to the nerves. Alcohol I have not touched for more than two years, nor flesh meat, nor tea, nor coffee. All my life long I have had no difficulty in adopting any diet whatever; but I am sure that since I confined myself to fruits and farinacea, life has gone easier with me. No one ever heard me complain of the want of a dinner, or of the quality of what was set before me; but I now know that a day or two's fasting will do me no sort of harm, [Footnote: Twice in my life I have tried the experiment of a _strictly_ vegetarian diet (_without milk, batter, eggs, fish or flesh_)-once when I was about twelve years old, and again, for forty-eight days, beginning On the 25th June, 1878. I had been for some months taking regular exercise (a rare thing with me), walking on four miles every morning from six to seven, so that I was in rude health. I was just beginning a stiff piece of literary work on Juvenal, which involved the daily examination of several hundred passages of authors, chiefly Greek and Latin; and I wished to try how far vegetarian diet would enable me to resist the depressing influence of fasting. I mapped out my forty-eight days into four divisions of twelve each, intending (if all went well) to fast every other day for the first twelve; every third for the second; every fourth for the third; and every sixth for the last twelve. I thought it prudent to consult a doctor (a thing which I have scarcely ever had occasion to do), who bid me go to the prison to be weighed every two or three days and to show myself to him twice a week. I did not quite carry out my scheme, but I did complete more than half--and the severer half--with no ill effects, fasting June 25, 27, 29, July 2, 5, 7. 10, 13, completing that is, two-thirds of my design for the first twelve days, and the whole of that for the second. I drank water freely on the fasting days, but ate nothing for a period varying from twenty-eight to about thirty-five hours. On the eating days, and for the remainder of the forty-eight, I lived on fruits, vegetables, or wholemeal biscuits or wheatmeal or oatmeal porridge. I never was more fiercely eager for work in my life, nor did my pulse give way, but I lost flesh rapidly, and had never much to spare. On the whole I lost 13 lbs., and was advised by the doctor to stay there, as it is much easier to let yourself down than to pick up again. For years I have been striking off one luxury after another in my diet when alone, till at last I have come to dry bread (or biscuit or porridge) and water.-- _Herald of Health, September, 1881_.] and that whether I dine in hall with my brother fellows, or take two or three biscuits in my own room, makes no odds. I am more independent, and certainly more able to influence the habits of the poor than I was. JOHN E. B. MAYOR. March 2, 1882. THE ABBE MOIGNO. I am grateful to you for thinking of me in your generous enquiry about the best conditions of literary and scientific composition. I can hardly offer myself as an example, because my constitution is rather too exceptional, but my experience may have some degree of usefulness. I have already published a hundred and fifty volumes, small and great. I scarcely ever leave my writing table. I never take a walk, nor recreation, even after meals; and yet have not felt any head-ache, constipation, or any derangement in the urinary organs. I have never had occasion to have recourse to stimulants, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, &c., in order to work, or to obtain clearness of mind. On the contrary, stimulants give rise in my case to abnormal vibrations in the brain, which are adverse to its quick and regular working. Several times in my life I fell into the habit of taking snuff. It is a fatal habit, dirty to begin with, since it puts a cautery to the nose, filth in the pocket, is extremely unwholesome; for he who takes snuff finds his nose stopped up every morning, his breathing difficult, his voice harsh and snuffling, because the action of tobacco consists in drawing the humours to the brain; fatal, at last, because the use of snuff weakens and destroys, by degrees, the memory. This last effect is fully proved by my own professional experiences, and that of many others. I learned twelve foreign languages by the method I published in my "_Latin for all;_" that is to say, I draw up the catalogue of 1,500, or 1,800 radical or primitive simple words, and engraved them upon my mind by means of mnemonic formulas. In that way I had learned about 41,500 words, whose meaning is generally, or most frequently, without connection with the word itself, and from 10,000 to 12,000 historical facts, with their precise date. All this existed simultaneously in my mind, always at my disposal when I wanted the meaning of a word or the date of an event. If anyone asked me who was the twenty-fifth king of England, for instance, I saw in my brain that it was Edward, surnamed Plantagenet, who ascended the throne in 1154. With respect to philology or chronology, I was the most extraordinary man of my time, and Francis Arago jokingly threatened to have me burnt like a wizard. But I had again fallen into the practice of snuff-taking during a stay of some weeks in Munich, where I spent my evenings in a smoking room with the learned Bavarians, each of whom ate four or five meals a day, and drank two or three jugs of beer. The most illustrious of these learned men, Steinhein, boasted of smoking 6,000 cigars a year. I attained to smoking three or four cigars a day. While drawing up my treatise on the Calculus of Variations, the most difficult of my mathematical treatises, I unconsciously emptied my snuff-box, which contained twenty-five grammes (nearly an ounce) of snuff; and one day I was painfully surprised to find that I was obliged to have recourse to my dictionary for the meaning of foreign words. I found that the dates of the numerous facts I had learnt by heart had fallen from my mind. Such a thing has rarely or seldom happened before. Distressed at this sorrowful decay of my memory, I made an heroic resolution, which nothing has disturbed since. On the 1st of August, 1863, I smoked three cigars and used twenty-five centimes (2-1/2d.) worth of snuff; from the following day to June, 1882, I have neither taken a pinch of snuff nor smoked a single cigarette. It was for me a complete resurrection, not only of memory, but of general health and well-being. It was only necessary for me to do, what I did eighteen years later, to lessen nearly one-half the quantity of food which I took every day, to eat less meat and more vegetables, to obtain such incomparable health, of which it is hardly possible to form any idea, unlimited capacity of labour, perfect digestion, absence of wrinkles, pimples; and I beg leave to affirm that those who tread in my footsteps will be as sound as I am. Add to this the habit, irrevocably established, of never saying, I _shall_ do, nor I am doing, but I _have done_, and you have the secret of the enormous amount of work I have been able to accomplish, and am accomplishing every day, in spite of my eighty years. Nobody will dispute me the honour of being the greatest hard-working man of my century. I ought, finally, to add that I find it well for me to take at breakfast a small half-cup of coffee without milk, to which, when only two or three teaspoonful remain at the bottom of the cup, I add a small spoonful of brandy, or other alcoholic liquor. That is my whole allowance of stimulants. How happy would those be who should adopt my _regime_. They would be able, without harm, to sit at their desk immediately after breakfast, and to stay there till dinner-time. No sooner would they be in bed, at about nine o'clock, but they would be softly asleep a few minutes later, and could rise at five in the morning, full of strength, after a nourishing sleep of eight hours. ABBE F. MOIGNO. July 20, 1882. REV. J. MORRISON, D. D., PRINCIPAL OF THE EVANGELICAL UNION COLLEGE. For my kind of work, I have found it absolutely necessary to abstain altogether from the use of both alcohol and tobacco. J. MORRISON. May 11, 1882. MR. AUGUSTUS MONGREDIEN. I am 75 years of age. I have smoked moderately all my life; and for the last fifty years have never, except in rare and short instances of illness, retired to bed without one tumbler of whiskey toddy. You will therefore see that I am utterly incompetent to pronounce on the respective effects, on the mind and body, of moderate indulgence, and of total abstinence, for I have never tried the latter. A. MONGREDIEN. March 10, 1882. DR. J. A. H. MURRAY, EX-PRESIDENT OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND EDITOR OF ITS ENGLISH ETYMOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL DICTIONARY. I use no stimulants of any kind, and should be very sorry to do so. I thought it was now generally admitted that the more work a man has to do, the less he can afford to muddle himself in any way. But as I have never tried the experiment in using either alcohol or tobacco, and cannot afford to do it, I have no comparative experience to offer. It might be beneficial; I do not believe it would, and prefer not to risk the chance. _Fiat experimentum in corpore viliore_. J. A. H. MURRAY. March 2, 1882. MR. D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. I should have thought that the universal experience of mankind had already been set on record without much ambiguity. It has been my practice to smoke at work, and I do not think I could get along without tobacco now, unless I made an effort, the profit of which could scarcely justify the pains. As a matter of nature, I do not believe that a man works either better or worse for the use of tobacco, unless he smokes so much as to injure his general health. Alcoholic drinks are, of course, mentally as well as physically stimulative, and I have found them useful at a pinch. But everybody knows that stimulants are reactionary, and it is pretty certain that in the end they take more out of a man than they put into him. Under extraordinary pressure they have their uses, but their habitual employment muddles the faculties, and the last state of the man who constantly works on them is worse than the first. Continually taken alone, and as a stimulant to mental exertion, their influences on a man of average formation are fatal. But I should have thought all these things settled long ago, unless it were in junior debating societies. D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. April 11, 1882. PROFESOR NEWMAN. In boyhood, I perceived that to my younger sisters mere drops of wine caused coughing and spitting, and the heat of wine to my own palate and throat was offensive. Beer, ale, and porter disgusted me by their bitterness. Porter was peculiarly nauseous to me. I early saw the ill-effects of wine on youths, and was frightened by accounts of college drunkenness. For this reason, as well as from economy, I never became a wine-drinker, further than to drink healths by just colouring water in a glass. I have never dreamed of needing wine, though often in old time ordered by physicians to drink it. Not having then the same power to look over their heads-which experience of their changes and their follies has brought to me-I used to obey a little while, but quickly reverted to my glass of water, and never had reason to believe, from my own case, that there was any advantage from the wine. In 1860-1, the Parisian experiments proved that all alcohol arrests digestion. Since then I have called myself a teetotaler. To me it seems clear that love of the drink, or fear of losing patients by forbidding it, are the true cause of the fuss made in its favour. I grieve that so noble a fruit as grapes should be wasted on wine. The same remark will hold of barley, of honey, of raisins, of dates: from which men make intoxicating drinks. As to tobacco-while I was in Turkey more than fifty years ago, I learned to smoke Turkish tobacco in a long Turkish pipe, partly to relieve evil smells, partly because it is uncivil there to refuse the proffered pipe. I never was aware of good or evil from it, and with perfect ease laid it aside when I quitted the soil of Asia. After this, a cigar was recommended to me in England, as a remedy for loss of sleep, but the essential oil of tobacco so near to my nose disgusted me, and the heat or smoke distressed my eyes. I have never felt any pleasure, rather annoyance, from English smoking; and since the late Sir Benjamin Brodie published his pamphlet against it (perhaps in 1855), I have learned that the practice is simply baneful. They say "it soothes"--which I interpret to mean--"it makes me inattentive and dreamy." FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. March 2, 1882. THE REV. MARK PATTISON, B. D. The story of my personal experiences of alcohol is one which would require more time than I can now command to write properly. I can now only say that I did not begin wine, as a habit, till I was thirty-seven; that, at first, an occasional effect was favourable to the brain power, but always followed by corresponding reaction towards feebleness. About fifty-seven, I was obliged to give up wine altogether; I found great general advantage from doing so, and no disadvantage whatever as regards mental activity. I am now sixty-eight, and take a glass of claret every third day, or oftener. This medicine does not produce any perceptible effect on the brain directly, but I have a fancy that I sleep better after wine; and sleep I have always looked to as the best brain restorative. [Footnote: SLEEP IS THE BEST STIMULANT.--The best possible thing for a man to do when he feels too weak to carry anything through is to go to bed and sleep for a week, if he can. This is the only recuperation of brain-power, the only recuperation of brain-force; because during sleep the brain is in a state of rest, in a condition to receive and appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood, which take the place of those that have been consumed in previous labour, since the very act of thinking consumes or burns up solid particles, as every turn of the wheel or screw of the steamer is the result of the consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace. The supply of consumed brain-substance can only be had from the nutritive particles in the blood, which were obtained from the food eaten previously; and the brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to itself those nutritive particles during a state of rest, of quiet, and stillness of sleep. Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves; they goad the brain, and force it to a greater consumption of its substance, until the substance has been so exhausted that there is not power enough left to receive a supply, just as men are so near death by thirst and starvation that there is not power enough left to swallow anything, and is over.--_Scientific American_.] Spirits I have never drunk; Though I have been a smoker for many years, I cannot say anything as to its effects. MARK PATTISON. March 16, 1882. MR. JAMES PAYN. In common with nine-tenths of my literary brethren, I am a constant smoker. I smoke the whole time I am engaged in composition (three hours _per diem_), and after meals; but very light tobacco-- _latakia_. [Footnote: Latakia, or Turkish, are called mild tobaccos, and although they produce dryness of the tongue, from the ammonia evolved in their smoke, they do not upset the digestion so materially, nor nauseate so much as the stronger tobaccos, unless they are indiscriminately used.--DR. B. W. RICHARDSON. ("_Diseases of Modern Life_")] That it stimulates the imagination, I have little doubt; and as I have worked longer and more continuously for thirty years than any other author (save one); I cannot believe that tobacco has done me any harm. Those who object to it have never tried it, or find it disagrees with them. How can they, therefore, be in a position to judge? I find cigars disagree with me but I do not on that account pronounce them unwholesome for everybody. I drink very little alcohol--only light claret, and occasionally dry champagne--but I do not know what effect drinking alcohol has upon composition. JAMES PAYN. MR. EIZAK PITMAN, AUTHOR OV "FONOGRAFI OR FONETIK SHORTHAND," AND ORIJINATER OV THE SPELING REFORM. If a breef skech ov mei leif, and the deietetik maner ov it, wil be ov servis tu you, ei gladly giv it. Your rekwest abzolvz me from the impiutashon ov boasting. If you make it publik, pray let it be printed in the parshiali reformd speling in hwich it iz riten. Ei hav been an abstainer from the stimiulant alkohol nearli all mei leif, and ei hav alwayz refraind from the seduktiv influens ov the sedativ tobako. Ei hav therefor no eksperiens tu ofer ov their use, eksept that about 1838 ei woz rekomended tu take a glas ov wein per day az a tonik, and az a remedi for dispepsia, hwich then began tu trubel me. After obeying this medikal preskripshon for a year or two, and feinding no releef from it, ei gave up both the wein and the use ov flesh, "the brandi ov deiet;" the dispepsia disapeard, and haz never vizited me sins. Ei am nou verjing on seventi. Ei intensli enjoi leif and labor, and rekweir nuthing beyond the laborz ov the day, and the walk tu and from mei ofis, hwich iz a meil, tu indius refreshing sleep. Ei keep up mei leif-long praktis ov reteiring at ten o'klok, and being at mei desk at siks. About three yearz ago ei adopted the kustom ov taking a siesta for half an our after diner. It iz wel, az Milton obzervz, tu giv the bodi rest diuring the ferst konkokshon ov the prinsipal meal. The uzhual sumer vizit tu the sea-seid woz unnon tu me til ei woz fifti yearz ov aje. From 1837 (the date ov the publikashon ov "Fonografi") tu 1861 (the date ov mei sekond maraje), nearli a kworter ov a sentiuri, ei wurkt on from siks in the morning til bed-teim, ten o'klok, without an intervening thought ov a holiday. Ei felt no wont ov a temporeri respit from labor bekauz ei tuk no ekseiting food or drink; and ei shud az soon hav meditated a breach in the Dekalog az a breach in mei daili round ov diutiz bei eidling at the sea-seid. In 1861 ei relakst, and komenst the praktis ov leaving mei ofis at siks in the evening. At the same teim ei komenst viziting the variiis watering plasez, or going tu the Kontinent in the sumer for four or feiv weeks. This rekriashon ei have taken more for the sake ov mei weif and two sunz than from eni feeling ov nesesiti for it on mei own part. From mei own eksperiens ov the benefits ov abstinens from the sedativ alkohol, and the stimulants tobako and snuf; and mei obzervashon ov the efekts ov theze thingz on personz who indulj in them, ei hav a ferm konvikshon that they ekserseiz a dedli influens on the hiuman rase. EIZAK PITMAN. March 25, 1882. M. GASTON PLANTE. I am much flattered by the interest that you attach to my opinion on the subject of the influence that certain substances can have upon thought and upon intellectual work. I must tell you frankly that I have not found that tobacco or alcohol have an advantageous influence. It is true that I have not made much use of them--I have never taken pure spirits, such as brandy, but only of wine containing a little. I have been obliged sometimes, in trying to fortify my health, to take some Bordeaux wine, and I have not observed that any appreciable effect resulted from it upon the facility of intellectual work. From the point of view of health, I counted particularly upon the iron contained in good Bordeaux wine, but I have found that the alcohol in the wine over-excited the nervous system, provoked sleeplessness and cramps; and I have finally adopted as a drink wine mixed with water, and even this in very small quantities. As to tobacco, I have also tried it; and far from thinking that it favours intellectual work, I believe, with one of our learned writers (the Abbe Moigno, Editor of the "_Journal du Mondes_"), that its use tends to weaken the memory. Neither do I make use of coffee, which equally excites the nervous system, although, like all the world, I have observed that this substance gives a certain intellectual activity. What I have found out most clearly is what everyone has observed from time immemorial--that the clearest ideas, the happiest and most fruitful expressions, come in the morning, after the repose of the night, and after sleep--when one has it, but of which I have not a very large share. I attach so much importance to the ideas which come during the night or in the morning, that I have always at the head of my bed paper and pencil suspended by string, by the help of which I write every morning the ideas I have been able to conceive, particularly upon subjects of scientific research. [Footnote: Curtis, I think, says that whenever Emerson has a "happy thought," he writes it down, be it dawn or midnight, and when Mrs. Emerson, startled in the night by some unusual sound, cries, "What is the matter? Are you ill?" the philosopher's soft voice answers, "No, my dear, only an idea."-- _Appleton's New York Journal, Nov., 1873.] I write these notes in obscurity, and decipher and develop them in the morning, pen in hand. This is the reply I can make to your interesting enquiry. I shall be happy to know the conclusion to which you will be conducted by the information which you will have been able to collect. GASTON PLANTE. THE REV. A. PLUMMER, HEAD MASTER OF THE DURHAM COLLEGE. University Tutor and Lecturer, and University Proctor. I am a firm believer in the value of a moderate use of tobacco and alcohol for the brain worker. I generally smoke one pipe in the morning, _before_ work, and one at night, _after_ work (or the equivalents of a pipe). I seldom smoke _while_ I work, and do not find it helpful. I drink two glasses of sherry (or their equivalents), as a rule daily, and take them at late dinner--not at lunch. If troubled with sleeplessness, I find a glass of sherry, and a few biscuits, followed by smoking, a tolerably safe cure, but not always to be relied upon. I should be very sorry to attempt to do without these two helps. Of the two I believe the smoking to be the more valuable, especially when (what is far worse than heavy work) _worry_ is pressing upon one. I am wholly sceptical as to the value of work before breakfast. Let a man get up as early as he likes: but don't let him try to work on an empty stomach. The Irishman was wise who said that when he worked before breakfast, he always had something to eat first. A. PLUMMER April 6, 1882. MR. EDWARD POCKNELL, (POCKNELL'S PRESS AGENCY AND LONDON ASSOCIATED REPORTERS.) In reply to your letter, I should say that tobacco has some action on the brain; but I think its action different in different people, and at different times in the same person. I think the action soothing after food, but exciting on an empty stomach. In the former case I think it promotes thinking in this way:--that the mind concentrates its attention better during the mechanical operation of "puffing", than when it is liable to be disturbed when not so occupied. For this reason I should say that smoking does help to get through work late at night. I find frequently that having commenced to write with a fresh pipe in my mouth, I go on a long time after it goes out; but as it remains in my mouth, it seems to have almost the same effect till the discovery, at some pause, that my pipe is out; and then it is a relaxation to spare a moment to refill it. I do not look upon smoking as a necessity to mental labour; but it seems to me, as a smoker, an agreeable and useful method for concentrating thought upon any subject. But I think it would be difficult to lay down any general rule for persons of different constitutions. E. POCKNELL. March 10, 1882. PROFESSOR GEORGE RAWLINSON. Although it does not appear to me that the method of your enquiry can lead to any important results, you are quite welcome to any information that I can give you on the subject. I was brought up to take daily a moderate amount of beer or wine, and have continued to do so all my lifetime, with the exception that my beer has been cut off, and I have been recommended to take a little brandy and soda-water, or whiskey and soda-water instead. I smoked an occasional cigar when I was young, but never much liked tobacco, and gave up the practice entirely when I was about five and twenty. I have never tried leaving off alcoholic liquors, being advised medically that it would probably be injurious to me to do so. I am, therefore, quite unable to say what effect my doing so would have on my powers of thought and work. GEORGE RAWLINSON. March 28, 1882. MR. CHARLES READE. Your subject is important, and your method of enquiry sound. I wish I could throw any light, but I cannot more than this. I tried to smoke five or six times, but it always made me heavy and rather sick; therefore, as it is not a necessary of life, and costs money, and makes me sick, I spurned it from me. I have never felt the want of it. I have seen many people the worse for it. I have seen many people apparently none the worse for it. I never saw anybody perceptibly the better for it. C. READE. Feb. 2, 1882. MR. THOMAS ALLEN REED. You ask me whether I have found tobacco or wine a help to me in my work. No! As to the first, for the sufficient reason that I have never tried it. I never smoked a pipe or a cigar in my life, and have no intention of commencing the practice. When, more than thirty years ago, I entered upon my profession, I was told by my _confreres_ that I should soon follow their example, and they smiled at my innocence when I declared that I thought they were mistaken. As to alcohol, I am not a teetotaler, but I think I can truly say that I never found the least benefit from wine or beer in my daily or nightly work. Indeed, I consider them rather a hindrance, having a tendency to make one heavy and sleepy. I have been, and am still, a tolerably hard worker, without the use of artificial stimulants, and judging from my own experience, and that of many others with whom I have been connected in my professional labours, I don't believe in their efficacy. If I take a glass of wine occasionally (not a frequent indulgence with me) it is because I like it, not because I think it helps me in my work. T. A. REED. Feb. 18, 1882. DR. JULIUS RODENBERG. I have smoked from my seventeenth year, and could not do without it now. On the whole, I am but a moderate smoker, and seldom smoke whilst walking, but at work I must have my cigar, and find it agrees very well with my health. Most of my learned and literary friends smoke; but two or three of them have given it up in their later years without visible effect upon their health or mental strength. As to alcohol, I could not stand to drink brandy. Sometimes I drink a glass, but only as an exception. I find it much more convenient for me, and a good help to work, to take now and then a bottle of hock or champagne; but, as a rule, I drink half a bottle of claret at dinner, and a pint of beer at supper. I generally write in the morning from nine to half-past one, when I dine; and from five o'clock in the afternoon to nine, when I take supper, but I could not bear to drink either wine or beer while at work. JULIUS RODENBERG. March 12, 1882. DR. W. H. RUSSELL. I am not able to give you any very positive expression of opinion on the matter respecting which you write, but I can say that I have smoked tobacco and taken wine for years, and though I cannot aver that I should not have done as well without them, I have felt comforted and sustained in my work by both at times, especially by the weed. However, I was very well in the last campaign in South Africa, where for some time we had neither wine nor spirits. Climate has a good deal to say to the craving for a stimulant, and men in India, who never drink in England, there consume "pegs" and cheroots enormously. Of course, tobacco is to be put out of account in relation to great workers and thinkers up to the close of the middle ages, but the experience of antiquity would lead one to infer that the moderate use of wine, at all events, was not unfavourable to the highest brain development and physical force. Bismarck and Moltke are very great smokers; neither is a temperance man. In effect, I am inclined to think that tobacco and stimulants are hurtful mostly in the case of inferior organizations of brain physique, where their use is only a concomitant of baser indulgences, and uncontrolled by intelligence and will. I am quite in favour, therefore, of legislative interference, and almost inclined to supporting the Permissive Bill. W. H. RUSSELL. Feb. 23, 1882. (For) MR. JOHN RUSKIN. You are evidently unaware that Mr. Ruskin entirely abhors the practice of smoking, in which he has never indulged. His dislike of it is mainly based upon his belief (no doubt a true one) that a cigar or pipe will very often make a man content to be idle for any length of time, who would not otherwise be so. The excessive use of tobacco amongst all classes abroad, both in France and Italy, and the consequent spitting everywhere and upon everything, has not tended to lessen his antipathy. I have heard him allow, however, that there is reason in the soldiers and the sailors' pipe, as being some protection against the ill effects of exposure, etc. As to the effect of tobacco on the brain, I know that he considers it anything but beneficial. Feb. 12, 1882. KESHUB CHUNDER SEN. The problem you have undertaken to solve is, indeed, one of intense importance and interest, and all who can ought to help its solution in the interests both of science and morality. I feel thankful for the honour you have done me in inviting my opinion on the subject. As a teetotaler I abstain wholly from intoxicating drinks and stimulants, and discourage the use of the same in others. From boyhood up to the present time--I am now 44--I have never been in the habit of drinking or of smoking, nor did it ever occur to me that such habits were essential to health or helpful to brain work. It is my firm conviction that neither the head nor the hand derives any fresh power from the use of stimulants. It is only habits already contracted which give to alcohol and tobacco their so-called stimulating properties, and engender a strong craving for them, which those who are not enslaved by such habits never experience. I must not, however, place alcohol and tobacco on the same level. The latter is comparatively harmless; the former is a prolific source of evil in society, and often acts like deadly poison. KESHUB CHUNDER SEN. July 29, 1882. M. JULES SIMON. Some twenty years ago I had occasion to study the condition of the working classes, when I did not fail to observe the pernicious effects produced upon their health and morals by the use of Strong liquors. I remember that one of the most painful results of my inquiry was that whilst some look for pleasure in the abuse of intoxicating liquor, others, unable to procure sufficient food, seek to blunt the edge of their appetite by drinking a little brandy. As my researches were made so long ago, my testimony will now be of little value. Everything changes in twenty years, and I would fain hope that during this period a change for the better has taken place in the habits of the people. I have not much to say on the use of tobacco. I believe that when taken in excess, it has a stupefying effect. I know that it may act as a poison, for a friend of mine, a member of the Senate, who has just died, assured me repeatedly that he was dying from the effects of constant smoking. I look upon the use of tobacco, as a practice much to be deprecated, as its tendency is to separate men from the society of women. JULES SIMON. March 8, 1882. PROFESOR SKEAT. As to the benefit of alcohol and tobacco, my opinion is that there is no _general_ rule. As for myself, my experience is, that the less stimulant I take, the better--I have given up beer with benefit to myself, and I have almost given up wine. I take, on an average, about five glasses of claret per week, more by way of luxury than of use. Tobacco I never use, as smoking seems to me to be rather a waste of time. WALTER W. SKEAT. March 18, 1882. M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. I have no difficulty in making known to you my views on the effects of tobacco and alcohol. I believe both to be extremely injurious, as they are the cause of many diseases, even when taken in small quantities, and much more so when indulged in to excess. I have never used them personally, but I have only too often observed their baneful influence on individuals of my acquaintance. I do not even consider wine to be harmless, especially as it is most usually adulterated. I have abstained from it for many years, indeed for nearly a lifetime, with great advantage. In our climate none of these stimulants are needed, and I very much question whether they are more necessary elsewhere. Accept my thanks for the questions you have addressed to me. B. ST. HlLAIRE. Feb. 24, 1882. MR. W. SPOTTISWOODE, D. C. L., LL. D., PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. In reply to your enquiry, I beg to say that I have never smoked, and that I take wine only at meals, and in moderation. I have never observed any noticeable effect from wine so taken on mental work, but should think it quite insignificant. W. SPOTTISWOODE. DR. C. W. SIEMENS, D. C. L., F. R. S. My experience has only extended to a very moderate use of alcohol and tobacco. I find that even the most moderate use of tobacco is decidedly hurtful to energetic mental effort. With regard to alcohol, a very moderate amount does not appear to depress the mental condition, under ordinary circumstances, but I find that although I never indulged in its use I can do very well without it, and I am doing with less and less. Under certain conditions, however, I find that alcohol has a beneficial effect in restoring both mind and body to a state of power and activity. C. W. SIEMENS. Dec. 4th, 1882. MR. G. BARNETT SMITH. I should probably not be accepted as an authority upon the tobacco question, as I have never smoked a pipe or cigar in my life. As to the use of alcohol, the moderate quantity I have taken has not been detrimental to me, and, in consequence of the state of my health, it has sometimes been necessary. No doubt a larger quantity of stimulant than is essential is taken by many literary men, and by other classes of the community; but a moderate quantity would, I believe, be found beneficial by most writers. Of course, if a man finds that he can do quite as well without alcohol, he is undoubtedly wise in discarding it. G. BARNETT SMITH. March 28, 1882. M. TAINE. I regret that it is not in my power to give you the information you ask. I have not made the question a study, and have no fixed opinion about it. All that I can say is that I have never made use of alcohol in any form as an essential stimulant. Coffee suits me much better. Alcohol, so far as I can judge, is good only as a physical stimulant after great physical fatigue, and even then it should be taken in very small quantities. As for tobacco, I have the bad habit of smoking cigarettes, and find them useful between two ideas,--when I have the first but have not arrived at the second; but I do not regard them as a necessity. It is probable that there is a little diversion produced at the same time, a little excitement and exhilaration. But every custom of this kind becomes tyrannical, and the observations which accompany your letter are very judicious. Among the men of letters and men of science around me there is not one to my knowledge who in order to think and to write has recourse to spirituous liquors; but three-fourths of them smoke, and almost all take before their work a cup of coffee. I have seen English journalists writing their articles by night with the aid of a bottle of champagne. With us, the articles are written in the day time, and our journalists have, therefore, no necessity to resort to this stimulant. H. TAINE. March 28, 1882. MR. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. I have been a smoker nearly all my life. Five years ago I found it certainly was hurting me, causing my hand to shake and producing somnolence. I gave it up for two years. A doctor told me I had smoked too much (three large cigars daily). Two years since I took to it again, and now smoke three small cigars (very small), and, so far as I can tell, without any effect. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Feb. 11, 1882. SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, M. A., LL. D., D. C. L., F. R. S. The question of usefulness or the reverse of tobacco or alcohol is one of health, and to be answered by medical men, if they can. It seems to me that neither is of the slightest consequence as a stimulus or help to intellectual efforts, but that either may be used without harm or the reverse if in small enough quantities, so as not to hurt the digestion. WILLIAM THOMSON. Feb. 13, 1882. PROFESSOR TRANTMANN, BONN UNIVERSITY. I am not a smoker, so that I am unable to make any statement regarding the effect of tobacco. As to alcohol, I never make use of spirits in order to stimulate my brain, but often, after working hard, I drink a glass of beer or wine, and immediately feel relieved. M. TRANTMANN. March 14, 1882. PROFESSOR TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. With regard to the use of alcohol and tobacco, I do not think any general rule can be laid down. Some powerful thinkers are very considerable smokers, while other powerful thinkers would have been damaged, if not ruined, by the practice. A similar remark applies in the case of alcohol. In my opinion, the man is happiest who is so organised as to be able to dispense with the use of both. JOHN TYNDALL. Feb. 14, 1882. MR. IVAN TOURGUENEFF. In answer to your enquiry I have to state that I have no personal experience of the influence of tobacco and alcohol on the mind, as I do not smoke or use alcoholic drinks. My observations on other people lead me to the conclusion that tobacco is generally a bad thing, and that alcohol taken in very small quantities can produce a good effect in some cases of constitutional debility. Iv. TOURGUENEFF. March 14, 1882. MARK TWAIN. I have not had a large experience in the matter of alcoholic drinks. I find that about two glasses of champagne are an admirable stimulant to the tongue, and is, perhaps, the happiest inspiration for an after dinner speech which can be found; but, as far as my experience goes, wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration. I have never seen the time when I could write to my satisfaction after drinking even one glass of wine. As regards smoking, my testimony is of the opposite character. I am forty-six years old, and I have smoked immoderately during thirty-eight years, with the exception of a few intervals, which I will speak of presently. During the first seven years of my life I had no health--I may almost say that I lived on allopathic medicine, but since that period I have hardly known what sickness is. My health has been excellent, and remains so. As I have already said, I began to smoke immoderately when I was eight years old; that is, I began with one hundred cigars a month, and by the time I was twenty I had increased my allowance to two hundred a month. Before I was thirty, I had increased it to three hundred a month. I think I do not smoke more than that now; I am quite sure I never smoke less. Once, when I was fifteen, I ceased from smoking for three months, but I do not remember whether the effect resulting was good or evil. I repeated this experiment when I was twenty-two; again I do not remember what the result was. I repeated the experiment once more, when I was thirty-four, and ceased from smoking during a year and a half. My health did not improve, because it was not possible to improve health which was already perfect. As I never permitted myself to regret this abstinence, I experienced no sort of inconvenience from it. I wrote nothing but occasional magazine articles during pastime, find as I never wrote one except under strong impulse, I observed no lapse of facility. But by and by I sat down with a contract behind me to write a book of five or six hundred pages--the book called "Roughing it"-- and then I found myself most seriously obstructed. I was three weeks writing six chapters. Then I gave up the fight, resumed my three hundred cigars, burned the six chapters, and wrote the book in three months, without any bother or difficulty. I find cigar smoking to be the best of all inspirations for the pen, and, in my particular case, no sort of detriment to the health. During eight months of the year I am at home, and that period is my holiday. In it I do nothing but very occasional miscellaneous work; therefore, three hundred cigars a month is a sufficient amount to keep my constitution on a firm basis. During the family's summer vacation, which we spend elsewhere, I work five hours every day, and five days in every week, and allow no interruption under any pretext. I allow myself the fullest possible marvel of inspiration; consequently, I ordinarily smoke fifteen cigars during my five hours' labours, and if my interest reaches the enthusiastic point, I smoke more. I smoke with all my might, and allow no intervals. MARK TWAIN. March 14, 1882. MR. CORNELIUS WALFORD, F. S. S., F. I. A. The subject you enquire about is one of vital consequence to brain-workers. I am distinctly of opinion that all stimulants are decidedly injurious to the physical system, and that as a consequence they tend to weaken and destroy the mental powers. I believe tobacco to be a more insidious stimulant than alcoholic beverages. It can be indulged in more constantly without visible degradation; but surely it saps the powers of the mind. In this view I gave it up some years ago. Many men say they smoke to make them think. I notice that a number of them seem to think to very small purpose, either for themselves or mankind generally. I am not a total abstainer, and theoretically have had a belief that pure wine ought to be beneficial to the human system. In practice I have not found it so, though I have always been a very moderate drinker. I certainly never drank a glass of wine or any other liquor in view of mental stimulus, and did not know it was ever seriously regarded as having any such effect, except in so far as it might invigorate the body, which I now find it does not do; but in case of sedentary occupations is positively injurious in its effects. Until mankind can rise above beer and tobacco, the race will remain degraded, as it now is, mentally, socially and physically. P.S.--I have never had so large an amount of mental labour on hand as now--three works in the press (including an encyclopedia, whereof all the articles are written by myself), all requiring much thought and research. I am taking no stimulants whatever. CORNELIUS WALFORD. March 9, 1882. MR. G. F. WATTS, R. A. In answer to your letter asking for my experience and opinion as a worker, on the subject of tobacco and alcoholic stimulants, I must begin by saying that reflection and experience should teach us the truth of the adage that "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," and that what may be wisely recommended in some cases is by no means desirable in all; in fact, that it is equally unwise and illiberal to dogmatise upon any subject that is not capable of scientific proof. Being myself a total abstainer from tobacco, and equally so, when not recommended by my doctor, from wine and all stimulants, I confess to having a strong prejudice against them. The use of wine seems to be natural to man, and it is possible he would be the better for it if it could be restrained within very moderate limits; but I have good reason for concluding that the more active stimulants are altogether harmful. It is natural as time goes on that new wants should be acquired, and new luxuries discovered, and doubtless it is in the abuse, and not in the use, of such things that the danger lies; but we all know how prone humanity is to abuse in its indulgences. It is, I believe, an admitted fact that even people who are considered to be strictly temperate as a rule, habitually take more wine than is good for them. With regard to tobacco, I cannot help thinking that its introduction by civilised races has been an unmixed evil. History shows us that before it was known the most splendid mental achievements were carried put, and the most heroic endurance exhibited, things done which if it be possible to rival, it is quite impossible to excel. The soldier, and sailor, the night-watchman especially in malarious districts may derive comfort and benefit from its use, and there I think it should be left; for my observation has induced me to think that nothing but evil results from its use as a luxurious habit. The subject is doubtless one of vital interest and importance; but I must end as I began by disclaiming a right to dogmatise. G. F. WATTS. Feb. 19, 1882. PROFESSOR ANDREW WILSON, Ph. D., F. R. S. E. The question you ask concerning the effects of alcohol and tobacco upon the health of brain-workers, relatively (I presume) to myself, is a complex one. Personally, I find with often excessive work in the way of lecturing, long railway journeys, and late hours, writing at other times, that I digest my food with greater ease when I take a little claret or beer with meals. Experiment has convinced me that the slight amount of alcohol I imbibe in my claret is a grateful stimulus to digestion. As to smoking, I take an occasional cigar, but only after dinner, and never during the day. As to health, I never suffer even from a headache. I usually deliver 18 lectures a week, often more; and I have often to make journeys of over 50 miles after a hard day's work here, to lecture in the country. My writing is done at night chiefly, but as a rule, I don't sit after 12-30. My work is exceptionally constant, yet I seem to be exceptionally healthy. I regard my claret or wine to meals in the same light in which others regard their tea, as a pleasant stimulus, followed in my case by good effect. At the same time, there may be others who may do the same amount of work as abstainers. My position in this matter has always been that of recognising the individual phases of the matter as the true basis of its settlement. What I can urge is, that I am an exceptionally healthy man, doing what I may fairly claim to be exceptionally hard work, and careful in every respect of health, finding that a moderate quantity of alcohol, with food, is for me better than total abstinence. Whiskey, or alcohol, in its strong forms I never taste. ANDREW WILSON. Feb. 14, 1882. MR. JUSTIN WINSER. Referring to your note, I may say that I have never used stimulants to incite intellectual work, but have found occasionally in social gatherings a certain intellectual exhilaration arising from its use, which conduces to quickness of wit, etc., but perhaps not so much from alcoholic liquors as from coffee, a cup of coffee being with me a good preparation for an after-dinner speech. My moderate use of a stimulant has not disclosed to me beneficial or hurtful effects. I often go long intervals without it; and have never indulged in it, to great extent, so that my testimony is of a narrow experience. My use of tobacco is so inconsiderable as to show nothing. JUSTIN WlNSER. March 9, 1882. M. WURTZ, PARIS. In reply to your letter of the 7th February, I have the honour to recall you the opinion which is current to-day among doctors of the highest authority, namely, that the abuse of alcohol and tobacco offers the greatest inconvenience from the point of view of health. Alcoholism produces a state of disorder of the organism to which a great number of maladies attach themselves. It is not a question of the moderate use of excitants, but the limit between use and abuse is difficult to trace, because it varies according to the country, the climate, and the habits of the individual constitution. A. WURTZ. March 14, 1882. APPENDIX. DR. RISDON BENNETT. "There are few people, I believe, who are aided in the actual performance of brain-work by alcohol; not that many, nay, most persons, are not rendered more ready and brilliant in conversation, or have their imagination quickened for a time. But the steady, continued exercise of the mental powers demanded of professional men is more often impeded than aided at the time by alcohol." _Contemporary Review_, vol. 34, p. 343. THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M. A. "It has been said that moderate doses of alcohol stimulate work into greater activity, and make life happier and brighter. My experience, since I became a total abstainer, has been the opposite. I have found myself able to work better. I have a greater command over any powers I possess. I can make use of them when I please. When I call upon them, they answer; and I need not wait for them to be in the humour. It is all the difference between a machine well oiled and one which has something, among the wheels which catches and retards the movement at unexpected times. As to the pleasure of life, it has been also increased. I enjoy Nature, books, and men more than I did--and my previous enjoyment of them was not small. Those attacks of depression which come to every man at times who lives too sedentary a life rarely visit me now, and when depression does come from any trouble, I can overcome it far more quickly than before. The fact is, alcohol, even in the small quantities I took it, while it did not seem to injure health, injures the fineness of that physical balance which means a state of health in which all the world is pleasant. That is my experience after four months of water-drinking, and it is all the more striking to me, because for the last four or five years I have been a very moderate drinker. However, the experience of one man is not that of another, and mine only goes for what it is worth to those to whom, as much alcohol as is contained in one glass of sherry, or port, alters away from the standard of health. I have discovered, since abstinence, that that is true of me. And I am sure, from inquiries, I have made, that it is true for a great many other people who do not at all suspect it. Therefore, I appeal to the young and the old, to try abstinence for the very reasons they now use alcohol--in order to increase their power of work and their enjoyment of life. Let the young make the experiment of working on water only. Alcohol slowly corrupts and certainly retards the activity of the brain of the greater number of men. They will be able to do all they have to do more swiftly. And this swiftness will leave them leisure--the blessing we want most in this over-worked world. And the leisure, not being led away by alcohol into idleness, into depression which craves unnatural excitement, into noisy or slothful company, will be more nobly used and with greater joy in the usage. And the older men, who find it so difficult to find leisure, and who when they find it cannot enjoy it because they have a number of slight ailments which do not allow them perfect health, or which keep them in over-excitement or over-depression, let them try--though it will need a struggle--whether the total abandonment of alcohol will not lessen all their ailments, and by restoring a better temper to the body--for the body with alcohol in it is like a house with an irritable man in it--enable them not only to work better, but to enjoy their leisure. It is not too much to say that the work of the world would be one-third better done, and more swiftly done, and the enjoyment of life increased by one-half, if no one took a drop of alcohol." Speech at Bedford Chapel, July 20th, 1882. WILLIAM C. BRYANT. (BORN 1794; DIED 1878.) I promised to give you some account of my habits of life, so far, at least, as regards diet, exercise, and occupation. I have reached a pretty advanced period of life, without the usual infirmities of old age, and with my strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation. How far this may be the effect of my way of life, adopted long ago, and steadily adhered to, is perhaps uncertain. I rise early, at this time of the year about 5 1/2; in summer, half an hour, or even an hour, earlier. Immediately, with very little incumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exercises, for the most part designed to expand the chest, and at the same time call into action all the muscles and articulations of the body. These are performed with dumb-bells, the very lightest, covered with flannel; with a pole, a horizontal bar, and a light chair swung around my head. After a full hour, and sometimes more, passed in this manner, I bathe from head to foot. When at my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my exercises in the chamber, and, going out, occupy myself for half an hour or more in some work which requires brisk exercise. After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit down to my studies until I am called. My breakfast is a simple one--hominy and milk, or in place of hominy, brown bread, or oat-meal, or wheaten grits, and, in the season, baked sweet apples. Buckwheat cakes I do not decline, nor any other article of vegetable food, but animal food I never take at breakfast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any time. Sometimes I take a cup of chocolate, which has no narcotic effect, and agrees with me very well. At breakfast I often take fruit, either in its natural state or freshly stewed. After breakfast I occupy myself for awhile with my studies, and then, when in town, I walk down to the office of _The Evening Post_, nearly three miles distant, and after about three hours, return, always walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the streets. In the country I am engaged in my literary tasks till a feeling of weariness drives me out into the open air, and I go upon my farm or into the garden and prune the trees, or perform some other work about them which they need, and then go back to my books. I do not often drive out, preferring to walk. In the country I dine early, and it is only at that meal that I take either meat or fish, and of these but a moderate quantity, making my dinner mostly of vegetables. At the meal which is called "tea," I take only a little bread and butter, with fruit, if it be on the table. In town, where I dine later, I make but two meals a day. Fruit makes a considerable part of my diet, and I eat it at almost any part of the day without inconvenience. My drink is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a glass of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with its use. That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed early: in town, as early as 10; in the country, somewhat earlier. For many years I have avoided in the evening every kind of literary occupation which tasks the faculties, such as composition, even to the writing of letters, for the reason that it excites the nervous system and prevents sound sleep. My brother told me, not long since, that he had seen in a Chicago newspaper, and several other Western journals, a paragraph in which it is said that I am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant; that I have depended upon the excitement it produces in writing my verses, and that, in consequence of using it in that way, I had become as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, you know that to be false, and the rest of the story is equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided every thing which spurs nature to exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even with my food I do not take the usual condiments, such as pepper, and the like. March 30, 1871. _Hygiene of the Brain_, New York, 1878. DR. KING CHAMBERS, HONORARY PHYSICIAN TO H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES. "The physiology of the action of alcohol has a very practical bearing on the physical regimen of the mental functions. Alcohol has the power of curbing, arresting, and suspending all the phenomena connected with the nervous system. We feel its influence on our thoughts as soon as on any other part of the man. Sometimes it brings them more completely under our command, controls and steadies them; sometimes it confuses or disconnects them; then breaks off our power and the action of the senses altogether. The first effect is desirable, the others to be avoided. When a man has tired himself with intellectual exertion a moderate quantity of alcohol taken with food acts as an anaesthetic, stays the wear of the system which is going on, and allows the nervous force to be diverted to the due digestion of the meal. But it must be followed by rest from mental labour, and is, in fact, a part of the same regimen which enforces rest--it is an artificial _rest_. To continue to labour and at the same time to take the anaesthetic is an inconsistency. It merely blunts the painful feeling of weariness, and prevents it from acting as a warning. I very much doubt the quickening or brightening of the wits which bacchanalian poets have conventionally attributed to alcohol. An abstainer in a party of even moderate topers finds their jokes dull and their anecdotes pointless, and his principal amusement consists in his observation of their curious bluntness to the groundlessness of their merriment. There is no more fatal habit to a literary man than that of using alcohol as a stimulant between meals. The vital powers go on getting worn out more and more without their cry for help being perceived, and in the end break down suddenly, and often irrevocably. The temptation is greater perhaps to a literary man than to any other in the same social position, especially if he has been induced by avarice, or ambition, to work wastefully against them; and if he cannot resist it, he had better abjure the use of alcohol altogether.... Mental activity certainly renders the brain less capable of bearing an amount of alcohol, which in seasons of rest and relaxation does not injuriously affect it. When any extraordinary toil is temporarily imposed, extreme temperance, or even total abstinence, should be the rule. Much to the point is the experience of Byron's Sardanapalus:-- "The _goblet_ I reserve for hours of ease, I war on _water_." "It is true that Byron assumes in his poetry the character of a _debauche_, and says he wrote Don Juan under the influence of gin and water. But much of that sort of talk is merely for stage effect, and we see how industrious he was, and read of his training vigorously to reduce corpulence, and of his being such an exceptionally experienced swimmer as to rival Leander in crossing the Hellespont.... The machinery of sensitive souls is as delicate as it is valuable, and cannot bear the rough usage which coarse customs inflict upon it. It is broken to pieces by blows which common natures laugh at. The literary man, with his highly-cultivated, tightly-strung sensations, is often more than others susceptible of the noxious, and less susceptible of the beneficial results of alcohol. His mind is easier to cloud, and there is a deeper responsibility in clouding it.... Equally when we descend into the lower regions of Parnassus, the abodes of talent and cleverness, and the supply of periodical literary requirements, we find the due care of the body absolutely essential to the continued usefulness of the intellect. The first thing to which one entering the profession of literature must make up his mind is to be healthy, and he can only be so by temperance.... Tobacco should not be indulged in during working hours. Whatever physiological effect it has is sedative, and so obstructs mental operations." _Manual of Diet in Health and Disease_. 1876, p. 162. PROFESSOR THOMAS R. FRASER, EDINBURGH. "The stimulating action on the brain of quantities far short of intoxicating, is accompanied with a paralysing action which seems most rapidly and powerfully to involve the higher faculties. Mental work may seem to be rendered more easy, but ease is gained at the expense of quality. The editor of a newspaper will tell you that, if he has been dining out, he cannot with confidence write a leading article until he has allowed sufficient time to elapse from the effect of the wine he has drunk, in moderation, to pass away; and even the novelist, whose brain-work is in the regions of imagination, will relate a similar experience.... In a person accustomed to the use of tobacco the intellectual work is difficult when smoking cannot be indulged in, the mind cannot easily be concentrated on a subject, and unrest is produced--but this disappears when recourse is had to smoking; and probably some of its reputation as a soothing agent has on this account been acquired. The circulation is also a little excited, and no doubt this assists in rendering brain work more easy. In a short time, however, the circulation is slightly depressed, the pulse becoming smaller; and this may assist in producing the soothing effect generally experienced." _The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Stimulants and Tobacco_. 1881 HUBERT HERKOMER, A. R. A. "It is no credit to me for being an abstainer. The credit is due to my father, who gave up smoking, drinking, intoxicating drinks, and eating meat at the same time, about twenty years ago; and as I was only ten years old then, I naturally grew into my father's habits (I now eat meat, however). The blessings of that reform have come down upon my children." Sherlock's _Heroes in the Strife_. COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. "I have been a busy worker with the brain all my life, and have enjoyed very unusual health. I am now fifty-three, and have not been confined to the house by illness since I was seventeen, except for a short time during the war, when suffering from the results of a wound. This favourable result I attribute to (1) a good constitution--and an elastic temperament; (2) simple tastes, disinclining me to stimulants and narcotics, such as tea, coffee, wine, spirits, and tobacco; (3) a love of athletic exercises; (4) a life-long habit of writing by daylight only; (5) the use of homoeopathic medicines in the early stages of slight ailments. I have never been a special devotee of health, I think, but have followed out my natural tastes; and have certainly enjoyed physical life very much. It may be well to add that, though, as I said, my constitution was good and my frame always large, I had yet an unusual number of children's diseases, and have often been told that my life was several times preserved, in infancy, against all expectation, by the unwearied care and devotion of my mother. This may encourage some anxious parents." Nov. 11, 1877. _Hygiene of the Brain_, N.Y., 1878. WILLIAM HOWITT. I have read with very great pleasure the letter of Mr. Bryant.... Let me observe that while the modes of my own life and those of Mr. Bryant very much accord, in a few particulars they differ, as, I suppose, must be the case in almost any two individuals. Mr. Bryant never takes coffee or tea. I regularly take both, find the greatest refreshment in both, and never experienced any deleterious effects from either, except in one instance, when, by mistake, I took a cup of tea strong enough for ten men. On the contrary, tea is to me a wonderful refresher and reviver. After long-continued exertion, as in the great pedestrian journeys that I formerly made, tea would always, in a manner almost miraculous, banish all my fatigue, and diffuse through my whole frame comfort and exhilaration, without any subsequent evil effect. I am quite well aware that this is not the experience of many others, my wife among the number, on whose nervous system tea acts mischievously, producing inordinate wakefulness, and its continued use, indigestion. But this is one of the things that people should learn, and act upon, namely, to take such things as suit them, and avoid such as do not. It is said that Mithridates could live and flourish on poisons, and if it be true that tea or coffee is a poison, so do most of us. William Hutton, the shrewd and humorous author of the histories of Birmingham and Derby, and also of a life of himself, scarcely inferior to that of Franklin in lessons of life-wisdom, said that he had been told that coffee was a slow poison, and, he added, that he had found it very slow, for he had drunk it more than sixty years without any ill effect My experience of it has been the same. Mr. Bryant also has recourse to the use of dumb-bells, and other gymnastic appliances. For my part, I find no artificial practices necessary for the maintenance of health and a vigorous circulation of the blood. My only gymnastics have been those of Nature--walking, riding, working in field and garden, bathing, swimming, etc. In some of those practices, or in the amount of their use, Nature, in my later years, has dictated an abatement. In Mr. Bryant's abhorrence of tobacco, I fully sympathize. That is a poisoner, a stupefier, a traitor to the nervous system, and, consequently, to energy and the spirit of enterprise, which I renounced once and for ever before I reached my twentieth year. The main causes of the vigor of my constitution and the retention of sound health, comfort, and activity to within three years of eighty, I shall point out as I proceed. First and foremost, it was my good fortune to derive my existence from parents descended on both sides from a vigorous stock, and of great longevity. I remember my great-grandmother, an old lady of nearly ninety; my grandmother of nearly as great an age. My mother lived to eighty-five, and my father to the same age. They were both of them temperate in their habits, living a fresh and healthy country life, and in enjoyment of that tranquillity of mind which is conferred by a spirit of genuine piety, and which confers, in return, health and strength. The great destroyers of life are not labor and exertion, either physical or intellectual, but care, misery, crime, and dissipation. My wife derived from her parentage similar advantages, and all the habits of our lives, both before and since our marriage, have been of a similar character. My boyhood and youth were, for the most part, spent in the country; and all country objects, sports, and labors, horse-racing and hunting excepted, have had a never-failing charm for me. As a boy, I ranged the country far and wide in curious quest and study of all the wild creatures of the woods and fields, in great delight in birds and their nests, climbing the loftiest trees, rocks and buildings in pursuit of them. In fact, the life described in the "Boy's Country Book," was my own life. No hours were too early for me, and in the bright, sunny fields in the early mornings, amid dews and odour of flowers, I breathed that pure air which gave a life-long tone to my lungs that I still reap the benefit of. All those daily habits of climbing, running, and working developed my frame to perfection, and gave a vigor to nerve and muscle that have stood well the wear and tear of existence. My brain was not dwarfed by excessive study in early boyhood, as is too much the case with children of to-day. Nature says, as plainly as she can speak, that the infancy of all creatures is sacred to play, to physical action, and the joyousness of mind that give life to every organ of the system. Lambs, kittens, kids, foals, even young pigs and donkeys, all teach the great lesson of Nature, that to have a body healthy and strong, the prompt and efficient vehicle of the mind, we must not infringe on her ordinations by our study and cramping sedentariness in life's tender years. We must not throw away or misappropriate her forces destined to the corporeal architecture of man, by tasks that belong properly to an after-time. There is no mistake so fatal to the proper development of man and woman, as to pile on the immature brain, and on the yet unfinished fabric of the human body, a weight of premature and, therefore, unnatural study. In most of those cases where Nature has intended to produce a first-class intellect, she has guarded her embryo genius by a stubborn slowness of development. Moderate study and plenty of play and exercise in early youth are the true requisites for a noble growth of intellectual powers in man, and for its continuance to old age. My youth, as my boyhood, was spent in the country, and in the active exercise of its sports and labors. I was fond of shooting, fishing, riding, and walking, often making long expeditions on foot for botanical or other purposes. Bathing and swimming I continued each year till the frost was in the ground and the ice fringed the banks of the river. As my father farmed his own land, I delighted in all the occupations of the field, mowing and reaping with the men through the harvest, looking after sheep and lambs, and finding never-ceasing pleasure in the cultivation of the garden. When our literary engagements drew us to London, we carefully avoided living in the great Babel, but took up our residence in one of its healthy suburbs, and, on the introduction of railways, removed to what was actual country. A very little time showed us the exhausting and unwholesome nature of city life. Late hours, heavy dinners, the indulgence of what are called jovial hours, and crowded parties, would soon have sent us whither they have sent so many of our literary contemporaries, long, long ago. After an evening spent in one of the crowded parties of London, I have always found myself literally poisoned. My whole nervous system has been distressed and vitiated. I have been miserable and incapable the next day of intellectual labor. Nor is there any mystery about this matter. To pass some four or five hours in a town, itself badly ventilated, amid a throng of people just come from dinner, loaded with a medley of viands, and reeking with the fumes of hot wines--no few of them, probably, of very moral habits, was simply undergoing a process of asphyxia. The air was speedily decomposed by so many lungs. Its ozone and oxygen were rapidly absorbed, and in return the atmosphere was loaded with carbonic acid, carbon, nitrogen, and other effluvia, from the lungs and pores of the dense and heated company; this mischievous matter being much increased from the products of the combustion of numerous lamps, candles, and gas-jets. The same effect was uniformly produced on me by evenings passed in theatres, or crowded concert or lecture rooms. These facts are now well understood by those who have studied the causes of health and disease in modern society; and I am assured by medical men that no source of consumption is so great as that occasioned by the breathing of these lethal atmospheres of fashionable parties, fashionable theatres, and concert and lecture halls; and then returning home at midnight by an abrupt plunge from their heat into damp and cold. People have said to me, "Oh! it is merely the effect of the unusual late hour that you have felt!" But, though nite hours, either in writing or society, have not been my habit, when circumstances of literary pressure have compelled me occasionally to work late, I have never felt any such effects. I could rise the next day a little later, perfectly refreshed and full of spirit for my work. Another cause to which I attribute my extraordinary degree of health, has been not merely continued country exercise in walking and gardening, but, now and then, making a clean breach and change of my location and mode of life. Travel is one of the great invigorators of the system, both physically and intellectually. When I have found a morbid condition stealing over me, I have at once started off on a pedestrian or other journey. The change of place, scene, atmosphere, of all the objects occupying the daily attention, has at once put to flight the enemy. It has vanished as by a spell. There is nothing like a throwing off the harness and giving mind and body a holiday--a treat to all sorts of new objects. Once, a wretched, nervous feeling grew upon me; I flung it off by mounting a stage-coach, and then taking a walk from the Land's End, in Cornwall, to the north of Devon. It was gone for ever! Another time the "jolly" late dinners and blithely-circulating decanter, with literary men, that I found it almost impossible to avoid altogether without cutting very valuable connections, gave me a dreadful dyspepsia. I became livingly sensible of the agonies of Prometheus with the daily vulture gnawing at his vitals. At once I started with all my family for a year's sojourn in Germany, which, in fact, proved three years. But the fiend had left me the very first day. The moment I quitted the British shore, the tormentor quitted me. I suppose he preferred staying behind, where he was aware of so many promising subjects of his diabolical art. New diet, new and early hours, and all the novelties of foreign life, made his approach to me impossible. I have known him no more, during these now thirty years. Eighteen years ago I made the circumnavigation of the globe, going out to Australia by the Cape of Good Hope, and returning by Cape Horn. This, including two years of wandering in the woods and wilds of Australia, evidently gave a new accession of vital stamina to my frame. It is said that the climate of Australia makes young men old, and old men young. I do not believe the first part of the proverb, but I am quite certain that there is a great deal in the second part of it. During those two years I chiefly lived in a tent, and led a quiet, free, and pleasant life in the open forests and wild country, continually shifting our scene as we took the fancy, now encamping in some valley among the mountains, now by some pleasant lake or river. In fact, pic-nicing from day to day, and month to month, watching, I and my two sons, with ever new interest, all the varied life of beast, bird, and insect, and the equally varied world of trees, shrubs, and flowers. My mind was lying fallow, as it regarded my usual literary pursuits, but actually engaged with a thousand things of novel interest, both among men in the Gold Diggings, and among other creatures and phenomena around me. In this climate I and my little party enjoyed, on the whole, excellent health, though we often walked or worked for days and weeks under a sun frequently, at noon, reaching from one hundred to one hundred and fifty degrees of Fahrenheit; waded through rivers breast high, because there were no bridges, and slept occasionally under the forest trees. There, at nearly sixty years of age, I dug for gold for weeks together, and my little company discovered a fine gold field which continues one to this day. These two years of bush life, with other journeys on the Australian Continent, and in Tasmania, and the voyages out and back, gave a world of new vigor that has been serving me ever since. During the last summer in Switzerland, Mrs. Howitt and myself, at the respective ages of sixty-eight and seventy-six, climbed mountains of from three to five thousand feet above the level of the sea, and descended the same day with more ease than many a young person of the modern school could do. As to our daily mode of life, little need be said. We keep early hours, prefer to dine at noon, are always employed in "books, or work, or healthful play;" have no particular rules about eating and drinking, except the general ones of having simple and good food, and drinking little wine. We have always been temperance people, but never pledged, being averse to thraldom of any kind, taking, both in food and drink, what seemed to do us good. At home, we drink, for the most part, water, with a glass of wine occasionally. On the Continent, we take the light wines of the country where we happen to be, with water, because they suit us; if they did not, we should eschew them. In fact, our great rule is to use what proves salutary, without regard to any theories, conceits, or speculations of hygienic economy; and, in our case, this following of common sense has answered extremely well. At the same time it is true that many eminent men, and especially eminent lawyers, who in their early days worked immensely hard, studied through many long nights, and caroused, some of them, deeply through others, yet attained to a good old age, as Lords Eldon, Scott, Brougham, Campbell, Lyndhurst, and others. To what are we to attribute this longevity under the circumstances? No doubt to iron constitutions derived from their parentage, and then to the recuperative effect of those half-yearly flights into the Egypt of the country, which make an essential part of English life. To a thorough change of hours, habits, and atmosphere in these seasons of villeggiatura. To vigorous athletic country sports and practices, hunting, shooting, fishing, riding, boating, yachting, traversing moors and mountains after black-cock, grouse, salmon, trout and deer. To long walks at sea-side resorts, and to that love of continental travel so strong in both your countrymen and women, and ours. These are the _saving_ causes in the lives of such men. Who knows how long they would have lived had they not inflicted on themselves, more or less, the destroying ones. There is an old story among us of two very old men being brought up on a trial where the evidence of "the oldest inhabitant" was required. The Judge asked the first who came up what had been the habits of his life. He replied, "Very regular, my lord; I have always been sober, and kept good hours." Upon which the Judge dilated in high terms of praise on the benefit of regular life. When the second old man appeared, the Judge put the same question, and received the answer, "Very regular, my lord; I have never gone to bed sober these forty years." Whereupon his lordship exclaimed, "Ha! I see how it is. English men, like English oak, wet or dry, last for ever." I am not of his lordship's opinion; but seeing the great longevity of many of our most eminent lawyers, and some of whom in early life seemed disposed to live fast rather than long, I am more than ever confirmed in my opinion of the vitalizing influences of temperance, good air, and daily activity, which, with the benefits of change and travel, can so far in after life save those whom no original force of constitution could have saved from the effects of jollity, or of gigantic efforts of study in early life. For one' of such hard livers, or hard brain-workers who have escaped by the periodical resort to healthful usages, how many thousands have been "cut off in the midst of their days?" A lady once meeting me in Highgate, where I then lived, asked me if I could recommend her a good doctor. I told her that I could recommend her three. She observed that one would be enough; but I assured her that she would find these three more economical and efficient than any individual Galen that I could think of. Their names were, "Temperance, Early Hours, and Daily Exercise." That they were the only ones that I had employed for years, or meant to employ. Soon after, a gentleman wrote to me respecting these "Three Doctors," and put them in print. Anon, they were made the subject of one of the "Ipswich Tracts;" and on a visit, a few years ago, to the Continent, I found this tract translated into French, and the title-page enriched with the name of a French physician, as the author. So much the better. If the name of the French physician can recommend "The Three Doctors" to the population of France, I am so much the more obliged. May 20, 1871. _Hygiene of the Brain_, New York, 1878. THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY Found great benefit from the use of tobacco, though several times he tried to give it up. He smoked the poorest tobacco, however, and Mr. C. Kegan Paul thus describes the care Charles Kingsley took to minimise the dangers of the habit:-- "He would work himself into a white heat over his book, till, too excited to write more, he would calm himself down by a pipe, pacing his grass-plot in thought, and in long strides. He was a great smoker, and tobacco was to him a needful sedative. He always used a long and clean clay pipe, which lurked in all sorts of unexpected places. But none was ever smoked which was in any degree foul, and when there was a vast accumulation of old pipes, they were sent back again to be rebaked, and returned fresh and new. This gave him a striking simile, which in 'Alton Locke,' he puts into the mouth of James Crossthwaite, 'Katie here believes in Purgatory, where souls are burnt clean again, like 'bacca pipes.'" HARRIET MARTINEAU. I was deeply impressed by something which an excellent clergyman told me one day, when there was nobody by to bring mischief on the head of the narrator. This clergyman knew the literary world of his time so thoroughly that there was probably no author of any mark then living in England with whom he was not more or less acquainted. It must be remembered that a new generation has now grown up. He told me that he had reason to believe that there was no author or authoress who was free from the habit of taking pernicious stimulants, either strong green tea or strong coffee at night, or wine, or spirits, or laudanum. The amount of opium taken to relieve the wear and tear of authorship was, he said, greater than most people had any conception of, and all literary workers took something. "Why, I do not," said I; "fresh air and cold water are my stimulants." "I believe you," he replied, "but you work in the morning, and there is much in that!" I then remembered, when I had to work a short time at night, a physician who called on me observed that I must not allow myself to be exhausted at the end of the day. He would not advise any alcoholic wines, but any light wines that I liked might do me good. "You have a cupboard there at your right hand," said he; "keep a bottle of hock and a wine glass there, and help yourself when you feel you want it." "No, thank you," said I; "if I took wine it should not be when alone, nor would I help myself to a glass; I might take a little more and a little more, till my solitary glass might become a regular tippling habit; I shall avoid the temptation altogether." Physicians should consider well before they give such advice to brain-worn workers. --_Autobiography_. PROFESSOR MILLER. "In labour of the head, alcohol stimulates the brain to an increase of function under the mental power, and so effects a concentrated cerebral exhaustion, without being able to afford compensating nutrition or repair. ....There is the same common fallacy here as in the case of manual labour. The stimulus is felt--to do good. 'I could not do my work without it.' But at what cost are you doing your work? Premature and permanent exhaustion of the muscles is bad enough; but premature and permanent exhaustion of brain is infinitely worse. And when you come to a point where work must cease or the stimulus be taken, do not hesitate as to the right alternative. Don't call for your pate ale, your brandy, or your wine. Shut your book, close your eyes, and go to sleep: or change your occupation, so as to give a thorough shift to your brain; and then, after a time, spent, as the case may be, either in repose or recreation, you will find yourself fit to resume your former task of thought without loss or detriment.... Look to the mental workers under alcohol. Take the best of them. Would not their genius have burned not only with a steadier and more enduring flame, but also with a less sickly and noxious vapour to the moral health of all around them, had they been free from the unnatural and unneeded stimulus? Take Burns, for example. Alcohol did not make his genius, or even brighten it.... Genius may have its poetical and imaginative powers stored up into fitful paroxysms by alcohol, no doubt: the control of will being gone or going, the mind is left to take ideas as they come, and they may come brilliantly for a time. But, at best, the man is but a revolving light. At one time a flash will dazzle you; at another, the darkness is as that of midnight; the alternating gloom being always longer than the period of light, and all the more intense by reason of the other's brightness. While imagination sparkles, reason is depressed. And, therefore, let the true student eschew the bottle's deceitful aid. He will think all the harder, all the clearer, and all the longer!" _Alcohol: its Place and Power_. 866, p. 122. MR. R. A. PROCTOR, F. R. S. "I would venture to add an expression of my own firm conviction that a life of study is aided by the almost entire avoidance of stimulants, alcoholic as well as nicotian, I do not say that the moderate use of such stimulants does harm, only that so far as I can judge from my own experience it affords no help. I recognise a slight risk in what Abbe Moigno correctly states--the apparent power of indefinite work which comes with the almost entire avoidance of stimulants; but the risk is very slight, for the man must have very little sense who abuses that power to a dangerous degree. Certainly, if the loss of the power be evidence of mischief, I would say (still speaking of my own experience, which may be peculiar to my own temperament) that the use of stimulants, even in a very moderate degree, is mischievous. For instance, I repeatedly have put this point to the test:--I work say from breakfast till one o'clock, when, if I feel at all hungry, I join my family at lunch; if now at lunch I eat very lightly, and take a glass of ale or whisky-and-water, I feel disposed, about a quarter of an hour later, to leave my work, which has, for the time, become irksome to me; and perhaps a couple of hours will pass before I care for steady work again: on the other hand, if I eat as lightly, or perhaps take a heartier lunch, but drink water only, I sit down as disposed for work after as before the meal. In point of fact, a very weak glass of whisky-and-water has as bad an influence on the disposition for work as a meal unwisely heavy would have. It is the same in the evening. If I take a light supper, with water only, I can work (and this, perhaps, is bad) comfortably till twelve or one; but a glass of weak whisky-and-water disposes me to rest or sleep, or to no heavier mental effort than is involved in reading a book of fiction or travel. These remarks apply only to quiet home life, with my relatives or intimate friends at the table. At larger gatherings it seems (as Herbert Spencer has noted) that not only a heartier meal, but stimulants in a larger quantity, can be taken without impairment of mental vivacity, and even with advantage, up to a point falling far short, however, of what in former times would have been regarded as the safe limit of moderation. Under those circumstances, "wine maketh glad the heart of man," and many find the stimulus it gives pleasant,--perhaps dangerously so, unless the lesson is soon learned that the point is very soon reached beyond which mental vivacity is not increased but impaired. "I must confess it seems to me that if we are to admit the necessity or prudence of adopting total abstinence principles, because of the miseries which have been caused by undue indulgence--if A, B, and C, who have no desire to make beasts of themselves, are to refrain from the social glass because X, Y, and Z cannot content themselves till they have taken half-a-dozen social glasses too many--society has an additional reason to be angry with the drunkards, and with those scarcely less pernicious members of the social body who either cannot keep sober without blue ribbons or pledges, or, having no wish to drink, want everyone to know it. I admit, of course, if it really is the case that the healthy-minded must refrain from the innocent use of such stimulants as suit them, in the interest of the diseased, it may be very proper and desirable to do so: but only in the same way that it might be very desirable to avoid in a lunatic asylum the rational discussion of subjects about which the lunatics were astray. For steady literary or scientific work, however, and throughout the hours of work (or near them), it is certain that for most men something very close to total abstinence from stimulants is the best policy." _Knowledge_, July, 29, 1882. "I have recently had rather interesting evidence of the real value of the use of so-called stimulants. When lecturing daily, and also travelling long distances, I always adopt a very light diet: tea, dry toast, and an egg for breakfast; nothing then till six, when I take tea, dry toast, and a chop; after lecturing I take a biscuit or so with cheese, and a glass of whisky-and-water, 'cold without.' I tried this season the effect of omitting the whisky. Result--sleeplessness till one or two in the morning. No other harm, but weariness during following day. Taking the whisky-and-water again, after trying this a night or two, acted as the most perfect sedative." _Knowledge_, Dec. 1, 1882. DR. B. W. RICHARDSON, F. R. S. "The evidence is all perfect that alcohol gives no potential power to brain or muscle. During the first stage of its action it may enable a wearied or a feeble organism to do brisk work for a short time; it may make the mind briefly brilliant: it may excite muscle to quick action, but it does nothing substantially, and fills up nothing it has destroyed, as it leads to destruction. A fire makes a brilliant sight, but leaves a desolation. It is the same with alcohol.... The true place of alcohol is clear; it is an agreeable temporary shroud. The savage, with the mansions of his soul unfurnished, buries his restless energy under its shadow. The civilised man, overburdened with mental labour, or with engrossing care, seeks the same shade; but it is shade, after all, in which in exact proportion as he seeks it, the seeker retires from perfect natural life. To search for force in alcohol is, to my mind, equivalent to the act of seeking for the sun in subterranean gloom until all is night.... In respect to the influence of smoking on the mental faculties, there need, I believe, be no obscurity. When mental labour is being commenced, indulgence in a pipe produces in most persons a heavy, dull condition, which impairs the processes of digestion and assimilation, and suspends more or less that motion of the tissues which constitutes vital activity. But if mental labour be continued for a long time, until exhaustion be felt, then the resort to a pipe gives to some _habitues_ a feeling of relief; it soothes, it is said, and gives new impetus to thought. This is the practical experience of almost all smokers, but few men become so habituated to the pipe as to commence well a day of physical or mental work on tobacco. Many try, but it almost invariably obtains that they go through their labours with much less alacrity than other men who are not so addicted. The majority of smokers feel that after a hard day's labour, a pipe, supposing always that the indulgence of it is moderately carried out, produces temporary relief from exhaustion." _Diseases of Modern Life_. "I gave up that which I thought warmed and helped me, and I can declare, after considering the whole period in which I have subjected myself to this ordeal, I never did more work; I never did more varied work; I never did work with so much facility; I never did work with such a complete sense of freedom from anxiety and worry, as I have done during the period that I have abstained altogether." Speech at Exeter Hall, Feb. 7, 1877. MR. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. "As to smoking stupefying a man's faculties or blunting his energy, that allegation I take to be mainly nonsense. The greatest workers and thinkers of modern times have been inveterate smokers. At the same time, it is idle to deny that smoking to excess weakens the eyesight, impairs the digestion, plays havoc with the nerves, and interferes with the action of the heart. I have been a constant smoker for nearly forty years; but had I my life to live over again I would never touch tobacco in any shape or form. It is to the man who sits all day long at a desk, poring over books and scribbling 'copy,' that smoking is deleterious." _Illustrated London News_, Sep. 30, 1882. BISHOP TEMPLE. "I can testify that since I have given up intoxicating liquors I have felt less weariness in what I have to do. I have been busy ever since I was a little boy, and I therefore know how much I can undertake, and I certainly can testify that since I gave up intoxicating liquors-- although I did not like the giving them up, inasmuch as I rather enjoyed them, when I used them, and inasmuch as I never felt the slightest intention to exceed, nor am I at all among those who cannot take one glass, and only one, but must go on to another--I have certainly found that I am very much the better for it. Whatever arguments I may hear about it, it is impossible for me to escape from the memory of the fact that I have found myself very much better able to work, to write, to read, to speak, and to do whatever I may have to do, ever since I abstained totally and entirely from all intoxicating liquor." Speech at Torquay, Sept 10, 1882. SIR HENRY THOMPSON, F. R. C. S., SURGEON-EXTRAORDINARY TO THE KING OF THE BELGIANS. "I will tell you who can't take alcohol, and that is very important in the present day. Of all the people I know who cannot stand alcohol, it is the brain-workers; and you know it is the brain-workers that are increasing in number, and that the people who do not use their brains are going down, and that is a noteworthy incident in relation to the future. I find that the men who live indoors, who have sedentary habits, who work their nervous systems, and who get irritable tempers, as such people always do, unless they take a large balance of exercise to keep them right (which they rarely do), I say that persons who are living in these fast days get nervous systems more excitable and more irritable than their forefathers, and they cannot bear alcohol so well." Speech at Exeter Hall, Feb. 7, 1877. MR. W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS, F. R. A. S., F. C. S. "I have just read your quotations from the Abbe Moigno, and your own comments thereon. I have tried experiments very similar to those you describe, with exactly the same results; in fact, so far as intellectual work is concerned, I might describe my own experience by direct plagiarism of your words. Besides these, I have tried other experiments which may be interesting to those who, without any partizan fanaticism, are seeking for practical guidance on this subject. As many of your readers may know, I have been (when of smaller girth) an energetic pedestrian, have walked over a large part of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, crossed France twice on foot, done Switzerland and the Tyrol pretty exhaustively; in one walk from Paris taking in on the way the popular lions of the Alps, and then proceeding, via, Milan and Genoa, to Florence, Rome, Naples, and Calabria, then from Messina to Syracuse, and on to the East. All this, excepting the East, on foot. At another time from Venice to Milan, besides a multitude of minor tours, and my well-known walk through Norway. In the course of these, my usual average rate, when in fair training, was 200 miles per week. The alcohol experiments consisted in doing a fortnight at this rate on water, scrupulously abstaining from any alcoholic drink whatever, and then a fortnight using the beverages of the country in ordinary moderate quantity. I have thus used British ales and porter, Bavarian beer, French wines, Italian wines, Hungarian wine in the Tyrol, Christiania ol, &c., according to circumstances, and the result has been the same, 'or with very little variation. With the stimulant I have, of course, obtained a temporary exhilaration that was pleasant enough while it lasted, but after the first week I found myself dragging through the last few miles, and quite able to appreciate the common habit of halting at a roadside "pub." or wine-shop, for a drink on the way. No such inclination came upon me when my only beverage was water, or water plus a cup of coffee for breakfast _only_ (no afternoon tea). Then I came in fresh, usually finishing at the best pace of the day, enjoying the brisk exercise in cool evening air. Physical work of this kind admits of accurate measurement, and I was careful to equalise the average of these experimental comparative fortnights. The result is a firm conviction that the only beverage for obtaining the maximum work out of any piece of human machinery is water, as pure as possible; that all other beverages (including even tea and coffee), ginger-beer, and all such concoctions as the so-called "temperance drinks," are prejudicial to anybody not under medical treatment. To a sound-bodied man there is no danger in drinking any quantity of cold water in the hottest weather, provided _it is swallowed slowly_. I have drunk as much as a dozen quarts in the course of a stiff mountain climb when perspiring profusely, and never suffered the slightest inconvenience, but, on the contrary, have found that the perspiration promoted by frequent and copious libations at the mountain streams enabled me to vigorously enjoy the roasting beat of sun-rays striking so freely and fiercely as they do through the thin air on the southward slopes of a high mountain. I am not a teetotaler, and enjoy a glass of light wine, but always take it as I sucked lollypops when a child, not because "it is good for my complaint," or any such humbug, but simply because I am so low in the scale of creation, as imperfect, as far from angelic, as to be capable of occasionally enjoying a certain amount of purely sensual indulgence, and of doing so from nothing higher than purely sensual motives. If all would admit this, and freely confess that their drinking or smoking, however moderate, is simply a folly or a vice, they would be far less liable to go to excess than when they befool themselves by inventing excuses that cover their weaknesses with a flimsy disguise of medicinal necessity, or other pretended advantage. In all such cases the physical mischief of the alcohol is supplemented by the moral corruption of habitual hypocrisy." _Knowledge_, August 18, 1882. DR. BURNEY YEO, M. D. "With regard to the effect of moderate doses of alcohol on mental work much difference of opinion exists. Many students find that, instead of helping them in their work, it hinders them. It dulls their receptive faculties. Others, on the contrary, find real help in moderate quantities of wine. These differences of effect would seem to depend greatly on differences in constitutional temperament. It is certainly capable, for a time, of calling some of the mental faculties into increased activity. Some of the best things that have ever been said have been said under the influence of wine. The circulation through the brain is quickened, the nervous tissue receives more nourishment, the imagination is stimulated, and ideas flow more rapidly, but it is doubtful if the power of close reasoning be not always diminished. It is useful for reviving mental power, when from accidental circumstances, such as want of food, &c., it has been exhausted, but it should never be relied upon as an aid to continuous effort or close application." _Fortnightly Review_. Vol. 21, p. 547. CONCLUSION. From a review of the 124 testimonies, including those which appear in the Appendix, I find that 25 use wine at dinner only; 30 are abstainers from all alcoholic liquors; 24 use tobacco, out of which only 12 smoke whilst at work; one chews and one took snuff. Not one resorts to alcohol for stimulus to thinking, and only two or three defend its use under special circumstances--"useful at a pinch," under "physical or mental exhaustion." "Not one resorts to alcohol" for inspiration. This is an important discovery, and indicates the existence of more enlightened views in reference to the value of alcohol, since Burns sang the praise of whisky:--"It kindles wit and weakens fear." That some literary men still "support" themselves by alcoholic stimulants, is no doubt true; and, if M. Taine is not mistaken, some of the leader writers of the London papers can write their articles only by the aid of a bottle of champagne. When the creative faculty flags, or the attention wanders, a writer, who is working against time, is strongly tempted to fly to stimulants for aid. But leader writing, or any other kind of writing, done under the influence of any kind of stimulants, is, remarks Blackie, unhealthy work, and tends to no good. "It may safely be affirmed," thinks the editor of the _Contemporary Review,_ "that no purely conscientious writing was ever produced under stimulation from alcohol. Harriet Martineau was one of those workers who could not write a paragraph without asking herself, 'Is that wholly true? Is it a good thing to say it? Shall I lead anyone astray by it? Had I better soften it down, or keep it back? Is it as well as I can say it?' Writing like that of Wilson's 'Noctes,' or Hoffman's madder stories, may be produced under the influence of wine, but 'stuff of the conscience', not." The workman himself is injured, as well as the quality of his work lessened. Mr. Hamerton says he has seen terrible results from the use of stimulants at work; and anyone who has read literary history, or who has had any experience of literary life in London, knows that the rock upon which many men split is--drink. Whatever journalists may gain from alcohol, other writers who have tried it say nothing in its favour. Mr. Howells does not take wine at all, because it weakens his work and his working force. To Mark Twain wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration. "I have," he says, "never seen the time when I could write to my satisfaction after drinking even one glass of wine." Dr. Bain finds abstinence from alcohol and the tea group essential to intellectual effort. They induce, he says, a false excitement, not compatible with severe application to problems of difficulty; and the experience of other workers, whether literary or scientific, is precisely similar. But the use of alcoholic stimulants at work is one thing; at dinner, another. The former practice is absolutely injurious; and the highest medical authorities have pronounced against the latter. Some of the most vigorous thinkers and laborious workers, however, find that wine aids digestion and conduces to their power of work. To Mr. Gladstone it is "especially necessary at the time of greatest intellectual exertion." As a rule, it is taken at the end of the day, when work is over; but when he resumes literary composition the quality of a writer's work seems deteriorated. One of the most esteemed novelists of the present day informs Dr. Brunton that, although he can take a great deal of wine without its having any apparent effect on him, yet a single glass of sherry is enough to take the fine edge off his intellect. He is able to write easily and fluently in the evening, after taking dinner and wine, but what he then writes will not bear his own criticism next morning, although curiously enough it may seem to him excellent at the time of writing. The perception of the fingers, as well as the perception of the mind, seems blunted by the use of alcohol. Dr. Alfred Carpenter relates that a celebrated violin player, as he was about to go on the platform, was asked if he would take a glass of wine before he appeared, "Oh, no, thank you," he replied, "I shall have it when I come off." This answer excited Mr. Carpenter's curiosity, and he inquired of the violinist why he would have it when he came off in preference to having it before his work commenced, and the reply was, "If I take stimulants before I go to work, the _perception of the fingers is blunted,_ and I don't feel that nicety and delicacy of touch necessary to bring out the fine tones requisite in this piece of music, and therefore I avoid them." "But to touch these things is dangerous, "says Mr. Hubert Bancroft, though less dangerous to touch them _after_ work than _before_ work. The most careful man is sometimes thrown off his guard, and drinks more than his usual allowance. It is, Mr. Watts believes, an admitted fact that even people who are considered strictly temperate habitually take more than is good for them. What quantity _is_ good for every man, no one can say with certainty. So far as wine is taken to aid digestion, Blackie, who considers that wine "may even be necessary to stimulate digestion," holds that "healthy _young_ men can never require such a stimulus." A belief exists that men who abstain from alcohol indulge to excess in some other stimulant. There is some foundation for this belief. Balzac, for instance, abstained from tobacco, which he declared injured the body, attacked the intellect, and stupefied the nations; but he drank great quantities of coffee, which produced the terrible nervous disease which shortened his life. Goethe was a non-smoker, but, according to Bayard Taylor, he drank fifty thousand bottles of wine in his life-time. Niebuhr greatly disliked smoking, but took a tremendous quantity of snuff. A great number of teetotalers "make up for their abstinence from alcohol by excessive indulgence in tobacco," and abuse their more consistent brethren who venture to expostulate with them. John Stuart Mill "believed that the giving up of wine would be apt to be followed by taking more food than was necessary, merely for the sake of stimulation." Sir Theodore Martin, also, thinks the absence of alcohol likely to lead to increased eating, and to an extent likely to cause derangement of the body. The power of alcohol to arrest and preserve decomposition may, it is admitted by temperance writers, retard to some extent the waste of animal tissue, and diminish accordingly the appetite for food; but they contend that the effete matter which has served its purpose and done for the body all that it can do is retained in the body to its loss and damage. "The question comes to be," says Professor Miller, "whether shall we take alcohol, eat less, and be improperly nourished, or take no alcohol, eat more, and be nourished well? Whether shall we thrive better on a small quantity of new nutritive material with a great deal of what is old and mouldy, or on a constant and fresh supply of new material? ... The most perfect health and strength depend on frequent and complete disintegration of tissue with a corresponding constant and complete replacement of the effete parts by the formation of new material." "This is not a question which can be settled by reasoning: it must be decided entirely by experience. No one who has always been in the habit of using stimulants can be heard on this point, because, having had no experience of life without alcohol, such a person cannot draw a comparison between life with and life without that agent." These are the words of Dr. Buckle, of London, Ontario, and this practical way of testing the question will commend itself to all. What is the experience, then, of those who have tried both moderation and total abstinence? The Rev. Canon Farrar found that "even a single glass of wine, when engaged in laborious work, was rather injurious than otherwise." Mr. A. J. Ellis did not find that wine increased his power of work, and Professor Skeat says the less stimulant he takes the better. Contrary to medical advice, Dr. Martineau reverted to abstinence, and for twelve or fifteen years he has been practically a total abstainer, and, at 77, he retains the power of mental application. For many years, the Rev. Mark Pattison found great advantage from giving up wine. Lieutenant-Colonel Butler finds that a greater amount of _even_ mental work is to be obtained without the use of alcohol. The belief that alcohol invigorated the body was held by Mr. Cornelius Walford, but he now finds that it does not do so, and believes that in sedentary occupations it is positively injurious even when taken with meals. Professor Skeat has given up beer with benefit to himself, and has almost given up wine. M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire has abstained from wine for many years, indeed, for nearly a life-time, with great advantage. Mr. Hamerton has abstained for long periods from stimulants, feeling better without them. Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's practice approaches nearer to abstinence as he grows older. The Bishop of Durham finds that, on the whole, he can work for more consecutive hours, and with greater application, than when he used stimulants. This, too, is the testimony of Bishop Temple. The Rev. Stopford Brooke is enthusiastic in his praise of total abstinence: it has enabled him to work better; it has increased the pleasure of life; and it has banished depression. Sir Henry Thompson declares himself better without wine, and better able to accomplish his work. Dr. Richardson declares that he never did more work, or more varied work; that he never did work with so much facility, or with such a complete sense of freedom from anxiety and worry as he has done during the period he has abstained from alcohol. On the other hand, Sir Erskine May's experience of abstinence was that it made him "dyspeptic and stupid;" and Dr. W. B. Carpenter "can get on best, while in London, by taking with his dinner a couple of glasses of very light claret, as an aid to digestion." But when on holiday, he says, he does not need it. A _natural_ stimulant then takes the place of an artificial one; and so long as a man is healthy, eating well, and sleeping well, he is, Dr. Brunton declares, better without alcohol. Although there is no comparison between the evils of smoking and those of drinking, most of the writers seem to attach more importance to the question of smoking, and some regard the question of alcohol as of no consequence. Mr. Cornelius Walford considers tobacco a more insidious stimulant than alcoholic beverages. It can, he points out, be indulged in constantly without visible degradation; but surely it saps the mind. Mr. Hyde Clarke is of the same opinion, and remarks, "a man knows when he is drunk, but he does not know when he has smoked too much, until the effects of accumulation have made themselves permanent." There is a growing conviction that tobacco does quite as much harm to the nervous system as alcohol. [Footnote: There can be no room to question the presumption that an excessive use of tobacco _does_ occasionally deteriorate the moral character, as the inordinate use of chloral or bromide of potassium may deprave the mind, by lowering the tone of certain of the nervous centres, in narcotising them and impairing their nutrition. Whether the nicotine of the tobacco can act on nerve-cells as alcohol acts may be doubtful, but the victim of excess in the use of tobacco certainly often very closely resembles the habitual drinker of small drams--the tippler who seldom becomes actually drunk--and he readily falls into the same maudlin state as that which seems characteristic of the subject of slow intoxication by chloral, or of the victim of bromide.--_The Lancet_, Nov. 12, 1881.] The question is often asked, "Does tobacco shorten life?" No evidence has yet been adduced proving that moderate smoking is injurious, though Sir Benjamin Brodie believed that, if accurate statistics could be obtained, it would be found that the value of life in inveterate smokers is considerably below the average; and the early deaths of some of the men whose names are so frequently quoted in defence of smoking, favours the idea that all smoking is injurious. Few literary men live out their days. It is a matter of general belief that Mr. Edward Miall weakened his body and shortened his life through his habit of incessant smoking. "Bayard Taylor," says Mr. James Parton, "was always laughing at me for the articles which I wrote in the _Atlantic Monthly_, one called 'Does it pay to smoke?' and the other, 'Will the Coming Man drink Wine?' I had ventured to answer both these questions in the negative. He, on the contrary, not only drank wine in moderation, but smoked freely, and he was accustomed to point to his fine proportions and rosy cheeks, comparing them with my own meagre form, as an argument for the use of those stimulants. 'Well,' he would say, on meeting me, glancing down at his portly person, and opening wide his arms, with a cigar in his fingers, 'doesn't it pay to smoke? How does _this_ look? The coming man may do as he likes; but the man of the present finds it salutary."' Commenting on Mr. Taylor's early death, Mr. Parton points out that some fifty New York journalists have either died in their prime or before reaching their prime. A similar mortality, he notes, has been observed in England. Dickens died at 58, and Thackeray at 52. A "great number of lesser lights have been extinguished that promised to burn with long-increasing brightness." Mr. Parton asks, "Is there anything in mental labour hostile to life? Was it over-work that shortened the lives of these valuable and interesting men?" He thinks not, but that they died before their time because they did not know how to live. Like Carlyle, William Howitt was scandalised by the tippling habits of some of the literary men whom he met, and equally scandalised by their smoking habits. Replying to a correspondent who urged that most literary men and artists smoke, he said, "No doubt; and that is what makes the lives of literary men and artists comparatively so short. May not too much joviality and too much smoking have a good deal to do with it? I myself, who have not smoked for these seventy years, have seen nearly the whole generation of my literary contemporaries pass away. The other day (Dec. 7, 1878), I ascended in the Tyrol, a mountain of 5,000 feet, inducting a walk of six or seven miles to it, and as many back, in company with some friends. I did it easily, and felt no subsequent fatigue. I would like to see an old smoker of eighty-six do 'that." There can be no doubt that excessive smoking is one of the causes of the early deaths of literary men, though not the greatest The opponents of tobacco have tried to make capital out of the early death of Jules Noriac, who is reported to have died of smoker's cancer; but it transpired that he lived very irregularly. [Footnote: Considerable difference of opinion would appear to exist among the "chroniqueurs" of the Parisian press as to the real nature of the malady to which M. Jules Noriac, the witty, humorous, and observant writer of "The Hundred and First Regiment," the essay on "Human Stupidity," and numerous dramatic pieces of a more or less ephemeral kind, has just fallen a victim. It has been generally understood that M. Noriac died from a mysterious malady which has not long since been recognised by French physicians as the "smoker's cancer." It is alleged that the deceased man of letters suffered for two whole years from the ravages of this dreadful and occult disease, and that his countenance became so transformed through the wasting action of the ailment that he could scarcely be recognised even by his most intimate friends. This statement, could it be substantiated, would serve as a very powerful argument to those who inveigh against the use of tobacco. Hitherto the fundamental point on which the opponents of the weed have dwelt is that as the active principle of tobacco, nicotine, is acknowledged to be in its isolated form a poison, its introduction into the system in any shape or form must be injurious, and that it is difficult to point to any human organ which may not be detrimentally affected by smoking, snuffing, or chewing. From a cognate point of view, it is worthy of remark that a contemporary, in a curiously interesting study of the originals of the characters in the famous "Scenes de la Vie de Boheme," draws attention to the circumstance that Henri Murger's consumption of coffee was so excessive as to bring on fever and delirium. Exhaustion and nervousness followed; and finally he was attacked by an obscure disorder of the sympathetic nerves which control the veins, at times turning his whole body to the colour of purple. The doctors who treated him seem to have known nothing of the ailment, for they dosed him with sulphur and aconite. He died a horrible--and very painful death, at the age of thirty-eight. This was in 1860; but only four years afterwards we find the English physician quoted above, Dr. Anstie, in his "Stimulants and Narcotics," recognising "a kind of chronic narcotism, the very existence of which is usually ignored, but which is, in truth, well marked and easy to identify as produced by habitual excess in tea and coffee." The common feature of the disease is muscular tumour; and out of fifty excessive consumers of tea and coffee whose cases were noted by Dr. Anstie, there were only five patients who did not exhibit the symptom named. They were suffering, in fact, from "theine" poisoning. The paralysing effects of narcotic doses of tea was further displayed by a particularly obstinate kind of dyspepsia; while the abuse of coffee disordered the action of the heart to a distressing degree. The friends and biographers of M. Jules Noriac are unanimous as to the fact that he was inveterate in the use of tobacco. He was wont to smoke to the butt-end, one after the other, the huge cigars sold by the French "Regie," and known as "Imperiales," and a cynic might opine that if the deceased gentleman had smoked fragrant Havanas in lieu of the abominable stuff vended by the "Regie" he would not have been afflicted with the "cancer des fumeurs," nor with any kindred ailment He kept fearfully late hours, he worked only at night and he smoked "all the time." If towards morning he felt somewhat faint he would refresh himself with crusts of bread soaked in cold water, thus imitating to a certain extent our William Ptynne, who would from time to time momentarily suspend his interminable scribble to recruit exhausted nature with a moistened crust; only the verbose author of "Histriomastix" used to dip his crusts in Strong ale. And the bitter old pamphleteer, for all that his ears had been cropped and his cheeks branded by the Star Chamber, lived to be nearly seventy. Jules Noriac was never to be seen abroad until noon. His breakfast, like that of most Frenchmen, was inordinately prolonged; and afterwards rehearsals, business interviews, dinner, and the play would occupy him until nearly midnight. His delight was to accompany some friend home, and then walk the friend, arm-in-arm, backwards and forwards in front of his, the friend's, door, discoursing of things sublunary and otherwise until two in the morning. Then he would enter his own house and sit down, pipe in mouth, to the hard labour of literature until six or seven in the morning. What kind of slumber could a man, leading such a life as this, be expected to enjoy? On the whole, it would appear that M. Jules Noriac's habits were diametrically opposed to the preservation of health and the prolongation of life, and that he died quite as much from too much Boulevard and too much night work, as from too much smoking. There are vast numbers of French journalists and men of letters who, without being necessarily "Bohemians," consume their health and shorten their lives by this continuous and feverish race against time. Their days are spent chiefly on the Boulevards or in the cafes, and it is only at the dead of night that they devote themselves to serious work. The French "savant," On the other hand, is rarely seen on the Boulevards. It is by day that he works, and he spends his evening in some tranquil "salon," and lives, as a rule, till eighty. The painter, again, must be a day worker, if he wishes to excel as a colourist. He is but a holiday "flaneur" on the Boulevards. They are but a part of his life; but of the "chroniqueur" and the "feuilletonniste" out of the small hours devoted to fagging at the production of "copy," those Boulevards are the whole existence.--_Daily Telegraph_, October 9, 1882.] On the other hand, the advocates of tobacco cite Carlyle as a proof that tobacco does not shorten life. They credit him with saying that he could never think of this miraculous blessing without being overwhelmed by a tenderness for which he could find no adequate expression. No wonder, therefore, that he called his doctor a "Jackass," who advised him to give up smoking in order to cure dyspepsia. In Carlyle's case long life was a doubtful advantage, and in the matter of smoking he did not practice what he preached. [Footnote: Describing the German Smoking Congress, he said:--Tobacco, introduced by the Swedish soldiers in the Thirty-years' War, say some, or even by the English soldiers in the Bohemian or Palatine beginnings of said war, say others, tobacco once shown them, was enthusiastically adopted by the German populations, long in want of such an article, and has done important multifarious functions in that country ever since. For truly in politics, morality, and all departments of their practical and speculative affairs we may trace its influences, good and bad, to this day. Influences generally bad; pacificatory but bad, engaging you in idle, cloudy dreams; still worse, promoting composure among the palpably chaotic and discomposed; soothing all things into lazy peace; that all things may be left to themselves very much, and to the laws of gravity and decomposition. Whereby German affairs are come to be greatly overgrown with funguses in our time, and give symptoms of dry and of wet rot wherever handled.--_History of Frederick the Great,_ vol. I, p. 387.] Many cases are known to us, however, where dyspepsia in smokers has been completely cured by the abandonment of smoking. The most recent case is that of Dr. Richardson, who was a dyspeptic during the whole time he was a smoker. "At length," he says, "I resolved to give up smoking. It was hard work to do so, but I eventually succeeded, and I have never been more thankful than for the day on which it was accomplished." In Carlyle's case a six months' abstinence could not drive out his enemy, which he declared was the cause of nine-tenths of his misery. A more successful illustration of the "harmlessness" of stimulants is supplied in Mr. Augustus Mongredien, well-known as an able expositor of the principles of Free Trade. He is now 75 years of age, and has smoked moderately all his life, and for the last fifty years has never, except in rare and short instances of illness, retired to bed without one tumbler of whiskey-toddy. But this is an exceptional case of longevity. All the evidence favours the opinion that tobacco, like alcohol, shortens life. It is certain that abstinence is beneficial, as shown by the long lives of some of our hardest brain-workers. It is worthy of note, too, that all the tough old Frenchmen still in the enjoyment of unimpaired mental faculties never smoked. M. Dufaure, M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Victor Hugo, M. Etienne Arago, brother of the astronomer, Abbe Moigno, belong to the non-smoking school of public men. So did M. Thiers, M. Guizot, M. Cremieux, M. Raspail, and the octogenarian, Comte Benoit-D'Azy, who died in full possession of his mental faculties. Reference has been made to idiosyncrasy, a matter of great importance, which should be borne in mind when considering the influence of any habit on the organism, whether animal or human. Professor Christison cites a remarkable case in which a gentleman unaccustomed to the use of opium took nearly an ounce of laudanum without any effect. This form of idiosyncrasy is very rare. Not only are some constitutions able to bear large doses of poison, but others cannot take certain kinds of food. Milk, for instance, cannot be taken by one person; pork by a second; porridge by a third. In the use of the various stimulants, as in the use of the various foods, the Same difference prevails among men. "The more I see of life," says Sir Henry Thompson, "the more I see that we cannot lay down rigid dogmas for everybody;" and I have come to the same conclusion that it is unsafe to make one man's experience another man's guide. Kant could work eight hours a day after drinking a cup of tea and smoking a pipe of tobacco. Professor Mayor finds that a day or two's fasting does him no harm, and he thrives on "dry bread and water." Professor Boyd Dawkins finds quinine the best stimulant; Darwin found a stimulant in snuff; Edison finds one in chewing; Professor Haeckel finds coffee the best, and Mr. Francillon and Mark Twain bear testimony to the value of smoking. These differences point to the conclusion that the same rules cannot be laid down for all. One thing is clear, however, that our best writers, clearest thinkers, and greatest scholars do not regard the use of alcohol as essential to thinking, and very few find tobacco an aid. With one or two exceptions, the writers take care to minimise the dangers incurred in the use of stimulants. Though they smoke, they smoke the weakest tobacco; though they drink, they drink only at meals. They work in the day time, take plenty of out-door exercise, and rest when they are tired. Many regard tobacco as a snare and a delusion; and all regard it as unnecessary for the brain of the youthful student. The greatest workers and thinkers of the middle ages, Dr. Russell remarks, never used it; [Footnote: Homer sang his deathless song, Raphael painted his glorious Madonnas, Luther preached, Guttenberg printed, Columbus discovered a New World before tobacco was heard of. No rations of tobacco were served out to the heroes of Thermopylae, no cigar strung up the nerves of Socrates. Empires rose and fell, men lived and loved and died during long ages, without tobacco. History was for the most part written before its appearance. "It is the solace, the aider, the familiar spirit of the thinker," cries the apologist; yet Plato the Divine thought without its aid, Augustine described the glories of God's city, Dante sang his majestic melancholy song, Savonarola reasoned and died, Alfred ruled well and wisely without it. Tyrtaeus sang his patriotic song, Roger Bacon dived deep into Nature's secrets, the wise Stagirite sounded the depths of human wisdom, equally unaided by it Harmodius and Aristogeiton twined the myrtle round their swords, and slew the tyrant of their fatherland, without its inspiration. In a word, kings ruled, poets sung, artists painted, patriots bled, martyrs suffered, thinkers reasoned, before it was known or dreamed of.--_Quarterly Journal of Science_, 1873.] and Mr. Watts thinks that its introduction by civilised races has been an unmixed evil. It is a remarkable fact that out of 20 men of science, only two smoke, one of whom, Professor Huxley, did not commence until he was forty years of age. Even among those who smoke there is a considerable difference in the times chosen for smoking. Though the Rev. A. Plummer declares himself a firm believer in the use of tobacco, he smokes _before_ work, _after_ work, rarely while at work. Mr. Wilkie Collins smokes after work, and Mr. James Payn smokes all the time he is working. Mr. Francillon's consumption of tobacco, and his power of work, are in almost exact proportion. Similar testimony comes from Mark Twain. Assuming that the prince of American humorists is not joking, his experience of cigar-smoking is unique. When Charles Lamb was asked how he had acquired the art of smoking, he answered, "By toiling after it as some men toil after virtue." I hope that young smokers will not conclude that by following the example of Mark Twain, their brain will become as fertile as his. To them tobacco is bad in any form. It poisons their blood, stunts their growth, weakens the mind, and makes them lazy. "It is not easy," says Mr. Ruskin, "to estimate the demoralizing effect of the cigar on the youth of Europe in enabling them to pass their time happily in idleness." It has been forbidden at Annapolis, the Naval School, and at West Point, the Military Academy of the United States, having been found injurious to the health, discipline, and power of study of the students. "At Harvard College," says Dr. Dio Lewis, "no young man addicted to the use of tobacco has graduated at the head of his class;" and at the lycees of Douai, Saint Quentin, and Chambery it has been found that the smokers are inferior to non-smokers. No public enquiry has yet been made as to the influence of tobacco upon English youths, but I am assured by several leading schoolmasters that the smokers are invariably the worst scholars. It cannot be too widely known, therefore, that tobacco, like alcohol, is of no advantage to a healthy student, and I advise young men to avoid it altogether. Darwin regretted that he had acquired the habit of snuff taking, and Mr. Sala says that had he his life to live over again, he would never touch tobacco in any shape or form. Never begun, never needed. "I do not advise you, young man," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grown brown before its time under such nicotian regimen, and thought the amber'd meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved." My conclusions, then, are as follows:-- 1.--Alcohol and tobacco are no value to a healthy student. 2.--That the most vigorous thinkers and hardest workers abstain from both stimulants. 3.--That those who have tried both moderation and total abstinence find the latter the more healthful practice. 4.--That almost every brain-worker would be the better for abstinence. 5.--That the most abstruse calculations may be made, and the most laborious mental work performed, without artificial stimulus. 6.--That all work done under the influence of _alcohol_ is unhealthy work. 7.--That the only pure brain stimulants are _external_ ones-- fresh air, cold water; walking, riding, and other out-door exercises. INDEX. Abstinence and dyspepsia Do. benefits of Alcohol dangerous Do. a stupefier Do. and speech-making Do. not a necessity Do. hurtful to the liver Do. a restorative Do. useful under exceptional circumstances Do. and digestion Do. as a medicine Do. and gout Do. bad for rheumatism Do. as a soother Do. as a stimulant to the brain Do. necessity of, to aid the subsidence of the brain Do. abstinence from, followed by over-eating Do. and longevity Air, fresh, importance of American boys, tobacco forbidden to Athletics, love of Balzac quoted Best time for working Brain-work non-natural Brain-work and biliousness Byron's temperament Carlyle, inconsistency of Carpenter, Dr. Alfred, quoted Chewing as a stimulant City life, exhausting and unwholesome nature of Cobbett's abstemiousness Coffee, a slow poison Do. as a stimulant College drunkenness Conscientious writing Country pursuits, value of Depression, the remedy for Drunkards among literary men Dyspepsia, cures for Early rising, value of Exercise, importance of, to brain-workers Eyesight injured by alcohol and tobacco French boys, smoking forbidden to Do. literature, the cause of the sickly productions in Frenchmen, a group of old Genius and alcohol German smokers Goethe quoted Gout and alcohol Hoffman's stories Howard's, John, abstemiousness Hugo, Victor, value of fresh air to Holmes, Oliver Wendell, quoted Idiosyncracy Idleness induced by smoking Do. do. drinking Imagination, the, stimulated by tobacco Indigestion and smoking Infection, tobacco a protection against Johnson, Dr., a glutton Journalists, use of alcohol by Juvenile smoking, evils of Lamb, Charles, quoted Leisure, how to gain Life, agreeableness of, promoted by the use of alcohol Do. do. do. non-use of alcohol Literary life in London, dangers of Longevity and alcohol Do. and tobacco Lynch, T. T., quoted Manzoni and nervous distraction Mill, John Stuart, practice of Miall, Edward, an incessant smoker Mortality of literary men Nervous excitement and composition Niebuhr's habits Night thoughts Night work, value of Noriac, Jules, habits of Opium, use of, by literary men Pain no drawback to mental work Parton, James, quoted Permissive Bill Physicians, advice of, to brain-workers Quinine as a stimulant Riding, value of Rules, impossibility of laying down, for all Ruskin, Mr., quoted Sleep the best stimulant Smoking, first effects of Smoking and working Smoking and digestion Smoking a sedative Do. a vile and odious practice Do. a cure for excitable nerves Do. a disinfectant Do. a greater evil than drinking Smoke drunk Smoking and longevity Snuff as a stimulant Snuff-taking and the memory Speech-making and alcohol Stimulants and unhealthy work Do. reactionary Do. a judicious use of Do. a taste for, imparted to children Taylor, Bayard, quoted Tea, effects of Teetotalism, a generator of due disease Thackeray, value of alcohol to Tobacco, soothing influences of Tobacco and exposure Do. and nerve Do. cost of Do. and longevity Do. and sleeplessness Do. and the memory Travelling, benefits of Vegetarianism, practice of Walking, value of Webster, Daniel, value of alcohol to Wilson's "Noctes," how produced Wordsworth on poetic excitement Wesley's abstemiousness Working, best time for Youths injured by smoking 
43480	----	Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with underscores: _italics_. The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain. SMOKING AND DRINKING. BY JAMES PARTON. BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1868. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO., CAMBRIDGE. PREFACE. The next very important thing that man has to attend to is his health. In some other respects, progress has been made during the last hundred years, and several considerable obstacles to the acquisition of a stable happiness have been removed or diminished. In the best parts of the best countries, so much knowledge is now freely offered to all the young as suffices to place within their reach all existing knowledge. We may say with confidence that the time is not distant when, in the United States, no child will live farther than four miles from a school-house, kept open four months in the year, and when there will be the beginning of a self-sustaining public library in every town and village of a thousand inhabitants. This great business of making knowledge universally accessible is well in hand; it has gone so far that it must go on till the work is complete. In this country, too, if nowhere else, there is so near an approach to perfect freedom of thinking, that scarcely any one, whose conduct is good, suffers inconvenience from professing any extreme or eccentricity of mere opinion. I constantly meet, in New England villages, men who differ as widely as possible from their neighbors on the most dividing of all subjects; but if they are good citizens and good neighbors, I have never observed that they were the less esteemed on that account. Their peculiarities of opinion become as familiar as the color of their hair, or the shape of their every-day hat, and as inoffensive. This is a grand triumph of good sense and good nature; or, as Matthew Arnold would say, of the metropolitan over the provincial spirit. It is also recent. It was not the case fifty years ago. It was not the case twenty years ago. The steam-engine, and the wondrous machinery which the steam-engine moves, have so cheapened manufactured articles, that a mechanic, in a village, may have so sufficient a share of the comforts, conveniences, and decencies of life, that it is sometimes hard to say what real advantage his rich neighbor has over him. The rich man used to have one truly enviable advantage over others: his family was safer, in case of his sudden death. But a mechanic, who has his home paid for, his life insured, and a year's subsistence accumulated, is as secure in this respect as, perhaps, the nature of human affairs admits. Now, an American workingman, anywhere out of a few largest cities, can easily have all these safeguards around his family by the time he is forty; and few persons can be rich before they are forty. We may say, perhaps, speaking generally, that, in the United States, there are no formidable obstacles to the attainment of substantial welfare, except such as exist in the nature of things and in ourselves. But in the midst of so many triumphs of man over material and immaterial things, man himself seems to dwindle and grow pale. Not here only, but in all the countries that have lately become rich enough to buy great quantities of the popular means of self-destruction, and in which women cease to labor as soon as their husbands and parents acquire a little property, and in which children sit in school and out of school from five to nine hours a day, and in which immense numbers of people breathe impure air twenty-two hours out of every twenty-four. In the regions of the United States otherwise most highly favored, nearly every woman, under forty, is sick or sickly; and hardly any young man has attained a proper growth, and measures the proper size around the chest. As to the young girls and school-children, if, in a school or party of two hundred, you can pick out thirty well-developed, well-proportioned, robust, ruddy children, you will do better than I have sometimes been able to do. This begins to alarm and puzzle all but the least reflective persons. People begin to wonder why every creature, whether of native or foreign origin, should flourish in America, except man. Not that there is anything mysterious with regard to the immediate causes of this obvious decline in the health and robustness of the race. Miss Nightingale tells us that more than half of all the sickness in the world comes of breathing bad air. She speaks feelingly of the time, not long passed, when the winds of heaven played freely through every house, from Windsor Castle to the laborer's cottage, and when every lady put forth muscular effort in the polishing of surfaces. That was the time when bread was an article of diet, and the Devil had not invented hot biscuit. The agreeable means of self-destruction, now so cheap and universal, were unknown, or very costly; and the great mass of the people subsisted, necessarily, upon the plain fare which affords abundant nourishment, without overtasking the digestive powers. Terrible epidemics, against which the medical science of the time vainly contended, swept off weakly persons, shortened the average duration of life, and raised the standard of health. But now we can all pervert and poison ourselves if we will, and yet not incur much danger of prompt extinction. Indeed, it is hard for the most careful and resolute person to avoid being a party to the universal violation of natural law. Children, of course, are quite helpless. How could I help, at eight years of age, being confined six hours a day in a school, where the word "ventilation" was only known as an object of spelling? How could I help, on Sunday, being entombed in a Sunday-school room, eight or nine feet high, crowded with children, all breathing their utmost? I hated it. I loathed it. I protested against it. I played truant from it. But I was thirteen years old before I could escape that detested basement, where I was poisoned with pernicious air, and where well-intentioned Ignorance made virtue disgusting, contemptible, and ridiculous, by turns. As all our virtues support one another, so all the vices of modern life are allies. Smoking and drinking are effects, as well as causes. We waste our vital force; we make larger demands upon ourselves than the nature of the human constitution warrants, and then we crave the momentary, delusive, pernicious aid which tobacco and alcohol afford. I suppose the use of these things will increase or decrease, as man degenerates or improves. This subject, I repeat, is the next great matter upon which we have to throw ourselves. The republication of these essays is only to be justified on the ground that every little helps. I think, too, that the next new sensation enjoyed by the self-indulgent, self-destroying inhabitants of the wealthy nations will be the practice of virtue. I mean, of course, the real thing, now nearly forgotten, the beginning of which is self-control, and which leads people to be temperate and pure, and enables them to go contrary to custom and fashion, without being eccentric or violent about it. That kind of virtue, I mean, which enables us to accept hard duties, and perform them with cheerful steadfastness; which enables us to make the most of our own lives, and to rear glorious offspring, superior to ourselves. It is surprising what a new interest is given to life by denying ourselves one vicious indulgence. What luxury so luxurious as just self-denial! Who has ever seen any happy people that were not voluntarily carrying a heavy burden? Human nature is so formed to endure and to deny itself, that those mistaken souls who forsake the world, and create for themselves artificial woes, and impose upon themselves unnecessary tasks, and deny themselves rational and beneficial pleasures, are a thousand times happier than those self-indulgent and aimless men, whom we see every afternoon, gazing listlessly out of club-windows, wondering why it is so long to six o'clock. I heard a young man say, the other day, that smoking had been the bane of his life, but that after abstaining for seven months, during which he made no progress in overcoming the desire to smoke, he had come to the conclusion that he was past cure, and must needs go on, as long as he lived. He _was_ going on, when he made the remark, smoking a pipe half as big and twice as yellow as himself. It was a great pity. That daily longing to smoke, with the daily triumphant struggle against it, was enough of itself to make his life both respectable and interesting. During those seven months, he was a man. He could claim fellowship with all the noble millions of our race, who have waged a secret warfare with Desire, all the days of their lives. If he had kept on, if he had not lapsed under the domination of his tyrant, he would probably have ascertained what there was in his way of life which kept alive in him the craving for stimulation. In all probability, he would have conquered the desire at last. And such a victory is usually followed by others similar. The cigar and the bottle are often replaced by something not sensual. The brain, freed from the dulling, lowering influence, regains a portion of its natural vivacity; and that vivacity frequently finds worthy objects upon which to expend itself. NEW YORK, September, 1868. SMOKING. DOES IT PAY TO SMOKE? BY AN OLD SMOKER. I have sometimes thought that there are people whom it does pay to smoke: those hod-carriers on the other side of the street, for example. It cannot be a very pleasant thing to be a hod-carrier at this season of the year, when a man who means to be at work at seven A.M. must wake an hour before the first streak of dawn. There is an aged sire over there, who lives in Vandewater Street, which is two miles and a quarter from the building he is now assisting to erect. He must be astir by half past five, in order to begin his breakfast at six; and at half past six he is in the car, with his dinner-kettle in his hand, on his way up town. About the time when the more active and industrious readers of this magazine begin to think it is nearly time to get up, this father of a family makes his first ascent of the ladder with a load of mortar on his shoulder. At twelve, the first stroke of the bell of St. George's Church (it is New York where these interesting events occur) sets him at liberty, and he goes in quest of his kettle. On very cold days, the dinner-kettle is wrapped in its proprietor's overcoat to keep the cold dinner from freezing stiff. But we will imagine a milder day, when the group of hod-carriers take their kettles to some sunny, sheltered spot about the building, where they sit upon soft, commodious boards, and enjoy their repast of cold meat and bread. The homely meal being concluded, our venerable friend takes out his short black pipe for his noontide smoke. How he enjoys it! How it seems to rest him! It is a kind of conscious sleep, ending, perhaps, in a brief unconscious sleep, from which he wakes refreshed for another five hours of the heavy hod. Who could wish to deny a poor man a luxury so cheap, and so dear? It does not cost him more than ten cents a week; but so long as he has his pipe, he has a sort of refuge to which he can fly from trouble. Especially consoling to him is it in the evening, when he is in his own crowded and most uninviting room. The smoke that is supposed to "poison the air" of some apartments seems to correct the foulness of this; and the smoker appears to be a benefactor to all its inmates, as well as to those who pass its door. Besides, this single luxury of smoke, at a cost of one cent and three sevenths per diem, is the full equivalent of all the luxuries which wealth can buy! None but a smoker, or one who has been a smoker, can realize this truth; but it is a truth. That short black pipe does actually place the hod-carrier, so far as mere luxury goes, on a par with Commodore Vanderbilt or the Prince of Wales. Tokay, champagne, turtle, game, and all the other luxurious commodities are not, taken altogether, so much to those who can daily enjoy them, as poor Paddy's pipe is to him. Indeed, the few rich people with whose habits I chance to be acquainted seldom touch such things, and never touch them except to please others. They all appear to go upon the system of the late Lord Palmerston, who used to say to his new butler, "Provide for my guests whatever the season affords; but for _me_ there must be always a leg of mutton and an apple-pie." Let the Prince of Wales (or any other smoker) be taken to a banqueting-hall, the tables of which should be spread with all the dainties which persons of wealth are erroneously supposed to be continually consuming, but over the door let there be written the terrible words, "No smoking." Then show him an adjoining room, with a table exhibiting Lord Palmerston's leg of mutton and apple-pie, plus a bundle of cigars. If any one doubts which of these two feasts the Prince of Wales would choose, we tell that doubting individual he has never been a smoker. Now the short pipe of the hod-carrier is just as good to him as the regalias could be that cost two hundred dollars a thousand in Havana, and sixty cents each in New York. If you were to give him one of those regalias, he would prefer to cut it up and smoke it in his pipe, and then he would not find it as good as the tobacco he usually smokes. The poor laborer's pipe, therefore, is a potent equalizer. To the enjoyment of pleasures purely luxurious there is a limit which is soon reached; and I maintain that a poor man gets as much of this _kind_ of pleasure out of his pipe as a prince or a railroad king can extract from all the costly wines and viands of the table. If there is a man in the world who ought to smoke, that ancient hod-carrier is the man. A stronger case for smoking cannot be selected from ordinary life. Does it pay him? After an attentive and sympathetic consideration of his case, I am compelled reluctantly to conclude that it does not. The very fact that it tends to make him contented with his lot is a point against his pipe. It is a shame to him to be contented. To a young man the carrying of the hod is no dishonor, for it is fit that young men should bear burdens and perform lowly tasks. But the hod is not for gray hairs. Whenever, in this free and spacious America, we see a man past fifty carrying heavy loads upon his shoulders, or performing any hired labor that requires little skill or thought, we know that there must have been some great defect or waste in that man's life. The first dollar that George Law ever earned, after leaving his father's house, was earned by carrying the hod at Albany. But with that dollar he bought an arithmetic and spelling-book; which, when winter closed in and put a stop to hod-carrying, he mastered, and thus began to prepare to build the "High Bridge" over the Harlem River, where he made a million dollars by using steam hod-carriers instead of Irish ones. The pipe is one of the points of difference between the hod-carrier content with his lot and the hod-carrier who means to get into bricklaying next spring. Yonder is one of the latter class reading his "Sun" after dinner, instead of steeping his senses in forgetfulness over a pipe. He, perhaps, will be taking a contract to build a bridge over the East River, about the time when his elderly comrade is buried in a corporation coffin. Of course, there are vigorous and triumphant men who smoke, and there are dull, contented men who do not. It is only of the general tendency of the poor man's pipe that I wish to speak. I mean to say that it tends to make him satisfied with a lot which it is his chief and immediate duty to alleviate. He ought to hate and loathe his tenement-house home; and when he goes to that home in the evening, instead of sitting down in stolid selfishness to smoke, he should be active in giving his wife (who usually has the worst of it) the assistance she needs and deserves. Better the merry song, the cheerful talk, the pleasant stroll, than this dulling of the senses and the brain in smoke. Nobler the conscious misery of such a home, than the artificial lethargy of the pipe. It is an unhandsome thing in this husband to steal out of his vile surroundings into cloudland, and leave his wife and children alone to their noisome desolation. If it does not pay this hod-carrier to smoke, it pays no man. If this man cannot smoke without injustice to others, no man can. Ladies, the natural enemies of tobacco, relented so far during the war as to send tobacco and pipes to the soldiers, and worked with their own fair hands many a pouch. Indeed, the pouch industry continues, though we will do the ladies the justice to say that, as their pouches usually have every excellent quality except fitness for the purpose intended, few of them ever hold tobacco. Does the lady who presented General Sheridan the other evening, in New York, with those superb and highly decorated tobacco-pouches suppose the gallant General has had, or will ever have, the heart to profane such beautiful objects with the noxious weed? It is evident from these gracious concessions on the part of the ladies, that they suppose the soldier is a man whose circumstances call imperatively for the solace of smoke; and really, when the wearied men after a long day's march gathered round the camp-fire for the evening pipe, the most infuriate hater of the weed must have sometimes paused and questioned the science which forbids the indulgence. But, reader, did you ever travel in one of the forward cars of a train returning from the seat of war, when the soldiers were coming home to re-enlist? We need not attempt to describe the indescribable scene. Most readers can imagine it. We allude to it merely as a set-off to the pleasant and picturesque spectacle of the tired soldiers smoking round the camp-fire. In truth, the soldier is the last man in the world who should smoke; for the simple reason, that while he, more than any other man, has need of all his strength, smoking robs him of part of it. It is not science alone which establishes this truth. The winning boat of Harvard University, and the losing boat of Yale, were not rowed by smokers. One of the first things demanded of a young man who is going into training for a boat-race is, _Stop smoking!_ And he himself, long before his body has reached its highest point of purity and development, will become conscious of the lowering and disturbing effect of smoking one inch of a mild cigar. No smoker who has ever trained severely for a race, or a game, or a fight, needs to be told that smoking reduces the tone of the system and diminishes all the forces of the body. He _knows_ it. He has been as conscious of it as a boy is conscious of the effects of his first cigar. Let the Harvard crew smoke during the last two months of their training, and let the Yale men abstain, and there is one individual prepared to risk a small sum upon Yale's winning back her laurels. A soldier should be in training always. Compelled to spend nine tenths of his time in laboriously doing nothing, he is called upon occasionally, for a few hours or days or weeks, to put forth exertions which task human endurance to the uttermost. The soldier, too, of all men, should have quiet nerves; for the phantoms of war scare more men than its real dangers, and men's bodies can shake when their souls are firm. That two and two make four is not a truth more unquestionably certain than that smoking does diminish a soldier's power of endurance, and does make him more susceptible to imaginary dangers. If a regiment were to be raised for the hardest service of which men can ever be capable, and that service were to be performed for a series of campaigns, it would be necessary to exclude from the commissariat, not tobacco only, but coffee and tea. Each man, in short, would have to be kept in what prize-fighters call "condition"; by which term they simply mean the natural state of the body, uncontaminated by poison, and unimpaired by indolence or excess. Every man is in duty bound to be "in condition" at all times; but the soldier,--it is part of his profession to be "in condition." When remote posterity comes to read of the millions and millions of dollars expended during the late war in curing soldiers untouched by bayonet or bullet, the enthusiasm of readers will not be excited by the generosity displayed in bestowing those millions. People will lay down the book and exclaim: "How ignorant were our poor ancestors of the laws of life! A soldier in hospital without a wound! How extremely absurd!" To this weighty and decisive objection minor ones may be added. The bother and vexation arising from the pipe were very great during the campaigns of the late war. Half the time the smokers, being deprived of their accustomed stimulant, were in that state of uneasy longing which smokers and other stimulators know. Men were shot during the war merely because they _would_ strike a light and smoke. The desire sometimes overcame all considerations of prudence and soldierly duty. A man out on picket, of a chilly night, knowing perfectly well that lighting his pipe would have the twofold effect of revealing his presence and inviting a bullet, was often unable to resist the temptation. Many men, too, risked capture in seeking what smokers call "a little fire." A fine, stalwart officer of a Minnesota regiment, whose natural forces, if he had given nature a fair chance, would have been abundantly sufficient for him without the aid of any stimulant, has told me there were nights when he would have gladly given a month's pay for a light. Readers probably remember the incident related in the newspapers of one of our smoking generals, who, after being defeated by the enemy, heard of the arrival of gunboats which assured his safety, and promised to restore his fortunes. The _first_ thing he did was to send an aid on board a gunboat to ask if they had any cigars. He was right in so doing. It was a piece of strategy necessitated by the circumstances. Let any man who has been in the habit of smoking ten to twenty cigars a day be suddenly deprived of them at a time when there is a great strain upon body and mind, and he will find himself reduced to a state bordering upon imbecility. Knowing what I know of the smoking habits of some officers of high rank, I should tremble for the success of any difficult operation, to be conducted by them in presence of an enemy, if their cigars had given out the evening before; nor could a spy do his employers a better service than to creep into the tents of some generals the night before an engagement, and throw all their cigars and tobacco into a pail of water. Of all men, therefore, the soldier is the very last man who could find his account in a practice which lowers the tone of his health, reduces his power of endurance, litters his knapsack, pesters him with a system of flints and tinder, and endangers his efficiency in critical moments. If all the world smoked, still the soldier should abstain. Sailors and other prisoners experience so many dull hours, and possess so many unused faculties, that some cordial haters of tobacco have thought that such persons might be justified in a habit which only lessens what they have in superfluity. In other words, sailors, being in a situation extremely unfavorable to spiritual life, ought not merely to yield to the lowering influence of the forecastle, but add to it one more benumbing circumstance. On the contrary, they ought to strive mightily against the paralyzing effects of monotony,--not give up to them, still less aggravate them. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why a sailor, after a three years' voyage, should not step on shore a man more alert in body and mind than when he sailed, and all alive to communicate the new knowledge he has acquired and the wonders he has seen. Why should he go round this beautiful world drugged? We must, therefore, add the sailor to the hod-carrier and the soldier, and respectfully take away his pipe. I select these classes, because they are supposed most to need artificial solace, and to be most capable of enduring the wear and tear of a vicious habit. Each of these classes also can smoke without much offending others, and each is provided with an "expectoratoon" which disgusts no one. The hod-carrier and the soldier have the earth and the sailor the ocean. But, for all that, the pipe is an injury to them. Every man of them would be better without it. But if we must deny _them_ the false solace of their pipe, what can be said of the all-but-universal smoking of persons supposed to be more refined than they, and whose occupations furnish them no pretence of an excuse? We now see painters in their studios smoking while they paint, and sculptors pegging away at the marble with a pipe in their mouths. Clergymen hurry out of church to find momentary relief for their tired throats in an ecstatic smoke, and carry into the apartment of fair invalids the odor of ex-cigars. How it may be in other cities I know not, but in New York a parishioner who wishes to confer upon his clergyman a _real_ pleasure can hardly do a safer thing than send him a thousand cigars of a good clerical brand. It is particularly agreeable to a clergyman to receive a present which supplies him with a luxury he loves, but in which he knows in his inmost soul he ought not to indulge. No matter for all his fine arguments, there is not one clergyman in ten that succeeds in this short life in reducing his conscience to such a degree of obtuseness that he can buy a box of cigars (at present prices) without a qualm of self-reproach. Editors, writers for the press, reporters, and others who haunt the places where newspapers are made, are smokers, except a few controlling men, and a few more who are on the way to become such. Most of the authors whose names are familiar to the public smoke steadily; even the poets most beloved do so. Philosophers have taken to the pipe of late years. Mr. Dickens, they say, toys with a cigar occasionally, but can hardly be reckoned among the smokers, and never touches a cigar when he has a serious task on hand. Mr. Prescott smoked, and O, how he loved his cigar! It was he who, when his physician had limited him to one cigar a day, ran all over Paris in quest of the largest cigars that Europe could furnish. In my smoking days I should have done the same. Thackeray smoked; he was very particular in his smoking; the scent of a bad cigar was an abomination to him. That Byron smoked, and loved "the naked beauties" of tobacco, he has told us in the most alluring verses the weed has ever inspired. Milton, Locke, Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Izaak Walton, Addison, Steele, Bolingbroke, Burns, Campbell, Scott, Talfourd, Christopher North, Lamb, were all smokers at some part of their lives. Among our Presidents, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, General Jackson, and probably many others, were smokers. Daniel Webster once smoked. Henry Clay, down to a late period of his life, chewed, smoked, and took snuff, but never approved of either practice, and stopped two of them. General Grant smokes, but regrets that he does, and has reduced his daily allowance of cigars. Edwin Booth smokes, as do most of the gentlemen of his arduous profession. Probably a majority of the physicians and surgeons in the United States, under forty years of age, are smokers; and who ever knew a medical student that did not smoke furiously? This, perhaps, is not to be wondered at, since doctors live upon the bodily sins of mankind. The question is, Does it pay these gentlemen to smoke? _They_ know it does not. It would be gross arrogance in any individual to lift up his voice in rebuke of so many illustrious persons, but for the fact that there is scarcely one of them who does not feel that the practice is wrong, or, at least, absurd. Almost all confirmed smokers will go so far as to admit that they wish they had never acquired the habit. Few of them desire their boys to acquire it. None recommend it to other men. Almost all smokers, who are not Turks, Chinamen, or Indians, appreciate at once the wisdom of Sir Isaac Newton's reply to one who asked him why he never smoked a pipe. "Because," said he "I am unwilling to make to myself any necessities." Nor can any intelligent smoker doubt that the fumes of tobacco are hostile to the vital principle. We smokers and ex-smokers all remember how our first cigar sickened us; we have all experienced various ill effects from what smokers call "smoking too much"; and very many smokers have, once or twice in their lives, risen in revolt against their tyrant, given away their pipes, and lived free men long enough to become conscious that their whole being had been torpid, and was alive again. No, no! let who will deny that smoking is unfriendly to life, and friendly to all that wars upon life, smokers will not question it, unless they are very ignorant indeed, or very young. It will be of no avail to talk to them of the man who lived to be a hundred years old and had smoked to excess for half a century. Smokers have that within which keeps them well in mind that smoking is pernicious. If there are any smokers who doubt it, it is the few whom smoke is rapidly killing; such, for example, as the interesting professional men who smoke an excellent quality of cigars and "break down" before they are thirty-five. It is not honest, legitimate hard work that breaks so many people down in the prime of life. It is bad habits. Smoking is a barbarism. This is the main argument against what is termed moderate smoking. There is something in the practice that allies a man with barbarians, and constantly tends to make him think and talk like a barbarian. Being at New Haven last September, a day or two before the opening of the term at Yale College, I sat in one of the public rooms of the hotel late one evening, hoping some students would come in, that I might see what sort of people college students are in these times. Yale College hath a pleasant seat. Who can stroll about upon that beautiful College Green, under those majestic elms, without envying the youth who are able to spend four long years of this troublesome life in the tranquil acquisition of knowledge amid scenes so refined and engaging? The visitor is bewitched with a wild desire to give the college two or three million dollars immediately, to enable it to become, in all respects, what it desires, aims, and intends to become. Visions of the noble Athenian youth thronging about the sages of eld, and learning wisdom from their lips, flit through his mind, as he wanders among the buildings of the college, and dodges the colored men who are beating carpets and carrying furniture. In this exalted frame of mind, suppose the stranger seated in the room of the hotel just mentioned. In the middle of the small apartment sat one fat, good-humored, uneducated man of fifty, smoking a cigar,--about such a man as we expect to find in the "office" of a large livery stable. At half past ten a young man strolled in, smoking, who addressed the elder by a military title, and began a slangy conversation with him upon the great New Haven subject,--boat-racing. About eleven, three or four other young men came in, to whom cigars were furnished by the military chieftain. All together they blew a very respectable cloud, and the conversation, being so strongly reinforced, became more animated. Boating was still the principal theme. The singular merits of Pittsburg oars were discussed. A warm dispute arose as to who was the builder of a certain boat that had won a race three years ago. Much admiration was expressed for the muscle, the nerve, and, above all, for the style and method, of the crew of the Harvard boat, which had beaten the Yale boat a few weeks before. Nevertheless, it did not occur to me that these smoking and damning gentlemen could be members of the college. I supposed they were young loafers of the town, who took an interest in the pleasures of the students, and were exchanging opinions thereon with their natural chief, the lord of the stable. At length one said to another, "Will Jones be here this week?" The reply was: "No, I wrote to the fellow; but, damn him, he says he can't get here till next Thursday." "Why, what's the matter with the cuss?" "O, he's had the fever and ague, and he says there's no pull in him." This led me to suspect that these young fellows were the envied youths of whom I had been dreaming under the elms,--a suspicion which the subsequent conversation soon confirmed. There was nothing wrong or harmful in the subject of their talk. The remarkable circumstance was, that all the difference which naturally exists, and naturally appears, between an educated and an uneducated person was obliterated; and it seemed, too, that the smoke was the "common element" in which the two were blended. It was the cigar that kept the students there talking boat till midnight with an elderly ignoramus, and it was the _cigar_ that was always drawing them down to his level. If he had not handed round his cigar-case, they would have exhausted all the natural interest of the subject in a few minutes, and gone home to bed. All of them, too, as it happened, confessed that smoking lessens the power of a man to row a boat, and lamented that a certain student would be lost to the crack crew from his unwillingness to give up his pipe. Smoking lures and detains men from the society of ladies. This herding of men into clubs, these dinners to which men only are invited, the late sitting at the table after the ladies have withdrawn, the gathering of male guests into some smoking-room, apart from the ladies of the party,--is not the cigar chiefly responsible for these atrocities? Men are not society; women are not society: society is the mingling of the two sexes in such a way that each restrains and inspires the other. That community is already far gone in degeneracy in which men prefer to band together by themselves, in which men do not crave the society of ladies, and value it as the chief charm of existence. "What is the real attraction of these gorgeous establishments?" I asked, the other evening, of an acquaintance who was about to enter one of the new club-houses on Fifth Avenue. His reply was: "No women can enter them! Once within these sacred walls, we are safe from everything that wears a petticoat!" Are we getting to be Turks? The Turks shut women in; we shut them out. The Turks build harems for their women; but we find it necessary to abandon to women our abodes, and construct harems for ourselves. Humiliating as the truth is, it must be confessed, tobacco is woman's rival, her successful rival. It is the cigar and the pipe (it used to be wine and punch) that enable men to endure one another during the whole of a long evening. Remove from every club-house all the means of intoxication,--i.e. all the wine and tobacco,--and seven out of every ten of them would cease to exist in one year. Men would come together for a few evenings, as usual, talk over the evening papers, yawn and go away, perhaps go home,--a place which our confirmed clubbists only know as a convenience for sleeping and breakfasting. One of the worst effects of smoking is that it deadens our susceptibility to tedium, and enables us to keep on enduring what we ought to war against and overcome. It is drunken people who "won't go home till morning." Tyrants and oppressors are wrong in drawing so much revenue from tobacco; they ought rather to give it away, for it tends to enable people to sit down content under every kind of oppression. Men say, in reply to those who object to their clubs, their men's dinner-parties, and their smoking-rooms: "Women overwhelm society with superfluous dry goods. The moment ladies are invited, the whole affair becomes a mere question of costume. A party at which ladies assist is little more than an exhibition of wearing apparel. They dress, too, not for the purpose of giving pleasure to men, but for the purpose of inflicting pain on one another. Besides, a lady who is carrying a considerable estate upon her person must devote a great part of her attention to the management of that estate. She may be talking to Mr. Smith about Shakespeare and the musical-glasses, but the thing her mind is really intent upon is crushing Mrs. Smith with her new lace. Even dancing is nothing but an exceedingly laborious and anxious wielding of yards of silk trailing out behind!" etc. Smoky diners-out will recognize this line of remark. When ladies have left the table, and are amusing themselves in the drawing-room in ways which may sometimes be trivial, but are never sensual, men frequently fall into discourse, over their cigars, upon the foibles of the sex, and often succeed in delivering themselves of one or more of the observations just quoted. As these noble critics sit boozing and smoking, they can sometimes hear the brilliant run upon the piano, or the notes of a finely trained voice, or the joyous laughter of a group of girls,--all inviting them to a higher and purer enjoyment than steeping their senses in barbarous smoke. But they stick to their cigars, and assume a lofty moral superiority over the lovely beings, the evidence of whose better civilization is sounding in their ears. Now, one of the subtle, mysterious effects of tobacco upon "the male of our species" is to disenchant him with regard to the female. It makes us read the poem entitled Woman as though it were only a piece of prose. It takes off the edge of virility. If it does not make a man less masculine, it keeps his masculinity in a state of partial torpor, which causes him to look upon women, not indeed without a certain curiosity, but without enthusiasm, without romantic elevation of mind, without any feeling of awe and veneration for the august Mothers of our race. It tends to make us regard women from what we may style the Black Crook point of view. The young man who boasted that he had seen the Black Crook forty-seven times in three months must have been an irreclaimable smoker. Nothing but the dulled, sensualized masculinity caused by this peculiar poison could have blinded men to the ghastly and haggard ugliness of that exhibition. The pinched and painted vacancy of those poor girls' faces; the bony horrors of some of their necks, and the flabby redundancy of others; the cheap and tawdry splendors; the stale, rejected tricks of London pantomimes; three or four tons of unhappy girls suspended in the air in various agonizing attitudes,--to think that such a show could have run for seventeen months! Even if science did not justify the conjecture, I should be disposed, for the honor of human nature, to lay the blame of all this upon tobacco. To a man who is uncorrupt and properly constituted, woman remains always something of a mystery and a romance. He never interprets her quite literally. She, on her part, is always striving to remain a poem, and is never weary of bringing out new editions of herself in novel bindings. Not till she has been utterly conquered and crushed by hopeless misery or a false religion does she give up the dream of still being a pleasant enchantment. To this end, without precisely knowing why, she turns the old dress, retrims it, or arrays herself in the freshness of a new one, ever striving to present herself in recreated loveliness. Uncontaminated man sympathizes with this intention, and easily lends himself to the renewed charm. Have you not felt something of this, old smokers, when, after indulging in the stock jests and sneers at womankind, you lay aside your cigars, and "join the ladies," arrayed in bright colors and bewitching novelties of dress, moving gracefully in the brilliant gas-light, or arranged in glowing groups about the room? Has not the truth flashed upon you, at such moments, that you had been talking prose upon a subject essentially poetical? Have you never felt how mean and low a thing it was to linger in sensual stupefaction, rather than take your proper place in such a scene as this? It is true, that a few women in commercial cities,--a few bankers' and brokers' wives, and others,--bewildered by the possession of new wealth, do go to ridiculous excess in dressing, and thus bring reproach upon the art. It were well if their husbands did no worse. Now and then, too, is presented the melancholy spectacle of an extravagant hussy marring, perhaps spoiling, the career of her husband by tasteless and unprincipled expenditures in the decoration of her person. But is it wholly her fault? Is he not the purse-holder? Is it not a husband's duty to prevent his wife from dishonoring herself in that manner? When men are sensual, women will be frivolous. When men abandon their homes and all the noble pleasures of society in order to herd together in clubs and smoking-rooms, what right have they to object if the ladies amuse themselves in the only innocent way accessible to them? The wonder is that they confine themselves to the innocent delights of the toilet. A husband who spends one day and seven evenings of every week at his club ought to expect that his wife will provide herself both with fine clothes and some one who will admire them. Besides, for one woman who shocks us by wasting upon her person an undue part of the family resources, there are ten who astonish us by the delightful results which their taste and ingenuity contrive out of next to nothing. It would be absurd to say that smoking is the cause of evils which originate in the weakness and imperfection of human nature. The point is simply this: tobacco, by disturbing and impairing virility, tends to vitiate the relations between the sexes, tends to lessen man's interest in women and his enjoyment of their society, and enables him to endure and be contented with, and finally even to prefer, the companionship of men. And this is the true reason why almost every lady of spirit is the irreconcilable foe of tobacco. It is not merely that she dislikes the stale odor of the smoke in her curtains, nor merely that her quick eye discerns its hostility to health and life. These things would make her disapprove the weed. But instinct causes her dimly to perceive that this ridiculous brown leaf is the rival of her sex. Women do not disapprove their rivals; they hate them. Smoking certainly does blunt a man's sense of cleanliness. It certainly is an unclean habit. Does the reader remember the fine scene in "Shirley," in which the lover soliloquizes in Shirley's own boudoir, just after that "stainless virgin" has gone out? She had gone away suddenly, it appears, and left disorder behind her; but every object bore upon it the legible inscription, _I belong to a lady!_ "Nothing sordid, nothing soiled," says Louis Moore. "Look at the pure kid of this little glove, at the fresh, unsullied satin of the bag." This is one of those happy touches of the great artist which convey more meaning than whole paint-pots of common coloring. What a pleasing sense it gives us of the sweet cleanness of the high-bred maiden! If smokers were to be judged by the places they have _left_,--by the smoking-car after a long day's use, by the dinner-table at which they have sat late, by the bachelor's quarters when the bachelor has gone down town,--they must be rated very low in the scale of civilization. We must admit, too, I think, that smoking dulls a man's sense of the rights of others. Horace Greeley is accustomed to sum up his opinion upon this branch of the subject by saying: "When a man begins to smoke, he immediately becomes a hog." He probably uses the word "hog" in two senses: namely, _hog_, an unclean creature; and _hog_, a creature devoid of a correct sense of what is due to other creatures. "Go into a public gathering," he has written, "where a speaker of delicate lungs, with an invincible repulsion to tobacco, is trying to discuss some important topic so that a thousand men can hear and understand him, yet whereinto ten or twenty smokers have introduced themselves, a long-nine projecting horizontally from beneath the nose of each, a fire at one end and a fool at the other, and mark how the puff, puffing gradually transforms the atmosphere (none too pure at best) into that of some foul and pestilential cavern, choking the utterance of the speaker, and distracting (by annoyance) the attention of the hearers, until the argument is arrested or its effect utterly destroyed." If these men, he adds, are not blackguards, who are blackguards? He mitigates the severity of this conclusion, however, by telling an anecdote: "Brethren," said Parson Strong, of Hartford, preaching a Connecticut election sermon, in high party times, some fifty years ago, "it has been charged that I have said every Democrat is a horse-thief; I never did. What I _did_ say was only that every horse-thief is a Democrat, and _that_ I can prove." Mr. Greeley challenges the universe to produce a genuine blackguard who is not a lover of the weed in some of its forms, and promises to reward the finder with the gift of two white blackbirds. Mr. Greeley exaggerates. Some of the best gentlemen alive smoke, and some of the dirtiest blackguards do not; but most intelligent smokers are conscious that the practice, besides being in itself unclean, dulls the smoker's sense of cleanliness, and, what is still worse, dulls his sense of what is due to others, and especially of what is due to the presence of ladies. The cost of tobacco ought perhaps to be considered before we conclude whether or not it pays to smoke; since every man who smokes, not only pays his share of the whole expense of the weed to mankind, but he also supports and justifies mankind in incurring that expense. The statistics of tobacco are tremendous, even to the point of being incredible. It is gravely asserted, in Messrs. Ripley and Dana's excellent and most trustworthy Cyclopædia, that the consumption of cigars in Cuba--the mere consumption--amounts to ten cigars per day for every man, woman, and child on the island. Besides this, Cuba exports two billions of cigars a year, which vary in price from twenty cents each (in gold) to two cents. In the manufacture of Manilla cheroots,--a small item in the trade,--the labor of seven thousand men and twelve hundred women is absorbed. Holland, where much of the tobacco used in smoky Germany is manufactured, employs, it is said, one million pale people in the business. In Bremen there are four thousand pallid or yellow cigar-makers. In the United States the weed exhausts four hundred thousand acres of excellent land, and employs forty thousand sickly and cadaverous cigar and tobacco makers. In England, where there is a duty upon tobacco of seventy-five cents a pound, and upon cigars of nearly four dollars a pound, the government derives about six million pounds sterling every year from tobacco. The French government gets from its monopoly of the tobacco trade nearly two hundred million francs per annum, and Austria over eighty million francs. It is computed that the world is now producing one thousand million pounds of tobacco every year, at a _total_ cost of five hundred millions of dollars. To this must be added the cost of pipes, and a long catalogue of smoking conveniences and accessories. In the London Exhibition there were four amber mouth-pieces, valued at two hundred and fifty guineas each. A plain, small, serviceable meerschaum pipe now costs in New York seven dollars, and the prices rise from that sum to a thousand dollars; but where is the young man who does not possess one? We have in New York two (perhaps more) extensive manufactories of these pipes; and very interesting it is to look in at the windows and inspect the novelties in this branch of art? In Vienna men earn their living (and their dying too) by smoking meerschaums for the purpose of starting the process of "coloring." Happily, the high price of labor has hitherto prevented the introduction of this industry into America. An inhabitant of the United States who smokes a pipe only, and good tobacco in that pipe, can now get his smoking for twenty-five dollars a year. One who smokes good cigars freely (say ten a day at twenty cents each) must expend between seven and eight hundred dollars a year. Almost every one whose eye may chance to fall upon these lines will be able to mention at least one man whose smoking costs him several hundred dollars per annum,--from three hundred to twelve hundred. On the other hand, our friend the hod-carrier can smoke a whole week upon ten cents' worth of tobacco, and buy a pipe for two cents which he can smoke till it is black with years. All this inconceivable expenditure--this five hundred millions per annum--comes out of the world's surplus, that precious fund which must pay all the cost, both of improving and extending civilization. Knowledge, art, literature, have to be supported out of what is left after food, clothes, fire, shelter, and defence have all been paid for. If the surest test of civilization, whether of an individual or of a community, is the use made of surplus revenue, what can we say of the civilization of a race that expends five hundred millions of dollars every year for an indulgence which is nearly an unmitigated injury? The surplus revenue, too, of every community is very small; for nearly the whole force of human nature is expended necessarily in the unending struggle for life. The most prosperous, industrious, economical, and civilized community that now exists in the world, or that ever existed, is, perhaps, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Yes, take it for all in all, Massachusetts, imperfect as it is, is about the best thing man has yet done in the way of a commonwealth. And yet the surplus revenue of Massachusetts is set down at only three cents a day for each inhabitant; and out of this the community has to pay for its knowledge, decoration, and luxury. Man, it must be confessed, after having been in business for so many thousands of years, is still in very narrow circumstances, and most assuredly cannot afford to spend five hundred millions a year in an injurious physical indulgence. It is melancholy to observe what a small, mean, precarious, grudging support we give to the best things, if they are of the kind which must be sustained out of our surplus. At Cambridge the other day, while looking about among the ancient barracks in which the students live, I had the curiosity to ask concerning the salaries of the professors in Harvard College,--supposing, of course, that such learned and eminent persons received a compensation proportioned to the dignity of their offices, the importance of their labors, and the celebrity of their names. Alas! it is not so. A good reporter on the New York press gets just about as much money as the President of the College, and the professors receive such salaries as fifteen and eighteen hundred dollars a year. The very gifts of inconsiderate benefactors have impoverished the college, few of whom, it seems, have been able to give money to the institution; most of them have merely bought distinction from it. Thus professorships in plenty have been endowed and named; but the college is hampered, and its resources have become insufficient, by being divided among a multitude of objects. I beg the reader, the next time he gives Harvard University a hundred thousand dollars, or leaves it a million in his will, to make the sum a gift,--a gift to the trustees,--to be expended as they deem best for the general and permanent good of the institution, and not to neutralize the benefit of the donation by conditions dictated by vanity. Yale, I have since learned, is no better off. At all our colleges, it seems, the professors either starve upon twelve or fifteen hundred dollars a year, or eke out a subsistence by taking pupils, or by some other arduous extra labor. But what wonder that learning pines, when we every year waste millions upon millions of the fund out of which alone learning can be supported! It is so with all high and spiritual things. How the theatre languishes! There are but four cities in the United States where a good and complete theatre could be sustained. In the great and wealthy city of New York there has never been more than one at a time, nor always one. How small, too, the sale of good books, even those of a popular cast! One of the most interesting works ever published in the United States is the "Life of Josiah Quincy," by his son Edmund Quincy. It is not an abstruse production. The narrative is easy and flowing, interspersed with well-told anecdotes of celebrated men,--Washington, Lafayette, John Adams, John Randolph, Hancock, Jefferson, and many others. Above all, the book exhibits and interprets, in the most agreeable manner, a triumphant human life; showing how it came to pass that Josiah Quincy, in this perplexing and perilous world, was able to live happily, healthily, honorably, and usefully for ninety-three years! Splendid triumph of civilization! Ninety-three years of joyous, dignified, and beneficial existence! One would have thought that many thousands of people in the United States would have hurried to their several bookstores to bear away, rejoicing, a volume recounting such a marvel, the explanation of which so nearly concerns us all. The book has now been published three months or more, and has not yet sold more than three thousand copies! Young men cannot waste their hard-earned money upon a three-dollar book. It is the price of a bundle of cigars! Mr. Henry Ward Beecher has recently told us, in one of his "Ledger" articles, how he earned his first ten dollars, and what he did with it. While he was a student in Amherst he was invited to deliver a Fourth-of-July temperance address in Brattleboro', forty miles distant. His travelling expenses were to be paid; but the brilliant scheme occurred to him to walk the eighty miles, and earn the stage fare by saving it. He did so, and received by mail after his return a ten-dollar bill,--the first ten dollars he had ever possessed, and the first money he had ever earned. He instantly gave a proof that the test of a person's civilization is the use he makes of his surplus money. He spent the whole of it upon an edition of the works of Edmund Burke, and carried the volumes to his room, a happy youth. It was not the best choice, in literature, perhaps; but it was one that marked the civilized being, and indicated the future instructor of his species. Suppose he had invested the sum (and we all know students who would make just that use of an unexpected ten-dollar bill) in a new meerschaum and a bag of Lone-Jack tobacco! At the end of his college course he would have had, probably, a finely colored pipe,--perhaps the prettiest pipe of his year; but he would not have had that little "library of fifty volumes," the solace of his coming years of poverty and fever and ague, always doing their part toward expanding him from a sectarian into a man of the world, and lifting him from the slavery of a mean country parish toward the mastership of a metropolitan congregation. His was the very nature to have been quenched by tobacco. If he had bought a pipe that day, instead of books, he might be at this moment a petty D.D., preaching safe inanity or silly eccentricity in some obscure corner of the world, and going to Europe every five years for his health. We all perceive that smoking has made bold and rapid encroachments of late years. It is said that the absurdly situated young man who passes in the world by the undescriptive name of the Prince of Wales smokes in drawing-rooms in the presence of ladies. This tale is probably false; scandalous tales respecting conspicuous persons are so generally false, that it is always safest and fairest to reject them as a matter of course, unless they rest upon testimony that ought to convince a jury. Nevertheless, it is true that smoke is creeping toward the drawing-room, and rolls in clouds where once it would not have dared to send a whiff. One reason of this is, that the cigar, and the pipe too, have "got into literature," where they shed abroad a most alluring odor. That passage, for example, in "Jane Eyre," where the timid, anxious Jane, returning after an absence, scents Rochester's cigar before she catches sight of his person, is enough to make any old smoker feel for his cigar-case; and all through the book smoke plays a dignified and attractive part. Mr. Rochester's cigars, we feel, must be of excellent quality (thirty cents each, at least); we see how freely they burn; we smell their delicious fragrance. Charlotte Brontë was, perhaps, one of the few women who have a morbid love of the odor of tobacco, who crave its stimulating aid as men do; and therefore her Rochester has a fragrance of the weed about him at all times, with which many readers have been captivated. "Jane Eyre" is the book of recent years which has been most frequently imitated, and consequently the circulating libraries are populous with smoking heroes. Byron, Thackeray, and many other popular authors have written passages in which the smoke of tobacco insinuates itself most agreeably into the reader's gentle senses. Many smokers, too, have been made such by the unexplained rigor with which the practice is sometimes forbidden. Forbidden it must be in all schools; but merely forbidding it and making it a dire offence will not suffice in these times. Some of the most pitiable slaves of smoke I have ever known were brought up in families and schools where smoking was invested with the irresistible charm of being the worst thing a boy could do, except running away. Deep in the heart of the woods, high up in rocky hills, far from the haunts of men and schoolmasters (not to speak of places less salubrious), boys assemble on holiday afternoons to sicken themselves with furtive smoke, returning at the close of the day to relate the dazzling exploit to their companions. In this way the habit sometimes becomes so tyrannical, that, if the victims of it should give a sincere definition of "vacation," it would be this, "The time when boys can get a chance to smoke every day." I can also state, that the only school I ever knew or heard of in which young men who had formed the habit were induced to break themselves of it was the only school I ever knew or heard of in which all students above the age of sixteen were allowed to smoke. Still, it must be forbidden. Professor Charlier, of New York, will not have in his school a boy who smokes even at home in his father's presence, or in the street; and he is right; but it requires all his talents as a disciplinarian and all his influence as a member of society to enforce the rule. Nor would even his vigilance avail if he confined himself to the cold enunciation of the law: Thou shalt not smoke. To forbid young men to smoke, without making an honest and earnest and skilful attempt to convince their understandings that the practice is pernicious, is sometimes followed by deplorable consequences. At the Naval Academy at Annapolis, not only is smoking forbidden, but the prohibition is effectual. There are four hundred young men confined within walls, and subjected to such discipline that it is impossible for a rule to be broken, the breaking of which betrays itself. The result is, that nearly all the students chew tobacco,--many of them to very great excess, and to their most serious and manifest injury. That great national institution teems with abuses, but, perhaps, all the other deleterious influences of the place united do less harm than this one abomination. On looking over the articles upon tobacco in the Encyclopædias, we occasionally find writers declaring or conjecturing that, as smoking has become a habit almost universal, there must be, in the nature of things, a reason which accounts for and justifies it. Accounts for it, _yes_; justifies it, _no_. So long as man lives the life of a pure savage, he has good health without ever bestowing a thought upon the matter. Nature, like a good farmer, saves the best for seed. The mightiest bull becomes the father of the herd; the great warrior, the great hunter, has the most wives and children. The sickly children are destroyed by the hardships of savage life, and those who survive are compelled to put forth such exertions in procuring food and defending their wigwams that they are always "in training." The pure savage has not the skill nor the time to extract from the wilds in which he lives the poisons that could deprave his taste and impair his vigor. Your Indian sleeps, with scanty covering, in a wigwam that freely admits the air. In his own way, he is an exquisite cook. Neither Delmonico nor Parker nor Professor Blot ever cooked a salmon or a partridge as well as a Rocky Mountain Indian cooks them; and when he has cooked his fish or his bird, he eats with it some perfectly simple preparation of Indian corn. He is an absolutely _unstimulated_ animal. The natural working of his internal machinery generates all the vital force he wants. He is as healthy as a buffalo, as a prize-fighter, as the stroke-oar of a university boat. But in our civilized, sedentary life, he who would have good health must fight for it. Many people have the insolence to become parents who have no right to aspire to that dignity; children are born who have no right to exist; and skill preserves many whom nature is eager to destroy. Civilized man, too, has learned the trick of heading off some of the diseases that used to sweep over whole regions of the earth, and lay low the weakliest tenth of the population. Consequently, while the average duration of human life has been increased, the average tone of human health has been lowered. Fewer die, and fewer are quite well. Very many of us breathe vitiated air, and keep nine tenths of the body quiescent for twenty-two or twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four. Immense numbers cherish gloomy, depressing opinions, and convert the day set apart for rest and recreation into one which aggravates some of the worst tendencies of the week, and counteracts none of them. Half the population of the United States violate the laws of nature every time they take sustenance; and the children go, crammed with indigestion, to sit six hours in hot, ill-ventilated or unventilated school-rooms. Except in a few large towns, the bread and meat are almost universally inferior or bad; and the only viands that are good are those which ought not to be eaten at all. At most family tables, after a course of meat which has the curious property of being both soft and tough, a wild profusion of ingenious puddings, pies, cakes, and other abominable trash, beguiles the young, disgusts the mature, and injures all. From bodies thus imperfectly nourished, we demand excessive exertions of all kinds. Hence, the universal craving for artificial aids to digestion. Hence, the universal use of stimulants,--whiskey, Worcestershire sauce, beer, wine, coffee, tea, tobacco. This is the only reason I can discover in the nature of things here for the widespread, increasing propensity to smoke. As all the virtues are akin, and give loyal aid to one another, so are all the vices in alliance, and play into one another's hands. Many a smoker will discover, when at last he breaks the bond of his servitude, that his pipe, trifling a matter as it may seem to him now, was really the power that kept down his whole nature, and vulgarized his whole existence. In many instances the single act of self-control involved in giving up the habit would necessitate and include a complete regeneration, first physical, then moral. Whether the Coming Man will drink wine or be a teetotaller has not yet, perhaps, been positively ascertained; but it is certain he will not smoke. Nothing can be surer than that. The Coming Man will be as healthy as Tecumseh, as clean as Shirley, and as well groomed as Dexter. He will not fly the female of his species, nor wall himself in from her approach, nor give her cause to prefer his absence. We are not left to infer or conjecture this; we can ascertain it from what we know of the messengers who have announced the coming of the Coming Man. The most distinguished of these was Goethe,--perhaps the nearest approach to the complete human being that has yet appeared. The mere fact that this admirable person lived always unpolluted by this seductive poison is a fact of some significance; but the important fact is, that he _could not_ have smoked and remained Goethe. When we get close to the man, and live intimately with him, we perceive the impossibility of his ever having been a smoker. We can as easily fancy Desdemona smoking a cigarette as the highly groomed, alert, refined, imperial Goethe with a cigar in his mouth. In America, the best gentleman and most variously learned and accomplished man we have had--the man, too, who had in him most of what will constitute the glory of the future--was Thomas Jefferson, Democrat, of Virginia. He was versed in six languages; he danced, rode, and hunted as well as General Washington; he played the violin well, wrote admirably, farmed skilfully, and was a most generous, affectionate, humane, and great-souled human being. It was the destiny of this ornament and consolation of his species to raise tobacco, and live by tobacco all his life. But he knew too much to use it himself; or, to speak more correctly, his fine feminine senses, his fine masculine instincts, revolted from the use of it, without any assistance from his understanding. There is no trace of the pipe in the writings of Washington or Franklin; probably they never smoked; so that we may rank the three great men of America--Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson--among the exempts. Washington Irving, who was the first literary man of the United States to achieve a universal reputation, and who is still regarded as standing at the head of our literature, was no smoker. Two noted Americans, Dr. Nott and John Quincy Adams, after having been slaves of the weed for many years, escaped from bondage and smoked no more. These distinguished names may serve as a set-off to the list of illustrious smokers previously given. Among the nations of the earth most universally addicted to smoking are the Turks, the Persians, the Chinese, the Spanish,--all slaves of tradition, submissive to tyrants, unenterprising, averse to improvement, despisers of women. Next to these, perhaps, we must place the Germans, a noble race, renowned for two thousand years for the masculine vigor of the men and the motherly dignity of the women. Smoking is a blight upon this valuable breed of men; it steals away from their minds much of the alertness and decision that naturally belong to such minds as they have, and it impairs their bodily health. Go, on some festive day, to "Jones's Woods," where you may sometimes see five thousand Germans--men, women, and children--amusing themselves in their simple and rational way. Not one face in ten has the clear, bright look of health. Nearly all the faces have a certain tallowy aspect,--yellowish in color, with a dull shine upon them. You perceive plainly that it is not well with these good people; they are not conforming to nature's requirements; they are not the Germans of Tacitus,--ruddy, tough, happy, and indomitable. To lay the whole blame of this decline upon smoking, which is only one of many bad habits of theirs, would be absurd. What I insist upon is this: Smoking, besides doing its part toward lowering the tone of the bodily health, deadens our sense of other physical evils, and makes us submit to them more patiently. If our excellent German fellow-citizens were to throw away their pipes, they would speedily toss their cast-iron sausages after them, and become more fastidious in the choice of air for their own and their children's breathing, and reduce their daily allowance of lager-bier. Their first step toward physical regeneration will be, must be, the suppression of the pipe. One hopeful sign for the future is, that this great subject of the physical aids and the physical obstacles to virtue is attracting attention and rising into importance. Our philanthropists have stopped giving tracts to hungry people; at least they give bread first. It is now a recognized truth, that it takes a certain number of cubic yards for a person to be virtuous in; and that, consequently, in that square mile of New York in which two hundred and ninety thousand people live, there must be--absolutely _must_ be--an immense number of unvirtuous persons. No human virtue or civilization can long exist where four families live in a room, some of whom take boarders. The way to regenerate this New York mile is simply to widen Manhattan Island by building three bridges over the East River, and to shorten the island by making three lines of underground or overground railroad to the upper end of it. We may say, too, there are circles--not many, it is true, but some--in which a man's religion would not be considered a very valuable acquisition, if, when he had "got" it, he kept on chewing tobacco. Such a flagrant and abominable violation of the Creator's laws, by a person distinctly professing a special veneration for them, would be ludicrous, if it were not so pernicious. The time is at hand when these simple and fundamental matters will have their proper place in all our schemes for the improvement of one another. The impulse in this direction given by the publication of the most valuable work of this century--Buckle's "History of Civilization in England"--will not expend itself in vain. If that author had but lived, he would not have disdained, in recounting the obstacles to civilization, to consider the effects upon the best modern brains of a poison that lulls their noblest faculties to torpor, and enables them languidly to endure what they ought constantly to fight. It is not difficult to stop smoking, except for one class of smokers,--those whom it has radically injured, and whose lives it is shortening. For all such the discontinuance of the practice will be almost as difficult as it is desirable. No rule can be given which will apply to all or to many such cases; but each man must fight it out on the line he finds best, and must not be surprised if it takes him a great deal longer than "all summer." If one of this class of smokers should gain deliverance from his bondage after a two years' struggle, he would be doing well. A man who had been smoking twenty cigars a day for several years, and should suddenly stop, would be almost certain either to relapse or fall into some worse habit,--chewing, whiskey, or opium. Perhaps his best way would be to put himself upon half allowance for a year, and devote the second year to completing his cure,--always taking care to live in other respects more wisely and temperately, and thus lessen the craving for a stimulant. The more smoke is hurting a man, the harder it is for him to stop smoking; and almost all whom the practice is destroying rest under the delusion that they could stop without the least effort, if they liked. The vast majority of smokers--seven out of every ten, at least--can, without the least danger or much inconvenience, cease smoking at once, totally and forever. As I have now given a trial to both sides of the question, I beg respectfully to assure the brotherhood of smokers that it does _not_ pay to smoke. It really does not. I can work better and longer than before. I have less headache. I have a better opinion of myself. I enjoy exercise more, and step out much more vigorously. My room is cleaner. The bad air of our theatres and other public places disgusts and infuriates me more, but exhausts me less. I think I am rather better tempered, as well as more cheerful and satisfied. I endure the inevitable ills of life with more fortitude, and look forward more hopefully to the coming years. It did not pay to smoke, but, most decidedly, it pays to stop smoking. DRINKING. WILL THE COMING MAN DRINK WINE? The teetotalers confess their failure. After forty-five years of zealous and well-meant effort in the "cause," they agree that people are drinking more than ever. Dr. R. T. Trall of New York, the most thoroughgoing teetotaler extant, exclaims: "Where are we to-day? Defeated on all sides. The enemy victorious and rampant everywhere. More intoxicating liquors manufactured and drunk than ever before. Why is this?" Why, indeed! When the teetotalers can answer that question correctly, they will be in a fair way to gain upon the "enemy" that is now so "rampant." They are not the first people who have mistaken a symptom of disease for the disease itself, and striven to cure a cancer by applying salve and plaster and cooling washes to the sore. They are not the first travellers through this Wilderness who have tried to extinguish a smouldering fire, and discovered, at last, that they had been pouring water into the crater of a volcano. Dr. Trall thinks we should all become teetotalers very soon, if only the doctors would stop prescribing wine, beer, and whiskey to their patients. But the doctors will not. They like a glass of wine themselves. Dr. Trall tells us that, during the Medical Convention held at St. Louis a few years ago, the doctors dined together, and upon the table were "forty kinds of alcoholic liquors." The most enormous feed ever accomplished under a roof in America, I suppose, was the great dinner of the doctors, given in New York, fifteen years ago, at the Metropolitan Hall. I had the pleasure on that occasion of seeing half an acre of doctors all eating and drinking at once, and I can testify that very few of them--indeed, none that I could discover--neglected the bottle. It was an occasion which united all the established barbarisms of a public dinner,--absence of ladies, indigestible food in most indigestible quantities, profuse and miscellaneous drinking, clouds of smoke, late sitting, and wild speaking. Why not? Do not these men live and thrive upon such practices? Why should they not set an example of the follies which enrich them? It is only heroes who offend, deny, and rebuke the people upon whose favor their fortune depends; and there are never many heroes in the world at one time. No, no, Dr. Trall! the doctors are good fellows; but their affair is to cure disease, not to preserve health. One man, it seems, and only one, has had much success in dissuading people from drinking, and that was Father Mathew. A considerable proportion of his converts in Ireland, it is said, remain faithful to their pledge; and most of the Catholic parishes in the United States have a Father Mathew Society connected with them, which is both a teetotal and a mutual-benefit organization. In New York and adjacent cities the number of persons belonging to such societies is about twenty-seven thousand. On the anniversary of Father Mathew's birth they walk in procession, wearing aprons, carrying large banners (when the wind permits), and heaping up gayly dressed children into pyramids and mountains drawn by six and eight horses. At their weekly or monthly meetings they sing songs, recite poetry, perform plays and farces, enact comic characters, and, in other innocent ways, endeavor to convince on-lookers that people can be happy and merry, uproariously merry, without putting a headache between their teeth. These societies seem to be a great and unmingled good. They do actually help poor men to withstand their only American enemy. They have, also, the approval of the most inveterate drinkers, both Catholic and Protestant. Jones complacently remarks, as he gracefully sips his claret (six dollars per dozen) that this total abstinence, you know, is an excellent thing for emigrants; to which Brown and Robinson invariably assent. Father Mathew used to administer his pledge to people who _knelt_ before him, and when they had taken it he made over them the sign of the cross. He did not usually deliver addresses; he did not relate amusing anecdotes; he did not argue the matter; he merely pronounced the pledge, and gave to it the sanction of religion, and something of the solemnity of a sacrament. The present Father Mathew Societies are also closely connected with the church, and the pledge is regarded by the members as of religious obligation. Hence, these societies are successful, in a respectable degree; and we may look, with the utmost confidence, to see them extend and flourish until a great multitude of Catholics are teetotalers. Catholic priests, I am informed, generally drink wine, and very many of them smoke; but _they_ are able to induce men to take the pledge without setting them an example of abstinence, just as parents sometimes deny their children pernicious viands of which they freely partake themselves. But _we_ cannot proceed in that way. Our religion has not power to control a physical craving by its mere fiat, nor do we all yet perceive what a deadly and shameful sin it is to vitiate our own bodies. The Catholic Church is antiquity. The Catholic Church is childhood. _We_ are living in modern times; _we_ have grown a little past childhood; and when we are asked to relinquish a pleasure, we demand to be convinced that it is best we should. By and by we shall all comprehend that, when a person means to reform his life, the very first thing for him to do--the thing preliminary and most indispensable--will be to cease violating physical laws. The time, I hope, is at hand, when an audience in a theatre, who catch a manager cheating them out of their fair allowance of fresh air, will not sit and gasp, and inhale destruction till eleven P.M., and then rush wildly to the street for relief. They will stop the play; they will tear up the benches, if necessary; they will throw things on the stage; they will knock a hole in the wall; they will _have_ the means of breathing, or perish in the struggle. But at present people do not know what they are doing when they inhale poison. They do not know that more than one half of all the diseases that plague us most--scarlet fever, small-pox, measles, and all the worst fevers--come of breathing bad air. Not a child last winter would have had the scarlet fever, if all the children in the world had slept with a window open, and had had pure air to breathe all day. This is Miss Nightingale's opinion, and there is no better authority. People are ignorant of these things, and they are therefore indifferent to them. They will remain indifferent till they are enlightened. Our teetotal friends have not neglected the scientific questions involved in their subject; nor have they settled them. Instead of insulting the public intelligence by asserting that the wines mentioned in the Bible were some kind of unintoxicating slop, and exasperating the public temper by premature prohibitory laws, they had better expend their strength upon the science of the matter, and prove to mankind, if they can, that these agreeable drinks which they denounce are really hurtful. We all know that excess is hurtful. We also know that adulterated liquors may be. But is the thing in itself pernicious?--pure wine taken in moderation? good beer? genuine Old Bourbon? For one, I wish it could be demonstrated that these things are hurtful. Sweeping, universal truths are as convenient as they are rare. The evils resulting from excess in drinking are so enormous and so terrible, that it would be a relief to know that alcoholic liquors are in themselves evil, and to be always avoided. What are the romantic woes of a Desdemona, or the brief picturesque sorrows of a Lear, compared with the thirty years' horror and desolation caused by a drunken parent? We laugh when we read Lamb's funny description of his waking up in the morning, and learning in what condition he had come home the night before by seeing all his clothes carefully folded. But his sister Mary did not laugh at it. He was all she had; it was tragedy to her,--this self-destruction of her sole stay and consolation. Goethe did not find it a laughing matter to have a drunken wife in his house for fifteen years, nor a jest to have his son brought in drunk from the tavern, and to see him dead in his coffin, the early victim of champagne. Who would not _like_ to have a clear conviction, that what we have to do with regard to all such fluids is to let them alone? I am sure I should. It is a great advantage to have your enemy in plain sight, and to be sure he _is_ an enemy. What is wine? Chemists tell us they do not know. Three fifths of a glass of wine is water. One fifth is alcohol. Of the remaining fifth, about one half is sugar. One tenth of the whole quantity remains to be accounted for. A small part of that tenth is the acid which makes vinegar sour. Water, alcohol, sugar, acid,--these make very nearly the whole body of the wine; but if we mix these things in the proportions in which they are found in Madeira, the liquid is a disgusting mess, nothing like Madeira. The great chemists confess they do not know what that last small fraction of the glass of wine is, upon which its flavor, its odor, its fascination, depend. They do not know what it is that makes the difference between port and sherry, but are obliged to content themselves with giving it a hard name. Similar things are admitted concerning the various kinds of spirituous and malt liquors. Chemistry seems to agree with the temperance society, that wine, beer, brandy, gin, whiskey, and rum are alcohol and water, mixed in different proportions, and with some slight differences of flavoring and coloring matter. In all these drinks, teetotalers maintain, _alcohol is power_, the other ingredients being mere dilution and flavoring. Wine, they assure us, is alcohol and water flavored with grapes; beer is alcohol and water flavored with malt and hops; Bourbon whiskey is alcohol and water flavored with corn. These things they assert, and the great chemists do not enable us drinkers of those seductive liquids to deny it. On the contrary, chemical analysis, so far as it has gone, supports the teetotal view of the matter. What does a glass of wine do to us when we have swallowed it? We should naturally look to physicians for an answer to such a question; but the great lights of the profession--men of the rank of Astley Cooper, Brodie, Abernethy, Holmes--all assure the public, that no man of them knows, and no man has ever known, how medicinal substances work in the system, and why they produce the effects they do. Even of a substance so common as Peruvian bark, no one knows why and how it acts as a tonic; nor is there any certainty of its being a benefit to mankind. There is no science of medicine. The "Red Lane" of the children leads to a region which is still mysterious and unknown; for when the eye can explore its recesses, a change has occurred in it, which is also mysterious and unknown: it is dead. Quacks tell us, in every newspaper, that they can cure and prevent disease by pouring or dropping something down our throats, and we have heard this so often, that, when a man is sick, the first thing that occurs to him is to "take physic." But physicians who are honest, intelligent, and in an independent position, appear to be coming over to the opinion that this is generally a delusion. We see eminent physicians prescribing for the most malignant fevers little but open windows, plenty of blankets, Nightingale nursing, and beef tea. Many young physicians, too, have gladly availed themselves of the ingenuity of Hahnemann, and satisfy at once their consciences and their patients by prescribing doses of medicine that are next to no medicine at all. The higher we go among the doctors, the more sweeping and emphatic is the assurance we receive that the profession does not understand the operation of medicines in the living body, and does not really approve their employment. If something more is known of the operation of alcohol than of any other chemical fluid,--if there is any approach to certainty respecting it,--we owe it chiefly to the teetotalers, because it is they who have provoked contradiction, excited inquiry, and suggested experiment. They have not done much themselves in the way of investigation, but they started the topic, and have kept it alive. They have also published a few pages which throw light upon the points in dispute. After going over the ground pretty thoroughly, I can tell the reader in a few words the substance of what has been ascertained, and plausibly inferred, concerning the effects of wine, beer, and spirits upon the human constitution. They cannot be _nourishment_, in the ordinary acceptation of that word, because the quantity of nutritive matter in them is so small. Liebig, no enemy of beer, says this: "We can prove, with mathematical certainty, that as much flour or meal as can lie on the point of a table-knife is more nutritious than nine quarts of the best Bavarian beer; that a man who is able daily to consume that amount of beer obtains from it, in a whole year, in the most favorable case, exactly the amount of nutritive constituents which is contained in a five-pound loaf of bread, or in three pounds of flesh." So of wine; when we have taken from a glass of wine the ingredients known to be innutritious, there is scarcely anything left but a grain or two of sugar. Pure alcohol, though a product of highly nutritive substances, is a mere poison,--an absolute poison,--the mortal foe of life in every one of its forms, animal and vegetable. If, therefore, these beverages do us good, it is not by supplying the body with nourishment. Nor can they aid digestion by assisting to decompose food. When we have taken too much shad for breakfast, we find that a wineglass of whiskey instantly mitigates the horrors of indigestion, and enables us again to contemplate the future without dismay. But if we catch a curious fish or reptile, and want to keep him from decomposing, and bring him home as a contribution to the Museum of Professor Agassiz, we put him in a bottle of whiskey. Several experiments have been made with a view to ascertain whether mixing alcohol with the gastric juice increases or lessens its power to decompose food, and the results of all of them point to the conclusion that the alcohol retards the process of decomposition. A little alcohol retards it a little, and much alcohol retards it much. It has been proved by repeated experiment, that any portion of alcohol, however small, diminishes the power of the gastric juice to decompose. The digestive fluid has been mixed with wine, beer, whiskey, brandy, and alcohol diluted with water, and kept at the temperature of the living body, and the motions of the body imitated during the experiment; but, in every instance, the pure gastric juice was found to be the true and sole digester, and the alcohol a retarder of digestion. This fact, however, required little proof. We are all familiar with alcohol as a _preserver_, and scarcely need to be reminded, that, if alcohol assists digestion at all, it cannot be by assisting decomposition. Nor is it a heat-producing fluid. On the contrary, it appears, in all cases, to diminish the efficiency of the heat-producing process. Most of us who live here in the North, and who are occasionally subjected to extreme cold for hours at a time, know this by personal experience; and all the Arctic voyagers attest it. Brandy is destruction when men have to face a temperature of sixty below zero; they want lamp-oil then, and the rich blubber of the whale and walrus. Dr. Rae, who made two or three pedestrian tours of the polar regions, and whose powers of endurance were put to as severe a test as man's ever were, is clear and emphatic upon this point. Brandy, he says, stimulates but for a few minutes, and greatly lessens a man's power to endure cold and fatigue. Occasionally we have in New York a cool breeze from the North which reduces the temperature below zero,--to the sore discomfort of omnibus-drivers and car-drivers, who have to face it on their way up town. On a certain Monday night, two or three winters ago, twenty-three drivers on one line were disabled by the cold, many of whom had to be lifted from the cars and carried in. It is a fact familiar to persons in this business, that men who drink freely are more likely to be benumbed and overcome by the cold than those who abstain. It seems strange to us, when we first hear it, that a meagre teetotaller should be safer on such a night than a bluff, red-faced imbiber of beer and whiskey, who takes something at each end of the line to keep himself warm. It nevertheless appears to be true. A traveller relates, that, when Russian troops are about to start upon a march in a very cold region, no grog is allowed to be served to them; and when the men are drawn up, ready to move, the corporals smell the breath of every man, and send back to quarters all who have been drinking. The reason is, that men who start under the influence of liquor are the first to succumb to the cold, and the likeliest to be frost-bitten. It is the uniform experience of the hunters and trappers in the northern provinces of North America, and of the Rocky Mountains, that alcohol diminishes their power to resist cold. A whole magazine could be filled with testimony on this point. Still less is alcohol a strength-giver. Every man that ever trained for a supreme exertion of strength knows that Tom Sayers spoke the truth when he said: "I'm no teetotaller: but when I've any business to do, there's nothing like water and the dumb-bells." Richard Cobden, whose powers were subjected to a far severer trial than a pugilist ever dreamed of, whose labors by night and day, during the corn-law struggle, were excessive and continuous beyond those of any other member of the House of Commons, bears similar testimony: "The more work I have to do, the more I have resorted to the pump and the teapot." On this branch of the subject, _all_ the testimony is against alcoholic drinks. Whenever the point has been tested,--and it has often been tested,--the truth has been confirmed, that he who would do his _very_ best and most, whether in rowing, lifting, running, watching, mowing, climbing, fighting, speaking, or writing, must not admit into his system one drop of alcohol. Trainers used to allow their men a pint of beer per day, and severe trainers half a pint; but now the knowing ones have cut off even that moderate allowance, and brought their men down to cold water, and not too much of that, the soundest digesters requiring little liquid of any kind. Mr. Bigelow, by his happy publication lately of the correct version of Franklin's Autobiography, has called to mind the famous beer passage in that immortal work: "I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers[1] of beer. On occasion I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands." I have a long list of references on this point; but, in these cricketing, boat-racing, prize-fighting days, the fact has become too familiar to require proof. The other morning, Horace Greeley, teetotaler, came to his office after an absence of several days, and found letters and arrears of work that would have been appalling to any man but him. He shut himself in at ten A.M., and wrote steadily, without leaving his room, till eleven, P.M.,--thirteen hours. When he had finished, he had some little difficulty in getting down stairs, owing to the stiffness of his joints, caused by the long inaction; but he was as fresh and smiling the next morning as though he had done nothing extraordinary. Are any of us drinkers of beer and wine capable of such a feat? Then, during the war, when he was writing his history, he performed every day, for two years, two days' work,--one from nine to four, on his book; the other from seven to eleven, upon the Tribune; and, in addition, he did more than would tire an ordinary man in the way of correspondence and public speaking. I may also remind the reader, that the clergyman who, of all others in the United States, expends most vitality, both with tongue and pen, and who does his work with least fatigue and most gayety of heart, is another of Franklin's "water Americans." [1] We owe to Mr. Bigelow the restoration of this strong Franklinian word. The common editions have it "drinkers." If, then, wine does not nourish us, does not assist the decomposition of food, does not warm, does not strengthen, what does it do? We all know that, when we drink alcoholic liquor, it affects the brain immediately. Most of us are aware, too, that it affects the brain injuriously, lessening at once its power to discern and discriminate. If I, at this ten, A.M., full of interest in this subject, and eager to get my view of it upon paper, were to drink a glass of the best port, Madeira, or sherry, or even a glass of lager-bier, I should lose the power to continue in three minutes; or, if I persisted in going on, I should be pretty sure to utter paradox and spurts of extravagance, which would not bear the cold review of to-morrow morning. Any one can try this experiment. Take two glasses of wine, and then immediately apply yourself to the hardest task your mind ever has to perform, and you will find you cannot do it. Let any student, just before he sits down to his mathematics, drink a pint of the purest beer, and he will be painfully conscious of loss of power. Or, let any salesman, before beginning with a difficult but important customer, perform the idiotic action of "taking a drink," and he will soon discover that his ascendency over his customer is impaired. In some way this alcohol, of which we are so fond, gets to the brain and injures it. We are conscious of this, and we can observe it. It is among the wine-drinking classes of our fellow-beings, that absurd, incomplete, and reactionary ideas prevail. The receptive, the curious, the candid, the trustworthy brains,--those that do not take things for granted, and yet are ever open to conviction,--such heads are to be found on the shoulders of men who drink little or none of these seductive fluids. How we all wondered that England should _think_ so erroneously, and adhere to its errors so obstinately, during our late war! Mr. Gladstone has in part explained the mystery. The adults of England, he said, in his famous wine speech, drink, on an average, three hundred quarts of beer each per annum! Now, it is physically impossible for a human brain, muddled every day with a quart of beer, to correctly hold correct opinions, or appropriate pure knowledge. Compare the conversation of a group of Vermont farmers, gathered on the stoop of a country store on a rainy afternoon, with that which you may hear in the farmers' room of a market-town inn in England! The advantage is not wholly with the Vermonters; by no means, for there is much in human nature besides the brain and the things of the brain. But in this one particular--in the topics of conversation, in the interest manifested in large and important subjects--the water-drinking Vermonters are to the beer-drinking Englishmen what Franklin was to the London printers. It is beyond the capacity of a well-beered brain even to read the pamphlet on Liberty and Necessity which Franklin wrote in those times. The few experiments which have been made, with a view to trace the course of alcohol in the living system, all confirm what all drinkers feel, that it is to the brain alcohol hurries when it has passed the lips. Some innocent dogs have suffered and died in this investigation. Dr. Percy, a British physician, records, that he injected two ounces and a half of alcohol into the stomach of a dog, which caused its almost instant death. The dog dropped very much as he would if he had been struck upon the head with a club. The experimenter, without a moment's unnecessary delay, removed the animal's brain, subjected it to distillation, and extracted from it a surprising quantity of alcohol,--a larger proportion than he could distil from the blood or liver. The alcohol seemed to have rushed to the brain: it was a blow upon the head which killed the dog. Dr. Percy introduced into the stomachs of other dogs smaller quantities of alcohol, not sufficient to cause death; but upon killing the dogs, and subjecting the brain, the blood, the bile, the liver, and other portions of the body, to distillation, he invariably found more alcohol in the brain than in the same weight of other organs. He injected alcohol into the blood of dogs, which caused death; but the deadly effect was produced, not upon the substance of the blood, but upon the brain. His experiments go far toward explaining why the drinking of alcoholic liquors does not sensibly retard digestion. It seems that, when we take wine at dinner, the alcohol does not remain in the stomach, but is immediately absorbed into the blood, and swiftly conveyed to the brain and other organs. If one of those "four-bottle men" of the last generation had fallen down dead, after boozing till past midnight, and he had been treated as Dr. Percy treated the dogs, his brain, his liver, and all the other centres of power, would have yielded alcohol in abundance; his blood would have smelt of it; his flesh would have contained it; but there would have been very little in the stomach. Those men were able to drink four, six, and seven bottles of wine at a sitting, because the sitting lasted four, six, and seven hours, which gave time for the alcohol to be distributed over the system. But instances have occurred of laboring men who have kept themselves steadily drunk for forty-eight hours, and then died. The bodies of two such were dissected some years ago in England, and the food which they had eaten at the beginning of the debauch was undigested. It had been preserved in alcohol as we preserve snakes. Once, and only once, in the lifetime of man, an intelligent human eye has been able to look into the living stomach, and watch the process of digestion. In 1822, at the United States military post of Michilimackinac, Alexis St. Martin, a Canadian of French extraction, received accidentally a heavy charge of duck-shot in his side, while he was standing one yard from the muzzle of the gun. The wound was frightful. One of the lungs protruded, and from an enormous aperture in the stomach the food recently eaten was oozing. Dr. William Beaumont, U.S.A., the surgeon of the post, was notified, and dressed the wound. In exactly one year from that day the young man was well enough to get out of doors, and walk about the fort; and he continued to improve in health and strength, until he was as strong and hardy as most of his race. He married, became the father of a large family, and performed for many years the laborious duties appertaining to an officer's servant at a frontier post. But the aperture into the stomach never closed, and the patient would not submit to the painful operation by which such wounds are sometimes closed artificially. He wore a compress arranged by the doctor, without which his dinner was not safe after he had eaten it. By a most blessed chance it happened that this Dr. William Beaumont, stationed there on the outskirts of creation, was an intelligent, inquisitive human being, who perceived all the value of the opportunity afforded him by this unique event. He set about improving that opportunity. He took the young man into his service, and, at intervals, for eight years, he experimented upon him. He alone among the sons of men has seen liquid flowing into the stomach of a living person while yet the vessel was at the drinker's lips. Through the aperture (which remained two and a half inches in circumference) he could watch the entire operation of digestion, and he did so hundreds of times. If the man's stomach ached, he could look into it and see what was the matter; and, having found out, he would drop a rectifying pill into the aperture. He ascertained the time it takes to digest each of the articles of food commonly eaten, and the effects of all the usual errors in eating and drinking. In 1833, he published a thin volume, at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, in which the results of thousands of experiments and observations were only too briefly stated. He appears not to have heard of teetotalism, and hence all that he says upon the effects of alcoholic liquors is free from the suspicion which the arrogance and extravagance of some teetotalers have thrown over much that has been published on this subject. With a mind unbiassed, Dr. Beaumont, peering into the stomach of this stout Canadian, notices that a glass of brandy causes the coats of that organ to assume the same inflamed appearance as when he had been very angry, or much frightened, or had overeaten, or had had the flow of perspiration suddenly checked. In other words, brandy played the part of a _foe_ in his system, not that of a friend; it produced effects which were morbid, not healthy. Nor did it make any material difference whether St. Martin drank brandy, whiskey, wine, cider, or beer, except so far as one was stronger than the other. "Simple water," says Dr. Beaumont, "is perhaps the only fluid that is called for by the wants of the economy. The artificial drinks are probably _all_ more or less injurious; some more so than others, but none can claim exemption from the general charge. Even tea and coffee, the common beverages of all classes of people, have a tendency to debilitate the digestive organs.... The whole class of alcoholic liquors may be considered as narcotics, producing very little difference in their ultimate effects upon the system." He ascertained too (not guessed, or inferred, but _ascertained_, watch in hand) that such things as mustard, horse-radish, and pepper retard digestion. At the close of his invaluable work Dr. Beaumont appends a long list of "Inferences," among which are the following: "That solid food of a certain texture is easier of digestion than fluid; that stimulating condiments are injurious to the healthy system; that the use of ardent spirits _always_ produces disease of the stomach if persisted in; that water, ardent spirits, and most other fluids, are not affected by the gastric juice, but pass from the stomach soon after they have been received." One thing appears to have much surprised Dr. Beaumont, and that was, the degree to which St. Martin's system could be disordered without his being much inconvenienced by it. After drinking hard every day for eight or ten days, the stomach would show alarming appearances of disease; and yet the man would only feel a slight headache, and a general dulness and languor. If there is no comfort for drinkers in Dr. Beaumont's precious little volume, it must be also confessed, that neither the dissecting-knife nor the microscope afford us the least countenance. All that has yet been ascertained of the effects of alcohol by the dissection of the body favors the extreme position of the extreme teetotalers. A brain alcoholized the microscope proves to be a brain diseased. Blood which has absorbed alcohol is unhealthy blood,--the microscope shows it. The liver, the heart, and other organs, which have been accustomed to absorb alcohol, all give testimony under the microscope which produces discomfort in the mind of one who likes a glass of wine, and hopes to be able to continue the enjoyment of it. The dissecting-knife and the microscope so far have nothing to say for us,--nothing at all: they are dead against us. Of all the experiments which have yet been undertaken with a view to trace the course of alcohol through the human system, the most important were those made in Paris a few years ago by Professors Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, distinguished physicians and chemists. Frenchmen have a way of co-operating with one another, both in the investigation of scientific questions and in the production of literature, which is creditable to their civilization and beneficial to the world. The experiments conducted by these gentlemen produced the remarkable effect of causing the editor of a leading periodical to confess to the public that he was not infallible. In 1855 the Westminster Review contained an article by Mr. Lewes, in which the teetotal side of these questions was effectively ridiculed; but, in 1861, the same periodical reviewed the work of the French professors just named, and honored itself by appending a note in which it said: "Since the date of our former article, scientific research has brought to light important facts which necessarily modify the opinions we then expressed concerning the _rôle_ of alcohol in the animal body." Those facts were revealed or indicated in the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy. Ether and chloroform,--their mode of operation; why and how they render the living body insensible to pain under the surgeon's knife; what becomes of them after they have performed that office,--these were the points which engaged their attention, and in the investigation of which they spent several years. They were rewarded, at length, with the success due to patience and ingenuity. By the aid of ingenious apparatus, after experiments almost numberless, they felt themselves in a position to demonstrate, that, when ether is inhaled, it is immediately absorbed by the blood, and by the blood is conveyed to the brain. If a surgeon were to commit such a breach of professional etiquette as to cut off a patient's head at the moment of complete insensibility, he would be able to distil from the brain a great quantity of ether. But it is not usual to take that liberty except with dogs. The inhalation, therefore, proceeds until the surgical operation is finished, when the handkerchief is withdrawn from the patient's face, and he is left to regain his senses. What happens then? What becomes of the ether? These learned Frenchmen discovered that most of it goes out of the body by the road it came in at,--the lungs. It was breathed in; it is breathed out. The rest escapes by other channels of egress; it all escapes, and it escapes unchanged! That is the point: it escapes without having _left_ anything in the system. All that can be said of it is, that it entered the body, created morbid conditions in the body, and then left the body. It cost these patient men years to arrive at this result; but any one who has ever had charge of a patient that has been rendered insensible by ether will find little difficulty in believing it. Having reached this demonstration, the experimenters naturally thought of applying the same method and similar apparatus to the investigation of the effects of alcohol, which is the fluid nearest resembling ether and chloroform. Dogs and men suffered in the cause. In the moisture exhaled from the pores of a drunken dog's skin, these cunning Frenchmen detected the alcohol which had made him drunk. They proved it to exist in the breath of a man, at six o'clock in the evening, who had drunk a bottle of claret for breakfast at half past ten in the morning. They also proved that, at midnight, the alcohol of that bottle of wine was still availing itself of other avenues of escape. They proved that when alcohol is taken into the system in any of its dilutions,--wine, cider, spirits, or beer,--the whole animal economy speedily busies itself with its expulsion, and continues to do so until it has expelled it. The lungs exhale it; the pores of the skin let out a little of it; the kidneys do their part; and by whatever other road an enemy can escape it seeks the outer air. Like ether, alcohol enters the body, makes a disturbance there, and goes out of the body, leaving it no richer than it found it. It is a guest that departs, after giving a great deal of trouble, without paying his bill or "remembering" the servants. Now, to make the demonstration complete, it would be necessary to take some unfortunate man or dog, give him a certain quantity of alcohol,--say one ounce,--and afterwards distil from his breath, perspiration, &c., the whole quantity that he had swallowed. This has not been done; it never will be done; it is obviously impossible. Enough has been done to justify these conscientious and indefatigable inquirers in announcing, as a thing susceptible of all but demonstration, that alcohol contributes to the human system nothing whatever, but leaves it undigested and wholly unchanged. They are fully persuaded (and so will you be, reader, if you read their book) that, if you take into your system an ounce of alcohol, the whole ounce leaves the system within forty-eight hours, just as good alcohol as it went in. There is a boy in Pickwick who swallowed a farthing. "Out with it," said the father; and it is to be presumed--though Mr. Weller does not mention the fact--that the boy complied with a request so reasonable. Just as much nutrition as that small copper coin left in the system of that boy, plus a small lump of sugar, did the claret which we drank yesterday deposit in ours; so, at least, we must infer from the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy. To evidence of this purely scientific nature might be added, if space could be afforded, a long list of persons who, having indulged in wine for many years, have found benefit from discontinuing the use of it. Most of us have known such instances. I have known several, and I can most truly say, that I have never known an individual in tolerable health who discontinued the use of any stimulant whatever without benefit. We all remember Sydney Smith's strong sentences on this point, scattered through the volume which contains the correspondence of that delicious humorist and wit. "I like London better than ever I liked it before," he writes in the prime of his prime (forty-three years old) to Lady Holland, "and simply, I believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London is stupefaction and inflammation." So has New York become. Again, in 1828, when he was fifty-seven, to the same lady: "I not only was never better, but never half so well; indeed, I find I have been very ill all my life without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough-boy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollections: Holland House past and to come! If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer walks and make greater exertions without fatigue. My understanding is improved, and I comprehend political economy. I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it; I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore or depress me. Pray leave off wine: the stomach is quite at rest; no heartburn, no pain, no distention." I have also a short catalogue of persons who, having long lived innocent of these agreeable drinks, began at length to use them. Dr. Franklin's case is striking. That "water American," as he was styled by the London printers, whose ceaseless guzzling of beer he ridiculed in his twentieth year, drank wine in his sixtieth with the freedom usual at that period among persons of good estate. "At parting," he writes in 1768, when he was sixty-two, "after we had drank a bottle and a half of claret each, Lord Clare hugged and kissed me, protesting he never in his life met with a man he was so much in love with." The consequence of this departure from the customs of his earlier life was ten years of occasional acute torture from the stone and gravel. Perhaps, if Franklin had remained a "water American," he would have annexed Canada to the United States at the peace of 1782. An agonizing attack of stone laid him on his back for three months, just as the negotiation was becoming interesting; and by the time he was well again the threads were gone out of his hands into those of the worst diplomatists that ever threw a golden chance away. What are we to conclude from all this? Are we to knock the heads out of all our wine-casks, join the temperance society, and denounce all men who do not follow our example? Taking together all that science and observation teach and indicate, we have one certainty: That, to a person in good health and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always in some degree hurtful. This truth becomes so clear, after a few weeks' investigation, that I advise every person who means to keep on drinking such liquors not to look into the facts; for if he does, he will never again be able to lift a glass of wine to his lips, nor contemplate a foaming tankard, nor mix his evening toddy, nor hear the pop and melodious gurgle of champagne, with that fine complacency which irradiates his countenance now, and renders it so pleasing a study to those who sit on the other side of the table. No; never again! Even the flavor of those fluids will lose something of their charm. The conviction will obtrude itself upon his mind at most inopportune moments, that this drinking of wine, beer, and whiskey, to which we are so much addicted, is an enormous delusion. If the teetotalers would induce some rational being--say that public benefactor, Dr. Willard Parker of New York--to collect into one small volume the substance of all the investigations alluded to in this article,--the substance of Dr. Beaumont's precious little book, the substance of the French professors' work, and the others,--adding no comment except such as might be necessary to elucidate the investigators' meaning, it could not but carry conviction to every candid and intelligent reader that spirituous drinks are to the healthy system an injury necessarily, and in all cases. The Coming Man, then, so long as he enjoys good health,--which he usually will from infancy to hoary age,--will _not_ drink wine, nor, of course, any of the coarser alcoholic dilutions. To that unclouded and fearless intelligence, science will be the supreme law; it will be to him more than the Koran is to a Mohammedan, and more than the Infallible Church is to a Roman Catholic. Science, or, in other words, the law of God as revealed in nature, life, and history, and as ascertained by experiment, observation, and thought,--this will be the teacher and guide of the Coming Man. A single certainty in a matter of so much importance is not to be despised. I can now say to young fellows who order a bottle of wine, and flatter themselves that, in so doing, they approve themselves "jolly dogs": No, my lads, it is because you are dull dogs that you want the wine. You are forced to borrow excitement because you have squandered your natural gayety. The ordering of the wine is a confession of insolvency. When we feel it necessary to "take something" at certain times during the day, we are in a condition similar to that of a merchant who every day, about the anxious hour of half past two, has to run around among his neighbors borrowing credit. It is something disgraceful or suspicious. Nature does not supply enough of inward force. We are in arrears. Our condition is absurd; and, if we ought not to be alarmed, we ought at least to be ashamed. Nor does the borrowed credit increase our store; it leaves nothing behind to enrich _us_, but takes something from our already insufficient stock; and the more pressing our need the more it costs us to borrow. But the Coming Man, blooming, robust, alert, and light-hearted as he will be, may not be always well. If, as he springs up a mountain-side, his foot slips, the law of gravitation will respect nature's darling too much to keep him from tumbling down the precipice; and, as he wanders in strange regions, an unperceived malaria may poison his pure and vivid blood. Some generous errors, too, he may commit (although it is not probable), and expend a portion of his own life in warding off evil from the lives of others. Fever may blaze even in his clear eyes; poison may rack his magnificent frame, and a long convalescence may severely try his admirable patience. Will the Coming Man drink wine when he is sick? The question is not easily answered. One valuable witness on this branch of the inquiry is the late Theodore Parker. A year or two before his lamented death, when he was already struggling with the disease that terminated his existence, he wrote for his friend, Dr. Bowditch, "the consumptive history" of his family from 1634, when his stalwart English ancestor settled in New England. The son of that ancestor built a house, in 1664, upon the slope of a hill which terminated in "a great fresh meadow of spongy peat," which was "always wet all the year through," and from which "fogs could be seen gathering towards night of a clear day."[2] In the third generation of the occupants of this house consumption was developed, and carried off eight children out of eleven, all between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. From that time consumption was the bane of the race, and spared not the offspring of parents who had removed from the family seat into localities free from malaria. One of the daughters of the house, who married a man of giant stature and great strength, became the mother of four sons. Three of these sons, though settled in a healthy place and in an innoxious business, died of consumption between twenty and twenty-five. But the fourth son became intemperate,--drank great quantities of New England rum. He did _not_ die of the disease, but was fifty-five years of age when the account was written, and then exhibited no consumptive tendency! To this fact Mr. Parker added others:-- "1. I know a consumptive family living in a situation like that I have mentioned for, perhaps, the same length of time, who had four sons. Two of them were often drunk, and always intemperate,--one of them as long as I can remember; both consumptive in early life, but now both hearty men from sixty to seventy. The two others were temperate, one drinking moderately, the other but occasionally. They both died of consumption, the eldest not over forty-five. [2] Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker. By John Weiss. Vol. II. p. 513. "2. Another consumptive family in such a situation as has been already described had many sons and several daughters. The daughters were all temperate, married, settled elsewhere, had children, died of consumption, bequeathing it also to their posterity. But five of the sons, whom I knew, were drunkards,--some, of the extremest description; they all had the consumptive build, and in early life showed signs of the disease, but none of them died of it; some of them are still burning in rum. There was one brother temperate, a farmer, living in the healthiest situation. But I was told he died some years ago of consumption." To these facts must be added one more woful than a thousand such,--that Theodore Parker himself, one of the most valuable lives upon the Western Continent, died of consumption in his fiftieth year. The inference which Mr. Parker drew from the family histories given was the following: "Intemperate habits (where the man drinks a pure, though coarse and fiery, liquor, like New England rum) tend to check the consumptive tendency, though the drunkard, who himself escapes the consequences, may transmit the fatal seed to his children." There is not much comfort in this for topers; but the facts are interesting, and have their value. A similar instance is related by Mr. Charles Knight; although in this case the poisoned air was more deadly, and more swift to destroy. Mr. Knight speaks, in his Popular History of England, of the "careless and avaricious employers" of London, among whom, he says, the master-tailors were the most notorious. Some of them would "huddle sixty or eighty workmen close together, nearly knee to knee, in a room fifty feet long by twenty feet broad, lighted from above, where the temperature in summer was thirty degrees higher than the temperature outside. Young men from the country fainted when they were first confined in such a life-destroying prison; the maturer ones _sustained themselves by gin_, till they perished of consumption, or typhus, or delirium tremens." To a long list of such facts as these could be added instances in which the deadly agent was other than poisoned air,--excessive exertion, very bad food, gluttony, deprivation. During the war I knew of a party of cavalry who, for three days and three nights, were not out of the saddle fifteen minutes at a time. The men consumed two quarts of whiskey each, and all of them came in alive. It is a custom in England to extract the last possible five miles from a tired horse, when those miles _must_ be had from him, by forcing down his most unwilling throat a quart of beer. It is known, too, that life can be sustained for many years in considerable vigor, upon a remarkably short allowance of food, provided the victim keeps his system well saturated with alcohol. Travellers across the plains to California tell us that, soon after getting past St. Louis, they strike a region where the principal articles of diet are saleratus and grease, to which a little flour and pork are added; upon which, they say, human life cannot be sustained unless the natural waste of the system is retarded by "preserving" the tissues in whiskey. Mr. Greeley, however, got through alive without resorting to this expedient, but he confesses in one of his letters that he suffered pangs and horrors of indigestion. All such facts as these--and they could be collected in great numbers--indicate the real office of alcohol in our modern life: _It enables us to violate the laws of nature without immediate suffering and speedy destruction_. This appears to be its chief office, in conjunction with its ally, tobacco. Those tailors would have soon died or escaped but for the gin; and those horsemen would have given up and perished but for the whiskey. Nature commanded those soldiers to rest, but they were enabled, for the moment, to disobey her. Doubtless Nature was even with them afterwards; but, for the time, they could _defy_ their mother great and wise. Alcohol supported them in doing wrong. Alcohol and tobacco support half the modern world in doing wrong. That is their part--their _rôle_, as the French investigators term it--in the present life of the human race. Dr. Great Practice would naturally go to bed at ten o'clock, when he comes in from his evening visits. It is his cigar that keeps him up till half past twelve, writing those treatises which make him famous, and shorten his life. Lawyer Heavy Fee takes home his papers, pores over them till past one, and then depends upon whiskey to quiet his brain and put him to sleep. Young Bohemian gets away from the office of the morning paper which enjoys the benefit of his fine talents at three o'clock. It is two mugs of lager-bier which enable him to endure the immediate consequences of eating a supper before going home. This is mad work, my masters; it is respectable suicide, nothing better. There is a paragraph now making the grand tour of the newspapers, which informs the public that there was a dinner given the other evening in New York consisting of twelve courses, and keeping the guests five hours at the table. For five hours, men and women sat consuming food, occupying half an hour at each viand. What could sustain human nature in such an amazing effort? What could enable them to look into one another's faces without blushing scarlet at the infamy of such a waste of time, food, and digestive force? What concealed from them the iniquity and deep vulgarity of what they were doing? The explanation of this mystery is given in the paragraph that records the crime: "There was a different kind of wine for each course." Even an ordinary dinner-party,--what mortal could eat it through, or sit it out, without a constant sipping of wine to keep his brain muddied, and lash his stomach to unnatural exertion. The joke of it is, that we all know and confess to one another how absurd such banquets are, and yet few have the courage and humanity to feed their friends in a way which they can enjoy, and feel the better for the next morning. When I saw Mr. Dickens eating and drinking his way through the elegantly bound book which Mr. Delmonico substituted for the usual bill of fare at the dinner given by the Press last April to the great artist,--a task of three hours' duration,--when, I say, I saw Mr. Dickens thus engaged, I wondered which banquet was the furthest from being the right thing,--the one to which he was then vainly trying to do justice, or the one of which Martin Chuzzlewit partook, on the day he landed in New York, at Mrs. Pawkins's boarding-house. The poultry, on the latter occasion, "disappeared as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see." Of course, the company adjourned from the dining-room to "the bar-room in the next block," where they imbibed strong drink enough to keep their dinner from prostrating them. The Delmonico banquet was a very different affair. Our public dinners are all arranged on the English system; for we have not yet taken up with the fine, sweeping principle, that whatever is right for England is wrong for America. Hence, not a lady was present! Within a day's journey of New York there are about thirty ladies who write regularly for the periodical press, besides as many more, perhaps, who contribute to it occasionally. Many editors, too, derive constant and important assistance, in the exercise of their profession, from their wives and daughters, who read books for them, suggest topics, correct errors, and keep busy editors in mind of the great truth that more than one half the human race is female. Mrs. Kemble, who had a treble claim to a seat at that table, was not many miles distant. Why were none of these gifted ladies present to grace and enliven the scene? The true answer is: _Wine and smoke_! Not _our_ wine and smoke, but those of our British ancestors who invented public dinners. The hospitable young gentlemen who had the affair in charge would have been delighted, no doubt, to depart from the established system, but hardly liked to risk so tremendous an innovation on an occasion of so much interest. If it had been put to the vote (by ballot), when the company had assembled, Shall we have ladies or not? all the hard drinkers, all the old smokers, would have furtively written "not" upon their ballots. Those who drink little wine, and do not depend upon that little; those who do not smoke or can easily dispense with smoke,--would have voted for the ladies; and the ladies would have carried the day by the majority which is so hard to get,--two thirds. It was a wise man who discovered that a small quantity of excellent soup is a good thing to begin a dinner with. He deserves well of his species. The soup allays the hungry savage within us, and restores us to civilization and to one another. Nor is he to be reckoned a traitor to his kind who first proclaimed that a little very nice and dainty fish, hot and crisp from the fire, is a pleasing introduction to more substantial viands. Six oysters upon their native shell, fresh from their ocean home, and freshly opened, small in size, intense in flavor, cool, but not too cold, radiating from a central quarter of a lemon,--this, too, was a fine conception, worthy of the age in which we live. But in what language can we characterize aright the abandoned man who first presumed to tempt Christians to begin a repast by partaking of _all_ three of these,--oysters, soup, _and_ fish? The object is defeated. The true purpose of these introductory trifles is to appease the appetite in a slight degree, so as to enable us to take sustenance with composure and dignity, and dispose the company to conversation. When a properly constituted person has eaten six oysters, a plate of soup, and the usual portion of fish, with the proper quantity of potatoes and bread, he has taken as much sustenance as nature requires. All the rest of the banquet is excess; and being excess, it is also mistake; it is a diminution of the sum-total of pleasure which the repast was capable of affording. But when Mr. Delmonico had brought us successfully so far on our way through his book; when we had consumed our oysters, our cream of asparagus in the Dumas style, our kettle-drums in the manner of Charles Dickens, and our trout cooked so as to do honor to Queen Victoria, we had only picked up a few pebbles on the shore of the banquet, while the great ocean of food still stretched out before us illimitable. The fillet of beef after the manner of Lucullus, the stuffed lamb in the style of Sir Walter Scott, the cutlets à la Fenimore Cooper, the historic pâtés, the sighs of Mantalini, and a dozen other efforts of Mr. Delmonico's genius, remained to be attempted. No man would willingly eat or sit through such a dinner without plenty of wine, which here plays its natural part,--supporting us in doing wrong. It is the wine which enables people to keep on eating for three hours, and to cram themselves with highly concentrated food, without rolling on the floor in agony. It is the wine which puts it within our power to consume, in digesting one dinner, the force that would suffice for the digestion of three. On that occasion Mr. Dickens was invited to visit us every twenty-five years "for the rest of his life," to see how we are getting on. The Coming Man may be a guest at the farewell banquet which the Press will give to the venerable author in 1893. That banquet will consist of three courses; and, instead of seven kinds of wine and various brands of cigars, there will be at every table its due proportion of ladies, the ornaments of their own sex, the instructors of ours, the boast and glory of the future Press of America. Wine, ale, and liquors, administered strictly as medicine,--what of them? Doctors differ on the subject, and known facts point to different conclusions. Distinguished physicians in England are of the opinion that Prince Albert would be alive at this moment if _no_ wine had been given him during his last sickness; but there were formerly those who thought that the Princess Charlotte would have been saved, if, at the crisis of her malady, she could have _had_ the glass of port wine which she craved and asked for. The biographers of William Pitt--Lord Macaulay among them--tell us, that at fourteen that precocious youth was tormented by inherited gout, and that the doctors prescribed a hair of the same dog which had bitten his ancestor from whom the gout was derived. The boy, we are told, used to consume two bottles of port a day; and, after keeping up this regimen for several months, he recovered his health, and retained it until, at the age of forty-seven, the news of Ulm and Austerlitz struck him mortal blows. Professor James Miller, of the University of Edinburgh, a decided teetotaler, declares _for_ wine in bad cases of fever; but Dr. R. T. Trall, another teetotaler, says that during the last twenty years he has treated hundreds of cases of fevers on the cold-water system, and "not yet lost the first one"; although, during the first ten years of his practice, when he gave wine and other stimulants, he lost "about the usual proportion of cases." The truth appears to be that, in a few instances of intermittent disease, a small quantity of wine may sometimes enable a patient who is at the low tide of vitality to anticipate the turn of the tide, and borrow at four o'clock enough of five o'clock strength to enable him to reach five o'clock. With regard to this daily drinking of wine and whiskey, by ladies and others, for mere debility, it is a delusion. In such cases wine is, in the most literal sense of the word, a mocker. It seems to nourish, but does not; it seems to warm, but does not; it seems to strengthen, but does not. It is an arrant cheat, and perpetuates the evils it is supposed to alleviate. The Coming Man, as before remarked, will not drink wine when he is well. It will be also an article of his religion not to commit any of those sins against his body the consequences of which can be postponed by drinking wine. He will hold his body in veneration. He will feel all the turpitude and shame of violating it. He will not acquire the greatest intellectual good by the smallest bodily loss. He will know that mental acquisitions gained at the expense of physical power or prowess are not culture, but effeminacy. He will honor a rosy and stalwart ignoramus, who is also an honest man, faithfully standing at his post; but he will start back with affright and indignation at the spectacle of a pallid philosopher. The Coming Man, I am firmly persuaded, will not drink wine, nor any other stimulating fluid. If by chance he should be sick, he will place himself in the hands of the Coming Doctor, and take whatever is prescribed. The impression is strong upon my mind, after reading almost all there is in print on the subject, and conversing with many physicians, that the Coming Doctor will give his patients alcoholic mixtures about as often as he will give them laudanum, and in doses of about the same magnitude, reckoned by drops. We drinkers have been in the habit, for many years, of playing off the wine countries against the teetotalers; but even this argument fails us when we question the men who really know the wine countries. Alcohol appears to be as pernicious to man in Italy, France, and Southern Germany, where little is taken except in the form of wine, as it is in Sweden, Scotland, Russia, England, and the United States, where more fiery and powerful dilutions are usual. Fenimore Cooper wrote: "I came to Europe under the impression that there was more drunkenness among us than in any other country,--England, perhaps, excepted. A residence of six months in Paris changed my views entirely; I have taken unbelievers with me into the streets, and have never failed to convince them of their mistake in the course of an hour.... On one occasion a party of four went out with this object; we passed thirteen drunken men within a walk of an hour,--many of them were so far gone as to be totally unable to walk.... In passing between Paris and London, I have been more struck by drunkenness in the streets of the former than in those of the latter." Horatio Greenough gives similar testimony respecting Italy: "Many of the more thinking and prudent Italians abstain from the use of wine; several of the most eminent of the medical men are notoriously opposed to its use, and declare it a poison. One fifth, and sometimes one fourth, of the earnings of the laborers are expended in wine." I have been surprised at the quantity, the emphasis, and the uniformity of the testimony on this point. Close observers of the famous beer countries, such as Saxony and Bavaria, where the beer is pure and excellent, speak of this delicious liquid as the chief enemy of the nobler faculties and tastes of human nature. The surplus wealth, the surplus time, the surplus force of those nations, are chiefly expended in fuddling the brain with beer. Now, no reader needs to be informed that the progress of man, of nations, and of men depends upon the use they make of their little surplus. It is not a small matter, but a great and weighty consideration,--the cost of these drinks in mere money. We drinkers must make out a very clear case in order to justify such a country as France in producing a _billion and a half of dollars'_ worth of wine and brandy per annum. The teetotalers, then, are right in their leading positions, and yet they stand aghast, wondering at their failure to convince mankind. Mr. E. G. Delavan writes from Paris within these few weeks: "When I was here thirty years since, Louis Philippe told me that wine was the curse of France; that he wished every grapevine was destroyed, except for the production of food; that total abstinence was the only true temperance; but he did not believe there were fifteen persons in Paris who understood it as it was understood by his family and myself; but he hoped from the labors in America, in time, an influence would flow back upon France that would be beneficial. I am here again after the lapse of so many years, and in place of witnessing any abatement of the evil, I think it is on the increase, especially in the use of distilled spirits." The teetotalers have underrated the difficulty of the task they have undertaken, and misconceived its nature. It is not the great toe that most requires treatment when a man has the gout, although it is the great toe that makes him roar. When we look about us, and consider the present physical life of man, we are obliged to conclude that the whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint. Drinking is but a symptom which reveals the malady. Perhaps, if we were all to stop our guzzling suddenly, _without_ discontinuing our other bad habits, we should rather lose by it than gain. Alcohol supports us in doing wrong! It prevents our immediate destruction. The thing for us to do is, to strike at the causes of drinking, to cease the bad breathing, the bad eating, the bad reading, the bad feeling and bad thinking, which, in a sense, necessitate bad drinking. For some of the teetotal organizations might be substituted Physical Welfare Societies. The Human Race is now on trial for its life! One hundred and three years ago last April, James Watt, a poor Scotch mechanic, while taking his walk on Sunday afternoon on Glasgow Green, conceived the idea which has made steam man's submissive and untiring slave. Steam enables the fifteen millions of adults in Great Britain and Ireland to produce more commodities than the whole population of the earth could produce without its assistance. Steam, plus the virgin soil of two new continents, has placed the means of self-destruction within the reach of hundreds of millions of human beings whose ancestors were almost as safe in their ignorance and poverty as the beasts they attended. At the same time, the steam-engine is an infuriate propagator; and myriad creatures of its producing--creatures of eager desires, thin brains, excessive vanity, and small self-control--seem formed to bend the neck to the destructive tyranny of fashion, and yield helplessly to the more destructive tyranny of habit. The steam-engine gives them a great variety of the means of self-extirpation,--air-tight houses, labor-saving machines, luxurious food, stimulating drinks, highly wrought novels, and many others. Let _all_ women for the next century but wear such restraining clothes as are now usual, and it is doubtful if the race could ever recover from the effects; it is doubtful if there could ever again be a full-orbed, bouncing baby. Wherever we look, we see the human race dwindling. The English aristocracy used to be thought an exception, but Miss Nightingale says not. She tells us that the great houses of England, like the small houses of America, contain great-grandmothers possessing constitutions without a flaw, grandmothers but slightly impaired, mothers who are often ailing and never strong, daughters who are miserable and hopeless invalids. And the steam-engine has placed efficient means of self-destruction within reach of the kitchen, the stable, the farm, and the shop; and those means of self-destruction are all but universally used. Perhaps man has nearly run his course in this world, and is about to disappear, like the mammoth, and give place to some nobler kind of creature who will manage the estate better than the present occupant. Certainly we cannot boast of having done very well with it, nor could we complain if we should receive notice to leave. Perhaps James Watt came into the world to extinguish his species. If so, it is well. Let us go on eating, drinking, smoking, over-working, idling, men killing themselves to buy clothes for their wives, wives killing themselves by wearing them, children petted and candied into imbecility and diphtheria. In that case, of course, there will be no Coming Man, and we need not take the trouble to inquire what he will do. But probably the instinct of self-preservation will assert itself in time, and an antidote to the steam-engine will be found before it has impaired the whole race beyond recovery. To have discovered the truth with regard to the effects of alcohol upon the system was of itself no slight triumph of the self-preserving principle. It is probable that the truly helpful men of the next hundred years will occupy themselves very much with the physical welfare of the race, without which no other welfare is possible. INEBRIATE ASYLUMS, AND A VISIT TO ONE. There are two kinds of drunkards,--the Regular and the Occasional. Of each of these two classes there are several varieties, and, indeed, there are no two cases precisely alike; but every drunkard in the world is either a person who has lost the power to refrain from drinking a certain large quantity of alcoholic liquor every day, or he is one who has lost the power to refrain from drinking an uncertain enormous quantity now and then. Few get drunk habitually who can refrain. If they could refrain, they would; for to no creatures is drunkenness so loathsome and temperance so engaging as to seven tenths of the drunkards. There are a few very coarse men, of heavy, stolid, animal organization, who almost seem formed by nature to absorb alcohol, and in whom there is not enough of manhood to be ashamed of its degradation. These Dr. Albert Day, the superintendent of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, sometimes calls Natural Drunkards. They like strong drink for its own sake; they have a kind of sulky enjoyment of its muddling effect upon such brains as they happen to have; and when once the habit is fixed, nothing can deliver them except stone walls and iron bars. There are also a few drunkards of very light calibre, trifling persons, incapable of serious reflection or of a serious purpose, their very terrors being trivial and transitory, who do not care for the ruin in which they are involved. Generally speaking, however, drunkards hate the servitude into which they have had the misfortune to fall; they long to escape from it, have often tried to escape, and if they have given up, it is only after having so many times slidden back into the abyss, that they feel it would be of no use to climb again. As Mrs. H. B. Stowe remarks, with that excellent charity of hers, which is but another name for refined justice, "Many a drunkard has expended more virtue in vain endeavors to break his chain than suffices to carry an ordinary Christian to heaven." The daily life of one of the steady drunkards is like this: upon getting up in the morning, after a heavy, restless, drunkard's sleep, he is miserable beyond expression, and almost helpless. In very bad cases, he will see double, and his hands will tremble so that he cannot lift to his lips the glass for which he has a desire amounting to mania. Two or three stiff glasses of spirituous liquor will restore him so far that he can control his muscles, and get about without betraying his condition. After being up an hour, and drinking every ten or fifteen minutes, he will usually be able to eat a pretty good breakfast, which, with the aid of coffee, tobacco, and a comparatively small quantity of liquor, he will be able to digest. After breakfast, for some hours he will generally be able to transact routine business, and associate with his fellows without exciting their pity or contempt. As dinner-time draws near he feels the necessity of creating an appetite; which he often accomplishes by drinking some of those infernal compounds which are advertised on the eternal rocks and mountain-sides as Bitters,--a mixture of bad drugs with worse spirits. These bitters do lash the torpid powers into a momentary, morbid, fierce activity, which enables the victim to eat even a superabundant dinner. The false excitement subsides, but the dinner remains, and it has to be digested. This calls for an occasional drink for three or four hours, after which the system is exhausted, and the man feels dull and languid. He is exhausted, but he is not tranquil; he craves a continuation of the stimulant with a craving which human nature, so abused and perverted, never resists. By this time it is evening, when all the apparatus of temptation is in the fullest activity, and all the loose population of the town is abroad. He now begins his evening debauch, and keeps up a steady drinking until he can drink no more, when he stumbles home to sleep off the stupefying fumes, and awake to the horror and decrepitude of a drunkard's morning. The quantity of spirituous liquor required to keep one of these unhappy men in this degrading slavery varies from a pint a day to two quarts. Many drunkards consume a quart of whiskey every day for years. The regular allowance of one gentleman of the highest position, both social and official, who made his way to the Inebriate Asylum, had been two quarts of brandy a day for about five years. The most remarkable known case is that of a hoary-headed man of education and fortune, residing in the city of New York, who confesses to taking "fifty drinks a day" of whiskey,--ten drinks to a bottle, and five bottles to a gallon. One gallon of liquor, he _says_, goes down his old throat every day of the year. Before he is fit to eat his breakfast in the morning he has to drink twelve glasses of whiskey, or one bottle and one fifth. Nevertheless, even this poor man is able, for some hours of the morning, to transact what people of property and leisure call business, and, during a part of the evening, to converse in such a way as to amuse persons who can look on and see a human being in such bondage without stopping to think what a tragedy it is. This Old Boy never has to be carried home, I believe. He is one of those most hopeless drunkards who never get drunk, never wallow in the gutter, never do anything to scare or startle them into an attempt to reform. He is like a certain German "puddler" who was pointed out to me in a Pittsburg iron-works, who consumes exactly seven dollars' worth of lager-bier every seven days,--twenty glasses a day, at five cents each. He is also like the men employed in the dismal work of the brewery, who are allowed as much beer as they can drink, and who generally do drink as much as they can. Such persons are always fuddled and stupid, but seldom drunk enough to alarm their neighbors or themselves. Perhaps they are the only persons in all the world who are in any degree justified in passing their lives in a state of suspended intelligence; those of them at least whose duty it is to get inside of enormous beer barrels, and there, in darkness and solitude, in an atmosphere reeking and heavy with stale ale, scrape and mop them out before they are refilled. When you see their dirty, pale faces at the "man-hole" of the barrel, down in the rumbling bowels of the earth, in one of those vast caves of beer in Cincinnati, you catch yourself saying, "Drink, poor devils, drink! Soak what brains you have in beer!" What can a man want with brains in a beer-barrel? But then, you think again, even these poor men need their brains when they get home; and _we_ need that they should have brains on the first Tuesday in November. It is that _going home_ which makes drunkenness so dire a tragedy. If the drunkard could only shut himself up with a whiskey-barrel, or a pipe of Madeira, and quietly guzzle himself to death, it would be a pity, but it could be borne. He never does this; he goes home to make that home perdition to some good souls that love him, or depend upon him, and cannot give him up. There are men at the Asylum near Binghamton, who have admirable wives, beautiful and accomplished daughters, venerable parents, whose portraits are there in the patient's trunks, and who write daily letters to cheer the absent one, whose absence now, for the firsts time in years, does not terrify them. _They_ are the victims of drunkenness,--they who never taste strong drink. For _their_ deliverance, this Asylum stands upon its hill justified in existing. The men themselves are interesting, valuable, precious, worth every rational effort that can be made to save them; but it is those whom they left at home anxious and desolate that have the first claim upon our consideration. With regard to these steady, regular drunkards, the point to be noted is this: very few of them can stop drinking while they continue to perform their daily labor; they absolutely _depend_ upon the alcohol to rouse their torpid energies to activity. Their jaded constitutions will not budge without the spur. Everything within them gapes and hungers for the accustomed stimulant. This is the case, even in a literal sense; for it seems, from Dr. Day's dissections, that the general effect of excessive drinking is to enlarge the globules of which the brain, the blood, the liver, and other organs are composed, so that those globules, as it were, stand open-mouthed, empty, athirst, inflamed, and most eager to be filled. A man whose every organ is thus diseased cannot usually take the first step toward cure without ceasing for a while to make any other demands upon himself. This is the great fact of his condition. If he is a true drunkard, i.e. if he has lost the power to do his work without excessive alcoholic stimulation, then there is no cure possible for him without rest. Here we have the simple explanation of Mrs. Stowe's fine remark just quoted. This is why so many thousand wives spend their days in torment between hope and despair,--hope kindled by the husband's efforts to regain possession of himself, and despair caused by his repeated, his inevitable relapses. The unfortunate man tries to do two things at once, the easiest of which is as much as he can accomplish; while the hardest is a task which, even with the advantage of perfect rest, few can perform without assistance. The Occasional Drunkard is a man who is a teetotaler for a week, two weeks, a month, three months, six months, and who, at the end of his period, is tempted to drink one glass of alcoholic liquor. That one glass has upon him two effects; it rouses the slumbering demon of Desire, and it perverts his moral judgment. All at once his honor and good name, the happiness and dignity of his family, his success in business, all that he held dearest a moment before, seem small to him, and he thinks he has been a fool of late to concern himself so much about them. Or else he thinks he can drink without being found out, and without its doing him the harm it did the last time. Whatever may be the particular delusion that seizes him, the effect is the same; he drinks, and drinks, and drinks, keeping it up sometimes for ten days, or even for several weeks, until the long debauch ends in utter exhaustion or in delirium tremens. He is then compelled to submit to treatment; he must needs go to the Inebriate Asylum of his own bed-room. There, whether he raves or droops, he is the most miserable wretch on earth; for, besides the bodily tortures which he surfers, he has to endure the most desolating pang that a decent human being ever knows,--the loss of his self-respect. He abhors himself and is ashamed; he remembers past relapses and despairs; he cannot look his own children in the face; he wishes he had never been born, or had died in the cursed hour, vividly remembered, when this appetite mastered him first. As his health is restored, his hopes revive; he renews his resolution and he resumes his ordinary routine, subdued, distrustful of himself, and on the watch against temptation. Why he again relapses he can hardly tell, but he always does. Sometimes a snarl in business perplexes him, and he drinks for elucidation. Sometimes melancholy oppresses him, and he drinks to drive dull care away. Sometimes good fortune overtakes him, or an enchanting day in June or October attunes his heart to joy, and he is taken captive by the strong delusion that now is the time to drink and be glad. Often it is lovely woman who offers the wine, and offers it in such a way that he thinks he cannot refuse without incivility or confession. From conversation with the inmates of the Inebriate Asylum, I am confident that Mr. Greeley's assertion with regard to the wine given at the Communion is correct. That sip might be enough to awaken the desire. The mere odor of the wine filling the church might be too much for some men. There appears to be a physical cause for this extreme susceptibility. Dr. Day has once had the opportunity to examine the brain of a man who, after having been a drunkard, reformed, and lived for some years a teetotaler. He found, to his surprise, that the globules of the brain had not shrunk to their natural size. They did not exhibit the inflammation of the drunkard's brain, but they were still enlarged, and seemed ready on the instant to absorb the fumes of alcohol, and resume their former condition. He thought he saw in this morbid state of the brain the physical part of the reason why a man who has once been a drunkard can never again, as long as he lives, safely take one drop of any alcoholic liquor. He thought he saw why a glass of wine puts the man back instantly to where he was when he drank all the time. He saw the citadel free from the enemy, swept and clean, but undefended, incapable of defence, and its doors opened wide to the enemy's return; so that there was no safety, except in keeping the foe at a distance, away beyond the outermost wall. There are many varieties of these occasional drunkards, and, as a class, they are perhaps the hardest to cure. Edgar Poe was one of them; half a glass of wine would set him off upon a wild, reckless debauch, that would last for days. All such persons as artists, writers, and actors used to be particularly subject to this malady, before they had any recognized place in the world, or any acknowledged right to exist at all. Men whose labors are intense, but irregular, whose gains are small and uncertain, who would gladly be gentlemen, but are compelled to content themselves with being loafers, are in special danger; and so are men whose toil is extremely monotonous. Printers, especially those who work at night upon newspapers, are, perhaps, of all men the most liable to fall under the dominion of drink. Some of them have persuaded themselves that they rest under a kind of necessity to "go on a tear" now and then, as a relief from such grinding work as theirs. On the contrary, one "tear" creates the temptation to another; for the man goes back to his work weak, depressed, and irritable; the monotony of his labor is aggravated by the incorrectness with which he does it, and the longing to break loose and renew the oblivion of drink strengthens rapidly, until it masters him once more. Of these periodical drunkards it is as true as it is of their regular brethren, that they cannot conquer the habit without being relieved for a while of their daily labor. This malady is so frequent among us, that hardly an individual will cast his eyes over these pages who cannot call to mind at least one person who has struggled with it for many years, and struggled in vain. They attempt too much. Their periodical "sprees," "benders," or "tears" are a connected series, each a cause and an effect, an heir and a progenitor. After each debauch, the man returns to his routine in just the state of health, in just the state of mind, to be irritated, disgusted, and exhausted by that routine; and, at every moment of weakness, there is always present the temptation to seek the deadly respite of alcohol. The moment arrives when the desire becomes too strong for him, and the victim yields to it by a law as sure, as irresistible, as that which makes the apple seek the earth's centre when it is disengaged from the tree. It is amazing to see how helpless men can be against such a habit, while they are compelled to continue their daily round of duties. Not ignorant men only, nor bad men, nor weak men, but men of good understanding, of rare gifts, of the loftiest aspirations, of characters the most amiable, engaging, and estimable, and of will sufficient for every purpose but this. They _know_ the ruin that awaits them, or in which they are already involved, better than we other sinners know it; they hate their bondage worse than the most uncharitable of their friends can despise it; they look with unutterable envy upon those who still have dominion over themselves; many, very many of them would give all they have for deliverance; and yet self-deliverance is impossible. There are men among them who have been trying for thirty years to abstain, and still they drink. Some of them have succeeded in lengthening the sober interval, and they will live with strictest correctness for six months or more, and then, taking that first fatal glass, will immediately lose their self-control, and drink furiously for days and nights; drink until they are obliged to use drunken artifice to get the liquid into their mouths,--their hands refusing their office. Whether they take a large quantity of liquor every day, or an immense quantity periodically, makes no great difference, the disease is essentially the same; the difficulties in the way of cure are the same; the remedial measures must be the same. A drunkard, in short, is a person so diseased by alcohol, that he cannot get through his work without keeping his system saturated with it, or without such weariness and irritation as furnish irresistible temptation to a debauch. He is, in other words, a fallen brother, who cannot get upon his feet without help, and who can generally get upon his feet with help. Upon this truth Inebriate Asylums are founded; their object being to afford the help needed. There are now four such institutions in the United States: one in Boston, opened in 1857, called the Washingtonian Home; one in Media, near Philadelphia, opened in 1867, called the Sanitarium; one at Chicago, opened in 1868; and one at Binghamton, New York, called the New York Inebriate Asylum. The one last named was founded in 1858, if the laying of the corner-stone with grand ceremonial can be called founding it; and it has been opened some years for the reception of patients; but it had no real existence as an asylum for the cure of inebriates until the year 1867, when the present superintendent, Dr. Albert Day, assumed control. The history of the institution previous to that time ought to be related fully for the warning of a preoccupied and subscribing public, but space cannot be afforded for it here. The substance of it, as developed in sundry reports of trials and pamphlets of testimony, is this: Fifteen or twenty years ago, an English adventurer living in the city of New York, calling himself a doctor, and professing to treat unnamable diseases, thought he saw in this notion of an Inebriate Asylum (then much spoken of) a chance for feathering his nest. He entered upon the enterprise without delay, and he displayed a good deal of nervous energy in getting the charter, collecting money, and erecting the building. The people of Binghamton, misled by his representations, gave a farm of two hundred and fifty-two acres for the future inmates to cultivate, which was two hundred acres too much; and to this tract farms still more superfluous have been added, until the Asylum estate contains more than five hundred acres. An edifice was begun on the scale of an imperial palace, which will have cost, by the time it is finished and furnished, a million dollars. The restless man pervaded the State raising money, and creating public opinion in favor of the institution. For several years he was regarded as one of the great originating philanthropists of the age; and this the more because he always gave out that he was laboring in the cause from pure love of the inebriate, and received no compensation. But the time came when his real object and true character were revealed. In 1864 he carried his disinterestedness so far as to offer to _give_ to the institution, as part of its permanent fund, the entire amount to which he said he was entitled for services rendered and expenses incurred. This amount was two hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars, which would certainly have been a handsome gift. When he was asked for the items of his account, he said he had charged for eighteen years' services in founding the institution, at thirty-five hundred dollars a year, and the rest was travelling-expenses, clerk hire, and salaries paid to agents. The trustees were puzzled to know how a man who, at the beginning of the enterprise, had no visible property, could have expended so much out of his private resources, while exercising an unremunerated employment. Leaving that conundrum unsolved, they were able at length to conjecture the object of the donation. One of the articles of the charter provided that any person giving ten dollars to the institution should be a stockholder, and entitled to a vote at the election of trustees. Every gift of ten dollars was a vote! If, therefore, this astounding claim had been allowed, and the _gift_ accepted, the audacious villain would have been constituted owner of four fifths of the governing stock, and the absolute controller of the entire property of the institution! It was a bold game, and the strangest part of the story is, that it came near succeeding. It required the most arduous exertions of a public-spirited board of trustees, headed by Dr. Willard Parker, to oust the man who, even after the discovery of his scheme, played his few last cards so well that he had to be bought off by a considerable sum cash down. An incident of the disastrous reign of this individual was the burning of one of the wings of the building, after he had had it well insured. The insurance was paid him ($81,000); and there was a trial for arson,--a crime which is easy to commit, and hard to prove. Binghamton convicted the prisoner, but the jury was obliged to acquit him.[3] [3] The man and his confederates must have carried off an enormous booty. The local trustees say, in their Report for 1867:-- "Less than two years ago the Asylum received about $81,000 from insurance companies for damage done by fire to the north wing. About $20,000 have since been received from the counties; making from these two sources about $100,000; and, although the buildings and grounds remain in the same unfinished state as when the fire occurred, except a small amount of work done in one or two wards in the south wing, the $100,000 have nearly disappeared.... Aside from the payment of interest and insurance, this money has been expended by Dr. ----, and in just such ways as he thought proper to use it. "It may well be asked why this is so. The answer is, that Dr. ---- assumes and exercises supreme control, and allows no interference, at least on the part of the resident trustees.... "His control and management of everything connected with the institution has been as absolute in fact, if not in form, as if he were its sole proprietor. He goes to Albany to obtain legislation giving him extraordinary police powers, without as much as even informing the trustees of his intentions. When the iron grates for the windows of the lower ward were obtained, the resident trustees knew nothing of the matter, until they were informed that the patients were looking through barred windows. Everything has been done in the same way. He is not known to have had any other official relation to the institution by regular appointment than that of corresponding secretary, and yet he has exercised a power over its affairs which has defied all restraint. He lives there with his family, without a salary, and without individual resources, and dispenses hospitality or charity to his kindred with as much freedom and unreserve as if he owned everything and had unlimited means at his command. In fact, incredible as it may seem, he claims that he is virtually the owner of the institution. And his claim might have challenged contradiction, had his plans succeeded." Such things may be done in a community where almost every one is benevolent enough to give money towards an object that promises to mitigate human woe, but where scarcely any one has leisure to watch the expenditure of that sacred treasure! The institution, after it was open, remained for two years under the blight of this person's control. Everything he did was wrong. Ignorant, obstinate, passionate, fussy, and false,--plausible and obsequious at Albany, a violent despot at the Asylum,--he was, of all the people in the world, the precisely worst man to conduct an experiment so novel and so abounding in difficulties. If he had a theory, it was that an inebriate is something between a criminal and a lunatic, who is to be punished like the one and restrained like the other. His real object seemed to be, after having received payment for a patient six months in advance, to starve and madden him into a sudden departure. The very name chosen by him for the institution proves his hopeless incompetency. "Inebriate Asylum!" That name to-day is, perhaps, the greatest single obstacle to its growth. He began by affixing a stigma to the unfortunate men who had honored themselves by making so gallant an effort at self-recovery. But let the man and his doings pass into oblivion. There never yet was a bad man who was not, upon the whole, a very stupid ass. All the genuine intelligence in the world resides in virtuous minds. When, therefore, I have said that this individual was an unprincipled adventurer, I have also said that he was signally incapable of conducting an institution like this. While we, in the State of New York, were blundering on in this way, permitting a million dollars of public and private money to be lavished in the attempt to found an asylum, a few quiet people in Boston, aided by a small annual grant from the Legislature, had actually established one, and kept it going for nine years, during which three thousand inebriates had been received, and two thousand of them cured! The thing was accomplished in the simplest way. They hired the best house for the purpose that chanced to be vacant, fitted it up at the least possible expense, installed in it as superintendent an honest man whose heart was in the business, and opened its doors for the reception of patients. By and by, when they had results to show, they asked the Legislature for a little help, which was granted, and has been renewed from year to year ever since. The sum voted has never exceeded five thousand dollars in any year, and there are three men in Boston at this moment reclaimed from drunkenness by the Washingtonian Home who pay taxes enough to support it. In an enterprise for the management of which no precedents exist, everything of course depends upon the chief. When you have got the right man at the head, you have got everything; and until you have got the right man there, you have got nothing. Albert Day, the superintendent for nine years of the Washingtonian Home at Boston, and during the last year and a half the superintendent of the Asylum at Binghamton, has originated nearly all that is known of the art of curing the mania for alcohol. He struck into the right path at once, guided by instinct and sympathy, rather than by science or reflection. He was not a professional person; he was simply a business man of good New England education, who had two special qualifications for his new position,--first, a singular pity for drunkards; and, secondly, a firm belief that, with timely and right assistance, a majority of them could be restored to self-control. This pity and this faith he had possessed for many years, and they had both grown strong by exercise. When he was a child upon his father's farm in Maine, he saw in his own home and all around him the evils resulting from the general use of alcoholic liquors, so that when the orators of teetotalism came along he was ready to receive their message. He is one of the very few persons now living in the world who never partook of an alcoholic beverage,--so early was he convinced of their preposterous inutility. Losing his father at thirteen, he at once took hold of life in the true Yankee way. He tied up his few worldly effects into a bundle, and, slinging it over his shoulder, walked to a farmer's house not many miles away, and addressed to him a plain question, "Do you want to hire a boy?" to which the farmer with equal directness replied, "Yes." From hoeing corn and chopping wood the lad advanced to an apprenticeship, and learned a mechanical trade; and so made his way to early marriage, decent prosperity, and a seat in the Legislature of Massachusetts. From the age of sixteen he was known, wherever he lived, as a stanch teetotaler, and also as one who would befriend a drunkard after others had abandoned him to his fate. I once heard Dr. Day relate the occurrence which produced in his mind the conviction that drunkards could be rescued from the domination of their morbid appetite. One evening, when he came home from his work, he heard that a certain Jack Watts, the sot of the neighborhood, was starving with his wife and three young children. After tea he went to see him. In treating this first patient, Albert Day hit upon the very method he has ever since pursued, and so I beg the reader will note the manner in which he proceeded. On entering his cottage he was as polite to him, as considerate of his dignity as head of a household, as he could have been to the first man of the village. "Mr. Watts," said he, after the usual salutations, "I hear you are in straitened circumstances." The man, who was then quite sober, replied: "I am; my two youngest children went to bed crying for food, and I had none to give them. I spent my last three cents over there," pointing to a grog-shop opposite, "and the bar-keeper said to me, as he took the money, says he, 'Jack Watts, you're a fool'; and so I am." Here was a chance for a fine moral lecture. Albert Day indulged in nothing of the kind. He said, "Mr. Watts, excuse me for a few minutes"; and he went out, returning soon with a basket containing some flour, pork, and other materials for a supper. "Now, Mrs. Watts, cook something, and wake your children up, and give them something to eat. I'll call again early in the morning. Good night." Perfect civility, no reproaches, no lecture, practical help of the kind needed and at the time needed. Observe, too, that the man was in the condition of mind in which patients usually are when they make the _confession_ implied in entering an asylum. He was at the end of his tether. He was--to use the language of the bar-room--"dead beat." When Mr. Day called the next morning, the family had had their breakfast, and Jack Watts smiled benedictions on the man whom he had been wont to regard as his enemy, because he was the declared enemy of Jack Watts's enemy. Now the time had come for a little talk. Jack Watts explained his circumstances; he had been out of work for a long time, and he had consumed all his substance in drink. Mr. Day listened with respectful attention, spoke to him of various plans for the future, and said that for that day he could give him a dollar's worth of wood-chopping to do. Then they got upon the liquor question. In the softened, receptive mind of Jack Watts, Albert Day deposited the substance of a rational temperance lecture. He spoke to him kindly, respectfully, hopefully, strongly. Jack Watts's mind was convinced; he said he had done with drink forever. He meant it too; and thus he was brought to the second stage on the road to deliverance. In this particular case, resting from labor was out of the question and unnecessary, for the man had been resting too long already, and must needs go to work. The wood was chopped. The dollar to be paid for the work at the close of the day was a fearful ordeal for poor Jack, living fifteen yards from a bar-room. Mr. Day called round in the evening, paid him the dollar without remark, fell into ordinary conversation with the family, and took leave. John stood the test; not a cent of the money found its way into the till of the bar-keeper. Next morning Mr. Day was there again, and, seeing that the patient was going on well, spoke to him further about the future, and glided again into the main topic, dwelling much upon the absolute necessity of total and eternal abstinence. He got the man a place, visited him, held him up, fortified his mind, and so helped him to complete and lasting recovery. Jack Watts never drank again. He died a year or two ago in Maine at a good age, having brought up his family respectably. This was an extreme case, for the man had been a drunkard many years; it was a difficult case, for he was poor and ignorant; and it made upon the mind of Albert Day an impression that nothing could efface. He was living in Boston in 1857, exercising his trade, when the Washingtonian Home was opened. He was indeed one of the originators of the movement, and took the post of superintendent because no one else seemed capable of conducting the experiment. Having now to deal with the diseased bodies of men, he joined the medical department of Harvard University, and went through the usual course, making a particular study of the malady he was attempting to cure. After nine years' service he was transferred to the Asylum at Binghamton, where he pursues the system practised with success at Boston. I visited the Binghamton Asylum in June of the present year. The situation combines many advantages. Of the younger cities that have sprung into importance along the line of leading railroads there is not one of more vigorous growth or more inviting appearance than Binghamton. Indications of spirit and civilization meet the eye at every turn. There are long streets of elegant cottages and villas, surrounded by nicely kept gardens and lawns, and containing churches in the construction of which the established barbarisms have been avoided. There is a general tidiness and attention to appearances that we notice in the beautiful towns and villages of New England; such as picturesque Northampton, romantic Brattleboro', and enchanting Stockbridge, peerless among villages. The Chenango River unites here with the Susquehanna; so that the people who have not a river within sight of their front doors are likely to have one flowing peacefully along at the back of their gardens. It is a town, the existence of which in a State governed as New York is governed shows how powerless a government is to corrupt a virtuous and intelligent people, and speaks of the time when governments will be reduced to their natural and proper insignificance. Such communities require little of the central power; and it is a great pity that that little is indispensable, and that Albany cannot be simply wiped out. Two miles from Binghamton, on a high hill rising from the bank of the Susquehanna, and commanding an extensive view of the beautiful valleys of both rivers, stands the castellated palace which an adventurer had the impudence to build with money intrusted to him for a better purpose. The Erie Railroad coils itself about the base of this eminence, from the summit of which the white puffs of the locomotive can be descried in one direction nine miles, and in the other fifteen miles. On reaching this summit about nine o'clock on a fine morning in June, I found myself in front of a building of light-colored stone, presenting a front of three hundred and sixty-five feet, in a style of architecture that unites well the useful and the pleasing. Those numerous towers which relieve the monotony of so extensive a front serve an excellent purpose in providing small apartments for various purposes, which, but for them, could not be contrived without wasting space. At present the first view of the building is not inviting, for the burnt wing remains roofless and void,--the insurance money not having been applied to refitting it,--and the main edifice is still unfinished. Not a tree has yet been planted, and the grounds about the building are little more pleasing to the eye than fifty acres of desert. On a level space in front of the edifice a number of young men were playing a game of base-ball, and playing it badly. Their intentions were excellent, but their skill was small. Sitting on the steps and upon the blocks of stone scattered about were fifty or sixty well-dressed, well-looking gentlemen of various ages, watching the game. In general appearance and bearing these persons were so decidedly superior to the average of mortals, that few visitors fail to remark the fact. Living up there in that keen, pure air, and living in a rational manner, amusing themselves with games of ball, rowing, sailing, gardening, bowling, billiards, and gymnastic exercises, they are as brown and robust as David Copperfield was when he came home from the Continent and visited his friend Traddles. Take any hundred men from the educated classes, and give them a few months of such a life as this, and the improvement in their appearance will be striking. Among these on-lookers of the game were a few men with gray hairs, but the majority were under thirty, perhaps thirty-two or thirty-five was about the average age. When I looked upon this most unexpected scene, it did not for a moment occur to me that these serene and healthy-looking men could be the inmates of the Asylum. The insensate name of the institution prepares the visitor to see the patients lying about in various stages of intoxication. The question has sometimes been asked of the superintendent by visitors looking about them and peering into remote corners, "But, Doctor, where do you _keep_ your drunkards?" The astonishment of such inquirers is great indeed when they are informed that the polite and well-dressed gentlemen standing about, and in whose hearing the question was uttered, are the inmates of the institution; every individual of whom was till very recently, not merely a drunkard, but a drunkard of the most advanced character, for whose deliverance from that miserable bondage almost every one had ceased to hope. A large majority of the present inmates are persons of education and respectable position, who pay for their residence here at rates varying from ten to twenty dollars a week, and who are co-operating ardently with the superintendent for their recovery. More than half of them were officers of the army or navy during the late war, and lost control of themselves then. One in ten must be by law a free patient; and whenever an inebriate really desires to break his chain, he is met half-way by the trustees, and his board is fixed at a rate that accords with his circumstances. A few patients have been taken as low as five dollars a week. When once the building has been completed, the grounds laid out, and the farms disposed of, the trustees hope never to turn from the door of the institution any proper applicant who desires to avail himself of its assistance. The present number of patients is something less than one hundred, which is about fifty less than can be accommodated. When the burnt wing is restored, there will be room for four hundred. Upon entering the building, we find ourselves in a spacious, handsome, well-arranged, and well-furnished hotel. The musical click of billiard-balls, and the distant thunder of the bowling-alley, salute the ear; one of the inmates may be performing brilliantly on the piano, or trying over a new piece for next Sunday on the cabinet organ in the temporary chapel. The billiard-room, we soon discover, contains three tables. There is a reading-room always open, in which the principal periodicals of both continents, and plenty of newspapers, are accessible to all the patients. A small library, which ought to be a larger one, is open at a certain hour every day. A conservatory is near completion, and there is a garden of ten acres near by in which a number of the inmates may usually be seen at work. A croquet-ground is not wanting, and the apparatus of cricket is visible in one of the halls. The chapel is still far from being finished, but enough is done to show that it will be elegant and inviting soon after the next instalment of excise-money comes in. The dining-room is lofty and large, as indeed are all the public rooms. The private rooms are equal, both in size and furniture, to those of good city hotels. The arrangements for warming, lighting, washing, bathing, cooking, are such as we should expect to find in so stately an edifice. We have not yet reached the point when housework will do itself; but in great establishments like this, where one man, working ten minutes an hour, warms two or three hundred rooms, menial labor is hopefully reduced. In walking about the wide halls and airy public apartments, the visitor sees nothing to destroy the impression that the building is a very liberally arranged summer hotel. To complete the illusion, he will perhaps see toddling about a lovely child with its beautiful mother, and in the large parlor some ladies visiting inmates or officers of the institution. The table also is good and well served. A stranger, not knowing the nature of the institution, might, however, be puzzled to decide whether it is a hotel or a college. No one, it is true, ever saw a college so handsomely arranged and provided; but the tone of the thing is college-like, especially when you get about among the rooms of the inmates, and see them cramming for next Monday's debate, or writing a lecture for the Asylum course. This institution is in fact, as in appearance, a rationally conducted hotel or Temporary Home and resting-place for men diseased by the excessive use of alcoholic drinks. It is a place where they can pause and reflect, and gather strength and knowledge for the final victorious struggle with themselves. Temptation is not so remote that their resolution is not in continual exercise, nor so near that it is tasked beyond its strength. There lies Binghamton in its valley below them in plain sight, among its rivers and its trees, with its thousand pretty homes and its dozen nasty bar-rooms. They can go down there and drink, if they can get any one to risk the fifty dollars' fine imposed by the law of the State upon any one who sells liquor to an inmate of the Asylum. Generally there is some poor mercenary wretch who will do it. Until it has been proved that the sight of Binghamton is too much for a patient, the only restraint upon his liberty is, that he must not enter the town without the consent of the superintendent. This consent is not regarded in the light of a permission, but in that of a physician's opinion. The patient is supposed to mean: "Dr. Day, would you, as my medical adviser, recommend me to go to Binghamton this morning to be measured for a pair of shoes? Do you think it would be salutary? Am I far enough advanced in convalescence to trust myself to breathe the air of the valley for an hour?" The doctor gives his opinion on the point, and it is etiquette to accept that opinion without remark. Not one patient has yet visited the town, with the consent of the superintendent, who has proved unequal to the temptation. If an inmate steals away and yields to his craving, he is placed in confinement for a day or two, or longer if necessary. It occasionally happens that a patient, conscious of the coming on of a paroxysm of desire, asks to have the key of his room turned upon him till it is over. It is desired that this turning of the key, and those few barred rooms in one of the wards, shall be regarded as mere remedial appliances, as much so as the bottles of medicine in the medicine-chest. It is, however, understood that no one is to be released from confinement who does not manifest a renewed purpose to refrain. Such a purpose is sometimes indicated by a note addressed to the superintendent like the following, which I happened to see placed in his hands:-- "DR. DAY:-- "DEAR SIR: I cannot let the circumstance which happened yesterday pass by without assuring you that I am truly sorry for the disgrace I have brought on the institution, as well as myself. I certainly appreciate your efforts to guide us all in the right direction, and more especially the interest that you have taken in my own welfare. Let me assure you now, that hereafter, as long as I remain with you, I shall use every endeavor to conduct myself as I should, and cause you no further trouble." Lapses of this kind are not frequent, and they are regarded by the superintendent as part of the means of restoration which the institution affords; since they aid him in destroying a fatal self-confidence, and in inculcating the idea that a patient who lapses must never think of giving up the struggle, but renew it the instant he can gain the least foothold of self-control. The system of treatment pursued here is founded on the expectation that the patient and the institution will co-operate. If a man does not desire to be reclaimed, and such a desire cannot be awakened within him, the institution can do no more than keep him sober while he remains an inmate of it. There will, perhaps, one day be in every State an asylum for incurable drunkards, wherein they will be permanently detained, and compelled to live temperately, and earn their subsistence by suitable labor. But this is not such an institution. Here all is voluntary. The co-operation of the patient is assumed; and when no desire to be restored can be roused, the experiment is not continued longer than a few months. The two grand objects aimed at by the superintendent are, to raise the tone of the bodily health, and to fortify the weakened will. The means employed vary somewhat in each case. The superintendent designs to make a particular study of each individual; he endeavors to win his confidence, to adapt the treatment to his peculiar disposition, and to give him just the aid he needs. As the number of patients increases, this will become more difficult, if it does not become impossible. The more general features of the system are all that can be communicated to others, and these I will endeavor briefly to indicate. It is interesting to observe the applicants for admission, when they enter the office of the Asylum, accompanied generally by a relative or friend. Some reach the building far gone in intoxication, having indulged in one last farewell debauch; or having drunk a bottle of whiskey for the purpose of screwing their courage to the sticking-point of entering the Asylum. A clergyman whom this institution restored told me that he reached Binghamton in the evening, and went to bed drunk; and before going to the Asylum the next morning he had to fortify his system and his resolve by twelve glasses of brandy. Sometimes the accompanying friend, out of an absurd kind of pity for a poor fellow about to be deprived of his solace, will rather encourage him to drink; and often the relatives of an inebriate can only get him into the institution by keeping him intoxicated until he is safe under its roof. Frequently men arrive emaciated and worn out from weeks or months of hard drinking; and occasionally a man will be brought in suffering from delirium tremens, who will require restraint and watching for several days. Some enter the office in terror, expecting to be immediately led away by a turnkey and locked up. All come with bodies diseased and minds demoralized; for the presence of alcohol in the system lowers the tone of the whole man, body and soul, strengthening every evil tendency, and weakening every good one. And this is the reason why men who are brought here against their will are not to be despaired of. Alcohol may only have suspended the activity of their better nature, which a few weeks of total abstinence may rouse to new life. As the health improves, ambition often revives, the native delicacy of the soul reappears, and the man becomes polite, docile, interested, agreeable, who on entering seemed coarse, stupid, obstinate, and malign. The new-comer subscribes to the rules, pays his board three months in advance, and surrenders all the rest of his money. The paying in advance is a good thing; it is like paying your passage on going on board ship; the voyager has no care, and nothing to think of, but the proposed object. It is also one more inducement to remain until other motives gain strength. Many hard drinkers live under the conviction that if they should cease drinking alcoholic liquors suddenly, they would die in a few days. This is a complete error. No "tapering off" is allowed here. Dr. Day discovered years ago that a man who has been drinking a quart of whiskey a day for a long time suffers more if his allowance is reduced to a pint than if he is put at once upon the system of total abstinence. He not only suffers less, but for a shorter time. The clergyman before referred to informed me that, for two years and a half before entering the Asylum, he drank a quart of brandy daily, and he felt confident that he would die if he should suddenly cease. He reached Binghamton drunk; he went to bed that evening drunk; he drank twelve glasses of brandy the next morning before eleven o'clock; he went up to the Asylum saturated with brandy, expecting to make the preliminary arrangements for his admission, then return to the hotel, and finish the day drinking. But precisely at that point Albert Day laid his hand upon him, and marked him for his own. Dr. Day quietly objected to his return to the town, sent for his trunk, caused the tavern bill to be paid, and cut off his brandy at once and totally. For forty-eight hours the patient craved the accustomed stimulant intensely, and he was only enabled to sleep by the assistance of bromide of potassium. On the third day the craving ceased, and he assured me that he never felt it again. Other morbid experiences he had, but not that; and now, after two years of abstinence, he enjoys good health, has no desire for drink, and is capable of extraordinary exertions. Other patients, however, informed me that they suffered a morbid craving for two or three weeks. But all agreed that the sudden discontinuance of the stimulant gave them less inconvenience than they had anticipated, and was in no degree dangerous. It is, indeed, most surprising to see how soon the system begins to rally when once it is relieved of the inimical influence. Complete recovery, of course, is a slow and long effort of nature; but the improvement in the health, feelings, and appearance of patients, after only a month's residence upon that breezy hill, is very remarkable. There is an impression in the country that the inmates of such asylums as this undergo some mysterious process, and take unknown medicines, which have power to destroy the desire for strong drink. Among the quack medicines of the day is a bottled humbug, pretending to have such power. It is also supposed by some that the plan which Captain Marryat mentions is efficacious,--that of confining a drunken sailor for several days to a diet of beef and brandy. Accounts have gone the rounds of the papers, of another system that consists in saturating with brandy every article of food of which the inebriate partakes. Patients occasionally arrive at the Asylum who expect to be treated in some such way; and when a day or two passes without anything extraordinary or disagreeable happening, they inquire, with visible apprehension, "When the treatment is going to begin." In this sense of the word, there is no treatment here. In all nature there is no substance that destroys or lessens a drunkard's desire for intoxicating liquors; and there is no such thing as permanently disgusting him with brandy by giving him more brandy than he wants. A drunkard's drinking is not a thing of mere appetite; his whole system craves stimulation; and he would drink himself into perdition while loathing the taste of the liquor. This Asylum simply gives its inmates rest, regimen, amusement, society, information. It tries to restore the health and renew the will, and both by rational means. Merely entering an establishment like this is a long step toward deliverance. It is a confession! It is a confession to the patient's family and friends, to the inmates of the Asylum, and, above all, to himself, that he has lost his self-control, and cannot get it back without assistance. He comes here for that assistance. Every one knows he comes for that. They are all in the same boat. The pot cannot call the kettle black. False pride, and all the thin disguises of self-love, are laid aside. The mere fact of a man's being an inmate of an inebriate asylum is a declaration to all about him that he has been a drunkard, and even a very bad drunkard; for the people here know, from their own bitter experience, that a person cannot bring himself to make such a confession until, by many a lapse, he has been brought to despair of self-recovery. Many of these men were thinking of the asylum for years before they could summon courage to own that they had lost the power to resist a physical craving. But when once they have made the agonizing avowal by entering the asylum, it costs them no great effort to reveal the details of their case to hearers who cannot reproach them; and, besides relating their own experience without reserve, they are relieved, encouraged, and instructed by hearing the similar experience of others. All have the same object, the same peril, the same dread, the same hope, and each aids the rest as students aid one another in the same college. In a community like this, Public Opinion is the controlling force. That subtle, resistless power is always aiding or frustrating the object for which the community exists. Public Opinion sides with a competent superintendent, and serves him as an assiduous, omnipresent police. Under the coercive system once attempted here, the public opinion of the Asylum applauded a man who smuggled a bottle of whiskey into the building, and invited his friends into his room to drink it. An inmate who should now attempt such a crime would be shunned by the best two thirds of the whole institution. One of their number, suddenly overcome by temptation, who should return to the Asylum drunk, they would all receive as cordially as before; but they would regard with horror or contempt a man who should bring temptation into the building, and place it within reach of those who had fled hither to avoid it. The French have a verb,--_se dépayser_,--to uncountry one's self, to get out of the groove, to drop undesirable companions and forsake haunts that are too alluring, by going away for a while, and, in returning, not resuming the old friends and habits. How necessary this is to some of the slaves of alcohol every one knows. To many of them restoration is impossible without it, and not difficult with it. To all such, what a refuge is a well-conducted asylum like this! Merely being here, out of the coil of old habits, haunts, pleasures, comrades, temptations, which had proved too much for them a thousand times,--merely being away for a time, so that they can calmly survey the scenes they have left and the life they have led,--is itself half the victory. Every Wednesday evening, after prayers, a kind of temperance meeting is held in the chapel. It is the intention of the superintendent, that every inmate of the Asylum shall become acquainted with the nature of alcohol, and with the precise effects of alcoholic drinks upon the human system. He means that they shall comprehend the absurdity of drinking as clearly as they know its ruinous consequences. He accordingly opens this meeting with a short lecture upon some one branch of the subject, and then invites the patients to illustrate the point from their own experience. At the meeting which I happened to attend the subject of Dr. Day's remarks was suggested (as it often is) by an occurrence which had just taken place at the institution, and had been the leading topic of conversation all that day. At the last meeting, a young man from a distant State, who had been in the Asylum for some months and was about to return home, delivered an eloquent farewell address to his companions, urging them to adhere to their resolution, and protesting his unalterable resolve never, never, never again to yield to their alluring and treacherous foe. He spoke with unusual animation and in a very loud voice. He took his departure in the morning, by the Erie Road, and twelve hours after he was brought back to the Asylum drunk. Upon his recovery he related to the superintendent and to his friends the story of his lamentable fall. When the train had gone three hours on its way, there was a detention of three hours at a station that offered little entertainment to impatient travellers. The returning prodigal paced the platform; found it dull work; heard at a distance the sound of billiard-balls; went and played two games, losing both; returned to the platform and resumed his walk; and there fell into the train of thought that led to the catastrophe. His reflections were like these: "How perfect is my cure! I have not once _thought_ of taking a drink. Not even when I saw men drinking at the bar did it cross my mind to follow their example. I have not the least desire for whiskey, and I have no doubt I could take that 'one glass' which Dr. Day keeps talking about, without a wish for a second. In fact, no man is perfectly cured till he can do that I have a great mind to put it to the test. It almost seems as if this opportunity of trying myself had been created on purpose. Here goes, then, for the last glass of whiskey I shall take as long as I live, and I take it purely as a scientific experiment." One hour after, his friend, who was accompanying him home, found him lying in a corner of a bar-room, dead drunk. He had him picked up, and placed in the next train bound for Binghamton. This was the text of Dr. Day's discourse, and he employed it in enforcing anew his three cardinal points: 1. No hope for an inebriate until he thoroughly distrusts the strength of his own resolution; 2. No hope for an inebriate except in total abstinence as long as he lives, both in sickness and in health; 3. Little hope for an inebriate unless he avoids, on system and on principle, the occasions of temptation, the places where liquor is sold, and the persons who will urge it upon him. Physicians, he said, were the inebriate's worst enemies; and he advised his hearers to avoid the tinctures prepared with alcohol, which had often awakened the long-dormant appetite. During my stay at Binghamton, a clergyman resident in the town, and recently an inmate of the Asylum, had a slight indisposition resulting from riding home from a meeting ten miles in the rain. One of the physicians of the place, who knew his history, knew that he had been an inebriate of the most pronounced type (quart of liquor a day), prescribed a powerful dose of brandy and laudanum. "I dare not take it, doctor," he said, and put the damnable temptation behind him. "If I _had_ taken it," said he to me, "I should have been drunk to-day." The case, too, required nothing but rest, rice, and an easy book. No medicine was necessary. Dr. Day has had under his care a man who, after being a confirmed drunkard, had been a teetotaler for eighteen years, and had then been advised to take wine for the purpose of hastening a slow convalescence. His appetite resumed its old ascendency, and, after drinking furiously for a year, he was brought to the Asylum in delirium tremens. Dr. Day expressed a strong hope and belief that the returned inmate mentioned above had _now_ actually taken his last glass of whiskey; for he had discovered his weakness, and was in a much more hopeful condition than he had been before his lapse. The Doctor scouted the idea that a man who has the misfortune to break his resolution should give up the struggle. Some men, he said, _must_ fall, at least once, before the last rag of self-confidence is torn from them; and he had had patients who, after coming back to him in Boston four times, had conquered, and had lived soberly for years, and were still living soberly. When the superintendent had finished his remarks, he called upon his hearers to speak. Several of them did so. One young gentleman, an officer of the army during the war, made his farewell speech. He thanked his companions for the forbearance they had shown him during the first weeks of his residence among them, when he was peevish, discontented, rebellious, and had no hope of ever being able to conquer his propensity, so often had he tried and failed. He would have left the Asylum in those days, if he had had the money to pay his fare on the cars. He felt the importance of what Dr. Day had advanced respecting the occasions of temptation, and especially what he had said about physicians' prescriptions, which he knew had led men to drink. "If," he added, "I cannot live without alcohol, I would rather die. For my part, I expect to have a struggle all my life; I don't think the time will ever come when it will be safe for me to dally with temptation, and I feel the necessity of following Dr. Day's advice on this point." He spoke in a simple, earnest, and manly manner. He was followed by another inmate, a robust, capable-looking man of thirty-five, who also spoke with directness and simplicity. He hoped that fear would help him to abstain. If he could only keep sober, he had the best possible prospects; but if he again gave way he saw nothing before him but infamy and destruction. He spoke modestly and anxiously, evidently feeling that it was more than a matter of life and death to him. When he had concluded, a young gentleman rose, and delivered a fluent, flower address upon temperance; just such a discourse as might precede a lapse into drinking. On Monday evening of every week, the Literary Society of the institution holds its meeting, when essays are read and lectures delivered. The course of lectures delivered last winter are highly spoken of by those who heard them, and they were all written by inmates of the Asylum. Among the subjects treated were: Columbus, a Study of Character: Goldsmith; The Telegraph, by an Operator; Resources of Missouri; Early English Novelists; The Age, and the Men for the Age; Geology; The Passions, with Poetical Illustrations; The Inebriate Asylum, under the Régime of Coercion. It occasionally happens, that distinguished visitors contribute something to the pleasure of the evening. Mrs. Stowe, the newspapers inform us, was kind enough some time since to give them a reading from Uncle Tom's Cabin; and the copy of the book from which she read was a cheap double-columned pamphlet brought from the South by a freedman, now the porter of the Asylum. He bought it and read it while he was still a slave, little thinking when he scrawled his name across the dingy title-page that he should ever have the honor of lending it to the authoress. Nearly twelve years have now elapsed since Dr. Day began to accumulate experience in the treatment of inebriates, during which time he has had nearly four thousand patients under his care. What proportion of these were permanently cured it is impossible to say, because nothing is heard of many patients after they leave; but it is reasonably conjectured that two thirds of the whole number were restored. It is a custom with many of them to write an annual letter to Dr. Day on the anniversary of their entering the Home under his management, and the reading of such letters is a highly interesting and beneficial feature of the Wednesday evening temperance meetings. The alcoholic mania is no respecter of persons. Dr. Day has had under treatment twenty-one clergymen, one of whom was a Catholic priest (who had delirium tremens), and one a Jewish Rabbi. He has had one old man past seventy, and one boy of sixteen. He has had a Philadelphia "killer" and a judge of a supreme court. He has had steady two-quarts-a-day men, and men who were subject only to semiannual debauches. He has had men whose "tears" lasted but forty-eight hours, and one man who came in of his own accord after what he styled "a general spree" of three months' continuance. He has had drunkards of two years' standing, and those who have been slaves of strong drink for thirty years. Some of his successes have been striking and memorable. There was Dr. X---- of Tennessee, at thirty-five a physician of large practice, professor in a medical college, happy in an excellent wife and seven children. Falling into drink, he lost at length his practice, his professorship, his property, his home; his family abandoned him to his fate, and went to his wife's father's in another State; and he became at last a helpless gutter sot. His brother, who heard by chance of the Home in Boston, picked him up one day from the street, where he lay insensible, and got him upon the train for the East. Before he roused from his drunken stupor, he was half-way across Virginia. "Where am I?" he asked. "In Virginia, on your way to Boston." "All right," said he, in a drunkard's drunkenest manner,--"all right! give me some whiskey." He was carried into the Home in the arms of men, and lay for some weeks miserably sick. His health improved, and the _man_ revived. He clutched at this unexpected chance of escape, and co-operated with all his heart with the system. Dr. Day wrote a hopeful letter to his wife. "Speak not to me of a husband," she replied; "I have no husband; I buried my husband long ago." After four months' stay in the institution, the patient returned home, and resumed his practice. A year after, his family rejoined him. He recovered all his former standing, which to this day, after nine years of sobriety, he retains. His ninth annual letter to his deliverer I have read. "By the way," he says in a postscript, "did you receive my letters each year of the war?" Yes, they reached Dr. Day months after they were written; but they always reached him. The secret of this cure, as the patient has often asserted, was total abstinence. He had attempted to reduce his daily quantity a hundred times; but never, until he entered the Home, was he aware of the physical _impossibility_ of a drunkard's becoming a moderate drinker. From the moment when he had a clear, intellectual comprehension of that truth, the spell was broken: abstinence was easy; he was himself again. Then there was Y----, a Philadelphia street savage,--one of those firemen who used to sleep in the engine-house, and lie in wait for rival companies, and make night and day hideous with slaughter. Fearful beings were those Philadelphia firemen of twenty years ago! Some of them made a nearer approach to total depravity than any creatures I have ever seen that wore the form of man,--revelling in blood, exulting in murder, and glorying in hellish blows with iron implements, given and received. It was difficult to say whether it gave them keener delight to wound or to be wounded. In all communities where external observances and decorums become tyrannical, and where the innocent pleasures of youth are placed under a ban, there is sure to be a class which revolts against the invisible despot, and goes to a horrid extreme of violence and vice. This Y---- was one of the revolters. Once in many weeks he would return to his decent home, ragged and penniless, to be reclothed. It is only alcohol that supports men in a life of _wanton_ violence like this; and he, accordingly, was a deep and reckless drinker. His sister prevailed upon him, after many months of persuasion, to go to the Home in Boston, and he presented himself there one morning, black all over with coal-dust. He explained his appearance by saying that he had come from Philadelphia in a coal-vessel. Dr. Day, who had been notified of his coming, received him with that emphatic politeness which produces such magical effects upon men who have long been accustomed to see an enemy in every one who behaves decently and uses the English language in its simplicity. He was exceedingly astonished to be treated with consideration, and to discover that he was not to be subjected to any disagreeable process. He proved to be a good, simple soul, very ignorant, not naturally intelligent, and more capable, therefore, of faith than of knowledge. The Doctor won his confidence; then his good-will; then his affection. Something that was read in the Bible attracted his attention one day, and he asked to be shown the passage; and this was the beginning of his reading the Bible regularly. It was all new to him; he found it highly interesting; and, this daily reading being associated in his mind with his reform, the book became a kind of talisman to him, and he felt safe as long as he continued the practice. After a six months' residence, he went to work in Boston, but always returned to spend the evening at the Home. At the beginning of the war he enlisted. He was in Colonel Baker's regiment on the bloody day of Ball's Bluff, and was one of the gallant handful of men who rescued from the enemy the body of their slain commander. He was one of the multitude who swam the Potomac amid a pattering rain of bullets, and walked barefoot seven miles to camp, The first man that met him there offered him whiskey, Mistaken kindness! Senseless offer! A man who is sinking with fatigue wants rest, not stimulation; sleep, not excitement. "Don't offer me _that_," he gasped, shuddering. "I dread that more than bullets." Instead of the whiskey, he took twelve hours' sleep, and consequently awoke refreshed, and ready for another day's hard service. At Antietam he had the glory and high privilege of giving life for mankind. A bullet through the brain sent him to heaven, and stretched his body on the field in painless and eternal sleep. It lies now in a cemetery near his native city; a monument covers it; and all who were connected with him are proud to point to his grave and claim him for their own. What a contrast between dying so, and being killed in a motiveless street-fight by a savage blow on the head with a speaking-trumpet! Perhaps, long as this article already is, I may venture to give, with the utmost possible brevity, one more of the many remarkable cases with which I became acquainted at the Asylum. One Sunday morning, a loud ringing of the front-door bell of the Home in Boston induced Dr. Day himself to answer the summons. He found a man at the door who was in the most complete state of dilapidation that can be imagined,--ragged, dirty, his hat awry, torn and bent, spectacles with one eye gone and the other cocked out of place, the perfect picture of a drunken sot who had slept among the barrels and cotton-bales for six months. He was such a person as we thoughtless fools roar at in the theatre sometimes, about 10.30 P.M., and who makes the lives of sundry children and one woman a long and hopeless tragedy up in some dismal garret, or down in some pestilential cellar. "What can I do for you?" inquired the superintendent. "My name is A. B----; will you take me in?" "Have you a letter of introduction from any one?" "No." "We must have something of the kind; do you know any one in Boston?" "Yes; there is Dr. Kirk; _I've preached in his church_; he ought to know me; I'll see if he does." In a few minutes he returned, bearing a note from that distinguished clergyman, saying that he thought he knew the man; and upon this he was admitted. He was as complete, though not as hopeless a wreck as he appeared. He had been a clergyman in good standing and of ability respectable; but had insensibly fallen under the dominion of a mania for drink. For ten years he had been a downright sot. He had not seen his family in that time. A benevolent man who chanced to meet him in New York described to him the Washingtonian Home, made him promise to go to it, and gave him money for the purpose. He immediately spent the money for drink; but yet, in some forgotten way, he smuggled himself to Boston, and made his appearance at the Home on that Sunday morning. Such cases as this, hopeless as they seem, are among the easiest to cure, because there are knowledge, conscience, and pride latent in the man, which begin to assert themselves as soon as the system is free from the presence of alcohol. This man was easily made to see the truth respecting his case. He soon came to understand alcohol; and this alone is a surprising assistance to a man at the instant of temptation. He remained at the Home six months, always improving in health, and regaining his former character. He left Boston twenty-two months ago, and has since lived with perfect sobriety, and has been restored to his family and to his profession. Inebriate asylums, rationally conducted, cannot fail to be worth their cost. They are probably destined to become as generally recognized a necessity of our diseased modern life as asylums for lunatics and hospitals for the sick. It is not necessary to begin with a million-dollar palace, though it is desirable that the building should be attractive, airy, and large enough to accommodate a considerable number of patients. When the building has been paid for, the institution may be self-sustaining, or even yield a profit. It is possible that the cure of inebriates may become a specialty of medical practice, to which men, gifted with the requisite talent, will devote their lives. The science of the thing is still most incomplete, and only one individual has had much success in the practice. Albert Day is a good superintendent chiefly because he is a good Yankee, not because he is a great scientific healer. It seems instinctive in good Yankees to respect the rights and feelings of others; and they are accustomed to persuade and convince, not drive, not compel. Albert Day has treated these unfortunate and amiable men as he would have treated younger brothers taken captive by a power stronger than themselves. His polite and respectful manner to his patients on all occasions must be balm to men accustomed to the averted look and taunting epithet, and accustomed, too, to something far harder to bear,--distrust and abhorrence of themselves. Others, of course, will originate improved methods, and we shall have, at length, a Fine Art of assisting men to overcome bad habits; but _this_ characteristic of Dr. Day will never be wanting to an asylum that answers the end of its establishment. The disease which such institutions are designed to cure must be very common; for where is the family that has not a drunkard in its circle of connections? It is true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; but not on that account must the pound of cure be withheld. The railroad which connects New York and Binghamton is the Erie, which is another way of saying that I was detained some hours on the journey home; and this afforded me the novel experience of working my way up town in a New York street-car an hour or two before daylight. The car started from the City Hall at half past two A.M., and received, during the first three miles of its course, twenty-seven persons. It so happened that nearly every individual of them, including the person coming home from the Asylum, was out of bed at that hour through alcohol. There were three drunken vagabonds asleep, who were probably taking a cheap lodging in the car by riding to Harlem and back,--two hours and forty minutes' ride for fourteen cents. In one corner was coiled away a pale, dirty, German Jew of the Fagin type, very drunk, singing snatches of drinking choruses in broken English. Next to him was his pal, a thick-set _old_ Charley Bates, also drunk, and occasionally joining in the festive songs. A mile of the ride was enlivened by an argument between C. Bates and the conductor, on the subject of a cigar, which Mr. Bates insisted on smoking, in violation of the rule. The controversy was carried on in "the English language." Then there were five German musicians, perfectly sober and very sleepy, with their instruments in their hand, returning, I suppose, from some late saloon or dance-house. One woman was in the car, a girl of twenty, who appeared to be a performer in a saloon, and was now, after having shed her spangles and her ribbons, going home in dirty calico drawn tight over a large and obvious hoop, under the protecting care of a nice young man. There were several young and youngish men, well-dressed, in various stages of intoxication, who had probably been at the lawless "late houses," singing and drinking all night, and were now going home to scare and horrify mothers, sisters, or wives, who may have been waiting five hours to hear the scratch of their latch-key against the front door. What a picture did the inside of that car present, when it was filled upon both sides with sleepy, bobbing drunkards and servants of drunkards, the girl leaning sleepily upon her neighbor's shoulder, the German musicians crouching over their instruments half dead with sleep, old Fagin bawling a line of a beery song, and the conductor, struggling down through the midst, vainly endeavoring to extract from boozy passengers, whether they were going "through," or desired to be dropped on the way. It was a fit ending to a week at the Inebriate Asylum. THE END. Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
54195	----	book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) +-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ GRIT OR The Young Boatman of Pine Point BY HORATIO ALGER, JR. AUTHOR OF "THE YOUNG ACROBAT," "THE STORE BOY," "THE TIN BOX," "TOM TRACY," "SAM'S CHANCE," "ONLY AN IRISH BOY," "JOE'S LUCK," AND FORTY-NINE OTHER RATTLING GOOD STORIES OF ADVENTURE PUBLISHED IN THE MEDAL LIBRARY NEW YORK HURST & COMPANY PUBLISHERS GRIT. CHAPTER I. GRIT. "Grit!" "Well, mother, what is it?" The speaker was a sturdy, thick-set boy of fifteen, rather short for his age, but strongly made. His eyes were clear and bright, his expression was pleasant, and his face attractive, but even a superficial observer could read in it unusual firmness and strength of will. He was evidently a boy whom it would not be easy to subdue or frighten. He was sure to make his way in the world, and maintain his rights against all aggression. It was the general recognition of this trait which had led to the nickname, "Grit," by which he was generally known. His real name was Harry Morris, but even his mother had fallen into the habit of calling him Grit, and his own name actually sounded strange to him. "Well, mother, what is it?" he asked again, as his mother continued to look at him in silence, with an expression of trouble on her face. "I had a letter this morning, Grit." "From--_him_?" "Yes, from your father." "Don't call him my father!" said the boy hastily. "He isn't my father." "He is your stepfather--and my husband," said Mrs. Morris soberly. "Yes, worse luck for you! Well, what does he say?" "He's coming home." An expression of dismay quickly gathered on the boy's face. "How can that be? His term isn't out." "It is shortened by good behavior, and so he comes out four months before his sentence would have expired." "I wouldn't have him here, mother," said Grit earnestly. "He will only worry and trouble you. We are getting on comfortably now without him." "Yes, thanks to my good, industrious boy." "Oh, don't talk about that," said Grit, who always felt embarrassed when openly praised. "But it is true, Grit. But for the money you make in your boat, I might have to go to the poorhouse." "You will never go while I live, mother," said Grit quickly. "No, Grit, I feel sure of that. It seems wicked to rejoice in your father's misfortune and disgrace----" "Not my father," interrupted Grit. "Mr. Brandon, then. As I was saying, it seems wicked to feel relieved by his imprisonment, but I can't help it." "Why should you try to help it? He has made you a bad husband, and only brought you unhappiness. How did you ever come to marry him, mother?" "I did it for the best, as I thought, Grit. I was left a widow when you were four years old. I had this cottage, to be sure, and about two thousand dollars, but the interest of that sum at six per cent. only amounted to a hundred and twenty dollars, and I was not brave and self-reliant like some, so when Mr. Brandon asked me to marry him, I did so, thinking that he would give us a good home, be a father to you, and save us from all pecuniary care or anxiety." "You were pretty soon undeceived, mother." "No, not soon. Your stepfather had a good mercantile position in Boston, and we occupied a comfortable cottage in Newton. For some years all went well, but then I began to see a change for the worse in him. He became fond of drink, was no longer attentive to business, picked up bad associates, and eventually lost his position. This was when you were ten years of age. Then he took possession of my little capital and went into business for himself. But his old habits clung to him, and of course there was small chance of success. He kept up for about a year, however, and then he failed, and the creditors took everything----" "Except this house, mother." "Yes, this house was fortunately settled upon me, so that my husband could not get hold of it. When we were turned out of our home in Newton, it proved a welcome refuge for us. It was small, plain, humble, but still it gave us a home." "It has been a happy home, mother--that is, ever since Mr. Brandon left us." "Yes; we have lived plainly, but I have had you, and you have always been a comfort to me. You were always a good boy, Grit." "I'm not quite an angel, mother. Ask Phil Courtney what he thinks about it," said Grit, smiling. "He is a bad, disagreeable boy," said Mrs. Brandon warmly. "So I think, mother; but Phil, on the other hand, thinks I am a low, vulgar boy, unworthy of associating with him." "I don't want you to associate with him, Grit." "I don't care to, mother; but we are getting away from the subject. How did Mr. Brandon behave after you moved here?" "He did nothing to earn money, but managed to obtain liquor at the tavern, and sometimes went off for three or four days or a week, leaving me in ignorance of his whereabouts. At last he did not come back at all, and I heard that he had been arrested for forgery, and was on trial. The trial was quickly over, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for a term of years. I saw him before he was carried to prison, but he treated me so rudely that I have not felt it my duty to visit him since. Gradually I resumed your father's name, and I have been known as Mrs. Morris, though my legal name of course is Brandon." "It is a pity you ever took the name, mother," said Grit hastily. "I agree with you, Grit; but I cannot undo the past." "The court ought to grant you a divorce from such a man." "Perhaps I might obtain one, but it would cost money, and we have no money to spend on such things." "If you had one," said Grit thoughtfully, "Mr. Brandon would no longer have any claim upon you." "That is true." "You said you had a letter from him. When did you receive it?" "While you were out, this morning. Mr. Wheeler saw it in the post-office, and brought it along, thinking we might not have occasion to call." "May I see the letter, mother?" "Certainly, Grit; I have no secrets from you." Mrs. Morris--to call her by the name she preferred--took from the pocket of her dress a letter in a yellow envelope, which, however, was directed in a neat, clerky hand, for Mr. Brandon had been carefully prepared for mercantile life, and had once been a bookkeeper, and wrote a handsome, flowing hand. "Here it is, Grit." Grit opened the letter, and read as follows: "'---- PRISON, May 10. "MY AFFECTIONATE WIFE: I have no doubt you will be overjoyed to hear that my long imprisonment is nearly over, and that on the fifteenth, probably, I shall be set free, and can leave these cursed walls behind me. Of course, I shall lose no time in seeking out my loving wife, who has not deigned for years to remember that she has a husband. You might at least have called now and then, to show some interest in me.' "Why should you?" ejaculated Grit indignantly. "He has only illtreated you, spent your money, and made you unhappy." "You think, then, I was right in staying away, Grit?" asked his mother. "Certainly I do. You don't pretend to love him?" "No, I only married him at his urgent request, thinking I was doing what was best for you. It was a bad day's work for me. I could have got along much better alone." "Of course you could, mother. Well, I will read the rest: "'However, you are my wife still, and owe me some reparation for your long neglect. I shall come to Pine Point as soon as I can, and it is hardly necessary to remind you that I shall be out of money, and shall want you to stir round and get me some, as I shall want to buy some clothes and other things." "How does he think you are to supply him with money, when he has left you to take care of yourself all these years?" again burst from Grit's indignant lips. He read on: "'How is the cub? Is he as independent and saucy as ever? I am afraid you have allowed him to do as he pleases. He needs a man's hand to hold him in check and train him up properly.'" "Heaven help you if Mr. Brandon is to have the training of you, Grit!" exclaimed his mother. "He'll have a tough job if he tries it!" said Grit. "He'll find me rather larger and stronger than when he went to prison." "Don't get into any conflict with him, Grit," said his mother, a new alarm seizing her. "I won't if I can help it, mother; but I don't mean to have him impose upon me." CHAPTER II. THE YOUNG BOATMAN. Pine Point was situated on the Kennebec River, and from its height overlooked it, so that a person standing on its crest could scan the river for a considerable distance up and down. There was a small grove of pine-trees at a little distance, and this had given the point its name. A hundred feet from the brink stood the old-fashioned cottage occupied by Mrs. Morris. It had belonged, in a former generation, to an uncle of hers, who, dying unmarried, had bequeathed it to her. Perhaps half an acre was attached to it. There had been more, but it had been sold off. When Grit and his mother came to Chester to live--it was in this township that Pine Point was situated--she had but little of her two thousand dollars' remaining, and when her husband was called to expiate his offense against the law in prison, there were but ten dollars in the house. Mrs. Morris was fortunate enough to secure a boarder, whose board-money paid nearly all their small household expenses for three years, the remainder being earned by her own skill as a dressmaker; but when the boarder went to California, never to return, Grit was already thirteen years old, and hit upon a way of earning money. On the opposite bank of the Kennebec was the village of Portville, but there was no bridge at that point. So Grit bought a boat for a few dollars, agreeing to pay for it in instalments, and established a private ferry between the two places. His ordinary charge for rowing a passenger across--the distance being half a mile--was ten cents; but if it were a child, or a poor person, he was willing to receive five, and he took parties of four at a reduction. It was an idea of his own, but it paid. Grit himself was rather surprised at the number of persons who availed themselves of his ferry. Sometimes he found at the end of the day that he had received in fares over a dollar, and one Fourth of July, when there was a special celebration in Portville, he actually made three dollars. Of course, he had to work pretty hard for it, but the young boatman's arms were strong, as was shown by his sturdy stroke. Grit was now fifteen, and he could reflect with pride that for two years he had been able to support his mother in a comfortable manner, so that she had wanted for nothing--that is, for nothing that could be classed as a comfort. Luxuries he had not been able to supply, but for them neither he nor his mother cared. They were content with their plain way of living. But if his stepfather were coming home, Grit felt that his income would no longer be adequate to maintain the household. Mr. Brandon ought to increase the family income, but, knowing what he and his mother did of his ways, he built no hope upon that. It looked as if their quiet home happiness was likely to be rudely broken in upon by the threatened invasion. "Well, mother," said Grit, "I must get to work." "You haven't finished your dinner, my son." "Your news has spoiled my appetite, mother. However, I dare say I'll make up for it at supper." "I'll save a piece of meat for you to eat then. You work so hard that you need meat to keep up your strength." "I haven't had to work much this morning, mother, worse luck! I only earned twenty cents. People don't seem inclined to travel to-day." "Never mind, Grit. I've got five dollars in the house." "Save it for a rainy day, mother. The day is only half over, and I may have good luck this afternoon." As Grit left the house with his quick, firm step, Mrs. Morris looked after him with blended affection and pride. "What a good boy he is!" she said to herself. "He is a boy that any mother might be proud of." And so he was. Our young hero was not only a strong, manly boy, but there was something very attractive in his clear eyes and frank smile, browned though his skin was by constant exposure to the sun and wind. He was a general favorite in the town, or, rather, in the two towns, for he was as well known in Portville as he was in Chester. I have said he was a general favorite, but there was one at least who disliked him. This was Phil Courtney, a boy about his own age, the son of an ex-president of the Chester bank, a boy who considered himself of great consequence, and socially far above the young boatman. He lived in a handsome house, and had a good supply of pocket-money, though he was always grumbling about his small allowance. It by no means follows that money makes a boy a snob, but if he has any tendency that way, it is likely to show itself under such circumstances. Now, it happened that Phil had a cousin staying at his house as a visitor, quite a pretty girl, in whose eyes he liked to appear to advantage. As Grit reached the shore, where he had tied his boat, they were seen approaching the same point. "I wonder if Phil is going to favor me with his patronage," thought Grit, as his eyes fell upon them. "Here, you boatman!" called out Phil, in a tone of authority. "We want to go over to Portville." Grit's eyes danced with merriment, as he answered gravely: "I have no objection to your going." The girl laughed merrily, but Phil frowned, for his dignity was wounded by Grit's flippancy. "I am not in the habit of considering whether you have any objection or not," he said haughtily. "Don't be a goose, Phil!" said his cousin. "The boy is in fun." "I would rather he would not make fun of me," said Phil. "I won't, then," said Grit, smiling. "Ahem! you may convey us across," said Phil. "If you please," added the young lady, with a smile. "She is very good-looking, and five times as polite as Phil," thought Grit, fixing his eyes admiringly upon the pretty face of Marion Clarke, as he afterward learned her name to be. "I shall be glad to have you as a passenger," said our hero, but he looked at Marion, not at Phil. "Thank you." "If you've got through with your compliments," said Phil impatiently, "we'd better start." "I am ready," said Grit. "May I help you in?" he asked of Marion. "Yes, thank you." "It is quite unnecessary. I can assist you," said Phil, advancing. But he was too late, for Marion had already availed herself of the young boatman's proffered aid. "Thank you," said Marion again, pleasantly, as she took her seat in the stern. "Why didn't you wait for me?" demanded Phil crossly, as he took his seat beside her. "I didn't want to be always troubling you, cousin Phil," said Marion, with a coquettish glance at Grit, which her cousin did not at all relish. "Don't notice him so much," he said, in a low voice. "He's only a poor boatman." "He is very good-looking, I think," said Marion. Grit's back was turned, but he heard both question and answer, and his cheeks glowed with pleasure at the young lady's speech, though it was answered by a contemptuous sniff from Phil. "I don't admire your taste, Marion," he said. "Hush, he'll hear you," she whispered. "What's his name?" By way of answering, Phil addressed Grit in a condescending tone. "Well, Grit, how is business to-day?" "Rather quiet, thank you." "You see, he earns his living by boating, explained Phil, with the manner of one who was speaking of a very inferior person. "How much have you earned now?" he asked further. "Only twenty cents," answered Grit; "but I suppose," he added, smiling, "I suppose you intend to pay me liberally." "I mean to pay you your regular fare," said Phil, who was not of a liberal disposition. "Thank you; I ask no more." "Do you row across often?" asked Marion. "Sometimes I make eight or ten trips in a day. On the Fourth of July I went fifteen times." "How strong you must be!" "Pooh! I could do more than that," said Phil loftily, unwilling that Grit should be admired for anything. "Oh, I know you're remarkable," said his cousin dryly. Just then the wind, which was unusually strong, took Phil's hat, and it blew off to a considerable distance. "My hat's off!" exclaimed Phil, in excitement. "Row after it, quick. It's a new Panama, and cost ten dollars." CHAPTER III. THE LOST HAT. Grit complied with the request of his passenger, and rowed after Phil's hat. But there was a strong current, and it was not without considerable trouble that he at last secured it. But, alas! the new hat, with its bright ribbon, was well soaked when it was fished out of the water. "It's mean," ejaculated Phil, lifting it with an air of disgust. "Just my luck." "Are you so unlucky, then?" asked his cousin Marion, with a half smile. "I should say so. What do you call this?" "A wet hat." "How am I ever to wear it? It will drip all over my clothes." "I think you had better buy a common one in Portville, and leave this one here to dry." "How am I going round Portville bareheaded?" inquired Phil crossly. "Shall I lend you my hat?" asked Marion. "Wouldn't I look like a fool, going round the streets with a girl's hat on?" "Well, you are the best judge of that," answered Marion demurely. Grit laughed, as the young lady glanced at him with a smile. "What are you laughing at, you boatman?" snarled Phil. "I beg your pardon," said Grit good-naturedly; "I know it must be provoking to have your hat wet. Can I help you in any way? If you will give me the money, and remain in the boat, I will run up to Davis, the hatter's, and get you a new hat." "How can you tell my size?" asked Phil, making no acknowledgment for the offer. "Then I will lend you my hat to go up yourself." Phil's lip curled, as if he considered that there would be contamination in such a plebeian hat. However, as Marion declared it would be the best thing to do, he suppressed his disdain, and, without a word of thanks, put Grit's hat on his head. "Come with me, Marion," he said. "No, Phil; I will remain here with Mr. ----," and she turned inquiringly toward the young boatman. "Grit," he suggested. "Mr. Grit," she said, finishing the sentence. "Just as you like. I admire your taste," said Phil, with a sneer. As he walked away, Marion turned to the young boatman. "Is your name really Grit?" she asked. "No; people call me so." "I can understand why," she answered with a smile. "You look--gritty." "If I do, I hope it isn't anything disagreeable," responded our hero. "Oh, no," said Marion; "quite the contrary. I like to see boys that won't allow themselves to be imposed upon." "I don't generally allow myself to be imposed upon." "What is your real name?" "Harry Morris." "I suppose you and Phil know each other very well?" "We have known each other a long time, but we are not very intimate friends." "I don't think Phil has any intimate friends," said Marion thoughtfully. "He--I don't think he gets on very well with the other boys." "He wants to boss them," said Grit bluntly. "Yes; I expect that is it. He's my cousin, you know." "Is he? I don't think you are much alike." "Is that remark a compliment to me--or him?" asked Marion, laughing. "To you, decidedly." "Well, Phil can be very disagreeable when he sets out to be. I should not want to be that, you know." "You couldn't," said Grit, with an admiring glance. "That's a compliment," said Marion. "But you're mistaken. I can be disagreeable when I set out to be. I expect Phil finds me so sometimes." "I wouldn't." "You know how to flatter as well as to row, Mr. Grit. It's true. I tease Phil awfully sometimes." By this time Phil came back with a new hat on his head, holding Grit's in the tips of his fingers, as if it would contaminate him. He pitched it into Grit's lap, saying shortly: "There's your hat." "Upon my word, Phil, you're polite," said his cousin. "Can't you thank Mr. Grit?" "Mr. Grit!" repeated Phil contemptuously. "Of course I thank him." "You're welcome," answered Grit dryly. "Here's your fare!" said Phil, taking out two dimes, and offering them to the young boatman. "Thank you." "Phil, you ought to pay something extra for the loan of the hat," said Marion, "and the delay." With evident reluctance Phil took a nickel from his vest pocket, and offered it to Grit. "No, thank you!" said Grit, drawing back, "I wouldn't be willing to take anything for that. I've found it very agreeable to wait," and he glanced significantly at Marion. "I suppose I am to consider that another compliment," said the young lady, with a coquettish glance. "What, has he been complimenting you?" asked Phil jealously. "Yes, and it was very agreeable, as I got no compliments from you. Good afternoon, Mr. Grit. I hope you will row us back by and by." "I hope so, too," said the young boatman, bowing. "Look here, Marion," said Phil, as they walked away, "you take altogether too much notice of that fellow." "Why do I? I am sure he is a very nice boy." "He is a common working boy!" snapped Phil. "He lives with his mother in a poor hut upon the bluff, and makes his living by boating." "I am sure that is to his credit." "Oh, yes, I suppose it is. So's a ditch-digger engaged in a creditable employment, but you don't treat him as an equal." "I should be willing to treat Grit as an equal. He is very good-looking, don't you think so, Phil?" "Good-looking! So is a cow good-looking." "I've seen some cows that were very good-looking," answered Marion, with a mischievous smile. "I suppose Grit and you are well acquainted." "Oh, I know him to speak to him," returned Phil loftily. "Of course, I couldn't be intimate with such a boy." "I was thinking," said Marion, "it would be nice to invite him round to the house to play croquet with us." "Invite Grit Morris?" gasped Phil. "Yes, why not?" "A boy like him!" "Why, wouldn't he behave well?" "Oh, I suppose he would, but he isn't in our circle." "Then it's a pity he isn't. He's the most agreeable boy I have met in Chester." "You say that only to provoke me." "No, I don't. I mean it." "I won't invite him," said Phil doggedly. "I am surprised that you should think of such a thing." "Propriety, Miss Marion, propriety!" said the young lady, in a tone of mock dignity, turning up the whites of her eyes. "That's just the way my governess used to talk. It's well I've got so experienced a young gentleman to look after me, and see that I don't stumble into any impropriety." Meanwhile, Grit sat in his boat, waiting for a return passenger, and as he waited he thought of the young lady he had just ferried over. "I can't see how such a fellow as Phil Courtney can have such a nice cousin," he said to himself. "She's very pretty, too! She isn't stuck-up, like him. I hope I shall get the chance of rowing them back." He waited about ten minutes, when he saw a gentleman and a little boy approaching the river. "Are you the ferry-boy?" asked the gentleman. "Yes, sir." "I heard there was a boy who would row me across. I want to go to Chester with my little boy. Can you take us over?" "Yes, sir; I shall be happy to do so." "Are you ready to start?" "Yes, sir, just as soon as you get into the boat." "Come, Willie," said the gentleman, addressing his little boy, "won't you like to ride over in the boat?" "Oh, yes, papa," answered Willie eagerly. "I hope you are well acquainted with rowing, and careful," said Mr. Jackson, for this was his name. "I am rather timid about the water, for I can't swim." "Yes, sir, I am as much at home on the water as on the land. I've been rowing every day for the last three years." The gentleman and his little boy sat down, and Grit bent to his oars. CHAPTER IV. A BOY IN THE WATER. Mr. Jackson was a slender, dark-complexioned man of forty, or thereabouts. He was fashionably dressed, and had the air of one who lives in a city. He had an affable manner, and seemed inclined to be social. "Is this your business, ferrying passengers across the river?" he asked of Grit. "Yes, sir," answered the young boatman. "Does it pay?" was the next inquiry--an important one in the eyes of a city man. "Yes, sir; I make more in this way than I could in any other." "How much, for instance?" "From five to seven dollars. Once--it was Fourth of July week--I made nearly ten dollars." "That is a great deal more than I made at your age," said Mr. Jackson. "You look as if you made more now," said Grit, smiling. "Yes," said the passenger, with an answering smile. "I am afraid I couldn't get along on that sum now." "Do you live in the city?" asked Grit, with a sudden impulse. "Yes, I live in what I regard as the city. I mean New York." "It must be a fine place," said the young boatman thoughtfully. "Yes, it is a fine place, if you have money enough to live handsomely. Did you ever hear of Wall Street?" "Yes, sir." "I am a Wall Street broker. I commenced as a boy in a broker's office. I don't think I was any better off than you at your age--certainly I did not earn so much money." "But you didn't have a mother to take care of, did you, sir?" "No; do you?" "Yes, sir." "You are a good boy to work for your mother. My poor boy has no mother;" and the gentleman looked sad. "What is your name?" "Grit." "Is that your real name?" "No, sir, but everybody calls me so." "For a good reason, probably. Willie, do you like to ride in the boat?" "Yes, papa," answered the little boy, his bright eyes and eager manner showing that he spoke the truth. "Grit," said Mr. Jackson, "I see we are nearly across the river. Unless you are due there at a specified time, you may stay out, and we will row here and there, prolonging our trip. Of course, I will increase your pay." "I shall be very willing, sir," said Grit. "My boat is my own, and my time also, and I have no fixed hours for starting from either side." "Good! Then we can continue our conversation. Is there a good hotel in Chester?" "Quite a good one, sir. They keep summer boarders." "That was the point I wished to inquire about. Willie and I have been staying with friends in Portville, but they are expecting other visitors, and I have a fancy for staying a while on your side of the river--that is, if you live in Chester." "Yes, sir; our cottage is on yonder bluff--Pine Point, it is called." "Then I think I will call at the hotel, and see whether I can obtain satisfactory accommodations." "Are you taking a vacation?" asked Grit, with curiosity. "Yes; the summer is a dull time in Wall Street, and my partner attends to everything. By and by I shall return, and give him a chance to go away." "Do people make a great deal of money in Wall Street?" asked Grit. "Sometimes, and sometimes they lose a great deal. I have known a man who kept his span of horses one summer reduced to accept a small clerkship the next. If a broker does not speculate, he is not so liable to such changes of fortune. What is your real name, since Grit is only a nickname?" "My real name is Harry Morris." "Have you any brothers or sisters?" "No, sir; I am an only child." "Were you born here?" "No, sir; I was born in Boston." "Have you formed any plans for the future? You won't be a boatman all your life, I presume?" "I hope not, sir. It will do well enough for the present, and I am glad to have such a chance of earning a living for my mother and myself; but when I grow up I should like to go to the city, and get into business there." "All the country boys are anxious to seek their fortune in the city. In many cases they would do better to stay at home." "Were you born in the city, sir?" asked Grit shrewdly. "No; I was born in the country." "But you didn't stay there." "No; you have got me there. I suppose it was better for me to go to the city, and perhaps it may be for you; but there is no hurry. You wouldn't have a chance to earn six dollars a week in the city, as you say you do here. Besides, it would cost much more for you and your mother to live." "I suppose so, sir. I am contented to remain where I am at present." "Is your father dead?" "Yes, sir." "It is a great loss. Then your mother is a widow?" "I wish she were," said Grit hastily. "But she must be, if your father is dead," said Mr. Jackson. "No, sir; she married again." "Oh, there is a stepfather, then? Don't you and he get along well together?" "There has been no chance to quarrel for nearly five years." "Why?" "Because he has been in prison." "Excuse me if I have forced upon you a disagreeable topic," said the passenger, in a tone of sympathy. "His term of confinement will expire, and then he can return to you." "That is just what troubles me, sir," said Grit bluntly. "We are expecting him in a day or two, and then our quiet life will be at an end." "Will he make things disagreeable for you?" "Yes, sir." "At least, you will not have to work so hard." "Yes, sir. I shall have to work harder, for I shall have to support him, too." "Won't he be willing to work?" "No, sir, he is very lazy, and if he can live without work, he will." "That is certainly unfortunate." "It is worse than having no father at all," said Grit bluntly. "I don't care to have him remain in prison, if he will only keep away from us, but I should be glad if I could never set eyes upon him again." "Well, my boy, you must bear the trial as well as you can. We all have our trials, and yours comes in the shape of a disagreeable stepfather----" He did not finish the sentence, for there was a startling interruption. Mr. Jackson and Grit had been so much engaged in their conversation that they had not watched the little boy. Willie had amused himself in bending over the side of the boat, and dipping his little fingers in the rippling water. With childish imprudence he leaned too far, and fell head first into the swift stream. A splash told the startled father what had happened. "Good Heaven!" he exclaimed, "my boy is overboard, and I cannot swim." He had scarcely got the words out of his mouth than Grit was in the water, swimming for the spot where the boy went down, now a rod or two distant, for the boat had been borne onward by the impulse of the oars. The young boatman was an expert swimmer. It would naturally have been expected, since so much of his time had been spent on the river. He had often engaged in swimming-matches with his boy companions, and there was no one who could surpass him in speed or endurance. He struck out boldly, and, as Willie rose to the surface for the second time, he seized him by the arm, and, turning, struck out for the boat. The little boy struggled, and this made his task more difficulty but Grit was strong and wary, and, holding Willie in a strong grasp, he soon gained the boat. Mr. Jackson leaned over, and drew the boy, dripping, into its safe refuge. "Climb in, too, Grit!" he said. "No, I shall upset it. If you will row to the shore, I will swim there." "Very well." Mr. Jackson was not wholly a stranger to the use of oars, and the shore was very near. In three minutes the boat touched the bank, and almost at the same time Grit clambered on shore. "You have saved my boy's life," said Mr. Jackson, his voice betraying the strong emotion he felt. "I shall not forget it." "Willie is cold!" said the little boy. "Our house is close by," said Grit. "Let us take him there at once, and mother will take care of him, and dry his clothes." The suggestion was adopted, and Mr. Jackson and his two young companions were soon standing at the door of the plain cottage on the bluff. When his mother admitted them, Grit noticed that she looked disturbed, and he seized the first chance to ask her if anything were the matter. "Your stepfather has come!" she answered. CHAPTER V. THE STEPFATHER. Grit was disagreeably surprised at the news of Mr. Brandon's arrival, and he looked about him in the expectation of seeing his unwelcome figure, in vain. "Where is he, mother?" the boy inquired. "Gone to the tavern," she answered significantly. "Did you give him any money?" "I gave him a dollar," she replied sadly. "It is easy to tell how it will be spent." Grit had no time to inquire further at that time, for he was assisting his mother in necessary attentions to their guests, having hurriedly exchanged his own wet clothes for dry ones. Mr. Jackson seemed very grateful to Mrs. Morris for her attention to Willie. She found an old suit of Grit's, worn by him at the age of eight, and dressed Willie in it, while his own wet suit was being dried. The little boy presented a comical spectacle, the suit being three or four sizes too large for him. "I don't like it," he said. "It is too big." "So it is, Willie," said his father; "but you won't have to wear it long. You would catch your death of cold if you wore your wet clothes. How long will it take to dry his clothes, Mrs. Morris?" "Two or three hours at least," answered the widow. "I have a great mind to go back to Portville, and get a change of garments," said the father. "That would be the best thing, probably." "But I should have to burden you with Willie; for I should need to take Grit with me to ferry me across." "It will be no trouble, sir. I will take good care of him." "Willie, will you stay here while I go after your other clothes?" asked Mr. Jackson. Willie readily consented, especially after Grit had brought him a picture-book to look over. Then he accompanied the father to the river, and they started to go across. While they were gone, Mr. Brandon returned to the cottage. His flushed face and unsteady gait showed that he had been drinking. He lifted the latch, and went in. When he saw Willie sitting in a small chair beside his wife, he gazed at the child in astonishment. "Is that the cub?" he asked doubtfully. "Seems to me he's grown smaller since I saw him." "I ain't a cub," said Willie indignantly. "Oh! yer ain't a cub, hey?" repeated Brandon mockingly. "No, I ain't. My name is Willie Jackson, and my papa lives in New York." "What is the meaning of this, Mrs. Brandon?" asked the inebriate. "Where did you pick up this youngster?" His wife explained in a few words. "I thought it wasn't the cub," said Mr. Brandon indistinctly. "Where is he?" "He has gone to row Mr. Jackson over to Portville." "I say, Mrs. B., does he earn much money that way?" "He earns all the money that supports us," answered his wife coldly. "I must see to that," said Brandon unsteadily. "He must bring me his money every night--do you hear, Mrs. B.?--must bring me his money every night." "To spend for liquor, I suppose?" she responded bitterly. "I'm a gentleman. My money--that is, his money is my money. D'ye understand?" "I understand only too well, Mr. Brandon." "That's all right. I feel tired. Guess I'll go and lie down." To his wife's relief he went up-stairs, and was soon stretched out on the bed in a drunken sleep. "I am glad he is out of the way. I should be ashamed to have Mr. Jackson see him," thought Grit's mother, or Mrs. Brandon, as we must now call her. "Who is that man?" asked Willie anxiously. "His name is Brandon," answered Grit's mother. "He isn't a nice man. I don't like him." Mrs. Brandon said nothing. What could she say? If she had spoken as she felt, she would have been compelled to agree with the boy. Yet this man was her husband, and was likely to be to her a daily source of anxiety and annoyance. "I am afraid Grit and he won't agree," she thought anxiously. "Oh I why did he ever come back? For the last five years we have been happy. We have lived plainly and humbly, but our home has been peaceful. Now, Heaven knows what trouble is in store for us." Half an hour later Mr. Jackson and Grit returned. CHAPTER VI. GRIT'S RECOMPENSE. No time was lost in arraying Willie in clothes more suitable for him. The little boy was glad to lay aside Grit's old suit, which certainly was not very becoming to him. "Are we going now, papa?" asked the little boy. "Yes, Willie; but first I must express to this good lady my great thanks for her kindness." "I have done but little, sir," said Mrs. Brandon; "but that little I was very glad to do." "I am sure of that," said the visitor cordially. "If you remain in the neighborhood, I shall hope to see your little boy again, and yourself, also." "I will come," said Willie promptly. "He answers for himself," said his father, smiling, "and he will keep his promise. Now, Grit," he said, turning to the young boatman, "I will ask you to accompany me to the hotel." "Certainly, sir." When they had passed from the cottage, Mr. Jackson turned to the boy and grasped his hand. "I have not yet expressed to you my obligations," he said, with emotion, "for the great service you have done me--the greatest in the power of any man, or boy." "Don't speak of it, sir," said Grit modestly. "But I must. You have saved the life of my darling boy." "I don't know, sir." "But I do. I cannot swim a stroke, and but for your prompt bravery, he would have drowned before my eyes." Grit could not well contradict this statement, for it was incontestably true. "It was lucky I could swim," he answered. "Yes, it was. It seems providential that I should have had with me so brave a boy, when Willie's life was in peril. It will be something that you will remember with satisfaction to the end of your own life." "Yes, sir, there is no doubt of that," answered Grit sincerely. "I shudder to think what a sad blank my own life would have been if I had lost my dear boy. He is my only child, and for this reason I should have missed him the more. Your brave act is one that I cannot fitly reward----" "I don't need any reward, Mr. Jackson," said Grit hastily. "I am sure you do not. You do not look like a mercenary boy. But, for all that, I owe it to myself to see that so great a favor does not go unacknowledged. My brave boy, accept this wallet and what it contains, not as the payment of a debt, but as the first in the series of my acknowledgments to you." As he spoke, he put into the hand of the young boatman a wallet. "I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Jackson," said Grit, "but I am not sure that I ought to take this." "Then let me decide for you," said the broker, smiling. "I am older, and may be presumed to have more judgment." "It will seem as if I took pay for saving Willie from drowning." "If you did, it would be perfectly proper. But you forget that I have had the use of your boat and your own services for the greater part of the afternoon." "I presume you have paid me more than I ask for such services." "Very likely," answered Mr. Jackson. "In fact, outside of my obligations to you, I have formed a good opinion of a boy who works hard and faithfully to support his mother. I was a poor boy once, and I have not forgotten how to sympathize with those who are beginning the conflict with narrow means. Mind, Grit, I don't condole with you. You have good health and strong hands, and in our favored country there is no reason why, when you reach my age, you may not be equally well off." "I wish I might--for mother's sake," said Grit, his face lighting up with hope. "I shall see more of you while I am here, but I may as well say now that I mean to bear you in mind, and wish you to come to me, either here or in the city, when you stand in need of advice or assistance." Grit expressed his gratitude. Mr. Jackson selected a room at the hotel, and promised to take up his quarters there the next day. Then Grit once more took up his oars and ferried Willie and his father across the river. It was not for some time, therefore, that he had a chance to examine the wallet which had been given him. CHAPTER VII. GRIT ASTONISHES PHIL. Grit was not wholly without curiosity, and, as was natural, he speculated as to the amount which the wallet contained. When Mr. Jackson and Willie had left him, he took it out of his pocket and opened it. He extracted a roll of bills and counted them over. There were ten five-dollar bills, and ten dollars in notes of a smaller denomination. "Sixty dollars!" ejaculated Grit, with a thrill of pleasure. "I never was so rich in all my life." He felt that the sum was too large for him to accept, and he was half tempted to run after Mr. Jackson and say so. But quick reflection satisfied him that the generous New Yorker wished him to retain it, and, modest though he was, he was conscious that in saving the little boy's life he had placed his passenger under an obligation which a much larger sum would not have overpaid. Besides, he saw two new passengers walking toward his boat, who doubtless wished to be ferried across the river. They were Phil Courtney and Marion Clarke. "We are just in time, Mr. Grit," said the young lady, smiling. "Yes, my good fellow," said Phil condescendingly, "we will employ you again." "You are very kind," answered Grit, with a smile of amusement. "I like to encourage you," continued Phil, who was not very quick to interpret the looks of others. Grit looked at Marion, and noticed that she, too, looked amused. "Have you had any passengers since we came over?" asked Phil, in a patronizing tone. He was quite ready to employ his old schoolmate, provided he would show proper gratitude, and be suitably impressed by his condescension. "I have been across several times," answered Grit briefly. "And how much have you made now?" asked Phil, with what he intended to pass for benevolent interest. If Phil had been his friend, Grit would not have minded telling him; but he had the pride of self-respect, and he objected to being patronized or condescended to. "I haven't counted up," he answered. "I might have brought my own boat," said Phil, "but I like to encourage you." "Really, Phil, you are appearing in a new character," said Marion. "I never should have taken you for a philanthropist before. I thought you told your mother it would be too much bother to row over in your own boat." "That was one reason," said Phil, looking slightly embarrassed. "Besides, I didn't want to interfere with Grit's business. He is poor, and has to support his mother out of his earnings." This was in bad taste, and Grit chafed against it. "That is true," he said, "but I don't ask any sympathy. I am prosperous enough." "Oh, yes; you are doing well enough for one in your position, I don't doubt. How much would you give, now, to have as much money as I carry in this pocketbook?" asked Phil boastfully. He had just passed his birthday, and had received a present of ten dollars from his father, and five dollars each from his mother and an aunt. He had spent a part of it for a hat and in other ways, but still he had seventeen dollars left. "Perhaps I have as much money," answered Grit quietly. "Oho! That's a good joke," said Phil. "No joke at all," said Grit. "I don't know how much money you have in your pocketbook, but I presume I can show more." Phil's face grew red with anger. He was one of those disagreeable boys who are purse-proud, and he was provoked at hearing such a ridiculous assertion from a poor boy who had to earn his own living. Even Marion regarded Grit with some wonder, for she happened to know how much money her cousin carried, and it seemed to her very improbable that the young boatman should have as much in his possession. "Don't make a fool of yourself, Grit!" said Phil sharply. "Thank you; I don't propose to." "But you are doing it." "How?" "Didn't you say you had more money than I?" "I think I have." "Hear him talk!" said Phil, with a glance of derision. By this time the young boatman's grit was up, if I may use the expression, and he resolved to surprise and mortify his young adversary. "If you are not afraid to test it," he said, "I will leave it to the young lady to decide. Let her count the money in your pocketbook, and I will then give her my wallet for the same purpose." "Done!" said Phil promptly. Marion, wondering a little at Grit's confidence, took her cousin's pocketbook, and counted the contents. "Well, Marion, how much is there?" said Phil exultingly. "Seventeen dollars and thirty-seven cents," was the announcement of the fair umpire. Phil smiled triumphantly. "You didn't think I had so much--eh, Grit?" he said. "No, I didn't," Grit admitted. "Now hand over your wallet." "With pleasure, if Miss Marion will take the trouble," answered the young boatman, with a polite bow. When Marion opened the wallet, and saw the roll of bills, both she and Phil looked astonished. She proceeded to count the bills, however, and in a tone of serious surprise announced: "I find sixty dollars here." "That is right," said Grit quietly, as he received back his wallet, and thrust it into his pocket. Phil hardly knew whether he was more surprised or mortified at this unexpected result. But a thought struck him. "Whose money is that?" he demanded abruptly. "It is mine." "I don't believe it. You are carrying it over to some one in Chester." "Perhaps I am; but, if so, that some one is my mother." "You don't mean to say that you have sixty dollars of your own?" "Yes, I do. You didn't think I had so much money--eh, Phil?" he retorted, with a smile. "I don't believe a word of it," returned Phil crossly. "It is ridiculous that a boy like you should have so much money. It can't be yours." "Do you doubt it, Miss Marion?" asked Grit, turning to the young lady. "No; I believe that it is yours since you say so." "Thank you." "If it is yours, where did you get it?" asked Phil, whose curiosity overcame his mortification sufficiently to induce him to ask the question. "I don't feel called upon to tell you," answered Grit. "Then I can guess." "Very well. If you guess right, I will admit it." "You found it, and won't be long before finding the owner." "You are wrong. The money is mine, and was paid me in the course of business." Phil did not know what to say, but Marion said pleasantly: "Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Grit, on being so well off. You are richer than either of your passengers. I never had sixty dollars of my own in my life." By this time they had reached the other side of the river, and the two passengers disembarked. "Well, Phil, you came off second best," said his cousin. "I can't understand how the boy came into possession of such a sum of money," said Phil, frowning. "Nor I; but I am sure of one thing." "What is that?" "That he came by it honestly." "Don't be too sure of that," said Phil, shaking his head. "Phil, you are too bad," said Marion warmly. "You seem to have taken an unaccountable prejudice against Grit. I am sure he seems to me a very nice boy." "You're welcome to the young boatman's society," said Phil, with a sneer. "You seem to be fond of low company." "If you call him low company, then perhaps I am. I never met Grit before this morning, but he seems a very polite, spirited boy, and it is certainly to his credit that he supports his mother." "I can tell you something about him that may chill your ardor? His father is in jail." "I heard that it was his stepfather." "Oh, well, it doesn't matter which." "In one sense, no. The boy isn't to blame for it." "No, but it shows of what stock he comes." Meanwhile, Grit, having fastened his boat, made his way to the cottage on the bluff. He wanted to tell his mother of his good fortune. CHAPTER VIII. GRIT PUTS HIS MONEY AWAY. "You seem to be in good spirits, Grit," said his mother, as our hero opened the outside door and entered the room where she sat sewing. "Yes, mother, I have reason to be. Is--is Mr. Brandon home?" "Yes; he is up-stairs lying down," answered Mrs. Brandon, with a sigh. Grit rose and closed the door. "I don't want him to hear what I'm going to tell you," he said. "Mother, I have been very lucky to-day." "I suppose Mr. Jackson was liberal." "I should say he was. Guess how much money I have in this wallet, mother." "Five dollars." "Multiply that by twelve." "You don't mean to say that he gave you sixty dollars?" inquired his mother quickly. "Yes, I do. See here," and Grit displayed the roll of bills. "You are, indeed, in luck, Grit. How much good this money will do us. But I forgot," she added, her expression changing to one of anxious solicitude. "What did you forget, mother?" "That your father--that Mr. Brandon had returned." "What difference will that make, mother? I suppose, of course, it will increase our expenses." "If that were all, Grit." "What is it, then, you fear, mother?" "That he will take this money away from you." "I should like to see him try it," exclaimed Grit, compressing his lips. "He will try it, Grit. He said only an hour ago that you would have to account to him for your daily earnings." "Doesn't he mean to do any work himself?" "I fear not. You know what sort of a man he is, Grit. He probably means to live on what we can earn, and spend his time and what money he can get hold of at the tavern." "And he calls himself a man!" said Grit disdainfully. "I am afraid our quiet, happy life is at an end, Grit," sighed his mother. Grit did not answer for a moment, but he looked stern and determined. Finally, he answered: "I don't want to make any disturbance, mother, or to act improperly, but I feel sure that we ought not to submit to such treatment." "What can we do, Grit?" "If Mr. Brandon cares to stay here we will provide him a home, give him his board, but, as to supplying him with money, we ought not to do it." "I agree with you, Grit, but I don't see how we can help it. Mr. Brandon is a man, and you are only a boy. I don't want you to quarrel with him." "I won't if I can help it. By the way, mother, I don't think it will be prudent to leave all this money in the house." "What can we do with it?" "I will put it out of my hands. Perhaps I had better not tell you what I am going to do with it, for Mr. Brandon might ask you, and it is better that you should be able to tell him that you don't know." "You are right, Grit." "I will attend to that matter at once, mother. I will be back in half or three-quarters of an hour," and the young boatman hurried from the house. He bent his steps to the house of his particular friend, Fred Lawrence, the son of a lawyer in the village. Mr. Lawrence was rated as wealthy by the people in the village, and lived in a house quite as good as Mr. Courtney's, but his son Fred was a very different style of boy. He had no purse-pride, and it never occurred to him that Grit was unfit to associate with, simply because he was poor, and had to earn a living for himself and his mother by ferrying passengers across the Kennebec. In fact, he regarded Grit as his most intimate friend, and spent as much time in his company as their differing engagements would allow. Phil Courtney, though he condescended to Grit, regarded Fred as his social equal, and wished to be intimate with him; but Fred did not fancy Phil, and the latter saw, with no little annoyance, that the young boatman's company was preferred to his. It displayed shocking bad taste on the part of Fred, but he did not venture to express himself to the lawyer's son as he would not scruple to do to the young ferryman. Naturally, when Grit felt the need of advice, he thought of his most intimate friend, and sought the lawyer's house. He met Fred on the way. "Hello, Grit!" said Fred cordially. "Where are you going?" "I was going to your house." "Then turn round, and we will go there." "I can talk with you in the street. I want your advice and help." "My advice is probably very valuable," said Fred, smiling, "considering my age and experience. However, my help you can rely upon, if I can give it." "Did you hear that Mr. Brandon had got home?" asked Grit abruptly. "Your stepfather?" "Yes; I am sorry to say that there is that tie between us. I presume you know where he has spent the last five years?" "Yes," answered Fred. "Of course, I am glad for his sake that he is free; but I am afraid he is going to give us trouble." "How does he appear?" "I have not seen him yet." "How's that?" "He only arrived to-day, and I was absent when he reached home." "Does he mean to live here?" "I am afraid so; and, what is more, I am afraid he means that mother and I shall pay his expenses. He has already told mother that he shall require me to account to him for my daily earnings." "That will be hard on you." "Yes; I need all I can make to pay our daily expenses, and I don't feel like letting mother suffer for the necessaries of life in order to supply Mr. Brandon with money for drink." "You are right there, Grit. I sympathize with you; but how can I help it?" "That is what I am coming to. I want to deposit my money with you--that is, what I don't need to use." "I suppose you haven't much. It might not be well to trust me too far," said Fred, smiling. "I have sixty dollars here, which I would like to put in your hands--that is, all but two dollars." "Sixty dollars! Where on earth did you get so much money, Grit?" asked his friend, opening his eyes wide in astonishment. Grit told the story briefly, and received the warm congratulations of his friend. "You deserve it all, Grit," he said, "for your brave deed." "Don't flatter me, Fred, or I may put on airs like Phil Courtney. But, to come back to business--will you do me this favor?" "Of course, I will. Father has a safe in his office, and I will put the money in there. Whenever you want any of it, you have only to ask me." "Thank you. That will suit me. I shan't break in upon it unless I am obliged to, as I would like to have it in reserve to fall back upon." "Come and take supper with us, Grit, won't you?" asked Fred cordially. "Thank you, Fred; not to-night. I haven't seen Mr. Brandon yet, and I may as well get over the first interview as soon as possible. We shall have to come to an understanding, and it is better not to delay it." "Good night, then; I shall see you to-morrow, for I am going to Portville, and I shall go over in your boat." "Then we can have a chat together. Good night." Meanwhile, Mr. Brandon, having slept off his debauch, had come down-stairs. "Where's the cub?" he asked. "I wish you wouldn't call him by that name," said his wife. "He wouldn't like it." "I shall call him what I please. Hasn't he been in?" "Yes, Grit has been in." "Grit?" "That's a nickname the boys have given him, and as everybody calls him so, I have got into that way." "Oh, well, call him what you like. Has he been in?" "Yes." "Where is he now?" "He went out for a short time. I expect him in every minute." "Did he leave his day's earnings with you?" "No," answered Mrs. Brandon, with a troubled look. "He has the best right to that himself." "Has he, hey? We'll see about that. I, as his stepfather and legal guardian, shall have something to say to that." Mrs. Brandon was not called upon to reply, for the door opened just then, and the young boatman stood in the presence of his worthy stepfather. CHAPTER IX. A LITTLE DISCUSSION. Grit was only ten years old when his stepfather began to serve out his sentence at the penitentiary, and the two had not seen each other since. Instead of the small boy he remembered, Brandon saw before him a boy large and strong for his age, of well-knit frame and sturdy look. Five years had made him quite a different boy. His daily exercise in rowing had strengthened his muscles and developed his chest, so that he seemed almost a young man. Brandon stared in surprise at the boy. "Is that--the cub?" he asked. "I object to that name, Mr. Brandon," said Grit quietly. "You've grown!" said Brandon, still regarding him with curiosity. "Yes, I ought to have grown some in five years." It occurred to Mr. Brandon that it might not be so easy as he had expected to bully his stepson. He resolved at first to be conciliatory. "I'm glad to see you," he said. "It's long since we met." "Yes," answered Grit. He was not prepared to return the compliment, and express pleasure at his stepfather's return. "I'm glad you and your mother have got along so well while I was away." Grit felt tempted to say that they had got along better during Mr. Brandon's absence than when he was with them, but he forbore. He did not want to precipitate a conflict, though, from what his mother had said, he foresaw that one would come soon enough. "Your mother tells me that you make money by your boat," continued Mr. Brandon. "Yes, sir." "That's a good plan. I approve it. How much money have you made to-day, now?" "I have a dollar or two in my pocket," answered Grit evasively. "Very good!" said Brandon, in a tone of satisfaction. "You may as well hand it to me." So the crisis had come! Mrs. Brandon looked at her son and her husband with anxiety, fearing there would be a quarrel, and perhaps something worse. She was tempted to say something in deprecation, but Grit said promptly: "Thank you, Mr. Brandon, but I would prefer to keep the money myself." Brandon was rather taken aback by the boy's perfect coolness and self-possession. "How old are you?" he asked, with a frown. "Fifteen." "Indeed!" sneered Brandon. "I thought, from the way you talked, you were twenty-one. You don't seem to be aware that I am your legal guardian." "No, sir, I was not aware of it." "Then it's time you knew it. Ain't I your stepfather?" "I suppose so," said Grit, with reluctance. "Ha, you admit that, do you? I'm the master of this house, and it's my place to give orders. Your wages belong to me, but if you are obedient and respectful, I will allow you a small sum daily, say five cents." "That arrangement is not satisfactory, Mr. Brandon," said Grit firmly. "Why isn't it?" demanded his stepfather, frowning. "I use my money to support the family." "Did I say anything against it? As the master of the house, the bills come to me to be paid, and therefore I require you to give me every night whatever you may have taken during the day." "Do you intend to earn anything yourself?" asked Grit pointedly; "or do you expect to live on us?" "Boy, you are impertinent," said Brandon, coloring. "Don't provoke Mr. Brandon," said Grit's mother timidly. "We may as well come to an understanding," said Grit boldly. "I am willing to do all I can for you, mother, but Mr. Brandon is able to take care of himself, and I cannot support him, too." "Is this the way you talk to your father, you impertinent boy?" exclaimed Brandon wrathfully. "You are not my father, Mr. Brandon," said Grit coldly. "It is all the same; I am your mother's husband." "That's a different thing." "Once more, are you going to give me the money you have in your pocket?" "No, sir." Brandon looked at Grit, and he felt that it would have given him pleasure to shake the rebellion out of his obstinate stepson, but supper was almost ready, and he felt hungry. He decided that it would be as well to postpone an open outbreak. Grit was in the house, and not likely to run away. "We'll speak of this another time," he said, waving his hand. "You will find, young man, that it is of no use opposing me. Mrs. Brandon, is supper almost ready?" "Nearly," answered his wife, glad to have the subject postponed. "Then serve it as soon as possible," he said, in a lordly tone. "I am to meet a gentleman on business directly afterward." Supper was on the table in fifteen minutes. Mr. Brandon ate with evident enjoyment. Indeed, it was so short a time since he had been restricted to prison fare that he relished the plain but well-cooked dishes which his wife prepared. "Another cup of tea, Mrs. Brandon," he said. "It seems pleasant to be at home again after my long absence." "I shouldn't think he would like to refer to his imprisonment," thought Grit. "I hope soon to be in business," continued Brandon, "and we shall then be able to live in better style. When that time comes I shall be willing to have Grit retain his small earnings, stipulating only that he shall buy his own clothes, and pay his mother, say a dollar and a quarter a week, for board." He said this with the air of a man who considered himself liberal, but neither Grit nor his mother expressed their sense of his generosity. "Of course, just at present," Mr. Brandon proceeded, "I have no money. The minions of the law took from me all I had when they unjustly thrust me into a foul dungeon. For a time, therefore, I shall be compelled to accept Grit's earnings, but it will not be for long." Grit said nothing to this hint, but all the same he determined, whether for a short or a long time, to resist the exactions of his stepfather. As for Brandon, his change of front was induced by the thought that he could accomplish by stratagem what he might have had some difficulty in securing by force. He still had twenty-five cents of the dollar which his wife had given him in the morning. When supper was over he rose, and, putting on his hat, said: "I am going to the village on business. I shall be home in good season. Are you going my way, Grit?" "Not just at present," answered Grit. Mother and son looked at each other when they were alone. "I suppose he's gone to the tavern," said Grit. "Yes, I presume so," said his mother, sighing. "Well, mother, I didn't give up the money." "No, Grit, but he means to have it yet." "He's welcome to it if he can get it," said the boy manfully. "You haven't got the sixty dollars with you?" said his mother anxiously. "No, they are safe. I have kept only two dollars, thinking you might need some groceries." "Yes, I do, Grit. They go off faster, now that we have another mouth to feed." "Suppose you make out a list of what you want, mother, and I will go up to the store this evening. I may as well save Mr. Brandon from temptation." His mother made a list, and Grit, putting it in his pocket, walked up to the village. The groceries, with a pound of steak, cost a dollar and ninety cents. As Grit took the bundles and walked homeward, he thought to himself. "Mr. Brandon wouldn't feel very well repaid for his trouble if he should take all I have left. He ought to be satisfied with free board, without expecting us to supply him with pocket-money besides. I wonder what he would say if he knew how much money I have deposited with Fred Lawrence?" Grit congratulated himself that his stepfather was not likely to make this discovery, but in this he reckoned without his host. Mr. Brandon made the discovery that same evening. How it came about will appear in the next chapter. CHAPTER X. BRANDON LEARNS GRIT'S SECRET. "I had no idea the boy had grown so much," said Brandon to himself, as he directed his course toward the tavern. "I thought he was a little kid, but he's almost as big as I am. He's kind of obstinate, too, but he'll find out who's master before long. It's ridiculous, his expectin' to have the handlin' of all the money that comes into the house. Just as if he had any judgment--a boy of his age." The chances are that Grit's judgment in the matter would have proved better than Brandon's, since the latter proposed to spend a large portion of the money for drink. "I expect the boy makes a good thing out of his boating," resumed Mr. Brandon. "He owned up that he had almost two dollars, and it's likely he earned it all to-day." Presently Brandon reached the tavern, and entered the barroom. He called for whisky, and swallowed it with gusto. "You may charge it to me," said he carelessly; "I'll pay once a week." "We don't care to do business that way," said the barkeeper. "You ain't afraid I won't pay you?" said Brandon, in a tone of affected indignation. "I don't know whether you would or not, but our terms are cash." "Oh, well, if you're so strict as that, take it out of this quarter," said Brandon, throwing his sole remaining coin on the counter. Fifteen cents were returned to him, and in half an hour that sum was also expended at the bar. It might have been supposed that Brandon would be satisfied, but he was not. He made an attempt to obtain another drink on credit, but the barkeeper proved obdurate. Then he engaged in a game of cards, and about half-past nine set out to go home, in a better condition than if he had had more money to spend. "This will never do!" he muttered, in a discontented tone; "I can't be kept so short as this. It is humiliating to think of me, a grown man, going round without a cent in my pocket, while my stepson is reveling in money. I won't have it, and I'll let him understand it." A few feet in front of Brandon two boys were walking. One of them was Phil Courtney, and the other Dick Graham, a poor boy, who, by proper subserviency, had earned a position as chief favorite with his companion. Brandon could not help hearing their conversation. He heard Grit's name mentioned, and this made him listen attentively. "I can't understand where Grit got his money," Phil was saying. "How much did you say he had?" inquired Dick. "Sixty dollars!" "Whew!" Brandon felt like saying "Whew!" too, for his amazement was great, but he wanted to hear more, and remained silent. "Are you sure there were sixty dollars?" "Yes; my cousin Marion counted it." "How did Grit happen to show his money?" "He was boasting that he had more money than I, and I challenged him to show his money." "I suppose he did show more?" "Yes, I had only seventeen dollars. But what I can't understand is, where did a common boatman pick up so much money?" "Perhaps he has been saving for a long time." "Perhaps so, but I don't believe he could save so much," answered Phil. "Perhaps he stole it." Phil didn't believe this, but he would like to have believed it true. "I shouldn't wonder if he did, though I don't know where he could get the chance." "I wonder if he'd lend me five dollars," thought Dick Graham, though he did not care to let Phil know his thought. He resolved to be more attentive to Grit, in the hope of pecuniary favors. Meanwhile, he did not forget that Phil also was well provided. "You were pretty well fixed, too," he said. "I wonder how I'd feel if I had seventeen dollars." "What do I care about seventeen dollars?" said Phil discontentedly, "when a boy like Grit Morris can show more than three times as much." "Oh, well, he'll have to spend it. He won't keep it long. By the way, Phil, will you do me a favor?" "What is it?" asked Phil cautiously. "Won't you lend me two dollars? I want it the worst way. I haven't got a cent to my name." "I can't spare it," said Phil curtly. "It will leave you fifteen----" "I'm going to use it all. Besides, it would be the same as giving it----" "No, I'd pay you back in a week or two." "You've been owing me fifty cents for three months. If you'd paid that up punctually, perhaps I would have lent you. You'd better go to Grit." "He isn't my friend, and I thought you might not like my going to him." "Oh, you can borrow as much as you like of him--the more, the better!" returned Phil, with a laugh. "I'll try it, then. I shall have to pretend to be his friend." "All right. The faster he gets rid of his money, the better it will suit me." Brandon heard no more of the conversation, for the boys turned down a side street. But he had heard enough to surprise him. "Grit got sixty dollars!" he repeated to himself. "Why, the artful young villain! Who'd have thought it? And he coolly refuses to let his father have a cent. He's actually rolling in riches, while I haven't got a penny in my purse. And his mother aids and abets him in it, I'll be bound. It's the blackest ingratitude I ever heard of." What Grit had to be grateful to him for Mr. Brandon might have found it difficult to instance, but he actually managed to work himself into a fit of indignation because Grit declined to commit his money to his custody. Brandon felt very much like a man who has suddenly been informed that a pot of gold was concealed in his back yard. Actually, a member of his family possessed the handsome sum of sixty dollars. How was he to get it into his own hands? That was easier to ask than to answer. As he had said, Grit was a stout, strong boy, nearly his equal in size and strength, and he had already had sufficient acquaintance with his firmness, or obstinacy, as he preferred to call it, to make sure that the boy would not give up the money without a struggle. If now he could get hold of the money by stratagem, it would be easier, and make less disturbance. Where did Grit keep the money? "He may have given it to his mother," thought Brandon. "If so, I can find it in one of her bureau drawers. She always used to keep money there. But it is more likely that the boy keeps it in his own pocket. I know what I'll do. I'll get up in the night, when he and his mother are asleep, and search his pockets. Gad, how astonished he'll look in the morning when he searches for it, and finds it missing!" Brandon was very much amused by this thought, and he laughed aloud. "Sixty dollars'll set me on my feet again," he reflected. "Let me see. I'll go to Boston, and look round, and see if I can't pick up a job of some kind. There isn't anything to do here in this beastly hole. By the way, I wonder where the boy did get so much money. He must find boatin' more profitable than I had any idea of." At this point Brandon entered the little path that led to his wife's cottage. "Mrs. B. is sittin' up," he said, as he saw through the window the figure of his wife in a rocking-chair, apparently occupied with some kind of work. "I'll get her off to bed soon, so that I can have a clear field." Mrs. Brandon looked up when her husband entered, and noticed, with a feeling of relief, that he was sober. That, however, was not owing to any intentional moderation on his part, but to his lack of funds. "Sittin' up for me, Mrs. B.?" asked Brandon. "I generally sit up till past this hour," she answered. "I feel rather tired myself," said Brandon, succeeding in yawning. "It isn't on account of having done any work," thought his wife. "I've been walkin' round considerably, and got tired." "Do you come from the tavern?" asked Mrs. Brandon coldly. "Yes, Mrs. B., I expected to meet a gentleman there on business, but he disappointed me. Where's Grit?" "He has gone to bed. He has got to get up early in the morning, to help me, and then he spends the day in ferrying passengers across the river." "That's a bright idea of Grit's. I approve it. He makes considerable money, doesn't he?" "Considerable for a boy. I don't know what I should do if it were not for Grit." "Just so. But now I'm home, and shall soon get into business. Then you won't need to depend on him. Of course, I shall need a little money to start with." Mrs. Brandon did not reply to this obvious hint. She prepared for bed. An hour later, Brandon, having ascertained that his wife was asleep, left the room cautiously, and stole into Grit's chamber. CHAPTER XI. THE MIDNIGHT VISIT. Grit was not aware that Brandon had discovered his secret, but still was not unprepared for a night visit. As we already know, he had but ten cents left of the two dollars he had reserved, and this coin he put into a small leather purse, which he usually carried. "If Mr. Brandon searches for money, he will be disappointed," he said to himself, with a quiet smile. "He won't find enough to pay him for his trouble." Grit was not anxious enough about his money to keep awake. When, therefore, his stepfather entered his chamber, he was fast asleep. Brandon listened for a moment to the deep breathing of the boy, and felt that there was no need of caution. He therefore boldly advanced, candle in hand, to the bedside. The candle he set on the bureau, and then took up Grit's clothes, which hung over a chair, and proceeded to examine the pockets. His countenance changed as he continued the search. At last he came to the purse, but it felt empty, and he did not open it with much confidence. Thrusting in his finger, he drew out the solitary dime which it contained. "Only ten cents!" he exclaimed, with intense disappointment. "It isn't worth taking. On second thoughts, I'll take it, though, for it will pay for a drink." He pocketed the coin, and resumed his search. "The boy must have a pocketbook somewhere," he muttered. "He wouldn't carry bank-bills in a purse. Where can he keep it?" Once more he explored the pockets of his stepson, but he met with no greater success than before. It is a curious circumstance that sometimes in profound sleep a person seems vaguely aware of the presence of an intruder, and the feeling is frequently strong enough to disturb slumber. Grit was a sound sleeper, but, however we may account for it, whether it was the instinctive feeling I have mentioned, or the glare of the candle, he woke up, and his glance rested on the kneeling figure of his stepfather rummaging his pockets. Instantly Grit realized the situation, and he felt more amused than indignant, knowing how poorly the searcher would be rewarded. Brandon's back was turned to him, and our hero felt inclined to try the effect of a practical joke. In a deep, sepulchral voice, he called out: "What are you doing there?" Brandon, taken by surprise, started as if he had been shot, and sprang to his feet in confusion. Turning to the bed, he saw Grit surveying him calmly. Then his natural hardihood restored his self-possession. "Where do you keep your money, you young cub?" he demanded. "Where do I keep it? I suspect you know well enough. Haven't you looked into my purse?" "Yes, and I only found ten cents." "Did you take it?" asked Grit. "Yes." "Then it's lucky I had no more in it." "Where is the rest of your money?" demanded Brandon. "What do you mean by the rest of my money?" "I mean the sixty dollars you had with you to-day." Grit whistled. "So you heard I had sixty dollars?" he said. "Yes." "It is in a safe place." "Ha! You own that you had so much money. You wanted to keep it from me, did you?" demanded Brandon, with a frown. "Yes, I did," admitted Grit. "Did Phil Courtney tell you I had it?" "No matter how I heard. I know that you are trying to conceal a large sum of money, which ought to be in my hands." "Indeed! How do you make that out?" "I am your stepfather and natural guardian. I am the best person to take care of your money." "I don't think so, and I propose to keep it myself," said Grit firmly. "Do you defy me?" demanded Brandon angrily. "If you call my refusing to give you my own money by that name, then I do." "Boy, you don't know me!" said Brandon, in a tone intended to strike terror into the heart of his stepson. "Hitherto you have had only your mother to look after you, and she has been foolishly indulgent. Now you have a man to deal with. Once more, will you hand me that money?" "I decline," said Grit firmly. "Then on your head be the consequences," said Brandon. "You will hear from me again, and soon." So saying, he stalked majestically from the chamber. "I wonder what he means to do?" thought Grit. But the thought did not keep him awake. CHAPTER XII. GRIT'S MISFORTUNE. The next morning Grit came down to breakfast nearly an hour later than usual. It might have been because he was unusually fatigued, or it may have been on account of his slumbers having been interrupted. When he came down-stairs, he looked at the clock, and realized that he had overslept himself. "I am nearly an hour late, mother," he said. "Why didn't you call me?" "I thought you were tired, Grit, and needed sleep." "Where is Mr. Brandon? I suppose he has not got up!" "Yes, he has had his breakfast and gone out." "He is in a great hurry to spend my ten cents," said Grit, laughing. "What do you mean, Grit?" "I had a visit from him last night," Grit explained. "He rummaged my pockets, and was successful in finding a dime." "Is it possible?" "Why should you be surprised, mother? I was not." "Did he say anything to you?" "Yes; he has found out somehow about the sixty dollars, and he asked me to give it to him." "Oh, Grit, I am afraid there will be trouble," said Mrs. Brandon anxiously. "He won't rest till he gets the money." "Then he won't rest at all," said Grit firmly. "I am afraid you will have to give it to him, Grit." "Not if I know what I am about. No, mother, the money is safe, where he won't find it. I won't tell you, for he might annoy you till you told him." "No, Grit; don't tell me. I would rather not know. How happy we were before he came, and how rich we should feel if this money had come to you before Mr. Brandon came home!" "That is true, mother. It's a shame that he should come home to give us so much trouble." "I can't see how it's all going to end," murmured Mrs. Brandon sadly. "Nor I; but I mean to resist Mr. Brandon till he finds it's of no use trying to appropriate my money. When he finds he can't get anything out of us except a bare living, he may become disgusted and leave us." "He won't do it while he has any hope left. What do you think he has been trying to persuade me to do, Grit?" "I don't know." "He wants me to mortgage this cottage, and give him the money." "Just like him, mother. I hope you were firm?" "Yes, Grit. I told him I would not consent. It is all we have. I cannot part with our home and the roof that shelters us." "Of course not, mother. You would be very foolish if you did. Did he mention any one that wanted to buy it?" "Yes, he said that Mr. Green would be willing to advance money upon it." "Mr. Green--the landlord of the hotel? I don't doubt it. He knows that Brandon would pay back the whole for drink in a short time." "I am afraid that would be the case." "Mother," said Grit, with energy, "promise me that you will never consent to this wicked plan." "No, Grit, I won't. I consider that the house is as much yours as mine, and I am not willing to leave you without a home." "I don't so much mind that, for I could shift for myself somehow, but I want you to keep it in your own hands, and I am not willing that Mr. Brandon should sacrifice it for drink." "I agree with you, Grit. Whatever it may cost me, I won't consent." "The sooner he becomes convinced that he has nothing to hope from either of us, the sooner he will leave us," said Grit. "If I thought he would go away and never come back, I would be willing to let him have the sixty dollars, but it would only make him stay, in the hope of getting more." By this time Grit had finished his breakfast. "I must get to work, mother," he said. "I'll be home to dinner at the usual time, if I can." "If not, I will save something for you, Grit." The young boatman made his way to the river. Here an unpleasant surprise awaited him. His boat was not where he had left it. He looked in all directions, but it had disappeared. "What can have become of it?" thought Grit, in perplexity. CHAPTER XIII. GRIT'S BOAT IS SOLD. Brandon was not usually an early riser, and would not on this occasion have got up so soon if a bright idea had not occurred to him likely to bring money to his purse. It was certainly vexatious that Grit so obstinately refused to pay into his hands the money he had managed in some way unknown to his stepfather to accumulate. Perhaps some way of forcing the boy to do so might suggest itself, but meanwhile he was penniless; that is, with the exception of the dime he had abstracted during the night. Possibly his wife might have some money. He proceeded to sound her on the subject. "Mrs. B.," said he, "I shall have to trouble you for a little money." "I gave you a dollar yesterday," said Mrs. Brandon. "What's a dollar? I have none of it left now." "Did you spend it at the tavern?" asked his wife gravely. "I am not willing to be catechized upon that point," returned Brandon, in a tone of lofty dignity. "It is quite impossible to supply you with money for such a purpose," continued Mrs. Brandon. "What money Grit earns is wanted for necessary expenses." "I am not so easily deceived," said her husband, nodding sagaciously. "It is quite true." "I won't argue the point, Mrs. B. Have you any change now? That is the question." "No, I have not." "Be it so. I have only to remark that you and your son will have occasion to regret the unfriendly and suspicious manner in which you see fit to treat me." So saying, Mr. Brandon sat down to his breakfast, which he ate with an appetite such as is usually earned by honest toil. When he rose from the table, he left the cottage without a word. "How it all this to end?" thought Mrs. Brandon, following his retreating form with an anxious glance. "He has not been here twenty-four hours yet, and he has spent a dollar of Grit's hard earnings, and is dissatisfied because we will not give him more. Besides, he has already broached the subject of mortgaging the house, and all to gratify his insatiable thirst for strong drink." Certainly the prospects were not very bright, and Mrs. Brandon might well be excused for feeling anxious. Though Brandon had ten cents in his pocket, the price of a glass of whisky, he did not go at once to the tavern, as might have been expected. Instead of this, he bent his steps toward the river. He knew about where Grit kept his boat, and went directly to it. "Ha! a very good boat!" he said, after surveying it critically. "It ought to be worth ten dollars, at least, though I suppose I can't get over five for it. Well, five dollars will be a lift to me, and if Grit wants another boat he's got the money to buy one. I can get even with him this way, at least. He'd better have treated me well and saved his boat." The boat was tied fast, but this presented no insurmountable difficulty. Brandon pulled a jack-knife out of his pocket, and after awhile--for it was very dull--succeeded in severing the rope. Then he jumped into the boat and began to row out into the stream. He was a little at a loss at first as to where he would be most likely to find a purchaser. In his five years' absence from the neighborhood he had lost his former acquaintances, and there had been, besides, changes in the population. As he was rowing at random, he chanced to look back to the shore he had left, and noticed that a boy was signaling to him. He recognized him as the boy whom he had heard speaking of Grit's treasure, and, being desirous of hearing more on the subject, he at once began to pull back to the river bank. The boy, as the reader will surmise, was Phil Courtney. "Hello, there!" said Phil; "isn't that Grit Morris' boat?" "No, it's mine." "It is the same Grit usually rows in," said Phil, beginning to suspect Brandon of theft. "That may be, but the boat is mine." "Did he sell it to you?" "No." "Who are you, then?" "I am Mr. Brandon, Grit's stepfather." Phil whistled. "Oh, it's you, is it?" he said, surveying Brandon, not over respectfully, for he knew where he had spent the last five years. "So you've come home?" "Yes, but I might as well have stayed away." "How is that?" asked Phil, regarding the man before him with curiosity. Brandon was not too proud to speak of his domestic grievances, as he regarded them, to a stranger. "My wife and son treat me like a stranger," he said. "Instead of giving me a warm welcome after my long absence, they seem to be sorry to see me." "I don't wonder much," thought Phil, but he did not say so, not being averse to drawing Brandon out on this subject. "And that reminds me, young gentleman; I was walking behind you last evening, and I heard you say something about Grit's having a large sum of money." "Yes; he showed me sixty dollars yesterday." "Are you sure there was as much as that?" inquired Brandon eagerly. "Yes, I am sure, for my cousin counted it in my presence." "It might have belonged to some one else," suggested Brandon. "No; I thought so myself, but Grit said it belonged to him." "Did he say where he got it?" "No; he's mighty close about his affairs. I couldn't help wondering myself, and asked him, but he wouldn't tell me." "If he's got as much money as that, he ought to give it to me to take care of." "Why don't you make him give it to you?" suggested Phil maliciously. "I did ask him, but he refused. A boy of his age ought not to carry about so much money. Did he carry it in a roll of bills, or in a pocketbook?" "He had it in a wallet." "I didn't see the wallet," thought Brandon. "I only found the purse. The boy must have hidden it somewhere. I must look for it." "What are you going to do about it?" asked Phil. "Are you going to let him keep it?" "Not if I can find it. I will take it away from him if I get the chance." "I wish he would," thought Phil. "It would soon go for drink, and then Master Grit wouldn't put on so many airs." "May I ask your name?" asked Brandon. "I am Phil Courtney, the son of Squire Courtney, the president of the bank," answered Phil pompously. "You don't say so!" exclaimed Brandon, in a tone of flattering deference. "I am proud to know you. You come of a fine family." "Yes, my father stands pretty high," remarked Phil complacently. "Really," thought he, "this man has very good manners, even if he has just come from the penitentiary. He treats me with a good deal more respect than Grit does. If I could help him to get the money I would." "Not a man in town stands higher," said Brandon emphatically. "Are you a friend of my stepson?" "Well, hardly," answered Phil, shrugging his shoulders. "You must excuse my saying so, but Grit hasn't very good manners, and, though I patronize him by riding in his boat, I cannot regard him as a fitting associate." "You are entirely right, young gentleman," said Brandon. "Though Grit is my stepson, I am not blind to his faults. He has behaved very badly to me already, and I shall be obliged to require him to treat me with more respect. If he would only copy you, I should be very glad." "You are very polite, Mr. Brandon," said Phil, flattered. "I hope, for your sake, that Grit will improve." "By the way, Mr. Courtney"--Phil swelled with conscious pride at this designation--"do you know any one who would like to buy a boat?" "What boat do you refer to?" asked Phil. "This boat." "But I thought it was Grit's." "I am his stepfather, and have decided to sell it." "What'll you take?" asked Phil, not unwilling to buy a good boat, especially as he knew it would annoy Grit. "It is worth ten dollars, but I will sell it for six dollars cash." "Say five, and I'll take it." "Very well, Mr. Courtney, seeing it's you, I will say five." "It's a bargain." Phil had his money in his pocket, and he lost no time in binding the bargain by paying the money. "I think I'll take a row myself," he said. He jumped into the boat, and Brandon, with five dollars in his pocket, took the nearest road to the tavern. CHAPTER XIV. THE BILL OF SALE. A sudden thought struck Phil, and he called back Brandon. "What's wanted now?" asked the latter impatiently. "I want you to give me a bill of sale of the boat," said Phil. "What's the use of that?" "I don't want Grit to charge me with taking his boat without leave." "Oh, bother! it's all right. I haven't got any paper," said Brandon, who was anxious to reach the tavern, and take his morning dram. "I have," said Phil promptly, as he drew out a small note-book and tore out a leaf, which he handed, with a pencil, to Brandon. "What do you want me to write?" asked the latter. Phil dictated a form, which Brandon wrote down and signed. "Will that do?" he asked. "Yes, that will do. Now I am all right, and the boat is mine in spite of all Grit may say." "I have made a good bargain," said Phil, to himself, complacently. "This boat is worth at least twice what I have paid for it. I will get it painted, and a new name for it, and it will pass for a new boat. Won't Grit be mad when he hears what his stepfather has done?" This was, on the whole, the pleasantest reflection connected with the purchase. It was not creditable to Phil to cherish such malice against a boy, simply because he would not treat him with as much deference as he expected; but human nature is often betrayed into petty meannesses, and Phil was a very human boy, so far, at least, as such traits were concerned. We now come back to Grit, who stood on the river's bank in perplexity, when he discovered that his boat had been abstracted. "Who can have taken it?" he thought. Here he felt quite at a loss. It did not occur to him that his stepfather had had anything to do with his boat, for he could not understand of what advantage it would be to him. He did not comprehend fully, however, how serious the loss was likely to prove, since it took away his means of living. He stooped over and examined the rope. Clearly, it had been cut, and this showed that the boat had been taken by some unauthorized person. "I can't understand who would serve me such a trick," thought Grit. "I don't know that I have any enemies." But at this point he could not help thinking of Phil Courtney, who, if not an enemy, was certainly not a friend. "Is it possible that Phil would play me such a trick?" he asked himself. "No; he would think too much of himself. He would not condescend to do such a thing." Grit walked up and down along the river bank, looking here and there to see if anywhere he could descry his boat. At length he saw a boat, but the boat was not his. It belonged to Jesse Burns, the son of the postmaster, and was of about the same size and build as his own. "Jesse!" he called out, putting his hands to his mouth to increase the volume of sound. Jesse heard the call, and rowed toward where Grit was standing. "What is it, Grit?" "My boat has been taken, and I don't know what has become of it." "Is that so?" asked Jesse, in surprise. "Why, I saw Phil Courtney out on the river with it. I passed him only fifteen minutes since. I thought you had let it to him." "Phil Courtney!" exclaimed Grit, angry and surprised. "I didn't think he would take it without leave." "Did he?" "Yes, I found the rope cut." "That doesn't seem like Phil. He's mean enough to do anything, but I didn't think he would do that." "Nor I. I'll give him a good piece of my mind when we meet. Where did you meet him?" "Just above Glen Cove." "Do me a favor, Jesse. Take me into your boat, and row me up there, so that I may meet him, and recover my boat." "All right, Grit. I'm very glad to do you a favor." "Are you sure it is my boat Phil had?" asked Grit, still unwilling to believe that Phil had deliberately taken his boat. "Yes, I know your boat as well as my own. Besides, there was the name, _Water Lily_, on it, as plain as day. There is no doubt about it." "Well," said Grit, closing his lips firmly, "all I can say is, I'll make him pay for the use of the boat, or there'll be trouble." "You won't challenge him, will you, Grit?" asked Jesse, smiling. "That's just what I will do. I should be justified in thrashing him, without notice, but I will give him a chance to defend himself." "If you want a second, call on me," said Jesse. "I don't like Phil any better than you do, and I shan't object to seeing his pride humbled. It's bad for your business, having the boat taken." "Yes, I shall lose the chance of two passengers who wanted to go across to Portville an hour from now." "You may use my boat for that, Grit." "Thank you, Jesse; I should like to, if I don't get back my own. Did you speak to Phil?" "No. I said 'good morning,' but, with his usual politeness, he only gave a slight nod, and did not answer. I wanted to ask him how it happened that he was using your boat so early in the morning, but, you see, I got no chance." "It is queer. I can't guess what he will have to say for himself." "There he is now!" said Jesse suddenly, looking up the river. "Where?" "Don't you see? He is rowing this way. His back is turned, and he hasn't seen us yet." Yes, it was Phil. He had enjoyed a good row, and now was on his return course. He was rowing slowly and lazily, as if fatigued. "You will soon hear what he has to say, Grit," said Jesse. At that moment Phil chanced to turn round, and he saw and recognized the boys that were approaching him. He did not, however, seem confused or embarrassed; neither did he change his course. He merely smiled, and continued to row toward his pursuers. "He sees us, and still he comes on. There's cheek for you!" ejaculated Jesse. Grit said nothing, but his mouth closed firmly, and his eyes sparkled with anger. He waited till Phil was within earshot, and then he demanded sternly: "What are you doing there with my boat, Phil Courtney?" Phil would have resented Grit's tone, but he gloated over the triumphant answer he was able to make, and thought he would tantalize Grit a little. "To what boat do you allude?" he asked, in a nonchalant tone. "To what boat do I allude?" repeated Grit, provoked. "I allude to my boat, in which you are rowing." "You are mistaken," said Phil composedly. "I am rowing in my own boat." "Isn't that the _Water Lily_?" asked Jesse, coming to the help of his friend. "It is at present. I shall change the name for one I like better." "Look here, Phil Courtney!" said Grit indignantly, "this is carrying the joke a little too far. You have taken my boat without leave or license from me, and now you actually claim it as your own. Do you mean to say that isn't the boat I have been rowing on this river for the last year?" "I never said it wasn't." "Isn't it the boat in which I carried you across the river yesterday?" "Of course." "Then what business had you to cut the rope and carry it off?" "I didn't." "Then how did you come by it?" "I bought it!" "Bought it!" exclaimed Grit and Jesse simultaneously. "Yes, I bought it, and it is mine," continued Phil, with a smile of triumph. "It's just as much mine to-day as it was yours yesterday." "I never sold it to you," said Grit, perplexed. "No, but your stepfather, Mr. Brandon, did. If the rope was cut, he cut it." "Can you prove this, Phil Courtney?" asked Grit. "If you will row up alongside, I will satisfy your curiosity." Jesse pulled his boat alongside, and Phil drew from his vest pocket a paper and handed it to Grit. "Read that," he said. Grit read as follows: "In consideration of five dollars, to me paid, I make over and sell the boat called the _Water Lily_ to Philip Courtney. NATHAN BRANDON." "There!" said Philip triumphantly, "what have you to say now?" CHAPTER XV. GRIT ENGAGES ANOTHER BOAT. When Phil displayed the bill of sale, made out in due form by Brandon, Grit was for the moment taken aback. "Whose boat is it now?" continued Phil triumphantly. "It is mine," answered Grit quietly; "for Mr. Brandon had no right to sell it." "I have nothing to do with that," said Phil. "He is your stepfather--you ought to feel proud of having a jail-bird in the family--and he told me the boat was his." "I shall not contest your claim at present," said Grit. "As long as it passes out of my hands, you may as well have it as any one." "I'll sell it back for ten dollars," said Phil, who had a keen scent for a bargain. "Thank you, I don't care to buy back my own property. Besides, Mr. Brandon would be ready to sell it again to-morrow. As to what you say of him, I shan't undertake to defend him. I am not particularly proud of the relationship." "What are you going to do for a boat to ferry your passengers?" asked Phil. "I don't know." "I'll let you this for fifty cents a day." "That would be about half of my receipts, and you would get your money back in ten days. I don't care about making such a bargain as that." "You'll have to give up your business, then," said Phil. "No, he won't," said Jesse Burns. "I will give him the use of mine, and won't charge him a cent." "Thank you, Jesse. You are a true friend," said Grit warmly. "You are doing me a great favor." "And I am glad to do it. Suppose we pull to land? There are three persons at the landing who look as if they wanted to be ferried across." Grit seized the oars and impelled the boat to land. As Jesse had said, there were three persons waiting, a gentleman and two ladies, who at once engaged the services of the young boatman. For this service he received thirty cents, and, finding two persons at the other end who wished to come to Chester, the first hour in his new boat brought him fifty cents. Grit's spirits rose. His misfortune was not irremediable, after all. He had feared that his means of living were taken away, and though he had money enough to buy a new boat, he did not dare to do so, lest Brandon should also sell that. "I'll give him a piece of my mind," he thought. "It's contemptible to come home and live on us, and then to take away my means of living." Meanwhile, Brandon had gone to the tavern, which he entered with a swagger, and immediately called for a glass of whisky. The barkeeper hesitated. "My orders are not to sell on credit," he said. "Who wants you to sell on credit?" asked Brandon haughtily. "You had no money last night." "I've got some now. What do you say to that?" and he displayed the five-dollar bill he had received from Phil Courtney. "That alters the case," said the barkeeper complaisantly. "Your money is as good as anybody's." "I should say so. Give me another." When Brandon left the barroom, he had spent a dollar, having drunk himself and treated others. "Wonder if Grit has found out about his boat?" he said to himself, with a waggish smile, as he walked homeward with unsteady steps. "Serves the boy right for treating me so disrespectfully." It was not much out of his way to go down to the margin of the river, and he did so. It happened that, as he reached it, Grit had just arrived from Portville with a second load of passengers. Fortune, as if to compensate him for his loss of a boat, had brought him an unusual number of passengers, so that he had already earned a dollar. When Brandon saw Grit engaged in his usual avocation, he opened wide his eyes in surprise. "Has the boy got his boat back again?" he asked himself. He was not familiar with the appearance of the boat, and the name had slipped from his recollection. Then, also, Jesse's boat looked very much like Grit's. When the passengers had walked away Brandon took measures to gratify his curiosity. "Where did you get that boat, Grit?" he asked. "Ah, it's you, is it?" said Grit, seeing his stepfather for the first time. "What business had you to sell my boat, Mr. Brandon?" "Ain't I your stepfather, I'd like to know?" retorted Brandon. "I am sorry to say you are," answered Grit; "but that doesn't give you any authority to steal and sell my boat." "Don't you dare to charge me with stealin', you--you young puppy!" exclaimed Brandon, indignantly. "If you had behaved as you ought to me, I wouldn't have meddled with your boat." "I understand you, Mr. Brandon. Because I wouldn't give you the money that I need to support my mother, you meanly and maliciously plot to take away my means of living." "You wouldn't give me your money to take care of for you." "You take care of my money for me!" returned Grit disdainfully. "I know very well how you would take care of it. You've already spent a part of the five dollars you received for stolen property at the tavern, and the result is that you can't walk straight." "You lie! I can walk as straight as you!" said Brandon, and proceeded to prove it by falling against a tree, and recovering his equilibrium with difficulty. "I see you can," said Grit sarcastically. "Of course I can. Where did you get that boat? Is it the same----" "The same you stole from me? No, it isn't." "Have you bought it?" inquired Brandon, with a cunning look. "No, I haven't, and I don't intend to buy another boat for you to sell. I have borrowed it of my friend, Jesse Burns." Mr. Brandon looked disappointed. He had thought the new boat would prove a second bonanza, and he was already considering whether he could find another purchaser for it. "Have you made much money this mornin', Grit?" next inquired Brandon, changing the conversation. "I decline to tell you," answered Grit shortly. "Grit, you don't seem to reflect that I am your stepfather, and set in authority over you." "I am not very likely to forget that I have a stepfather I am ashamed of," said Grit. "This is unkind, Grit," said Brandon, in a voice tremulous with maudlin sentiment. "Because I've been unfortunate, and have been shut out from all enjoyment for five years, you mock and insult me when I get home and pine for domestic happiness." "If you would behave decently, you wouldn't be reminded of the past," said Grit. "But how is it? You haven't been home but twenty-four hours, and have already borrowed all the money mother had, and have sold my boat, to gratify your taste for rum. There may be more contemptible men in the world, but I never met with one." "Grit, if you talk to me in that way," said Brandon, with attempted dignity, "I shall be under the necessity of flogging you." "You'd better not try it, Mr. Brandon. I wouldn't stand still while you were doing it. I promise you that." Just then two gentlemen came down to Phil's pier, and one asked: "Can you take us across to Portville?" "Yes, sir," answered Grit promptly. The two gentlemen got in, and Grit was about to push off, when Brandon said: "Stop, Grit; I'll go, too." "You'll have to wait, Mr. Brandon," said Grit coolly, and a determined push sent the boat out into the stream, and frustrated the design of his stepfather. "You don't want any more passengers, I see," said one of the gentlemen, smiling. "Not of that kind," answered Grit. "You are right. The man had evidently been drinking, and his presence would have been disagreeable to us." When the boat reached the opposite shore, the gentleman who had engaged him handed Grit half a dollar. Grit was about to offer change, but the passenger said: "No, keep the change, my lad. You'll find a use for it, I make no doubt." "After all," thought Grit, who did not forget to thank his liberal patron, "this isn't going to be so bad a day for me." Five minutes later a man with a heavy black beard and rather shabbily attired presented himself as a passenger. "I say, boy," said he, "do you know a man named Brandon that has recently gone to Chester?" "Yes," answered Grit. "All right. When we get over on the other side, you can just point out to me where he lives." CHAPTER XVI. MR. BRANDON'S FRIEND. It was clear that Grit's new passenger was a stranger in the neighborhood. Had he been a resident of Chester or Portville, the young boatman would have known him. It must be confessed, however, that the appearance of the newcomer was not such as to render any one anxious to make his acquaintance. He was a black-haired, low-browed man, with a cunning, crafty look, and, to sum up, with the general appearance of a tramp. He seated himself comfortably, and scanned the young boatman critically. "Where do you live?" he asked abruptly. "In Chester," answered Grit briefly. "That's where my friend Brandon lives, isn't it?" "Yes." "Do you know him?" "Yes." Grit felt reluctant to admit that any tie existed between himself and the returned convict. "Brandon's wife is living, isn't she?" "Yes." "There's a kid, isn't there?" "Mrs. Brandon has a son, if that's what you mean," said Grit. "Of course, that's what I mean. Mrs. Brandon got any property?" Grit was getting provoked. He did not fancy discussing his mother's affairs with a man of this stamp. "You seem to feel considerable interest in the family," he could not help saying. "S'pose I do! That's my business, isn't it?" "I suppose so," answered Grit. "Well, why don't you answer my question?" demanded the passenger impatiently. "I haven't agreed to answer your questions; I have engaged to row you across the river, and I am doing it." "Look here, boy!" said the passenger, bending his brows, "I don't want you to talk back to me--do you hear?" "Yes, I hear; but if you ask me questions I shall answer as I please." "You will, hey? I've a great mind to throw you into the river." "That wouldn't do you any good. You wouldn't get over any quicker, and, besides, you would find yourself under arrest before night." "And you would drown." "Not if I could help it. I can swim across the river easily." "You're a cool hand. Then you are not willing to answer my questions?" "I will, if you will answer mine." "Go ahead. I'll see about it." "Where did you meet Mr. Brandon?" "Where? Well, let that pass." It so happened that the two had first met as fellow prisoners--a confession the passenger did not care to make. Grit inferred this from the reluctance displayed in giving the answer. "What is your name?" "Thomas Travers," answered the passenger, rather slowly. "What is yours?" "Harry Morris." This answer revealed nothing, since Travers did not know the name of Brandon's wife before marriage. "Do you make much, ferrying passengers across the river?" "I do pretty well." "What is your fare?" "Ten cents." "Pretty good. I'd do it for that myself." "There's a chance to run opposition to me," said Grit, smiling. "I've got more important business on hand. So you know Brandon, do you?" "Yes, I know him." "Do you know his wife?" "Yes." "Has she property?" "She owns the small cottage she lives in." "Good!" said Travers, nodding. "That's luck for Brandon." "How is it?" asked Grit, desirous of drawing out Travers, as he probably knew Mr. Brandon's intentions, and it was important that these should be understood. "It's a good thing to have property in the family. My friend Brandon is short of funds, and he can sell the house, or raise money on it." "Without his wife's consent?" "Oh, she'll have to give in," said Travers nonchalantly. "We'll see about that," said Grit to himself, but he did not utter his thoughts aloud. By this time they had reached the opposite shore of the river, and Travers stepped out of the boat. He felt in his vest pocket, as a matter of form, but did not succeed in finding anything there. "I've got no change, boy," he said. "I'll get some from Brandon, and pay you to-morrow." "Mr. Brandon's credit isn't good with me," said Grit. "Ha, does he owe you money?" "I refused to take him across the river this morning," answered Grit. "Look here, young fellow, that isn't the way to carry on business. When you insult my friend Brandon, you insult me. I've a great mind never to ride across on your boat again." "I don't mind losing your patronage," repeated Grit. "It doesn't pay." "We'll discuss that another time. Where does my friend Brandon live?" "You can inquire," returned Grit, by no means anxious to point out the way to his mother's house to this objectionable stranger. "You're the most impudent boy I've met lately," said Travers angrily. "I'll settle you yet." "Better settle with me first, Mr. Travers," said Grit coolly, and he pushed his boat back into the stream. "I wonder who he is," thought Travers, as he walked away from the boat landing. "I must ask Brandon. I wish I could meet him. I'm precious short of funds, and I depend on him to take care of me for a few days." Thomas Travers passed by the little cottage on the bluff, quite unaware that it was the house he was in search of. He kept on his way toward the village, not meeting any one of whom he could ask the proper direction. At length, greatly to his relief, he espied in the distance the familiar figure of Brandon, walking, or, more properly, reeling, toward him. "That's he--that's my friend Brandon!" he exclaimed joyfully. "Now I'm all right. Say, old fellow, how are you?" "Is it you, Travers?" said Brandon, trying to steady himself. "Yes, it's I--Tom Travers." "When did you get out?" "Sh! Don't speak too loud!" said Travers, looking about him cautiously. "I got out two days after you." "What are you doing here?" "Just come. Come to see you, old boy. I can stay with you, can't I?" Brandon looked dubious. "I don't know what Mrs. B. will say," he answered slowly. "You're boss in your own house, ain't you?" "Well, that's where it is! It isn't my own house. It belongs to Mrs. B." "Same thing, I take it." "No, it isn't. The old lady's bound to keep it in her own hands." "Can't you sell or mortgage it?" "She won't let me." "Bah! Can't you control a woman?" returned Travers disdainfully. "I might, but for the cub." "The boy?" "Yes. He's the most obstinate, perverse, independent young kid you ever saw." "You don't say so!" "Fact! It's pretty hard on me." "Then he'll make a pretty good match for the boy I met this morning." "Where?" "The boy that ferried me across the river. He's as sassy a young kid as I ever saw." "Why, that's him--that's Grit." "Grit! He told me his name was Harry Morris." "So it is, and his mother was Mrs. Morris before I married her." "You don't mean to say that boy is your stepson?" "Yes, he is." "Whew!" whistled Travers. "Well, he doesn't seem to admire you very much," continued the visitor. "No, doesn't treat me with any respect. If it wasn't for him, I could manage his mother. He sets her against me, and gets her to stand out against anything I propose. It's hard, Travers," continued Brandon, showing an inclination to indulge in maudlin tears. "Then why do you submit to it, Brandon? Ain't you a match for a boy like that? Why, you ain't half the man I thought you was." "Ain't I? I was too much for Grit this morning, anyway," said Brandon, with a cunning smile. "What did you do?" "I sold his boat before he was up, and he had to borrow another." "Good!" exclaimed Travers, delighted. "You're a trump. Have you got any of the money left?" "A little." "Then steer for the tavern, old fellow. I'm awfully thirsty." The next hour was spent in the barroom, and then the worthy and well-matched pair bent their steps toward the little cottage, Travers supporting his friend Brandon as well as he could. CHAPTER XVII. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR. Mrs. Brandon was laying the cloth for dinner when she heard a scuffling sound, as of footsteps, in the entry. "Who is with Mr. Brandon?" she thought. "It can't be Grit. They wouldn't be likely to come home together." Her uncertainty was soon at an end, for the door was opened, and her husband reeled in, sinking into the nearest chair, of necessity, for his limbs refused to support him. Just behind him was Mr. Thomas Travers, who was also under the influence of his recent potations, but not to the same extent as his companion. "How do, Mrs. B.?" said her liege lord. "Mrs. B., I have the pleasure of introducin' my frien' Travers. Come in, Travers." Mrs. Brandon surveyed the two with a look of disgust, and did not speak. "I hope I see you well, ma'am," said Travers, rather awkwardly, endeavoring, with some difficulty, to maintain an erect attitude. "Sorry to intrude, but my old friend Brandon insisted." "You can come in if you like," said Mrs. Brandon coldly. "I say, Mrs. B., is dinner almost ready? My frien', Mr. Travers, is hungry, an' so'm I." "Dinner is nearly ready. I suppose, Mr. Brandon, you have just come from the tavern." "Yes, Mrs. B., I've come from the tavern," hiccoughed Brandon. "Have you anything to say against it?" "I would say something if it would do any good," said his wife despondently. "If you think--hic--that I've been drinking Mrs. B., you're mistaken; ain't she, Travers?" "You didn't drink enough to hurt you, Brandon," said his companion, coming to his assistance. Mrs. Brandon looked at Travers, but did not deign to answer him. It was clear that his assurance possessed no value in her eyes. She continued her preparations, and laid the dinner on the table. Then she went to the door, and, shading her eyes, looked out, hoping to see Grit on his way home. But she looked in vain. Just as he was about fastening his boat, or, rather, the boat he had borrowed, two passengers came up and wished to be conveyed across the river. "My dinner can wait," thought Grit. "I must not disappoint passengers." So his coming home was delayed, and Brandon and his friend had the field to themselves. When dinner was ready, Brandon staggered to the table and seated himself. "Sit down, Travers," he said. "You're in my house, and you must make yourself at home." He said this a little defiantly, for he saw by Mrs. Brandon's expression that she was not pleased with his friend's presence. "I'm glad to hear it," said Travers, with a knowing smile. "I was told that the house belonged to your wife." "It's the same thing, isn't it, Mrs. B.?" returned Brandon. "Not quite," answered his wife bitterly. "If it were, we should not have a roof over our heads." "There you go again!" said Brandon fiercely, pounding the table with the handle of his knife. "Don't let me hear no more such talk. I'm master here, d'ye hear that?" "That's the talk, Brandon!" said Travers approvingly. "I like to hear a man show proper independence. Of course you're master here." Mrs. Brandon was of a gentle nature, but she was roused to resentment by this rudeness. Turning to Travers, she said: "I don't know who you are, sir, but your remarks are offensive and displeasing." "I'm the friend of my friend Brandon," said Travers insolently, "and as long as he don't complain of my remarks, I shall remark what I please. What d'ye say, Brandon?" "Quite right, Travers, old boy! You're in my house, and I expect you to be treated accordingly. Mrs. B., you will be kind enough to remember that this gen'leman is a frien' of mine," and Brandon closed the sentence with a drunken hiccough. "I think it necessary to say that this house belongs to me," said Mrs. Brandon, "and that no one is welcome here who does not treat me with respect." "Spunky, eh?" said Travers, laughing rudely. "Yes, she's spunky," said Brandon, "but we'll cure her of that, eh, Travers?--the same way as I cured that boy of hers." "That was good!" laughed Travers. "He's an impudent young rascal." Mrs. Brandon was alarmed. What did they mean by these references? What had been done to Grit, and how had he been served? Was it possible that Brandon had dared to use violence to the boy? The very thought hardened her, and gave her courage. "Mr. Brandon," she said, with flashing eyes, "what do you mean? What have you done to Grit? Have you dared to illtreat him? If you have, it will be a bad day's work for you." "Ha! She threatens you, Brandon. Now, brace up, man, and show your spunk," said Travers, enjoying the scene. "I'm not accountable to you, Mrs. B.," stammered Brandon, in what he essayed to make a dignified tone. "Grit is my stepson, and I'm his natural guardian." "Mr. Brandon, what have you done to Grit?" persisted his wife, with flashing eyes. "Have you dared to lay a finger upon him?" "I'll lay two fingers, three fingers, on him, if I like," said Brandon doggedly. "He's a sassy puppy, Mrs. B." Mrs. Brandon became more and more anxious. Generally, Grit was home by this time, and his failure to appear led the anxious mother to conclude that he had been injured by her husband. "Where is Grit?" she asked, with startling emphasis. "He's all right," stammered Brandon. "He's all right, but he isn't happy," said Travers, laughing. "That was a good move of yours, selling his boat." "Did you sell Grit's boat, Mr. Brandon?" demanded his wife quickly. "Yes, I did, Mrs. B. Have you got anything to say against it?" "I say that it was a mean, contemptible, dishonest act!" said Mrs. Brandon warmly. "You have taken away the poor boy's means of living, in order to gratify your love of drink. The food which you are eating was bought with his earnings. How do you expect to live, now that you have taken away his boat?" "He'll get along; he's got sixty dollars," said Brandon thickly. "Sixty dollars won't last forever. To whom did you sell the boat?" "Phil Courtney." "He was just the boy to buy it. Little he cared for the harm he was doing my poor Grit. How much did he pay you?" "Five dollars." "And how much of the money have you got left?" Brandon drew out two silver half-dollars from his pocket. "That's all I've got left," he said. "And you have actually squandered four dollars on liquor, you and your friend!" said Mrs. Brandon--"nearly the whole sum you received for my poor boy's boat!" "Hush up, Mrs. B.! It's none of your business," said Brandon. "That's the way to talk, Brandon!" said Travers, surveying the scene with boorish delight. "I like to see a man show the proper spirit of a man. I like to see a man master in his own house." "You would not insult me so if Grit were here!" said Mrs. Brandon, with a red spot on either cheek. "Mr. Brandon, I tolerate your presence here, because I was foolish enough to accept you as my husband. As for this man whom you have brought here, he is unwelcome. He has dared to insult me while sitting at my table, and I ask him in your presence to leave the house." "Travers is my frien'; he will stay here, Mrs. B., and don't you forget it!" Brandon pounded the table as he spoke, and nodded his head vigorously. "Sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Brandon," said Travers impudently, "but when my friend Brandon tells me to stay, stay I must. If you don't enjoy my being here, let me suggest to you, in the politest manner, to go and take a walk. Eh, Brandon?" "Yes, go take a walk!" said Brandon, echoing his friend's remark. "I'll have you to know, Mrs. B., that this is my house, an' I am master here. My frien' Travers will stay here as long as he pleases." "That's the talk, Brandon. I knew you weren't under petticoat government. You're too much of a man for that." "Yesh, I'm too much of a man for that," said Brandon sleepily. Travers took from his pocket a clay pipe, and, deliberately filling the bowl with tobacco, began to smoke. As he leaned back in his chair, winking insolently at Mrs. Brandon, the poor woman cried: "Will no one relieve me from this insolent intruder?" The words caught the ears of Grit, who entered at this moment. He looked from one to the other of the two men who sat at his mother's table, and his eyes flashed, and his boyish form dilated with passion. CHAPTER XVIII. A STORMY TIME. "What does this mean?" demanded Grit, in a stern voice. "What have these men been doing?" "Oh, Grit, I am glad you are here!" said his mother. "Mr. Brandon has brought this man here against my will, and he has treated me rudely." Travers looked round and saw the boy. "Hello, my young friend!" he said. "You didn't tell me that my friend Brandon was your stepfather." "Because I was ashamed of it," answered Grit promptly. "D'ye hear that, Brandon?" said Travers. "The boy says he is ashamed of you." "I'll settle with him when I feel better," said Brandon, who realized that he was not in a condition even to deal with a boy. "He's a bad-mannered cub, an' deserves a floggin'." "You won't give it to me!" said Grit contemptuously. "What is the name of this man you have brought into the house?" "He's my frien' Travers," answered Brandon. "My frien' Travers is a gen'l'man." "A gentleman isn't insolent to ladies," retorted Grit. "Mr. Travers, if that is your name, my mother wishes you to leave the house." "Couldn't do it," said Travers, leering. "My frien' Brandon wants me to stay--don't you, Brandon?" "Certainly, Travers. This is my house, an' I'm master of the house. Don't you mind what Mrs. B. or this cub says. Just stay where you are, and stand by me." "I'll do it with pleasure," said Travers. "My friend Brandon is the master of this house, and what he says I will do." "Mr. Travers," said Grit firmly, "you shall not stay here. This house belongs to my mother, and she wishes you to go. I suppose you can understand that?" "My dear boy, you may as well shut up. I shan't go." "You won't!" said Grit menacingly. "Oh, Grit, don't get into any difficulty," said his mother, becoming alarmed. Travers puffed away at his pipe, surveying Grit with an insulting smile. "Listen to your mother, boy!" he said. "She talks sense." "Mother," said Grit quietly, "will you be kind enough to go up-stairs for five minutes? I will deal with these men." "I will go if you think it best, Grit; but do be cautious. I am sure Mr. Travers will see the impropriety of his remaining here against my wishes." "I may see it in a few days," said Travers insolently. "Don't trouble yourself, ma'am. The law is on my side, and I am the guest of my friend Brandon. Isn't that so, Brandon?" "To be sure, Travers," said Brandon, in a drowsy tone. "Mr. Brandon's friends are not welcome here," said Grit, "nor is he himself welcome." "That's an unkind thing for your own boy to say," said Brandon, in a tone which he tried to make pathetic. "Because I've been unfortunate, my own family turn against me." "If you had behaved decently, Mr. Brandon, we would have tolerated your presence," said Grit; "but during the short time you have been here, you have annoyed and robbed my mother and myself, and spent the money you stole at the tavern. We have had enough of you!" "Do you hear that, Travers?" asked Brandon, by a ludicrous transition shedding maudlin tears. "Do you hear that ungrateful boy?" Meanwhile, Mrs. Brandon, in accordance with Grit's request, had left the room. Grit felt that the time had come for decisive measures. He was not a quarrelsome boy, nor was he given to fighting, but he had plenty of spirit, and he was deeply moved and provoked by the insolence of Travers. Some consideration he perhaps owed to his mother's husband; but to his disreputable companion, none whatever. "Mr. Travers," he said, with cool determination, turning toward the intruder, "did you hear me say that my mother desired you to leave the house?" "I don't care that for your mother!" said Travers, snapping his fingers. "My friend Brandon----" He did not complete the sentence. Grit could not restrain himself when he heard this insolent defiance of his mother, and, without a moment's hesitation, he approached Travers, with one sweep of his arm dashed the pipe he was smoking into a hundred pieces, and, seizing the astonished visitor by the shoulders, pushed him forcibly to the door and thrust him out. Travers was so astonished that he was quite unable to resist, nor indeed was he a match for the strong and muscular boy in his present condition. "Well, that beats all I ever heard of!" he muttered, as he stumbled into a sitting position on the door-step. Brandon stared at Grit and his summary proceeding in a dazed manner. "Wha--what's all this, Grit?" he asked, trying to rise from his chair. "How dare you treat my friend Travers so rudely?" Grit's blood was up. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes sparkled with resentment. "Mr. Brandon," he said, "we have borne with you, my mother and I, but this has got to stop. When you bring one of your disreputable friends here to insult my mother, you've got me to deal with. Don't you dare bring that man here again!" This was, I admit, rather a singular tone for a boy of Grit's age to assume, but it must be considered what provocation he had. Circumstances had made him feel older than he really was. For nearly five years he had been his mother's adviser, protector, and dependence, and he felt indignant through and through at the mean and dastardly course of his stepfather. "Don't be sassy, Grit," said Brandon, slipping back into his chair. "I'm the master of this house." "That is where you are mistaken, Mr. Brandon," said Grit. "Perhaps you are," retorted Brandon, with mild sarcasm. "This house has no master. My mother is the mistress and owner," said Grit. "I'm goin' to flog you, Grit, when I feel better." "I'm willing to wait," said Grit calmly. Here there was an interruption. The ejected guest rose from his sitting posture on the steps, and essayed to lift the latch and gain fresh admittance. He failed, for Grit, foreseeing the attempt, had bolted the door. Finding he could not open the door, Travers rattled the latch and called out: "Open the door, Brandon, and let me in!" "Open the door, Grit," said his stepfather, not finding it convenient to rise. "I refuse to do so, Mr. Brandon," said Grit, in a firm tone. "Why don't you let me in?" was heard from the outside, as Travers rattled the latch once more. "I'll have to open it myself," said Brandon, half rising and trying to steady himself. The attempt was vain, for he had already drunk more than was good for him when he met Travers, and had drunk several glasses on top of that. Instead of going to the door, he sank helpless and miserable on the floor. "That disposes of him," said Grit, eying the prostrate form with a glance of disgust and contempt. "I shall be able to manage the other one now with less trouble." "Let me in, Brandon!" repeated Travers, beginning to pound on the door. Grit went to a window on a line with the door, and, raising it, looked out at the besieging force. "Mr. Travers," he said, "you may as well go away; you won't get back into the house." "My friend Brandon will let me in. You're only a boy. My friend Brandon is the master of the house. He will let me in." "Your friend Brandon is lying on the floor, drunk, and doesn't hear you," said Grit. "Then I'll let myself in!" said Travers, with an oath. He picked up a rock, and began to pound the door, to the imminent danger of breaking the panels. "There's more than one way to get in. When I get in, I'll mash you!" The time had come for decisive action. Drunk as he was, Travers would sooner or later break down the door, and then there would be trouble. Grit seized an old pistol which lay on the mantel-piece. It had long been disused, and was so rusty that it was very doubtful whether any use could have been made of it. Still it presented a formidable appearance, as the young boatman pointed it at Travers. "Stop pounding that door, or I fire!" Grit exclaimed, in a commanding tone. Travers turned quickly at the word, and as he saw the rusty weapon pointed at him, his small stock of courage left him, and he turned pale, for he was a coward at heart. "For the Lord's sake, don't fire!" he cried hastily. CHAPTER XIX. TRAVERS PICKS UP A FRIEND. Travers looked the picture of fright as he beheld the rusty pistol which Grit pointed at him. "Don't fire, for the Lord's sake!" he repeated, in alarm. "Will you go away, then, and give up troubling us?" demanded the young boatman sternly. "Yes, yes, I'll go," said Travers hurriedly. "Lower that pistol. It might go off." Grit lowered the weapon, as desired, seeing that Travers was likely to keep his word. "Tell Brandon I want to see him. I will be at the tavern this afternoon at four o'clock." "I'll tell him," said Grit, who preferred that his stepfather should be anywhere rather than at home. Having got rid of Travers, Grit turned to survey his stepfather, who was lying on the floor, breathing heavily. His eyes were closed, and he seemed in a drunken stupor. "How long have we got to submit to this?" thought Grit. "I must go up and consult with mother about what is to be done." He went up-stairs, and found his mother seated in her chamber, nervously awaiting the issue of the interview between Grit and the worthy pair below. "Are they gone, Grit?" she asked quickly. "Travers is gone, mother. I turned him out of the house." "Did you have any trouble with him?" "I should have had, but he was too weak to resist me, on account of having drunk too much." "I thought I heard him pounding on the door." "So he did, but I frightened him away with the old pistol," and Grit laughed at the remembrance. "He thought it was loaded." "He may come back again," said Mrs. Brandon apprehensively. "Yes, he may. Brandon is likely to draw such company. I wish we could get rid of him, too." "What a fatal mistake I made in marrying that man!" said Mrs. Brandon mournfully. "That is true, mother but it can't be helped now. The question is, what shall we do?" "Where is he?" "Lying on the floor, drunk," said Grit, in a tone of disgust. "We may as well leave him there for the present." "He has hardly been home twenty-four hours, yet how he has changed our quiet life. If he would only reform!" "Not much chance of that, mother." "What shall we do, Grit?" asked Mrs. Brandon, who was wont to come to Grit, young as he was, for advice. "I have thought of two ways. I might buy him a ticket for Boston, if I thought he would use it. It would be of no use to give him the money, or he would spend it at the tavern instead." "If he would only leave us to ourselves, it would a blessing." "If he won't hear of that, there is another way." "What is it?" "I could engage board for you and myself at the house of one of our neighbors for a week." "What good would that do, Grit?" "You would prepare no meals at home, and Mr. Brandon would be starved out. While he can live upon us, and raise money to buy liquor at the tavern, there is little chance of getting rid of him." "I don't know, Grit. It seems a harsh thing to do." "But consider the circumstances, mother. We can't allow him to continue annoying us as he has done." "Do as you think best, Grit." "Then I will go over to Mrs. Sprague's and ask if she will take us for a few days. That will probably be sufficient." Going down-stairs, Grit saw his stepfather still lying on the floor. Grit's step aroused him, and he lifted his head. "'S'that you Grit?" he asked, in thick accents. "Yes, sir." "Where's my frien' Travers?" "He's gone." "Where's he gone?" "To the tavern. He said he would meet you there at four o'clock." "What time is it?" asked Brandon, trying to get up. "Two o'clock." "I'll be there. You tell him so, Grit." "I will if I see him." Grit went on his way to Mrs. Sprague's, and had no difficulty in making the arrangement he desired for his mother and himself, when she learned that Mr. Brandon was not to come, too. "I feel for your mother, Grit," she said. "If I can help her in this trial, I certainly will." "Thank you, Mrs. Sprague. I will return and tell her. Perhaps she may come over by the middle of the afternoon. I don't like to leave her alone in the house with Mr. Brandon." "She will be welcome whenever she comes, Grit." "You had better go over at once, mother," said Grit, on his return. "A drunken man is not fit company for you." Mrs. Brandon was easily persuaded to take the step recommended, and her husband was left in the house alone. Meanwhile, Travers went on his way to the tavern. It was rather a serious thing for him to be turned out of his friend's house, for he had but a scanty supply of money, and his appearance was not likely to give him credit. "Confound that boy!" he muttered. "He's just reckless enough to shoot me, if I don't give up to him. I pity Brandon, having such a son as that." It would have been more in order to pity Grit for having such a stepfather, but Travers looked upon the matter from his own point of view, which, it is needless to say, was influenced by his own interests. "Will they take me at the tavern?" he thought to himself. "If they won't, I shall have to sleep out, and that would be hard for a gentleman like me." When we are in a tight place, help often comes from unexpected quarters, and this to those who hardly deserve such a favor. So it happened in the case of Travers. As he was walking slowly along, his face wrinkled with perplexity, he attracted the attention of a tall man, dressed in black, who might readily have passed for a clergyman, so far as his externals went. He crossed the street, and accosted Travers. "My friend," he said, "you appear to be in trouble." "So I am," answered Travers readily. "Of what nature?" "I've just been turned out of the house of the only friend I have in the village, and I don't know where to go." "Go to the tavern." "So I would if I had money enough to pay my score. You haven't got five dollars to spare, have you?" Travers had no expectation of being answered in the affirmative, and he was surprised, as well as gratified, when the stranger drew out his wallet, and, taking therefrom a five-dollar bill, put it into his hand. "There," said he. "Well!" exclaimed the astonished Travers, "you're a gentleman if ever there was one. May I know the name of such an--an ornament to his species?" The stranger smiled. "I am glad you appreciate my little favor," he said. "As to my name, you may call me Colonel Johnson." "Proud to know you, colonel," said Travers, clasping the hand of his new acquaintance warmly. "What is your name?" asked Johnson. "Thomas Travers." "I am glad to know you, Mr. Travers," said the colonel. "Let me drop you a hint. There's more money where that came from." "You couldn't lend me any more, could you?" asked Travers eagerly. "Well, not exactly lend, Mr. Travers, but perhaps we can enter into a little business arrangement." "All right, colonel," said Travers briskly. "I'm out of business. Fact is, I've been in seclusion lately--confined to the house in fact, and haven't been able to earn anything." "Just so. Suppose we take a walk in yonder field, and I will tell you what I have in view." They got over a fence, and walked slowly along a path that led a quarter of a mile farther on into the woods. Here they sat down under a tree, and Colonel Johnson, producing a couple of cigars and a match, said: "I can always talk better when I am smoking. Have one, Travers." "You're a man after my own heart, colonel," said Travers enthusiastically. "Now, if I only had a nip I should be in clover." "Take one, then," said the colonel, producing a pocket-flask of brandy. Travers was by no means bashful in accepting this invitation. CHAPTER XX. A PROMISING PLAN. The conference between Colonel Johnson and Travers was apparently of great interest to the latter. It is important that the reader should be made acquainted with its nature. "I take it for granted, Mr. Travers," said the colonel, after their potation, "that you are ready to undertake a job if there is money in it." "That's as true as you live," said Travers emphatically. "Am I also right in concluding that you are not squeamish as to how the money is earned? You are not overburdened with conscientious scruples, eh?" "Not much! They're all nonsense," returned Travers. "Good! I see you are the sort of a man I took you for. Now you must, to begin with, promise that you will regard as confidential what I am about to say to you." "Tom Travers can be relied upon, colonel. He's safe every time." "Good again! Then I shall not hesitate to unfold to you my little plan. I believe you have a bank in the village?" "Yes; but, colonel, I am a stranger here. I only know one person here--my friend Brandon." "Is he--the same kind of a man as yourself?" inquired Johnson. "The same identical kind, colonel. What is it Shakespeare, or some other poet, says: "'Two flowers upon a single stalk, Two hearts that beat as one.'" "I compliment you on your knowledge of poetry, Mr. Travers. I didn't think it was in you." Travers looked complimented. "I've had an education, colonel," he said complacently, "though circumstances have been against me for the last four years. As for my friend Brandon, he's one you can rely upon." "I shall probably require his services as well as yours," said Johnson. "Now let me proceed. You agree with me that bank capitalists are grasping monopolists, that they grind down the poor man, and live in luxury at the expense of the poor laborer." "Just my notion, colonel!" "And whatever we can get out of them is what they richly deserve to lose?" "Just so!" "Well and good! I see you agree with me. And now, friend Travers, I will tell you what I have in view, and why it is that I need the services of two gentlemen like you and your friend. The fact is"--here Johnson dropped the mask, being assured of the character of his listener--"there's a good haul to be made within three days--a haul which, if successful, will make all three of us easy in our circumstances for years to come." "Go ahead, colonel. I'm with you, and my friend Brandon, too. I'll answer for him. We both need a lift mightily." "I learn--no matter how"--said Johnson, lowering his voice, "that a messenger from the bank goes to Boston day after to-morrow with a package of thirty thousand dollars in government bonds. He's to carry them to the Merchant's National Bank in Boston. These bonds are not registered, but coupon bonds, and can easily be sold. They are at a premium of fifteen or sixteen per cent., which would bring up the value to nearly or quite thirty-five thousand dollars." Travers listened with eager interest. He began to understand the service that was expected of him, but it did not apparently shock him. "Well?" he said. "My plan," continued Colonel Johnson, "is for you and your friend to follow this bank messenger, and between here and Boston to relieve him of this package. You will meet me at a spot agreed upon in or near the city, and I will take the package." "You will take the package?" repeated Travers blankly. "Yes, but I will reward you liberally for your service. You and Brandon will each receive from me, in case the affair succeeds, the sum of five thousand dollars." "I thought we would share and share alike," said Travers, in a tone of disappointment. "Nonsense, man! Isn't it my plan? Am I to reap no benefit from my own conception? Besides, shall I not have the care and responsibility of disposing of the bonds? This will involve danger." "So will our part involve danger," objected Travers. "That is true, but your hazard is small. There will be two of you to one bank messenger. Besides, I take it for granted that you will be adroit enough to relieve the messenger without his knowing anything about it. When he discovers his loss you will be out of sight. It strikes me you will be rewarded very handsomely for the small labor imposed upon you." Travers made a further effort to secure better terms, but his new acquaintance was firm in refusing them. The result was, that Travers unconditionally accepted for himself and Brandon. "When shall you see your friend Brandon, as you call him?" inquired the colonel. "This very afternoon," answered Travers promptly. "Good! I like your promptness." "That is, if I can," continued Travers, a shade doubtfully, for he remembered the summary manner in which he had been ejected from the house of his congenial companion and friend. "Very well. Then we will postpone further debate till you have done so. I shall stay at the tavern here, and you can readily find me." "I will stay there, too. I was staying with my friend Brandon, but his wife and her son did not treat me well, and I left them. They want to separate us--old friends as we are." "They are jealous of you," suggested Johnson, smiling. "Just so, but I'll euchre them yet." The two walked together to the road, and there they separated, Johnson suggesting that it might be prudent for them not to be seen together too much. Travers assented, and turned back in the direction of the house he had recently left under rather mortifying circumstances. "The boy'll be gone to his boat," he thought, "and I don't care for the old lady. She doesn't like me, but I can stand that. I must see my friend Brandon, if I can." Although Travers decided that Grit had returned to his boat, he approached the house cautiously. He thought it possible that Grit might still be on guard with the formidable pistol which he had pointed at him an hour or more earlier, and he did not like the looks of the weapon. "It might go off!" he thought. "That plaguy boy is awfully reckless, and he wouldn't mind shooting a gentleman, if he felt like it. I'd like to pitch him into the water, pistol and all," he ejaculated fervently, in conclusion. As I have said, Travers approached the little cottage with cautious steps. Drawing near, he listened to see if he could hear any sound of voices that would betray the presence of the boy he wished to avoid. All was still. Nothing was to be heard but the deep breathing of Brandon, who still lay on the floor in a stupor. Grit was back at his boat, and Mrs. Brandon had already left the house and gone to spend the remainder of the afternoon with her neighbor. Brandon was, therefore, the only occupant of the cottage. "I hear my friend Brandon," said Travers to himself. "I can hear nothing of the boy. He must be away." By way of ascertaining definitely, Travers moved round to the window and peered in. He caught sight of the prostrate figure of Brandon, but could see no one else. "It's all right," he said to himself, in a satisfied tone. He tried the door, and found it unlocked. He entered, and stooping over, seized Brandon by the shoulder, and called him loudly by name. "I say, Brandon, wake up!" "Go away, Grit," said Brandon drowsily. "It isn't Grit. It's I--your friend Travers," said that gentleman. "Thought my friend Travers was gone," muttered Brandon, opening his eyes. "So I did go, but I've come back. I want to see you on important business." "'Portant business?" repeated Brandon. "Yes, very important business. Do you want to earn five thousand dollars?" "Five thousand dollars!" said Brandon, roused by this startling inquiry. "'Course I do." "Then rouse yourself, and I'll tell you all about it. Here, let me bring you some water, and you can dip your face in it. It will bring you to yourself sooner than anything else." Brandon acceded to the proposal, and was soon in a clearer state of mind. Travers proceeded to unfold his plan, after learning that Mrs. Brandon was out; but he had a listener he did not know of. Grit had come home for something he had forgotten, and, with his ear to the keyhole, heard the whole plot. He listened attentively. When all was told, he said to himself: "I'll foil them, or my name isn't Grit!" CHAPTER XXI. MR. BRANDON LOSES HIS SUPPER. When Brandon and Travers had discussed the plan, and decided to accept the terms offered by Colonel Johnson, the latter, looking cautiously about, inquired: "Where's the boy?" "Out with the boat, I expect," said Brandon. "He's a little ruffian. I never saw such a desperate boy of his age." "He managed you neatly," said Brandon, with a smile. "Pooh!" returned Travers, who did not like the allusion. "I didn't want to hurt the boy." "He didn't want to harm you," said Brandon, with an exasperating smile. "I could wind him round my finger," said Travers disdainfully. "You don't think I'm afraid of that half-grown cub, I hope." Grit heard this, and smiled to himself at the evident annoyance of Travers. "As to winding me round his finger," thought the young boatman, "I may have something to say about that." Brandon did not continue his raillery, not wishing to provoke the friend who had secured him participation in so profitable a job. "Where's the old lady?" asked Travers, with a glance toward the staircase. "I believe she's gone out, but I'll see." Brandon went to the foot of the stairs, and called: "Mrs. B.!" There was no response. "Yes, she's gone, and the coast is clear. Where are you staying, Travers?" "I s'pose I'll have to stay at the hotel, unless you can provide for me here." "You'd better go to the tavern, for there might be trouble about keepin' you here. Mrs. B. and the boy don't like you." "I thought you were master of the house," said Travers, with mild sarcasm. "So I am," answered Brandon, a little embarrassed, "but I don't want to be in hot water all the time." "You don't want me to stay to supper, I reckon." "Well, I guess not to-night. Fact is, I don't know when we shall have supper. Mrs. B. ought to be here gettin' it ready." "Come out and have a walk, Brandon. I will introduce you to Colonel Johnson, and we can talk this thing over." "All right. That'll take up the time till supper." The two men walked over to the tavern, and Colonel Johnson walked out with them. They had a conference together, but it is not necessary to give the details here. A little after six o'clock Brandon directed his steps homeward. "I'll be a little late to supper," he said to himself, "but Mrs. B. will save some for me. I feel confoundedly hungry. Must be in the air. There's nothing like country air to give a man a good appetite." Brandon opened the door of the cottage, and went in. All was quiet and solitary, as he had left it. "Well. I'll be blowed!" he ejaculated. "What does all this mean? Where's Mrs. B., and where's supper?" He sat down, and looked about him in surprise and bewilderment. "What has become of Mrs. B.?" he thought. "She hasn't gone and left me, just when I've come home after an absence of five years? That boy can't have carried her off, can he?" Brandon did not have long to debate this question in his own mind, for the door opened, and Grit and his mother entered. Brandon was relieved, but he could not forbear expressing his vexation. "Well, Mrs. B.," he said, "this I call pretty goings on. Are you aware that it is nearly seven o'clock, ma'am?" "I supposed it was," answered his wife quietly. "And you've left me to starve here, ma'am! This is a strange time for supper." "We've had supper," answered Grit coolly. "Had supper!" ejaculated Brandon, looking about him. "I don't see any signs of supper." "You won't see any signs of it here," continued Grit. "What do you mean?" "I mean that mother and I have engaged board at Mrs. Sprague's. We have just had supper there." "You have! Well, that's a new start. It doesn't matter much, though. I'll go over and get mine." "We haven't made any arrangements for you," said Grit. "I shall pay for mother's board and mine. You can make any bargain you like for your board." "Well, if that isn't the meanest treatment I ever received!" exclaimed Brandon, in wrath and disgust. "You actually begrudge me the little I eat, and turn me adrift in the cold world!" "That's one way of looking at it, Mr. Brandon," said Grit. "Here's the other: You are a strong man, in good health, and able to work. Most men in your position expect to support a family, but you come to live upon my earnings, and expect me not only to provide you with board, but with money for the purpose of drink. That isn't all! You bring home one of your disreputable companions, and expect us to provide for him, too. Now, I am willing to work for mother, and consider it a privilege to do so, but I can't do any more. If you don't choose to contribute to the support of the family, you must at least take care of yourself. I am not going to do it." "How hard and unfeeling you are, Grit!" said Brandon, in the tone of a martyr. "After all I have suffered in the last five years you treat me like this." "As to the last five years, Mr. Brandon," said Grit, "I should think you would hardly care to refer to them. It was certainly your own fault that you were not as free as I am." "I was a victim of circumstances," whined Brandon. "We won't discuss that," said Grit. "You had a fair trial, and were sentenced to five years' imprisonment. About the unkindness. I should like to know what you think of a man who deliberately takes away the means of earning a living from his stepson, who is filling his place, and supporting his family, in order to gratify his miserable love of drink." "You drove me to it, Grit." "How did I drive you to it?" "You would not give me from your overflowing hoards, when I felt sick and in need of a mild stimulus. You had sixty dollars, and would not spare me one." "So you sold my boat for half price, and squandered nearly the whole proceeds in one forenoon!" exclaimed Grit scornfully. "Mr. Brandon, your reasoning is altogether too thin. We have decided to leave you to support yourself as you can." Here the glowing prospects offered by the plan suggested by Colonel Johnson occurred to Brandon, and his tone changed. "You may find you have made a mistake, Grit, you and Mrs. B.," said Brandon pompously. "You have snubbed and illtreated me because you looked upon me as a poor, destitute, friendless man. It's the way of the world! But you may regret it, and that very soon. What will you say when I tell you that I have a chance to earn five thousand dollars in the next five days, eh?" Mrs. Brandon looked surprised, for Grit had not thought it wise to confide to his mother what he had heard of the conversation between Travers and his stepfather. Grit, on the other hand, was immediately interested, for the compensation offered was one of the things he had not overheard. "Five thousand dollars!" he repeated, appearing to be surprised. "Yes, five thousand dollars!" repeated Brandon complacently. "That's a thousand dollars a day! Perhaps you won't be so anxious to get rid of me when I am worth my thousands." "That's pretty good pay," said Grit quietly. "What have you got to do?" "That would be telling," said Brandon cunningly. "It's a joint speculation of my friend Travers and myself--my friend Travers, whom you treated so badly. It's he that's brought me this fine offer, and you insult and order him out of the house. You were just as bad as Grit, Mrs. B." "You are welcome to all you make, Mr. Brandon," said Grit. "Neither my mother nor myself will ask a penny of the handsome sum you expect to make. You can spend it all on yourself if you like. All we ask is, that you will take care of yourself, and leave us alone." "I mean to do so," said Brandon independently, "but, as I shan't get the money for three or four days, I should like to borrow five dollars, and I'll repay you double within a week." "That's a very generous offer," said Grit, "but I don't lend without better security." "Isn't there anything to eat in the house, Mrs. B.?" asked Brandon, changing the subject. "I'm famished." "You will find some cold meat, and bread, and butter in the pantry." Brandon went to the pantry, and satisfied his appetite as well as he could. He then went out, and Grit soon followed. "Mother," he said, "I have an important call to make, but will be back soon." It will be remembered that Mr. Courtney had formerly been president of the bank, but proving unpopular in consequence of his disposition to manage it in his own interest, Mr. Philo Graves, a manufacturer, was put in his place. To the house of Mr. Graves Grit directed his steps. CHAPTER XXII. BANK OFFICIALS IN COUNCIL. Mr. Graves was at home, but he was not alone. Mr. Courtney had dropped in, and as he was still a director of the bank, it was natural that the conversation should turn upon affairs of the bank in which he and Mr. Graves had a common interest. Though no longer president, Mr. Courtney was still anxious to control the affairs of the bank, and to make it of as much service to himself as possible. He had recently become interested in certain speculative securities, through a firm of Wall Street brokers, and finding himself rather cramped for money, desired to obtain a loan on them from the bank. To this end he had sought a preliminary interview with Mr. Graves, previous to making a formal application to the full board of directors. "You are aware, Mr. Courtney," said the president, "that to grant your request would be contrary to the general usage of the bank." "I ought to know the usage of the bank, having served as president for three years," said Mr. Courtney. "In my time such loans were made." Mr. Graves was aware of this, but he was also aware that such loans had been made on the former president's sole authority, and either to himself or some one of his friends, and that it was on account of this very circumstance that he had been removed from office. "I know that such loans were made, but I am equally certain that such a course would not meet the approval of the directors." "But," insinuated Mr. Courtney, "if you openly favored it, and my vote as director was given, we could probably influence enough other votes to accomplish our object." "I cannot say whether this would or would not follow," said Mr. Graves, "but I am bound to say for myself that I cannot recommend, or vote for, granting such a loan." "Perhaps you think I am not responsible," said Mr. Courtney, irritated. "I presume you are, but that ought not to be considered, when the question is about violating our fixed usage." "It seems to me, considering my official connection with the bank, that a point might be strained in my favor." "That is not my view, Mr. Courtney; although I am now president, I should not care to ask any special favor of the bank. I prefer to be treated like any other customer." Mr. Courtney mentally voted Graves slow and behind the times. In his views, one great advantage of holding a high financial position was to favor himself and his own interests, without special regard to the welfare of the corporation or stockholders. "You wouldn't find many bank presidents agree with you, Mr. Graves," said Courtney impatiently. "I am sorry to hear it," returned the president gravely. "It seems to me that I owe a duty to the stockholders of the bank which ought to override any personal considerations." "You are very quixotic in your ideas," said Courtney coldly. "I am sure I am right, at any rate," returned Graves firmly. "I consider your refusal unfriendly--nay, more, I think it is calculated to throw suspicion on my financial position." "Not at all. I have no reason to doubt your financial stability, and as to the unkindness, when I distinctly state that I would not ask such a favor for myself, you will see that I am disposed to treat you as well as myself." "It may be so," sneered Courtney, "but I presume you are not at present in need of a personal loan, and--circumstances alter cases, you know." "If you mean that I shall at any future time ask favors for myself, which, I am not disposed to grant to you, you are mistaken," said the president. "My financial position is as strong as yours," said Courtney rather irrelevantly. "Very probably you are a richer man than I am, but as I said, that is not in question." At this point a servant entered, and said to the president: "Mr. Graves, there is a boy outside who says he wants to see you." "What boy is it?" "Grit Morris." "Very well; you can bring him in." "The young boatman," said Courtney contemptuously. "I wouldn't allow a boy like that to take up my time." "He may have something of importance to communicate. Besides, I don't set so high a value on my time." This will illustrate the difference between the two men. Mr. Graves was pleasant and affable to all, while Mr. Courtney was stiff, and apparently always possessed of a high idea of his own importance and dignity. In this respect, his son Phil was his counterpart. Into the presence of these two gentlemen Grit was admitted. "Good morning, Grit," said the president pleasantly. "Take a seat. Margaret tells me you wish to see me." "Yes, sir, I wish to see you on a matter of importance." "Perhaps he wants a loan from the bank," suggested Mr. Courtney scornfully. "If Grit wanted a loan, he would not need to apply to the bank," said Mr. Graves, in a friendly manner. "I would lend him, myself." "Thank you, Mr. Graves," said Grit gratefully, "but I don't wish any loan for myself. My business relates to the bank, however." Both gentlemen were rather surprised to hear this. They could not understand what business Grit could have with the bank. "Go on, Grit," said Mr. Graves. "Mr. Courtney is one of our directors, so that you may speak freely before him." "I understand," commenced Grit, coming at once to the point, "that you are intending to send up thirty thousand dollars in government bonds to the Merchants' Bank, in Boston." Mr. Graves and Mr. Courtney looked at each other in surprise. This was a bank secret, and such matters were generally kept very close with them. "How did you learn this?" asked the president, in surprise, "and if so, what can you have to say in regard to it?" "Perhaps he wants to be the messenger," said Mr. Courtney, with a derisive smile. Grit took no notice of this, for his mind was occupied with the plan of the would-be robbers. "I will tell you at once," he said. "There is a plan to waylay the messenger, and relieve him of the bonds." Here was a fresh surprise. Mr. Graves began to find Grit's communication of absorbing interest. "How do you know this?" he asked cautiously. "Because I overheard the robbers discussing their plan." "You say the robbers. Then there are more than one?" "Yes, there are two." "Are you willing to tell me who they are, Grit?" "That is what I came to tell you. I am sorry to say that one is my stepfather, as I am obliged to call him, Mr. Brandon." "Mr. Brandon? I thought he was----" Here Mr. Graves paused, out of delicacy. "He has been in prison until a few days since," said Grit, understanding what the president of the bank intended to say, "but now he is free." "And where is he?" "He is living at our house. Since he got back, he has given my mother and myself a great deal of trouble. Not content with living on us, he has spent what money he could get at the tavern, and because I would give him no more, he sold my boat without my knowledge." "That was bad, Grit. To whom did he sell it?" asked Mr. Graves. "To Mr. Courtney's son Phil!" answered Grit. "My son's name is Philip," said Mr. Courtney stiffly. "We boys generally call him Phil," said Grit, smiling. "However, that doesn't matter." "My son had a right to purchase the boat," said Mr. Courtney. "I have nothing to say as to that, at any rate now," returned Grit. "I only mention it to show how Mr. Brandon has treated us." "Who was the other conspirator, Grit?" asked Graves. "A companion of Mr. Brandon's, named Travers. I understand they are to be employed by a third person, now staying at the hotel, a man named Johnson." "One thing more, Grit, how did you come to hear of their plan?" Grit answered this question fully. He related how he had overheard the conference between his stepfather and Travers in the afternoon. "This information is of great importance, Grit," said the president. "If, as you say, there are three conspirators, there would be a very good chance of their succeeding in overpowering any messenger, and abstracting the bonds. As it happens, the bonds do not belong to the bank, but to an individual depositor, but it would be very unpleasant and mortifying to have them taken from our messenger. It might lead to a supposition on the part of some that we didn't keep our secrets well, but suffered a matter as important as this to become known outside. Mr. Courtney, what would you advise to be done in such an emergency?" Courtney always looked important when his advice was asked, and answered promptly: "It is a very simple matter. Put the messenger on his guard. Supply him with a revolver, if need be, and if he is on the watch he can't be robbed." Mr. Graves looked thoughtful, and appeared to be turning over this advice in his mind. "If Mr. Courtney will excuse me," Grit said, "I think there is a better plan than that." Courtney's lip curled. "Ask the boy's advice, by all means, Mr. Graves," he said, with a palpable sneer. "It must be very valuable, considering his experience and knowledge of the world." CHAPTER XXIII. GRIT GIVES IMPORTANT ADVICE. "Let me hear your idea, Grit," said Mr. Graves courteously. "I have little experience or knowledge of the world," said Grit, "as Mr. Courtney says, or means to say, but it occurs to me to ask whether you have full confidence in your messenger?" "Of course we have," said Mr. Courtney. "What foolish idea have you got in your head?" "Tell me why this question occurs to you, Grit?" asked the president. "I thought it possible that this Colonel Johnson, who employs the conspirators, as you call them, may have learned from the messenger that he was to be entrusted with a valuable package of bonds." "Why on earth should the messenger reveal this news to a stranger?" demanded Mr. Courtney sharply. "Because," said Grit quietly, not allowing himself to be disturbed by the sneering tone of the ex-president, "he might be well paid for doing so." "Nonsense!" said Mr. Courtney, but the president of the bank said thoughtfully: "There may be something in that." "I am sure the messenger is faithful," asserted Mr. Courtney positively, but it may be remarked that his confidence sprang rather from a desire to discredit Grit's suggestion than from any real belief in the integrity of the bank messenger. "It isn't best to take this integrity for granted in a matter where a mistake would subject us to serious loss," observed President Graves. "I hope he is reliable, but I do not shut my eyes to the fact that such a price as he might demand for conniving with these conspirators would be a strong temptation to a poor man like Ephraim Carver." "What are you going to do about it?" asked Courtney. "For my part I am free to confess that I attach very little importance to the astounding discovery of this young man, who knows a good deal more, I presume, about managing a boat than managing a bank." "You are right there, Mr. Courtney," said Grit good-naturedly. "I don't want Mr. Graves to attach any more importance to my suggestion than he thinks it deserves." "Whatever your suggestion may be worth, Grit," said the president of the bank, "there can be no doubt that you have brought me news of great importance. I shall not forget the obligation the bank is under to you." Mr. Courtney shrugged his shoulders. "The story looks to me very improbable," he said. "If I were still president of the bank, I should probably dismiss it as an idle fabrication." "Then, Mr. Courtney," said Mr. Graves emphatically, "permit me to say that you would be wanting in your duty to the bank and its interests." "I understand the duties of a bank president at least as well as you, Mr. Graves," said Mr. Courtney stiffly. "After that remark you will not be surprised if I bid you good evening." "Good evening!" said the president quietly, not attempting to call back or placate the offended director. "Perhaps I had better go, too," said Grit, rising from his chair. "No, Grit, stay a few minutes longer; I wish to inquire further into this affair." "Certainly, Mr. Graves, I will stay, with pleasure." Mr. Courtney heard this fragment of conversation, and it led him to say with pointed sarcasm, as he stood with the knob of the door in his hand: "Perhaps I had better resign my position, and suggest this young boatman as bank director in my place." "I doubt whether Grit would consider himself competent to discharge the duties of a director," said Mr. Graves, smiling. "It may come in time." Mr. Courtney shut the door hastily, and left the room. "Mr. Courtney is rather a peculiar man; you needn't mind him, Grit," said Mr. Graves, when the ruffled director was gone. "He doesn't like me very much, nor Phil, either," said Grit. "It is lucky you are president of the bank now, and not he, for there is no humbug about the news I bring you." "I consider it highly important," said Mr. Graves, "as I have already stated. I am a little puzzled as to what I ought to do in the matter. As you say, the messenger himself may be in the plot. By the way, what put that idea into your head?" "I didn't know how otherwise Colonel Johnson could have learned about the bonds being sent up to Boston." "Frequently the messenger himself is ignorant of the service he is to render, but in this particular instance it happened that I told Mr. Carver that I should have occasion to send him to Boston this week, and for what purpose." "I am sorry that one who is in any way connected with our family should be concerned in such a plot," said Grit. "Of course; that is natural. Still, you did your duty in telling me of it. Whatever consequences may follow, you have done right." "I can't take much credit to myself for that," said Grit, "since I don't like Mr. Brandon, and it would be a great relief both to my mother and myself if he were away." "As I have already consulted you on this matter, Grit," said the bank president, after a pause, "I am disposed to consult you further. Have you any advice to offer as to the best course to pursue?" "Yes, sir," answered Grit. "As long as you don't think it presumption in me, I will tell you of a plan I thought of as I was coming here. In the first place, I would send the messenger as usual, without letting him know that he was suspected." "But that would involve risks, wouldn't it Grit," objected Mr. Graves. "We can't afford to lose the bonds." "I did not intend that he should carry the bonds," continued Grit. "I would make up a parcel, filled with old papers, of about the same size, and let him think he was carrying the bonds." "So far, so good, but what of the bonds? They would still be here, when we want them delivered in Boston." "I have thought of that," said Grit promptly. "Either a little before or a little afterward, I would send them by another messenger." "Good, Grit! You're a trump!" said the banker, his face lighting up. "It's a capital plan. But one thing you have forgotten. We shall not in this way ascertain whether the messenger is in collusion with the conspirators--that is, not necessarily." "I think you can, sir. As I understand, this is the way in which the theft will be accomplished: The conspirators will make up a bundle of the same shape as the messenger's, and slyly substitute it at some point on the route. They will not openly rob him, for there will be no chance of doing so without attracting attention." "If the messenger is careful, they could not easily substitute a false for the true package." "That is true, and that is the reason why I think the messenger is in league with them. If he is careless, the change can easily be made. I understand Brandon and Travers are to receive five thousand dollars each for their services, and Colonel Johnson may, perhaps, have offered the same sum to Mr. Carver." "It would be a great temptation to a man employed on a small salary like Carver," said Mr. Graves thoughtfully. "What do you think of my plan, Mr. Graves?" asked Grit. "I think it a capital one. I shall adopt it in every detail. The only thing that remains is to decide whom to employ to carry the genuine package of bonds to Boston. Do you think of any one?" Grit shook his head. "No, sir, I don't know of any one." "I do," said the president. "Who is it?" asked Grit, with considerable curiosity. "I mean to send you!" answered Mr. Graves. CHAPTER XXIV. WHAT GRIT OVERHEARD BEHIND THE ELM-TREE. Grit listened with incredulous amazement to the words of the bank president. "You mean to send me?" he ejaculated. "Yes," answered Mr. Graves, nodding. "But I am only a boy!" "That is true; but you have shown a sagacity and good judgment which justify me in selecting you, young as you are. Of course, I shall take care that you are paid for your time. Now, are you willing to go?" Willing to go to Boston, where he had not been for five years? Grit did not take long to consider. "Yes," he answered promptly. "If you are willing to trust me, I am willing to go." "That is well," said the president. "I need hardly caution you to keep your errand a profound secret." "You must not even tell your mother," continued Mr. Graves. "But she will feel anxious if I go away without a word to her." "You mistake me. I would not for the world have you give her unnecessary anxiety. You may tell her that you are employed on an errand which may detain you from home a day or two, and ask her not to question you till you return." "Yes, I can say that," returned Grit. "Mother will very likely think Mr. Jackson has employed me." "Mr. Jackson?" "A gentleman now staying at the hotel. He has already been very kind to me." If Grit had been boastful or vainglorious, he would have given the particulars of his rescue of little Willie Jackson from drowning. As it was, he said no more than I have recorded above. "Very well," answered the president. "Your mother will not, at any rate, think you are in any mischief, as she knows you too well for that." "When do you want me to go, sir?" asked Grit. "Let me see. To-day is Wednesday, and Friday is the day when we had decided to send the messenger. He was to go by the morning train. I think I will send you off in advance by the evening train of Thursday. Then the bonds will be in the bank at Boston, while the regular messenger is still on the way." "That will suit me very well, sir." "The train starts at ten o'clock. You can be at the train at half-past nine. I will be there at the same hour, and will have the bonds with me. I will at the same time provide you with money for the journey." "All right, sir. Do you want to see me any time to-morrow?" "No. I think it best that we should not be too much together. Even then, I don't think any one would suspect that I would employ you on such an errand. Still, it will be most prudent not to do anything to arouse suspicion." "Then, Mr. Graves, I will bid you good night," said Grit, rising. "I thank you very much for the confidence you are going to repose in me. I will do my best, so that you may not have occasion to repent it." "I don't expect to repent it," said Mr. Graves, shaking hands with Grit in a friendly manner. When the young boatman left the house of the bank president, it was natural that he should feel a thrill of pride as the thought of the important mission on which he was to be sent. Then again, it was exhilarating to reflect that he was about to visit Boston. He had lived at Chester for five years and more, and during that time he had once visited Portland. That was an exciting day for him; but Boston he knew was a great deal larger than the beautiful city of which Maine people are pardonably proud, and contained possibilities of pleasure and excitement which filled him with eager anticipations. But Grit knew that his journey was undertaken not for his own enjoyment, but was to be an important business mission, and he resolved that he would do his duty, even if he did not have a bit of fun. As he thought over the business on which he was to be employed, his thoughts reverted to Ephraim Carver, the bank messenger, and the more he thought of him, the more he suspected that he was implicated in the projected robbery. It was perhaps this thought that led him to make a detour so that he could pass the house of the messenger. It was a small cottage-house, standing back from the street, from which a narrow lane led to it. Connected with it were four or five acres of land, which might have yielded quite an addition to his income, but Mr. Carver was not very fond of working on land, and he let it lie fallow, making scarcely any use of it. Until he obtained the position of bank messenger he had a hard time getting a living, and was generally regarded as rather a shiftless man. He was connected with the wife of one of the directors, and that was the way in which he secured his position. Now he received a small salary, but one on which he might have lived comfortably in a cheap place like Chester. But in spite of this he was dissatisfied, and on many occasions complained of the difficulty he experienced in making both ends meet. Grit turned down the lane and approached the house. He hardly knew why he did so. He had no expectation of learning anything that would throw light on the question whether Carver was or was not implicated in the conspiracy. Still, he was drawn toward the house. The night was quite dark, but Grit knew every step of the way, and he walked slowly up the lane, which was probably two hundred feet long. He had gone, perhaps, half the distance, when he saw the front door of Carver's house open. Mr. Carver himself could be seen in the doorway with a kerosene-lamp in his hand, and at his side was a person whom with a thrill of surprise Grit recognized as the man staying at the hotel under the name of Colonel Johnson. "That looks suspicious," thought Grit. "I am afraid the messenger is guilty." He reflected that it would not do for either of them to see him, as it might render them suspicious. He took advantage of the darkness, and the fact that the two were not looking his way, to jump over the stone wall and hide behind the broad trunk of the lofty elm which stood just in that spot. "I wish I could hear what they are saying," thought Grit. "Then I should know for certain if my suspicions are well founded." The two men stood at the door for the space of a minute or more, and then the stranger departed, but not alone. Ephraim Carver took his hat and accompanied him, both walking slowly up the lane toward the main road. By a piece of good luck, as Grit considered it, they halted beneath the very elm-tree behind which he lay concealed. These were the first words Grit heard spoken: "My dear friend," said Johnson, in bland, persuasive accents, "there isn't a particle of danger in it. You have only to follow my directions, and all will be well." "I shall find it hard to explain how it happened that I lost the package," said Carver. "Not at all! You will have a facsimile in your possession--one so like that no one need wonder that you mistook it for the original. Undoubtedly you will be charged with negligence, but they can't prove anything more against you. You can stand being found fault with for five thousand dollars, can't you?" "If that is all, I won't mind. I shall probably lose my situation." "Suppose you do; it brings you in only six hundred dollars a year, while we pay you in one lump five thousand dollars--over eight times as much. Why, man, the interest of this sum at six per cent. will yield half as much as your annual salary." "The bank people ought to pay me more," said Carver. "Two months since I asked them to raise me to eight hundred a year, but they wouldn't. There was only one of the directors in favor of it--the man who married my wife's cousin." "They don't appreciate you, friend Carver," said Johnson. "How can they expect you to be honest, when they treat you in so niggardly a manner?" "Just so," said Carver, eager to find some justification for his intended treachery. "If they paid me a living salary, I wouldn't do this thing you ask of me." "As it is, they have only themselves to blame," said Colonel Johnson. "That's the way I look at it," said the bank messenger. "And quite right, too! I shouldn't be surprised if you managed to keep your place, after all. They won't suspect you of anything more than carelessness." "That would be splendid!" returned Carver. "With my salary and the interest of five thousand dollars, I could live as comfortably as I wanted to. How soon shall I receive the money?" "As soon as we can dispose of the bonds safely. It won't be long." Here the two men parted, and Carver returned to his house. Grit crept out from behind the elm-tree when the coast was clear, and made his way home. He had learned a most important secret, but resolved to communicate it only to Mr. Graves. CHAPTER XXV. MRS. BRANDON IS MYSTIFIED. When Grit explained to his mother that he was going away for a day or two on a journey, she was naturally surprised, and asked for particulars. "I should like to tell you, mother," said the young boatman, "but there are reasons why I cannot. It is a secret mission, and the secret is not mine." "That is perfectly satisfactory, Grit," said Mrs. Brandon. "I have full confidence in you, and know I can trust you." "After I return I shall probably be able to tell you all," said Grit. "Meanwhile, I shall, no doubt, be paid better than if I were ferrying passengers across the river." "At any rate, I shall be glad to see you back. We have not been separated for a night for years, or, indeed, since you were born." The next day, Mr. Brandon, taught by experience that he need not look for his meals at home, went over to the tavern to breakfast. He felt unusually independent and elated, for he had money in his pocket, obtained from Colonel Johnson, and he expected soon to receive the handsome sum of five thousand dollars. A shrewder man, in order to avert suspicion, would have held his tongue, at least until he had performed the service for which he was to be so liberally paid; but Brandon could not forego the opportunity to boast a little. "It is quite possible, Mrs. B.," he said, in the morning, "that I may leave you in a day or two, to be gone a considerable time." Mrs. B. did not show the expected curiosity, but received the communication in silence. "You don't inquire where I am going," said Brandon. "Where do you propose to go?" asked his wife, whose chief feeling was that she and Grit would now be left to their old quiet and peace. "I may go to Europe," said Mr. Brandon, in an important tone. "Isn't this a new plan?" asked Mrs. Brandon, really surprised. "Yes, it is new. I shall go on business, Mrs. B. My friend Travers and I will probably go together. You and Grit made a great mistake when you treated him with rudeness. It is through him that I am offered most remunerative employment." "I don't enjoy the society of your friend," said Mrs. Brandon. "If he is likely to give you a chance to earn something, I am glad, but that does not excuse the rudeness with which he treated me." "My friend Travers is a gentleman, Mrs. B., a high-toned gentleman, and if you had treated him with the respect which is his due, you would have had nothing to complain of. As it is, you may soon discover that you have made a mistake, and lost a great pleasure. I had not intended to tell you, but I am tempted to do so, that but for your impoliteness to Travers, I might have taken you and Grit with me on a European tour." Mr. Brandon watched his wife, to see if she exhibited severe disappointment at the dazzling prospect which was no sooner shown than withdrawn, but she showed her usual equanimity. "Grit and I will be quite as happy at home," she answered. "Sour grapes!" thought Brandon, but he was wrong. A tour of Europe taken in his company would have no attractions for his wife. "Very well," said Brandon. "You and Grit are welcome to the charms of Pine Point. As for me, it is too small and contracted for a man of my business capacity." "I wonder whether there is any truth in what he says," thought Mrs. Brandon, puzzled. "Your business seems a profitable one," she ventured to remark. "It is, Mrs. B.," answered her husband. "It is of an unusually delicate nature, and requires business talents of a high order." "Your friend Travers does not impress one as a man possessed of a high order of business talent," said Mrs. Brandon. "That is where you fail to appreciate him, but I cannot say more. My business is secret, and cannot be revealed." So saying, Brandon took his hat, and with a jaunty step walked to the hotel. "More secrecy!" thought Mrs. Brandon. "Grit tells me that his mission is a secret one, and now Mr. Brandon says he, too, is engaged in something that cannot be revealed. I know that it is all right with Grit, but I do not feel so sure about Mr. Brandon." The day passed as usual. Grit plied his boat on the river, and did a fair day's work. But about four o'clock he came home. "You are home early, Grit," said his mother. "Yes, for I must get ready to go." He had not yet mentioned to his mother when he was to start. "Do you go to-morrow morning?" asked Mrs. Brandon. "I go to-night, and may be away for a couple of days, mother." Mrs. Brandon uttered an exclamation of surprise. "I suppose I must not ask you where you are going," said his mother. "I cannot tell, for it is somebody else's secret. One thing more, will you take care to say as little as possible about my going away? I would rather Mr. Brandon should not know of it." "I will do as you wish, Grit. By the way, Mr. Brandon tells me he is soon going to Europe." Grit smiled. He knew where the money was to come from, which his stepfather depended upon to defray the expenses of a foreign journey. "I don't feel sure about his going, mother," he answered. "He said he would have taken you and me if we had treated his friend Travers more politely." "Well, mother, we must reconcile ourselves as well as we can to staying at home." "Home will be happy while I have you with me, Grit." "And Mr. Brandon away," added the young boatman. "Yes; I can't help hoping that he will be able to carry out his purpose, and go to Europe, or somewhere else as far off." "I think it very likely we sha'n't see him again for some time," said Grit, "though I don't think he will be traveling in Europe." "As you and Mr. Brandon are both to be engaged in business of a secret nature," said Mrs. Brandon, smiling, "I don't know but I ought to follow your example." "I have full confidence in you, mother, whatever you undertake," said Grit, with a laugh, repeating his mother's own words. Evening came on, and Grit stole out of the house early, lest his stepfather might by some chance return home, and suspect something from his unusual journey. He need not have been alarmed, for Brandon did not leave the tavern till ten o'clock, though he, too, expected to leave town the next morning. When he returned he didn't inquire for Grit, whom he supposed to be abed and asleep. "Mrs. B.," he said, "I must trouble you to wake me at seven o'clock to-morrow morning. I am going to take the early train to Portland." "Very well." "And as it will be rather inconvenient for me to go out to breakfast, I would be glad if you would give me some breakfast before I go." "I will do so," said his wife. "It may be some time before I see you again, as I am to go away on business." "I hope you may be successful," said Mrs. Brandon. Brandon laughed queerly. "If the old lady knew that I was going to steal some government bonds, she would hesitate a little before she wished me success," he thought, but he said: "Thank you, Mrs. B., your good wishes are appreciated, and I may hereafter be able to show my appreciation in a substantial way. I suppose Grit is asleep." Mrs. Brandon did not answer, finding the question an embarrassing one. The next morning Brandon, contrary to his wont, showed considerable alacrity in dressing, and did justice to the breakfast his wife had set before him. "Well, good-bye, Mrs. B.," he said, as he took his hat and prepared to leave the house. "Perhaps I had better go up-stairs and bid good-by to Grit, as I may not see him again for some time." "Grit is out," said Mrs. Brandon hastily, for she did not wish her husband to go up to Grit's room, as he would discover that his bed had not been slept in. "Out already?" said Brandon. "He's made an early start. Well, bid him good-by for me." "It's very strange," repeated Mrs. Brandon, as she cleared away the breakfast dishes; "there's Grit gone, I don't know where, and now Mr. Brandon has started off on some mysterious business. What can it all mean?" CHAPTER XXVI. THE FALL RIVER MANUFACTURER. Grit lost no time in prosecuting his journey. In Portland he found that he should need to stay over a few hours, and repaired to the United States Hotel. He left word to be called early, as he wished to take a morning train to Boston. At the breakfast-table he found himself sitting next to a man of swarthy complexion and bushy black whiskers. "Good morning, my young friend," said the stranger, after a scrutinizing glance. "Good morning, sir," said Grit politely. "Are you stopping at this hotel?" "For the present, yes," answered the young boatman. "Are you going farther?" "I think of it," said Grit cautiously. "Perhaps you are going to Boston," proceeded the stranger. "I may do so," Grit admitted. "I am glad of it, for I am going, too. If agreeable, we will travel in company." "I suppose we shall go on the same train?" said Grit evasively. "Just so. I am going to Boston on business. You, I suppose, are too young to have business of any importance?" "Boys of my age seldom have business of importance," said Grit, resolved to baffle the evident curiosity of the stranger. "Exactly. I suppose you have relations in Boston?" "I once lived in that neighborhood," said Grit. "Just so. Are you going to stay long in the city?" "That depends on circumstances?" "Do you live in this State?" "At present I do." The man looked a little annoyed, for he saw that Grit was determined to say as little about himself as possible. He decided to set the boy an example of frankness. "I do not live in Maine," he said; "I am a manufacturer in Fall River, Mass. I suppose you have heard of Fall River?" "Oh, yes!" "It is a right smart place, as a Philadelphian would say. You never heard of Townsend's Woolen Mill, I dare say?" "No, I never have." "It is one of the largest mills in Fall River. I own a controlling interest in it. I assure you I wouldn't take a hundred thousand dollars for my interest in it." "You ought to be in very easy circumstances," said Grit politely, though it did occur to him to wonder why the owner of a controlling interest in a large woolen mill should be attired in such a rusty suit. "I am," said the stranger complacently. "Daniel Townsend's income--I am Daniel T., at your service--for last year was twelve thousand three hundred and sixty-nine dollars." "This gentleman seems very communicative," thought Grit. "Your income was rather larger than mine," he said. "Ho, ho! I should say so," laughed Mr. Townsend. "Are you in any business, my young friend?" "I am connected with navigation," said Grit. "Indeed?" observed Townsend, appearing puzzled. "Do you find it a paying business?" "Tolerably so, but I presume woolen manufacturing is better?" "Just so," assented Townsend, rather absently. At this point Grit rose from the table, having finished his breakfast. "Mr. Townsend seems very social," thought our hero, "but I think he is given to romancing. I don't believe he has anything more to do with a woolen mill in Fall River than I have." Grit reached the station in time, and took his seat in the train. He bought a morning paper, and began to read. "Ah, here you are, my young friend!" fell on his ears just after they passed Saco, and Grit, looking up, saw his breakfast companion. "Is the seat beside you taken?" asked Mr. Daniel Townsend. Grit would like to have said "yes," but he was compelled to admit that it was unengaged. "So much the better for me," said the woolen manufacturer, and he sat down beside our hero. He had with him a small, well-worn valise, which looked as if in some remote period it had seen better days. He laid it down, and, looking keenly about, observed Grit's parcel, which, though commonplace in appearance, contained, as we know, thirty thousand dollars in government bonds. "It is rather a long ride to Boston," said Mr. Townsend. "Yes; but it seems shorter when you have something to read," answered Grit, looking wistfully at his paper, which he would have preferred reading to listening to the conversation of his neighbor. "I never care to read on the cars," said Mr. Townsend. "I think it is injurious to the eyes. Do you ever find it so?" "I have not traveled enough to be able to judge," said Grit. "Very likely. At your age I had traveled a good deal. My father was a rich merchant, and as I was fond of roving, he sent me on a voyage to the Mediterranean on one of his vessels. I was sixteen at that time." "I wonder whether this is true, or not," thought Grit. "I enjoyed the trip, though I was seasick on the Mediterranean. It is really more trying than the ocean, though you might not imagine it. Don't you think you would enjoy a trip of that sort?" "Yes; I am sure I would," said Grit, with interest. "Just so; most boys of your age are fond of traveling. Perhaps I might find it in my way to gratify your wishes. Our corporation is thinking of sending a traveler to Europe. You are rather young, but still I might be able to get it for you." "You know so little about me," said Grit sensibly, "that I wonder you should think of me in any such connection." "That is true. I don't know anything of you, except what you have told me." "That isn't much," thought Grit. "And it may be necessary for me to know more. I will ask you a few questions, and report your answers to our directors at their meeting next week." "Thank you, sir; but I think we will postpone discussing the matter this morning." "Is any time better than the present?" inquired Townsend. Grit did not care to say much about himself until after he had fulfilled his errand in the city. He justly felt that with such an important charge it was necessary for him to use the greatest caution and circumspection. Still, there was a bare possibility that the man beside him was really what he claimed to be, and might have it in his power to give him a business commission which he would enjoy. "If you will call on me at the Parker House this evening," said Grit, "I will speak with you on the subject." "Whom shall I inquire for?" asked the Fall River manufacturer. "You need not inquire for any one. You will find me in the reading-room at eight o'clock." "Very well," answered Mr. Townsend, appearing satisfied. The conversation drifted along till they reached Exeter. Then Mr. Townsend rose in haste, and, seizing Grit's bundle instead of his own, hurried toward the door. Grit sprang after him and snatched the precious package. "You have made a mistake, Mr. Townsend," he said, eyeing his late seat companion with distrust. "Why, so I have!" ejaculated Townsend, in apparent surprise. "By Jove! it's lucky you noticed it. That little satchel of mine contains some papers and certificates of great value." "In that case I would advise you to be more careful," said Grit, who did not believe one word of the last statement. "So I will," said Townsend, taking the satchel. "I am going into the smoking-car. Won't you go with me?" "No, thank you." "I have a spare cigar," urged Townsend. "Thank you again, but I don't smoke." "Oh, well, you're right, no doubt, but it's an old habit of mine. I began to smoke when I was twelve years old. My wife often tells me I am injuring my health, and perhaps I am. Take the advice of a man old enough to be your father, and don't smoke." "That's good advice, sir, and I shall probably follow it." "Well, good day, if we don't meet again," said Townsend. Mr. Townsend, instead of passing into the smoking-car, got off the train. Grit observed this, and was puzzled to account for it, particularly as the train started on, leaving him standing on the platform. A few minutes later the conductor passed through the train, calling for tickets. Grit looked in vain for his, and, deciding that he should have to pay the fare over again, he felt for his pocketbook, but that, too, was missing. He began to understand why Mr. Townsend left the train at Exeter. CHAPTER XXVII. A FRIEND IN NEED. The conductor waited while Grit was searching for his ticket. He was not the same one who started with the train, so that he could not know whether our hero had shown a ticket earlier in the journey. "I can't find my ticket or my money," said Grit, perplexed. "Then you will have to leave the train at the next station," said the conductor suspiciously. "It is very important that I should proceed on my journey," pleaded Grit. "I will give you my name, and send you the money." "That won't do, youngster," said the conductor roughly. "I have heard of that game before. It won't go down." "There is no game about it," said Grit. "My ticket and pocketbook have been stolen." "Of course," sneered the conductor. "Perhaps you can point out the thief." "No, I can't, for he has left the train. He got out at Exeter." "Very likely. You can take the next train back and find him." "Do you doubt that I had a ticket?" asked Grit, nettled by the conductor's evident incredulity. "Yes, I do, if you want the truth. You want to steal a ride; that's what's the matter." "That is not true," said Grit. "I am sure some of these passengers have seen me show my ticket. Didn't you, sir?" He addressed this question to a stout old gentleman who sat in the seat behind him. "Really, I couldn't say," answered the old gentleman addressed. "I was reading my paper, and didn't take notice." The conductor looked more incredulous than ever. "I can't waste any more time with you, young man," he said. "At the next station you must get out." Grit was very much disturbed. It was not pleasant to be left penniless at a small station, but if he had been left alone he would not have cared so much. But to have the custody of thirty thousand dollars' worth of government bonds, under such circumstances, was certainly embarrassing. He could not get along without money, and for a tramp without money to be in charge of such a treasure was ample cause of suspicion. What could he do? The train was already going slower, and it was evident that the next station was near at hand. Grit was trying in vain to think of some way of securing a continuation of his journey, when a stout, good-looking lady of middle age, who sat just opposite, rose from her seat and seated herself beside him. "You seem to be in trouble," she said kindly. "Yes, ma'am," answered Grit. "My ticket and money have been stolen, and the conductor threatens to put me off the train." "So I heard. Who do you think robbed you?" "The man who sat beside me and got out at Exeter." "I noticed him. I wonder you didn't detect him in the act of robbing you." "So do I," answered Grit. "He must be a professional. All the same, I am ashamed of being so taken in." "I heard you say it was important for you to reach Boston." "It is," said Grit. He was about to explain why, when it occurred to him that it would not be prudent in a crowded car, which might contain suspicious and unprincipled persons, to draw attention to the nature of his packet. "I can't explain why just at present," he said; "but if any one would lend me money to keep on my journey I would willingly repay the loan two for one." At this point the train came to a stop, and the conductor, passing through the car, addressed Grit: "Young man, you must get out at this station." "No, he needn't," said the stout lady decidedly. "Here, my young friend, pay your fare out of this," and she drew from a pearl portemonnaie a ten-dollar bill. Grit's heart leaped for joy. It was such an intense relief. "How can I ever thank you?" he said gratefully, as he offered the change to his new friend. "No," she said; "keep the whole. You will need it, and you can repay me whenever you find it convenient." "That will be as soon as I get home," said Grit promptly. "I have the money there." "That will be entirely satisfactory." "Let me know your name and address, madam," said Grit, taking out a small memorandum-book, "so that I may know where to send." "Mrs. Jane Bancroft, No. 37 Mount Vernon Street," said the lady. Grit noted it down. "Let me tell you mine," he said. "My name is Harry Morris, and I live in the town of Chester, in Maine." "Chester? I know that place. I have a cousin living there, or, rather, I should say, a cousin of my late husband." "Who is it, Mrs. Bancroft?" asked Grit. "I know almost everybody in the village." "Mr. Courtney. I believe he has something to do with the bank." "Yes, he is a director. He was once president." "Exactly. Do you know him?" "Yes, ma'am. I saw him only a day or two before I left." "I presume you know his son Philip, also." "Oh, yes, I know Phil," said Grit. "Is he a friend of yours?" asked the lady curiously. "No, I can't say that. We don't care much for each other." "And whose fault is that?" asked the lady, smiling. "I don't think it is mine. I have always treated Phil well enough, but he doesn't think me a suitable associate for him." "Why?" "Because I am poor, while he is the son of a rich man." "That is as it may be," said the lady, shrugging her shoulders. "Money sometimes has wings. So you are not rich?" "I have to work for a living." "What do you do?" "I ferry passengers across the Kennebec, and in that way earn a living for my mother and myself." "Do you make it pay?" "I earn from seven to ten dollars a week." "That is doing very well for a boy of your age. What sort of a boy is Phil? Is he popular?" "I don't think he is." "Why?" "He is your nephew, Mrs. Bancroft, and I don't like to criticize him." "Never mind that. Speak freely." "He puts on too many airs to be popular. If he would just forget that his father is a rich man, and meet the rest of the boys on an equality, I think we should like him well enough." "That is just the opinion I have formed of him. Last winter he came to make me a visit, but I found him hard to please. He wanted a great deal of attention, and seemed disposed to order my servants about, till I was obliged to check him." "I remember hearing him say he was going to visit a rich relative in Boston," said Grit. Mrs. Bancroft smiled. "It was all for his own gratification, no doubt," she said. "So your name is Harry Morris?" "Yes, but I am usually called Grit." "A good omen. It is a good thing for any boy--especially a poor boy--to possess grit. Most of our successful men were poor boys, and most of them possessed this quality." "You encourage me, Mrs. Bancroft," said our hero. "I want to succeed in life, for my mother's sake especially." "I think you will; I have little knowledge of you, but you seem like one born to prosper. How long are you going to stay in Boston?" "Till to-morrow, at any rate." "You will be in the city overnight, then. Where did you think of staying?" "At the Parker House." "It is an expensive hotel. You had better stay at my house." "At your house?" exclaimed Grit, surprised. "Yes; I may want to ask more questions about Chester. We have tea at half-past six. That will give you plenty of time to attend to your business. I shall be at home any time after half-past five. Will you come?" "With pleasure," said Grit politely. "Then I will expect you." Mrs. Bancroft returned to her seat. Our hero mentally congratulated himself on making so agreeable and serviceable a friend. "What will Phil say when he learns that I have been the guest of his fashionable relatives in Boston?" thought he. In due time the train reached Boston, and Grit lost no time in repairing to the bank. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE TRAIN ROBBERY. When Grit had delivered the bonds at the bank, a great load seemed to be lifted from his shoulders. Especially after he had been robbed on the train, he realized the degree of risk and responsibility involved in the custody of so valuable a packet. The officials at the bank seemed surprised at the youth of the messenger, but Grit felt at liberty to explain why he was selected as a substitute for the regular messenger. Leaving our hero for a time, we go back to Chester to speak of other characters in our story. Ephraim Carver, the bank messenger, went to the bank at the hour of opening to receive the package of bonds which he expected to convey to Boston. He had no suspicion that his negotiations of a previous evening had been overheard and reported to the president. He felt somewhat nervous, it is true, for he felt that a few hours would make him a rich man. Then the risk involved, though he did not consider it to be great, was yet sufficient to excite him. He was admitted into the president's room, as usual. Mr. Graves was already in his office, but his manner was his ordinary one, and the messenger did not dream that the quiet official read him through and through and understood him thoroughly. "You know, I suppose, Mr. Carver," said President Graves, "that you are to go to Boston by the next train." "Yes, sir." "The packet you will carry is of unusual value, and requires an unusual degree of care and caution." "Yes, sir." "It contains thirty thousand dollars in government bonds," said the president, laying his hand on the prepared packet, which was in the usual form. "That is a fortune in itself," he added, closely scrutinizing the face of the messenger. He thought he detected a transient gleam of exultation in the eyes of the bank messenger. "Of course," he proceeded, "if it were known that you carried a packet of such value, there would be great danger of your being robbed. Indeed, you might be in some personal danger." "Yes, sir." "But as it is only known to you and the officers of the bank, there is no special danger. Still, I advise you to be more than usually vigilant, on account of the value of your charge." "Oh, yes, sir, I shall take good care of it," answered Carver, reaching out his hand for the packet. "Let me see, how long have you been in the employ of the bank?" asked the president. "Nearly three years, sir." "You have found it a light, easy position, have you not?" "Yes, sir, though, if you will allow me to say so, the salary is small." "True; but the expenses of living in Chester are small, also. However, we will not discuss that question now. Possibly at the end of the year, if they continue satisfied with you, the directors may increase your salary slightly. There cannot be a large increase." "I may not need an increase then," thought Carver. "With five thousand dollars to fall back upon, I shall feel independent." "You will report to me when you return," said Mr. Graves, as the messenger left the bank parlor. "Yes, sir, directly." The president fixed his eyes upon the vanishing figure of the messenger, and said to himself: "My friend, you have deliberately planned your own downfall. Greed of money has made you dishonest, but your plans are destined to miscarry, as this time to-morrow you and your confederates will be made aware." "Now," thought the bank messenger, as he bent his steps toward the railway station, "the path is clear. Here is what will completely change my fortunes, and lift me from an humble dependent to a comfortable position in life." Then he thought, with some dissatisfaction, that he was to receive but one-sixth of the value of the bonds, and that the man who employed him to betray his trust would be much more richly paid. However, in his case, there would be no risk of being personally implicated. No one could prove that he had allowed himself to be robbed. Even if suspicion fastened upon him, nothing could be proved. So, on the whole, perhaps it was better to be content with one-sixth than to incur greater risk, and the dread penalty of imprisonment for a term of years. On the railroad platform Carver glanced furtively about him. He easily recognized Brandon and Travers, who stood side by side, each having provided himself with a ticket. They on their side also glanced swiftly at him, and then turned away with a look of indifference. But they had not failed to notice the important packet which the bank messenger carried in his hand. "It is all right!" was the thought that passed through their minds. There was another passenger waiting for the train, whom they did not notice. He was a small, quiet, unpretentious-looking man, attired in a suit of pepper and salt, and looked like a retail merchant in a small way, going to Portland or Boston, to order goods. They would have been very much startled had they known that it was a Boston detective, who had been telegraphed for by Mr. Graves, and that his special business was to follow them and observe their actions. When the train reached the station Carver got in, and took a seat by himself in the second car. Just behind him sat the two confederates, Brandon and Travers, and in line with them, on the opposite side of the car, sat the quiet man, whom we will call Denton. Ten minutes before the train reached Portland Ephraim Carver left his seat, and very singularly forgot to take the parcel, of which he had special custody, with him. It was a remarkable piece of forgetfulness, truly. But his oversight was not unobserved. Travers sprang from his seat, took the parcel, and following the messenger overtook him at the door of the car. He tapped Carver on the shoulder, and the latter turned round. "I beg pardon," said Travers, "but you left this on the seat." As he spoke he handed a packet to Carver. "A thousand thanks!" said the messenger hurriedly. "I was very careless. I am very much indebted to you." "I thought the packet might contain something valuable," said Travers. "At any rate, I should not like to lose it," said the messenger, who appeared to be properly on his guard. "Oh, don't mention it," said Travers politely, and he walked back and resumed his seat beside Brandon. The quiet man, to whom we have already referred, noted this little piece of acting with a smile of enjoyment. "Very well done, good people," he said to himself. "It ought to succeed, but it won't." His sharp eyes had detected what the other passengers had not--that Travers had skilfully substituted another package for the one he had picked up from the seat vacated by Carver. Carver passed on into the next car, and Denton now concentrated his attention upon Brandon and Travers. He noticed in both traces of joyful excitement, for which he could easily account. They thought they had succeeded, and each mentally congratulated himself on the acquisition of a neat little fortune. "They will get out at Portland," thought Denton, "and take account of their booty. I should like to be there to see, but I am instructed to follow my friend the bank messenger to Boston, and must, therefore, forego the pleasure." At Portland, Brandon and Travers got out of the cars, and took a hack to the Falmouth Hotel. They went to the office, and, calling for the hotel register, carefully scanned the list of arrivals. The afternoon previous they found entered the name of Colonel Johnson. "Is Colonel Johnson in?" asked Brandon. "We will ascertain," was the reply. The bell-boy who was despatched to inquire returned with the message that Colonel Johnson would see the gentlemen. They followed the attendant to a room on the third floor, where they found their employer pacing the room in visible excitement. "Give me the parcel," he said, in a peremptory tone. He cut the strings, and hastily opened the coveted prize. But his eager look was succeeded by black disappointment, as, instead of the bonds, he saw a package of blank paper of about the same shape and size. "Confusion!" he ejaculated; "what does all this mean? What devil's mess have you made of the business?" CHAPTER XXIX. THE CONSPIRATORS ARE PERPLEXED. Johnson's hasty exclamation was heard with blank amazement by his two confederates. "What do you mean, Colonel? Ain't the bonds there?" asked Travers. "Do you call these bonds?" demanded Johnson savagely, as he pointed to the neatly folded brown paper. "You must have brought back your own parcel, and left the genuine one with the bank messenger." "No," said Travers, shaking his head; "our package was filled with old newspapers. This is different." "It is evidently only a dummy. Was it the only parcel Carver had?" "Yes, it was the only one." "Is it possible the villain has fooled us?" said Johnson, frowning ominously. "If he has, we'll get even with him--I swear it!" "I don't know what to think, colonel," said Travers. "You can tell better than I, for you saw him about this business." "He didn't seem like it, for he caught at my suggestion greedily. There's another possibility," added Johnson, after a pause, with a searching glance at his two confederates. "How do I know but you two have secured the bonds, and palmed off this dummy upon me?" Both men hastily disclaimed doing anything of the kind, and Johnson was forced to believe them, not from any confidence he felt in them, but from his conviction that they were not astute enough to think of any such treachery. "This must be looked into," he said slowly. "There has been treachery somewhere. It lies between you and the messenger, though I did not dream that either would be up to such a thing." "You don't think the bank people did it, do you?" suggested Brandon. "I don't know," said Johnson slowly. "I can't understand how they could learn what was in the wind, unless one of you three blabbed." Of course, Travers and Brandon asseverated stoutly that they had not breathed a word to any third party. Johnson was deeply perplexed, and remained silent for five minutes. At length he announced his decision. "We can do nothing, and decide upon nothing," he said, "till we see Carver. He went on to Boston, I conclude?" "Yes, sir." "He will be back to-morrow. We must watch the trains, and intercept him." Leaving this worthy trio in Portland, we follow Ephraim Carver to Boston. As the cars sped on their way, he felt an uneasy excitement as he thought of his treachery, and he feared he should look embarrassed when he was called to account by the Boston bank officials. But there was a balm in the thought of the substantial sum he was to receive as the reward of his wrongdoing. That, he thought, would well repay him for the bad quarter of an hour he would pass in Boston. "Five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars!" This was the burden of his thoughts as he considered the matter. "It will make me independent. If I can keep my post, I will, and I can then afford to be faithful to the bank. If they discharge me, I will move away, for my living without work, and having money to spend, would attract suspicion if I continued to live in Chester. Somewhere else I can go into business for myself. I might stock a small dry-goods store, for instance. I must inquire into the chances of making a living at that business." So, in spite of his treachery, Ephraim Carver, on the whole, indulged in pleasing reflections, so that the railroad journey seemed short. Arrived in Boston, he found that he had just time to go to the bank and deliver his parcel within banking hours. "I may as well do it, and have it over with," he said to himself. So, with a return of nervousness, which he tried to conceal by outward indifference, he made his way to the bank to which he was commissioned. He had been there before, and was recognized when he entered. He was at once conducted into the presence of the president. To him he delivered the parcel of bonds. "That will do, Mr. Carver," said the president. "You may go outside while I examine them." He was ushered into the ordinary room, and waited five minutes. He was trying to brace himself for an outburst of surprise, perhaps of stormy indignation, and searching cross-examination, when the president presented himself at the door of his private office. "That will do," he said. "You can go, Mr. Carver." Carver stared at him in blank amazement. This was precisely what he did not expect. "Have you examined the bonds?" he asked. "Of course," answered the president. "And you find them all right?" continued the messenger, with irrepressible surprise. "I suppose so," answered the president. "I will examine more carefully presently." "Then you don't wish me to stay?" inquired Carver. "No; there is no occasion to do so." Ephraim Carver left the bank in a state of stupefaction. "What can it all mean?" he asked himself. "The man must be blind as a bat if he didn't discover that the package contained no bonds. I don't believe he opened it at all." So Carver was left in a state of uncertainty. On the whole he wished that the substitution had been discovered, so that the president could have had it out with him. Now he felt that a sword was impending over his head, which might fall at any time. This was unpleasant, for he did not know what to expect. He went back to Portland by a late train, however, as he had arranged to do. At the depot he met Colonel Johnson. He was puzzled to find that Johnson did not look as jubilant as he anticipated, now that their plot had succeeded. On the other hand, he looked grave and stern. "Well, colonel, how goes it?" he asked. "That is for you to say," returned Johnson. "You have seen Brandon and Travers, I suppose?" "Yes, I have seen them." "Then it's all right, and the parcel is in your hands." "He takes it pretty coolly," thought Johnson. "I can't understand what it means. I must get to the bottom of this thing. Well, how did they take it at the bank?" he added, aloud. "Did they make any fuss?" "No," answered the bank messenger. Johnson was surprised. "They didn't question you about the parcel you brought them?" "No; they told me it was all right, and let me go." "Then they must have got the bonds," said Johnson hastily. "What! haven't you got them?" asked the messenger, in genuine surprise. "No," said Johnson bitterly. "The fools brought me a package stuffed with sheets of brown paper." Carver stared at him in open-mouthed amazement. "I don't understand it," he said. "I can't account for any parcel of the kind." "They couldn't have made the exchange at all. This must have been their own parcel." "No," said Carver; "theirs was stuffed with old newspapers." "That was what they said." "They told the truth. I helped them make up the parcel myself." "Then it must have been their parcel that is now in the hands of the bank." "It seems likely." "Then where are the bonds?" demanded Johnson sternly. "That is more than I can tell," said the bank messenger, in evident perplexity. "It's enough to make a man tear his hair to have such a promising scheme miscarry," said Johnson gloomily. "I wish I could lay my finger on the man that's responsible for it." "I can't understand it at all, colonel. We followed out your instructions to the letter. Everything went off smoothly." "Can you tell me where are the bonds?" interrupted Johnson harshly. "No, I can't." "Then you may as well be silent." "I will follow your directions," said Carver submissively. "What do you wish me to do?" Johnson reflected a moment. Finally he said: "Take the earliest morning train to Chester. I will stay here. So will the other two men." "Anything further?" "Only this: Keep your eyes and ears open when you get home. If you hear anything that will throw light on this affair, write or telegraph, or send a special messenger, so that I may act promptly on your information. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir. Your directions shall be followed. I am as anxious as you are to find out why we failed." CHAPTER XXX. GRIT IS BETRAYED. In sending Grit to Boston instead of the regular messenger, President Graves had acted on his own responsibility, as he had a right to do, since it was a matter to be decided by the executive. He might, indeed, have consulted the directors, but that would have created delay, and might have endangered the needful secrecy. When, however, Grit returned and reported to him that his mission had been satisfactorily accomplished, he informed the directors of what had been done at a special meeting summoned at his own house. All approved the action except Mr. Courtney, who was prejudiced against Grit, and, moreover, felt offended because his own counsel had not been asked or regarded. "It seems to me," he said, with some heat, "that our president has acted in a very rash manner." "How do you make that out, Mr. Courtney?" interrogated that official. "It was actually foolhardy to trust a boy like Grit Morris with a package of such value." "Why?" inquired Graves. "Why? He is only a common boy, who makes a living by ferrying passengers across the river." "Does that prevent his being honest?" "A valuable package like that would be a powerful temptation to a boy like that," asserted Courtney. "The package was promptly delivered," said Mr. Graves dryly. "He says so," sneered Courtney. "Pardon me, Mr. Courtney, I have had advice to that effect from the Boston bank," said the president blandly. "Well, I'm glad the danger has been averted," said Courtney, rather discomfited. "All the same, I blame your course as hazardous and injudicious. I suppose the boy was afraid to appropriate property of so much value." "I think, Mr. Courtney, you do injustice to Grit," said Mr. Saunders, another director. "I am satisfied that he is strictly honest." "Perhaps you'd be in favor of appointing him regular bank messenger," said Courtney, with a sneer. "I should certainly prefer him to Ephraim Carver." "I consider Carver an honest man." "And I have positive proof that he is not honest," said the president. "I have proof, moreover, that he was actually in league with the man who plotted to rob the bank." This statement made a sensation, and the president proceeded: "Indeed, I have called this extra meeting partly to suggest the necessity of appointing in Carver's place a man in whom we can repose confidence." Here he detailed briefly the conversation which Grit overheard between the bank messenger and Colonel Johnson. It impressed all, except Mr. Courtney. "All a fabrication of that boy, I'll be bound," he declared. "I am surprised, Mr. Graves, that you should have been humbugged by such a palpable invention." "What could have been the boy's object in inventing such a story, allow me to ask, Mr. Courtney?" "Oh, he wanted to worm himself into our confidence," said Courtney. "Very likely he wished to be appointed bank messenger, though that would, of course, be preposterous." "Gentlemen," said President Graves, "as my course does not seem to command entire approval, I will ask those of you who think I acted with discretion to signify it." All voted in the affirmative except Mr. Courtney. "I regret, Mr. Courtney, that you disapprove my course," said the president; "but I continue to think it wise, and am glad that your fellow directors side with me." Soon after the meeting dissolved, and Mr. Courtney went home very much dissatisfied. Nothing was done about the appointment of a new messenger, the matter being postponed for three days. When Mr. Courtney went home he did a very unwise thing. He inveighed in the presence of his family against the course of President Graves, though it was a matter that should have been kept secret. He found one to sympathize with him--his son Phil. "You don't mean to say," exclaimed that young man, "that Grit Morris was sent to Boston in charge of thirty thousand dollars in bonds?" "Yes, I do. That is just what was done." "It's a wonder he didn't steal them and make himself scarce." "That is in substance what I said at the meeting of the directors, my son." "I wish they'd sent me," said Phil. "I should have enjoyed the trip." "It would certainly have been more appropriate," said Mr. Courtney, "as you are the son of one of the directors, and not the least influential or prominent, I flatter myself." "To take a common boatman!" said Phil scornfully. "Why, Mr. Graves must be crazy!" "He is certainly a very injudicious man," said his father. "Do you believe Carver to be dishonest, father?" "No, I don't, though Graves does, on some evidence trumped up by the boy Grit. He wants to supersede him, and it would not at all surprise me if he should be in favor of appointing Grit." "How ridiculous! What is the pay?" asked Phil. "Six hundred dollars a year, I believe," said Courtney. "Can't you get it for me?" asked Phil eagerly. "I don't think it would be suitable to appoint a boy," returned Courtney. "That is my objection to Grit." "Surely I would be a better messenger than a common boy like that." "Of course, you come of a very different family. Still, I prefer a man, and indeed I am in favor of retaining Ephraim Carver." Phil would really have liked the office of bank messenger. He was tired of studying, and would have found it very agreeable to have an income of his own. He got considerable sums from his father, but not sufficient for his needs, or, rather, his wishes. Besides, like most boys of his age, he enjoyed traveling about, and considered the office a light and pleasant one. "What a fool Graves must be," he said to himself, "to think of a common boatman for such a place! He'd better stick to his boat, it's all he's qualified for. I'd like to put a spoke in his wheel." He left the house, and a short distance up the street he met Ephraim Carver, who had come back to town in obedience to Colonel Johnson's suggestion, to learn what he could about the mysterious package. "I'll see what I can learn from him," thought Phil. "Good morning, Mr. Carver," he said. "Good morning, Philip." "You've been to Boston lately, haven't you?" "I wonder whether he has heard anything about the matter from his father," thought Carver. "Yes," he answered. "You didn't happen to meet Grit Morris there, did you?" asked Phil. "Grit Morris!" exclaimed Carver, in genuine surprise. "Yes, didn't you know he had been to Boston?" "No; what business had he in Boston?" asked the messenger. "None of his own," answered Phil significantly. "Did any one send him?" "You had better ask Mr. Graves," said Phil, telling more than he intended to. "Why didn't Mr. Graves get me to attend to his business?" asked Carver, still in the dark. "I didn't say Graves had any business of his own. He is president of the bank, you know." "But I attend to the bank business. I am the messenger." "Perhaps you don't attend to all of it," said Phil, telling considerably more than he intended when the conversation commenced. "Tell me what you know, Phil, about this matter. It is important for me to know," said Carver coaxingly. "I know you don't like Grit, neither do I. If he is trying to curry favor with Mr. Graves, I want to know it, so as to circumvent him." Before Phil quite knew what he was saying, he had revealed everything to Carver, adding that Grit was after his place. The bank messenger now understood why the package entrusted to him was a dummy, and who carried the real package. He lost no time in sending information to Colonel Johnson, in Portland. The gentleman was very much excited when he learned in what way he had been circumvented. "So it was a boy, was it?" he said savagely. "That boy must be looked after. He may find that he has made a mistake in meddling with affairs that don't concern him." CHAPTER XXXI. NEW PLANS. When Grit returned he found his mother naturally curious to know where he had been and on what errand. "I should like to tell you everything, mother," he said, "but it may not be prudent just yet." "It's nothing wrong, I hope, Grit?" "You may be sure of that, mother; I wouldn't engage in anything that I thought wrong. I feel justified in telling you confidentially that I was sent by Mr. Graves." "What! the president of the bank?" "Yes." "Then it's all right," said Mrs. Brandon, with an air of relief. "My time wasn't wasted, mother," said Grit cheerfully, as he displayed a ten-dollar note, new and crisp, which Mr. Graves had given him, besides paying the expenses of his trip. "I've only been gone two days, and ten dollars will pay me very well. It's better than boating, at any rate." "Yes, but it isn't a steady employment." "No; don't suppose I have any idea of giving up boating, because I have been paid five dollars a day for my trip. It's a help, though." "Did you see anything of Mr. Brandon while you were gone?" asked his mother apprehensively. "No, mother. I can't say I was disappointed, either." "When he went away he spoke mysteriously of some good fortune that was coming to him. He expected to earn a large sum of money, and talked of going to Europe." "He is welcome to do so," said Grit, smiling. "I hope he will, and then we can resume our old life. I tell you, mother, I feel more sure than ever of getting along. I am certain I can earn considerably more next year than I have ever done before," and the boy's cheeks glowed and his eyes sparkled with cheerful hope. "I am sure you deserve to, Grit, for you've always been a good son." "I ought to be, for I've got a good mother," said the boy, with a glance of affection at his mother. "He pays me for all," thought Mrs. Brandon, as she watched with pride and a mother's love the form of her boy as he walked down to the river. "As long as he lives, I have reason to be grateful to God. Mr. Brandon is a heavy cross to me, but I can bear it while I have Grit." Mr. Brandon, however, did not show himself. He was at Portland, subject to the orders of Colonel Johnson, who thought it not prudent that he or Travers should return just at present, lest, under the influence of liquor, they might become talkative and betray more than he desired. It was at this point that he learned from Ephraim Carver that Grit had been sent to Boston in the place of the regular bank messenger. "It looks as if somebody suspected something," he reflected anxiously. "Is it possible that any part of our plan has leaked out? And if so, how? Then why should a boy like that be selected for so responsible a duty? He must have had some agency in the discovery. Ha! I have it! He is the stepson of this Brandon. I must question Brandon." "Brandon," he said abruptly, summoning that worthy to his presence, "you have a son named Grit, have you not?" "Yes--curse the brat!" answered Brandon, in a tone by no means paternal. "What kind of a boy is he?" "Impudent and undutiful," said Brandon. "He doesn't treat me with any kind of respect." "I don't blame him for that," thought Johnson, surveying his instrument with a glance that did not indicate the highest esteem. "Did you tell him anything of our plans?" he asked searchingly. "Tell him! He's the last person I'd tell!" returned Brandon, with emphasis. "He didn't overhear you and Travers speaking of the matter, did he?" "Certainly not. What makes you ask me that, colonel?" "Because it was he who carried the genuine package of bonds to Boston--that's all." "Grit--carried--the bonds!" Brandon ejaculated, in amazement. "Yes." "How did you find out?" "Carver found out. I have just had a despatch from him." "Well, that beats me!" muttered Brandon. "I can't understand it at all." "It looks as if Carver were distrusted. I shall find out presently. In the meanwhile, I must see that boy of yours." "I'll go and bring him here," said Brandon. "Don't trouble yourself. I can manage the matter better by myself. I shall go to Boston this afternoon." "Are Travers and I to go, too?" "No; you can stay here. I'll direct you to a cheap boarding-house, where you can await my orders. I may take Travers with me." This arrangement did not suit Brandon very well, though it might had he been entrusted with a liberal sum of money. But Colonel Johnson, having lost the valuable prize for which he had striven, was in no mood to be generous. He agreed to be responsible for Brandon's board, but only gave him two dollars for outside expenses, thus enforcing a degree of temperance which was very disagreeable to Brandon. CHAPTER XXXII. GRIT RECEIVES A BUSINESS LETTER. Grit returned to his old business, but I am obliged to confess that he was not as well contented with it as he had been a week previous. The incidents of the past four days had broadened his views, and given him thoughts of a career which would suit him better. He earned a dollar and a quarter during the day, and this made a very good average. Multiply it by six, and it stood for an income of seven dollars and a half per week. This, to be sure, was not a large sum, but it was quite sufficient to maintain the little household in a degree of comfort which left nothing to be desired. "It's all very well now," thought Grit, "but it won't lead to anything. I'm so old now"--he was not quite sixteen--"that I ought to be getting hold of some business that I can follow when I am a man. I don't mean to be a boatman when I am twenty-five years old." There was something in this, no doubt. Still Grit need not have felt in such a hurry. He was young enough to wait. Waiting, however, is a very bad thing for boys of his age. I only want to show how his mind was affected, in order that the reader may understand how it happened that he fell unsuspiciously into a trap which Colonel Johnson prepared for him. After supper--it was two days later--Grit prepared to go to the village. He had a little errand of his own, and besides, his mother wanted a few articles at the grocery-store. Our hero, unlike some boys that I know, was always ready to do any errands for his mother, so that she was spared the trouble of exacting unwilling service. Grit had done all his business, when he chanced to meet his friend Jesse Burns, who, as I have already said, was the son of the postmaster. "How are you, Jesse?" said Grit. "All right, Grit. Have you got your letter?" "My letter!" returned Grit, in surprise. "Yes; there's a letter for you in the post-office." "I wonder who it can be from?" "Perhaps it's from your affectionate stepfather," suggested Jesse, smiling. "I hope not, I don't want to see or hear from him." "Well, you can easily solve the problem. You have only to take the letter out." "That's good advice, Jesse. I'll follow it." Grit called for his letter, and noticed, with some surprise, that it was addressed to him, not under his real name, but under that familiar name by which we know him. "Grit Morris," said Jesse, scanning the envelope. "Who can it be from?" The letter was postmarked Boston, and was addressed in a bold, business hand. Grit opened the envelope, read it through hastily, and with a look of evident pleasure. "What's it all about, Grit?" asked Jesse. "Read it for yourself, Jesse," said the young boatman, handing the letter to his friend. This was the letter: "DEAR SIR: I need a young person on whom I can rely to travel for me at the West. I don't know you personally, but you have been recommended to me as likely to suit my purpose. I am willing to pay twelve dollars per week and traveling expenses. If this will suit your views, come to Boston at once, and call upon me at my private residence, No. ----, Essex Street. "Yours truly, "SOLOMON WEAVER." "What are you going to do about it, Grit?" asked Jesse, when he had finished reading the letter. "I shall go to Boston to-morrow morning," answered Grit promptly. CHAPTER XXXIII. GRIT LEAVES PINE POINT. "It does seem to be a good offer," said Jesse thoughtfully. "I should think it was--twelve dollars a week and traveling expenses," said Grit enthusiastically. "I wonder how this Mr. Weaver came to hear of you?" "I can't think. That's what puzzles me," said Grit. "He says that you have been recommended to him, I see." "Yes. At any rate, I am very much obliged to the one who recommended me." "What will your mother say?" "She won't want to part with me; but when I tell her how good the offer is, she will get reconciled to it." When Grit went home and read the letter to his mother, it was a shock to the good woman. "How can I part from you, Grit?" she said, with a troubled look. "It won't be for long, mother," said Grit hopefully. "I shall soon be able to send for you, and we can settle down somewhere near Boston. I've got tired of this place, haven't you?" "No, Grit. I think Pine Point is very pleasant, as long as I can keep you with me. When you are gone, of course, it will seem very different. I don't see how I am going to stand it." "It won't be for long, mother; and you'll know I am doing well." "You can make a living with your boat, Grit." "Yes, mother; but it isn't going to lead to anything. It's all very well now, but half a dozen years from now I ought to be established in some good business." "Can't you put off going for a year, Grit?" "A year hence there may be no such chance as this, mother." "That is true." "You'll give your consent, then, mother?" "If you really think it is best, Grit--that is, if you've set your heart on it." "I have, mother," said Grit earnestly. "I was getting tired of boating before this letter came, but I kept at it because there didn't seem to be anything else. Now it would seem worse than ever, and I'm afraid I should be very discontented." "I wish you would call on your friend Mr. Jackson, at the hotel, and see what he thinks of it," said Mrs. Brandon. "He is an experienced man of business, and his judgment will be better than ours." "I will do as you say, mother. I am sure he will recommend me to go." Grit went to the hotel, arriving there about eight o'clock, and inquired for Mr. Jackson. He was told that that gentleman had started in the morning for Augusta, and would not return for a day or two. The young boatman was not, on the whole, sorry to hear this, for it was possible that the broker might not think favorably of the plan proposed, and he felt unwilling, even in that case, to give it up. He returned, and acquainted his mother with the result of his visit. "Can't you wait till Mr. Jackson returns?" asked his mother. "No, mother; I should run the risk of losing the chance." The evening was spent in getting ready to go. Grit left in his mother's hands all the money he had, except the ten dollars he had last received, and gave an order for the sixty dollars in the hands of Mr. Lawrence, the lawyer, so that even if this Western journey were prolonged for three months, his mother would have enough to provide for her wants. "Now, mother, I can leave home without any anxiety," he said. "You will write me often, Grit?" said Mrs. Brandon anxiously. "Oh, yes, mother; there is no danger I shall forget that." "Your letters will be all I shall have to think of, you know, Grit." "I won't forget it, mother." Grit kissed his mother good-by, and bent his steps toward the railway station. On the way he met Ephraim Carver. "Where are you going, Grit?" asked the bank messenger. "I am going to Boston." "It seems to me you have a good deal of business in Boston." "I hope to have." "You ain't going to stay, are you?" "I expect to stay. I've got an offer from a party there." "Of what sort?" "That letter will tell you." Ephraim Carver looked over the letter, and he smiled to himself, for he recognized the handwriting of Colonel Johnson, though the letter was signed by another name. "You're walking into the lion's den, young man," he thought; but he only said: "It seems to be a good offer. Why, you will be paid as much as I get. How old are you?" "Almost sixteen." "Boys get on more rapidly now than they did when I was of your age. Why, I'm more'n twenty years older than you are, and I haven't got any higher than twelve dollars a week yet." Mr. Carver laughed in what seemed to be an entirely uncalled-for manner. "I don't believe you'll keep your place long," thought the young boatman; but he, too, was not disposed to tell all he knew. So the two parted, each possessed of a secret in regard to the other. Mr. Carver, however, was destined to receive the first disagreeable surprise. After parting from Grit he met Mr. Graves in the street. "Good morning, Mr. Graves," he said, in his usual deferential manner, for he was a worldly-wise man, though he had committed one fatal mistake. "Good morning, Mr. Carver," said the president of the bank gravely. "Shall you have any errand for me this week?" "I have something to say to you, Mr. Carver," said Mr. Graves, "and I may as well take the present opportunity to do so. We have concluded to dispense with your services, and you are at liberty to look elsewhere for employment." "You are going to dispense with my services!" repeated Carver, in dismay. "Such is the determination of the directors, Mr. Carver." "But, sir, that is very hard on me. How am I to get along?" "I hope you may find something else to do. We shall pay you a month's salary in advance, to give you an opportunity of looking about." "But, Mr. Graves, why am I treated so harshly? Can't you intercede for me? I am a poor man." "I feel for your situation, Mr. Carver, but I am compelled to say that I do not feel disposed to intercede for you." "Haven't I always served the bank faithfully?" "I advise you to ask yourself that question, Mr. Carver," said the president significantly. "You can answer it to your own conscience better than I or any one else can do for you." "What does he mean?" thought Carver, startled. Then it occurred to the messenger that nothing had been discovered, but that Mr. Graves, who had recently shown such partiality to Grit, wished to create a vacancy for him. "Are you going to put Grit Morris in my place?" he asked angrily. "What makes you think so?" asked Mr. Graves keenly. "I knew you were partial to him," answered Carver, who reflected that it would not do to give the source of his information. "I will at any rate answer your question, Mr. Carver. There is no intention of putting Grit in your place. We have every confidence in his fidelity and capacity, but consider him too young for the position." "I was only going to say that Grit has another chance in Boston, so that there will be no need to provide for him." "Grit has a chance in Boston!" said Mr. Graves, in surprise. "Yes; he has just started for the city." "What sort of a chance is it?" "He has received an offer to travel at the West, with a salary of twelve dollars a week and expenses." "That is strange." "It is true. He showed me the letter." "From whom did it come?" "I don't remember." Carver did remember, but for obvious reasons did not think it best to acquaint Mr. Graves. "That is remarkable," thought Mr. Graves, as he walked home. "Grit is a smart boy, but such offers are not often made by strangers to a boy of fifteen. I must speak to Clark about it." He found Mr. Clark at his house. He was the quiet man who had been employed by the bank as a detective, and who had come to report to the president. There was a look of intelligence as he listened to the news about Grit. "I tell you what I think of it," he said. "The rascals have found out the part which Grit took in circumventing them, and this letter is part of a plot. They mean the boy mischief." "I hope not," said Mr. Graves anxiously. "I am attached to Grit, and I wouldn't have harm come to him for a good deal." "Leave the matter in my hands. I will take the next train for Boston, and follow this clue. It may enable me to get hold of this Johnson, who is a dangerous rascal, because he has brains." "Do so, and I will see you paid, if necessary, out of my own pocket." CHAPTER XXXIV. GRIT REACHES BOSTON. Full of hope and joyful anticipation, Grit left home and pursued his journey to Boston. He had occasion to stop a couple of hours at Portland, and improved it by strolling down to the pier of the little steamers that make periodical trips to the islands in the harbor. Just outside a low saloon he unexpectedly ran across his stepfather. "How are you, Grit?" said Brandon affably. There was a flush on Brandon's face, and an unsteadiness of gait which indicated that he had succeeded in evading what is known as the Maine law. To Grit it was not a welcome apparition. Still, he felt it due to himself to be ordinarily polite. "I am well," he answered briefly. "And how's your mother?" asked Brandon. "Quite well, thank you," Grit answered, as formally as if the question had been asked by a stranger. "Does she miss me much?" asked his stepfather, with a smile. "She has not mentioned it," responded our hero coldly. "I am sorry that circumstances compel me to be absent from her for a time," continued Brandon. "Oh, don't disturb yourself," said Grit. "She is quite used to being alone. I think she mentioned that you talked of going to Europe." Brandon frowned, and his bitter disappointment was thus recalled to his mind. "I don't know whether I shall or not," he answered. "It depends upon whether my--speculation turns out well. Where are you going?" Grit hesitated as to whether he should answer correctly. He was not anxious to have Brandon looking him up in Boston, but it occurred to him that he should be traveling at the West, and, therefore, he answered: "I have heard of a chance in Boston, and am going to see about it." "All right, Grit!" said Brandon. "You have my consent." It occurred to Grit that he did not stand in need of his stepfather's approval, but he did not say so. "Yes, Grit, I send you forth with a father's blessing," said Brandon paternally. "By the way, have you a quarter about you?" Grit thought that a quarter was rather a high price to pay for Brandon's blessing, but he was in good spirits, and this made him good-natured. Accordingly, he drew a quarter from his pocket and handed it to his stepfather. "Thank you, Grit," said Brandon briskly, for he had felt uncertain as to the success of his application. "I like to see you respectful and dutiful. I will drink your good health, and success to your plans." "You had better drink it in cold water, Mr. Brandon." "That's all right," said Brandon. "Good-by!" He disappeared in the direction of the nearest saloon, and Grit returned to the depot to take the train for Boston. "I don't know that I ought to have given him any money," thought Grit, "but I was so glad to get rid of him that I couldn't refuse." He reached Boston without further adventure, arriving at the Boston and Maine depot in Haymarket Square about four o'clock. "I wonder whether it is too late to call on Mr. Weaver to-night," thought Grit. He decided that it was not. Even if it were too late for an interview, he thought it would be wise to let his prospective employer understand that he had met his appointment punctually. "Carriage, sir?" asked a hackman. Grit answered in the negative, feeling that to one in his circumstances it would be foolish extravagance to spend money for a carriage. But this was succeeded by the thought that time was valuable, and as he did not know where Essex Street was, it might consume so much to find out the place indicated in the letter that he might miss the opportunity of seeing Mr. Weaver. "How far is Essex Street from here?" he asked. "Three or four miles," promptly answered the hackman. "Is there any street-car line that goes there?" "Oh, bless you, no." Neither of these answers was correct, but Grit did not know this. "How much will you charge to take me to No. ---- Essex Street?" "Seein' it's you, I'll take you for a dollar and a quarter." Grit was about to accept this offer, when a quiet-looking man beside him said: "The regular fare is fifty cents." "Is it any of your business?" demanded the hackman angrily. "Do you want to take the bread out of a poor man's mouth?" "Yes, if the poor man undertakes to cheat a boy!" answered the quiet man keenly. "It's ridiculous expectin' to pay fifty cents for a ride of three or four miles," grumbled the hackman. "The distance isn't over a mile and a quarter, and you are not allowed to ask over fifty cents. My boy, I advise you to call another hack." "Jump in," said the hackman, fearful of losing his fare. "I think I will get in, too, as I am going to that part of the city," said the small man, in whom my readers will probably recognize the detective already referred to. "That'll be extra." "Of course," said the detective. "I understand that, and I understand how much extra," said the stranger significantly. As the man and boy rattled through the streets, they fell into a conversation, and Grit, feeling that he was with a friend, told his plan. "Humph!" said the detective. "May I see this letter?" "Certainly, sir." "Do you know who recommended you to Mr. Weaver?" asked Grit's new friend. "No, sir." "And can't guess?" "No, sir." "Doesn't it strike you as a little singular that such an offer should come from a stranger?" "Yes, sir; that did occur to me. Don't you think it genuine?" asked Grit anxiously. "I don't know. I could tell better if I should see this Mr. Weaver." "Won't you go in with me?" "No; it might seem odd, and the proposal may be genuine. I'll tell you what to do, my boy. That is, if you feel confidence in me." "I do, and shall be glad of your advice." "Come to the Parker House after your interview, and inquire for Benjamin Baker." "I will, sir, and thank you." When the hack drew up in front of No. ---- Essex Street, the stranger got out with Grit. "I am calling close by," he said, "and won't ride any farther. Here is the fare for both." "But, sir," said Grit, "it is not right that you should pay my fare for me." "It is all right," said Mr. Baker. "I have more money than you, probably, my young friend. Besides, meeting with you has saved me some trouble." This speech puzzled Grit, but he did not feel like asking any explanation. He glanced with some interest at the house where he was to meet Mr. Weaver. It was a three-story brick house, with a swell front, such as used to be very popular in Boston thirty or forty years since. It was very quiet in appearance, and there was nothing to distinguish it from its neighbors on either side. "Good afternoon, Mr. Baker," said Grit, as he ascended the steps to ring the bell. "Good afternoon. Remember to call upon me at the Parker House." "Thank you, sir." Benjamin Baker turned down a side street, and Grit rang the bell. It was opened by a tall, gaunt woman, with a cast in her eye. "What's wanted?" she asked abruptly. "I called to see Mr. Weaver--Mr. Solomon Weaver," said Grit. "Oh, yes," said the woman, with a curious smile. "Come in." The hall which Grit entered was dark and shabby in its general appearance. Our hero followed his guide to a rear room, the door of which was thrown open, revealing a small apartment, with a shabby collection of furniture. There was no carpet on the floor, but one or two rugs relieved the large expanse of floor. "Take a seat, and I'll call Mr. Weaver," said the woman. Somehow Grit's courage was dampened by the unpromising look of the house and its interior. He had pictured to himself Mr. Weaver as a pleasant, prosperous-looking man, who lived in good style, and was liberally disposed. He sat down in an armchair in the center of the room. He had but five minutes to wait. Then the door opened, and to Grit's amazement the man whom he had known as Colonel Johnson entered the room, and coolly locked the door after him. CHAPTER XXXV. CROSS-EXAMINED. Grit's face showed the astonishment he felt at the unexpected appearance of a man whom he knew to be the prime instigator of the attempt to rob the bank at Chester. Colonel Johnson smiled grimly as he saw the effect produced by his presence. "You didn't expect to see me?" he said. "No, sir," answered Grit. "I flatter myself you had done me the honor to call upon me," said Johnson, seating himself at a little distance from our hero. "I came to see Mr. Solomon Weaver, from whom I received a letter," explained Grit. "If this is your house I may have made a mistake in the number." "Not at all," answered Johnson. "Mr. Weaver is a friend of mine." "Does he live here?" "Oh, yes," said Johnson, smiling. "He wrote me that he wished to send me on a Western trip." "That's all right." "Then the letter was genuine," said Grit, hoping that things might turn out right after all. Could it be possible, he thought, that Colonel Johnson was the friend who had recommended him? It did not seem at all probable, but in his bewilderment he did not know what to think. "Can I see Mr. Weaver?" asked Grit, desirous of putting an end to his uncertainty. "Presently," answered Colonel Johnson. "He is busy just at present, but he deputed me to speak with you." This was all very surprising, but would probably soon be explained. "I shall be glad to answer any questions," said Grit. "I suppose you can present good recommendations, as the position is a responsible one," said Johnson, with a half smile. "Yes, sir." "Whom, for instance?" "Mr. Graves, president of the Chester Bank," said Grit. Knowing what he did of Colonel Johnson's attempt upon the bank, it was perhaps a rather odd choice to make, but the young boatman thought it might help him to discover whether Johnson knew anything of his recent employment by the bank. "I have heard of Mr. Graves," said Johnson. "Has he ever employed you?" "Yes, sir." "In what capacity?" demanded Johnson searchingly. "He sent me to this city with a package." "What did the package contain?" "I think it contained bonds." "Haven't they a regular bank messenger?" "Yes, sir." "What's his name?" "Ephraim Carver." "Why was he not employed? Why should you be sent in his place?" "I think you had better ask Mr. Graves," said Grit independently. "Why? Don't you know?" "Even if I did I should consider that I had no right to tell." "You are a very conscientious and honorable young man," said Johnson sneeringly. "Thank you, sir," returned Grit, choosing not to show that he understood the sneer. "Where is your stepfather?" inquired Johnson, changing the subject abruptly. "In Portland." "How do you know?" "I met him in the street while on my way through the city." "Did you speak with him?" "Yes, sir." "What did he say?" asked Johnson suspiciously. "He wished to borrow twenty-five cents," answered Grit, with a smile. "Did you lend it to him?" "Yes." "Very dutiful, on my word!" "I have no feeling of that sort for Mr. Brandon," said Grit frankly. "I thought it the easiest way to get rid of him." Johnson changed the subject again. "Is Ephraim Carver likely to lose his situation as bank messenger?" he asked. "I think you had better ask Mr. Graves," said Grit, on his guard. Johnson frowned, for he did not like Grit's independence. "It is reported that you are intriguing for his position," he continued. "That is not true." "Do you think there is any likelihood of your being appointed in his place?" "No, sir; I never dreamed of it." "Yet there is a possibility of it. Don't suppose that I am particularly interested in this Carver. So far as I am concerned, I should not object to your succeeding him." "What does all this mean?" thought Grit. "If you should do so, I might have a proposal to make to you that would be to your advantage." Knowing what he did, Grit very well understood what was meant. Johnson, no doubt, wished to hire him to betray the confidence reposed in him by the bank, and deliver up any valuable package entrusted to him for a money consideration. Like any right-minded and honorable boy, Grit felt that the very hint of such a thing was an insult to him, and his face flushed with indignation. For the moment he forgot his prudence. "I don't think there is the least chance of my getting such a position," he said; "but even if I did, it would not do you any good to make me a proposal." "How do you know what sort of a proposal I should make?" demanded Johnson keenly. "I don't know," answered Grit, emphasizing the last word. "It appears to me, young man, that you are a little ahead of time," said Johnson. "You shouldn't crow too soon." "I think I will bid you good evening," said Grit, rising. "Why so soon? You haven't seen Mr. Weaver." "On the whole, I don't think I should wish to engage with him." Our hero felt that if Mr. Weaver were a friend of the man before him, it would be safest to have nothing to do with him. On the principle that a man is known by the company he keeps, the friend of Colonel Johnson could hardly be a desirable person to serve. "You seem to be in a hurry, especially as you have not seen my friend Weaver." "You will be kind enough to explain to him that I have changed my plans," said Grit. "Resume your seat for five minutes," said Johnson, "and I will call Weaver. You had better see him for yourself." "Very well, sir." He reflected that merely seeing Mr. Weaver would not commit him to anything. Colonel Johnson rose to his feet, and placed his foot firmly on a particular spot in the floor. To Grit's dismay, the floor seemed to sink beneath him, and chair and all were lowered a dozen feet into a subterranean cavity, too quickly for him to help himself. He realized that the chair so conveniently placed in the center of the apartment rested on a trap-door. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE BOY DANIEL. Though Grit was not hurt by his sudden descent into the dark cavity under the room in which he had been seated, he was, nevertheless, somewhat startled. Indeed, it was enough to startle a person much older. For the first time it dawned upon him that he was the victim of a conspiracy, and Mr. Weaver was either an imaginary person, or his offer was not genuine. It was clear, also, from the tenor of Johnson's questions that he fully understood, or at least suspected, that his plan had been known in advance to the bank officials. The young boatman understood how to manage a boat, but in the present case he found that he was out of his element. The tricks, traps, and devices of a great city he knew very little about. He had, indeed, read about trap-doors and subterranean chambers in certain sensational stories which had come into his possession, but he looked upon them as mere figments of the imagination, and did not believe they really existed. Now, here was he himself made an unexpected victim by a conspiracy of the same class familiar to him in novels. Naturally, the first thing to do was to take a survey of his new quarters, and obtain some idea of his position. At first everything seemed involved in thick darkness, but as his eye became accustomed to it, he could see that he was in a cellar of about the same size as the room above, though there was a door leading into another. He felt his way to it, and tried to open it, but found that it was fastened, probably by a bolt on the other side. There was no other door. "I am like a rat in a trap," thought Grit. "What are they going to do with me, I wonder?" While it was unpleasant enough to be where he was, he did not allow himself to despond or give way to unmanly fears. There was no reason, he thought, to apprehend serious peril or physical violence. Colonel Johnson probably intended to frighten him, with a view of securing his compliance with the demands of the conspirators. "He will find he has made a mistake," thought Grit. "I am not a baby, and don't mean to act like one." He heard a noise, and, looking round, discovered the armchair in which he had descended being drawn up toward the trap-door. The door was opened by some agency, the chair disappeared, and again he was in darkness. "They don't mean to keep me here in luxury," thought Grit. "If I sit down anywhere, it will have to be on the floor." It was late in the afternoon, as we know, and it seemed likely that our hero would have to remain in the subterranean chamber all night. As there was no bed, he would have to lie down on the ground. Grit kneeled down, and ascertained that the floor was cemented, and not a damp earthen flooring as he had feared. He congratulated himself, for he was bound to make the best of the situation. There was another source of discomfort, however. It was already past Grit's ordinary supper hour, and, except a very slight lunch, consisting of a sandwich bought in the cars, our hero had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and an early breakfast at that. Now, Grit was not one of those delicate boys who are satisfied with a few mouthfuls, but he had what is called a "healthy appetite," such as belongs to most boys who have good stomachs and spend considerable time in the open air. He began to feel an aching void in the region of his stomach, and thought, with a sigh, of the plain but hearty supper he should have had at home. "I hope Colonel Johnson isn't going to starve me," he thought. "That is carrying the joke too far. It seems to me I never felt so hungry in all my life before." Half an hour passed, and poor Grit's reflections became decidedly gloomy as his stomach became more and more troublesome. However, he was perfectly helpless, and must wait till the man, or men, who had him in their clutches, saw fit to provide for him. Under these circumstances it may well be imagined that his heart leaped for joy when he heard the bolt of the only door, already referred to, slowly withdrawn with a rasping sound, as if it did not slide easily in its socket. He turned his eyes eagerly toward the door. It was opened, and a tall, overgrown youth entered with a small basket in his hand, which he set down on the floor while he carefully closed the door. "Hello, there! Where are you?" he asked, for his eyes were not used to the darkness. "Here I am," answered Grit. "I hope you've brought me some supper." "Right you are!" said the youth. "Oh, now I see you." The speaker was tall and overgrown, as I have said. He was also painfully thin, and his clothes were two or three sizes too small for him, so that his long, bony arms protruded from his coat-sleeves, and his legs appeared to have outgrown his pants. His face was long, and his cheeky were hollow. "He reminds me of Smike, in 'Nicholas Nickleby,'" thought Grit. "Take your supper, young one, and eat it quick," said the youth, for he was not more than eighteen. Grit needed no second invitation. He quickly explored the contents of the basket. The supper consisted of cold meat and slices of bread and butter, with a mug of tea. To Grit everything tasted delicious, and he did not leave a crumb. "My! haven't you got an appetite?" said the youth. "I haven't had anything to eat since morning," said Grit apologetically--"that is, only a sandwich." "Say, what are you here for?" asked the youth curiously. "I don't know," answered Grit. "Honor bright?" "Yes, honor bright. Do you live here?" "Yes," answered the youth soberly. "Is this man--Colonel Johnson--any relation of yours?" "No." "Where are your folks?" "Haven't got any. Never had any as I know of." "Have you always lived here?" "Always lived with him," answered the boy, jerking his thumb in an upward direction. "Sometimes here, sometimes in New York." "Do you like to be with--him?" "No." "Why don't you run away?" "Run away!" repeated the other, looking around him nervously. "He'd get me back, and half kill me." "There's some mystery about this boy," thought Grit. "Do you think he will keep me here long?" he asked, in some anxiety. "Can't say--maybe." "What's your name?" "Daniel." "What's your other name?" "Haven't got any." "Daniel," said Grit, a thought striking him. "Do you ever go out--about the city, I mean?" "Oh, yes; I go to the post-office and other places." "Will you carry a message for me to the Parker House?" "I darsn't," said Daniel, trembling. "No one will know it," pleaded Grit. "Besides, I'll give you--five dollars," he added, after a pause. "Have you got so much?" asked Daniel eagerly. "Yes." "Show it to me." Grit did so. "Yes, I'll do it," said the youth, after a pause; "but I must be careful so he won't know." "All right. When can you leave the house?" "In the morning." "That will suit me very well. Now, shall I see you again to-morrow morning?" "Yes, I shall bring you your breakfast." "Very well; I will write a note, and will describe the gentleman you are to hand it to." "You'll be sure to give me the money?" "Yes, I will give it to you before you go, if you will promise to do my errand faithfully." "I'll promise. I never had five dollars," continued Daniel. "There's many things I can buy for five dollars." "So you can," answered Grit, who began to perceive that this overgrown youth was rather deficient mentally. "You mustn't tell anybody that you are going to carry a message for me," said Grit, thinking the caution might be necessary. "Oh, no, I darsn't," said Daniel quickly, and Grit was satisfied. Our hero felt much more comfortable after he was left alone, partly in consequence of the plain supper he had eaten, partly because he thought he saw his way out of the trap into which he had been inveigled. "To-morrow I hope to be free," he said to himself, as he lay down on the floor and sought the refreshment of sleep. Fortunately for him, he was feeling pretty well fatigued, and though it was but eight o'clock, he soon lost consciousness of all that was disagreeable in his situation under the benignant influence of sleep. When Grit awoke, he had no idea what time it was, for there was no way for light to enter the dark chamber. "I hope it is almost breakfast-time," thought our hero, for he already felt the stirrings of appetite, and besides, all his hope centered in Daniel, whom he was then to see. After awhile he heard the welcome sound of the bolt drawn back. Then a sudden fear assailed him. It might be some one else, not Daniel, who would bring his breakfast. If so, all his hopes would be dashed to the ground, and he could fix no limit to his captivity. But his fears were dissipated when he saw the long, lank youth, with the same basket which he had brought the night before. "Good morning, Daniel," said Grit joyfully. "I am glad to see you." "You're hungry, I reckon," said the youth practically. "Yes; but I wanted to see you, so as to give you my message. Are you going out this morning?" "Yes; I'm goin' to market." "Can you go to the Parker House? You know where it is, don't you?" "Yes; it is on School Street." Grit was glad that Daniel knew, for he could not have told him. Grit had written a note in pencil on a sheet of paper which he fortunately had in his pocket. This he handed to Daniel, with full instructions as to the outward appearance of Mr. Benjamin Baker, to whom it was to be handed. "Now give me the money," said Daniel. "Here it is. Mind, Daniel, I expect you to serve me faithfully." "All right!" said, the lank youth, as he disappeared through the door, once more leaving Grit alone. CHAPTER XXXVII. DANIEL CALLS AT THE PARKER HOUSE. It was half-past nine o'clock in the forenoon, and Mr. Benjamin Baker, detective, sat smoking a cigar in the famous hotel on School Street, known as "Parker's." "I hope nothing has happened to the boy," he said to himself, uneasily, as he drew out his watch. "It is time he was here. Have I done rightly in leaving him in the clutches of a company of unprincipled men? Yet I don't know what else I could do. If I had accompanied him to the door, my appearance would have awakened suspicion. If through his means I can get authentic information as to the interior of this house, which I strongly suspect to be the headquarters of the gang, I shall have done a good thing. Yet perhaps I did wrong in not giving the boy a word of warning." Mr. Baker took the cigar from his mouth and strolled into the opposite room, where several of the hotel guests were either reading the morning papers or writing letters. He glanced quickly about him, but saw no one that resembled Grit. "Not here yet?" he said to himself, "perhaps he can't find the hotel. But he looks too smart to have any difficulty about that. Ha! whom have we here?" This question was elicited by a singular figure upon the sidewalk. It was a tall, overgrown boy, whose well-worn suit appeared to have been first put on when he was several years younger, and several inches shorter. The boy was standing still, with mouth and eyes wide open, staring in a bewildered way at the entrance of the hotel, as if he had some business therein, but did not know how to go about it. "That's an odd-looking boy," he thought. "Looks like one of Dickens' characters." Finally the boy, in an uncertain, puzzled way, ascended the steps into the main vestibule, and again began to stare helplessly in different directions. One of the employees of the hotel went up to him. "What do you want?" he demanded, rather roughly. "Be you Mr. Baker?" asked the boy. "No; I am not Mr. Baker." "Where is Mr. Baker?" "I don't know anything about Mr. Baker," answered the attendant impatiently. "The boy told me I would find him here," said Daniel, for of course my reader recognizes him. "Then the boy was playing a trick on you, most likely." By this time Mr. Baker thought it advisable to make himself known. "I am Mr. Benjamin Baker," he said, advancing. "Do you want to see me?" Daniel looked very much relieved. "I've got a note for you," he said. "Give it to me." Daniel did so, and was about to go out. "Wait a minute, my young friend, there may be an answer," said the detective. Mr. Baker read rapidly the following note: "I am in trouble. I think the letter I received was only meant to entrap me. I have not seen Mr. Weaver, but I have had an interview with Colonel Johnson, who planned the robbery of the bank at Chester. He seems to know that I had something to do with defeating his plans, and has sounded me as to whether I will help him in case I act again as bank messenger. On my refusing, he touched a spring, and let me down through a trap-door in the floor of the rear room to a cellar beneath, where I am kept in darkness. The boy who gives you this brings me my meals. He doesn't seem very bright, but I have agreed to pay him well if he will hand you this, and I hope he will succeed. I don't know what Colonel Johnson proposes to do with me, but I hope you will be able to help me. GRIT." Benjamin Baker nodded to himself while he was reading this note. "This confirms my suspicions," he said to himself. "If I am lucky I shall succeed in trapping the trappers. Hark you, my boy, when are you going back?" "As soon as I have been to the market." "Very well; what did the boy agree to give you for bringing this note?" "Five dollars," answered Daniel, his dull face lighting up, for he knew the power of money. "Would you like five dollars more?" "Wouldn't I?" was the eager response. "Then don't say a word to anybody about bringing this note." "No, I won't. He'd strap me if I did." "Shall you see the boy?" "Yes, at twelve o'clock, when I carry his dinner." "When you see him, tell him you've seen me, and it's all right. Do you understand?" Daniel nodded. "I may call up there some time this morning. If I do I want you to open the door and let me in." Daniel nodded again. "That will do. You can go." Mr. Baker left the hotel with a preoccupied air. CHAPTER XXXVIII. GRIT MAKES A DISCOVERY. Grit, left to himself, was subjected to the hardest trial, that of waiting for deliverance, and not knowing whether the expected help would come. "At any rate I have done the best I could," he said to himself. "Daniel is the best messenger I could obtain. He doesn't seem to be more than half-witted, but he ought to be intelligent enough to find Mr. Baker and deliver my note." The subterranean apartment, with its utter destitution of furniture, furnished absolutely no resources against ennui. Grit was fond of reading, and in spite of his anxiety might in an interesting paper or book have forgotten his captivity, but there was nothing to read, and even if there had been, it was too dark to avail himself of it. "I suppose I sha'n't see Daniel till noon," he reflected. "Till then I am left in suspense." He sat down in a corner and began to think over his position and future prospects. He was not wholly cast down, for he refused to believe that he was in any real peril. In fact, though a captive, he had never felt more hopeful, or more self-reliant than now. But he was an active boy, and accustomed to exercise, and he grew tired of sitting down. "I will walk a little," he decided, and proceeded to pace up and down his limited apartment. Then it occurred to him to ascertain the dimensions of the room, by pacing. As he did so, he ran his hand along the side wall. A most remarkable thing occurred. A door flew open, which had appeared like the rest of the wall, and a narrow passageway was revealed, leading Grit could not tell where. "I must have touched some spring," he thought. "This house is a regular trap. I wonder where this passageway leads?" Grit stooped down, for the passage was but about four feet in height, and tried to peer through the darkness. But he could see nothing. "Shall I explore it?" he thought. He hesitated a moment, not knowing whether it would be prudent, but finally curiosity overruled prudence, and he decided to do so. Stooping over, he felt his way for possibly fifty feet, when he came to a solid wall. Here seemed to be the end of the passage. He began to feel slowly with his hand, when another small door, only about twelve inches square, flew open, and he looked through it into another subterranean apartment. It did not appear to be occupied, but on a small wooden table was a candle, and by the light of the candle Grit could see a variety of articles, including several trunks, one open, revealing its contents to be plate. "What does it mean?" thought Grit. Then the thought came to him, for, though he was a country boy, his wits had been sharpened by his recent experiences. "It must be a storehouse of stolen goods." This supposition seemed in harmony with the character of the man who had lured him here, and now held him captive. "If I were only outside," thought Grit, "I would tell Mr. Baker of this. The police ought to know it." Just then he heard his name called, and, turning suddenly, distinguished by the faint light which the candle threw into the passage the stern and menacing countenance of Colonel Johnson. "Come out here, boy!" he called, in an angry tone. "I have an account to settle with you." CHAPTER XXXIX. AN UNPLEASANT INTERVIEW. There was nothing to do but to obey. Judging by his own interpretation of the discovery our hero was not surprised that his captor should be incensed. He retraced his steps, and found himself once more in the subterranean chamber facing an angry man. "What took you in there?" demanded Colonel Johnson. "Curiosity, I suppose," answered Grit composedly. He felt that he was in a scrape, but he was not a boy to show fear or confusion. "How did you happen to discover the entrance?" "It was quite accidental. I was pacing the floor to see how wide the room was, when my hand touched the spring." "Why did you want to know the width of the room?" asked Johnson suspiciously. "I didn't care much to know, but the time hung heavily on my hands, and that was one way of filling it up." Colonel Johnson eyed the boy attentively. He was at a loss to know whether Grit really suspected the nature and meaning of his discovery, or not. If not, he didn't wish to excite suspicion in the boy's mind. He decided to insinuate an explanation. "I suppose you were surprised to find the passageway," he remarked. "Yes, sir." "As you have always lived in the country, that is natural. Such arrangements are common enough in the city." "I wonder whether trap doors are common," thought Grit, but he did not give expression to his thought. "The room into which you looked is under the house of my brother-in-law, and the passage affords an easy mode of entrance." "I should think it would be easier going into the street," thought Grit. "Still I am annoyed at your meddlesome curiosity, and shall take measures to prevent your gratifying it again. I had a great mind when I first saw you to shut you up in the passage. I fancy you wouldn't enjoy that." "I certainly shouldn't," said Grit, smiling. "I will have some consideration for you, and put a stop to your wanderings in another way." As he spoke he drew from his pocket a thick, stout cord, and directing Grit to hold his hands together, proceeded to tie his wrists. This our hero naturally regarded as distasteful. "You need not do this," he said. "I will promise not to go into the passage." "Humph! Will you promise not to attempt to escape?" "No, sir, I can't promise that." "Ha! you mean, then, to attempt to escape?" "Of course!" answered Grit. "I should be a fool to stay here if any chance offered of getting away." "You are candid, young man," returned Johnson. "There is no earthly chance of your escaping. Still, I may as well make sure. Put out your feet." "You are not going to tie my feet, too, are you?" asked Grit, in some dismay. "To be sure I am. I can't trust you after what you have done this morning." It was of no use to resist, for Colonel Johnson was a powerful man, and Grit, though strong, only a boy of sixteen. "This doesn't look much like escaping," thought Grit. "I hope he won't search my pockets and discover my knife. If I can get hold of that, I may be able to release myself." Colonel Johnson had just completed tying the last knot when the door, which had been left unbolted, was seen to open, and the half-witted boy, Daniel, entered hastily. "How now, idiot!" said Johnson harshly. "What brings you here?" "There's a gentleman up-stairs wants to see you, master," said Daniel, with the scared look with which he always regarded his tyrant. "A gentleman!" repeated Johnson hastily. "Who let him in?" "I did, sir." "You did!" thundered Johnson. "How often have I told you to let in nobody? Do you want me to choke you?" "I--forgot," faltered the boy. "Besides, he said he wanted to see you particular." "All the more reason why I don't want to see him. What does he look like?" "He's a small man, sir." "Humph! Where did you leave him?" "Room above, sir." "I'll go up and see him. If it's somebody I don't want to see, I'll choke you." "Yes, sir," said Daniel humbly. As Johnson went out, Daniel lingered a moment, and, in a hoarse whisper, said to Grit: "It's him." "Who is it?" asked Grit puzzled. "It's the man you sent me to." "Good! You're a trump, Daniel," said Grit joyfully. A minute after a confused noise was heard in the room above. Daniel turned pale. "Tell him where I am, Daniel," said Grit, as the boy timidly left the room. CHAPTER XL. COLONEL JOHNSON COMES TO GRIEF. We must now follow Johnson up-stairs. In the room above, sitting down tranquilly in an arm-chair, but not in that in the center of the room, was a small, wiry man of unpretending exterior. "What is your business here, sir?" demanded Johnson rudely. "Are you the owner of this house?" asked Benjamin Baker coolly. "Yes. That does not explain your presence here, however." "I am in search of a quiet home, and it struck me that this was about the sort of a house I would like," answered Baker. "Then, sir, you have wasted your time in coming here. This house is not for sale." "Indeed! Perhaps I may offer you enough to make it worth your while to sell it to me." "Quite impossible, sir. This is my house, and I don't want to sell." "I am sorry to hear it. Perhaps you would be kind enough to show me over the house to let me see its arrangements, as I may wish to copy them if I build." "It strikes me, sir, you are very curious, whoever you are," said Johnson angrily. "You intrude yourself into the house of a quiet citizen, and wish to pry into his private arrangements." "I really beg your pardon, Mr. ---- I really forget your name." "Because you never heard it. The name is of no consequence." "I was about to say, if you have anything to conceal, I won't press my request." "Who told you I had anything to conceal?" said Johnson suspiciously. "I inferred it from your evident reluctance to let me go over your house." "Then, sir, I have only to say that you are mistaken. Because I resent your impertinent intrusion, you jump to the conclusion that I have something to conceal." "Just so. There might, for example, be a trap-door in this very room----" Colonel Johnson sprang to his feet and advanced toward his unwelcome guest. "Tell me what you mean," he said savagely. "I am not the man to be bearded in my own house. You will yet repent your temerity in thrusting yourself here." Benjamin Baker also rose to his feet, and, putting a whistle to his mouth, whistled shrilly. Instantly two stalwart policemen sprang into the apartment from the hall outside. "Seize that man!" said the detective. "What does this mean?" asked Johnson, struggling, but ineffectually. "It means, Colonel Johnson, alias Robert Kidd, that you are arrested on a charge of being implicated in the attempt to steal a parcel of bonds belonging to the National Bank of Chester, Maine." "I don't know anything about it," said Johnson sullenly. "You've got the wrong man." "Possibly. If so, you'll be released, especially as there are other charges against you. Guard him, men, while I search the house." "Here, boy, show me where my young friend is concealed," said Baker to Daniel, who was timidly peeping in at the door. A minute later and Baker cut the cords that confined the hands and feet of Grit. "Now," said he quickly, "have you discovered anything that will be of service to me?" Grit opened for him the dark passage. The detective walked to the end, and saw the room into which it opened. "Do you know, Grit," he said, on his return, "you have done a splendid day's work? With your help I have discovered the headquarters of a bold and desperate gang of thieves, which has long baffled the efforts of the Boston police. There is a standing reward of two thousand dollars for their discovery, to which you will be entitled." "No, sir; it belongs to you," said Grit modestly. "I could have done nothing without you." "Nor I without your information. But we can discuss this hereafter." Johnson ground his teeth when Grit was brought upstairs, free, to see him handcuffed and helpless. "I believe you are at the bottom of this, you young rascal!" he said. "You are right," said the detective. "We have received very valuable information from this boy, whom you supposed to be in your power." "I wish I had killed him!" said Johnson furiously. "Fortunately, you were saved that crime, and need expect nothing worse than a long term of imprisonment. Officers, take him along." CHAPTER XLI. CONCLUSION. The Boston and Portland papers of the next morning contained full accounts of the discovery of the rendezvous of a gang of robbers whose operations had been extensive in and near Boston, together with the arrest of their chief. In the account full credit was given to our young hero, Grit, for his agency in the affair, and it was announced that the prize offered would be divided between Grit and the famous detective, Benjamin Baker. It may readily be supposed that this account created great excitement in Chester. Most of the villagers were heartily pleased by the good fortune and sudden renown of the young boatman; but there was at least one household to which the news brought no satisfaction. This was the home of Phil Courtney. "What a fuss the papers make about that boy!" exclaimed Phil, in disgust. "I suppose he will put on no end of airs when he gets home." "Very likely," said Mr. Courtney. "He seems to have had good luck, that's all." "It's pretty good luck to get a thousand dollars," said Phil enviously. "Papa, will you do me a favor?" "What is it?" "Can't you put a thousand dollars in the bank for me, so that the boatman can't crow over me?" "Money is very scarce with me just now, Philip," said his father. "It will do just as well to tell him you have a thousand dollars in my hands." "I would rather have it in a bank," said Philip. "Then you'll have to wait till it is convenient for me," said his father shortly. It was true that money was scarce with Mr. Courtney. I have already stated that he had been speculating in Wall Street heavily, and with by no means unvarying success. In fact, the same evening he received a letter from his brother, stating that the market was so heavily against him that he must at once forward five thousand dollars to protect his margin, or the stocks carried on his account must be sold. As Mr. Courtney was unable to meet this demand, the stocks were sold, involving a loss of ten thousand dollars. This, in addition to previous losses, so far crippled Mr. Courtney that he was compelled materially to change his way of living, and Phil had to come down in the social scale, much to his mortification. But the star of the young boatman was in the ascendant. On his return to Pine Point he found Mr. Jackson, the New York broker, about to leave the hotel for a return to the city. He congratulated Grit on his success as an amateur detective, and then asked: "What are your plans, Grit? Probably you won't care to remain a boatman?" "No, sir; I have decided to give up that business, at any rate." "Have you anything in view?" "I thought I might get a situation of some kind in Boston. The prize-money will keep us going till I can earn a good salary." "Will your mother move from Pine Point?" "Yes, sir; she would be lonely here without me." "I have an amendment to offer to your plans, Grit." "What is that, sir?" "Come to New York instead of Boston." "I have no objection, sir, if there is any opening there for me." "There is, and in my office. Do you think you would like to enter my office?" "I should like it very much," said Grit eagerly. "Then I will engage you at a salary of twelve dollars per week--for the first year." "Twelve dollars!" exclaimed Grit, overwhelmed. "I had no idea a green hand could get such pay." "Nor can they," answered Mr. Jackson, smiling; "but you remember that there is an unsettled account between us. I have not forgotten that you saved the life of my boy." "I don't want any reward for that, sir." "I appreciate your delicacy, but I shall feel better satisfied to recognize it in my own way. I have another proposal to make to you. It is this: Place in my hands as much of your thousand dollars as you can spare, and I will invest it carefully for your advantage in stock operations, and hope materially to increase it." "I shall be delighted if you will do so, Mr. Jackson, and think myself very fortunate that you take this trouble for me." "Now, how soon can you go to New York?" "When you think best, sir?" "I advise you to go on with me, and select a home for your mother. Then you can come back for her, and settle yourself down to work." * * * * * * * * A year later, in a pleasant cottage on Staten Island, Grit and his mother sat in a neatly furnished sitting-room. Our young hero was taller, as befitted his increased age, but there was the same pleasant, frank expression which had characterized him as a boy. "Mother," said he, "I have some news for you." "What is it, Grit?" "Mr. Jackson has raised my pay to twenty dollars a week." "That is excellent news, Grit." "He has besides rendered an account of the eight hundred dollars he took from me to operate with. How much do you think it amounts to now?" "Perhaps a thousand." "Between four and five thousand!" answered Grit, in exultation. "How can that be possible?" exclaimed Mrs. Morris, in astonishment. "He used it as a margin to buy stocks which advanced greatly in a short time. This being repeated once or twice, has made me almost rich." "I can hardly believe it, Grit. It is too good to be true." "But it is true, mother. Now we can change our mode of living." "Wait till you are worth ten thousand dollars, Grit--then I will consent. But, I, too, have some news for you." "What is it?" "I had a letter from Chester to-day. Our old neighbor, Mr. Courtney, has lost everything--or almost everything--and has been compelled to accept the post of bank messenger, at a salary of fifty dollars per month." "That is indeed a change," said Grit. "What will Phil do?" "He has gone into a store in Chester, on a salary of three dollars a week." "Poor fellow!" said Grit. "I pity him. It must be hard for a boy with his high notions to come down in the world so. I would rather begin small and rise, than be reared in affluence only to sink into poverty afterward." It was quite true. The result of his rash speculations was to reduce Mr. Courtney to poverty, and make him for the balance of his life a soured, discontented man. As for Phil, he is still young, and adversity may teach him a valuable lesson. Still, I hardly think he will ever look with satisfaction upon the growing success and prosperity of the young boatman. I must note another change. It will be observed that I have referred to Grit's mother as Mrs. Morris. Mr. Brandon was accidentally drowned in Portland Harbor, having undertaken, while under the influence of liquor, to row to Peake's Island, some two miles distant. His wife and Grit were shocked by his sudden death, but they could hardly be expected to mourn for him. His widow resumed the name of her former husband, and could now lay aside all anxiety as to the quiet tenor of her life being broken in upon by her ill-chosen second husband. It looks as if Grit's prosperity had come to stay. I am privately informed that Mr. Jackson intends next year to make him junior partner, and this will give him a high position in business circles. I am sure my young readers will feel that his prosperity has been well earned, and will rejoice heartily in the brilliant success of the young boatman of Pine Point. THE END. 
13365	----	THE ETHICS OF DRINK AND OTHER SOCIAL QUESTIONS _OR_ _JOINTS IN OUR SOCIAL ARMOUR_ BY JAMES RUNCIMAN _Author of "A Dream of the North Sea," "Skippers and Shellbacks," Etc_ London HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27, PATERNOSTER ROW MDCCCXCII [1892] _THE ETHICS OF THE DRINK QUESTION_. All the statistics and formal statements published about drink are no doubt impressive enough to those who have the eye for that kind of thing; but, to most of us, the word "million" means nothing at all, and thus when we look at figures, and find that a terrific number of gallons are swallowed, and that an equally terrific amount in millions sterling is spent, we feel no emotion. It is as though you told us that a thousand Chinamen were killed yesterday; for we should think more about the ailments of a pet terrier than about the death of the Chinese, and we think absolutely nothing definite concerning the "millions" which appear with such an imposing intention when reformers want to stir the public. No man's imagination was ever vitally impressed by figures, and I am a little afraid that the statistical gentlemen repel people instead of attracting them. The persons who screech and abuse the drink sellers are even less effective than the men of figures; their opponents laugh at them, and their friends grow deaf and apathetic in the storm of whirling words, while cool outsiders think that we should be better employed if we found fault with ourselves and sat in sackcloth and ashes instead of gnashing teeth at tradesmen who obey a human instinct. The publican is considered, among platform folk in the temperance body, as even worse than a criminal, if we take all things seriously that they choose to say, and I have over and over again heard vague blather about confiscating the drink-sellers' property and reducing them to the state to which they have brought others. Then there is the rant regarding brewers. Why forget essential business only in order to attack a class of plutocrats whom we have made, and whom our society worships with odious grovellings? The brewers and distillers earn their money by concocting poisons which cause nearly all the crime and misery in broad Britain; there is not a soul living in these islands who does not know the effect of the afore-named poisons; there is not a soul living who does not very well know that there never was a pestilence crawling over the earth which could match the alcoholic poisons in murderous power. There is a demand for these poisons; the brewer and distiller supply the demand and gain thereby large profits; society beholds the profits and adores the brewer. When a gentleman has sold enough alcoholic poison to give him the vast regulation fortune which is the drink-maker's inevitable portion, then the world receives him with welcome and reverence; the rulers of the nation search out honours and meekly bestow them upon him, for can he not command seats, and do not seats mean power, and does not power enable talkative gentry to feed themselves fat out of the parliamentary trough? No wonder the brewer is a personage. Honours which used to be reserved for men who did brave deeds, or thought brave thoughts, are reserved for persons who have done nothing but sell so many buckets of alcoholized fluid. Observe what happens when some brewer's wife chooses to spend £5000 on a ball. I remember one excellent lady carefully boasting (for the benefit of the Press) that the flowers alone that were in her house on one evening cost in all £2000. Well, the mob of society folk fairly yearn for invitations to such a show, and there is no meanness too despicable to be perpetrated by women who desire admission. So through life the drink-maker and his family fare in dignity and splendour; adulation surrounds them; powerful men bow to the superior force of money; wealth accumulates until the amount in the brewer's possession baffles the mind that tries to conceive it--and the big majority of our interesting race say that all this is good. Considering, then, how the English people directly and indirectly force the man of drink onward until he must of necessity fancy there is something of the moral demi-god about him; considering how he is wildly implored to aid in ruling us from Westminster; considering that his aid at an election may procure him the same honour which fell to the share of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham--may we not say that the community makes the brewer, and that if the brewer's stuff mars the community we have no business to howl at him. We are answerable for his living, and moving, and having his being--the few impulsive people who gird at him should rather turn in shame and try to make some impression on the huge, cringing, slavering crowd who make the plutocrat's pompous reign possible. But for myself, I cannot be bothered with bare figures and vague abuse nowadays; abstractions are nothing, and neat arguments are less than nothing, because the dullest quack that ever quacked can always clench an argument in a fashion. Every turn that talk can take on the drink question brings the image of some man or woman, or company of men and women, before me, and that image is alive to my mind. If you pelt me with tabular forms, and tell me that each adult in Britain drank so many pints last year, you might just as well recite a mathematical proof. I fix on some one human figure that your words may suggest and the image of the bright lad whom I saw become a dirty, loafing, thievish sot is more instructive and more woeful than all your columns of numerals. Before me passes a tremendous procession of the lost: I can stop its march when I choose and fix on any given individual in the ranks, so that you can hardly name a single fact concerning drink, which does not recall to me a fellow-creature who has passed into the place of wrecked lives and slain souls. The more I think about it the more plainly I see that, if we are to make any useful fight against drink, we must drop the preachee-preachee; we must drop loud execrations of the people whose existence the State fosters; we must get hold of men who _know_ what drinking means, and let them come heart to heart with the victims who are blindly tramping on to ruin for want of a guide and friend. My hideous procession of the damned is always there to importune me; I gathered the dolorous recruits who form the procession when I was dwelling in strange, darkened ways, and I know that only the magnetism of the human soul could ever have saved one of them. If anybody fancies that Gothenburg systems, or lectures, or little tiresome tracts, or sloppy yarns about "Joe Tomkins's Temperance Turkey," or effusive harangues by half-educated buffoons, will ever do any good, he must run along the ranks of my procession with me, and I reckon he may learn something. The comic personages who deal with the subject are cruelly useless; the very notion of making jokes in presence of such a mighty living Terror seems desolating to the mind; I could not joke over the pest of drink, for I had as lief dance a hornpipe to the blare of the last Trumpet. I said you must have men who _know_, if you care to rescue any tempted creature. You must also have men who address the individual and get fast hold of his imagination; abstractions must be completely left alone, and your workers must know so much of the minute details of the horror against which they are fighting that each one who comes under their influence shall feel as if the story of his life were known and his soul laid bare. I do not believe that you will ever stop one man from drinking by means of legislation; you may level every tavern over twenty square miles, but you will not thereby prevent a fellow who has the _bite_ of drink from boozing himself mad whenever he likes. As for stopping a woman by such merely mechanical means as the closing of public-houses, the idea is ridiculous to anybody who knows the foxy cunning, the fixed determination of a female soaker. It is a great moral and physical problem that we want to solve, and Bills and clauses are only so much ink and paper which are ineffective as a schoolboy's copybook. If a man has the desire for alcohol there is no power known that can stop him from gratifying himself; the end to be aimed at is to remove the desire--to get the drinker past that stage when the craving presses hardly on him, and you can never bring that about by rules and regulations. I grant that the clusters of drink-shops which are stuck together in the slums of our big towns are a disgrace to all of us, but if we closed 99 per cent. of them by Statute we should have the same drunken crew left. While wandering far and wide over England, nothing has struck me more than the steady resolution with which men will obtain drink during prohibited hours; the cleverest administrator in the world could not frame a network of clauses that could stop them; one might close every drink-selling place in Britain, and yet those folks that had a mind would get drink when they wanted it. You may ply bolts and bars; you may stop the working of beer-engines and taps; but all will be futile, for I repeat, that only by asserting power over hearts, souls, imaginations, can you make any sort of definite resistance to the awe-striking plague that envenoms the world. With every humility I am obliged to say that many of the good people who aim at reform do not know sufficiently well the central facts regarding drink and drinkers. It is beautiful to watch some placid man who stands up and talks gently to a gathering of sympathizers. The reposeful face, the reposeful voice, the refinement, the assured faith of the speaker are comforting; but when he explains that he has always been an abstainer, I am inclined to wonder how he can possibly exchange ideas with an alcoholized man. How _can_ he know where to aim his persuasions with most effect? Can he really sympathize with the fallen? He has never lived with drunkards or wastrels; he is apart, like a star, and I half think that he only has a blurred vision of the things about which he talks so sweetly. He would be more poignant, and more likely to draw people after him, if he had living images burned into his consciousness. My own set of pictures all stand out with ghastly plainness as if they were lit up by streaks of fire from the Pit. I have come through the Valley of the Shadow into which I ventured with a light heart, and those who know me might point and say what was said of a giant: "There is the man who has been in hell." It was true. Through the dim and sordid inferno, I moved as in a trance for awhile, and that is what makes me so keen to warn those who fancy they are safe; that is what makes me so discontented with the peculiar ethical conceptions of a society which bows down before the concocter of drink and spurns the lost one whom drink seizes. I have learned to look with yearning pity and pardon on all who have been blasted in life by their own weakness, and gripped by the trap into which so many weakly creatures stumble. Looking at brutal life, catching the rotting soul in the very fact, have made me feel the most careless contempt for Statute-mongers, because I know now that you must conquer the evil of evils by a straight appeal to one individual after another and not by any screed of throttling jargon. One Father Mathew would be worth ten Parliaments, even if the Parliaments were all reeling off curative measures with unexampled velocity. You must not talk to a county or a province and expect to be heard to any purpose; you must address John, and Tom, and Mary. I am sure that dead-lift individual effort will eventually reduce the ills arising from alcohol to a minimum, and I am equally sure that the blind groping of half-informed men who chatter at St. Stephen's will never do more good than the chatter of the same number of jackdaws. It is impossible to help admiring Sir Wilfrid Lawson's smiling courage, but I really do not believe that he sees more than the faint shadows of the evils against which he struggles; he does not know the true nature of the task which he has attacked, and he fancies that securing temperance is an affair of bolts, and bars, and police, and cackling local councils. I wish he had lived with me for a year. If you talk with strong emotion about the dark horror of drink you always earn plenty of jibes, and it is true that you do give your hand away, as the fighting men say. It is easy to turn off a light paragraph like this: "Because A chooses to make a beast of himself, is that any reason why B, and C, and D should be deprived of a wholesome article of liquid food?"--and so on. Now, I do not want to trouble B, and C, and D at all; A is my man, and I want to get at him, not by means of a policeman, or a municipal officer of any kind, but by bringing my soul and sympathy close to him. Moreover, I believe that if everybody had definite knowledge of the wide ruin which is being wrought by drink there would be a general movement which would end in the gradual disappearance of drinking habits. At this present, however, our state is truly awful, and I see a bad end to it all, and a very bad end to England herself, unless a great emotional impulse travels over the country. The same middle class which is envenomed by the gambling madness is also the heir of all the more vile habits which the aristocrats have abandoned. Drinking--conviviality I think they call it--is not merely an excrescence on the life of the middle class--it _is_ the life; and work, thought, study, seemly conduct, are now the excrescences. Drink first, gambling second, lubricity third--those are the chief interests of the young men, and I cannot say that the interests of mature and elderly men differ very much from those of the fledglings. Ladies and gentlemen who dwell in quiet refinement can hardly know the scenes amid which our middle-class lad passes the span of his most impressionable days. I have watched the men at all times and in all kinds of places; every town of importance is very well known to me, and the same abomination is steadily destroying the higher life in all. The Chancellors of the Exchequer gaily repeat the significant figures which give the revenue from alcohol; the optimist says that times are mending; the comfortable gentry who mount the pulpits do not generally care to ruffle the fine dames by talking about unpleasant things--and all the while the curse is gaining, and the betting, scoffing, degraded crew of drinkers are sliding merrily to destruction. Some are able to keep on the slide longer than others, but I have seen scores--hundreds--stop miserably, and the very faces of the condemned men, with the last embruted look on them, are before me. My subject has so many thousands of facets that I am compelled to select a few of the most striking. Take one scene through which I sat not very long ago, and then you may understand how far the coming regenerator will have to go. A great room was filled by about 350 men and lads, all of the middle class; a concert was going on, and I was a little curious to know the kind of entertainment which the well-dressed company liked. Of course there was drink in plenty, and the staff of waiters had a busy time; a loud crash of talk went on between the songs, and, as the drink gathered power on excited brains, this crash grew more and more discordant. Nice lads, with smooth, pleasant faces, grew flushed and excited, and I am afraid that I occupied myself in marking out possible careers for a good many of them as I studied their faces. There was not much fun of the healthy kind; fat, comfortable, middle-aged men laughed so heartily at the faintest indecent allusion that the singers grew broader and broader, and the hateful music-hall songs grew more and more risky as the night grew onward. By the way, can anything be more loathsomely idiotic than the average music-hall ditty, with its refrain and its quaint stringing together of casual filthiness? If I had not wanted to fix a new picture on my mind I should have liked better to be in a tap-room among honestly brutal costers and scavengers than with that sniggering, winking gang. The drink got hold, glasses began to be broken here and there, the time was beaten with glass crushers, spoons, pipes, and walking-sticks; and then the bolder spirits felt that the time for good, rank, unblushing blackguardism had come. A being stepped up and faced a roaring audience of enthusiasts who knew the quality of his dirtiness; he launched out into an unclean stave, and he reduced his admirers to mere convulsions. He was encored, and he went a trifle further, until he reached a depth of bestiality below which a gaff in Shoreditch could net descend. Ah! Those bonny lads, how they roared with laughter, and how they exchanged winks with grinning elders! Not a single obscure allusion to filth was lost upon them, and they took more and more drink under pressure of the secret excitement until many of them were unsteady and incoherent. I think I should shoot a boy of mine if I found him enjoying such a foul entertainment. It was léze-Humanity. The orgie rattled on, to the joy of all the steaming, soddened company, and I am not able to guess where some of the songs and recitations came from. There are deeps below deeps, and I suppose that there are skilled literary workmen who have sunk so far that they are ready to supply the unspeakable dirt which I heard. There was a merry crowd at the bar when this astounding function ceased, and the lively lads jostled, and laughed, and quoted some of the more spicy specimens of nastiness which they had just heard. Now, I should not have mentioned such an unsavoury business as this, but that it illustrates in a curious way the fact that one is met and countered by the power of Drink at every turn in this country. Among that unholy audience were one or two worthies who ought by rights to have called the police, and forced the promoters of the fun to appear before the Bench in the morning. But then these magistrates had an interest in Beer, and Brewery shares were pretty well represented in the odious room, and thus a flagrant scandal was gently passed aside. The worst of it is that, after a rouse like this, the young men do not care to go to bed, so they adjourn to some one's rooms and play cards till any hour. In the train next morning there are blotchy faces, dull eyes, tongues with a bitter taste, and there is a general rush for "liveners" before the men go to office or warehouse; and the day drags on until the joyous evening comes, when some new form of debauch drowns the memory of the morning's headache. Should you listen to a set of these men when the roar of a long bar is at its height at night, you will find that the life of the intellect has passed away from their midst. The fellows may be sharp in a small way at business, and I am sure I hope they are; but their conversation is painful in the extreme to any one who wishes to retain a shred of respect for his own species. If you listen long, and then fix your mind so that you can pick out the exact significance of what you have heard, you become confounded. Take the scraps of "bar" gabble. "So I says, 'Lay me fours.' And he winks and says, 'I'll give you seven to two, if you like.' Well, you know, the horse won, and I stood him a bottle out of the three pound ten, so I wasn't much in." "'What!' says I; 'step outside along o' me, and bring your pal with you, and I'll spread your bloomin' nose over your face.'" "_That_ corked him." "I tell you Flyaway's a dead cert. I know a bloke that goes to Newmarket regular, and he's acquainted with Reilly of the Greyhound, and Reilly told him that he heard Teddy Martin's cousin say that Flyaway was tried within seven pounds of Peacock. Can you have a better tip than that?" "I'll give you the break, and we'll play for a bob and the games." "Thanks, deah boy, I'll jest have one with you. Lor! wasn't I chippy this morning? I felt as if the pavement was making rushes at me, and my hat seemed to want a shoehorn to get it on or off for that matter. Bill's whisky's too good." "I'm going out with a Judy on Sunday, or else you'd have me with you. The girls won't leave me alone, and the blessed dears can't be denied." So the talk goes steadily forward. What can a bright lad learn there? Many of the assembly are very young, and their features have not lost the freshness and purity of skin which give such a charm to a healthy lad's appearance. Would any mother like to see her favourite among that hateful crowd? I do not think that mothers rightly know the sort of places which their darlings enter; I do not think they guess the kind of language which the youths hear when the chimes sound at midnight; they do not know the intricacies of a society which half encourages callow beings to drink, and then kicks them into the gutter if the drink takes hold effectually. The kindly, seemly woman remains at home in her drawing-room, papa slumbers if he is one of the stay-at-home sort; but Gerald, and Sidney, and Alfred are out in the drink-shop hearing talk fit to make Rabelais turn queasy, or they are in the billiard-room learning to spell "ruin" with all convenient speed, or perhaps they have "copped it"--that is the correct phrase--rather early, and they are swaggering along, shadowed by some creature--half girl, half tiger-cat--who will bring them up in good time. If the women knew enough, I sometimes think they would make a combined, nightly raid on the boozing-bars, and bring their lads out. Some hard-headed fellows may think that there is something grandmotherly in the regrets which I utter over the cesspool in which so many of our middle-class seem able to wallow without suffering asphyxia; but I am only mournful because I have seen the plight of so many and many after their dip in the sinister depths of the pool. I envy those stolid people who can talk so contemptuously of frailty--I mean I envy them their self-mastery; I quite understand the temperament of those who can be content with a slight exhilaration, and who fiercely contemn the crackbrain who does not know when to stop. No doubt it is a sad thing for a man to part with his self-control, but I happen to hold a brief for the crackbrain, and I say that there is not any man living who can afford to be too contemptuous, for no one knows when his turn may come to make a disastrous slip. Most strange it is that a vice which brings instant punishment on him who harbours it should be first of all encouraged by the very people who are most merciless in condemning it. The drunkard has not to wait long for his punishment; it follows hard on his sin, and he is not left to the justice of another world. And yet, as we have said, this vice, which entails such scathing disgrace and suffering, is encouraged in many seductive ways. The talk in good company often runs on wine; the man who has the deadly taint in his blood is delicately pressed to take that which brings the taint once more into ill-omened activity; but, so long as his tissues show no sign of that flabbiness and general unwholesomeness which mark the excessive drinker, he is left unnoticed. Then the literary men nearly always make the subject of drink attractive in one way or other. We laugh at Mr. Pickwick and all his gay set of brandy-bibbers; we laugh at John Ridd, with his few odd gallons of ale per day; but let any man be seen often in the condition which led to Mr. Pickwick's little accident, and see what becomes of him. He is soon shunned like a scabbed sheep. One had better incur penal servitude than fall into that vice from which the Government derives a huge revenue--the vice which is ironically associated with friendliness, good temper, merriment, and all goodly things. There are times when one is minded to laugh for very bitterness. And this sin, which begins in kindness and ends always in utter selfishness--this sin, which pours accursed money into the Exchequer--this sin, which consigns him who is guilty of it to a doom worse than servitude or death--this sin is to be fought by Act of Parliament! On the one hand, there are gentry who say, "Drink is a dreadful curse, but look at the revenue." On the other hand, there are those who say, "Drink is a dreadful thing; let us stamp it out by means of foolscap and printers' ink." Then the neutrals say, "Bother both your parties. Drink is a capital thing in its place. Why don't you leave it alone?" Meantime the flower of the earth are being bitterly blighted. It is the special examples that I like to bring out, so that the jolly lads who are tempted into such places as the concert-room which I described may perhaps receive a timely check. It is no use talking to me about culture, and refinement, and learning, and serious pursuits saving a man from the devouring fiend; for it happens that the fiend nearly always clutches the best and brightest and most promising. Intellect alone is not worth anything as a defensive means against alcohol, and I can convince anybody of that if he will go with me to a common lodging-house which we can choose at random. Yes, it is the bright and powerful intellects that catch the rot first in too many cases, and that is why I smile at the notion of mere book-learning making us any better. If I were to make out a list of the scholars whom I have met starving and in rags, I should make people gape. I once shared a pot of fourpenny ale with a man who used to earn £2000 a year by coaching at Oxford. He was in a low house near the Waterloo Road, and he died of cold and hunger there. He had been the friend and counsellor of statesmen, but the vice from which statesmen squeeze revenue had him by the throat before he knew where he was, and he drifted toward death in a kind of constant dream from which no one ever saw him wake. These once bright and splendid intellectual beings swarm in the houses of poverty: if you pick up with a peculiarly degraded one you may always be sure that he was one of the best men of his time, and it seems as if the very rich quality of his intelligence had enabled corruption to rankle through him so much the more quickly. I have seen a tramp on the road--a queer, long-nosed, short-sighted animal--who would read Greek with the book upside-down. He was a very fine Latin scholar, and we tried him with Virgil; he could go off at score when he had a single line given him, and he scarcely made a slip, for the poetry seemed ingrained. I have shared a pennyworth of sausage with the brother of a Chief Justice, and I have played a piccolo while an ex-incumbent performed a dance which he described, I think, as Pyrrhic. He fell in the fire and used hideous language in Latin and French, but I do not know whether that was Pyrrhic also. Drink is the dainty harvester; no puny ears for him, no faint and bending stalks: he reaps the rathe corn, and there is only the choicest of the choice in his sheaves. That is what I want to fix on the minds of young people--and others; the more sense of power you have, the more pride of strength you have, the more you are likely to be marked and shorn down by the grim reaper; and there is little hope for you when the reaper once approaches, because the very friends who followed the national craze, and upheld the harmlessness of drink, will shoot out their lips at you and run away when your bad moment comes. The last person who ever suspects that a wife drinks is always the husband; the last person who ever suspects that any given man is bitten with drink is that man himself. So stealthily, so softly does the evil wind itself around a man's being, that he very often goes on fancying himself a rather admirable and temperate customer--until the crash comes. It is all so easy, that the deluded dupe never thinks that anything is far wrong until he finds that his friends are somehow beginning to fight shy of him. No one will tell him what ails him, and I may say that such a course would be quite useless, for the person warned would surely fly into a passion, declare himself insulted, and probably perform some mad trick while his nerves were on edge. Well, there comes a time when the doomed man is disinclined for exertion, and he knows that something is wrong. He has become sly almost without knowing it, and, although he is pining for some stimulus, he pretends to go without, and tries by the flimsiest of devices, to deceive those around him. Now that is a funny symptom; the master vice, the vice that is the pillar of the revenue, always, without any exception known to me, turns a man into a sneak, and it generally turns him into a liar as well. So sure as the habit of concealment sets in, so surely we may be certain that the dry-rot of the soul has begun. The drinker is tremulous; he finds that light beverages are useless to him, and he tries something that burns: his nerve recovers tone; he laughs at himself for his early morning fears, and he gets over another day. But the dry-rot is spreading; body and soul react on each other, and the forlorn one soon begins to be fatally false and weak in morals, and dirty and slovenly in person. Then in the dead, unhappy nights he suffers all the torments that can be endured if he wakes up while his day's supply of alcohol lies stagnant in his system. No imagination is so retrospective as the drunkard's, and the drunkard's remorse is the most terrible torture known. The wind cries in the dark and the trees moan; the agonized man who lies waiting the morning thinks of the times when the whistle of the wind was the gladdest of sounds to him; his old ambitions wake from their trance and come to gaze on him reproachfully; he sees that fortune (and mayhap fame) have passed him by, and all through his own fault; he may whine about imaginary wrongs during the day when he is maudlin, but the night fairly throttles him if he attempts to turn away from the stark truth, and he remains pinned face to face with his beautiful, dead self. Then, with a start, he remembers that he has no friends. When he crawls out in the morning to steady his hand he will be greeted with filthy public-house cordiality by the animals to whose level he has dragged himself, but of friends he has none. Now, is it not marvellous? Drink is so jolly; prosperous persons talk with such a droll wink about vagaries which they or their friends committed the night before; it is all so very, very lightsome! The brewers and distillers who put the mirth-inspiring beverages into the market receive more consideration, and a great deal more money, than an average European prince;--and yet the poor dry-rotted unfortunate whose decadence we are tracing is like a leper in the scattering effects which he produces during his shaky promenade. He is indeed alone in the world, and brandy or gin is his only counsellor and comforter. As to character, the last rag of that goes when the first sign of indolence is seen; the watchers have eyes like cats, and the self-restrained men among them have usually seen so many fellows depart to perdition that every stage in the process of degradation is known to them. No! there is not a friend, and dry, clever gentlemen say, "Yes. Good chap enough once on a day, but can't afford to be seen with him now." The soaker is amazed to find that women are afraid of him a little, and shrink from him--in fact, the only people who are cordial with him are the landlords, among whom he is treated as a sort of irresponsible baby. "I may as well have his money as anybody else. He shan't get outrageously drunk here, but he may as well moisten his clay and keep himself from being miserable. If he gets the jumps in the night that's his look-out." That is the soaker's friend. The man is not unkind; he is merely hardened, and his morals, like those of nearly all who are connected with the great Trade, have suffered a twist. When the soaker's last penny has gone, he will receive from the landlord many a contemptuously good-natured gift--pity it is that the lost wastrel cannot be saved before that weariful last penny huddles in the corner of his pocket. While the harrowing descent goes on our suffering wretch is gradually changing in appearance: the piggish element that is latent in most of us comes out in him; his morality is sapped; he will beg, borrow, lie, and steal; and, worst of all, he is a butt for thoughtless young fellows. The last is the worst cut of all, for the battered, bloodless, sunken ne'er-do-well can remember only too vividly his own gallant youth, and the thought of what he was drives him crazed. There is only one end; if the doomed one escapes _delirium tremens_ he is likely to have cirrhosis, and if he misses both of these, then dropsy or Bright's disease claims him. Those who once loved him pray for his death, and greet his last breath with an echoing sigh of thankfulness and relief: he might have been cheered in his last hour by the graceful sympathy of troops of friends; but the State-protected vice has such a withering effect that it scorches up friendship as a fiery breath from a furnace might scorch a grass blade. If one of my joyous, delightful lads could just watch the shambling, dirty figure of such a failure as I have described; if he could see the sneers of amused passers-by, the timid glances of women, the contemptuous off-hand speech of the children--"Oh! him! That's old, boozy Blank;" then the youths might well tremble, for the woebegone beggar that snivels out thanks for a mouthful of gin was once a brave lad--clever, handsome, generous, the delight of friends, the joy of his parents, the most brilliantly promising of all his circle. He began by being jolly; he was well encouraged and abetted; he found that respectable men drank, and that Society made no demur. But he forgot that there are drinkers and drinkers, he forgot that the cool-headed men were not tainted by heredity, nor were their brains so delicately poised that the least grain of foreign matter introduced in the form of vapour could cause semi-insanity. And thus the sacrifice of Society--and the Exchequer--goes to the tomb amid contempt, and hissing, and scorn; while the saddest thing of all is that those who loved him most passionately are most glad to hear the clods thump on his coffin. I believe, if you let me keep a youngster for an hour in a room with me, I could tell him enough stories from my own shuddery experience to frighten him off drink for life. I should cause him to be haunted. There is none of the rage of the convert in all this; I knew what I was doing when I went into the base and sordid homes of ruin during years, and I want to know how any justification _not_ fitted for the libretto of an extravaganza can be given by certain parliamentary gentlemen in order that we may be satisfied with their conduct. My wanderings and freaks do not count; I was a Bohemian, with the tastes of a Romany and the curiosity of a philosopher; I went into the most abominable company because it amused me and I had only myself to please, and I saw what a fearfully tense grip the monster, Drink, has taken of this nation; and let me say that you cannot understand that one little bit, if you are content to knock about with a policeman and squint at signboards. Well, I want to know how these legislators can go to church and repeat certain prayers, while they continue to make profit by retailing Death at so much a gallon; and I want to know how some scores of other godly men go out of their way to back up a traffic which is very well able to take care of itself. A wild, night-roaming gipsy like me is not expected to be a model, but one might certainly expect better things from folks who are so insultingly, aggressively righteous. One sombre and thoughtful Romany of my acquaintance said, "My brother, there are many things that I try to fight, and they knock me out of time in the first round." That is my own case exactly when I observe comfortable personages who deplore vice, and fill their pockets to bursting by shoving the vice right in the way of the folks most likely to be stricken with deadly precision by it. It is not easy to be bad-tempered over this saddening business; one has to be pitiful. As my memory travels over England, and follows the tracks that I trod, I seem to see a line of dead faces, that start into life if I linger by them, and mop and mow at me in bitterness because I put out no saving hand. So many and many I saw tramping over the path of Destruction, and I do not think that ever I gave one of them a manly word of caution. It was not my place, I thought, and thus their bones are bleaching, and the memory of their names has flown away like a mephitic vapour that was better dispersed. Are there many like me, I wonder, who have not only done nothing to battle with the mightiest modern evil, but have half encouraged it through cynical recklessness and pessimism? We entrap the poor and the base and the wretched to their deaths, and then we cry out about their vicious tendencies, and their improvidence, and all the rest. Heaven knows I have no right to sermonize; but, at least, I never shammed anything. When I saw some spectacle of piercing misery caused by Drink (as nearly all English misery is) I simply choked down the tendency to groan, and grimly resolved to see all I could and remember it. But now that I have had time to reflect instead of gazing and moaning, I have a sharp conception of the thing that is biting at England's vitals. People fish out all sorts of wondrous and obscure causes for crime. As far as England is concerned I should lump the influences provocative of crime and productive of misery into one--I say Drink is the root of almost all evil. It is heartbreaking to know what is going on at our own doors, for, however we may shuffle and blink, we cannot disguise the fact that many millions of human beings who might be saved pass their lives in an obscene hell--and they live so in merry England. Durst any one describe a lane in Sandgate, Newcastle-on-Tyne, a court off Orange Street or Lancaster Street, London, an alley in Manchester, a four-storey tenement in the Irish quarter of Liverpool? I think not, and it is perhaps best that no description should be done; for, if it were well done it would make harmless people unhappy, and if it were ill done it would drive away sympathy. I only say that all the horrors of those places are due to alcohol alone. Do not say that idleness is answerable for the gruesome state of things; that would be putting cause for effect. A man finds the pains of the world too much for him; he takes alcohol to bring on forgetfulness; he forgets, and he pays for his pleasure by losing alike the desire and capacity for work. The man of the slums fares exactly like the gentleman: both sacrifice their moral sense, both become idle; the bad in both is ripened into rankness, and makes itself villainously manifest at all seasons; the good is atrophied, and finally dies. Goodness may take an unconscionable time a-dying, but it is sentenced to death by the fates from the moment when alcoholism sets in, and the execution is only a matter of time. England, then, is a country of grief. I never yet knew one family which had not lost a cherished member through the national curse; and thus at all times we are like the wailing nation whereof the first-born in every house was stricken. It is an awful sight, and as I sit here alone I can send my mind over the sad England which I know, and see the army of the mourners. They say that the calling of the wounded on the field of Boródino was like the roar of the sea: on my battle-field, where drink has been the only slayer, there are many dead; and I can imagine that I hear the full volume of cries from those who are stricken but still living. The vision would unsettle my reason if I had not a trifle of Hope remaining. The philosophic individual who talks in correctly frigid phrases about the evils of the Liquor Trade may keep his reason balanced daintily and his nerve unhurt. But I have images for company--images of wild fearsomeness. There is the puffy and tawdry woman who rolls along the street goggling at the passengers with boiled eye. The little pretty child says, "Oh! mother, what a strange woman. I didn't understand what she said." My pretty, that was Drink, and you may be like that one of these days, for as little as your mother thinks it, if you ever let yourself touch the Curse carelessly. Bless you, I know scores who were once as sweet as you who can now drink any costermonger of them all under the stools in the Haymarket bar. The young men grin and wink as that staggering portent lurches past: I do not smile; my heart is too sad for even a show of sadness. Then there are the children--the children of Drink they should be called, for they suck it from the breast, and the venomous molecules become one with their flesh and blood, and they soon learn to like the poison as if it were pure mother's milk. How they hunger--those little children! What obscure complications of agony they endure and how very dark their odd convulsive species of existence is made, only that one man may buy forgetfulness by the glass. If I let my imagination loose, I can hear the immense army of the young crying to the dumb and impotent sky, and they all cry for bread. Mercy! how the little children suffer! And I have seen them by the hundred--by the thousand--and only helped from caprice; I could do no other. The iron winter is nearing us, and soon the dull agony of cold will swoop down and bear the gnawing hunger company while the two dire agencies inflict torture on the little ones. Were it not for Drink the sufferers might be clad and nourished; but then Drink is the support of the State, and a few thousand of raw-skinned, hunger-bitten children perhaps do not matter. Then I can see all the ruined gentlemen, and all the fine fellows whose glittering promise was so easily tarnished; they have crossed my track, and I remember every one of them, but I never could haul back one from the fate toward which he shambled so blindly; what could I do when Drink was driving him? If I could not shake off the memories of squalor, hunger, poverty--well-deserved poverty--despair, crime, abject wretchedness, then life could not be borne. I can always call to mind the wrung hands and drawn faces of well-nurtured and sweet ladies who saw the dull mask of loathsome degradation sliding downward over their loved one's face. Of all the mental trials that are cruel, that must be the worst--to see the light of a beloved soul guttering gradually down into stench and uncleanness. The woman sees the decadence day by day, while the blinded and lulled man who causes all the indescribable trouble thinks that everything is as it should be. The Drink mask is a very scaring thing; once you watch it being slowly fitted on to a beautiful and spiritual face you do not care over-much about the revenue. And now the famous Russian's question comes up: What shall we do? Well, so far as the wastrel poor are concerned, I should say, "Catch them when young, and send them out of England so long as there is any place abroad where their labour is sought." I should say so, because there is not a shadow of a chance for them in this country: they will go in their turn to drink as surely as they go to death. As to the vagabond poor whom we have with us now I have no hope for them; we must wait until death weeds them out, for we can do nothing with them nor for them. Among the classes who are better off from the worldly point of view, we shall have sacrifices offered to the fiend from time to time. Drink has wound like some ubiquitous fungus round and round the tissues of the national body, and we are sure to have a nasty growth striking out at intervals. It tears the heart-strings when we see the brave, the brilliant, the merry, the wise, sinking under the evil clement in our appalling dual nature, and we feel, with something like despair, that we cannot be altogether delivered from the scourge yet awhile. I have stabs of conscience when I call to mind all I have seen and remember how little I have done, and I can only hope, in a shame-faced way, that the use of intoxicants may be quietly dropped, just as the practice of gambling, and the habit of drinking heavy, sweet wines, have passed away from the exclusive society in which cards used to form the main diversion. Frankly speaking, I have seen the degradation, the abomination, and the measureless force of Drink so near at hand that I am not sanguine. I can take care of myself, but I am never really sure about many other people, and I had good reason for not being sure of myself. One thing is certain, and that is that the creeping enemy is sure to attack the very last man or woman whom you would expect to see attacked. When the first symptoms are seen, the stricken one should be delivered from _ennui_ as much as possible, and then some friend should tell, in dull, dry style, the slow horror of the drop to the Pit. Fear will be effective when nothing else will. Many are stronger than I am and can help more. By the memory of broken hearts, by the fruitless prayers of mothers and sorrowing wives, for the sake of the children who are forced to stay on earth in a living death, I ask the strong to help us all. Blighted lives, wrecked intellects, wasted brilliancy, poisoned morality, rotted will--all these mark the road that the King of Evils takes in his darksome progress. Out of the depths I have called for aid and received it, and now I ask aid for others, and I shall not be denied. _October, 1889._ _VOYAGING AT SEA_ A philosopher has described the active life of man as a continuous effort to forget the facts of his own existence. It is vain to pin such philosophers to a definite meaning; but I think the writer meant vaguely to hint in a lofty way that the human mind incessantly longs for change. We all crave to be something that we are not; we all wish to know the facts concerning states of existence other than our own; and it is this craving curiosity that produces every form of social and spiritual activity. Yet, with all this restless desire, this uneasy yearning, only a few of us are ever able to pass beyond one piteously narrow sphere, and we rest in blank ignorance of the existence that goes on without the bounds of our tiny domain. How many people know that by simply going on board a ship and sailing for a couple of days they would pass practically into another moral world, and change their mental as well as their bodily habits? I have been moved to these reflections by observing the vast amount of nautical literature which appears during the holiday season, and by seeing the complete ignorance and misconception which are palmed off upon the public. It is a fact that only a few English people know anything about the mightiest of God's works. To them life on the ocean is represented by a series of phrases which seem to have been transplanted from copy-books. They speak of "the bounding main," "the raging billows," "seas mountains high," "the breath of the gale," "the seething breakers," and so on; but regarding the commonplace, quiet everyday life at sea they know nothing. Strangely enough, only Mr. Clark Russell has attempted to give in literary form a vivid, veracious account of sea-life, and his thrice-noble books are far too little known, so that the strongest maritime nation in the whole world is ignorant of vital facts concerning the men who make her prosperity. Let any one who is well informed enter a theatre when a nautical drama is presented; he will find the most ridiculous spectacle that the mind of man can conceive. On one occasion, when a cat came on to the stage at Drury Lane and ran across the heaving billows of the canvas ocean, the audience roared with laughter; but to the judicious critic the real cause for mirth was the behaviour of the nautical persons who figured in the drama. The same ignorance holds everywhere. Seamen scarcely ever think of describing their life to people on shore, and the majority of landsmen regard a sea-voyage as a dull affair, to be begun with regret and ended with joy. Dull! Alas, it is dull for people who have dim eyes and commonplace minds; but for the man who has learned to gaze aright at the Creator's works there is not a heavy minute from the time when the dawn trembles in the gray sky until the hour when, with stars and sea-winds in her raiment, night sinks on the sea. Dull! As well describe the rush of the turbulent Strand or the populous splendour of Regent Street by that word! I have always held that a man cannot be considered as educated if he is unable to wait an hour in a railway-station for a train without _ennui_. What is education good for if it does not give us resources which may enable us to gather delight or instruction from every sight and sound that may fall on our nerves? The most melancholy spectacle in the world is presented by the stolid citizen who yawns over his _Bradshaw_ while the swift panoramas of Charing Cross or Euston are gliding by him. Men who are rightly constituted find delight in the very quietude and isolation of sea-life; they know how to derive pure entertainment from the pageant of the sky and the music of winds and waters, and they experience a piquant delight by reason of the contrast between the loneliness of the sea and the eager struggling life of the City. Proceeding, as is my custom, by examples, I shall give precise descriptions of specimen days which anybody may spend on the wandering wastes of the ocean. "All things pertaining to the life of man are of interest to me," said the Roman; and he showed his wisdom by that saying. Dawn. Along the water-line a pale leaden streak appears, and little tremulous ripples of gray run gently upwards, until a broad band of mingled white and scarlet shines with cold radiance. The mystery of the sea is suddenly removed, and we can watch the strange serpentine belts that twine and glitter all round from our vessel to the horizon. The light is strong before the sun appears; and perhaps that brooding hour, when Nature seems to be turning in her sleep, is the best of the whole day. The dew lies thickly on deck, and the chill of the night hangs in the air; but soon a red arc looms up gorgeously at the sea-line; long rays spread out like a sheaf of splendid swords on the blue; there is, as it were, a wild dance of colour in the noble vault, where cold green and pink and crimson wind and flush and softly glide in mystic mazes; and then--the sun! The great flaming disc seems to poise for a little, and all around it--pierced here and there by the steely rays--the clouds hang like tossing scarlet plumes. Like a warrior-angel sped On a mighty mission, Light and life about him shed-- A transcendent vision! Mailed in gold and fire he stands, And, with splendours shaken, Bids the slumbering seas and lands Quicken and awaken. Day is on us. Dreams are dumb, Thought has light for neighbour; Room! The rival giants come-- Lo, the Sun and Labour! After witnessing that lordly spectacle, who can wonder at Zoroaster? As the lights from east and west meet and mingle, and the sky rears its blue immensity, it is hard to look on for very gladness. I shall suppose that we are on a small vessel--for, if we sail in a liner, or even in an ordinary big steamer, it is somewhat like moving about on a floating factory. The busy life of a sailor begins, for Jack rarely has an idle minute while he is on deck. Landsmen can call in help when their house needs repairing, but sailors must be able to keep every part of _their_ house in perfect order; and there is always something to be done. But we are lazy; we toil not, neither do we tar ropes, and our main business is to get up a thoroughly good appetite while we watch the deft sailor-men going about their business. It is my belief that a landsman might spend a month without a tedious hour, if he would only take the trouble to watch everything that the men do and find out why it is done. Ages on ages of storm and stress are answerable for the most trifling device that the sailor employs. How many and many lives were lost before the Norsemen learned to support the masts of their winged dragons by means of bull's-hide ropes! How many shiploads of men were laid at the mercy of the travelling seas before the Scandinavians learned to use a fixed rudder instead of a huge oar! Not a bolt or rope or pulley or eyelet-hole has been fixed in our vessel save through the bitter experience of centuries; one might write a volume about that mainsail, showing how its rigid, slanting beauty and its tremendous power were gradually attained by evolution from the ugly square lump of matting which swung from the masthead of Mediterranean craft. But we must not philosophise; we must enjoy. The fresh morning breeze runs merrily over the ripples and plucks off their crests; our vessel leans prettily, and you hear a tinkling hiss as she shears through the lovely green hillocks. Sometimes she thrusts away a burst of spray, and in the midst of the white spurt there shines a rainbow. It may happen that the rainbows come thickly for half an hour at a time, and then we seem to be passing through a fairy scene. Go under the main-yard and look away to leeward. The wind roars out of the mainsail and streams over you in a cold flood; but you do not mind that, for there is the joyous expanse of emerald and snow dancing under the glad sun. There is something unspeakably delightful in the rushing never-ending procession of waves that passes away, away in merry ranks to the shining horizon; and all true lovers of the sea are exhilarated by the sweet tumult. Remember I am talking about a fine day; I shall come to the bad weather in good time. On this ineffable morning a lady may come up and walk briskly in the crisp air; but indeed women are the best and coolest of sailors in any weather when once their preliminary troubles are over. The hours fly past, and we hail the announcement of breakfast with a sudden joy which tells of gross materialism. I may say, by-the-way, that our lower nature, or what sentimental persons call our lower nature, comes out powerfully at sea, and men of the most refined sort catch themselves in the act of wondering time after time when meals will be ready. For me I think that it is no more gross to delight in flavours than it is to delight in colours or harmonies, and one of my main reasons for dwelling on the delights of the sea lies in the fact that the voyager learns to take an exquisite, but quite rational, delight in the mere act of eating. I know that I ought to speak as though dinner were an ignoble institution; I know that the young lady who said, "Thanks--I rarely eat," represented a class who pretend to devote themselves to higher joys; but I decline to talk cant on any terms, and I say that the healthy, hearty hunger bestowed by the open sea is one of God's good gifts. The sweet morning passes away, and somehow our thoughts run in bright grooves. That is the strange thing about the sea--its moods have an instant effect on the mind; and, as it changes with wild and swift caprice, the seafarer finds that his views of life alter with tantalizing but pleasant suddenness. Just now I am speaking only of content and exhilaration; but I may soon see another side of the picture. The afternoon glides by like the morning; no churlish houses and chimney-pots hide the sun, and we see him describe his magnificent curve, while, with mysterious potency, he influences the wind. Dull! Why, on shore we should gaze out on the same streets or fields or trees; but here our residence is driven along like a flying cloud, and we gain a fresh view with every mile! I confess that I like sailing in populous waters, for indeed the lonely tropical seas and the brassy skies are not by any means to be regarded as delightful; but for the present we are supposing ourselves to be in the track of vessels, and there is some new and poignant interest for every hour. Watch this vast pallid cloud that looms up far away; the sun strikes on the cloud, and straightway the snowy mass gleams like silver; on it comes, and soon we see a superb four-masted clipper broadside on to us. A royal fabric she is; every snowy sail is drawing, and she moves with resistless force and matchless grace through the water, while a boiling wreath of milky foam rushes away from her bows, and swathes of white dapple the green river that seems to pour past her majestic sides. The emigrants lean over the rail, and gaze wistfully at us. Ah, how many thousands of miles they must travel ere they reach their new home! Strange and pitiful it is to think that so few of them will ever see the old home again; and yet there is something bright and hopeful in the spectacle, if we think not of individuals, but of the world's future. Under the Southern Cross a mighty state is rising; the inevitable movement of populations is irresistible as the tides of mid-ocean; and those wistful emigrants who quietly wave their handkerchiefs to us are about to assist in working out the destiny of a new world. Dull! The passing of that great vessel gives matter for grave thought. She swings away, and we may perhaps try to run alongside for a while, but the immense drag of her four towers of canvas soon draws her clear, and she speedily looms once more like a cloud on the horizon. Good-bye! The squat collier lumbers along, and her leisurely grimy skipper salutes as we near him. It is marvellous to reflect that the whole of our coal-trade was carried on in those queer tubs only sixty years ago. They are passing away, and the gallant, ignorant, comical race of sailors who manned them has all but disappeared; the ugly sordid iron box that goes snorting past us, belching out jets of water from her dirty side--that is the agency that destroyed the colliers, and, alas, destroyed the finest breed of seamen that ever the world saw! So rapidly do new sights and sounds greet us that the night steals down almost before we are aware of its approach. The day is for joy; but, ah, the night is for subtle overmastering rapture, for pregnant gloom, for thoughts that lie too deep for tears! If a wind springs up when the last ray of the sun shoots over the shoulder of the earth, then the ship roars through an inky sea, and the mysterious blending of terror and ecstasy cannot be restrained. Hoarsely the breeze shrieks in the cordage, savagely the water roars as it darts away astern like a broad fierce white flame. The vessel seems to spring forward and shake herself with passion as the sea retards her, and the whole wild symphony of humming ropes, roaring water, screaming wind, sets every pulse bounding. Should the moon shine out from the charging clouds, then earth has not anything to show more fair; the broad track of light looks like an immeasurable river peopled by fiery serpents that dart and writhe and interwind, until the eye aches with gazing on them. Sleep seems impossible at first, and yet by degrees the poppied touch lulls our nerves, and we slumber without heeding the harrowing groans of the timbers or the confused cries of the wind. So much for the glad weather; but, when the sky droops low, and leaping waves of mournful hue seem to rear themselves and mingle with the clouds, then the gladness is not so apparent. Still the exulting rush of the ship through the gray seas and her contemptuous shudder as she shakes off the masses of water that thunder down on her are fine to witness. Even a storm, when cataracts of hissing water plunge over the vessel and force every one to "hang on anywhere," is by no means without its delights; but I must candidly say that a ship is hardly the place for a woman when the wild winds try their strength against the works of man. On the whole, if we reckon up the pains and pleasures of life on board ship, the balance is all in favour of pleasure. The sailors have a toilsome life, and must endure much; but they have health. It is the sense of physical well-being that makes the mind so easy when one is on the sea; and refined men who have lived in the forecastle readily declare that they were happy but for the invariable dirt. Instead of trooping to stuffy lodgings, those of my readers who have the nerve should, if not this year, then next summer, go right away and take a cheap and charming holiday on the open sea. _October, 1887._ _WAR._ The brisk Pressmen are usually exceedingly busy in calculating the chances of a huge fight--indeed they spend a good part of each year in that pleasing employment. Smug diplomatists talk glibly about "war clearing the air;" and the crowd--the rank and file--chatter as though war were a pageant quite divorced from wounds and death, or a mere harmless hurly-burly where certain battalions receive thrashings of a trifling nature. It is saddening to notice the levity with which the most awful of topics is treated, and especially is it sad to see how completely the women and children are thrust out of mind by belligerent persons. We who have gazed on the monster of War, we who have looked in the whites--or rather the reds--of his loathsome eyes, cannot let this burst of frivolity work mischief without one temperate word of warning and protest. Pleasant it is to watch the soldiers as they march along the streets, or form in their superb lines on parade. No man or woman of any sensibility can help feeling proudly stirred when a Cavalry regiment goes by. The clean, alert, upright men, with their sure seat; the massive war-horses champing their bits and shaking their accoutrements: the rhythmic thud of hoofs, the keen glitter of steel, and the general air of power, all combine to form a spectacle that sets the pulses beating faster. Then, again, observe the strange elastic rhythm of the march as a battalion of tall Highlanders moves past. The fifes and drums cease, there is a silence broken only by that sinuous beautiful onward movement of lines of splendid men, until the thrilling scream of the pipes shatters the air, and the mad tumult of warlike sound makes even a Southron's nerves quiver. Then, once more, watch the deadly, steady march of a regiment of Guards. The stalwart men step together, and, as the red ranks sway on, it seems as though no earthly power could stand against them. The gloomy bearskins are like a brooding dark cloud, and the glitter of the rifle-barrels carries with it certain sinister terrible suggestions. The gaiety and splendour of Cavalry and Infantry all gain increased power over the imagination since we know that each of those gaily clad fellows would march to his doom without a tremor or a murmur if he received the word. Poor Tommy Atkins is surrounded by a sort of halo in the popular imagination, simply because it is known that he may one day have to deal forth death to an enemy, or take his own doom, according to the chances of combat. I need say little about the field-days and reviews which have caused so many martially-minded young men to take the shilling. The crash of the small-arm firing, the wild galloping of hasty aides-de-camp, the measured movement of serried lines, the rapid flight of flocks of bedizened staff-officers, all make up a very exciting and confusing picture, and many a youngster has fancied that war must be a glorious game. Let us leave the picturesque and theatrical business and come to the dry prose. So far from being an affair of glitter, excitement, fierce joy, fierce triumph, war is but a round of hideous hours which bring memories of squalor, filth, hunger, wretchedness, dull toil, unspeakable misery. Take it at its best, and consider what a modern engagement really means. Recollect, moreover, that I am about to use sentences accurate as a photograph. The sportive Pressman says, "Vernon began to find the enemy's cloud of sharp-shooters troublesome, so the 5th sought better cover on the right, leaving Brown free to develop his artillery fire." "Troublesome!" Translate that word, and it means this: Private Brown and Private Jones are lying behind the same low bank. Jones raises his head; there comes a sound like "Roo-o-osh--pht!"--then a horrible thud. Jones glares, grasps at nothing with convulsed hands, and rolls sideways with a long shudder. The ball took him in the temple. Serjeant Morrison says, "Now, men, try for that felled log! Double!" A few men make a short rush, and gain the solid cover; but one throws up his hands when half way, gives a choking yell, springs in the air, and falls down limp. The same thing is going on over a mile of country, while the shell-fire is gradually gaining power--and we may be sure that the enemy are suffering at the hands of our marksmen. And now suppose that an infantry brigade receives orders to charge. "Charge!" The word carries magnificent poetic associations, but, alas, it is a very prosaic affair nowadays! The lines move onward in short rushes, and it seems as if a swarm of ants were migrating warily. The strident voices of the officers ring here and there: the men edge their way onward: it seems as if there were no method in the advance; but somehow the loose wavy ranks are kept well in hand, and the main movement proceeds like machinery. "I feel a bit queer," says Bill Williams to a veteran friend. "Never mind--'taint every one durst say that," says the friend. "Whoo-o-sh!" a muffled thump, and the veteran falls forward, dropping his rifle. He struggles up on hands and knees, but a rush of blood chokes him, and he drops with a groan. He will lie there for a long time before his burning throat is moistened by a cup of water, and he knows only too well that the surgeon will merely shake his head when he sees him. The brigade still advances; gradually the sputtering crackle in their front grows into a low steady roar; a stream of lead whistles in the air, and the long lurid line of flame glows with the sustained glare of a fire among furze. Men fall at every yard, but the hoarse murmur of the dogged advance never ceases. At last the time comes for the rush. The ranks are trimmed up by imperceptible degrees; the men set their teeth, and a strange eager look comes over many a face. The eyes of the youngsters stare glassily; they can see the wood from which the enemy must be dislodged at any price, but they can form no definite ideas; they merely grip their rifles and go on mechanically. The word is given--the dark lines dash forward; the firing from the wood breaks out in a crash of fury--there is a long harsh rattle, then a chance crack like a thunder-clap, and then a whirring like the spinning of some demoniac mill. Curses ring out amid a low sound of hard breathing; the ranks are gapped here and there as a man wriggles away like a wounded rabbit, or another bounds upward with a frantic ejaculation. Then comes the fighting at close quarters. Perhaps kind women who are misled by the newspaper-writer's brisk babblement may like to know what that means, so I give the words of the best eyewitness that ever gazed on warfare. He took down his notes by the light of burning wood, and he had no time to think of grammar. All his words were written like mere convulsive cries, but their main effect is too vivid to be altered. Notice that he rarely concludes a sentence, for he wanted to save time, and the bullets were cutting up the ground and the trees all round him. "Patches of the wood take fire, and several of the wounded, unable to move, are consumed. Quite large spaces are swept over, burning the dead also; some of the men have their hair and beards singed, some burns on their faces and hands, others holes burnt in their clothing. The flashes of fire from the cannon, the quick glaring flames and smoke, and the immense roar--the musketry so general; the light nearly bright enough for each side to see the other; the crashing, tramping of men--the yelling--close quarters--hand-to-hand conflicts. Each side stands up to it, brave, determined as demons; and still the wood's on fire--still many are not only scorched--too many, unable to move, are burned to death. Who knows the conflict, hand-to-hand--the many conflicts in the dark--those shadowy, tangled, flashing, moon-beamed woods--the writhing groups and squads--the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols, the distant cannon--the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the oaths, the indescribable mix, the officers' orders, persuasions, encouragements--the devils fully roused in human hearts--the strong shout, 'Charge, men--charge!'--the flash of the naked swords, and rolling flame and smoke? And still the broken, clear, and clouded heaven; and still again the moonlight pouring silvery soft its radiant patches over all." There is a description vivid as lightning, though there is not a properly-constructed sentence in it. Gruesome, cruel, horrible! Is it not enough to make the women of our sober sensible race declare for ever against the flaunting stay-at-homes who would egg us on to war? By all means let us hold to the old-fashioned dogged ways, but let us beware of rushing into the squalid vortex of war. And now let us see what follows the brilliant charge and bayonet fight. How many ladies consider what the curt word "wounded" means? It conveys no idea to them, and they are too apt to stray off into the dashing details that tell of a great wrestle of armies. One eminent man--whom I believe to have uttered a libel--has declared that women like war, and that they are usually the means of urging men on. He is a very sedate and learned philosopher who wrote that statement, and yet I cannot believe it. Ah, no! Our ladies can give their dearest up to death when the State calls on them, but they will never be like the odious viragoes of the Roman circus. At any rate, if any woman acts according to the dictum of the philosopher after reading my bitterly true words, we shall hold that our influence is departed. Therefore with ruthless composure I follow my observer--a man whose pure and holy spirit upheld him as he ministered to sufferers for year after year. "Then the camps of the wounded. Oh, heavens, what scene is this? Is this indeed humanity--these butchers' shambles? There are several of them. There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods--from two to three hundred poor fellows. The groans and screams, the odour of blood mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the trees--that slaughter-house! Oh, well is it their mothers, their sisters, cannot see them, cannot conceive, and never conceived such things! One man is shot by a shell both in the arm and leg; both are amputated--there lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blown off, some bullets through the breast, some indescribably horrid wounds in the head--all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out, some in the abdomen, some mere boys." Alas, I have quoted enough--and may never such a task come before me again! The picture is sharp as an etching; it is drawn with a shudder of the soul. Is that grim sedate man right when he says that women are the moving influence that drives men to such carnage? Would you wantonly advocate war? Never! I reject the solemn philosopher's saying, in spite of his logic and his sententiousness. Who shall speak of the awful monotony of the hospital camps, where men die like flies, and where regret, sympathy, kindness are blotted from the hardened soldier's breast? People are not cruel by nature, but the vague picturesque language of historians and other general writers prevents men and women from forming just opinions. I believe that, if one hundred wounded men could be transported from a battle-field and laid down in the public square of any town or city for the population to see, then the gazers would say among themselves, "So this is war, is it? Well, for our parts, we shall be very cautious before we raise any agitation that might force our Government into any conflict. We can die if our liberties are threatened, for there are circumstances in which it would be shameful to live, but we shall never do anything which may bring about results such as those before us." That would be a fair and temperate mode of talking--far different from the airy babble of the warlike scribe. An argumentative person may stop us here and ask, "Are you of opinion that it is possible to abolish warfare?" Unfortunately, we can cherish no such pleasing hope. I do emphatically believe that in time men will come to see the wild folly of engaging in sanguinary struggles; but the growth of their wisdom will be slow. Action and reaction are equal; the fighting instinct has been impressed on our nature by hereditary transmission for countless generations, and we cannot hope suddenly to make man a peaceful animal any more than we can hope to breed setters from South African wild dogs. But the conditions of life are gradually changing, and the very madness which has made Europe into a huge barrack may work its own cure. The burden will probably grow so intolerable that the most embruted of citizens will ask themselves why they bear it, and a rapid revolution may undo the growth of centuries. The scientific men point to the huge warfare that goes on from the summit of the Himalayas to the depths of the ocean slime, and they ask how men can be exempt from the universal struggle for existence. But it is by no means certain that the pressure of population in the case of man will always force on struggles--at any rate, struggles that can be decided only by death and agony. Little by little we are learning something of the laws that govern our hitherto mysterious existence, and we have good hopes that by and by our race may learn to be mutually helpful, so that our span of life may be passed with as much happiness as possible. Men will strive against each other, but the striving will not be carried on to an accompaniment of slaughter and torture. There are keen forms of competition which, so far from being painful, give positive pleasure to those who engage in them; there are triumphs which satisfy the victor without mortifying the vanquished; and, in spite of the indiscreet writers who have called forth this Essay, I hold that such harmless forms of competition will take the place of the brutal strife that adds senselessly to the sum of human woe. Our race has outgrown so many forms of brutality, so many deliberate changes have taken place in the course of even two thousand years, that the final change which shall abolish war is almost certain to come. We find that about one thousand nine hundred years ago a polished gentleman like Julius Caesar gravely congratulates himself on the fact that his troops destroyed in cold blood forty thousand people--men, women, and children. No man in the civilized world dare do such a deed now, even if he had the mind for the carnage. The feeling with which we read Caesar's frigid recital measures the arc of improvement through which we have passed. May the improvement go on! We can continue to progress only through knowledge; if our people--our women especially--are wantonly warlike, then our action will be wantonly warlike; knowledge alone can save us from the guilt of blood, and that knowledge I have tried to set forth briefly. By wondrous ways does our Master work out His ends. Let us pray that He may hasten the time when nation shall not rise up against nation, neither shall they draw the sword any more. _December, 1886._ _DRINK_. I have no intention of imitating those intemperate advocates of temperance who frighten people by their thunderous and extravagant denunciations; I leave high moral considerations on one side for the present, and our discussion will be purely practical, and, if possible, helpful. The duty of helpful men and women is not to rave about horrors and failures and misfortunes, but to aim coolly at remedial measures; and I am firmly convinced that such remedial measures can be employed only by private effort. State interference is always to be deprecated; individual action alone has power to better the condition of our sorely-tempted race. With sorrow too keen for words, I hear of blighted homes, intellects abased, children starved, careers wrecked, wives made wretched, crime fostered; and I fully sympathize with the men and women who are stung into wild speech by the sight of a curse that seems all-powerful in Britain. But I prefer to cultivate a sedate and scientific attitude of mind; I do not want to repeat catalogues of evils; I want to point out ways whereby the intemperate may be cured. Above all, I wish to abate the panic which paralyzes the minds of some afflicted people, and which causes them to regard a drunkard or even a tippler as a hopeless victim. "Hopeless" is a word used by ignorant persons, by cowards, and by fools. When I hear some mourner say, "Alas! we can do nothing with him--he is a slave!" I feel impelled to reply, "What do you know about it? Have you given yourself the trouble to do more than preach? Listen, and follow the simple directions which I lay down for you." First, I deal with the unhappy beings who are called periodical drinkers. These are generally men who possess great ability and a capacity for severe stretches of labour. They may be artists, writers, men of business, mechanicians--anything; but in nearly every case some special faculty of brain is developed to an extraordinary degree, and the man is able to put forth the most strenuous exertions at a pinch. Let us name some typical examples. Turner was a man of phenomenal industry, but at intervals his temperament craved for some excitement more violent and distracting than any that he could get from the steady strain of daily work. He used to go away to Wapping, and spend weeks in the filthiest debauch with the lowest characters in London. None of his companions guessed who he was; they only knew that he had more money than they had, and that he behaved in a more bestial manner than any of those who frequented the "Fox under the Hill" and other pleasing hostelries. Turner pursued his reckless career, till his money was gone, and then he returned to his gruesome den and proceeded to turn out artistic prodigies until the fit came upon him once more. Benvenuto Cellini was subject to similar paroxysms, during which he behaved like a maniac. Our own novelist Bulwer Lytton disappeared at times, and plunged into the wildest excesses among wretches whom he would have loathed when he was in his normal state of mind. He used to dress himself as a navvy, or as a sailor, and no one would have recognized the weird intellectual face when the great writer was clad in rags, and when the brutal mask of intoxication had fallen over his face. It was during his recovery from one of these terrible visitations that he drove the woman whom he most loved from his house, and brought on that breach which resulted in irreparable misery. Poor George Morland, the painter, had wild spells of debauch, during which he spent his time in boxing-saloons among ruffianly prize-fighters and jockeys. His vice grew upon him, his mad fits became more and more frequent, and at last his exquisite work could be produced only when his nerve was temporarily steadied by copious doses of brandy. Keats, who "worshipped Beauty," was afflicted by seizures like those of Turner and Morland. On one occasion he remained in a state of drunkenness for six weeks; and it is a wonder that his marvellous mind retained its freshness at all after the poison had passed from amid the delicate tissues of the brain. He conquered himself at last; but I fear that his health was impaired by his few mad outbursts. Charles Lamb, who is dear to us all, reduced himself to a pitiable state by giving way to outbreaks of alcoholic craving. When Carlyle saw him, the unhappy essayist was semi-imbecile from the effects of drink; and the savage Scotsman wrote some cruel words which will unfortunately cleave to Lamb's cherished memory for long. Lamb fought against his failing; he suffered agonies of remorse; he bitterly blamed himself for "buying days of misery by nights of madness;" but the sweet soul was enchained, and no struggles availed to work a blessed transformation. Read his "Confessions of a Drunkard." It is the most awful chapter in English literature, for it is written out of the agony of a pure and well-meaning mind, and its tortured phrases seem to cry out from the page that holds their misery. We are placed face to face with a dread aspect of life, and the remorseless artist paints his own pitiable case as though he longed to save his fellow-creatures even at the expense of his own self-abasement. All these afflicted creatures sought the wrong remedy for the exhaustion and the nameless craving that beset them when they were spent with toil. The periodic drinker takes his dive into the sensual mud-bath just at the times when eager exertion has brought on lassitude of body and mind. He begins by timidly drinking a little of the deleterious stuff, and he finds that his mental images grow bright and pleasant. A moment comes to him when he would not change places with the princes of the earth, and he endeavours to make that moment last long. He fails, and only succeeds in dropping into drunkenness. On the morning after his first day he feels depressed; but his biliary processes are undisturbed, and he is able to begin again without any sense of nausea. His quantity is increased until he gradually reaches the point when glasses of spirits are poured down with feverish rapidity. His appetite is sometimes voracious, sometimes capricious, sometimes absent altogether. His stomach becomes ulcerated, and he can obtain release from the grinding uneasiness only by feeding the inflamed organ with more and more alcohol. The liver ceases to act healthily, the blood becomes charged with bile, and one morning the wretch awakes feeling that life is not worth having. He has slept like a log; but all night through his outraged brain has avenged itself by calling up crowds of hideous dreams. The blood-vessels of the eye are charged with bilious particles, and these intruding specks give rise to fearful, exaggerated images of things that never yet were seen on sea or land. Grim faces leer at the dreamer and make mock of him; frightful animals pass in procession before him; and hosts of incoherent words are jabbered in his ear by unholy voices. He wakes, limp, exhausted, trembling, nauseated, and he feels as if he must choose between suicide and--more drink. If he drinks at this stage, he is lost; and then is the time to fix upon him and draw him by main force from the slough. Now some practitioners say, "Let him drop it gradually;" and they proceed to stir every molecule of alcohol in the system into vile activity by adding small doses of wine or spirit to the deadly accumulation. The man's brain is impoverished, and the mistaken doctors proceed to impoverish it more, so that a patient who should be cured in forty-eight hours is kept in dragging misery for a month or more. The proper mode of treatment is widely different. You want to nourish the brain speedily, and at any cost, ere the ghastly depression drives the agonized wretch to the arms of Circe once more. First, then, give him milk. If you try milk alone, the stomach will not retain it long, so you must mix the nourishing fluid with soda-water. Half an hour afterwards administer a spoonful of meat-essence. Beware of giving the patient any hot fluid, for that will damage him almost as much as alcohol. Continue with alternate half-hourly instalments of milk and meat-essence; supply no solid food whatever; and do not be tempted by the growing good spirits of your charge to let him go out of doors amid temptation. At night, after some eight hours of this rapid feeding, you must take a risky step. Make sure that the drinker is calm, and then prepare him for sleep. That preparation is accomplished thus. Get a draught of hydrate of chloral made up, and be sure that you describe your man's physique--this is most important--to the apothecary who serves you. A very light dose will suffice, and, when it is swallowed, the drugged man should be left in quietude. He will sleep heavily, perhaps for as much as twelve hours, and no noise must be allowed to come near him. If he is waked suddenly, the consequences may be bad, so that those who go to look at him must use precautions to ensure silence. In the morning he will awake with his brain invigorated, his muscles unagitated, and his craving utterly gone. It is like magic; for a man who was prostrate on Sunday morning is brisk and eager for work on Monday at noon. Whenever the cured man feels his craving arise after a spell of labour, he should at once recuperate his brain by rapidly-repeated doses of the easily-assimilated meat-essence, and this, with a little strong black coffee taken at short intervals, will tide him over the evil time. He saves money, he keeps his working power, and he gives no shock to his health. Since a beneficent doctor first described this cure to the British Medical Association, hundreds have been restored and ultimately reclaimed. And now as to the persons who are called "soakers." Scattered over the country are thousands of men and women who do not go to bestial excesses, but who steadily undermine their constitutions by persistent tippling. Such a man as a commercial traveller imbibes twenty or thirty nips in the course of the day; he eats well in the evening, though he is usually repelled by the sight of food in the morning, and he preserves an outward appearance of ruddy health. Then there are the female soakers, whom doctors find to be the most troublesome of all their patients. There is not a medical man in large practice who has not a shocking percentage of lady inebriates on his list, and the cases are hard to manage. An ill-starred woman, whose well-to-do husband is engaged in business all day, finds that a dull life-weariness overtakes her. If she has many children, her enforced activity preserves her from danger; but, if she is childless, the subtle temptation is apt to overcome her. She seeks unnatural exaltation, and the very secrecy which is necessary lends a strange zest to the pursuit of a numbing vice. Then we have such busy men as auctioneers, ship-brokers, water-clerks, ship-captains, buyers for great firms--all of whom are more or less a prey to the custom of "standing liquors." The soaker goes on without meeting any startling check for a good while; but, by slow degrees, the main organs of the body suffer, and a chronic state of alcoholic irritation is set up. A man becomes suspected by his employers and slighted by his abstemious friends; he loses health, character, prospects; and yet he is invariably ready to declare that no one ever saw him the worse for drink. The tippling goes on till the resultant irritation reaches an acute stage, and the faintest disturbing cause brings on _delirium tremens_. There is only one way with people thus afflicted. They must be made to loathe alcohol, and their nerves must at the same time be artificially stimulated. The cure is not precisely easy, but it is certain. If my directions are followed out, then a man who is in the last stage of alcoholic debility will not only regain a certain measure of health, but he will turn with horror from the stuff that fascinated him. In the case of the soaker a little wine may be given at meal-times during the first stages of the cure; but he (or she) will soon reject even wine. Strong black coffee, or tea, should be given as often as possible--the oftener the better--and iced soda-water should be administered after a heavy meal. Take this prescription and let it be made up--Rx Acid. Acet. eight ounces. Sponge down the patient's spine with this fluid until the parts moistened tingle smartly; and let this be done night and morning. Also get the following from your chemist--Rx Ext. Cinch. Rub. Liq. four ounces--and give one teaspoonful in water after each meal. In a week the drinker will cease to desire alcohol, and in a month he will refuse it with disgust. His nerves will resume their healthy action, and, if he has not reached the stage of cirrhosis of the liver, he will become well and clear-headed. Recollect that this remedy is almost infallible, and then even the most greedy of literary students will hardly reproach me for placing a kind of medical chapter in the quarter usually devoted to disquisitions of another kind. From every side rises the bitter cry of those who see their loved ones falling victims to the seductive scourge; from all quarters the voices of earnest men are raised in passionate pleading; and in every great city there are noble workers who strive to rescue their fellow-creatures from drink as from a gulf of doom. My words are not addressed to the happy beings who can rejoice in the cheerfulness bestowed by wine; I have before me only the fortunes of those to whom wine is a mocker. Far be it from me to find fault with the good and sound-hearted men and women who are never scathed by their innocent potations; my attempt is directed toward saving the wreckages of civilization who perish in the grasp of the destroyer. _March, 1886._ _CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO KNOW THEY ARE GOING WRONG_. Some five years ago a mere accident gave to the world one of the most gruesome and remarkable pieces of literature that has ever perhaps been seen. A convict named Fury confessed to having committed a murder of an atrocious character. He was brought from prison, put on his trial at Durham, and condemned to death. Every chance was given him to escape his doom; but he persisted in providing the authorities with the most minutely accurate chain of evidence against himself; and, in the end, there was nothing for it but to cast him for death. Even when the police blundered, he carefully set them right--and he could not have proved his own guilt more clearly had he been the ablest prosecuting counsel in Britain. He held in his hand a voluminous statement which, as it seems, he wished to read before sentence of death was passed. The Court could not permit the nation's time to be thus expended; so the convict handed his manuscript to a reporter--and we thus have possibly the most absolutely curious of all extant thieves' literature. Somewhere in the recesses of Fury's wild heart there must have been good concealed; for he confessed his worst crime in the interests of justice, and he went to the scaffold with a serious and serene courage which almost made of him a dignified person. But, on his own confession, he must have been all his life long an unmitigated rascal--a predatory beast of the most dangerous kind. From his youth upward he had lived as a professional thief, and his pilferings were various and extensive. The glimpses of sordid villainy which he frankly gives are so poignantly effective that they put into the shade the most dreadful phases in the life of Villon. He was a mean sneaking wretch who supported a miserable existence on the fruits of other people's industry, and he closed his list of crimes by brutally stabbing an unhappy woman who had never harmed him. The fellow had genuine literary skill and a good deal of culture; his confession is very different from any of those contained in the _Newgate Calendar_--infinitely different from the crude horror of the statement which George Borrow quotes as a masterpiece of simple and direct writing. Here is Borrow's specimen, by-the-way--"So I went with them to a music-booth, where they made me almost drunk with gin and began to talk their flash language, which I did not understand"--and so on. But this dry simplicity is not in Fury's line. He has studied philosophy; he has reasoned keenly; and, as one goes on through his terrible narrative, one finds that he has mental capacity of a high order. He was as mean a rascal as Noah Claypole: and yet he had a fine clear-seeing intellect. Now what does this gallows-bird tell us? Why, his whole argument is intended to prove that he was an ill-used victim of society! Such a perversion has probably never been quite equalled; but it remains there to show us how firmly my theory stands--that the real scoundrel never knows himself to be a scoundrel. Had Fury settled down in a back street and employed his genius in writing stories, he could have earned a livelihood, for people would have eagerly read his experiences; but he preferred thieving--and then he turned round and blamed other people for hounding him on to theft. There are wrong-doers and wrong-doers; there are men who do ill in the world because they are entirely harmful by nature, and they seek to hurt their fellows--there are others who err only from weakness of will. I make no excuse for the weaklings; a man or woman who is weak may do more harm than the vilest criminal, and, when I hear any one talk about that nice man who is nobody's enemy but his own, I am instantly forced to remember a score or thereabouts of beings whom I know to have been the deadliest foes of those whom they should have cherished. Let us help those who err; but let us have no maudlin pity. Moralists in general have made a somewhat serious error in supposing that one has only to show a man the true aspect of any given evil in order to make sure of his avoiding it. Of late so many sad things have been witnessed in public and private life that one is tempted to doubt whether abstract morality is of any use whatever in the world. One may tell a man that a certain course is dangerous or fatal; one may show by every device of logic and illustration that he should avoid the said course, and he will fully admit the truth of one's contentions; yet he is not deterred from his folly, and he goes on toward ruin with a sort of blind abandonment. "Blind," I say. That is but a formal phrase; for it happens that the very men and women who wreck their lives by doing foolish things are those who are keenest in detecting folly and wisest in giving advice to others. "Educate the people, and you will find that a steady diminution of vice, debauchery, and criminality must set in." I am not talking about criminality at present; but I am bound to say that no amount of enlightenment seems to diminish the tendency toward forms of folly which approach criminality. It is almost confounding to see how lucid of mind and how sane in theoretical judgment are the men who sometimes steep themselves in folly and even in vice. A wicked man boasted much of his own wickedness to some fellow-travellers during a brief sea-voyage. He said, "I like doing wrong for the sake of doing it. When you know you are outraging the senses of decent people there is a kind of excitement about it." This contemptible cynic told with glee stories of his own vileness which made good men look at him with scorn; but he fancied himself the cleverest of men. With the grave nearly ready for him, he could chuckle over things which he had done--things which proved him base, although none of them brought him within measurable distance of the dock. But such instances are quite rare. The man whose vision is lucid, but who nevertheless goes wrong, is usually a prey to constant misery or to downright remorse. Look at Burns's epitaph, composed by himself for himself. It is a dreadful thing. It is more than verse; it is a sermon, a prophecy, a word of doom; and it tells with matchless terseness the story of many men who are at this hour passing to grim ruin either of body or soul or both. Burns had such magnificent common sense that in his last two lines he sums up almost everything that is worth saying on the subject; and yet that fatal lack of will which I have so often lamented made all his theoretical good sense as naught He could give one every essential of morality and conduct--in theory--and he was one of the most convincing and wise preachers who ever lived; but that mournful epitaph summarises the results of all his mighty gifts; and I think that it should be learned by all young men, on the chance that some few might possibly be warned and convinced. Advice is of scanty use to men of keen reason who are capable of composing precepts for themselves; but to the duller sort I certainly think that the flash of a sudden revelation given in concise words is beneficial. Here is poor Burns's saying-- Is there a man whose judgment clear Can others teach the course to steer, Yet runs himself life's mad career Wild as the wave? Here pause, and through the starting tear Survey this grave. The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know, And keenly felt the kindly glow And softer flame; But thoughtless follies laid him low And stained his name. Reader, attend! Whether thy soul Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole; Or, darkling, grubs this earthly hole In low pursuit, Know--prudent cautious self-control Is wisdom's root. When I ponder that forlorn masterpiece, I cannot help a tendency to despair; for I know, by multifarious experience of men, that the curt lines hint at profundities so vast as to baffle the best powers of comprehension. As I think of the hundreds of men who are minor copies of Burns, I have a passionate wish to call on the Power that sways us all and pray for pity and guidance. A most wise--should I say "wise"?--and brilliant man had brought himself very low through drink, and was dying solely through the effects of a debauch which had lasted for years with scarcely an interval of pure sanity. He was beloved by all; he had a most sweet nature; he was so shrewd and witty that it seemed impossible for him to be wrong about anything. On his deathbed he talked with lovely serenity, and he seemed rather like some thrice-noble disciple of Socrates than like one who had cast away all that the world has worth holding. He knew every folly that he had committed, and he knew its exact proportions; he was consulted during his last days by young and old, who recognized the well-nigh superhuman character of his wisdom; and yet he had abundantly proved himself to be one of the most unwise men living. How strange! How infinitely pathetic! Few men of clearer vision ever came on this earth; but, with his flashing eyes open, he walked into snare after snare, and the last of the devil's traps caught him fatally. Even when he was too weak to stir, he said that, if he could move, he would be sure to take the old path again. Well may the warning devotees cry, "Have mercy upon us!" Well may they bow themselves and wail for the weakness of man! Well may they cast themselves humbly on the bosom of the Infinite Pity! For, of a truth, we are a feeble folk, and, if we depended only on ourselves, it would be well that George Eliot's ghastly thought of simultaneous universal suicide should be put into practice speedily. Hark to the appalling words of wisdom uttered by the good man whose name I never miss mentioning because I wish all gentle souls to refresh themselves with his ineffable sweetness and tender fun! "Could the youth to whom the flavour of his first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon some newly-discovered paradise look upon my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will--to see his destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself--to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise--to hear about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruin--could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's drinking and feverishly looking for this night's repetition of the folly--could he feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly, with feebler and feebler outcry, to be delivered--it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation, to make him clasp his teeth, And not undo 'em To suffer wet damnation to run thro' 'em." Can that be beaten for utter lucidity and directness? Not by any master of prose known to us--not by any man who ever wrote in prose or in verse. The vision is so completely convincing, the sense of actuality given by the words is so haunting, that, not even Dickens could have equalled it. The man who wrote those searing words is to this day remembered and spoken of with caressing gentleness by all men of intellect, refinement, quick fancy, genial humour; the editing of his works has occupied a great part of the lifetime of a most distinguished ecclesiastic. Could he avoid the fell horror against which he warned others? No. With all his dread knowledge, he went on his sorrowful way--and he remained the victim of his vice until the bitter end. It was Charles Lamb. A gambler is usually the most prodigal of men in the matter of promises. If he is clever, he is nearly always quite ready to smile mournfully at his own infatuation, and he will warn inexperienced youngsters--unless he wants to rob them. In sum, intellect, wit, keenness, lucidity of vision, perfect reasoning power, are all useless in restraining a man from proceeding to ruin unless some steadying agency is allied with them. After much sad brooding, I cannot but conclude that a fervent religious faith is the only thing that will give complete security; and it will be a bitter day for England and the world if ever flippancy and irreligion become general. _June, 1889._ _THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE "BAR."_ A great American writer has lately given a terrible account of "The Social Influence of the Saloon" in his country. The article is very grave, and every word is weighed, but the cold precision of the paper attracts the reader with a horrible fascination. The author does not so much regret the enormous waste of money, though he allows that about two hundred millions of pounds sterling are spent yearly in the States on strong drink; but he mourns most because of the steady ruin which he sees overtaking the social happiness of his country. The saloon is subtly corrupting the men of America, and the ghastly plagues of selfishness, brutality, and immorality are spreading with cruel swiftness. The great author's conclusion is more than startling, and I confess to having caught my breath when I read it. He says in effect, "We sacrificed a million men in order to do away with slavery, but we now have working in our midst a curse which is infinitely worse than slavery. One day we shall be obliged to save ourselves from ruin, even if we have to stamp out the trade in alcohol entirely, and that by means of a civil war." Strong words--and yet the man speaks with intense conviction: and his very quietude only serves to emphasise the awful nature of his disclosures. As I read on I saw with horror that the description of the state of things in America accurately fits our own country. We do not talk of a "saloon" here, but "bar" means the same thing; and the "bar" is crushing out the higher life of the English middle-class as surely as the saloon is destroying American manhood. Amid all our material prosperity, amid all the complexities of our amazing community, an evil is at work which gathers power daily and which is actually assassinating, as it were, every moral quality that has made England strong and beneficent. Begin with a picture. The long curved counter glistens under the flare of the gas; the lines of gaudy bottles gleam like vulgar, sham jewelry; the glare, the glitter, the garish refulgence of the place dazzle the eye, and the sharp acrid whiffs of vile odour fall on the senses with a kind of mephitic influence. The evening is wearing away, and the broad space in front of the bar is crowded. A hoarse crashing babble goes steadily on, forming the ground-bass of an odious symphony; shrill and discordant laughter rises by fits and starts above the low tumult; a coarse joke sets one group sniggering; a vile oath rings out from some foul-mouthed roysterer; and at intervals some flushed and bleared creature breaks into a slavering laugh which has a sickly resemblance to weeping. At one of the side-tables a sodden brute leans forward and wags his head to and fro with ignoble solemnity; another has fallen asleep and snores at intervals with a nauseous rattle; smart young men, dressed fashionably, fling chance witticisms at the busy barmaids, and the nymphs answer with glib readiness. This is the home of Jollity and Good-fellowship; this is the place from which Care is banished; this is the happy corner where the social glass is dispensed. Alas for the jollity and the sociability and all the rest of it! Force yourself to study the vile spectacle, and you will soon harbour a brood of aching reflections. The whole of that chattering, swilling mob are employing their muddled minds on frivolity or obscenity, or worse things still. You will hear hardly an intelligent word; you will not catch a sound of sensible discussion; the scraps of conversation that reach you alternate between low banter, low squabbling, objectionable narrative, and histories of fights or swindles or former debauches. Middle-aged men tell interminable stories about money or smart strokes of business; youngsters wink and look unspeakably wise as they talk on the subject of the spring handicaps; wild spirits tell of their experiences at a glove-fight in some foul East-end tavern; amorous exploits are detailed with a fulness and freedom which would extremely amaze the ladies who form the subject of the conversation. In all the nasty confusion you never hear a word that can be called manly, unless you are prepared to allow the manliness of pugilism. Each quarter-hour sees the company grow more and more incoherent; the laughter gradually becomes senseless, and loses the last indication of pure merriment; the reek thickens; the dense air is permeated with queasy smells which rise from the fusel oil and the sugared beer; the shrewd landlord looks on with affected jollity, and hails casual friends with effusive imitation of joy; and last of all "time" is called, and the host of men pour into the street. They are ready for any folly or mischief, and they are all more or less unfitted for the next day's work. Strangely enough, many of those wretched fellows who thus waste time amid sordid surroundings come from refined homes; but music and books and the quiet pleasant talk of mothers and sisters are tame after the delirious rattle of the bar, and thus bright lads go home with-their wits dulled and with a complete incapacity for coherent speech. Now let it be remembered that no real friendships are contracted in those odious drinking-shops--something in the very atmosphere of the place seems to induce selfishness, and a drinker who goes wrong is never pitied; when evil days come, the smart landlord shuns the failure, the barmaids sneer at him, and his boon companions shrink away as though the doomed man were tainted. Monstrous it is to hear the remarks made about a lost soul who is plunging with accelerated speed down the steep road to ruin. His companions compare notes about him, and all his bodily symptoms are described with truculent glee in the filthy slang of the bar. So long as the wretch has money he is received with boisterous cordiality, and encouraged to rush yet faster on the way to perdition; his wildest feats in the way of mawkish generosity are applauded; and the very men who drink at his expense go on plucking him and laughing at him until the inevitable crash comes. I once heard with a kind of chilled horror a narrative about a fine young man who had died of _delirium tremens_. The narrator giggled so much that his story was often interrupted; but it ran thus--"He was very shaky in the morning, and he began on brandy; he took about six before his hand was steady, and I saw him looking over his shoulder every now and again. In the afternoon a lot of fellows came in, and he stood champagne like water to the whole gang. At six o'clock I wanted him to have a cup of tea, but he said, 'I've had nothing but booze for three days.' Then he got on to the floor, and said he was catching rats--so we knew he'd got 'em on.[1] At night he came out and cleared the street with his sword-bayonet; and it's a wonder he didn't murder somebody. It took two to hold him down all night, and he had his last fit at six in the morning. Died screaming!" A burst of laughter hailed the climax, and then one appreciative friend remarked, "He was a fool--I suppose he was drunk eleven months out of the last twelve." This was the epitaph of a bright young athlete who had been possessed of health, riches, and all fair prospects. No one warned him; none of those who swilled expensive poisons for which he paid ever refused to accept his mad generosity; he was cheered down the road to the gulf by the inane plaudits of the lowest of men; and one who was evidently his companion in many a frantic drinking-bout could find nothing to say but "He was a fool!" At this moment there are thousands of youths in our great towns and cities who are leading the heartless, senseless, semi-delirious life of the bar, and every possible temptation is put in their way to draw them from home, from refinement, from high thoughts, from chaste and temperate modes of life. Horrible it is to hear fine lads talking familiarly about the "jumpy" sensations which they feel in the morning. The "jumps" are those involuntary twitchings which sometimes precede and sometimes accompany _delirium tremens_; the frightful twitching of the limbs is accompanied by a kind of depression that takes the very heart and courage out of a man; and yet no one who travels over these islands can avoid hearing jokes on the dismal subject made by boys who have hardly reached their twenty-fifth year. The bar encourages levity, and the levity is unrelieved by any real gaiety--it is the hysterical feigned merriment of lost souls. [Footnote 1: This is the elegant public-house mode of describing _delirium tremens_.] There are bars of a quieter sort, and there are rooms where middle-aged topers meet, but these are, if possible, more repulsive than the clattering dens frequented by dissipated youths. Stout staid-looking men--fathers of families--gather night after night to sodden themselves quietly, and they make believe that they are enjoying the pleasures of good-fellowship. Curious it is to see how the fictitious assertion of goodwill seems to flourish in the atmosphere of the bar and the parlour. Those elderly men who sit and smoke in the places described as "cosy" are woeful examples of the effects of our national curse. They are not riotous; they are only dull, coarse, and silly. Their talk is confused, dogmatic, and generally senseless; and, when they break out into downright foulness of speech, their comparatively silent enjoyment of detestable stories is a thing to make one shiver. Here again good-fellowship is absent. Comfortable tradesmen, prosperous dealers, sharp men who hold good commercial situations, meet to gossip and exchange dubious stories. They laugh a good deal in a restrained way, and they are apparently genial; but the hard selfishness of all is plain to a cool observer. The habit of self-indigence has grown upon them until it pervades their being, and the corruption of the bar subtly envenoms their declining years. If good women could only once hear an evening's conversation that passes among these elderly citizens, they would be a little surprised. Thoughtful ladies complain that women are not reverenced in England, and Americans in particular notice with shame the attitude which middle-class Englishmen adopt towards ladies. If the people who complain could only hear how women are spoken of in the homes of Jollity, they would feel no more amazement at a distressing social phenomenon. The talk which is chuckled over by men who have daughters of their own is something to make an inexperienced individual redden. Reverence, nobility, high chivalry, common cleanliness, cannot flourish in the precincts of the bar, and there is not an honest man who has studied with adequate opportunities who will deny that the social glass is too often taken to an accompaniment of sheer uncleanness. Why have not our moral novelists spoken the plain truth about these things? We have many hideous pictures of the East-end drinking-bars, and much reproachful pity is expended on the "residuum;" but the evil that is eating at the very heart of the nation, the evil that is destroying our once noble middle-class, finds no assailant and no chronicler. Were it not for the athletic sports which happily engage the energies of thousands of young men, our middle-class would degenerate with appalling rapidity. But, in spite of athletics, the bar claims its holocaust of manhood year by year, and the professional moralists keep silence on the matter. Some of them say that they cannot risk hurting the sensibilities of innocent maidens. What nonsense! Those maidens all have a chance of becoming the wives of men who have suffered deterioration in the reek and glare of the bar. How many sorrowing wives are now hiding their heart-break and striving to lure their loved ones away from the curse of curses! If the moralists could only look on the mortal pathos of the letters which I receive, they would see that the maidens about whom they are so nervous are the very people who should be summoned as allies in our fight against a universal enemy. If our brave sweet English girls once learn the nature of the temptations to which their brothers and lovers are exposed, they will use every force of their pure souls to save the men whom they can influence from a doom which is death in life. _May, 1887._ _FRIENDSHIP_. The memoirs that are now poured into the book-market certainly tend to breed cynicism in the minds of susceptible persons, for it appears that to many eminent men and women of our generation friendship was almost an unknown sentiment. As we read one spiteful paragraph after another, we begin to wonder whether the living men around us resemble the dead purveyors of scandal. The fashionable mode of proceeding nowadays is to leave diaries crammed with sarcasm, give some unhappy friend orders to wait until you are settled in the grave, and then confound your friends and foes by attacks which come to the light long after your ears are deaf to praise and blame. Samuel Wilberforce went into the choicest society that Britain could show; he was the confidant of many people, and he contrived to charm all but a few cross-grained critics. His good humour seemed inexhaustible; and those who saw his cherubic face beaming sweetly on the company at banquets or assemblies fancied that so delightful a man was never known before. But this suave, unctuous gentleman, who fascinated every one, from Queen to cottager, spent a pretty fair share of his life in writing vicious witticisms and scandals concerning the folk with whom he seemed to be on affectionate terms. At nights, after spending his days in working and bowing and smiling and winning the hearts of men, he went home and poured out all the venom that was in his heart. When his memoirs appeared, all the most select social circles in the country were driven into a serious flutter. No one was spared; and, as some of the statements made by Wilberforce were, to say the least, a little sweeping, a violent paper warfare began, which has hardly ceased raging even now. Happy and contented men who believed that the Bishop loved and admired them were surprised to find that he had disliked and despised them. Moreover, the naughty diarist had an ugly habit of recording men's private conversations; and thus a good many sayings which should have been kept secret became public property. A very irreverent wag wrote-- How blest was he who'd ne'er consent With Wilberforce to walk, Nor dined with Soapy Sam, nor let The Bishop hear him talk! and this crude epigram expressed the feelings of numbers of enraged and scandalized individuals. The wretched book gave us an ugly picture of a hollow society where kindness seemed non-existent, and where every man walked with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies. As more memoirs appeared, it was most funny to observe that, while Wilberforce was occupied in scarifying his dear friends, some of his dear friends were occupied in scarifying him. Thus we find Abraham Hayward, a polished leader of society, writing in the following way of Wilberforce, with whom ostensibly his relations were of the most affectionate description--"Wilberforce is really a low fellow. Again and again the committee of the Athenaeum Club have been obliged to reprove him for his vulgar selfishness." This is dreadful! No wonder that petty cynics snarl and rejoice; they say, "Look at your great men, and see what mean backbiters they are!" Alas! Thomas Carlyle's memoirs are a kind of graveyard of reputations; and we can well understand the rage and horror with which many individuals protested against the fierce Scotchman's strictures. In the hearts of thousands of noble young people Carlyle's memory was cherished like that of some dear saint; and it was terrible to find that the strong prophet had been penetrated by such a virus of malice. Carlyle met all the best men and women in England; but the only ones whom he did not disparage were Tennyson, the Duke of Wellington, Mr. Froude, and Emerson. He could not talk even of Charles Darwin without calling him an imbecile; and his all-round hitting at his closest intimates is simply merciless. The same perversity which made him talk of Keats's "maudlin weak-eyed sensibility" caused him to describe his loyal, generous, high-bred friend Lord Houghton as a "nice little robin-redbreast of a man;" while Mrs. Basil Montagu, who cheered him and spared no pains to aid him in the darkest times, is now immortalized by one masterly venomous paragraph. Carlyle was great--very great--but really the cultivation of loyal friendships seems hardly to have been in his line. Men who know his works by heart, and who derived their noblest inspiration from him, cannot bear to read his memoirs twice over, for it sadly appears as though the Titan had defiled the very altar of friendship. What shall we say of the cunning cat-like Charles Greville, who crept on tiptoe through the world, observing and recording the littleness of men? His stealthy eye missed nothing; and the men whom he flattered and used little thought that the wizened dandy who pleased them with his old-world courtesy was chronicling their weakness and baseness for all time. A nobly patriotic Ministry came before the world with a flourish of trumpets, and declared that England must fight Russia in defence of public law, freedom, and other holy things. But the wicked diarist had watched the secret proceedings of his dear friends; and he informs us that those beloved intimates were all sound asleep when a single Minister decided on the movement which cost us forty thousand men and one hundred millions of treasure. That close sly being used--to worm out the secrets of men's innermost hearts; and his impassive mask never showed a sign of emotion. To illustrate his mode of extracting the information of which he made such terrible use, I may tell one trivial anecdote which has never before been made public. When Greville was very old, he went to see a spiritualistic "medium" who was attracting fashionable London. The charlatan looked at the gray worn old man and thought himself safe; four other visitors attended the _séance_, but the "medium" bestowed all his attention on Greville. With much emotion he cried, "There is an aged lady behind your chair!" Greville remarked sweetly, "How interesting!" "She is very, very like you!" "Who can it be?" murmured Greville. "She lifts her hands to bless you. Her hands are now resting over your head!" shouted the medium; and the pallid emotionless man said, with a slight tremor in his voice, "Pray tell me who this mysterious visitant may be!" "It is your mother." "Oh," said Greville, "I am delighted to hear that!" "She says she is perfectly happy, and she watches you constantly." "Dear soul!" muttered the imperturbable one. "She tells me you will join her soon, and be happy with her." Then Greville said gravely, in dulcet tones, "That is extremely likely, for I am going to take tea with her at five o'clock!" He had led on the poor swindler in his usual fashion; and he never hinted at the fact that his mother was nearly a century old. His friends were "pumped" in the same subtle manner; and the immortally notorious memoirs are strewn with assassinated characters. As we study the phenomena indicated by these memoirs, we begin to wonder whether friendship is or is not extinct. Men are gregarious, and flocks of them meet together at all hours of the day and night. They exchange conventional words of greeting, they wear happy smiles, they are apparently cordial and charming' one with another; and yet a rigidly accurate observer may look mournfully for signs of real friendship. How can it exist? The men and women who pass through the whirl of a London season cannot help regarding their fellow-creatures rather as lay figures than as human beings. They go to crowded balls and seething "receptions," not to hold any wise human converse, but only to be able to say that they were in such and such a room on a certain night. The glittering crowds fleet by like shadows, and no man has much chance of knowing his neighbour's heart. How fast the flitting figures come-- The mild, the fierce, the stony face; Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace! Ah, it is only the faces that the tired pleasure-seeker sees and knows; the real comrade, the human soul, is hidden away behind the mask! Genuine heroic friendship cannot flourish in an artificial society; and that perhaps accounts for the fact that the curled darlings of our modern community spend much of their leisure in reading papers devoted to tattle and scandal. It seems as though the search after pleasure poisoned the very sources of nobleness in the nature of men. In our monstrous city a man may live without a quarrel for forty years; he may be popular, he may be received with genial greetings wherever he goes--and yet he has no friend. He lingers through his little day; and, when he passes away, the change is less heeded than would be the removal of a chair from a club smoking-room. When I see the callous indifference with which illness, misfortune, and death are regarded by the dainty classes, I can scarcely wonder when irate philosophers denounce polite society as a pestilent and demoralizing nuisance. Among the people airily and impudently called "the lower orders" noble friendships are by no means uncommon. "I can't bear that look on your face, Bill. I'm coming to save you or go with you!" said a rough sailor as he sprang into a raging sea to help his shipmate. "I'm coming, old fellow!" shouted the mate of a merchant-vessel; and he dived overboard among the mountainous seas that were rolling south of Cape Horn one January. For an hour this hero fought with the blinding water, and he saved his comrade at last. Strange to say, the lounging impassive dandies who regard the universe with a yawn, and who sneer at the very notion of friendship, develop the kindly and manly virtues when they are removed from the enervating atmosphere of Society and forced to lead a hard life. A man to whom emotion, passion, self-sacrifice, are things to be mentioned with a curl of the lip, departs on a campaign, and amid squalor, peril, and grim horrors he becomes totally unselfish. Men who have watched our splendid military officers in the field are apt to think that a society which converts such generous souls into self-seeking fribbles must be merely poisonous. The more we study the subject the more clearly we can see that where luxury flourishes friendship withers. In the vast suffering Russian nation friendships are at this very moment cherished to the heroic pitch. A mighty people are awakening, as it were, from sleep; the wicked and corrupt still sit in high places, but among the weltering masses of the populace purity and nobleness are spreading, and such friendships are fostered as never have been shadowed forth in story or song. Sophie Peroffsky mounts the scaffold with four other doomed mortals; she never thinks of her own approaching agony--she only longs to comfort her friends and she kisses them and greets them with cheering words until the last dread moment arrives. Poor little Marie Soubotine--sweetest of perverted children, noblest of rebels--refuses to purchase her own safety by uttering a word to betray her sworn friend. For three years she lingers on in an underground dungeon, and then she is sent on the wild road to Siberia; she dies amid gloom and deep suffering, but no torture can unseal her lips; she gladly gives her life to save another's. Antonoff endures the torture, but no agony can make him prove false to his friends. When his captors give him a respite from the thumbscrews and the red-hot wires that are thrust under his nails, he forgets his own torment, and scratches on his plate his cipher signals to his comrades. Those men and women in that awful country are lawless and dangerous, but they are heroic, and they are true friends one to another. How far we proud islanders must have forsaken for a time the road to nobleness when we are able to exalt the saying "A full purse is the only true friend" into a representative English proverb! We do not rage and foam as Timon did--that would be ill-bred and ludicrous; we simply smile and utter delicate mockeries. In the plays that best please our golden youth nothing is so certain to win applause and laughter as a sentence about the treachery or greed of friends. Do those grinning, superlatively insolent cynics really represent the mighty Mother of Nations? Ah, no! If even the worst of them were thrust away into some region where life was hard for him, he would show something like nobility and manliness; it is the mephitic airs of ease and luxury that breed selfishness and scorn in his soul. At any rate, those effeminate people are not typical specimens of our steadfast friendly race. When the folk in the colliery village hear that deadly thud and feel the shudder of the earth which tell of disaster, Jack the hewer rushes to the pit's mouth and joins the search-party. He knows that the gas may grip him by the throat, and that the heavy current of dissolution may creep through his veins; but his mate is down there in the workings, and he must needs save him or die in the attempt. Greater love hath no man than this. Ah, yes--the poor collier is indeed ready to lay down his life for his friend! The fiery soldier, William Beresford, sees a comrade in peril; a horde of infuriated savages are rushing up, and there is only one pony to carry the two Englishmen. Beresford calls, "Jump up behind me!" but the friend answers, "No; save yourself! I can die, and I won't risk your life." Then the undignified but decidedly gallant Beresford observes, "If you don't come, I'll punch your head!" The pony canters heavily off; one stumble would mean death, but the dauntless fighting man brings in his friend safely, though only by the skin of his teeth. It is absolutely necessary for the saving of our moral health that we should turn away from the dreary flippancy of an effete society to such scenes as those. If we regarded only the pampered classes, then we might well think that true human fellowship had perished, and a starless darkness--worse almost than Atheism--would fall on the soul. But we are not all corrupt, and the strong brave heart of our people still beats true. Young men cherish manly affection for friends, and are not ashamed to show it; sweet girls form friendships that hold until the maidens become matrons and till the shining locks have turned to silver white. Wherever men are massed together the struggle for existence grows keen, and selfishness and cynicism thrust up their rank growths. "Pleasure" blunts the moral sense and converts the natural man into a noxious being; but happily our people are sound at the core, and it will be long ere cynicism and corruption are universal. The great healthy middle-class is made up of folk who would regard a writer of spiteful memoirs as a mere bravo; they have not perhaps the sweetness and light which Mr. Arnold wished to bestow on them, but at any rate they have a certain rough generosity, and they have also a share of that self-forgetfulness which alone forms the basis of friendship. Having that, they can do without Carlyle's learning and Wilberforce's polish, and they can certainly do without the sour malice of the historian and the prelate. _July, 1887._ _DISASTERS AT SEA_. During last year the register of slaughter on the ocean was worse than any ever before seen since the _Royal Charter_ took her crew to destruction; and it seems as though matters were growing worse and worse. One dismal old story is being repeated week in, week out. In thick weather or clear weather--it does not seem to matter which--two vessels approach each other, and the presiding officers on board of each are quite satisfied and calm; then, on a sudden, one vessel shifts her course, there are a few hurried and maddened ejaculations, and then comes a crash. After that, the ugly tale may be continued in the same terms over and over again; the boats cannot be cleared away, the vessels drift apart, and both founder, or one is left crippled. I shall have something to say about the actual effects of a collision presently, but I may first go on to name some other kinds of disaster. A heavy sea is rolling, and occasionally breaking, and a vessel is lumbering along from crest to hollow of the rushing seas; a big wall of water looms over her for a second, and then comes crashing down; the deck gives way--there are no water-tight compartments--and the ship becomes suddenly as unmanageable as a mere cask in a seaway. Again, a plate is wrenched, and some villainously-made rivets jump out of their places like buttons from an over-tight bodice; in ten minutes the vessel is wallowing, ready for her last plunge; and very likely the crew have not even the forlorn chance of taking to the boats. Once more--on a clear night in the tropics an emigrant ship is stealing softly through the water; the merry crowd on deck has broken up, the women, poor creatures, are all locked up in their quarters, and only a few men remain to lounge and gossip. The great stars hang like lamps from the solemn dome of the sky, and the ripples are painted with exquisite serpentine streaks; the wind hums softly from the courses of the sails, and some of the men like to let the cool breeze blow over them. Everything seems so delightfully placid and clear that the thought of danger vanishes; no one would imagine that even a sea-bird could come up unobserved over that starlit expanse of water. But the ocean is treacherous in light and shade. The loungers tell their little stories and laugh merrily; the officer of the watch carelessly stumps forward from abreast of the wheel, looks knowingly aloft, twirls round like a teetotum, and stumps back again; and the sweet night passes in splendour, until all save one or two home-sick lingerers are happy. It never occurs to any of these passengers to glance forward and see whether a streak of green fire seems to strike out from the starboard--the right-hand side of the vessel--or whether a shaft of red shoots from the other side. As a matter of fact, the vessel is going on like a dark cloud over the flying furrows of the sea; but there is very little of the cloud about her great hull, for she would knock a house down if she hit it when travelling at her present rate. The captain is a thrifty man, and the owners are thrifty persons; they consider the cost of oil; and thus, as it is a nice clear night, the side-lights are not lit, and the judgment of the tramping look-out man on the forecastle-head is trusted. Parenthetically I may say that, without being in any way disposed to harbour exaggerated sentiment, I feel almost inclined to advocate death for any sailor who runs in mid-ocean without carrying his proper lights out. I once saw a big iron barque go grinding right from the bulge of the bow to the stern of an ocean steamer--and that wretched barque had no lights. Half a yard's difference, and both vessels would have sunk. Three hundred and fifty people were sleeping peacefully on board the steamer, and the majority of them must have gone down, while those who were saved would have had a hard time in the boats. Strange to say, that very same steamer was crossed by another vessel which carried no lights: but this time the result was bad, for the steamer went clean through the other ship and sank her instantly. To return to the emigrant vessel. The officer continues his tramp like one of the caged animals of a menagerie; the spare man of the watch leans against the rail and hums-- We'll go no more by the light of the moon; The song is done, and we've lost the tune, So I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid-- A-roving, A-roving, &c. --the pipes glow in the clear air, and the flying water bubbles and moans. Oh, yes, all is well--beautifully well--and we need no lights whatever! Then the look-out man whistles "Hist!"--which is quite an unusual mode of signalling; the officer ceases his monotonous tramp and runs forward. "Luff a little!" "He's still bearing up. Why doesn't he keep away?" "Luff a little more! Stand by your lee-braces. Oh, he'll go clear!" So the low clear talk goes, till at last with a savage yell of rage a voice comes from the other vessel--"Where you coming to?" "Hard down with it!" "He's into us!" "Clear away your boats!" Then there is a sound like "smack." Then comes a long scraunch, and a thunderous rattle of blocks; a sail goes with a report like a gun; the vessels bump a few times, and then one draws away, leaving the other with bows staved in. A wild clamour surges up from below, but there is no time to heed that; the men toil like Titans, and the hideous music of prayers and curses disturbs the night. Then the vessel that was hit amidships rolls a little, and there is a gurgle like that of an enormous, weir: a mast goes with a sharp report; a man's figure appears on the taffrail and bounds far into the sea--it is an experienced hand who wants to escape the down-draught; the hull shudders, grows steady, and then with one lurch the ship swashes down and the bellowing vortex throws up huge spirts of boiling spray. A few stray swimmers are picked up, but the rest of the company will be seen nevermore. Fancy those women in that darkened steerage! Think of it, and then say what should be done to an owner who stints his officers in the matter of lamp-oil; or to a captain who does not use what the owner provides! The huddled victims wake from confused slumbers; some scream--some become insane on the instant; the children add their shrill clamour to the mad rout; and the water roars in. Then the darkness grows thick, and the agonized crowd tear and throttle each other in fierce terror; and then approaches the slowly-coming end. Oh, how often--how wearily often--have such scenes been enacted on the face of this fair world! And all to save a little lamp-oil! Yet again--a great vessel plunges away to sea bearing a precious freight of some one thousand souls. Perhaps the owners reckon the cargo in the hold as being worth more than the human burden; but of course opinions differ. The wild rush from one border of the ocean to the other goes on for a few days and nights, and the tremendous structure of steel cleaves the hugest waves as though they were but clouds. Down below the luxurious passengers live in their fine hotel, and the luckier ones are quite happy and ineffably comfortable. If a sunny day breaks, then the pallid battalions in the steerage come up to the air, and the ship's deck is like a long animated street. A thousand souls, we said? True! Now let some quiet observant man of the sailorly sort go round at night and count the boats. Twelve, and the gig aft makes thirteen! Allowing a tremendously large average, this set of boats might actually carry six hundred persons; but the six hundred would need to sit very carefully even in smooth water, and a rush might capsize any one boat. The vast floating hotel spins on at twenty miles an hour--a speed that might possibly shame some of the railways that run from London suburbs--and the officers want to save every yard. No care is omitted; three men are on the bridge at night, there is a starboard look-out, a port look-out, and the quartermaster patrols amidships and sees that the masthead light is all right The officer and the look-out men pass the word every half-hour, and nothing escapes notice. If some unlucky steerage passenger happens to strike a light forward, he stands a very good chance of being put in irons; and, if there is a patient in the deck-house, the windows must be darkened with thick cloths. Each officer, on hazy nights, improvises a sort of hood for himself; and he peers forward as if life depended on his eyesight--as indeed it does. But there comes a bright evening, and the monster liner's journey is all but over; three hours more of steaming and she will be safe. A little schooner comes skimming up on the port side--and the schooner is to the liner as a chip is to a tree-trunk. The schooner holds on her course, for she is not bound to give way at all; but the officer on the bridge of the steamer thinks, "I shall lose a quarter of an hour if I edge away to starboard and let him fall astern of us. I shall keep right on and shave his bows." The liner is going at nineteen knots, the schooner is romping along at eight--yet the liner cannot clear the little vessel. There comes a fresh gust of wind; the sailing vessel lies over to it, and just touches the floating hotel amidships--but the touch is enough to open a breach big enough for a coach and four to go through. The steamer's head is laid for the land and every ounce of steam is put on, but she settles and settles more and more. And now what about the thirteen boats for a thousand people? There is a wild scuffling, wild outcry. Women bite their lips and-try, with divine patience, to crush down all appearance of fear, and to keep their limbs from trembling; some unruly fellows are kept in check only by terror of the revolver; and the officers remember that their fair name and their hope of earthly redemption are at stake. In one case of this sort it took three mortal hours to ferry the passengers and crew over smooth water to the rescuing vessel; and those rescued folk may think themselves the most fortunate of all created souls, for, if the liner had been hit with an impetus of a few more tons, very few on board of her would have lived to tell the tale. Unless passengers, at the risk of being snubbed and threatened, criticise the boat accommodation of great steamers, there will be such a disaster one day as will make the world shudder. The pitiful thing is to know how easily all this might be prevented. Until one has been on board a small vessel which has every spar, bolt, iron, and plank sound, one can have no idea how perfectly safe a perfectly-built ship is in any sort of weather. A schooner of one hundred and fifty tons was caught in a hurricane which was so powerful that the men had to hang on where they could, even before the flattened foaming sea rose from its level rush and began to come on board. All round were vessels in distress; the scare caused many of the seamen to forget their lights, and the ships lumbered on, first to collision, and then to that crashing plunge which takes all hands down. The little schooner was actually obliged to offer assistance to a big mail-steamer--and yet she might have been rather easily carried by that same steamer. But the little vessel's lights were watched with sedulous care; the blasts might tear at her scanty canvas, but there was not a rag or a rope that would give way; and, although the awful rush of the gale carried her within eight miles of a rocky lee-shore, her captain had sufficient confidence in the goodness of his gear to begin sailing his ship instead of keeping her hove to. One rope faulty, one light wrong, one hand out of his place at the critical time, and the bones of a pleasant ship's company would have been strewn on a bleak shore: but everything was right, and the tiny craft drew away like a seagull when she was made to sail. Of course the sea ran clean over her, but she forged quietly on until she was thirty miles clear of those foaming breakers that roared on the cliffs. During that night more good seamen were drowned than one would like to number; ships worth a king's ransom were utterly lost. And why? Simply because they had not the perfect gear which saved the little schooner. Even had the little craft been sent over until she refused to rise again to the sea, the boats were ready, and everybody on board had a good chance. Care first of all is needed, and then fear may be banished. The smart agent reads his report glibly to the directors of a steamboat company--and yet I have seen such smart agents superintending the departure of vessels whereof the appearance was enough to make a good judge quake for the safety of crew and cargo. What do I advise? Well, in the first place, I must remind shoregoing folk that a sound well-found vessel will live through anything. Let passengers beware of lines which pay a large dividend and show nothing on their balance-sheets to allow for depreciation. In the next place, if any passenger on a long voyage should see that the proper lights are not shown, he ought to wake up his fellow passengers at any hour of the night, and go with his friends to threaten the captain. Never mind bluster or oaths--merely say, "If your lights are not shown, you may regard your certificate as gone." If that does not bring the gentleman to his senses, nothing will. Again, take care in any case that no raw foreign seamen are allowed to go on the look-out in any vessel, for a misunderstood shout at a critical moment may bring sudden doom on hundreds of unsuspecting fellow-creatures. Above all, see that the water-casks in every boat are kept full. In this way the sea tragedies may be a little lessened in their hateful number. _March, 1889._ _A RHAPSODY OF SUMMER_. There came into my life a time of strenuous effort, and I drank all the joys of labour to the lees. When the rich dark midnights of summer drooped over the earth, I could hardly bear to think of the hours of oblivion which must pass ere I felt the delight of work once more. And the world seemed very beautiful; and, when I looked up to the solemn sky, so sweetly sown with stars, I could see stirring words like "Fame" and "Gladness" and "Triumph" written dimly across the vault; so that my heart was full of rejoicing, and all the world promised fair. In those immortal midnights the sea spoke wonderful things to me, and the long rollers glittering under the high moon bore health and bright promise as they hastened to the shore. And, when the ships stole--oh, so silently!--out of the shadows and moved over the diamond track of the moon's light, I sent my heart out to the lonely seamen and prayed that they might be joyous like me. Then the ringing of the song of multitudinous birds sounded in the hours of dawn, and the tawny-throated king of songsters made my pulses tremble with his wild ecstasy; and the blackbird poured forth mellow defiance, and the thrush shrilled in his lovely fashion concerning the joy of existence. Pass, dreams! The long beams are drawn from the bosom of dawn. The gray of the quiet sea quickens into rose, and soon the glittering serpentine streaks of colour quiver into a blaze; the brown sands glow, and the little waves run inward, showing milky curves under the gay light; the shoregoing boats come home, and their sails--those coarse tanned sails--are like flowers that wake with the daisies and the peonies to feast on the sun. Happy holiday-makers who are wise enough to watch the fishers come in! The booted thickly-clad fellows plunge into the shallow water; and then the bare-footed women come down, and the harvest of the night is carried up the cliffs before the most of the holiday-folk have fairly awakened. The proud day broadens to its height, and the sands are blackened by the growing crowd; for the beach near a fashionable watering-place is like a section cut from a turbulent city street, save that the folk on the sands think of aught but business. I have never been able to sympathize with those who can perceive only vulgarity in a seaside crowd. It is well to care for deserted shores and dark moaning forests in the far North; but the average British holiday-maker is a sociable creature; he likes to feel the sense of companionship, and his spirits rise in proportion to the density of the crowd amid which he disports himself. To me, the life, the concentrated enjoyment, the ways of the children who are set free from the trammels of town life, are all like so much poetry. I learned early to rejoice in silent sympathy with the rejoicing of God's creatures. Only to watch the languid pose of some steady toiler from the City is enough to give discontented people a goodly lesson. The man has been ground in the mill for a year; his modest life has left him no time for enjoyment, and his ideas of all pleasure are crude. Watch him as he remains passively in an ecstasy of rest. The cries of children, the confused jargon of the crowd, fall but faintly on his nerves; he likes the sensation of being in company; he has a dim notion of the beauty of the vast sky with its shining snowy-bosomed clouds, and he lets the light breeze blow over him. I like to look on that good citizen and contrast the dull round of his wayfarings on many streets with the ease and satisfaction of his attitude on the sands. Then the night comes. The dancers are busy, the commonplace music is made refined by distance, and the murmur of the sea gathers power over all other sounds, until the noon of night arrives and the last merry voices are heard no more. Poor harmless revellers, so condemned by men whose round of life is a search for pleasure! Many of you do not understand or care for quiet refinements of dress and demeanour; you lack restraint; but I have felt much gladness while demurely watching your abandonment. I could draw rest for my soul from the magnetic night long after you were aweary and asleep; but much of my pleasure came as a reflection from yours. As my memories of sweetness--yes, and of purifying sadness--gather more thickly, I am minded to wonder that so much has been vouchsafed me rather than to mourn over shadowy might-have-beens. The summer day by the deep lovely lake--the lake within sound of the sea! All round the steep walls that shut in the dark glossy water there hung rank festoons and bosses of brilliant green, and the clear reflections of the weeds and flowers hung so far down in the mysterious deeps that the height of the rocky wall seemed stupendous. Far over in one tremendously deep pool the lazy great fish wallowed and lunged; they would not show their speckled sides very much until the evening; but they kept sleepily moving all day, and sometimes a mighty back would show like a log for an instant. In the morning the modest ground-larks cheeped softly among the rough grasses on the low hills, while the proud heaven-scaler--the lordly kinsman of the ground-lark--filled the sky with his lovely clamour. Sometimes a water-rail would come out from the sedges and walk on the surface of the lake as a tiny ostrich might on the shifting sand; pretty creatures of all sorts seemed to find their homes near the deep wonderful water, and the whole morning might be passed in silently watching the birds and beasts that came around. The gay sun made streams of silver fire shoot from the polished brackens and sorrel, the purple geraniums gleamed like scattered jewels, and the birds seemed to be joyful in presence of that manifold beauty--joyful as the quiet human being who watched them all. And the little fishes in the shallows would have their fun as well. They darted hither and thither; the spiny creatures which the schoolboy loves built their queer nests among the waterweeds; and sometimes a silly adventurer--alarmed by the majestic approach of a large fish--would rush on to the loamy bank at the shallow end of the lake and wriggle piteously in hopeless failure. The afternoons were divinely restful by the varied shores of the limpid lake. Sometimes as the sun sloped there might come hollow blasts of wind that had careered for a brief space over the woods; but the brooding heat, the mastering silence, the feeling that multifarious quiescent living things were ready to start into action, all took the senses with somnolence. That drowsy joy, that soothing silence which seemed only intensified by the murmur of bees and the faint gurgle of water, were like medicine to the soul; and it seemed that the conception of Nirvana became easily understood as the delicious open-air reverie grew more and more involved and vague. Then the last look of the sun, the creeping shadows that made the sea gray and turned the little lake to an inky hue, and then the slow fall of the quiet-coloured evening, and, last, the fall of the mystic night! Poor little birds, moving uneasily in the darkness, threw down tiny fragments from the rocks, and each fragment fell with a sound like the clink of a delicate silver bell; softly the sea moaned, softly the night-wind blew, and softly--so softly!--came whispering the spirits of the dead. Joyous faces could be seen by that lake long, long ago. In summer, when the lower rim was all blazing with red and yellow flowers, young lovers came to whisper and gaze. They are dead and gone. In winter, when the tarn was covered with jetty glossy ice, there were jovial scenes whereof the jollity was shared by a happy few. Round and round on the glossy surface the skaters flew and passed like gliding ghosts under the gloom of the rocks; the hiss of the iron sounded musically, and the steep wall flung back sharp echoes of harmless laughter. Each volume of sound was magically magnified, and the gay company carried on their pleasant outing far into the chili winter night. They are all gone! One was there oftenest in spring and summer, and the last sun-rays often made her golden hair shine in splendour as she stood gazing wistfully over the solemn lake. She saw wonders there that coarser spirits could not know; and all her gentle musings passed into poetry--poetry that was seldom spoken. Those who loved her never cared to break her sacred stillness as she pondered by the side of the beloved tarn; her language was not known to common folk, for she held high converse with the great of old time; and, when she chanced to speak with me, I understood but dimly, though I had all the sense of beauty and mystery. A shipwrecked sailor said she looked as if she belonged to God. Her Master claimed her early. Dear, your yellow hair will shine no more in the sun that you loved; you have long given over your day-dreams--and you are now dreamless. Or perhaps you dwell amid the silent glory of one last long dream of those you loved. The gorse on the moor moans by your grave, the brackens grow green and tall and wither into dead gold year by year, the lake gleams gloomily in fitful flashes amid its borders of splendour; and you rest softly while the sea calls your lullaby nightly. Far off, far off, my soul, by quiet seas where the lamps of the Southern Cross hang in the magnificence of the purple sky, there is one who remembers the lake, and the glassy ice, and the blaze of pompous summer, and the shining of that yellow hair. Peace--oh, peace! The sorrow has passed into quiet pensive regret that is nigh akin to gladness. How many other ineffable days and nights have I known? All who can feel the thrilling of sea-winds, all who can have even one day amid grass and fair trees, grasp the time of delight, enjoy all beauties, do not pass in coarseness one single minute; and then, when the Guide comes to point your road through the strange gates, you may be like me--you may repine at nothing, for you will have much good to remember and scanty evil. It is good for me now to think of the thundering rush of the yacht as, with the great mainsail drawing heavily, she roared through the field of foam made by her own splendid speed, while the inky waves on the dim horizon moaned and the dark summer midnight brooded warmly over the dark sea. It is good to think of the strange days when the vessel was buried in wreaths of dark cloud, and the rush of the wind only drove the haze screaming among the shrouds. The vast dim mountains might not be pleasant to the eye of either seaman or landsman; but, when they poured their thundering deluge on a strong safe deck, we did not mind them. Happy hearts were there even in stormy warring afternoons; and men watched quite placidly as the long grim hills came gliding on. Then in the evenings there were chance hours when the dim forecastle was a pleasant place in bad weather. The bow of the vessel swayed wildly; the pitching seemed as if it might end in one immense supreme dive to the gulf, and the mad storming of the wind forced us to utter our simple talk in loudest tones. Gruff kindly phrases, without much wit or point, were good enough for us; perhaps even the appalling dignitary--yes, even the mate--would crawl in; and we listened to lengthy disjointed stories. And all the while the tremendous howl of the storm went on, and the merry lads who went out on duty had to rush wildly so as to reach the alley when a very heavy sea came over. The sense of strength was supreme; the crash of the gale was nothing; and we rather hugged ourselves on the notion that the fierce screaming meant us no harm. The curls of smoke flitted softly amid the blurred yellow beams from the lamp, and our chat went on while the monstrous billows grew blacker and blacker and the spray shone like corpse-candles on the mystic and mighty hills. And then the hours of the terrible darkness! To leave the swept deck while every vein tingled with the ecstasy of the gale! The dull warmth below was exquisite; the sly creatures which crept from their, dens and let the lamplight shine on their weird eyes--even the gamesome rats--had something merrily diabolic about them. Their thuds on the floor, their sordid swarming, their inexplicable daring--all gave a kind of minor current of _diablerie_ to the rush and hurry of the stormy night; for they seemed to speak--and the creatures which on shore are odious appeared to be quite in place in the soaring groaning vessel. Ah, my brave forecastle lads, my merry tan-faced favourites, I shall no more see your quaint squalor, I shall no more see your battle with wind and savage waves and elemental turmoil! Some of you have passed to the shadows before me; some of you have only the ooze for your graves; and the others cannot ever hear my greeting again on the sweet mornings when the waves are all gay with lily-hued blossoms of foam. Pale beyond porch and portal, Crowned with dark flowers she stands, Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands. Gathers! And Proserpina will strew the flowers of foam that I may never see more--and then she will gather me. All was good in the time of delight--all is good now that only a memory clings lovingly to the heart. Take my counsel. Rejoice in your day, and the night shall carry no dread for you. _June, 1889._ _LOST DAYS._ I fully recognize the fact which the Frenchman flippantly stated--that no human beings really believe that death is inevitable until the last clasp of the stone-cold king numbs their pulses. Perhaps this insensibility is a merciful gift; at any rate, it is a fact. If belief came home with violence to our minds, we should suffer from a sort of vertigo; but the merciful dullness which the Frenchman perceived and mocked in his epigram saves us all the miseries of apprehension. This is very curiously seen among soldiers when they know that they must soon go into action. The soldiers chat together on the night before the attack; they know that some of them must go down; they actually go so far as to exchange messages thus--"If anything happens to me, you know, Bill, I want you to take that to the old people. You give me a note or anything else you have; and, if we get out of the shindy, we can hand the things back again." After confidences of this sort, the men chat on; and I never yet knew or heard of one who did not speak of his own safe return as a matter of course. When a brigade charges, there may be a little anxiety at first; but the whistle of the first bullet ends all misgivings, and the fellows grow quite merry, though it may be that half of them are certain to be down on the ground before the day is over. A man who is struck may know well that he will pass away: but he will rise up feebly to cheer on his comrades--nay, he will ask questions, as the charging troops pass him, as to the fate of Bill or Joe, or the probable action of the Heavies, or similar trifles. In the fight of life we all behave much as the soldiers do in the crash and hurry of battle. If we reason the matter out with a semblance of logic, we all know that we must move toward the shadows; but, even after we are mortally stricken by disease or age, we persist in acting and thinking as if there were no end. In youth we go almost further; we are too apt to live as though we were immortal, and as though there were absolutely nothing to result from human action or human inaction. To the young man and the young woman the future is not a blind lane with a grave at the end; it is a spacious plain reaching away towards a far-off horizon; and that horizon recedes and recedes as they move forward, leaving magnificent expanses to be crossed in joyous freedom. A pretty delusion! The youth harks onward, singing merrily and rejoicing in sympathy with the mystic song of the birds; there is so much space around him--the very breath of life is a joy--and he is content to taste in glorious idleness the ecstasy of living. The evening closes in, and then the horizon seems to be narrowing; like the walls of the deadly chamber in the home of the Inquisition, the skies shrink inward--and the youth has misgivings. The next day finds his plain shrunken a little in expanse, and his horizon has not so superb a sweep. Nevertheless he goes gaily on, and once more he raises his voice joyously, and tries to think that the plain and the horizon can contract no more. Thus in foolish hopefulness he passes his days until the glorious plain of his dreams has been traversed, and, lo, under his very feet is the great gulf fixed, and far below the tide--the tide of Eternity--laps sullenly against the walls of the deadly chasm. If the youth knew that the gulf and the rolling river were so near--if he not only knew, but could absolutely picture his doom--would he be so merry? Ah, no! I repeat that, if men could be so disciplined as to believe in their souls that death must come, then there would be no lost days. Is there one of us who can say that he never lost a day amid this too brief, too joyous, too entrancing term of existence? Not one. The aged Roman--who, by-the-way, was somewhat of a prig--used to go about moaning, "I have lost a day," if he thought he had not performed some good action or learned something in the twenty-four hours. Most of us have no such qualms; we waste the time freely; and we never know that it is wasted until with a dull shock we comprehend that all must be left and that the squandered hours can never be retrieved. The men who are strongest and greatest and best suffer the acutest remorse for the lost days; they know their own powers, and that very knowledge makes them suffer all the more bitterly when they reckon up what they might have done and compare it with the sum of their actual achievement. In a certain German town a little cell is shown on the walls of which a famous name is marked many times. It appears that in his turbulent youth Prince Bismarck was often a prisoner in this cell; and his various appearances are registered under eleven different dates. Moreover, I observe from the same rude register that he fought twenty-eight duels. Lost days--lost days! He tells us how he drank in the usual insane fashion prevalent among the students. He "cannot tell how much Burgundy he could really drink." Lost days--lost days! And now the great old man, with Europe at his feet and the world awaiting his lightest word with eagerness, turns regretfully sometimes to think of the days thrown away. A haze seems to hang before the eyes of such as he; and it is a haze that makes the future seem dim and vast, even while it obscures all the sharp outlines of things. The child is not capable of reasoning coherently, and therefore its disposition to fritter away time must be regarded as only the result of defective organization; but the young man and young woman can reason, and yet we find them perpetually making excuses for eluding time and eternity. Look at the young fellows who are preparing for the hard duties of life by studying at a University. Here is one who seems to have recognized the facts of existence; his hours are arranged as methodically as his heart beats; he knows the exact balance between physical and intellectual strength, and he overtaxes neither, but body and mind are worked up to the highest attainable pressure. No pleasures of the destructive sort call this youngster aside; he has learned already what it is to reap the harvest of a quiet eye, and his joys are of the sober kind. He rises early, and he has got far through his work ere noon; his quiet afternoon is devoted to harmless merriment in the cricket-field or on the friendly country roads, and his evening is spent without any vain gossip in the happy companionship of his books. That young man loses no day; but unhappily he represents a type which is but too rare. The steady man, economic of time, is a rarity; but the wild youth who is always going to do something to-morrow is one of a class that numbers only too many on its rolls. To-morrow! The young fellow passes to-day on the river, or spends it in lounging or in active dissipation. He feels that he is doing wrong; but the gaunt spectres raised by conscience are always exorcised by the bright vision of to-morrow. To-morrow the truant will go to his books; he will bend himself for that concentrated effort which alone secures success, and his time of carelessness and sloth shall be far left behind. But the sinister influence of to-day saps his will and renders him infirm; each new to-day is wasted amid thoughts of visionary to-morrows which take all the power from his soul; and, when he is nerveless, powerless, tired, discontented with the very sight of the sun, he finds suddenly that his feet are on the edge of the gulf, and he knows that there will be no more to-morrows. I am not entering a plea for hard, petrifying work. If a man is a hand-worker or brain-worker, his fate is inevitable if he regards work as the only end of life. The loss of which I speak is that incurred by engaging in pursuits which do not give mental strength or resource or bodily health. The hard-worked business-man who gallops twenty miles after hounds before he settles to his long stretch of toil is not losing his day; the empty young dandy whose life for five months in the year is given up to galloping across grass country or lounging around stables is decidedly a spendthrift so far as time is concerned. I wish--if it be not impious so to wish--that every young man could have one glimpse into the future. Supposing some good genius could say, "If you proceed as you are now doing, your position in your fortieth year will be this!" what a horror would strike through many among us, and how desperately each would strive to take advantage of that kindly "If." But there is no uplifting of the veil; and we must all be guided by the experience of the past and not by knowledge of the future. I observe that those who score the greatest number of lost days on the world's calendar always do so under the impression that they are enjoying pleasure. An acute observer whose soul is not vitiated by cynicism may find a kind of melancholy pastime in observing the hopeless attempts of these poor son's to persuade themselves that they are making the best of existence. I would not for worlds seem for a moment to disparage pleasure, because I hold that a human being who lives without joy must either become bad, mad, or wretched. But I speak of those who cheat themselves into thinking that every hour which passes swiftly to eternity is wisely spent. Observe the parties of young men who play at cards even in the railway-train morning after morning and evening after evening. The time of the journey might be spent in useful and happy thought; it is passed in rapid and feverish speculation. There is no question of reviving the brain; it is not recreation that is gained, but distraction, and the brain, instead of being ready to concentrate its power upon work, is enfeebled and rendered vague and flighty. Supposing a youth spends but one hour per day in handling pieces of pasteboard and trying to win his neighbour's money, then in four weeks he has wasted twenty-four hours, and in one year he wastes thirteen days. Is there any gain--mental, muscular, or nervous--from this unhappy pursuit? Not one jot or tittle. Supposing that a weary man of science leaves his laboratory in the evening, and wends his way homeward, the very thought of the game of whist which awaits him is a kind of recuperative agency. Whist is the true recreation of the man of science; and the astronomer or mathematician or biologist goes calmly to rest with his mind at ease after he has enjoyed his rubber. The most industrious of living novelists and the most prolific of all modern writers was asked--so he tells us in his autobiography--"How is it that your thirtieth book is fresher than your first?" He made answer, "I eat very well, keep regular hours, sleep ten hours a day, and never miss my three hours a day at whist." These men of great brain derive benefit from their harmless contests; the young men in the railway-carriages only waste brain-tissue which they do nothing-to repair. A very beautiful writer who was an extremely lazy man pictures his own lost days as arising before him and saying, "I am thy Self; say, what didst thou to me?" That question may well be asked by all the host of murdered days, but especially may it be asked of those foolish beings who try to gain distinction by recklessly losing money on the Turf or in gambling-saloons. A heart of stone might be moved by seeing the precious time that is hurled to the limbo of lost days in the vulgar pandemonium by the racecourse. A nice lad comes out into the world after attaining his majority, and plunges into that vortex of Hades. Reckon up the good he gets there. Does he gain health? Alas, think of the crowd, the rank odours, the straining heart-beats! Does he hear any wisdom? Listen to the hideous badinage, the wild bursts of foul language from the betting-men, the mean, cunning drivel of the gamblers, the shrill laughter of the horsey and unsexed women? Does the youth make friends? Ah, yes! He makes friends who will cheat him at betting, cheat him at horse-dealing, cheat him at gambling when the orgies of the course are over, borrow money as long as he will lend, and throw him over when he has parted with his last penny and his last rag of self-respect. Those who can carry their minds back for twenty years must remember the foolish young nobleman who sold a splendid estate to pay the yelling vulgarians of the betting-ring. They cheered him when he all but beggared himself; they hissed him when he failed once to pay. With lost health, lost patrimony, lost hopes, lost self-respect, he sank amid the rough billows of life's sea, and only one human creature was there to aid him when the great last wave swept over him. Lost days--lost days! Youths who are going to ruin now amid the plaudits of those who live upon them might surely take warning: but they do not, and their bones will soon bleach on the mound whereon those of all other wasters of days have been thrown. When I think of the lost days and the lost lives of which I have cognizance, then it seems as though I were gazing on some vast charnel-house, some ghoul-haunted place of skulls. Memories of those who trifled with life come to me, and their very faces flash past with looks of tragic significance. By their own fault they were ruined; they were shut out of the garden of their gifts; their city of hope was ploughed and salted. The past cannot be retrieved, let canting optimists talk as they choose; what has been has been, and the effects will last and spread until the earth shall pass away. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill; our fatal shadows that walk by us still. The thing done lasts for eternity; the lightest act of man or woman has incalculably vast results. So it is madness to say that the lost days can be retrieved. They cannot! But by timely wisdom we may save the days and make them beneficent and fruitful in the future. Watch those wild lads who are sowing in wine what they reap in headache and degradation. Night after night they laugh with senseless glee, night after night inanities which pass for wit are poured forth; and daily the nerve and strength of each carouser grow weaker. Can you retrieve those nights? Never! But you may take the most shattered of the crew and assure him that all is not irretrievably lost; his weakened nerve may be steadied, his deranged gastric functions may gradually grow more healthy, his distorted views of life may pass away. So far, so good; but never try to persuade any one that the past may be repaired, for that delusion is the very source and spring of the foul stream of lost days. Once impress upon any teachable creature the stern fact that a lost day is lost for ever, once make that belief part of his being, and then he will strive to cheat death. Perhaps it may be thought that I take sombre views of life. No; I see that the world may be made a place of pleasure, but only by learning and obeying the inexorable laws which govern all things, from the fall of a seed of grass to the moving of the miraculous brain of man. _April, 1888._ _MIDSUMMER DAYS AND MIDSUMMER NIGHTS._ Soon, with pomp of golden days and silver nights, the dying Summer will wave the world farewell; but the precious time is still with us, and we cherish the glad moments gleefully. When the dawn swirls up in the splendid sky, it is as though one gladsome procession of hours had begun to move. The breeze sighs cool and low, the trees rustle with vast whisperings, and the conquering sun shoots his level volleys from rim to rim of the world. The birds are very, very busy, and they take no thought of the grim time coming, when the iron ground will be swept by chill winds and the sad trees will quiver mournfully in the biting air. A riot of life is in progress, and it seems as if the sense of pure joy banished the very thought of pain and foreboding from all living things. The sleepy afternoons glide away, the sun droops, and the quiet, coloured evening falls solemnly. Then comes the hush of the huge and thoughtful night; the wan stars wash the dust with silver, and the brave day is over. Alas, for those who are pent in populous cities throughout this glorious time! We who are out in the free air may cast a kindly thought on the fate of those to whom "holiday" must be as a word in an unknown tongue. Some of us are happy amid the shade of mighty hills: some of us fare toward the Land of the Midnight Sun, where the golden light steeps all the air by night as well as day; some of us rest beside the sea, where the loud wind, large and free, blows the long surges out in sounding bars and thrills us with fresh fierce pleasure; some of us are able to wander in glowing lanes where the tender roses star the hedges and the murmur of innumerable bees falls softly on the senses. Let us thankfully take the good that is vouchsafed to us, and let those of us who can lend a helping hand do something towards giving the poor and needy a brief taste of the happiness that we freely enjoy. I do not want to dwell on ugly thoughts; and yet it seems selfish to refrain from speaking of the fate of the poor who are packed in crowded quarters during this bright holiday season. For them the midsummer days and midsummer nights are a term of tribulation. The hot street reeks with pungent odours, the faint airs that wander in the scorching alleys at noonday strike on the fevered face like wafts from some furnace, and the cruel nights are hard to endure save when a cool shower has fallen. If you wander in London byways, you find that the people are fairly driven from their houses after a blistering summer day, and they sit in the streets till early morning. They are not at all depressed; on the contrary, the dark hours are passed in reckless merriment, and I have often known the men to rest quite contentedly on the pavement till the dawn came and the time of departure for labour was near. Even the young children remain out of doors, and their shrill treble mingles with the coarse rattle of noisy choruses. Some of those cheery youngsters have an outing in the hopping season, and they come back bronzed and healthy; but most of them have to be satisfied with one day at the most amid the fields and trees. I have spoken of London; but the case of those who dwell in the black manufacturing cities is even worse. What is Oldham like on a blistering midsummer day? What are Hanley and St. Helen's and the lower parts of Manchester like? The air is charged with dust, and the acrid, rasping fumes from the chimneys seem to acquire a malignant power over men and brain. Toil goes steadily on, and the working-folk certainly have the advantage of starting in the bright morning hours, before the air has become befouled; but, as the sun gains strength, and the close air of the unlovely streets is heated, then the torment to be endured is severe. In Oldham and many other Lancashire towns a most admirable custom prevails. Large numbers of people club their money during the year and establish a holiday-fund; they migrate wholesale in the summertime, and have a merry holiday far away from the crush of the pavements and the dreary lines of ugly houses. A wise and beneficent custom is this, and the man who first devised it deserves a monument. I congratulate the troops of toilers who share my own pleasure; but, alas, how many honest folk in those awful Midland places will pant and sweat and suffer amid grime and heat while the glad months are passing! Good men who might be happy even in the free spaces of the Far West, fair women who need only rest and pure air to enable them to bloom in beauty, little children who peak and pine, are all crammed within the odious precincts of the towns which Cobbett hated; and the merry stretches of the sea, the billowy roll of the downs, the peace of soft days, are not for them. Only last year I looked on a stretch of interminable brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the ocean perpetually rolling in upon it with slow-measured sweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low bass drums. There before me was Whitman's very vision, and in the keen mystic joy of the moment I could not help thinking sadly of one dreadful alley where lately I had been. It seemed so sad that the folk of the alley could not share my pleasure; and the murmur of vain regrets came to the soul even amid the triumphant clamour of the free wind. Poor cramped townsfolk, hard is your fate! It is hard; but I can see no good in repining over their fortune if we aid them as far as we can; rather let us speak of the bright time that comes for the toilers who are able to escape from the burning streets. The mathematicians and such-like dry personages confine midsummer to one day in June; but we who are untrammelled by science know a great deal better. For us midsummer lasts till August is half over, and we utterly refuse to trouble ourselves about equinoxes and solstices and trivialities of that kind. For us it is midsummer while the sun is warm, while the trees hold their green, while the dancing waves fling their blossoms of foam under the darting rays that dazzle us, while the sacred night is soft and warm and the cool airs are wafted like sounds of blessings spoken in the scented darkness. For us the solstice is abolished, and we sturdily refuse to give up our midsummer till the first gleam of yellow comes on the leaves. We are not all lucky enough to see the leagues upon leagues of overpowering colour as the sun comes up on the Alps; we cannot all rest in the glittering seclusion of Norwegian fiords; but most of us, in our modest way, can enjoy our extravagantly prolonged midsummer beside the shore of our British waters. Spring is the time for hope; our midsummer is the time for ripened joy, for healthful rest; and we are satisfied with the beaches and cliffs that are hallowed by many memories--we are satisfied with simple copses and level fields. They say that spring is the poet's season; but we know better. Spring is all very well for those who have constant leisure; it is good to watch the gradual bursting of early buds; it is good to hear the thrush chant his even-song of love; it is good to rest the eye on the glorious clouds of bloom that seem to float in the orchards. But the midsummer, the gallant midsummer, pranked in manifold splendours, is the true season of poetry for the toilers. The birds of passage who are now crowding out of the towns have had little pleasure in the spring, and their blissful days are only now beginning. What is it to them that the seaside landlady crouches awaiting her prey? What is it to them that 'Arry is preparing to make night hideous? They are bound for their rest, and the surcease of toil is the only thing that suggests poetry to them. Spring the season for poets! We wipe away that treasonable suggestion just as we have wiped out the solstice. We holiday makers are not going to be tyrannized over by literary and scientific persons, and we insist on taking our own way. Our blood beats fully only at this season, and not even the extortioners' bills can daunt us. Let us break into poetry and flout the maudlin enthusiasts who prate of spring. With a ripple of leaves and a twinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! The dusks grow vast in a purple haze, While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! * * * * * The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams, The lush grass thickens and springs and sways, The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! In the stilly fields, in the stilly way, All secret shadows and mystic lights, Late lovers, murmurous, linger and gaze-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! * * * * * There's a swagger of bells from the trampling teams, Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, The rich ripe rose as with incense steams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! A soul from the honeysuckle strays, And the nightingale, as from prophet heights, Speaks to the Earth of her million Mays-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! And it's oh for my Dear and the charm that stays-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! And it's oh for my Love and the dark that plights-- Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights! There is a burst for you! And we will let the poets of spring, with their lambkins and their catkins and the rest, match this poem of William Henley's if they can. The royal months are ours, and we love the reign of the rose. When the burnished tints of bronze shine on the brackens, and the night-wind blows with a chilly moan from the fields of darkness, we shall have precious days to remember, and, ah, when the nights are long, and the churlish Winter lays his fell finger on stream and grass and tree, we shall be haunted by jolly memories! Will the memories be wholly pleasant? Perchance, when the curtains are drawn and the lamp burns softly, we may read of bright and beautiful things. Out of doors the war of the winter fills the roaring darkness. It may be that Hoarsely across the iron ground The icy wind goes roaring past, The powdery wreaths go whirling round Dancing a measure to the blast. The hideous sky droops darkly down In brooding swathes of misty gloom, And seems to wrap the fated town In shadows of remorseless doom. Then some of us may find a magic phrase of Keats's, or Thomas Hardy's, or Black's, or Dickens's, that recalls the lovely past from the dead. Many times I have had that experience. Once, after spending the long and glorious summer amid the weird subdued beauty of a wide heath, I returned to the great city. It had been a pleasant sojourn, though I had had no company save a collie and one or two terriers. At evening the dogs liked their ramble, and we all loved to stay out until the pouring light of the moon shone on billowy mists and heath-clad knolls. The faint rustling of the heath grew to a wide murmur, the little bells seemed to chime with notes heard only by the innermost spirit, and the gliding dogs were like strange creatures from some shadowy underworld. At times a pheasant would rise and whirl like a rocket from hillock to hollow, and about midnight a rapturous concert began. On one line of trees a colony of nightingales had established themselves near the heart of the waste. First came the low inquiry from the leader; then two or three low twittering answers; then the one long note that lays hold of the nerves and makes the whole being quiver; and then--ah, the passion, the pain, the unutterable delight of the heavenly jargoning when the whole of the little choir begin their magnificent rivalry! The thought of death is gone, the wild and poignant issues of life are softened, and the pulses beat thickly amid the blinding sweetness of the music. He who has not heard the nightingale has not lived. Far off the sea called low through the mist, and the long path of the moon ran toward the bright horizon; the ships stole in shadow and shine over the glossy ripples, and swung away to north and south till they faded in wreaths of delicate darkness. Dominating the whole scene of beauty, there was the vast and subtle mystery of the heath that awed the soul even when the rapture was at its keenest. Time passed away, and on one savage night I read Thomas Hardy's unparalleled description of the majestic waste in "The Return of the Native." That superb piece of English is above praise--indeed praise, as applied to it, is half an impertinence; it is great as Shakespeare, great almost as Nature--one of the finest poems in our language. As I read with awe the quiet inevitable sentences, the vision of my own heath rose, and the memory filled me with a sudden joy. I know that the hour of darkness ever dogs our delight, and the shadow of approaching darkness and toil might affront me even now, if I were ungrateful; but I live for the present only. Let grave persons talk about the grand achievements and discoveries that have made this age or that age illustrious; I hold that holidays are the noblest invention of the human mind, and, if any philosopher wants to argue the matter, I flee from his presence, and luxuriate on the yellow sands or amid the keen kisses of the salty waves. I own that Newton's discoveries were meritorious, and I willingly applaud Mr. George Stephenson, through whose ingenuity we are now whisked to our places of rest with the swiftness of an eagle's flight. Nevertheless I contend that holidays are the crowning device of modern thought, and I hold that no thesis can be so easily proven as mine. How did our grandfathers take holiday? Alas, the luxury was reserved for the great lords who scoured over the Continent, and for the pursy cits who crawled down to Brighthelmstone! The ordinary Londoner was obliged to endure agonies on board a stuffy Margate hoy, while the people in Northern towns never thought of taking a holiday at all. The marvellous cures wrought by Doctor Ozone were not then known, and the science of holiday-making was in its infancy. The wisdom of our ancestors was decidedly at fault in this matter, and the gout and dyspepsia from which they suffered served them right. Read volumes of old memoirs, and you will find that our forefathers, who are supposed to have been so merry and healthy, suffered from all the ills which grumblers ascribe to struggling civilization. They did not know how to extract pleasure from their midsummer days and midsummer nights; we do, and we are all the better for the grand modern discovery. Seriously, it is a good thing that we have learned the value of leisure, and, for my own part, I regard the rushing yearly exodus from London, Liverpool, Birmingham, with serene satisfaction. It is a pity that so many English folk persist in leaving their own most lovely land when our scenery and climate are at their best. In too many cases they wear themselves with miserable and harassing journeys when they might be placidly rejoicing in the sweet midsummer days at home. Snarling aesthetes may say what they choose, but England is not half explored yet, and anybody who takes the trouble may find out languorous nooks where life seems always dreamy, and where the tired nerves and brain are unhurt by a single disturbing influence. There are tiny villages dotted here and there on the coast where the flaunting tourist never intrudes, and where the British cad cares not to show his unlovable face. Still, if people like the stuffy Continental hotel and the unspeakable devices of the wily Swiss, they must take their choice. I prefer beloved England; but I wish all joy to those who go far afield. _June, 1886._ _DANDIES_. Perhaps there is no individual of all our race who is quite insensible to the pleasures of what children call "dressing-up." Even the cynic, the man who defiantly wears old and queer clothes, is merely suffering from a perversion of that animal instinct which causes the peacock to swagger in the sun and flaunt the splendour of his train, the instinct that makes the tiger-moth show the magnificence of his damask wing, and also makes the lion erect the horrors of his cloudy mane and paw proudly before his tawny mate. We are all alike in essentials, and Diogenes with his dirty clouts was only a perverted brother of Prince Florizel with his peach-coloured coat and snowy ruffles. I intend to handle the subject of dandies and their nature from a deeply philosophic starting-point, for, like Carlyle, I recognize the vast significance of the questions involved in the philosophy of clothes. Let no flippant individual venture on a jeer, for I am in dead earnest. A mocking critic may point to the Bond Street lounger and ask, "What are the net use and purport of that being's existence? Look at his suffering frame! His linen stock almost decapitates him, his boots appear to hail from the chambers of the Inquisition, every garment tends to confine his muscles and dwarf his bodily powers; yet he chooses to smile in his torments and pretends to luxuriate in life. Again, what are the net use and purport of his existence?" I can only deprecate our critic's wrath by going gravely to first principles. O savage and critical one, that suffering youth of Bond Street is but exhibiting in flaunting action a law that has influenced the breed of men since our forefathers dwelt in caves or trees! Observe the conduct of the innocent and primitive beings who dwell in sunny archipelagos far away to the South; they suffer in the cause of fashion as the youth of the city promenade suffers. The chief longing of the judicious savage is to shave, but the paucity of metals and sharp instruments prevents him from indulging his longing very frequently. When the joyous chance does come, the son of the forest promptly rises to the occasion. No elderly gentleman whose feet are studded with corns could bear the agony of patent leather boots in a heated ballroom with grander stoicism than that exhibited by our savage when he compasses the means of indulging in a thorough uncompromising shave. The elderly man of the ballroom sees the rosy-fingered dawn touching the sky into golden fretwork; he thinks of his cool white bed, and then, by contrast, he thinks of his hot throbbing feet. Shooting fires dart through his unhappy extremities, yet he smiles on and bears his pain for his daughters' sake. But the elderly hero cannot be compared with the ambitious exquisite of the Southern Seas, and we shall prove this hypothesis. The careless voyager throws a beer-bottle overboard, and that bottle drifts to the glad shore of a glittering isle; the overjoyed savage bounds on the prize, and proceeds to announce his good fortune to his bosom friend. Then the pleased cronies decide that they will have a good, wholesome, thorough shave, and they will turn all rivals green with unavailing envy. Solemnly those children of nature go to a quiet place, and savage number one lies down while his friend sits on his head; then with a shred of the broken bottle the operator proceeds to rasp away. It is a great and grave function, and no savage worthy the name of warrior would fulfil it in a slovenly way. When the last scrape is given, and the stubbly irregular crop of bristles stands up from a field of gore, then the operating brave lies down, and his scarified friend sits on _his_ head. These sweet and satisfying idyllic scenes are enacted whenever a bottle comes ashore, and the broken pieces of the receptacles that lately held foaming Bass or glistening Hochheimer are used until their edge gives way, to the great contentment of true untutored dandies. The Bond Street man is at one end of the scale, the uncompromising heathen barber at the other; but the same principles actuate both. The Maori is even more courageous in his attempts to secure a true decorative exterior, for he carves the surface of his manly frame into deep meandering channels until he resembles a walking advertisement of crochet-patterns for ladies. Dire is his suffering, long is the time of healing; but, when he can appear among his friends with a staring blue serpent coiled round his body from the neck to the ankle, when the rude figure of the bounding wallaby ornaments his noble chest, he feels that all his pain was worth enduring and that life is indeed worth living. The primitive dandy of Central Africa submits himself to the magician of the tribe, and has his front teeth knocked out with joy; the Ashantee or the Masai has his teeth filed to sharp points--and each painful process enables the victim to pose as a leader of fashion in the tribe. As the race rises higher, the refinements of dandyism become more and more complex, but the ruling motive remains the same, and the Macaroni, the Corinthian, the Incroyable, the swell, the dude--nay, even the common toff--are all mysteriously stirred by the same instinct which prompts the festive Papuan to bore holes in his innocent nose. Who then shall sneer at the dandy? Does he not fulfil a law of our nature? Let us rather regard him with toleration, or even with some slight modicum of reverence. Solemn historians affect to smile at the gaudy knights of the second Richard's Court, who wore the points of their shoes tied round their waists; they even ridicule the tight, choking, padded coats worn by George IV., that pattern father of his people; but I see in the stumbling courtier and the half-asphyxiated wearer of the padded Petersham coat two beings who act under the demands of inexorable law. Our great modern sage brooded in loneliness for some six years over the moving problem of dandyism, and we have the results of his meditations in "Sartor Resartus." We have an uneasy sense that he may be making fun of us--in fact, we are almost sure that he is; for, if you look at his summary of the doctrines put forth in "Pelham," you can hardly fail to detect a kind of sub-acid sneer. Instead of being impressed by the dainty musings of the learned Bulwer, that grim vulturine sage chose to curl his fierce lips and turn the whole thing to a laughing-stock. We must at once get to that summary of what the great Thomas calls "Dandiacal doctrine," and then just thinkers may draw their own conclusions. Articles of Faith.--1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same time wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. 2. The collar is a very important point; it should be low behind, and slightly rolled. 3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 4. There is safety in a swallowtail. 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than in his rings. 6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. 7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips. Then the sage observes, "All which propositions I for the present content myself with modestly, but peremptorily and irrevocably, denying." Wicked Scotchman, rugged chip of the Hartz rock, your seven articles of the Whole Duty of the Dandy are evidently solemn fooling! You despised Lytton in your heart, and you thought that because you wore a ragged duffel coat in gay Hyde Park you had a right to despise the human ephemera who appeared in inspiriting splendour. I have often laughed at your solemn enumeration of childish maxims, but I am not quite sure that you were altogether right in sneering. So far for the heroic vein. The Clothes Philosopher whose huge burst of literary horse-laughter was levelled at the dandy does not always confine himself to indirect scoffing; here is a plain statement--"First, touching dandies, let us consider with some scientific strictness what a dandy specially is. A dandy is a clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object--the wearing of clothes wisely and well; so that, as others dress to live, he lives to dress. The all-importance of clothes has sprung upon the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with cloth--a poet of cloth. Like a generous creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his idea an action--shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind, walks forth a witness and living martyr to the eternal worth of clothes. We called him a poet; is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a sonnet to his mistress's eyebrow?" This is very witty and very trenchant in allusion, but I am obliged to say seriously that Carlyle by no means reached the root of the matter. The mere tailor's dummy is deplorable, despicable, detestable, but a real man is none the worse if he gives way to the imperious human desire for adornment, and some of the men who have made permanent marks on the world's face have been of the tribe whom our Scotchman satirised. I have known sensible young men turned into perfectly objectionable slovens by reading Carlyle; they thought they rendered a tribute to their master's genius by making themselves look disreputable, and they found allies to applaud them. One youth of a poetic turn saw that the sage let his hair fall over his forehead in a tangled mass. Now this young man had very nice wavy hair, which naturally fell back in a sweep, but he devoted himself with an industry worthy of a much better cause to the task of making his hair fall in unkempt style over his brow. When he succeeded, he looked partly like a Shetland pony, partly like a street-arab; but his own impression was that his wild and ferocious appearance acted as a living rebuke to young men of weaker natures. If I had to express a blunt opinion, I should say he was a dreadful simpleton. Every man likes to be attractive in some way in the springtime and hey-day of life; when the blood flushes the veins gaily and the brain is sensitive to joy, then a man glories in looking well. Why blame him? The young officer likes to show himself with his troop in gay trappings; the athlete likes to wear garments that set off his frame to advantage; and it is good that this desire for distinction exists, else we should have but a grey and sorry world to live in. When the pulses beat quietly and life moves on the downward slope, a man relies on more sober attractions, and he ceases to care for that physical adornment which every young and healthy living creature on earth appreciates. So long as our young men are genuinely manly, good, strong, and courageous, I am not inclined to find fault with them, even if they happen to trip and fall into slight extravagances in the matter of costume. The creature who lives to dress I abhor, the sane and sound man who fulfils his life-duties gallantly and who is not above pleasing himself and others by means of reasonable adornments I like and even respect warmly. The philosophers may growl as they chose, but I contend that the sight of a superb young Englishman with his clean clear face, his springy limbs, his faultless habiliments is about as pleasant as anything can be to a discerning man. Moreover, it is by no means true that the dandy is necessarily incompetent when he comes to engage in the severe work of life. Our hero, our Nelson, kept his nautical dandyism until he was middle-aged. Who ever accused him of incompetence? Think of his going at Trafalgar into that pouring Inferno of lead and iron with all his decorations blazing on him! "In honour I won them and in honour I will wear them," said this unconscionable dandy; and he did wear them until he had broken our terrible enemy's power, saved London from sack, and worse, and yielded up his gallant soul to his Maker. Rather an impressive kind of dandy was that wizened little animal. "There'll be wigs on the green, boys--the dandies are coming!" So Marlborough's soldiers used to cry when the regiment of exquisites charged. At home the fierce Englishmen strutted around in their merry haunts and showed off their brave finery as though their one task in life were to wear gaudy garments gracefully; but, when the trumpet rang for the charge, the silken dandies showed that they had the stuff of men in them. The philosopher is a trifle too apt to say, "Anybody who does not choose to do as I like is, on the face of it, an inferior member of the human race." I utterly refuse to have any such doctrine thrust down my throat. No sage would venture to declare that the handsome, gorgeous John Churchill was a fool or a failure. He beat England's enemies, he made no blunder in his life, and he survived the most vile calumnies that ever assailed a struggling man; yet, if he was not a dandy, then I never saw or heard of one. All our fine fellows who stray with the British flag over the whole earth belong more or less distinctly to the dandy division. The velvet glove conceals the iron hand; the pleasing modulated voice can rise at short notice to tones of command; the apparent languor will on occasion start with electric suddenness into martial vigour. The lounging dandies who were in India when the red storm of the Mutiny burst from a clear sky suddenly became heroes who toiled, fought, lavished their strength and their blood, performed glorious prodigies of unselfish action, and snatched an empire from the fires of ruin. Even if a young fellow cannot afford fine clothes, he can be neat, and I always welcome the slightest sign of fastidiousness, because it indicates self-respect. The awful beings who wear felt hats swung on one side, glaring ties, obtrusive checks, and carry vulgar little sticks, are so abhorrent that I should journey a dozen miles to escape meeting one of them. The cheap, nasty, gaudy garments are an index to a vast vulgarity of mind and soul; the cheap "swell" is a sham, and, as a sham, he is immoral and repulsive. But the modest youth need not copy the wild unrestraint of the gentleman known as "'Arry"; he can contrive to make himself attractive without sullying his appearance by a trace of cheap and nasty adornment, and every attempt which he makes to look seemly and pleasing tends subtly to raise his own character. Once or twice I have said that you cannot really love any one wholly unless you can sometimes laugh at him. Now I cannot laugh at the invertebrate haunter of flashy bars and theatre-stalls, because he has not the lovable element in him which invites kindly laughter; but I do smile--not unadmiringly--at our dandy, and forgive him his little eccentricities because I know that what the Americans term the "hard pan" of his nature is sound. It is all very well for unhandsome philosophers in duffel to snarl at our butterfly youth. The dry dull person who devours blue-books and figures may mock at their fribbles; but persons who are tolerant take large and gentle views, and they indulge the dandy, and let him strut for his day unmolested, until the pressing hints given by the years cause him to modify his splendours and sink into unassuming sobriety of demeanour and raiment. _June, 1888._ _GENIUS AND RESPECTABILITY_. A very lengthy biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley appeared recently, and the biographer thought it his duty to give the most minute and peculiar details concerning the poet's private life. In consequence, the book is a deplorable one in many respects, and no plain-minded person can read it without feeling sorry that our sweet singer should be presented to us in the guise of a weak-minded hypocrite. One critic wrote a great many pages in which he bemoans the dreary and sordid family-life of the man who wrote the "Ode to the West Wind." I can hardly help sympathizing with the critic, for indeed Shelley's proceedings rather test the patience of ordinary mortals, who do not think that poetic--or rather artistic--ability licenses its possessor to behave like a scoundrel. Shelley wrote the most lovely verse in praise of purity; but he tempted a poor child to marry him, deserted her, insulted her, and finally left her to drown herself when brutal neglect and injury had driven her crazy. Poor Harriet Westbrook! She did not behave very discreetly after her precious husband left her; but she was young, and thrown on a hard world without any strength but her own to protect her. While she was drifting into misery the airy poet was talking sentiment and ventilating his theories of the universe to Mary Godwin. Harriet was too "shallow" for the rhymester, and the penalty she paid for her shallowness was to be deceived, enticed into a rash marriage, brutally insulted, and left to fare as well as she might in a world that is bitterly cruel to helpless girls. The maker of rhymes goes off gaily to the Continent to enjoy himself heartily and write bewitching poems; Harriet stays at home and lives as best she can on her pittance until the time comes for her despairing plunge into the Serpentine. It is true that the poet invited the poor creature to come and stay with him; but what a piece of unparalleled insolence toward a wronged lady! The admirers of the rhymer say, "Ah, but Harriet's society was not congenial to the poet." Congenial! How many brave men make their bargain in youth and stand to it gallantly unto the end? A simple soul of this sort thinks to himself, "Well, I find that my wife and I are not in sympathy; but perhaps I may be in fault. At any rate, she has trusted her life to me, and I must try to make her days as happy as possible." It seems that supreme poets are to be exempt from all laws of manliness and honour, and a simple woman who cannot babble to them about their ideals and so forth is to be pitched aside like a soiled glove! Honest men who cannot jingle words are content with faith and honour and rectitude, but the poet is to be applauded if he behaves like a base fellow on finding that some unhappy loving creature cannot talk in his particular fashion. We may all be very low Philistines if we are not prepared to accept rhymers for chartered villains; but some of us still have a glimmering of belief in the old standards of nobility and constancy. Can any one fancy Walter Scott cheating a miserable little girl of sixteen into marriage, and then leaving her, only to many a female philosopher? How that noble soul would have spurned the maundering sentimentalist who talked of truth and beauty, and music and moonlight and feeling, and behaved as a mean and bad man! Scott is more to my fancy than is Shelley. Again, this poet, this exquisite weaver of verbal harmonies, is represented to us by his worshippers as having a passion for truth; whereas it happens that he was one of the most remarkable fibbers that ever lived. He would come home with amazing tales about assassins who had waylaid him, and try to give himself importance by such blustering inventions. "Imagination!" says the enthusiast; but among commonplace persons another word is used. "Your lordship knows what kleptomania is?" said a counsel who was defending a thief. Justice Byles replied, "Oh, yes! I come here to cure it." Some critical justice might say the same of Shelley's imagination. We are also told that Shelley's excessive nobility of nature prevented him from agreeing with his commonplace father; and truly the poet was a bad and an ungrateful son. But, if a pretty verse-maker is privileged to be an undutiful son, what becomes of all our old notions? I think once more of the great Sir Walter, and I remember his unquestioning obedience to his parents. Then we may also remember Gibbon, who was quite as able and useful a man as Shelley. The historian loved a young French lady, but his father refused consent to their marriage, and Gibbon quietly obeyed and accepted his hard fate. The passion sanctified his whole life, and, as he says, made him more dear to himself; he settled his colossal work, and remained unmarried for life. He may have been foolish: but I prefer his behaviour to that of a man who treats his father with contumely and ingratitude even while he is living upon him. We hear much of Shelley's unselfishness, but it does not appear that he ever denied himself the indulgence of a whim. The "Ode to the West Wind," the "Ode Written in Dejection near Naples," and "The Skylark" are unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but I can hardly pardon a man for cruelty and turpitude merely because he produces a few masterpieces of art. A confident and serene critic attacks Mr. Arnold very severely because the latter writer thinks that poets should be amenable to fair and honest social laws. If I understand the critic aright, we must all be so thankful for beautiful literary works that we must be ready to let the producers of such works play any pranks they please under high heaven. They are the children of genius, and we are to spoil them; "Childe Harold" and "Manfred" are such wondrous productions that we need never think of the author's orgies at Venice and the Abbey; "Epipsychidion" is lovely, so we should not think of poor Harriet Westbrook casting herself into the Serpentine. This is marvellous doctrine, and one hardly knows whither it might lead us if we carried it into thorough practice. Suppose that, in addition to indulging the spoiled children of genius, we were to approve all the proceedings of the clever children in any household. I fancy that the dwellers therein would have an unpleasant time. Noble charity towards human weakness is one thing; but blind adulation of clever and immoral men is another. We have great need to pity the poor souls who are the prey of their passions, but we need not worship them. A large and lofty charity will forgive the shortcomings of Robert Burns; we may even love that wild and misguided but essentially noble man. That is well; yet we must not put Burns forward and offer our adulation in such a way as to set him up for a model to young men. A man may read-- The pale moon is setting beyont the white wave, And Time is setting with me, oh! The pathos will wring his heart; but he should not ask any youth to imitate the conduct of the great poet. Carlyle said very profoundly that new morality must be made before we can judge Mirabeau; but Carlyle never put his hero's excesses in the foreground of his history, nor did he try to apologize for them; he only said, "Here is a man whose stormy passions overcame him and drove him down the steep to ruin! Think of him at his best, pardon him, and imitate, in your weak human fashion, the infinite Divine Mercy." That is good; and it is certainly very different from the behaviour of writers who ask us to regard their heroes' evil-doing as not only pardonable, but as being almost admirable. This Shelley controversy raises several weighty issues. We forgive Burns because he again and again offers us examples of splendid self-sacrifice in the course of his broken life, and we are able to do so because the balance is greatly on the good side; but we do not refrain from saying, "In some respects Burns was a scamp." The fact is that the claims of weak-headed adorers who worship men of genius would lead to endless mischief if they were allowed. Men who were skilled in poetry and music and art have often behaved like scoundrels; but their scoundrelism should be reprobated, and not excused. And my reason for this contention is very simple--once allow that a man of genius may override all salutary conventions, and the same conventions will be overridden by vain and foolish mediocrities. Take, for example, the conventions which guide us in the matter of dress. Most people grant that in many respects our modern dress is ugly in shape, ugly in material, and calculated to promote ill-health. The hard hat which makes the brow ache must affect the wearer's health, and therefore, when we see the greatest living poet going about in a comfortable soft felt, we call him a sensible man. Carlyle used to hobble about with soft shoes and soft slouch-hat, and he was right But it is possible to be as comfortable as Lord Tennyson or Carlyle without flying very outrageously in the face of modern conventions; and many everyday folk contrive to keep their bodies at ease without trying any fool's device. Charles Kingsley used to roam about in his guernsey--most comfortable of all dresses--when he was in the country; but when he visited the town he managed to dress easily and elegantly in the style of an average gentleman. But some foolish creatures say in their hearts, "Men of genius wear strange clothing--Tennyson wears a vast Inverness cape, Carlyle wore a duffel jacket, Bismarck wears a flat white cap, Mortimer Collins wore a big Panama; artists in general like velvet and neckties of various gaudy hues. Let us adopt something startling in the way of costume, and we may be taken for men of genius." Thus it happened that very lately London was invested by a set of simpletons of small ability in art and letters; they let their hair grow down their backs; they drove about in the guise of Venetian senators of the fifteenth century; they appeared in slashed doublets and slouched hats; and one of them astonished the public--and the cabmen--by marching down a fashionable thoroughfare on a broiling day with a fur ulster on his back and a huge flower in his hand. Observe my point--these social nuisances obtained for themselves a certain contemptible notoriety by caricaturing the ways of able men. I can forgive young Disraeli's gaudy waistcoats and pink-lined coats, but I have no patience with his silly imitators. This is why I object to the praise which is bestowed on men of genius for qualities which do not deserve praise. The reckless literary admirer of Shelley or Byron goes into ecstasies and cries, "Perish the slave who would think of these great men's vices!"--whereupon raw and conceited youngsters say, "Vice and eccentricity are signs of genius. We will be vicious and eccentric;" and then they go and convert themselves into public nuisances. That vice and folly are not always associated with genius scarcely needs demonstrating. I allow that many great men have been sensual fools, but we can by no means allow that folly and sensuality are inseparable from greatness. My point is to prove that littleness must be conquered before a man can be great or good. Macaulay lived a life of perfect and exemplary purity; he was good in all the relations of life; those nearest to him loved him most dearly, and his days were passed in thinking of the happiness of others. Perhaps he was vain--certainly he had something to be vain of--but, though he had such masterful talent, he never thought himself licensed, and he wore the white flower of a blameless life until his happy spirit passed easily away. Wordsworth was a poet who will be placed on a level with Byron when an estimate of our century's great men comes to be made. But Wordsworth lived his sweet and pious life without in any way offending against the moral law. We must have done with all talk about the privileges of irregular genius; a clever man must be made to see that, while he may be as independent as he likes, he cannot be left free to offend either the sense or the sensibility of his neighbours. The genius must learn to conduct himself in accordance with rational and seemly custom, or he must be brought to his senses. When a great man's ways are merely innocently different from those of ordinary people, by all means let him alone. For instance, Leonardo da Vinci used often to buy caged wild-birds from their captors and let them go free. What a lovely and lovable action! He hurt no one; he restored the joy of life to innocent creatures, and no one could find fault with his sweet fancy. In the same way, when Samuel Johnson chose to stalk ponderously along the streets, stepping on the edges of the paving-stones, or even when he happened to roar a little loudly in conversation, who could censure him seriously? His heart was as a little child's: his deeds were saintly; and we perhaps love him all the more for his droll little ways. But, when Shelley outrages decency and the healthy sense of manliness by his peculiar escapades, it is not easy to pardon him; the image of that drowned child rises before us, and we are apt to forget the pretty verses. Calm folk remember that many peculiarly wicked and selfish gentry have been able to make nice rhymes and paint charming pictures. The old poet Francois Villon, who has made men weep and sympathize for so many years, was a burglar, a murderer, and something baser, if possible, than either murderer or burglar. A more despicable being probably never existed; and yet he warbles with angelic sweetness, and his piercing sadness thrills us after the lapse of four centuries. Young men of unrestrained appetites and negative morality are often able to talk most charmingly, but the meanest and most unworthy persons whom I have met have been the wild and lofty-minded poets who perpetually express contempt of Philistines and cast the shaft of their scorn at what they call "dross." So far as money goes, I fancy that the oratorical, and grandiose poet is often the most greedy of individuals; and, when, in his infinite conceit, he sets himself up above common decency and morality, I find it difficult to confine myself to moderate language. A man of genius may very well be chaste, modest, unselfish, and retiring. Byron was at his worst when he was producing the works which made him immortal; I prefer to think of him as he was when he cast his baser self away, and nobly took up the cause of Greece. When once his matchless common sense asserted itself, and he ceased to contemplate his own woes and his own wrongs, he became a far greater man than he had ever been before. I should be delighted to know that the cant about the lowering restrictions imposed by stupidity on genius had been silenced for ever. A man of transcendent ability must never forget that he is a member of a community, and that he has no more right wantonly to offend the feelings or prejudices of that community than he has to go about buffeting individual members with a club. As soon as he offends the common feelings of his fellows he must take the consequences; and hard-headed persons should turn a deaf ear when any eloquent and sentimental person chooses to whine about his hero's wrongs. _March, 1888._ _SLANG_. Has any one ever yet considered the spiritual significance of slang? The dictionaries inform us that "slang is a conversational irregularity of a more or less vulgar type;" but that is not all. The prim definition refers merely to words, but I am rather more interested in considering the mental attitude which is indicated by the distortion and loose employment of words, and by the fresh coinages which seem to spring up every hour. I know of no age or nation that has been without its slang, and the study is amongst the most curious that a scholar can take up; but our own age, after all, must be reckoned as the palmy time of slang, for we have gone beyond mere words, and our vulgarizations of language are significant of degradation of soul. The Romans of the decadence had a hideous cant language which fairly matched the grossness of the people, and the Gauls, with their descendants, fairly matched the old conquerors. The frightful old Paris of Francois Villon, with all its bleak show of famine and death, had its constant changes of slang. "_Tousjours vieil synge est desplaisant,"_ says the burglar-poet, and he means that the old buffoon is tiresome; the young man with the newest phases of city slang at his tongue's end is most acceptable in merry company. Very few people can read Villon's longer poems at all, for they are almost entirely written in cant language, and the glossary must be in constant requisition. The rascal is a really great writer in his abominable way, but his dialect was that of the lowest resorts, and he lets us see that the copious _argot_ which now puzzles the stranger by its kaleidoscopic changes was just as vivid and changeable in the miserable days of the eleventh Louis. In the Paris of our day the slang varies from hour to hour; every one seems able to follow it, and no one knows who invents the constant new changes. The slang of the boarding-house in Balzac's "Pere Goriot" is quite different from that of the novels done by the Goncourt brothers; and, though I have not yet mustered courage to finish one of M. Zola's outrages, I can see that the vulgarisms which he has learned are not at all like any that have been used in bygone days. The corruption of Paris seems to breed verbal distortions rather freely, and the ordinary babble of the city workman is as hard to any Englishman as are the colloquialisms of Burns to the average Cockney. In England our slang has undergone one transformation after another ever since the time of Chaucer. Shakespeare certainly gives us plenty; then we have the slang of the Great War, and then the unutterable horrors of the Restoration--even the highly proper Mr. Joseph Addison does not disdain to talk of an "old put," and his wags are given to "smoking" strangers. The eighteenth century--the century of the gallows--gave us a whole crop of queer terms which were first used in thieves' cellars, and gradually filtered from the racecourse and the cockpit till they took their place in the vulgar tongue. The sweet idyll of "Life in London" is a perfect garden of slang; Tom the Corinthian and Bob Logic lard their phrases with the idiom of the prize-ring, and the author obligingly italicises the knowing words so that one has no chance of missing them. But nowadays we have passed beyond all that, and every social clique, every school of art and literature, every trade--nay, almost every religion--has its peculiar slang; and the results as regards morals, manners, and even conduct in general are too remarkable to be passed over by any one who desires to understand the complex society of our era. The mere patter of thieves or racing-men--the terms are nearly synonymous--counts for nothing. Those who know the byways of life know that there are two kinds of dark language used by our nomad classes and by our human predatory animals. A London thief can talk a dialect which no outsider can possibly understand; for, by common agreement, arbitrary names are applied to every object which the robbers at any time handle, and to every sort of underhand business which they transact. But this gibberish is not exactly an outcome of any moral obliquity; it is employed as a means of securing safety. The gipsy cant is the remnant of a pure and ancient language; we all occasionally use terms taken from this remarkable tongue, and, when we speak of a "cad," or "making a mull," or "bosh," or "shindy," or "cadger" or "bamboozling," or "mug," or "duffer," or "tool," or "queer," or "maunder," or "loafer," or "bung," we are using pure gipsy. No distinct mental process, no process of corruption, is made manifest by the use of these terms; we simply have picked them up unconsciously, and we continue to utter them in the course of familiar conversation. I am concerned with a degradation of language which is of an importance far beyond the trifling corruption caused by the introduction of terms from the gipsy's caravan, the betting ring, or the thieves' kitchen; one cannot help being made angry and sad by observing a tendency to belittle all things that are great, to mock all earnestness, to vulgarize all beauty. There is not a quarter where the subtle taint has not crept in, and under its malign influence poetry has all but expired, good conversation has utterly ceased to exist, art is no longer serious, and the intercourse of men is not straightforward. The Englishman will always be emotional in spite of the rigid reserve which he imposes upon himself; he is an enthusiast, and he does truly love earnestness, veracity, and healthy vigour. Take him away from a corrupt and petty society and give him free scope, and he at once lets fall the film of shams from off him like a cast garment, and comes out as a reality. Shut the same Englishman up in an artificial, frivolous, unreal society, and he at once becomes afraid of himself; he fears to exhibit enthusiasm about anything, and he hides his genuine nature behind a cloud of slang. He belittles everything he touches, he is afraid to utter a word from his inner heart, and his talk becomes a mere dropping shower of verbal counters which ring hollow. The superlative degree is abhorrent to him unless he can misuse it for comic purposes; and, like the ridiculous dummy lord in "Nicholas Nickleby," he is quite capable of calling Shakespeare a "very clayver man." I have heard of the attitude taken by two flowers of our society in presence of Joachim. Think of it! The unmatched violinist had achieved one of those triumphs which seem to permeate the innermost being of a worthy listener; the soul is entranced, and the magician takes us into a fair world where there is nothing but loveliness and exalted feeling. "Vewy good fellow, that fiddle fellow," observed the British aristocrat. "Ya-as," answered his faithful friend. Let any man who is given to speaking words with a view of presenting the truth begin to speak in our faint, super-refined, orthodox society; he will be looked at as if he were some queer object brought from a museum of curiosities and pulled out for exhibition. The shallowest and most impudent being that ever talked fooleries will assume superior airs and treat the man of intellect as an amusing but inferior creature. More than that--earnestness and reality are classed together under the head of "bad form," the vital word grates on the emasculate brain of the society man, and he compensates himself for his inward consciousness of inferiority by assuming easy airs of insolence. A very brilliant man was once talking in a company which included several of the superfine division; he was witty, vivid, genial, full of knowledge and tact; but he had one dreadful habit--he always said what he thought. The brilliant man left the company, and one sham-languid person said to a sham-aristocratic person, "Who is that?" "Ah, he's a species of over-educated savage!" Now the gentleman who propounded this pleasant piece of criticism was, according to trustworthy history, the meanest, most useless, and most despicable man of his set; yet he could venture to assume haughty airs towards a man whose shoes he was not fit to black, and he could assume those airs on the strength of his slangy impassivity--his "good form." When we remember that this same fictitious indifference characterized the typical _grand seigneur_ of old France, and when we also remember that indifference may be rapidly transformed into insolence, and insolence into cruelty, we may well look grave at the symptoms which we can watch around us. The dreary _ennui_ of the heart, _ennui_ that revolts at truth, that is nauseated by earnestness, expresses itself in what we call slang, and slang is the sign of mental disease. I have no fault to find with the broad, racy, slap-dash language of the American frontier, with its picturesque perversions and its droll exaggeration. The inspired person who chose to call a coffin an "eternity box" and whisky "blue ruin" was too innocent to sneer. The slang of Mark Twain's Mr. Scott when he goes to make arrangements for the funeral of the lamented Buck Fanshawe is excruciatingly funny and totally inoffensive. Then the story of Jim Baker and the jays in "A Tramp Abroad" is told almost entirely in frontier slang, yet it is one of the most exquisite, tender, lovable pieces of work ever set down in our tongue. The grace and fun of the story, the odd effects produced by bad grammar, the gentle humour, all combine to make this decidedly slangy chapter a literary masterpiece. A miner or rancheman will talk to you for an hour and delight you, because his slang somehow fits his peculiar thought accurately; an English sailor will tell a story, and he will use one slang word in every three that come out of his mouth, yet he is delightful, for the simple reason that his distorted dialect enables him to express and not to suppress truth. But the poison that has crept through the minds of our finer folk paralyses their utterance so far as truth is concerned; and society may be fairly caricatured by a figure of the Father of Lies blinking through an immense eyeglass upon God's universe. Mr. George Meredith, with his usual magic insight, saw long ago whither our over-refined gentry were tending; and in one of his finest books he shows how a little dexterous slang may dwarf a noble deed. Nevil Beauchamp was under a tremendous fire with his men: he wanted to carry a wounded soldier out of action, but the soldier wished his adored officer to be saved. At the finish the two men arrived safely in their own lines amid the cheers of English, French, and even of the Russian enemy. This is how the votary of slang transfigures the episode; he wishes to make a little fun out of the hero, and he manages it by employing the tongue which it is good form to use. "A long-shanked trooper bearing the name of John Thomas Drew was crawling along under fire of the batteries. Out pops old Nevil, tries to get the man on his back. It won't do. Nevil insists that it's exactly one of the cases that ought to be, and they remain arguing about it like a pair of nine-pins while the Moscovites are at work with the bowls. Very well. Let me tell you my story. It's perfectly true, I give you my word. So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and Drew proposes to horse Nevil, as at school. Then Drew offers a compromise. He would much rather have crawled on, you know, and allowed the shot to pass over his head; but he's a Briton--old Nevil's the same; but old Nevil's peculiarity is that, as you are aware, he hates a compromise--won't have it--_retro Sathanas!_--and Drew's proposal to take his arm instead of being carried pick-a-or piggy-back--I am ignorant how Nevil spells it--disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to stop where they are, like the cocoanut and pincushion of our friends the gipsies on the downs; so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime--two steps to the right, half a dozen to the left, &c. They were knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery. 'Confound it!' cries Nevil. 'It's because I consented to a compromise!'" Most people know that this passage refers to Rear-Admiral Maxse, yet, well as we may know our man, we have him presented like an awkward, silly, comic puppet from a show. The professor of slang could degrade the conduct of the soldiers on board the _Birkenhead_; he could make the choruses from _Samson Agonistes_ seem like the Cockney puerilities of a comic news-sheet. It is this high-sniffing, supercilious slang that I attack, for I can see that it is the impudent language of a people to whom nothing is great, nothing beautiful, nothing pure, and nothing worthy of faith. The slang of the "London season" is terrible and painful. A gloriously beautiful lady is a "rather good-looking woman--looks fairly well to-night;" a great entertainment is a "function;" a splendid ball is a "nice little dance;" high-bred, refined, and exclusive ladies and gentlemen are "smart people;" a tasteful dress is a "swagger frock;" a new craze is "the swagger thing to do." Imbecile, useless, contemptible beings, male and female, use all these verbal monstrosities under the impression that they make themselves look distinguished. A microcephalous youth whose chief intellectual relaxation consists in sucking the head of a stick thinks that his conversational style is brilliant when he calls a man a "Johnnie," a battle "a blooming slog," his lodgings his "show," a hero "a game sort of a chappie," and so on. Girls catch the infection of slang; and thus, while sweet young ladies are leading beautiful lives at Girton and Newnham, their sisters of society are learning to use a language which is a frail copy of the robust language of the drinking-bar and the racecourse. Under this blight lofty thought perishes, noble language also dies away, real wit is cankered and withered into a mere ghastly crackle of wordplay, humour is regarded as the sign of the savage, and generous emotion, manly love, womanly tenderness are reckoned as the folly of people whom the smart young lady of the period would describe as "Jugginses." As to the slang of the juniors of the middle class, it is well-nigh past description and past bearing. The dog-collared, tight-coated, horsey youth learns all the cant phrases from cheap sporting prints, and he has an idea that to call a man a "bally bounder" is quite a ducal thing to do. His hideous cackle sounds in railway-carriages, or on breezy piers by the pure sea, or in suburban roads. From the time when he gabbles over his game of Nap in the train until his last villainous howl pollutes the night, he lives, moves, and has his being in slang; and he is incapable of understanding truth, beauty, grandeur, or refinement. He is apt to label any one who does not wear a dog-collar and stableman's trousers as a cad; but, ah, what a cad he himself is! In what a vast profound gulf of vulgarity his being wallows; and his tongue, his slang, is enough to make the spirits of the pure and just return to earth and smite him! Better by far the cunning gipsy with his glib chatter, the rough tramp with his incoherent hoarseness! All who wish to save our grand language from deterioration, all who wish to retain some savour of sincerity and manhood among us, should set themselves resolutely to talk on all occasions, great or trivial, in simple, direct, refined English. There is no need to be bookish; there is much need for being natural and sincere--and nature and sincerity are assassinated by slang. _September, 1888._ _PETS._ That enterprising savage who first domesticated the pig has a good deal to answer for. I do not say that the moral training of the pig was a distinct evil, for it undoubtedly saved many aged and respectable persons from serious inconvenience. The more practical members of the primitive tribes were wont to club the patriarchs whom they regarded as having lived long enough; and an exaggerated spirit of economy led the sons of the forest to eat their venerable relatives. The domestication of the noble animal which is the symbol of Irish prosperity caused a remarkable change in primitive public opinion. The gratified savage, conscious of possessing pigs, no longer cast the anxious eye of the epicure upon his grandmother. Thus a disagreeable habit and a disagreeable tradition were abolished, and one more step was made in the direction of universal kindliness. But, while we are in some measure grateful to the first pig-tamer, we do not feel quite so sure about the first person who inveigled the cat into captivity. Mark that I do not speak of the "slavery" of the cat--for who ever knew a cat to do anything against its will? If you whistle for a dog, he comes with servile gestures, and almost overdoes his obedience; but, if a cat has got into a comfortable place, you may whistle for that cat until you are spent, and it will go on regarding you with a lordly blink of independence. No; decidedly the cat is not a slave. Of course I must be logical, and therefore I allow, under reasonable reservations, that a boot-jack, used as a projectile, will make a cat stir; and I have known a large garden-syringe cause a most picturesque exodus in the case of some eloquent and thoughtful cats that were holding a conference in a garden at midnight. Still I must carefully point out the fact that the boot-jack will not induce the cat to travel in any given direction for your convenience; you throw the missile, and you must wait in suspense until you know whether your cat will vanish with a wild plunge through the roof of your conservatory or bound with unwonted smartness into your favourite William pear tree. The syringe is scarcely more trustworthy in its action than the boot-jack; the parting remarks of six drenched cats are spirited and harmonious; but the animals depart to different quarters of the universe, and your hydraulic measure, so far from bringing order out of chaos, merely evokes a wailing chaos out of comparative order. These discursive observations aim at showing that a cat has a haughty spirit of independence which centuries of partial submission to the suzerainty of man have not eradicated. I do not want to censure the ancient personage who made friends with the creature which is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever to many estimable people--I reserve my judgment. Some otherwise calm and moral men regard the cat in such a light that they would go and jump on the tomb of the primeval tamer; others would erect monuments to him; so perhaps it is better that we do not know whose memory we should revere--or anathematise--the processes are reversible, according to our dispositions. Man is the paragon of animals; the cat is the paradox of animals. You cannot reason about the creature; you can only make sure that it has every quality likely to secure success in the struggle for existence; and it is well to be careful how you state your opinions in promiscuous company, for the fanatic cat-lover is only a little less wildly ferocious than the fanatical cat-hater. Cats and pigs appear to have been the first creatures to earn the protective affection of man; but, ah, what a cohort of brutes and birds have followed! The dog is an excellent, noble, lovable animal; but the pet-dog! Alas! I seem to hear one vast sigh of genuine anguish as this Essay travels round the earth from China to Peru. I can understand the artfulness of that wily savage who first persuaded the wolf-like animal of the Asiatic plains to help him in the chase; I understand the statesmanship of the Thibetan shepherd who first made a wolf turn traitor to the lupine race. But who first invented the pet-dog? This impassioned question I ask with thoughts that are a very great deal too deep for tears. Consider what the existence of the pet-dog means. You visit an estimable lady, and you are greeted, almost in the hall, by a poodle, who waltzes around your legs and makes an oration like an obstructionist when the Irish Estimates are before the House. You feel that you are pale, but you summon up all your reserves of base hypocrisy and remark, "Poor fellow! Poo-poo-poo-ole fellow!" You really mean, "I should like to tomahawk you, and scalp you afterwards!"--but this sentiment you ignobly retain in your own bosom. You lift one leg in an apologetic way, and poodle instantly dashes at you with all the vehemence of a charge of his compatriots the Cuirassiers. You shut your eyes and wait for the shedding of blood; but the torturer has all the malignant subtlety of an Apache Indian, and he tantalizes you. Presently the lady of the house appears, and, finding that you are beleaguered by an ubiquitous foe, she says sweetly, "Pray do not mind Moumou; his fun gets the better of him. Go away, naughty Moumou! Did Mr. Blank frighten him then--the darling?" Fun! A pleasing sort of fun! If the rescuer had seen that dog's sanguinary rushes, she would not talk about fun. When you reach the drawing-room, there is a pug seated on an ottoman. He looks like a peculiarly truculent bull-dog that has been brought up on a lowering diet of gin-and-water, and you gain an exaggerated idea of his savagery as he uplifts his sooty muzzle. He barks with indignation, as if he thought you had come for his mistress's will, and intended to cut him off with a Spratt's biscuit. Of course he comes to smell round your ankles, and equally of course you put on a sickly smile, and take up an attitude as though you had sat down on the wrong side of a harrow. Your conversation is strained and feeble; you fail to demonstrate your affection; and, when a fussy King Charles comes up and fairly shrieks injurious remarks at you, the sense of humiliation and desertion is too severe, and you depart. Of course your hostess never attempts to control her satellites--they are quiet with her; and, even if one of them sampled the leg of a guest with a view to further business, she would be secretly pleased at such a proof of exclusive affection. We suppose that people must have something to be fond of; but why should any one be fond of a pug that is too unwieldy to move faster than a hedgehog? His face is, to say the least, not celestial--whatever his nose may be; he cannot catch a rat; he cannot swim; he cannot retrieve; he can do nothing, and his insolence to strangers eclipses the best performances of the finest and tallest Belgravian flunkeys. He is alive, and in his youth he may doubtless have been comic and engaging; but in his obese, waddling, ill-conditioned old age he is such an atrocity that one wishes a wandering Chinaman might pick him up and use him instantly after the sensible thrifty fashion of the great nation. I love the St. Bernard; he is a noble creature, and his beautiful life-saving instinct is such that I have seen a huge member of the breed jump off a high bridge to save a puppy which he considered to be drowning. The St. Bernard will allow a little child to lead him and to smite him on the nose without his uttering so much as a whine by way of remonstrance. If another dog attacks him, he will not retaliate by biting--that would be undignified, and like a mere bull-dog; he lies down on his antagonist and waits a little; then that other dog gets up when it has recovered breath, and, after thinking the matter over, it concludes that it must have attacked a sort of hairy traction-engine. All these traits of the St. Bernard are very sweet and engaging, and I must, moreover, congratulate him on his scientific method of treating burglars; but I do object with all the pathos at my disposal to the St. Bernard considered as a pet. His master will bring him into rooms. Now, when he is bounding about on glaciers, or infringing the Licensing Act by giving travellers brandy without scrutinizing their return-tickets, or acting as pony for frozen little boys, or doing duty as special constable when burglars pay an evening call, he is admirable; but, when he enters a room, he has all the general effects of an earthquake without any picturesque accessories. His beauty is of course praised, and, like any other big lumbering male, he is flattered; his vast tail makes a sweep like the blade of a screw-propeller, and away goes a vase. A maid brings in tea, and the St. Bernard is pleased to approve the expression of Mary's countenance; with one colossal spring he places his paws on her shoulders, and she has visions of immediate execution. Not being equal to the part of an early martyr, she observes, "Ow!" The St. Bernard regards this brief statement as a compliment, and, in an ecstasy of self-approval, he sends poor Mary staggering. Of course, when he is sent out, after causing this little excitement, he proceeds to eat anything that happens to be handy; and, as the cook does not wish to be eaten herself, she bears her bitter wrong in silence, only hoping that the two pounds of butter which the animal took as dessert may make him excessively unwell. Now I ask any man and brother, or lady and sister, is a St. Bernard a legitimate pet in the proper sense of the word? As to the bull-dog, I say little. He at least is a good water-dog, and, when he is taught, he will retrieve birds through the heaviest sea as long as his master cares to shoot. But his appearance is sardonic, to say the least of it; he puts me in mind of a prize-fighter coming up for the tenth round when he has got matters all his own way. Happily he is not often kept as a pet; he is usually taken out by fast young men in riverside places, for his company is believed to give an air of dash and fashion to his master; and he waddles along apparently engaged in thinking out some scheme of reform for sporting circles in general. In a drawing-room he looks unnatural, and his imperturbable good humour fails to secure him favour. Dr. Jessopp tells a story of a clergyman's wife who usually kept from fifteen to twenty brindled bull-dogs; but this lady was an original character, and her mode of using a red-hot iron bar when any of her pets had an argument was marked by punctuality and despatch. The genuine collie is an ideal pet, but the cross-grained fleecy brutes bred for the show-bench are good neither for one thing nor another. The real, homely, ugly collie never snaps at friends; the mongrel brute with the cross of Gordon setter is not safe for an hour at a time. The real collie takes to sheep-driving by instinct; he will run three miles out and three miles in, and secure his master's property accurately after very little teaching; the present champion of all the collies would run away from a sheep as if he had seen a troop of lions. In any case, even when a collie is a genuine affectionate pet, his place is not in the house. Let him have all the open air possible, and he will remain healthy, delightful in his manners, and preternaturally intelligent. The dog of the day is the fox-terrier, and a charming little fellow he is. Unfortunately it happens that most smart youths who possess fox-terriers have an exalted idea of their friends' pugilistic powers, and hence the sweet little black, white, and tan beauty too often has life concerted into a battle and a march. Still no one who understands the fox-terrier can help respecting and admiring him. If I might hint a fault, it is that the fox-terrier lacks balance of character. The ejaculation "Cats!" causes him to behave in a way which is devoid of well-bred repose, and his conduct when in presence of rabbits is enough to make a meditative lurcher or retriever grieve. When a lurcher sees a rabbit in the daytime, he leers at him from his villainous oblique eye, and seems to say, "Shan't follow you just now--may have the pleasure of looking you up this evening." But the fox-terrier converts himself into a kind of hurricane in fur, and he gives tongue like a stump-orator in full cry. I may say that, when once the fox-terrier becomes a drawing-room pet, he loses all character--he might just as well be a pug at once. The Bedlington is perhaps the best of all terriers, but his disreputable aspect renders him rather out of place in a refined room. It is only when his deep sagacious eyes are seen that he looks attractive. He can run, swim, dive, catch rabbits, retrieve, or do anything. I grieve to say that he is a dog of an intriguing disposition; and no prudent lady would introduce him among dogs who have not learned mischief. The Bedlington seems to have the power of command, and he takes a fiendish delight in ordering young dogs to play pranks. He will whisper to a young collie, and in an instant you will see that collie chasing sheep or hens, or hunting among flower-beds, or baiting a cow, or something equally outrageous. Decidedly the Bedlington does not shine as a pet; and he should be kept only where there are plenty of things to be murdered daily--then he lives with placid joy, varied by sublime Berserker rage. As to feathered pets, who has not suffered from parrots? You buy a grey one at the docks, and pay four pounds for him on account of his manifold accomplishments. When he is taken home and presented to a prim lady, he of course gives her samples of the language used by the sailors on the voyage home; and, even when his morals are cured and his language is purified by discipline, he is a terrible creature. The imp lurks in his eye, and his beak--his abominable beak--is like a malicious vice. But I allow that Polly, when well behaved, gives a charming appearance to a room, and her ways are very quaint. Lonely women have amused themselves for many and many a weary hour with the antics of the pretty tropical bird; and I shall say nothing against Poll for the world. I started with the intention of merely skirting the subject; but I find I am involved in considerations deep as society--deep as the origins of the human race. In their proper place I like all pets, with the exception of snakes. The aggressive pug is bad enough, but the snake is a thousand times worse. When possible, all boys and girls should have pets, and they should be made to tend their charges without any adult help whatever. No indirect discipline has such a humanizing effect. The unregenerate boy deprived of pets will tie kettles to dogs' tails, he will shoot at cats with catapults, he is merciless to small birds, and no one can convince him that frogs or young nestlings can feel. When he has pets, his mental horizon is widened and his kindlier instincts awaken. A boy or girl without a pet is maimed in sympathy. Let me plead for discrimination in choice of pets. A gentleman--like the celebrated Mary--had a little lamb which he loved; but the little lamb developed into a very big and vicious ram which the owner could not find heart to kill. When this gentleman's friends were holding sweet and improving converse with him, that sheep would draw up behind his master's companion; then he would shoot out like a stone from a sling, and you would see a disconcerted guest propelled through space in a manner destructive alike to dignity and trousers. That sheep comes and butts at the front-door if he thinks his master is making too long a call; it is of no use to go and apologize for he will not take any denial, and, moreover, he will as soon ram you with his granite skull as look at you. Let the door be shut again, and the sheep seems to say, "If I don't send a panel in, you may call me a low, common goat!" and then he butts away with an enthusiasm which arouses the street. A pet of that sort is quite embarrassing, and I must respectfully beg leave to draw the line at rams. A ram is too exciting a personage for the owner's friends. Every sign that tells of the growing love for dumb animals is grateful to my mind; for any one who has a true, kindly love for pets cannot be wholly bad. While I gently ridicule the people who keep useless brutes to annoy their neighbours, I would rather see even the hideous, useless pug kept to wheeze and snarl in his old age than see no pets at all. Good luck to all good folk who love animals, and may the reign of kindness spread! _March, 1888._ _THE ETHICS OF THE TURF_. When Lord Beaconsfield called the Turf a vast engine of national demoralization, he uttered a broad general truth; but, unfortunately, he did not go into particulars, and his vague grandiloquence has inspired a large number of ferocious imitators, who know as little about the essentials of the matter as Lord Beaconsfield did. These imitators abuse the wrong things and the wrong people; they mix up causes and effects; they are acrid where they should be tolerant; they know nothing about the real evils; and they do no good, for the simple reason that racing blackguards never read anything, while cultured gentlemen who happen to go racing smile quietly at the blundering of amateur moralists. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is a good man and a clever man; but to see the kind of display he makes when he gets up to talk about the Turf is very saddening. He can give you an accurate statement concerning the evils of drink, but as soon as he touches racing his innocence becomes woefully apparent, and the biggest scoundrel that ever entered the Ring can afford to make game of the harmless, well-meaning critic. The subject is an intricate one, and you cannot settle it right off by talking of "pampered nobles who pander to the worst vices of the multitude;" and you go equally wrong if you begin to shriek whenever that inevitable larcenous shopboy whimpers in the dock about the temptations of betting. We are poisoned by generalities; our reformers, who use press and platform to enlighten us, resemble a doctor who should stop by a patient's bedside and deliver an oration on bad health in the abstract when he ought to be finding out his man's particular ailment. Let us clear the ground a little bit, until we can see something definite. I am going to talk plainly about things that I know, and I want to put all sentimental rubbish out of the road. In the first place, then, horse-racing, in itself, is neither degrading nor anything else that is bad; a race is a beautiful and exhilarating spectacle, and quiet men, who never bet, are taken out of themselves in a delightful fashion when the exquisite thoroughbreds thunder past. No sensible man supposes for a moment that owners and trainers have any deliberate intention of improving the breed of horses, but, nevertheless, these splendid tests of speed and endurance undoubtedly tend indirectly to produce a fine breed, and that is worth taking into account. The Survival of the Fittest is the law that governs racing studs; the thought and observation of clever men are constantly exercised with a view to preserving excellence and eliminating defects, so that, little by little, we have contrived, in the course of a century, to approach equine perfection. If a twelve-stone man were put up on Bendigo, that magnificent animal could give half a mile start to any Arab steed that ever was foaled, and run away from the Arab at the finish of a four-mile course. Weight need not be considered, for if the Eastern-bred horse only carried a postage-stamp the result would be much about the same. Minting could carry fourteen stone across a country, while, if we come to mere speed, there is really no knowing what horses like Ormonde, Energy, Prince Charlie, and others might have done had they been pressed. If the Emir of Haïl were to bring over fifty of his best mares, the Newmarket trainers could pick out fifty fillies from among their second-rate animals, and the worst of the fillies could distance the best of the Arabs on any terms; while, if fifty heats were run off, over any courses from half a mile to four miles, the English horses would not lose one. The champion Arab of the world was matched against one of the worst thoroughbreds in training; the English "plater" carried about five stone more than the pride of the East, and won by a quarter of a mile. Unconsciously, the breeders of racers have been evolving for us the swiftest, strongest, and most courageous horse known to the world, and we cannot afford to neglect that consideration, for people will not strive after perfection unless perfection brings profit. Again, we hear occasionally a good deal of outcry about the great noblemen and gentlemen who keep up expensive studs, and the assumption is that racehorses and immorality go together; but what would the critics have the racing nobleman do? He is born into a strange artificial society; his fate is ready-made for him; he inherits luxuries and pastimes as he inherits land and trees. Say that the stud is a useless luxury: but then, what about the daubs for which plutocrats pay thousands of guineas? A picture costs, let us say, 2,000 guineas; it is the slovenly work of a hurried master, and the guineas are paid for a name; it is stuck away in a private gallery, and, if its owner looks at it so often as once a week, it costs him £2 per peep--reckoning only the interest on the money sunk. Is that useless luxury? The fact is that we are living in a sort of guarded hothouse; our barbarian propensities cannot have an easy outlet; and luxury of all sorts tends to lull our barbarian energy. If we blame one man for indulging a costly hobby, we must blame almost every man and woman who belongs to the grades above the lower middle-class. A rich trader who spends £5,000 a year on orchid-houses cannot very well afford to reprove a man who pays 50s. per week for each of a dozen horses in training. Rich folk, whose wealth has been fostered during the long security of England, will indulge in superfluities, and no one can stop them. A country gentleman who succeeds to a deer park cannot slaughter all the useless, pretty creatures merely because they _are_ useless: he is bound by a thousand traditions, and he cannot suddenly break away. A nobleman inherits a colossal income, of which he cannot very well rid himself: he follows the traditions of his family or his class, and employs part of his profuse surplus riches in maintaining a racing stud; how can any one find fault with him? Such a man as Lord Hartington would never dream of betting except in a languid, off-hand way. He (and his like) are fond of watching the superb rush of the glossy horses; they want the freedom, the swift excitement of the breezy heath; our society encourages them to amuse themselves, and they do so with a will. That is all. It may be wrong for A and B and C to own superfluous wealth, but then the fact is there--that they have got it, and the community agree that they may expend the superfluity as they choose. The rich man's stud gives wholesome employment to myriads of decent folks in various stations of life--farmers, saddlers, blacksmiths, builders, corn dealers, road-makers, hedgers, farriers, grooms, and half a score other sorts of toilers derive their living from feeding, harnessing, and tending the horses, and the withdrawal of such a sportsman as Mr. "Abington" from Newmarket would inflict a terrible blow on hundreds of industrious persons who lead perfectly useful and harmless lives. My point is, that racing (as racing) is in no way noxious; it is the most pleasant of all excitements, and it gives bread to many praiseworthy citizens. I have seen 5,000 given for a Latin hymn-book, and, when I pondered on the ghastly, imbecile selfishness of that purchase, I thought that I should not have mourned very much if the money had been laid out on a dozen smart colts and fillies, for, at least, the horses would have ultimately been of some use, even if they all had been put to cab-work. We must allow that when racing is a hobby, it is quite respectable--as hobbies go. One good friend of mine, whose fortune has been made by shrewd judgment and constant work, always keeps five or six racers in training. He goes from meeting to meeting with all the eagerness of a boy; his friends sturdily maintain that his stud is composed of "hair trunks," and the animals certainly have an impressively uniform habit of coming in last But the good owner has his pleasure; his hobby satisfies him; and, when he goes out in the morning to watch his yearlings frolicking, he certainly never dreams that he is fostering an immoral institution. Could we only have racing--and none of the hideous adjuncts--I should be glad, in spite of all the moralists who associate horse-flesh with original sin. As to the bookmakers, I shall have much to say further on. At present I am content with observing that the quiet, respectable bookmaker is as honourable and trustworthy as any trafficker in stocks and shares, and his business is almost identical with that of the stockjobber in many respects. No class of men adhere more rigidly to the point of honour than bookmakers of the better sort, and a mere nod from one of them is as binding to him as the most elaborate of parchments. They are simply shrewd, audacious tradesmen, who know that most people are fools, and make their profit out of that knowledge. It is painful to hear an ignorant man abusing a bookmaker who does no more than use his opportunities skilfully. Why not abuse the gentry who buy copper to catch the rise of the market? Why not abuse the whole of the thousands of men who make the City lively for six days of the week? Is there any rational man breathing who would scruple to accept profit from the rise of a stock or share? If I, practically, back South-Eastern Railway shares to rise, who blames me if I sell when my property has increased in value by one-eighth? My good counsellor, Mr. Ruskin, who is the most virulent enemy of usury, is nevertheless very glad that his father bought Bank of England shares, which have now been converted into Stock, and stand at over 300; Ruskin senior was a shrewd speculator, who backed his fancy; and a bookmaker does the same in a safer way. Bookmaking is a business which is carried out in its higher branches with perfect sobriety, discretion, mid probity; the gambling element does not come in on the bookmaker's side, but he deals with gamblers in a fair way. They know that he will lay them the shortest odds he can; they know that they put their wits against his, and they also know that he will pay them with punctilious accuracy if they happen to beat him in the encounter of brains. Three or four of the leading betting men "turn over" on the average about half a million each per annum; one firm who bet on commission receive an average of five thousand pounds per day to invest, and the vouchers of all these speculators and agents are as good as bank notes. Mark that I grant the certainty of the bookmakers winning; they can remain idle in their mansions for months in the year, and the great gambling public supply the means; but I do not find fault with the bookmakers because they use their opportunities, or else I might rave about the iniquity of a godly man who earns in a week 100,000 from a "corner" in tin, or I might reprobate the quack who makes no less than 7000 per cent on every box of pills that he sells. A good man once chatted with me for a whole evening, and all his talk ran on his own luck in "spotting" shares that were likely to move upward. Certainly his luck as a gambler had been phenomenal. I turned the conversation to the Turf case of Wood _v_. Cox, and the torrent of eloquence which met me was enough to drown my intellect in its whirl and rush. My friend was great on the iniquity of gaming and racing, and I rather fancy that he proposed to play on the Betting Ring with a mitrailleuse if ever he had the power. I know he was most sanguinary--and I smiled. He never for an instant seemed to think that he was exactly like a backer of horses, and I have no doubt but that his density is shared by a few odd millions here and there. The stockbroker is a kind of bookmaker, and the men and women who patronise both and make their wealth are fools who all may be lumped under the same heading. I knew of one outside-broker--a mere bucket-shop keeper--who keeps 600 clerks constantly employed. That seems to point out rather an extensive gambling business. And now I have tried to clear the ground on one hand a little, and my last and uttermost good word has been said for the Turf. With sorrow I say that, after all excuses are made, the cool observer must own that it is indeed a vast engine of national demoralization, and the subtle venom which it injects into the veins of the Nation creeps along through channels of which Lord Beaconsfield never dreamed. I might call the Turf a canker, but a canker is only a local ailment, whereas the evils of betting have now become constitutional so far as the State is concerned. If we cut out the whole tribe of bookmakers and betting-agents, and applied such cautery as would prevent any similar growth from arising in the place wherefrom we excised them, we should do very little good; for the life-blood of Britain is tainted, and no superficial remedy can cure her now. I shut my eyes on the bookmakers, and I only spare attention for the myriads who make the bookmakers' existence possible--who would evolve new bookmakers from their midst if we exterminated the present tribe to-morrow. It is not the professional bettors who cause the existence of fools; it is the insensate fools who cause the existence of professional bettors. Gambling used to be mainly confined to the upper classes; it is now a raging disease among that lower middle-class which used to form the main element of our national strength, and the tradesman whose cart comes to your area in the morning gambles with all the reckless abandonment that used to be shown by the Hon. A. Deuceace or Lady Betty when George the Third was King. Your clerk, shopman, butcher, baker, barber--especially the barber--ask their companions, "What have you done on the Lincoln?" or "How do you stand for the Two Thousand?" just as ordinary folks ask after each other's health. Tradesmen step out of their shops in the morning and telegraph to their bookmaker just as they might to one of their wholesale houses; there is not a town in broad England which has not its flourishing betting men, and some very small towns can maintain two or three. The bookmakers are usually publicans, barbers, or tobacconists; but whatever they are they invariably drive a capital trade. In the corner of a smoking-room you may see a quiet, impassive man sitting daily in a contemplative manner; he does not drink much; he smokes little, and he appears to have nothing in particular to worry him. If he knows you well, he will scarcely mind your presence; men (and boys) greet him, and little, gentle colloquies take place from time to time; the smartest man could detect nothing, and yet the noiseless, placid gentleman of the smoking-room registers thirty or forty bets in a day. That is one type which I have watched for hours, days, months. There are dozens of other types, but I need not attempt to sketch them; it is sufficient to say that the poison has taken hard hold on us, and that I see every symptom of a national decadence. Some one may say, "But you excused the Turf and the betting men." Exactly. I said that racing is a delightful pastime to those who go to watch good horses gallop; the miserable thing to me is seeing the wretches who do not care for racing at all, but only care for gambling on names and numbers. Let Lord Hartington, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Corlett, Mr. Rothschild, Lord Rosebery, and the rest, go and see the lovely horses shooting over the turf; by all means let them watch their own colts and fillies come flying home. But the poor creatures who muddle away brains, energy, and money on what _they_ are pleased to term sport, do not know a horse from a mule; they gamble, as I have said, on names; the splendid racers give them no enjoyment such as the true sportsman derives, for they would not know Ormonde from a Clydesdale. To these forlorn beings only the ignoble side of racing is known; it is sacrilege to call them sportsmen; they are rotting their very souls and destroying the remnants of their manhood over a game which they play blindfold. It is pitiful--most pitiful. No good-natured man will begrudge occasional holiday-makers their chance of seeing a good race. Rural and industrial Yorkshire are represented by thousands at Doncaster, on the St. Ledger day, and the tourists get no particular harm; they are horsey to the backbone, and they come to see the running. They criticize the animals and gain topics for months of conversation, and, if they bet an odd half-crown and never go beyond it, perhaps no one is much the worse. When the Duke of Portland allowed his tenantry to see St. Simon gallop five years ago at Newcastle, the pitmen and artisans thronged to look at the horse. There was no betting whatever, because no conceivable odds could have measured the difference between St. Simon and his opponent, yet when Archer let the multitude see how fast a horse _could_ travel, and the great thoroughbred swept along like a flash, the excitement and enthusiasm rose to fever-pitch. Those men had an unaffected pleasure in observing the beauty and symmetry and speed of a noble creature, and they were unharmed by the little treat which the good-natured magnate provided for them. It is quite otherwise with the mob of stay-at-home gamblers; they do not care a rush for the horses; they long, with all the crazy greed of true dupes, to gain money without working for it, and that is where the mischief comes in. Cupidity, mean anxieties, unwholesome excitements, gradually sap the morality of really sturdy fellows--the last shred of manliness is torn away, and the ordinary human intelligence is replaced by repulsive vulpine cunning. If you can look at a little group of the stay-at-homes while they are discussing the prospects of a race, you will see something that Hogarth would have enjoyed in his large, lusty fashion. The fair human soul no longer shines through those shifty, deceitful eyes; the men have, somehow, sunk from the level of their race, and they make you think that Swift may-have been right after all. From long experience I am certain that if a cultured gentleman, accustomed to high thinking, were suddenly compelled to live among these dismal beings, he would be attacked by a species of intellectual paralysis. The affairs of the country are nothing to them; poetry, art, and all beautiful things are contemptible in their eyes; they dwell in an obscure twilight of the mind, and their relaxation, when the serious business of betting is put aside for awhile, mostly lies in the direction of sheer bawdry and abomination. It is curious to see the oblique effect which general degradation has upon the vocabulary of these people; quiet words, or words that express a plain meaning, are repugnant to them; even the old-fashioned full-mouthed oaths of our fathers are tame to their fancy, for they must have something strongly spiced, and thus they have by degrees fitted themselves up with a loathly dialect of their own which transcends the comparatively harmless efforts of the Black Country potter. Foul is not the word for this ultra-filthy mode of talk--it passes into depths below foulness. I may digress for a little to emphasize this point. The latter-day hanger-on of the Turf has introduced a new horror to existence. Go into the Silver Ring at a suburban meeting, and listen while two or three of the fellows work themselves into an ecstasy of vile excitement, then you will hear something which cannot be described or defined in any terms known to humanity. Why it should be so I cannot tell, but the portentous symptom of putridity is always in evidence. As is the man of the Ring, so are the stay-at-homes. The disease of their minds is made manifest by their manner of speech; they throw out verbal pustules which tell of the rank corruption which has overtaken their nature, and you need some seasoning before you can remain coolly among them without feeling symptoms of nausea. There is one peer of this realm--a hereditary legislator and a patron of many Church livings--who is famous for his skill in the use of certain kinds of vocables. This man is a living exemplar of the mysterious effect which low dodging and low distractions have on the soul. In five minutes he can make you feel as if you had tumbled into one of Swedenborg's loathsome hells; he can make the most eloquent of turf thieves feel, envious, and he can make you awe-stricken as you see how far and long God bears with man. The disease from which this pleasing pillar of the State suffers has spread, with more or less virulence, to the furthermost recesses of our towns, and you must know the fringe of the Turf world before you can so much as guess what the symptoms are like. Here is a queer kind of a world which has suddenly arisen! Faith and trust are banished; real honesty is unknown; purity is less than a name; manliness means no more than a certain readiness to use the fists. Most of the dwellers in this atmosphere are punctilious about money payments because they durst not be otherwise, but the fine flower of real probity does not flourish in the mephitic air. To lie, to dodge, to take mean advantages--these are the accomplishments which an ugly percentage of middle-class youths cultivate, and all the mischief arises from the fact that they persist in trying to ape the manners of the most unworthy members of an order to which they do not belong. It is bad enough when a rich and idle man is bitten with the taste for betting, but when he is imitated by the tailor's assistant who carries his clothes home, then we have a still more unpleasant phenomenon to consider. For it is fatal to a nation when any large and influential section of the populace once begin to be confused in their notions of right and wrong. Not long ago I was struck by noticing a significant instance of this moral dry rot. An old racing man died, and all the sporting papers had something to say about him and his career. Now the best of the sporting journalists are clever and cultured gentlemen, who give refinement, to every subject that they touch. But a certain kind of writing is done by pariahs, who are not much of a credit to our society, and I was interested by the style in which these scribbling vermin spoke of the dead man. Their gush was a trifle nauseating; their mean worship of money gave one a shiver, and the relish with which they described their hero's exploits would have been comic were it not for the before-mentioned nausea. It seemed that the departed turfite had been--to use blunt English--a very skilful and successful swindler. He would buy a horse which took his fancy, and he would run the animal again and again, until people got tired of seeing such a useless brute taken down to the starting-point. The handicappers finally let our schemer's horse in at a trifling weight, and then he prepared for business. He had trustworthy agents at Manchester, Nottingham, and Newcastle, and these men contrived, without rousing suspicion, to "dribble" money into the market in a stealthy way, until the whole of their commission was worked on very advantageous terms. The arch-plotter did not show prominently in the transaction, and he contrived once or twice to throw dust in the eyes of the very cleverest men. One or two neatly arranged strokes secured our acute gentleman a handsome fortune. He missed £70,000 once, by a short head, but this was the only instance in which his plans seriously failed; and he was looked up to as an epitome of all the virtues which are most acceptable in racing circles. Well, had this dodger exhibited the heroism of Gordon, the benevolence of Lord Shaftesbury, the probity of Henry Fawcett, he could not have been more bepraised and bewailed by the small fry of sporting literature. All he had done in life was to deceive people by making them fancy that certain good horses were bad ones: strictly speaking, he made money by false pretences, and yet, such is the twist given by association with genuine gamblers, that educated men wrote of him as if he had been a saint of the most admirable order. This disposition is seen all through the piece: successful roguery is glorified, and our young men admire "the Colonel," or "the Captain," or Jack This and Tom That, merely because the Captain and the Colonel and Jack and Tom are acute rascals who have managed to make money. Decidedly, our national ideals are in a queer way. Just think of a little transaction which occurred in 1887. A noble lord ordered a miserable jockey boy to pull a horse, so that the animal might lose a race: the exalted guide of youth was found out, and deservedly packed off the Turf; but it was only by an accident that the Stewards were able to catch him. That legislator had funny notions of the duty which he owed to boyhood: he asked his poor little satellite to play the scoundrel, and he only did what scores do who are _not_ found out. A haze hangs about the Turf, and all the principles which should guide human nature are blurred and distorted; the high-minded, honourable racing men can do nothing or next to nothing, and the scum work their will in only too many instances. Every one knows that the ground is palpitating with corruption, but our national mental disease has so gained ground that some regard corruption in a lazy way as being inevitable, while others--including the stay-at-home horse-racers--reckon it as absolutely admirable. Some years ago, a pretty little mare was winning the St. Leger easily, when a big horse cut into her heels and knocked her over. About two months afterwards, the same wiry little mare was running in an important race at Newmarket, and at the Bushes she was hauling her jockey out of the saddle. There were not many spectators about, and only a few noticed that, while the mare was fighting for her head, she was suddenly pulled until she reared up, lost her place, and reached the post about seventh in a large field. The jockey who rode the mare, and who made her exhibit circus gambols, received a thousand pounds from the owner of the winning horse. Now, there was no disguise about this transaction--nay, it was rather advertised than otherwise, and a good many of the sporting prints took it quite as a matter of course. Why? Simply because no prominent racing man raked up the matter judicially, and because the ordinary Turf scramblers accept suspicious proceedings as part of their environment. Mr. Carlyle mourned over the deadly virus of lying which was emitted by Loyola and his crew; he might mourn now over the deadly virus of cheating which is emitted from the central ganglia of the Turf. The upright men who love horses and love racing are nearly powerless; the thieves leaven the country, and they have reduced what was once the finest middle-class in the world to a condition of stark putridity. Before we can rightly understand the degradation which has befallen us by reason of the Turf, we must examine the position of jockeys in the community. Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his most wicked sentences, said that the jockey is our Western substitute for the eunuch; a noble duke, who ought to know something about the matter, lately informed the world through the medium of a court of law with an oath that "jockeys are thieves." Now, I know one jockey whose character is not embraced by the duke's definition, and I have heard that there are two, but I am not acquainted with the second man. The wonder is, considering the harebrained, slavering folly of the public, that any of the riding manikins are half as honest as they are; the wonder is that their poor little horsey brains are not led astray in such fashion as to make every race a farce. They certainly do try their best on occasion, and I believe that there are many races which are _not_ arranged before the start; but you cannot persuade the picked men of the rascals' corps that any race is run fairly. When Melton and Paradox ran their tremendous race home in the Derby, I heard quite a number of intelligent gentry saying that Paradox should have won but for the adjectived and participled propensities of his jockey. Nevertheless, although most devout turfites agree with the emphatic duke, they do not idolize their diminutive fetishes a whit the less; they worship the manikin with a touching and droll devotion, and, when they know him to be a confirmed scamp, they admire his cleverness, and try to find out which way the little rogue's interest lies, so that they may follow him. So it comes about that we have amidst us a school of skinny dwarfs whose leaders are paid better than the greatest statesmen in Europe. The commonest jockey-boy in this company of manikins can usually earn more than the average scholar or professional man, and the whole set receive a good deal more of adulation than has been bestowed on any soldier, sailor, explorer, or scientific man of our generation. And what is the life-history of the jockey? A tiny boy is bound apprentice, and submitted to the discipline of a training stable; he goes through the long routine of morning gallops, trials, and so forth, and when he begins to show signs of aptitude he is put up to ride for his master in public. If he is a born horseman, like Archer or Robinson, he may make his mark long before his indentures are returned to him, and he is at once surrounded by a horde of flatterers who do their best to spoil him. There is no cult so distinguished by slavishness, by gush, by lavishness, as jockey-worship, and a boy needs to have a strong head and sound, careful advisers, if he is to escape becoming positively insufferable. When the lad Robinson won the St. Leger, after his horse had been left at the post, he was made recipient of the most frantic and silly toadyism that the mind can conceive; the clever trainer to whom he was apprenticed received £1,500 for transferring the little fellow's services, and he is now a celebrity who probably earns a great deal more than Professor Owen or Mr. Walter Besant. The tiny boy who won the Cesarevitch on Don Juan received £1,000 after the race, and it must be remembered that this child had not left school. Mr. Herbert Spencer has not earned £1,000 by the works that have altered the course of modern thought; the child Martin picked up the amount in a lump, after he had scurried for less than five minutes on the back of a feather-weighted thoroughbred. As the jockey grows older and is freed from his apprenticeship he becomes a more and more important personage; if his weight keeps well within limits he can ride four or five races every day during the season; he draws five guineas for a win, and three for the mount, and he picks up an infinite number of unconsidered trifles in the way of presents, since the turfite, bad or good, is invariably a cheerful giver. The popular jockey soon has his carriages, his horses, his valet, and his sumptuous house; noblemen, millionaires, great dames, and men and women of all degrees conspire to pamper him: for jockey-worship, when it is once started, increases in intensity by a sort of geometrical progression. A shrewd man of the world may smile grimly when he hears that a popular rider was actually received with royal honours and installed in the royal box when he went to the theatre during his honeymoon, but there are the facts. It was so, and the best people of the fine town in which this deplorable piece of toadyism was perpetrated were tolerably angry at the time. If the sporting journalists perform their work of puffery with skill and care, the worship of the jockey reaches a pitch that borders on insanity. If General Gordon had returned and visited such a place as Liverpool or Doncaster during a race-meeting, he would not have been noticed by the discriminating crowd if Archer had passed along the street. If the Prime Minister were to visit any place of public resort while Watts or Webb happened to be there, it is probable that his lordship would learn something useful concerning the relative importance of Her Majesty's subjects. I know for a fact that a cleverly executed cartoon of Archer, Fordham, Wood, or Barrett will have at least six times as many buyers as a similar portrait of Professor Tyndall, Mr. James Payn, M. Pasteur, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Chamberlain, or any one in Britain excepting Mr. Gladstone. I do not know how many times the _Vanity Fair_ cartoon of Archer has been reprinted, but I learn on good authority that, for years, not a single day has been known to pass on which the caricature was not asked for. And now let us bring to mind the plain truth that these jockeys are only uneducated and promoted stable-boys after all. Is it not a wonder that we can pick out a single honest man from their midst? Vast sums depend on their exertions, and they are surrounded by a huge crowd of moneyed men who will stand at nothing if they can gain their ends; their unbalanced, sharp little minds are always open to temptation; they see their brethren amassing great fortunes, and they naturally fall into line and proceed, when their turn comes, to grab as much money as they can. Not long ago the inland revenue officials, after minute investigation, assessed the gains of one wee creature at £9,000 per year. This pigmy is now twenty-six years of age, and he earned as much as the Lord Chancellor, and more than any other judge, until a jury decided his fate by giving him what the Lord Chief Justice called "a contemptuous verdict." Another jockey paid income-tax on £10,000 a year, and a thousand pounds is not at all an uncommon sum to be paid merely as a retainer. Forty or fifty years ago a jockey would not have dreamed of facing his employer otherwise than cap in hand, but the value of stable-boys has gone up in the market, and Lear's fool might now say, "Handy-Dandy! Who is your jockey now and who is your master?" The little men gradually gather a kind of veneer of good manners, and some of them can behave very much like pocket editions of gentlemen, but the scent of the stable remains, and, whether the jockey is a rogue or passably honest, he remains a stable-boy to the end. Half the mischief on the Turf arises from the way in which these overpaid, spoilt menials can be bribed, and, certes, there are plenty of bribers ready. Racing men do not seem able to shake off the rule of their stunted tyrants. When the gentleman who paid income-tax on nine thousand a year brought the action which secured him the contemptuous verdict, the official handicapper to the Jockey Club declared on oath that the jockey's character was "as bad as bad can be." The starter and a score of other witnesses followed in the same groove, and yet this man was freely employed. Why? We may perhaps explain by inference presently. With this cynically corrupt corps of jockeys and their hangers-on, it may easily be seen that the plutocrats who manipulate the Turf wires have an admirable time of it, while the great gaping mob of zanies who go to races, and zanies who stay at home, are readily bled by the fellows who have the money and the "information" and the power. The rule of the Turf is easily formulated:--"Get the better of your neighbour. Play the game outwardly according to fair rules. Pay like a man if your calculations prove faulty, but take care that they shall be as seldom faulty as possible. Never mind what you pay for information if it gives you a point the better of other men. Keep your agents honest if you can, but, if they happen to be dishonest under pressure of circumstances, take care at any rate that you are not found out." In short, the Ring is mainly made up of men who pay with scrupulous honesty when they lose, but who take uncommonly good care to reduce the chances of losing to a minimum. Are they in the wrong? It depends. I shall not, at the present moment, go into details; I prefer to pause and ask what can be expected to result from the wolfish scheme of Turf morality which I have indicated. I do not compare it with the rules which guide our host of commercial middlemen, because, if I did, I should say that the betting men have rather the best of the comparison: I keep to the Turf, and I want to know what broad consequences must emanate from a body which organizes plans for plunder and veils them under the forms of honesty. An old hand--the Odysseus of racing--once said to me: "No man on earth would ever be allowed to take a hundred thousand pounds out of the Ring: they wouldn't allow it, they wouldn't That young fool must drop all he's got." We were speaking about a youthful madman who was just then being plucked to the last feather, and I knew that the old turfite was right. The Ring is a close body, and I have only known about four men who ever managed to beat the confederacy in the long run. There is one astute, taciturn, inscrutable organizer whom the bookmakers dread a little, because he happens to use their own methods; he will scheme for a year or two if necessary until he succeeds in placing a horse advantageously, and he usually brings off his _coup_ just at the time when the Ring least like it. "They don't yell like that when one of mine rolls home," he once said, while the bookmakers were clamouring with delight over the downfall of a favourite; and indeed this wily master of deceptions has very often made the pencillers draw long faces. But the case of the Turf Odysseus is not by any means typical; the man stands almost alone, and his like will not be seen again for many a day. The rule is that the backer must come to grief in the long run, for every resource of chicanery, bribery, and resolute keenness is against him. He is there to be plundered; it is his mission in life to lose, or how could the bookmakers maintain their mansions and carriages? It matters little what the backer's capital may be at starting, he will lose it all if he is idiot enough to go on to the end, for he is fighting against unscrupulous legions. One well-known bookmaker coolly announced in 1888 that he had written off three hundred thousand pounds of bad debts. Consider what a man's genuine business must be like when he can jauntily allude to three hundred thousands as a bagatelle by the way. That same man has means of obtaining "information" sufficient to discomfit any poor gambler who steps into the Ring and expects to beat the bookmakers by downright above-board dealing. As soon as he begins to lay heavily against a horse the animal is regarded as doomed to lose by all save the imbeciles who persist in hoping against hope. In 1889 this betting man made a dead set at the favourite for the Two Thousand Guineas. The colt was known to be the best of his year; he was trained in a stable which has the best of reputations; his exercise was uninterrupted, and mere amateurs fancied they had only to lay heavy odds _on_ him in order to put down three pounds and pick up four. Yet the inexorable bookmaker kept on steadily taking the odds; the more he betted, the more money was piled on to the unbeaten horse, and yet few took warning, although they must have seen that the audacious financier was taking on himself an appalling risk. Well, the peerless colt was pulled out, and, on his way to the starting post, he began to shake blood and matter from his jaws; he could hardly move in the race, and when he was taken to his quarters a surgeon let out yet another pint of pus from the poor beast's jaw. Observe that the shrewdest trainer in England, a crowd of stable-boys, the horse's special attendant, the horse-watchers at Kingsclere, and the casual strangers who saw the favourite gallop--all these knew nothing apparently about that monstrous abscess, and no one suspected that the colt's jaw had been splintered. But "information"--always information--evidently reached one quarter, and the host of outsiders lost their money. Soon afterwards a beautiful colt that had won the Derby was persistently backed for the City and Suburban Handicap. On paper it seemed as if the race might be regarded as over, for only the last year's Derby winner appeared to have a chance; but our prescient penciller cared nothing about paper. Once more he did not trouble himself about betting to figures; he must have laid his book five times over before the flag fell. Then the nincompoops who refused to attend to danger-signals saw that the beautiful colt which had spun over the same course like a greyhound only ten months before was unable to gallop at all. The unhappy brute tried for a time, and was then mercifully eased; the bookmaker would have lost £100,000 if his "information" had not been accurate, but that is just the crux--it _was_. So admirably do the bookmakers organize their intelligence department that I hardly know more than three instances in which they have blundered after they really began to lay fiercely against a horse. They contrive to buy jockeys, stablemen, veterinary surgeons--indeed, who can tell whom they do _not_ subsidize? When Belladrum came striding from the fateful hollow in front of Pretender, there was one "leviathan" bookmaker who turned green and began to gasp, for he stood to lose £50,000; but the "leviathan" was spared the trouble of fainting, for the hill choked the splendid Stockwell horse, and "information" was once more vindicated, while Belladrum's backers paid copious tribute. Just two years before the leviathan had occasion to turn green our Turf Odysseus really did manage to deceive the great betting corporation with consummate skill. The whole business throws such a clear light on Turf ethics that I may repeat it for the benefit of those who know little about our great national sport--the Sport of Kings. It was rumoured that Hermit had broken a blood-vessel, and the animal was stopped for a little in his work. Then Odysseus and his chief confederate proceeded to seize their chance. The horse started at 1000 to 15, and it seemed like a million to one against him, for his rough coat had been left on him, and he looked a ragged equine invalid. The invalid won, however, by a neck, the Marquis of Hastings was ruined, and the confederates won about £150,000. As we go over these stories of plot and counterplot, it is hardly possible to avoid thinking what a singularly high-souled set of gentry we have got amongst. What ambitions! To trick money out of somebody's pocket! To wager when you know that you have made winning certain! The outcome of it all is that, in the unequal battle between the men who back and the men who lay, the latter must win; they _will_ win, even if they have to cog the dice on a pinch; and, moreover, they will not be found out officially, even though their "secret" is as open as if it were written across the sky. A strange, hard, pitiless crew are these same bookmakers. Personally, strange to say, they are, in private life, among the most kindly and generous of men; their wild life, with its excitement and hurry, and keen encounters of wits, never seems to make them anything but thoughtful and liberal when distress has to be aided; but the man who will go far out of his way to perform a charitable action will take your very skin from you if you engage him in that enclosure which is his battle-ground, and he will not be very particular as to whether he wins your skin by fair means or foul. About two years ago, an exasperating, soft-headed boy brought a colossal fortune into the Ring. I never pitied him much; I only longed to see him placed in the hands of a good schoolmaster who knew how to use a birch. This piteous wretch, with his fatuous airs of sharpness, was exactly the kind of game that the bookmakers cared to fly at; he was cajoled and stimulated; he was trapped at every turn; the vultures flapped round him; and there was no strong, wise man to give the booby counsel or to drag him by main force from his fate. There was no pity for the boy's youth; he was a mark for every obscene bird of prey that haunts the Turf; respectable betting men gave him fair play, though they exacted their pound of flesh; the birds of Night gave him no fair play at all. In a few short months he had poured a quarter of a million into the bursting pockets of the Ring, and he was at last "posted" for the paltry sum of £1,400. This tragic farce was not enacted in a corner; a hundred journals printed every act as it was played; the victim never received that one hearty flogging which might have saved him, and the curtain was at last rung down on a smug, grinning group of bookmakers, a deservedly ruined spendthrift, and a mob of indifferent lookers-on. So minutely circumstantial were the newspapers, that we may say that all England saw a gigantic robbery being committed, and no man, on the Turf or off, interfered by so much as a sign. Decidedly, the Ethics of the Turf offer an odd study for the moralist; and, in passing, I may say that the national ethics are also a little queer. We ruin a tradesman who lets two men play a game at billiards for sixpence on licensed premises, and we allow a silly boy to be rooked of a quarter of a million in nine months, although the robbery is as well-known as if it were advertised over the whole front page of _The Times_ day by day. In sum, then, we have an inner circle of bookmakers who take care either to bet on figures alone, or on perfectly accurate and secret information; we have another circle of sharp owners and backers, who, by means of modified (or unmodified) false pretences, succeed at times in beating the bookmakers; we have then an outer circle, composed partly of stainless gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey on which the bookmakers batten. And then we have circle on circle showing every shade of vice, baseness, cupidity, and blank folly. First, I may glance--and only glance--at the unredeemed, hopeless villains who are the immediate hangers-on of the Turf. People hardly believe that there are thousands of sturdy, able-bodied men scattered among our great towns and cities who have never worked, and who never mean to work. In their hoggish way they feed well and lie warm--the phrase is their own favourite--and they subsist like odious reptiles, fed from mysterious sources. Go to any suburban race meeting (I don't care which you pick) and you will fancy that Hell's tatterdemalions have got holiday. Whatsoever things are vile, whatsoever things are roguish, bestial, abominable, belong to the racecourse loafers. To call them thieves is to flatter them, for their impudent knavery transcends mere thieving; they have not a virtue; they are more than dangerous, and, if ever there comes a great social convulsion, they will let us know of their presence in an awkward fashion, for they are trained to riot, fraud, bestiality, and theft, on the fringe of the racecourse. Then comes the next line of predatory animals who suck the blood of the dupes. If you look at one of the daily sporting papers you will see, on the most important page, a number of flaming announcements, which will make very comic reading for you if you have any sense of humour at all. Gentlemen, who usually take the names of well-known jockeys or trainers, offer to make your fortune on the most ridiculously easy terms. You forward a guinea or half-a-guinea, and an obliging prophet will show you how to ruin the bookmakers. Old Tom Tompkins has a "glorious success" every week; Joe, and Bill, and Harry, and a good score more, are always ready to prove that they named the winner of any given race; one of these fellows advertises under at least a dozen different names, and he is able to live in great style and keep a couple of secretaries, although he cannot write a letter or compose a circular. The _Sporting Times_ will not allow one of these vermin to advertise in its columns, and it has exposed all their dodges in the most conclusive and trenchant set of articles that I ever saw; but other journals admit the advertisements at prices which seem well-nigh prohibitive, and they are content to draw from £15 to £20 per day by blazoning forth false pretences. I have had much fun out of these "tipsters," for they are deliciously impudent blackguards. A fellow will send you the names of six horses--all losers; in two days he will advertise--"I beg to congratulate all my patrons. This week I was in great form on the whole, and on Thursday I sent all six winners. A thousand pounds will be paid to any one who can disprove this statement." Considering that the sage sent you six losers on the Thursday, you naturally feel a little surprised at his tempestuously confident challenge. All the seers are alike; they pick names at haphazard from the columns of the newspapers, and then they pretend to be in possession of the darkest stable secrets. If they are wrong, and they usually are, they advertise their own infallibility all the more brazenly. I do not exactly know what getting money under false pretences may be if the proceedings which I have described do not come under that heading, and I wonder what the police think of the business. They very soon catch a poor Rommany wench who tells fortunes, and she goes to gaol for three months. But I suppose that the Rommany rawnee does not contribute to the support of influential newspapers. A sharp detective ought to secure clear cases against at least a dozen of these parasites in a single fortnight, for they are really stupid in essentials. One of the brotherhood always sets forth his infallible prophecies from a dark little public-house bar near Fountain Court. I have seen him, when I came off a journey, trying to steady his hand at seven in the morning; his twisted, tortured fingers could hardly hold the pencil, and he was fit for nothing but to sit in the stinking dusk and soak whisky; but no doubt many of his dupes imagined that he sat in a palatial office and received myriads of messages from his ubiquitous corps of spies. He was a poor, diseased, cunning rogue; I found him amusing, but I do not think that his patrons always saw the fun of him. And last there comes the broad outer circle, whereof the thought makes me sad. On that circle are scattered the men who should be England's backbone, but they are all suffering by reason of the evil germs wafted from the centre of contagion. Mr. Matthew Arnold often gave me a good deal of advice; I wish I could sometimes have given him a little. I should have told him that all his dainty jeers about middle-class denseness were beside the mark; all the complacent mockery concerning the deceased wife's sister and the rest, was of no use. If you see a man walking right into a deadly quicksand, you do not content yourself with informing him that a bit of fluff has stuck to his coat. Mr. Arnold should have gone among the lower middle-class a trifle more instead of trusting to his superfine imagination, and then he might have got to know whither our poor, stupid folks are tending. I have just ended an unpleasantly long spell which I passed among various centres where middle-class leisure is spent, and I would not care to repeat the experience for any money. Any given town will suit a competent observer, for I found scarcely any vital differences in passing from place to place. It is tragical and disheartening to see scores of fine lads and men, full of excellent faculties and latent goodness--and all under the spell of the dreary Circe of the Turf. I have been for a year, on and off, among a large circle of fellows whom I really liked; and what was their staple talk? Nothing but betting. The paralysis at once of intellect and of the sense of humour which attacks the man who begins flirting with the gambling Enchantress struck me with a sense of helplessness. I like to see a race when it is possible, and I can always keep a kind of picture of a horse in my eye. Well, I have known a very enthusiastic gentleman say, "The Bard, sir, The Bard; the big horse, the mighty _bay_. He'll smother 'em all." I modestly said, "Do you think he is big enough?" "Big enough! a giant, sir! Mark my words, sir, you'll see Bob Peck's colours in triumph on the bay." I mildly said: "I thought The Bard was a very little one when I saw him, and he didn't seem bay. He was rather like the colour you might get by shaking a flour-dredger over a mulberry. Have you had a look at him?" As usual, I found that my learned friend had never seen that horse nor any other; he was neglecting his business, loafing with wastrels, and trying, in a small way, to imitate the fine strategy of the Colonel and the Captain and Odysseus. Amongst these bewitched unfortunates, the life of the soul seems to die away. Once I said to a nice lad, "Do none of your set ever read anything?" and he made answer, "I don't think any of them read very much except the _Sportsman_." That was true--very true and rather shocking. The _Sportsman_ is bright enough and good enough in its way, and I read it constantly; but to limit your literature to the _Sportsman_ alone--well, it must be cramping. But that is what our fine young men are mostly doing nowadays; the eager, intellectual life of young Scotchmen and of the better sort of Englishmen is unknown: you may wait for a year and you will never hear a word of talk which is essentially above the intelligence of a hog; and a man of whom you are fond, purely because of his kindliness, may bore you in the deadliest manner by drawling on by the hour about names and weights, the shifting of the odds, and the changes of luck. The country fairly swarms with clubs where betting goes on all day, and sometimes all night: the despicable dupes are drawn in one after another, and they fall into manifold varieties of mischief; agonized parents pray for help; employers chafe at the carelessness and pre-occupation of their servants; the dupes sink to ruin unpitied, and still the crowd steps onward to the gulf of doom. To think that by merely setting certain noble creatures to exhibit their speed and staunchness, we should have ended by establishing in our midst a veritable Inferno! Our faith, our honour, our manhood, our future as a nation, are being sacrificed, and all because Circe has read her spell over our best and most promising souls. And our legislators amuse themselves with recriminations! We foster a horde of bloodsuckers who rear their strength on our weakness and our vices. Why should a drink-seller be kept in check by his having to pay for a license, while the ruin-seller needs no license, and is not even required to pay income tax. If licenses to bet were issued at very heavy prices, and if a crushing fine were inflicted on any man who made a book without holding a license, we might stamp out the villainous small fry who work in corners at all events. But Authority is supreme; the peer and the plutocrat go on unharmed, while the poor men who copy follies which do not hurt the rich go right on to the death of the soul. _April, 1889._ _DISCIPLINE_. Of the ancestor generally assigned to us by gentlemen who must be right--because they say so--we have very few records save the odd scratches found on bones and stones, and the remnants of extremely frugal meals eaten ages ago. We gather that the revered ancestor hunted large game with an audacity which must have pleased the Rider Haggard of ancient days; at any rate, some simple soul certainly scratched the record of a famous mammoth-fight on a tusk, and we can now see a furious beast charging upon a pigmy who awaits the onset with a coolness quite superior to Mr. Quatermain's heroics. That Siberian hunter evidently went out and tried to make a bag for his own hand, and I have no doubt that he carried out the principle of individualism until his last mammoth reduced him to pulp. There is no indication of organization, and, although the men of the great deltas were able to indulge in oysters with a freedom which almost makes me regret the advance of civilization and the decay of Whitstable, yet I cannot trace one record of an orderly supper-party. This shows how the heathen in his blindness neglects his natural advantages. Long after the savage of the tundras passed away we find vestiges of the family; and thenceforward discipline advances steadily, though with occasional relapses toward anarchy, until we see the ordered perfection which enables us to have West-end riots and all-night sittings of the House of Commons without any trouble whatever. I do not care much to deal with the times when the members of the families elected each other promiscuously according to the success with which they managed to club their neighbours--in fact, I wish to come as soon as possible to the period when discipline, as understood by us, was gradually allowed to sway the lives of men, and when the sections of the race recognized tacitly the law of the strongest by appointing their best man as chief. At present we in England are passing through a dangerous and critical transition stage; a very strong party inclines to abolish discipline of all sorts, the views of the Continental anarchists are slowly filtering into our great towns, and, as soon as such a move is safe, we shall have a large number of people who will not scruple to cry out for free land, no taxation, free everything. We have heard so much about rights lately that some of us are beginning to question within ourselves as to what rights really are. If a gentleman, no matter how bookish or eloquent he may be, desires to do away with discipline altogether, I will give him credit for all the tongue-power which he happens to possess; but I must ask leave to think for myself in old-fashioned grooves just a little longer. After all, a system which--for civilized countries--has been growing gradually for more thousands of years than we dare compute cannot be entirely bad, no matter what chance faults we may see. The generations that have flown into the night may not have possessed complete wisdom, but they adapted their social systems step by step to the needs of each new generation, and it requires very little logic to tell that they would not be likely always to cast out the good. The noisy orator who gets up and addresses a London crowd at midnight, yelling "Down with everything!" can hardly know what he means to destroy. We have come a long way since the man of the swamps hunted the hairy elephant and burrowed in caves; that very structure in which the anarchists have taken to meeting represents sixty thousand years of slow progression from savagery towards seemliness and refinement and wisdom; and therefore, bitterly as we may feel the suffering of the poor orator, we say to him, "Wait a little, and talk to us. I do not touch politics--I loathe place-hunters and talkers as much as you do; but you are speaking about reversing the course of the ages, and you cannot quite manage that. Let us forget the windy war of the place-hunters, and speak reasonably and in a broad human way." I do not by any means hold with those very robust literary characters who want to see the principle of stern Drill carried into the most minute branchings of our complex society. (By-the-way, these robust gentry always put a capital "D" to the word "Drill," as though they would have their precious principle enthroned as an object of reverence, or even of worship.) And I am inclined to think that not a few of them must have experienced a severe attack of wrath when they found Carlyle suggesting that King Friedrich Wilhelm would have laid a stick across the shoulders of literary men had he been able to have his own way. The unfeeling old king used to go about thumping people in the streets with a big cudgel; and Carlyle rather implies that the world would not have been much the worse off if a stray literary man here and there could have been bludgeoned. The king flogged apple-women who did not knit and loafers who were unable to find work; and our historian apparently fancies that the dignity of kingship would have been rather enhanced than otherwise had his hero broken the head of a poet or essayist. This is a clear case of a disciplinarian suffering from temporary derangement. I really cannot quite stomach such heroic and sweeping work. Carlyle, who was a Scotch peasant by birth, raised himself until he was deservedly regarded as the greatest man of his day, and he did this by means of literature; yet he coolly sets an ignorant, cruel, crowned drill-serjeant high above the men of the literary calling. It is a little too much! Suppose that Carlyle had been flogged back to the plough-tail by some potentate when he first went to the University; should we not have heard a good deal of noise about the business sooner or later? Again, we find Mr. Froude writing somewhat placidly when he tells us about the men who were cut to pieces slowly in order that their agony might be prolonged. The description of the dismemberment of Ballard and the rest, as given in the "Curiosities of Literature," is too gratuitously horrible to be read a second time; but Mr. Froude is convinced that the whole affair was no more than a smart and salutary lesson given to some obtrusive Papists, and he commends the measures adopted by Elizabeth's ministers to secure proper discipline. Similarly the wholesale massacre of the people in the English northern counties is not at all condemned by the judicious Mr. Freeman. The Conqueror left a desert where goodly homesteads and farms had flourished; but we are not any the less to regard him as a great statesman. I grow angry for a time with these bold writers, but I always end by smiling, for there is something very feminine about such shrill expressions of admiration for force. I like to figure to myself the troubles which would have ensued had Carlyle lived under the sway of his precious Friedrich. It was all very well to sit in a comfortable house in pleasant Chelsea, and enlarge upon the beauties of drill and discipline; but, had the sage been cast into one of the noisome old German prisons, and kept there till he was dying, merely because the kingly disciplinarian objected to a phrase in a pamphlet, we should have heard a very curious tune from our great humourist. A man who groaned if his bed was ill-made or his bacon ill-fried would not quite have seen the beauty of being disciplined in a foul cellar among swarming vermin. The methods of certain other rulers may no doubt appear very fine to our robust scribblers, but I must always enter my own slight protest. Ivan the Terrible was a really thorough-paced martinet who preserved discipline by marvellously powerful methods. He did not mind killing a few thousands of men at a time; and he was answerable for several pyramids of skulls which remained long after his manly spirit had passed away. He occasionally had prisoners flayed alive or impaled merely by way of instituting a change; and I think that some graphic British historian should at once give us a good life of this remarkable and royal man. The massacre of the revolted peasants would afford a fine opening to a stern rhetorician; he might lead off thus--"Dost thou think that this king cared for noble sentiment? Thou poor creature who canst not look on a man without turning green with feminine terror, this writer begs to inform you and all creatures of your sort that law is law and discipline is discipline, and the divine origin of both is undeniable even in an age of advertised soap and interminable spouting. Ivan had no parliamentary eloquence under his control, but he had cold steel and whips and racks and wheels, and he employed them all with vigour for the repression of undisciplined scoundrels. He butchered some thousands of innocent men! Ah, my sentimental friend, an anarchic mob cannot be ruled by sprinkling rose-water; the lash and the rope and the stern steel are needed to bring them to order! When my Noble One, with a glare in his lion eyes, watched the rebels being skinned alive, he was performing a truly beneficent function and preparing the way for that vast, noble, and expansive Russia which we see to-day. The poor long-eared mortals who were being skinned did not quite perceive the beneficence at the time. How should they, unhappy long-eared creatures that they were? Oh, Dryasdust, does any long-eared mortal who is being skinned by a true King--a Canning, Königlich, Able Man--does the long-eared one amid his wriggles ever recognize the scope and transcendent significance of Kingship? Answer me that, Dryasdust, or shut your eloquent mouth and go home to dinner." That is quite a proper style for a disciplinarian, but I have not got into the way of using it yet. For, to my limited intelligence, it appears that, if you once begin praising Friedrichs and Charlemagnes and Ivans at the rate of a volume or so per massacre, you may as well go on to Cetewayo and Timour and Attila--not to mention Sulla and Koffee Kalkalli. I abhor the floggers and stranglers and butchers; and when I speak of discipline, I leave them out of count. My business is a little more practical, and I have no time to refute at length the vociferations of persons who tell us that a man proves his capacity of kingship by commanding the extinction or torture of vast numbers of human creatures. My thoughts are not bent on the bad deeds--the deeds of blood--wrought out in bitterness and anguish either long ago or lately; I am thinking of the immense European fabric which looks so solid outwardly, but which is being permeated by the subtle forces of decay and disease. Discipline is being outwardly preserved, but the destroying forces are creeping into every weak place, and the men of our time may see strange things. Gradually a certain resolute body of men are teaching weaker people that even self-discipline is unnecessary, and that self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control are only phrases used by interested people who want to hold others in slavery. In our England it is plainer every day that the character of the people is changing. Individual men are obedient, brave to the death, self-sacrificing, just as they always were even in our darkest times; but, none the less, it is too plain that authority ordained by law is dying, and that authority which rests on vague and fluctuating sentiment gains power with steady swiftness. The judges sit and retain all their old confidence; the magistrates sentence daily their batches of submissive culprits; the policeman rules supreme over the streets--he scares the flower-girl, and warns the pensive burglar with the staccato thunder of his monarchical foot. All seems very firm and orderly; and our largest crowds maintain their attitude of harmless good-humour when no inflammatory talkers are there. But the hand has written, and true discipline cannot survive very much longer unless we rouse ourselves for a dead-lift effort. Take Parliament at the crown of the social structure, and the School--the elementary school--at the foundation, and we cannot feel reassured. All between the highest and the lowest is moderately sound; the best of the middle-classes are decent, law-abiding, and steady; the young men are good fellows in a way; the girls and young women are charming and virtuous. But the extremities are rotten, and sentiment has rotted them both. Parliament has become a hissing and a scorn. No man of any party in all broad England could be found to deny this, and many would say more. The sentimentalist has said that loutishness shall not be curbed, that a bawling ruffian who is silenced is martyred, that every man shall talk as he likes, and the veto of the Polish Assembly which enabled any one man to ruin the work of a session is revived in sober, solid England. So it is that all has gone to wreck; and an assembly once the noblest on earth is treated with unhidden contempt by the labourer in his field and the mechanic at his bench. And all this has arisen from lack of discipline. In the School--the lower-class school--things are much worse. The lowest of the low--the beings who should be kept in order by sharp, firm kindness and justice--have been taught to mock at order and justice and to treat kindness as a sign of weakness. The lads will all soon be ready to aid in governing the country. May the good powers defend us! What a set of governors! The son of the aristocrat is easily held in order, because he knows that any infraction of discipline will be surely punished; the son and daughter of the decent artizan cause little trouble to any teacher, because they know that their parents are on the side of order, and, even if the children are inclined to be rebellious, they dare not defy the united authority of parents and teacher. But the child of the thief, the costermonger, the racecourse swindler, the thriftless labourer, is now practically emancipated through the action of sentimental persons. He may go to school or not, as he likes; and, while the decent and orderly poor are harried by School Board regulations, the rough of the slum snaps his fingers without fear at all regulations. If one of the bad boys from the "rookeries" does go to school, he soon learns that he may take his own way. If he is foul-mouthed, thievish, indecent, or insolent, and is promptly punished, he drags his teacher into a police-court, and the sentimentalists secure a conviction. No one can tell the kind of anarchy that reigns in some parts of England excepting men who dwell amidst it; and, to make matters worse, a set of men who may perhaps be charitably reckoned as insane have framed a Parliamentary measure which may render any teacher who controls a young rough liable at once to one hundred pounds fine or six months' imprisonment. This is no flight of inventive humour on our part; it is plain fact which may probably be seen in action as law before twelve months are over. Tyranny I abhor, cruelty I abhor--above all, cruelty to children. But we are threatened at one pole of the State-world with a tyranny of factioneers who cultivate rudeness and rowdyism as a science, while at the other pole we are threatened with the uncontrolled tyranny of the "residuum." We must return to our common sense; the middle-classes must make themselves heard, and we must teach the wild spirits who aim at wrecking all order that safety depends upon the submission of all to the expressed will of the majority. Debate is free enough--too free--and no man is ever neglected ultimately if he has anything rational to say, so that a minority has great power; but, when once a law is made, it must be obeyed. England is mainly sound; our movement is chiefly to the good; but this senseless pampering of loutishness in high and low places is a bad symptom which tends to such consequences as can be understood only by those who have learned to know the secret places. If it is not checked--if anarchists, young and old, are not taught that they must obey or suffer--there is nothing ahead but tumult, heart-burning, and wreck. _March, 1889._ _BAD COMPANY_. There has been much talk about the insensate youth who boasted that he had squandered half-a-million on the Turf in a year. The marvellous journalists who frequent betting resorts printed hundreds of paragraphs every week explaining the wretched boy's extravagances--how he lost ten thousand pounds in one evening at cards; how he lost five thousand on one pigeon-shooting match; how he kept fifty racehorses in training; how he made little presents of jewelry to all and sundry of his friends; how he gaily lost fifteen thousand on a single race, though he might have saved himself had he chosen; how he never would wear the same shirt twice. Dear boy! Every day those whose duty compels them to read newspapers were forced to see such nauseous stuff, so that a lad's private business became public property, and no secret was made of matters which were a subject for grief and scorn. Hundreds of grown men stood by and saw that boy lose a fortune in two hours, and some forty paragraphs might have been collected in which the transaction was described in various terms as a gross swindle. A good shot was killing pigeons--gallant sport--and the wealthy schoolboy was betting. When a sign was given by a bookmaker the shooting-man obeyed, and won or lost according to orders; and every man in the assembly knew what foul work was being carried on. Did one man warn the victim? The next day the whole country knew what had happened, and the names of the thieves were given in almost every sporting print; but the mischief was done, and the lookers-on contented themselves with cheap wrath. A few brief months flew by, and every day saw the usual flock of tributes to the mad boy's vanity; and now the end has come--a colossal fortune, amassed by half a century's toil, has gone into the pockets of all sorts of knaves, and the fatal _Gazette_ showed the end. The princely fortune that might have done so much good in the world has gone to fatten the foulest flock of predatory birds that ever cumbered the earth. Where are the glib parasites who came to fawn on the poor dolt? Where are the swarms of begging dandies who clustered around him? Where are the persons who sold him useless horses? Any one who has eyes can see that they point their fingers and shrug. Another victim gone--that is all. And now our daily moralizers declare that bad company alone brought our unhappy subject down. Yes, bad company! The boy might have grown up into beneficent manhood; he might have helped to spread comfort and culture and solid happiness among the people; but he fell into bad company, and he is now pitied and scorned by the most despicable of the human race; and I observe that one of his humorous Press patrons advises him to drive a cab. Think of Gordon nobly spending his pittance among the poor mudlarks; think of the good Lord Shaftesbury ekeing out his scanty means among the poor; think of all the gallant souls that made the most of poverty; and then think of that precious half-million gone to light fresh fuel under the hotbeds of vice and villainy! Should I be wrong if I said that the contrast rouses me to indignation and even horror? And now let us consider what bad company means. Paradoxical as it may seem, I do not by any means think that bad company is necessarily made up of bad men. I say that any company is bad for a man if it does not tempt him to exert his higher faculties. It is as certain as death that a bodily member which is left unused shrinks and becomes aborted. If one arm is hung for a long time in a sling, the muscles gradually fade until the skin clings closely round the bone. The wing of the huge penguin still exists, but it is no bigger than that of a wren, and it is hidden away under the skin. The instances might be multiplied a thousandfold. In the same way then any mental faculty becomes atrophied if it is unused. Bad company is that which produces this atrophy of the finer powers; and it is strange to see how soon the deadly process of shrinkage sets in. The awful thing to think of is that the cramp may insensibly be set in action by a company which, as I have said, is composed of rather estimable people. Who can forget Lydgate in "Middlemarch"? There is a type drawn by a woman of transcendent genius; and the type represents only too many human wrecks. Lydgate was thrown into a respectable provincial society; he was mastered by high ambition, he possessed great powers, and he felt as though he could move the mocking solidities of the world. Watch the evolution of his long history; to me it is truly awful in spite of its gleams of brightness. The powerful young doctor, equipped in frock-coat and modern hat, plays a part in a tragedy which is as moving as any ever imagined by a brooding, sombre Greek. As you read the book and watch the steady, inexorable decline of the strong man, you feel minded to cry out for some one to save him--he is alive to you, and you want to call out and warn him. When the bitter end comes, you cannot sneer as Lydgate does--you can hardly keep back the tears. And what is it all about? It simply comes to this, that a good strong man falls into the bad company of a number of fairly good but dull people, and the result is a tragedy. Rosamund Vincy is a pattern of propriety; Mrs. Vincy is a fat, kindly soul; Mr. Vincy is a blustering good-natured middle-class man. There is no particular harm among the whole set, yet they contrive to ruin a great man; they lower him from a great career, and convert him into a mere prosperous gout-doctor. Every high aspiration of the man dies away. His wife is essentially a commonplace pretty being, and she cannot understand the great heart and brain that are sacrificed to her; so the genius is forced to break his heart about furniture and carpets and respectability, while the prim pretty young woman who causes the ghastly death of a soul goes on fancying herself a model of good sense and virtue and all the rest. "Of course I should like you to make discoveries," she says; but she only shudders at the microscopic work. When the financial catastrophe comes, she has the great soul at her mercy, and she stabs him--stabs him through and through--while he is too noble and tender to make reply. Ah, it is pitiful! Lydgate is like too many others who are stifling in the mud of respectable dullness. The fate of those men proves what we have asserted, that bad company is that which does not permit the healthful and fruitful development of a soul. Take the case of a brilliant young man who leaves the University and dives into the great whirlpool of London. Perhaps he goes to the Bar, and earns money meantime by writing for the Press. The young fellows who swarm in the London centres--that is, the higher centres--are gentlemen, polished in manner and strict as to the code of honour, save perhaps as regards tradesmen's bills; no coarse word or accent escapes them, and there is something attractive about their merry stoicism. But they make bad company for a young and high-souled man, and you may see your young enthusiast, after a year of town-life, converted into a cynic who tries to make game of everything. He talks lightly of women, because that is considered as showing a spirit of superiority; he is humorous regarding the state of his head on the morning after a late supper; he can give you slangy little details about any one and every one whom you may meet at a theatre or any other public place; he is somewhat proud when some bellowing, foul-mouthed bookmaker smiles suavely and inquires, "Doing anything to-day, sir?" Mark you, he is still a charming young fellow; but the bloom has gone from his character. He has been in bad company. Let it be remembered that bad company may be pleasant at first; and I can easily give the reason for that, although the process of thinking out the problem is a little complicated. The natural tendency of our lower nature is toward idleness; our higher nature drives us to work. But no man ever attained the habit of work without an effort. If once that effort is slackened, then the lower nature gains sway by degrees and idleness creeps in. Idleness is the beginning of almost every form of ill, and the idlest man dashes down the steep to ruin either of body or soul, perhaps of both. Now the best of us--until our habits are formed--find something seductive in the notion of idleness; and it is most marvellous to observe how strongly we are apt to be drawn by a fascinating idle man. By-the-way, no one would accuse the resident Cambridge professors of being slothful, yet one brilliant idle man of genius said, "When I go to Cambridge, I affect them all with a murrain of idleness. I should paralyze the work of the place if I were resident." To return--it appears that the best of men, especially of youthful men, feel the subtle charm of an invitation to laziness. The man who says, "It's a sin to be indoors to-day; let us row up to the backwater and try a smoke among the willows;" or the one who says, "Never mind mathematics to-night; come and have a talk with me," is much more pleasing than the stern moralist. Well, it happens that the most dangerous species of bad company is the species Idler. Look round over the ranks of the hurtful creatures who spoil the State, corrupt and sap the better nature of young men, and disgrace the name of our race. What are they all but idlers pure and simple? Idleness, idleness, the tap-root of misery, sin, villainy! Note the gambler at Monte Carlo, watching with tense but impassive face as the red and the black take the advantage by turns--he is an idler. The roaring bookmaker who contaminates the air with his cries, and who grows wealthy on the spoil of fools--he is an idler. The silly beings who crowd into the betting-shops and lounge till morning in the hot air; the stout florid person who passes from bar to bar in a commercial town; the greasy scoundrel who congregates with his mates at street corners; the unspeakable dogs who prowl at night in London and snatch their prey in lonely thoroughfares; the "jolly" gangs of young men who play cards till dawn in provincial club-rooms; even the slouching poacher who passes his afternoons in humorous converse at the ale-house--they are all idlers, and they all form bad company for anybody who comes within range of their influences. We are nearing the point of our demonstration. The youth is at first attracted by the charm of mere laziness, but he does not quite know it. Look at the case of the lad who goes fresh from school to the city, and starts life at seventeen years of age. We will say that he lives in a suburb of some great town. At first he returns home at night full of quite admirable resolves; he intends to improve himself and advance himself in the world. But on one fine evening a companion suggests a stroll, and it happens that billiards are suggested. Away goes the youngster into that flash atmosphere through which sharp, prematurely-aged features loom so curiously; he hears the low hum, he sees the intense eagerness and suspense of the strikers, and he learns to like the place. After a while he is found there nightly; his general style is low, his talk is that of the music-hall--the ineffable flash air has taken the place of his natural repose. He ought to be studying as many languages as possible, he ought to be watching the markets abroad, or he should be reading the latest science if he is engaged in practical work. But no--he is in bad company, and we find him at eight-and-twenty a disappointed, semi-competent man who grumbles very much about the Germans. If we go to the lower classes, we observe the same set of phenomena. A young workman is chatting with his friends in a public-house on Saturday night; he rises to go at half-past nine, but his comrades pull him down. "Make it eleven o'clock," they say. He drinks fast in the last hour, and is then so exhilarated that he probably conveys a supply of beer home. On Sunday morning he feels muddled, heavy, a little troubled with nausea; his mates hail him joyously, and then the company wait with anxiety until the public-houses are open; then the dry throats are eased and the low spirits raised, and the game goes on till three. In the afternoon the young workman sleeps, and when he wakes up he is so depressed that he goes out and meets his mates again. Once more he is persuaded to exceed, but he reckons on having a good long sleep. With aching head and fevered hands he makes a wild rush next morning, and arrives at the shop only to find himself shut out. He is horrified and doleful, when up come a few of his friends. They laugh the matter off. "It's only a quarter lost! There's time for a pint before we go in." So the drinking is begun again, and the men have none of the delicacy and steadiness of hand that are needed. Is it not an old story? The loss of "quarters," half-days, and days goes on; then Saint Monday comes to be observed; then the spoiled young man and his merry crew begin to draw very short wages on Saturdays; then the foreman begins to look askance as the blinking uneasy laggard enters; and last comes the fatal quiet speech, "You won't be required on Monday." Bad company! As for the heartbreaking cases of young men who go up to the Universities full of bright hope and equipped at all points splendidly, they are almost too pitiful. Very often the lads who have done so well that subscriptions are raised for them are the ones who go wrong soonest. A smart student wins a scholarship or two, and his parents or relatives make a dead-lift effort to scrape money so that the clever fellow may go well through his course. At the end of a year the youth fails to present any trophies of distinction; he comes home as a lounger; this is "slow" and the other is "slow," and the old folk are treated with easy contempt. Still there is hope--so very brilliant a young gentleman must succeed in the end. But the brilliant one has taken up with rich young cads who affect bull-terriers and boxing-gloves; he is not averse from a street-brawl in the foggy November days; he can take his part in questionable choruses; he yells on the tow-path or in the pit of the theatre, and he is often shaky in the morning after a dose of very bad wine. All the idleness and rowdyism do not matter to Brown and Tomkins and the rest of the raffish company, for they only read for the pass degree or take the poll; but the fortunes--almost the lives--of many folk depend on our young hopeful's securing his Class, and yet he fritters away time among bad talk, bad habits, bad drink, and bad tobacco. Then come rumours of bills, then the crash, and the brilliant youth goes down, while Brown and Tomkins and all the rowdies say, "What a fool he was to try going our pace!" Bad company! I should therefore say to any youth--"Always be doing something--bad company never do anything; and thus, if you are resolved to be always doing something useful, it follows that you will not be among the bad company." This seems to me to be conclusive; and many a broken heart and broken life might have been kept sound if inexperienced youths were only taught thus much continually. _October, 1888._ _GOOD COMPANY_. Let it be understood that I do not intend to speak very much about the excellent people who are kind enough to label themselves as "Society," for I have had quite enough experience of them at one time and another, and my impressions are not of a peculiarly reverential kind. "Company" among the set who regard themselves as the cream of England's--and consequently of the world's--population is something so laborious, so useless, so exhausting that I cannot imagine any really rational person attending a "function" (that is the proper name) if Providence had left open the remotest chance of running away; at any rate, the rational person would not endure more than one experience. For, when the clear-seeing outsider looks into "Society," and studies the members who make up the little clique, he is smitten with thoughts that lie too deep for tears--or laughter. A perfectly fresh mind, when brought to bear on the "Society" phenomenon, asks, "What are these people? What have they done? What are they particularly fitted for? Is there anything noble about them? Is their conversation at all charming? Are any of them really happy?" And to all of these queries the most disappointing answers must be returned. Take the men. Here is a marquis who is a Knight of the Garter. He has held offices in several Cabinets; he can control the votes spread over a very large slice of a county, and his income amounts to some trifle like one hundred and eighty thousand pounds per year. We may surely expect something of the superb aristocratic grace here, and surely a chance word of wit may drop from a man who has been in the most influential of European assemblies! Alas! The potentate crosses his hand over his comfortable stomach, and his contributions to the entertainment of the evening amount to occasional ejaculations of "Ugh! Ugh!" "Hah!" "Hey!" "Exactly!" "Ugh! Ugh!" In the higher spheres of intellect and breeding I have no doubt but that "Ugh! Ugh!" "Hah!" "Hey!" may have some profound significance; but, to say the least, it is not obviously weighty. The marchioness is sweet in manner, grave, reposeful, and with a flash of wit at disposal--not too obvious wit--that would offend against the canon which ordains restraint; but she might, one thinks, become tiresome in an hour. No one could say that her manners were anything but absolutely simple, yet the very simplicity is so obviously maintained as a sort of gymnastic effort that it tires us only to study it. Then here is a viscount, graceful, well-set, easy in his pose, talking with a deep voice, and lisping to the faintest degree. He has owned some horses, caused some scandals, waltzed some waltzes, and eaten a very large number of good dinners: he has been admired by many, hated by many, threatened by many, and he would not be admitted to any refined middle-class home; yet here he is in his element, and no one would think of questioning his presence. He never uttered a really wise or helpful word in his life, he never did anything save pamper himself--his precious self--and yet he is in "Society," and reckoned as rather an authority too! These are only types, but, if you run through them all, you must discover that only the sweet and splendid girls who have not had time to be spoilt and soured are worth thinking about. If there is dancing, it is of course carried out with perfect grace and composure; if there is merely an assembly, every one looks as well as possible, and every one stares at every one else with an air as indifferent as possible. But the child of nature asks in wild bewilderment, "Where on earth does the human companionship come in?" Young girls are nowadays beginning to expect bright talk from their partners, and the ladies have a singularly pretty way of saying the most biting things in a smooth and unconcerned fashion when they find a dunce beginning to talk platitudes or to patronize his partner; but the middle generation are unspeakably inane; and the worst is that they regard their inanity as a decided sign of distinction. A grave man who adds a sense of humour to his gravity may find a sort of melancholy entertainment if he listens to a pair of thorough-paced "Society" gentry. He will learn that you do not go to a "function" to please others or to be pleased yourself; you must not be witty--that is bad form; you must not be quietly in earnest--that is left to literary people; you must not speak plain, direct truth even in the most restrained fashion--that is to render yourself liable to be classified as a savage. No. You go to a "function" in order, firstly, to see who else is there; secondly, to let others see you; thirdly, to be able to say to absentees that you saw they were not there; fourthly, to say, with a liquid roll on the "ll," "She's looking remarkably wellll." These are the great and glorious duties of the Society person. A little funny creature was once talking to a writer of some distinction. The little funny man would have been like a footman if he had been eight inches taller, for his manners savoured of the pantry. As it was, he succeeded in resembling a somewhat diminutive valet who had learnt his style and accent from a cook. The writer, out of common politeness, spoke of some ordinary topic, and the valet observed with honest pride, "_We_ don't talk about that sort of thing." The writer smiled grimly from under his jutting brows, and he repeated that valet's terrific repartee for many days. The actual talk which goes on runs in this way, "Quite charming weather!" "Yes, very." "I didn't see you at Lady Blank's on Tuesday?" "No; we could hardly arrange to suit times at all." "She was looking uncommonly well. The new North-Country girl has come out." "So I've heard." "Going to Goodwood?" "Yes. We take Brighton this time with the Sendalls." And so on. It dribbles for the regulation time, and, after a sufficient period of mortal endurance, the crowd disperse, and proceed to scandalize each other or to carry news elsewhere about the ladies who were looking "remarkably well-l-l." As for the dreadful crushes, what can one say? The absurd rooms where six hundred people try to move about in a space meant for three hundred; the staircase a Black-Hole tempered by flowers; the tired smile of the hostess; the set simper of long-recked shaven young men; the patient, tortured hypocrisy of hustled and heated ladies; the babble of scrappy nothings; the envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness; the magnificence turned into meanness; the lack of all feeling of home, and the discontented dispersal of ungrateful people--are these the things to occupy life? Are these the things to interest any manly man who is free to act for himself? Hardly. But our "company" refers to the meeting of human souls and hearts, and not to the meeting of a fortuitous concourse of male and female evening-dresses. I have now before me a very brilliant published account of a reception at George Eliot's house. Those assemblies were company, and company of the finest kind. The exaggerated fuss made by the sibyl's husband in order to secure silence while she was speaking sometimes became a little embarrassing when men of a humorous turn were there; but nevertheless the best in England met in that drawing-room, and all that was highest in literature, science, and art was talked over in graceful fashion. The sniffing drawl of Society and the impudent affectation of cynicism were not to be found; and grave men and women--some of them mournful enough, it may be--agreed to make the useful hours fleet to some profit. No man or woman in England--or in Europe for that matter--was unwilling to enter that modest but brilliant assemblage, and I wish some one could have taken minute notes, though that of course would have been too entirely shocking. When I think of that little deep-voiced lady gathering the choicest spirits of her day together, and keeping so many notes in tuneful chime, I hardly know whether to use superlatives of admiration about her or superlatives of contempt about the fribbles who crush each other on staircases and babble like parrots in an aviary. If we cast back a little, we have another example of an almost perfect company. People have talked of Johnson, Burke, Boswell, Beauclerc, and Goldsmith until the subject is growing a thought stale; but, unless a reader takes Boswell and reads the book attentively after he has come to maturity, he can hardly imagine how fine was that admirable company. They were men of high aims and strong sense; they talked at their very best, and they talked because they wished to attain clear views of life and fate. The old gladiator sometimes argued for victory, but that was only in moments of whim, and he was always ready to acknowledge when he was in error. Those men may sometimes have drunk too much wine; they may have spoken platitudes on occasion; but they were good company for each other, and the hearty, manly friendship which all but poor Goldsmith and Boswell felt for every one else was certainly excellent. Assemblies like the Club are impossible nowadays; but surely we might find some modification suited even to our gigantic intellects and our exaggerated cleverness! I have defined bad company; I may define good company as that social intercourse which tends to bring out all that is best in man. I have said my bitter word about the artificial society of the capital; but I never forget the lovely quiet circles which meet in places far away from the blare of the city. In especial I may refer to the beautiful family assemblies which are almost self-centred. The girls are all at home, but the boys are scattered. Harry writes from India, with all sorts of gossip from Simla, and many longings for home; a neighbour calls, and the Indian letter gives matter for pleasant half-melancholy chat. Then the quiet evening passes with books and placid casual talk; the nerves from the family stretch perhaps all over the world, but all the threads converge on one centre. This life is led in many places, and the folk who so live are good company among themselves, and good company for all who meet them. The very thought of the men who are usually described in set slang phrases is enough to arouse a shudder. The loud wit who cracks his prepared witticisms either at the head of a tavern-table or in private society is a mere horror. The tavern men of the commercial traveller class are very bad, for their mirth is prepared; their jokes have run the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, and they are not always prepared to sacrifice the privilege of being coarse which used to be regarded as the joker's prerogative. In moving about the world I have always found that the society of the great commercial room set up for being jolly, but I could never exactly perceive where the jollity entered. Noise, sham gentility, the cackle of false laughter were there; but the strong, sincere cheerfulness of friendly men--never! Yet the tavern humourist, or even the club joker, is as nothing compared with the true professional wit. Who can remember that story about Theodore Hook and the orange? Hook wrote a note to the hostess, saying, "Ask me at dinner if I will venture on an orange." The lady did so, and then the brilliant wit promptly made answer, "I'm afraid I should tumble off." A whole volume of biography is implied in that one gruesome and vulgar anecdote. In truth, the professional wit is no company at all; he has the effect of a performing monkey suddenly planted on the table, and his efforts are usually quite on a level with the monkey's. Among the higher Bohemian sets--Bohemian they call themselves, as if there ever was a Bohemian with five hundred a year!--good company is common. I may say, with fear and much trembling, that the man of letters, the man who can name you all the Restoration comedies or tell you the styles of the contemporaries of Alan Chartier is a most terrible being, and I should risk sharks rather than remain with him on a desolate island; but a mixed set of artists, musicians, verse-makers, novelists, critics--yea, even critics--contrive usually to make an unusually pleasant company. They are all so clever that the professional wit dares not raise his voice lest some wielder of the bludgeon should smite him; no long-winded talk is allowed, and, though a bore may once be admitted to the company, he certainly will never be admitted more than once. The talk ranges loosely from point to point, and yet a certain sequence is always observed; the men are freed from conventions; they like each other and know each other's measure pretty well; so the hours fly in merry fashion, and the brethren who carried on the symposium go away well pleased with themselves and with each other. There can be no good company where the capacity for general agreement is carried too far in any quarter. Unity of aim, difference of opinion--those are the elements that make men's conversations valuable. Last of all, I must declare that there can be no good company unless women are present. The artists and authors and the rest are all very well in their way, but the dexterous unseen touch of the lady is needed; and no man can reckon himself fit to converse at all unless he has been taught by women's care, and gently reproved by women's impalpable skill. Young men of our day are beginning to think it childish or tedious to mix much in women's society; the consequence is that, though many of them go a long way toward being gentlemen, too many are the merest cubs that ever exhibited pure loutishness in conversation. The subtle blending, the light give-and-take of chat between men and women is the true training which makes men graceful of tongue, kindly in the use of phrases, and, I believe, pure in heart. _October, 1888._ _GOING A-WALKING._ One of the most pestilent of all social nuisances is the athlete who must be eternally performing "feats," and then talking about them. He goes to the Alps, and, instead of looking at the riot of sunset colour or the immortal calm of the slumbering peaks, he attempts performances which might be amusing in a circus of unlimited size, but which are not in the least interesting when brought off on the mighty declivities of the great hills. One of these gentlemen takes up a quarter of a volume in telling us how he first of all climbed up a terrible peak, then fell backwards and slid down a slope of eight hundred feet, cutting his head to the bone, and losing enough blood to make him feel faint The same gentleman had seen two of his companions fly into eternity down the grim sides of the same mountain; but he must needs climb to the top, not in order to serve any scientific purpose, or even to secure a striking view, but merely to say he had been there. After an hour on the summit of the enormous mass of stone, he came down; and I should have liked to ask him what he reckoned to be the net profit accruing to him for his little exploit. Wise men do not want to clamber up immense and dangerous Alps; there is a kind of heroic lunacy about the business, but it is not useful, and it certainly is not inviting. If a thoughtful man goes even in winter among the mountains, their vast repose sinks on his soul; his love of them never slackens, and he returns again and again to his haunts until time has stiffened his joints and dulled his eyes, and he prepares to go down into the dust of death. But the wise man has a salutary dislike of break-neck situations; he cannot let his sweet or melancholy fancies free while he is hanging on for dear life to some inhospitable crag, so he prefers a little moderate exercise of the muscles, and a good deal of placid gazing on scenes that ennoble his thoughts and make his imagination more lofty. One of the mountain-climbing enthusiasts could not contrive to break his neck in Europe, so, with a gallantry worthy of a better cause, he went to South America and scaled Chimborazo. He could not quite break his neck even in the Andes, but he no doubt turned many athletic friends yellow with envy. Yet another went to the Caucasus, and found so many charming and almost deadly perils there that he wants numbers of people to go out and share his raptures. The same barren competitive spirit breaks out in other directions. Men will run across the North Sea in a five-ton boat, though there are scores of big and comfortable steamers to carry them: they are cramped in their tiny craft; they can get no exercise; their limbs are pained; they undergo a few days of cruel privation--and all in order that they may tell how they bore a drenching in a cockboat. On the roads in our own England we see the same disposition made manifest. The bicyclist tears along with his head low and his eyes fixed just ahead of the tyre of his front wheel; he does not enjoy the lovely panorama that flits past him, he has no definite thought, he only wants to cover so many miles before dark; save for the fresh air that will whistle past him, thrilling his blood, he might as well be rolling round on a cinder track in some running-ground. But the walker--the long-distance walker--is the most trying of all to the average leisurely and meditative citizen. He fits himself out with elaborate boots and ribbed stockings; he carries resin and other medicaments for use in case his feet should give way; his knapsack is unspeakably stylish, and he posts off like a spirited thoroughbred running a trial. His one thought is of distances; he gloats over a milestone which informs him that he is going well up to five and a half miles per hour, and he fills up his evening by giving spirited but somewhat trying accounts of the pace at which he did each stage of his pilgrimage. In the early morning he is astir, not because he likes to see the diamond dew on the lovely trees or hear the chant of the birds as they sing of love and thanksgiving--he wants to make a good start, so that he may devour even more of the way than he did the day before. In any one lane that he passes through there are scores of sights that offer a harvest to the quiet eye; but our insatiable athlete does not want to see anything in particular until the sight of his evening steak fills him with rapture. If the most patient and urbane of men were shut up with one of these tremendous fellows during a storm of rain, he would pray for deliverance before a couple of hours went by; for the competitive athlete's intelligence seems to settle in his calves, and he refers to his legs for all topics which he kindly conceives to possess human interest. Of course the swift walker may become a useful citizen should we ever have war; he will display the same qualities that were shown by the sturdy Bavarians and Brandenburgers who bore those terrible marches in 1870 and swept MacMahon into a deadly trap by sheer endurance and speed of foot; but he is not the ideal companion. Persons who are wise proceed on a different plan; they wish to make the most of every moment, and, while they value exercise, they like to make the quickened currents of their blood feed a receptive and perhaps somewhat epicurean brain. To the judicious man our lovely country affords a veritable harvest of delights--and the delights can be gained with very little trouble. I let the swift muscular men hurry away to the Tyrol or the Caucasus or the Rocky Mountains, or whithersoever else they care to go, and I turn to our own windy seashore or quiet lanes or flushed purple moorlands. I do not much care for the babble of talk at my elbow; but one good companion who has cultivated the art of keeping silent is a boon. Suppose that you follow me on a roundabout journey. Say we run northward in the train and resolve to work to the south on foot; we start by the sea, and foot it on some fine gaudy morning over the springy links where the grass grows gaily and the steel-coloured bent-grass gleams like the bayonets of some vast host. The fresh wind sings from the sea and flies through the lungs and into the pores with an exhilarating effect like that of wine; the waves dance shoreward, glittering as if diamonds were being pelted down from the blue arch above; the sea-swallows sweep over the bubbling crests like flights of silver arrows. It is very joyous. You have set off early, of course, and the rabbits have not yet turned into their holes for their day-long snooze. Watch quietly, and you may perhaps see how they make their fairy rings on the grass. One frolicsome brown rogue whisks up his white tail, and begins careering round and round; another is fired by emulation and joins; another and another follow, and soon there is a flying ring of merry little creatures who seem quite demented with the very pleasure of living. One bounds into the air with a comic curvet, and comes down with a thud; the others copy him, and there is a wild maze of coiling bodies and gleaming white tails. But let the treacherous wind carry the scent of you down on the little rascals and you will see a change. An old fellow sits up like a kangaroo for an instant, looking extremely wise and vigilant; he drops and kicks the ground with a sharp thud that can be heard a long way off; the terror of man asserts itself in the midst of that pure, peaceful beauty, and the whole flock dart off in agitated fashion till they reach their holes; then they seem to look round with a sarcastic air, for they know that you could not even raise a gun to your shoulder in time to catch one of them before he made his lightning dive into the darksome depths of the sand-hill. How strange it is that meditative men like to watch the ways of wild things! White of Selborne did not care much for killing anything in particular; he enjoyed himself in a beautiful way for years, merely because he had learned to love the pretty creatures of fen and meadow and woodland. Mr. Russell Lowell can spend a happy day in watching through his glass the habits of the birds that haunt his great garden; he does not want a gun; he only cares to observe the instincts which God has implanted in the harmless children of the air. On our walking tour we have hundreds of chances to see the mystic mode of life pursued by the creatures that swarm even in our crowded England; and if we use our eyes we may see a score of genuine miracles every day. On the pleasant "links" there is always something new to draw the eye. Out on the flashing sea a ship rolls bravely away to north or south; her sails are snowy in certain lights, and then in an instant she stands up in raiment of sooty black. You may make up a story about her if you are fanciful. Perhaps she is trailing her way into the deep quiet harbour which you have just left, and the women are waiting until the rough bearded fellows come lumbering up the quay. Perhaps she was careering over the rushing mountain waves to the southward of the desolate Horn only a few weeks ago, and the men were counting the days wearily, while the lasses and wives at home sighed as the wind scourged the sea in the dreary night and set all the rocks thundering with the charges of mad surges. A little indulgence of the fancy does you no harm even though you may be all wrong; very likely the skipper of the glad-looking vessel is tipsy, maybe he has just been rope's-ending his cabin-boy or engaging in some equally unpoetic pursuit; still no one is harmed by idealizing a little, and so, by your leave, we will not alter our crude romance of the sailor-men. Meantime, as you go on framing poetic fancies, there is a school of other poets up above you, and they are composing their fantasies at a pretty rate. The modest brown lark sits quietly amid the sheltering grass, and will hardly stir, no matter how near her you may go; but her mate, the glorious singer, is far away up toward the sun, and he shouts in his joyous ecstasy until the heaven is full of his exquisite joyance. Imagine how he puts his heart into his carol! He is at least a mile above you, and you can hear him over a radius of half a mile, measured from the place where he will drop. The little poets chant one against the other, and yet there is no discord, for the magic of distance seems to harmonize song with song, and the tumult soothes instead of exciting you. Who is the poet who talks of "drawing a thread of honey through your heart"? It is a quaint, conceited phrase, and yet somehow it gives with absurd felicity some idea of the lark's song. They massacre these innocents of the holy choir by thousands, and put them in puddings for Cockneys to eat. The mere memory of one of those beatified mornings makes you want to take the blood of the first poulterer whom you find exposing a piteous string of the exquisite darlings. But we must not think of blood, or taxes, or German bands, or political speeches, or any other abomination, for our walk takes us through flowery regions of peace. Your muscles tighten rarely as you stump on over the elastic herbage; two miles an hour is quite enough for your modest desires, especially as you know you can quicken to four or five whenever you choose. As the day wears on, the glorious open-air confusion takes possession of your senses, your pulses beat with spirit, and you pass amid floating visions of keen colour, soft greenery, comforting shades. The corn rustles on the margin where the sandy soil ceases; the sleepy farmhouses seem to 'give you a lazy greeting, and the figures of the labourers are like natural features of the landscape. Everything appears friendly; it may be that the feeling of kindness and security arises from your physical well-being, but it is there all the same, and what can you do more than enjoy? Perhaps in the midst of your confused happiness your mind begins acting on its own account, and quite disregards its humble companion, the body. Xavier de Maistre's mind always did so, and left what Xavier called the poor _bête_ of a carcass to take care of itself; and all of us have to experience this double existence at times. Then you find the advantages of knowing a great deal of poetry. I would not give a rush for a man who merely pores over his poets in order to make notes or comments on them; you ought to have them as beloved companions to be near you night and day, to take up the parable when your own independent thought is hazy with delight or even with sorrow. As you tramp along the whistling stretches amid the blaze of the ragworts and the tender passing glances of the wild veronica, you can take in all their loveliness with the eye, while the brain goes on adding to your pleasure by recalling the music of the poets. Perhaps you fall into step with the quiver and beat of our British Homer's rushing rhymes, and Marmion thunders over the brown hills of the Border, or Clara lingers where mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying. Perhaps the wilful brain persists in crooning over the "Belle Dame Sans Merci;" your mood flutters and changes with every minute, and you derive equal satisfaction from the organ-roll of Milton or the silvery flageolet tones of Thomas Moore. If culture consists in learning the grammar an etymologies of a poet's song, then no cultured man will ever get any pleasure from poetry while he is on a walking tour; but, if you absorb your poets into your being, you have spells of rare and unexpected delight. The halt is always pleasant. On our sand-hills the brackens grow to an immense height, and, if you lie down among them, you are surrounded by a pale green gleam, as if you had dived beneath some lucent sun-smitten water. The ground-lark sways on a frond above you; the stonechat lights for an instant, utters his cracking cry, and is off with a whisk; you have fair, quiet, and sweet rest, and you start up ready to jog along again. You come to a slow clear stream that winds seaward, lilting to itself in low whispered cadences. Over some broad shallow pool paven with brown stones the little trout fly hither and thither, making a weft and woof of dark streaks as they travel; the minnows poise themselves, and shiver and dart convulsively; the leisurely eel undulates along, and perhaps gives you a glint of his wicked eye; you begin to understand the angler's fascination, for the most restive of men might be lulled by the light moan of that wimpling current. Cruel? Alas, yes! That quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet Should have a hook, with a small trout to pull it. That was the little punishment which Byron devised for Izaak Walton. But of course, if you once begin to be supersensitive about cruelty, you find your way blocked at every cross-road of life, and existence ceases to be worth having. On, as the sun slopes, and his beams fall slant over solemn mounds of cool gray hue and woody fields all pranked in gold. Look to the north, and you see the far-away hills in their sunset livery of white and purple and rose. On the clear summits the snow sometimes lies; and, as the royal orb sinks, you will see the snow blush for a minute with throbbing carnation tints that shift and faint off slowly into cold pallid green. The heart is too full of ecstasy to allow even of thought. You live--that is all! You may continue your wanderings among all the mystic sounds and sights of the night, but it is better to rest long and well when you can. Let the village innkeeper put down for you the coarsest fare that can be conceived, and you will be content; for, as a matter of fact, any food and drink appeal gratefully to the palate of a man who has been inhaling the raciest air at every pore for eight or ten hours. If the fare does not happen to be coarse--if, for example, the landlord has a dish of trout--so much the better; you do not envy any crowned personage in Christendom or elsewhere. And how much does your day of Paradise cost you? At the utmost, half-a-crown. Had you been away on the Rhine or in Switzerland or in some German home of brigands, you would have been bleeding at the purse all day, while in our own matchless land you have had merriment, wild nature, air that is like the essence of life--and all for thirty pence. When night falls heavily, you pass your last hour in listening to the under-song of the sea and the whisper of the roaming winds among the grass. Then, if you are wise and grateful, you thank the Giver of all, and go to sleep. In the jolly greenwoods of the Midlands you may have enjoyment of another kind. Some men prefer the sleepy settled villages, the sweeping fens with their bickering windmills, the hush and placidity of old market-towns that brood under the looming majesty of the castle. The truth is that you cannot go anywhere in England outside of the blighted hideous manufacturing districts without finding beauty and peace. In the first instance you seek health and physical well-being--that goes without saying; but the walking epicure must also have dainty thoughts, full banquets of the mind, quiet hours wherein resolutions may be framed in solitude and left in the soul to ripen. When the epicure returns to the din of towns, he has a safeguard in his own breast which tends to keep him alike from folly and melancholy. Furthermore, as he passes the reeking dens where human beings crowd who never see flower or tree, he feels all churlishness depart from him, and he is ready to pity and help his less happy brethren. After he has settled to labour again, his hours of rest are made calmly contented by the chance visions that come to him and show him the blown sea, the rustling whiteness of fretted surges, the painted meadows, and the solemn colours of the dying day. And all this talk we have got only through letting our minds go wandering away on the subject of going a-walking. I have always said that the sweetest pleasures are almost costless. The placid "look of the bay mare" took all the silliness out of Walt Whitman; and there is more in his queer phrase than meets the eye. One word. When you go a-walking, do not try to be obtrusively merry. Meet a group of tramping gentlemen who have been beer-drinking at noon; they are surprisingly vivacious until the gaze of the sun becomes importunate; they even sing as they go, and their hearty laughter resounds far and near. See them in the afternoon, and ask where the merriment is; their eyes are glazed, their nerves crave slumber, their steps are by no mean sprightly, and they probably form a doleful company, ready to quarrel or think pessimistic thoughts. Be calm, placid, even; do not expect too much, and your reward will be rich. _June, 1888._ _"SPORT."_ Simple folk fancy that "sport" must be a joyous pursuit, and that a sportsman is a jovial, light-hearted, and rather innocent person. It may be useful to many parents, and perhaps to some young people, if I let them know what "sport" really means nowadays. Those who have their imaginations filled with pictures of merry red-coated riders, or of sturdy gaitered squires tramping through stubble behind their dogs, are quite welcome to their agreeable visions. The hounds of course meet in hundreds of places in winter-time, and the bold riders charge gaily across meadows and over fences. It is a splendid, exhilarating sight; and no one can find much fault with the pursuit, for it gives health to thousands. The foxes may perhaps object a little; but, if a philosopher could explain to them that, if they were not preserved for hunting purposes, they would soon be exterminated, we have no doubt that they would choose the alternative which gives them a chance. Shooting is engaged in with more enthusiasm now than ever it was before; and doubtless the gentlemen who sit in snug corners and knock down tame pheasants derive benefit--physical and moral--from the lively exercise. But the word "sport" in England does not now refer to hunting and shooting; it has a wide application, and it describes in a generic way a number of pursuits which are, to say the least, not improving to those who engage in them. The royal sport is of course horse-racing; and about that amusement--in its present aspect--I may have something profitable to say. The advocates of racing inform us that the noble sport improves the breed of horses, and affords wholesome relaxation to men; they grow quite indignant with the narrow Puritans who talk "stuff" about demoralization, and they have numerous fine phrases referring to old England and the spirit of our fathers. All the talk concerning the improving influence of the Turf on horses and men is pernicious nonsense, and there is an end of the matter. The English thoroughbred is a beautiful creature, and it is pleasant enough to see him make his splendid rush from start to finish; amusing also is it to watch the skill of the wiry manikins who ride; the jockeys measure every second and every yard, and their cleverness in extracting the last ounce of strength from their horses is quite curious. The merest novice may enjoy the sight of the gay colours, and he cannot help feeling a thrill of excitement when the thud, thud of the hoofs sounds near him as the exquisite slender animals fly past. But the persons who take most interest in races are those who hardly know a horse from a mule. They may make a chance visit to a racecourse, but the speed and beauty of the animals do not interest them in any way; they cannot judge the skill of a rider; they have no eye for anything but money. To them a horse is merely a name; and, so far from their racing pursuits bringing them health, they prefer staying in a low club or lower public-house, where they may gamble without being obliged to trouble themselves about the nobler animals on which they bet. The crowd on a racecourse is always a hideous spectacle. The class of men who swarm there are amongst the worst specimens of the human race, and, when a stranger has wandered among them for an hour or so, he feels as though he had been gazing at one huge, gross, distorted face. Their language is many degrees below vulgarity; in fact, their coarseness can be understood only by people who have been forced to go much amongst them--and that perhaps is fortunate. The quiet stoical aristocrats in the special enclosures are in all ways inoffensive; they gamble and gossip, but their betting is carried on with still self-restraint, and their gossip is the ordinary polished triviality of the country-house and drawing-room. But what can be said of the beings who crowd the betting-ring? They are indeed awful types of humanity, fitted to make sensitive men shudder. Their yells, their profanity, their low cunning, their noisy eagerness to pounce upon a simpleton, their infamous obscenity, all combine to make them the most loathsome collection of human beings to be found on the face of the broad earth. Observe that all of this betting crew appear to be what is called rolling in money. They never do a stroke of useful work; they merely howl and make bets--that is their contribution to the prosperity of the State. Yet they are dressed with vulgar richness, they fare sumptuously, and they would not condescend to taste any wine save the finest vintages; they have servants and good horses, and in all ways they resemble some rank luxurious growth that has sprung from a putrid soil. Mark that these bookmakers, as they are called, are not gentlemen in any sense of the word; some of them are publicans, some look like prize-fighters, some like promoted costermongers, some like common thieves. There is not a man in the company who speaks with a decently refined accent--in short, to use plain terms, they are the scum of the earth. Whence then comes the money which enables them to live in riotous profusion? The explanation is a sad one, and I trust that these words may warn many young people in time. Here is the point to be weighed upon--these foul-mouthed persons in the betting-ring are able to travel about all spring, summer, and autumn, staying in the best hotels and lacking nothing; in winter they can loll away their time in billiard-rooms. Once more, who supplies the means? It is the senseless outside public who imagine they know something about "sport." Every town in England contains some centre--generally a public-house or a barber's shop--where men meet to make wagers; the evil influence of the Turf is almost everywhere apparent, for it is probable that at least two millions of men are interested in betting. London swarms with vile clubs which are merely gambling saloons; professional men, tradesmen, clerks, and even artizans crowd into these horrid holes, and do business with the professional gamblers. In London alone there are some half-dozen papers published daily which are entirely devoted to "sport," and these journals are of course bought by the gudgeons who seek destruction in the betting-rooms. In the provinces there are several towns which easily support a daily sporting journal; and no ordinary paper in the North of England could possibly survive unless at least one-eighth of its space were devoted to racing matters of various sorts. There are hundreds of thousands of our population who read absolutely nothing save lists of weights and entries, quotations which give the odds against horses, and reports of races. Not 5 per cent, of these individuals ever see a horse from year's end to year's end, yet they talk of nothing else but horses, horses, horses, and every effort of their intellects is devoted to the task of picking out winners. Incredible as it may seem, these poor souls call themselves sportsmen, and they undoubtedly think that their grubbing about in malodorous tap-rooms is a form of "sport"; it is their hopeless folly and greed that fill the pockets of the loud-mouthed tenants of the Ring. Some one must supply the bookmakers' wealth, and the "some one" is the senseless amateur who takes his ideas from newspapers. The amateur of the tap-room or the club looks down a list of horses and chooses one which he fancies; perhaps he has received private advice from one of the beings who haunt the training-grounds and watch the thoroughbreds at exercise; perhaps he is influenced by some enthusiast who bids him risk all he has on certain private information. The fly enters the den and asks the spider, "What price Flora?"--that means, "What odds are you prepared to lay against the mare named Flora?" The spider answers--say seven to one; the fly hands one pound to the spider, and the bet is made. The peculiarity of this transaction is that one of the parties to it is always careful to arrange so that he cannot lose. Supposing that there are seven horses entered in a race, it is certain that six must be losers. The bookmaker so makes his wagers that no matter which of the seven wins he at least loses nothing; the miserable amateur has only one chance. He may possibly be lucky; but the chances in the long run are dead against him, for he is quite at the mercy of the sharp capitalist who bets with him. The money which the rowdies of the Ring spend so lavishly all comes from the pockets of dupes who persist in pursuing a kind of _ignis fatuus_ which too often leads them into a bog of ruin. This deplorable business of wagering has become universal. We talk of the Italians as a gambling nation, but they are not to be compared with the English for recklessness and purblind persistence. I know almost every town in England, and I say without fear that the main topic of conversation in every place of entertainment where the traveller stays is betting. A tourist must of course make for hotel after hotel where the natives of each place congregate; and, if he keeps his ears open, he will find the gambling venom has tainted the life-blood of the people in every town from Berwick to Hastings. It may be asked, "How do these silly creatures who bet manage to obtain any idea of a horse?" They have not the faintest notion of what any given horse is like, but they usually follow the advice of some sharper who pretends to know what is going to win. There are some hundreds of persons who carry on a kind of secret trade in information, and these persons profess their ability to enable any one to win a fortune. The dupes write for advice, enclosing a fee, and they receive the name of a horse; then they risk their money, and so the shocking game goes on. I receive only too many letters from wives, mothers, and sisters whose loved ones are being drawn into the vortex of destruction. Let me give some rough colloquial advice to the gamblers--"You bet on horses according to the advice of men who watch them. Observe how foolish you are! The horse A is trained in Yorkshire; the horse B at Newmarket. The man who watches A thinks that the animal can gallop very fast, and you risk your money according to his report. But what means has he of knowing the speed of B? If two horses gallop towards the winning-post locked together, it often happens that one wins by about six inches. There is no real difference in their speed, but the winner happens to have a neck slightly longer than the other. Observe that one race-horse--Buccaneer--has been known to cover a mile at the rate of fifty-four feet per second; it is therefore pretty certain that at his very highest speed he could move at sixty feet per second. Very good; it happens then that a horse which wins a race by one foot is about one-sixtieth of a second faster, than the beaten animal. What a dolt you must be to imagine that any man in the world could possibly tell you which of those two brutes was likely to be the winner! It is the merest guess-work; you have all the chances against you and you might as well bet on the tossing of halfpence. The bookmaker does not need to care, for he is safe whatever may win; but you are defying all the laws of chance; and, although you may make one lucky hit, you must fare ill in the end." But no commonsensical talk seems to have any effect on the insensate fellows who are the betting-man's prey, and thus this precious sport has become a source of idleness, theft, and vast misery. One wretch goes under, but the stock of human folly is unlimited, and the shoal of gudgeons moves steadily into the bookmaker's net. One betting-agent in France receives some five thousand letters and telegrams per day, and all this huge correspondence comes from persons who never take the trouble to see a race, but who are bitten with the gambler's fever. No warning suffices--man after man goes headlong to ruin, and still the doomed host musters in club and tavern. They lose all semblance of gentle humanity; they become mere blockheads--for cupidity and stupidity are usually allied--and they form a demoralizing leaven that is permeating the nation and sapping our manhood. We have only to consider the position of the various dwarfs who bestride the racehorses in order to see how hard a hold this iniquity has on us. A jockey is merely a stable-boy after all; yet a successful jockey receives more adulation than does the greatest of statesmen. A theatrical manager has been known to prepare the royal box for the reception of one of these celebrities; some of the manikins earn five thousand a year, one of them has been known to make twenty thousand pounds in a year; and that same youth received three thousand pounds for riding in one race. As to the flattery--the detestable flattery--which the mob bestows on good horsemen, it cannot be mentioned with patience. In sum, then, a form of insanity has attacked England, and we shall pay bitterly for the fit. The idle host who gather on the racecourse add nothing to the nation's wealth; they are poisonous parasites whose influence destroys industry, honesty, and common manliness. And yet the whole hapless crew, winners and losers, call themselves "sportsmen." I have said plainly enough that every villainous human being seems to take naturally to the Turf; but unfortunately the fools follow on the same track as that trodden by the villains, and thus the honest gentlemen who still support a vile institution have all their work set out in order to prevent the hawks from making a meal of the pigeons. One of the honest guardians of racing morality resigned in bitter despair some time ago, giving as his reason the assertion that he could trust nobody. Nobody! The man was a great lord, he was totally disinterested and utterly generous, he never betted a penny, and he only preferred to see the superb thoroughbreds gallop. Lavish he was to all about him--and he could trust nobody. It seems that this despairful nobleman had tolerably good reasons for his hasty departure, for we have had such a crop of villainies to reap this year as never was gathered before in the same time, and it appears plain that no animal will be allowed to win any prize unless the foul crew of betting-men accord their kind approval, and refrain from poisoning the brute. I address myself directly, and with all the earnestness of which I am capable, to those young simpletons who think that it is a fine and knowing thing to stake money on a horse. Some poor silly creatures cannot be taught that they are not even backing a good chance; they will not learn that the success or failure of horses in important races is regulated by a clique of rapscallions whose existence sullies the very light of day. Even if the simpleton chooses the very best horse in a race, it by no means follows that the creature will win--nay, the very excellence of an animal is all against its chances of success. The Ring--which is largely composed of well-to-do black-legs--will not let any man win too much. What earthly chance can a clerk or shopman or tradesman in Manchester or Derby have of knowing what passes in the hotels of Newmarket, the homes of trainers, the London betting-clubs? The information supplied so copiously by the sporting journals is as good as money can buy, but the writers on those papers are just as easily deceived as other people. Men are out every morning watching the horses take their exercise, and an animal cannot sneeze without the fact being telegraphed to the remotest corners of the country; but all this vigilance is useless when roguery comes into the field. Observe that for the moment I am not speaking about the morality of betting at all. I have my own opinion as to the mental tone of a man who is continually eyeing his neighbour's pocket and wondering what he can abstract therefrom. There is, and can be, no friendship save bottle friendship among the animals of prey who spend their time and energy on betting; and I know how callously they let a victim sink to ruin after they have sucked his substance to the last drop. The very face of a betting-man is enough to let you know what his soul is like; it is a face such as can be seen nowhere but on the racecourse or in the betting-club: the last trace of high thought has vanished, and, though the men may laugh and indulge in verbal horse-play, there is always something carnivorous about their aspect. They are sharp in a certain line, but true intelligence is rarely found among them. Strange to say, they are often generous with money if their sentimental side is fairly touched, but their very generosity is the lavishness of ostentation, and they seem to have no true kindness in them, nor do they appear capable of even shamming to possess the genuine helpful nature. Eternally on the watch for prey, they assume the essential nature of predatory animals; their notion of cleverness is to get the better of somebody, and their idea of intellectual effort is to lay cunning traps for fools to enter. Yes; the betting-ring is a bad school of morality, and the man who goes there as a fool and a victim too, often blossoms into a rogue and a plunderer. With all this in my mind, I press my readers to understand that I leave the ethics of wagering alone for the present, and confine my attention strictly to the question of expediency. What is the use of wearing out nerve and brain on pondering an infinite maze of uncertainties? The rogues who command jockeys and even trainers on occasion can act with certainty, for they have their eye on the very tap-root of the Turf upas-tree. The noodles who read sporting prints and try to look knowing can only fumble about among uncertainties; they and their pitiful money help to swell the triumphs and the purses of rascals, and they fritter away good brain-power on calculations which have no sound basis whatever. Let us get to some facts, and let us all hope in the name of everything that is righteous and of good report that, when this article is read, some blind feather-brains may be induced to stop ere the inevitable final ruin descends upon them. What has happened in the doleful spring of this year? In 1887 a colt was brought out for the first time to run for the greatest of all Turf prizes. As usual, some bagatelle of a million or thereabouts had been betted on a horse which had won several races, and this animal was reckoned to be incapable of losing: but the untried animal shot out and galloped home an easy winner. So little was the successful brute distressed by his race that he began to caper out of sheer light-heartedness when he was led back to the enclosure, and he very soon cleared the place in his gambols--in fact, he could have run another race within half an hour after the first one. In the autumn this same winner strained a ligament; but in spite of the accident he ran for another important prize, and his lightning speed served him in good stead, for he came in second for the St. Leger. Well, in the spring this animal was entered in a handicap race, and the weight which he had to carry seemed so trifling that good judges thought he must romp over the course and win with ease. Hundreds of thousands of dolts rushed to wager their money on this chance, and the horse's owner, who is anything but a fool, proceeded to back his own property lavishly. Now a certain number of the betting-rogues appeared to know something--if I may be pardoned for using their repulsive phraseology--and, so long as any one was willing to bet on the horse, they were ready to lay against him. Still the pigeons would not take warning by this ominous symptom; they had chances enough to keep clear of danger, but they flocked into the snare in their confused fashion. A grain of common sense would have made them ask, "Why do these shrewd, hard men seem so certain that our favourite must lose? Are they the kind of persons who risk thousands in hard cash unless they know particularly well what they are doing? They bet with an air of certainty, though some of them must be almost ruined if they have made a miscalculation; they defy even the owner of the animal, and they cheerfully give him the opportunity of putting down thousands if he wishes to do so. There must be some reason for this assurance which at first sight looks so very overweening. Better have a care!" Thus would common sense have counselled the victims; but, alas, common sense is usually left out of the composition of the betting-man's victim, and the flood of honest money rolled into the keeping of men who are certainly no more than indifferent honest. The day of the race came; the great gaping public dipped their hands in their pockets and accepted short odds about their precious certainty. When the flag fell for the start, the most wildly extravagant odds were offered against the favourite by the men who had been betting against him all along, for they saw very soon that they were safe. The poor brute on whose success so many thousands depended could not even gallop; he trailed on wearily for a little, without showing any sign of his old gallant fire and speed, and at last his hopeless rider stopped him. This story is in the mouths of all men; and now perhaps our simpletons maybe surprised to hear that the wretched animal which was the innocent cause of loss and misery was poisoned by a narcotic. In his efforts to move freely he strained himself, for the subtle drug deprived him of the power of using his limbs, and he could only sprawl and wrench his sinews. This is the fourth case of the kind which has recently occurred; and now clever judges have hit upon the cause which has disabled so many good horses, after the rascals of the Ring have succeeded in laying colossal amounts against them. Too many people know the dire effects of the morphia injections which are now so commonly used by weak individuals who fear pain and _ennui_; the same deadly drug is used to poison the horses. One touch with the sharp needle-point under the horse's elbow, and the subtle, numbing poison speeds through the arteries and paralyzes the nerves; a beautiful creature that comes out full of fire and courage is converted in a very few minutes into a dull helpless mass that has no more conscious volition than a machine. The animal remains on its feet, but exertion is impossible, and neither rein, whip, nor spur serves to stimulate the cunning poisoner's victim. About the facts there can now be no dispute: and this last wretched story supplies a copestone to a pile of similar tales which has been in course of building during the past three or four years. Enraged men have become outspoken, and things are now boldly printed and circulated which were mentioned only in whispers long ago. The days of clumsy poisoning have gone by; the prowling villain no longer obtains entrance to a stable for the purpose of battering a horse's leg or driving a nail into the frog of the foot; the ancient crude devices are used no more, for science has become the handmaid of scoundrelism. When in 1811 a bad fellow squirted a solution of arsenic into a locked horse-trough, the evil trick was too clumsy to escape detection, and the cruel rogue was promptly caught and sent to the gallows; but we now have horse-poisoners who hold a secret similar to that which Palmer of Rugeley kept so long. I say "a secret," though every skilled veterinary surgeon knows how to administer morphia, and knows its effects; but the new practitioners contrive to send in the deadly injection of the drug in spite of the ceaseless vigilance of trainers, stablemen, detectives, and all other guards. Now I ask any rational man who may have been tempted to bet, Is it worth while? Leave out the morality for the present, and tell us whether you think it business-like to risk your money when you know that neither a horse's speed nor a trainer's skill will avail you when once an acute crew of sharpers have settled that a race must not be won by a certain animal. The miserable creature whose case has served me for a text was tried at home during the second week of April; he carried four stone more than the very useful and fast horse which ran against him, and he merely amused himself by romping alongside of his opponent. Again, when he took a preliminary canter before the drug had time to act, he moved with great strength and with the freedom of a greyhound; yet within three minutes he was no more than an inert mass of flesh and bone. I say to the inexperienced gambler, "Draw your own conclusions, and if, after studying my words, you choose to tempt fortune any more, your fate--your evil fate--be on your own head, for nothing that I or any one else can do will save you." Not long before the melancholy and sordid case which I have described, and which is now gaining attention and rousing curiosity everywhere, a certain splendid steeplechaser was brought out to run for the most important of cross-country races. He was a famous horse, and, like our Derby winner, he bore the fortunes of a good many people. To the confusion and dismay of the men who made sure of his success, he was found to be stupified, and suffering from all the symptoms of morphia-poisoning! Not long ago an exquisite mare was brought out to run for the Liverpool Steeplechase, and, like the two I have already named, she was deemed to be absolutely certain of success. She came out merrily from her box; but soon she appeared to become dazed and silly; she could not move properly, and in trying to clear her first fence she staggered like a soddened drunkard and fell. The rascals had not become artistic poisoners at that date, and it was found that the poor mare had received the drug through a rather large puncture in her nostril. The men whom I seek to cure are not worthy of much care; but they have dependants; and it is of the women and children that I think. Here is another pitfall into which the eager novice stumbles; and once more on grounds of expediency I ask the novice to consider his position. According to the decision of the peculiarly-constituted senate which rules racing affairs, I understand that, even if a horse starts in a race with health and training all in its favour, it by no means follows that he will win, or even run well. Cunning touches of the bridle, dexterous movements of body and limbs on the jockey's part, subtle checks applied so as to cramp the animal's stride--all these things tend to bring about surprising results. The horse that fails dismally in one race comes out soon afterwards and wins easily in more adverse circumstances. I grow tired of the unlucky catalogue of mean swindles, and I should be glad if I never heard of the Turf again; though, alas, I have little hope of that so long as betting-shops are open, and so long as miserable women have the power to address letters to me! I can only implore those who are not stricken with the gambler's fever to come away from danger while yet there is time. A great nobleman like Lord Hartington or Lord Rodney may amuse himself by keeping racers; he gains relaxation by running out from London to see his pretty colts and fillies gallop, and he needs not to care very much whether they win or lose, for it is only the mild excitement and the change of scene that he wants. The wealthy people who go to Newmarket seek pleasant company as much as anything, and the loss of a few hundreds hardly counts in their year's expenses. But the poor noodle who can hardly afford to pay his fare and hotel bill--why should he meddle with horses? If an animal is poisoned, the betting millionaire who backs it swallows his chagrin and thinks no more of the matter, but the wretched clerk who has risked a quarter's salary cannot take matters so easily. Racing is the rich man's diversion, and men of poor or moderate means cannot afford to think about it. The beautiful world is full of entertainment for those who search wisely; then why should any man vex heart and brain by meddling with a pursuit which gives him no pleasure, and which cannot by any chance bring him profit? I have no pity for a man who ascribes his ruin to betting, and I contemn those paltry weaklings whose cases I study and collect from the newspapers. Certainly there are enough of them! A man who bets wants to make money without work, and that on the face of it is a dishonourable aspiration; if he robs some one, I do not in the faintest degree try to palliate his crime--he is a responsible being, or ought to be one, and he has no excuse for pilfering. I should never aid any man who suffered through betting, and I would not advise any one else to do so. My appeal to the selfish instincts of the gudgeons who are hooked by the bookmakers is made only for the sake of the helpless creatures who suffer for the follies and blundering cupidity of the would-be sharper. I abhor the bookmakers, but I do not blame them alone; the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done, and they are doubtless tempted to roguery by the very simpletons who complain when they meet the reward of their folly. I am solely concerned with the innocents who fare hardly because of their selfish relatives' reckless want of judgment, and for them, and them alone, my efforts are engaged. _May, 1888_ _DEGRADED MEN_. The man of science derives suggestive knowledge from the study of mere putrefaction; he places an infusion of common hay-seeds or meat or fruit in his phials, and awaits events; presently a drop from one of the infusions is laid on the field of the microscope, and straightly the economy of a new and strange kingdom is seen by the observer. The microscopist takes any kind of garbage; he watches the bacteria and their mysterious development, and he reaches at last the most significant conclusions regarding the health and growth and diseases of the highest organizations. The student of human nature must also bestow his attention on disease of mind if he would attain to any real knowledge of the strange race to which he belongs. We develop, it is true, but there are modes and modes of development. I have often pointed out that a steady process of degeneration goes on side by side with the unfolding of new and healthy powers in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The great South American lizards grow strong and splendid in hue amid the rank freedom of pampas or forest; but their poor relatives in the sunless caves of Transylvania grow milky white, flabby, and stone-blind. The creatures in the Kentucky caves are all aborted in some way or other; the birds in far-off islands lose the power of flight, and the shrivelled wings gradually sink under the skin, and show us only a tiny network of delicate bones when the creature is stripped to the skeleton. The condor soars magnificently in the thin air over the Andes--it can rise like a kite or drop like a thunderbolt: the weeka of New Zealand can hardly get out of the way of a stick aimed by an active man. The proud forest giant sucks up the pouring moisture from the great Brazilian river; the shoots that rise under the shadow of the monster tree are weakened and blighted by lack of light and free air. The same astounding work goes on among the beings who are so haughty in their assumption of the post of creation's lords. The healthy child born of healthy parents grows up amid pure air and pure surroundings; his tissues are nourished by strength-giving food, he lives according to sane rules, and he becomes round-limbed, full-chested, and vigorous. The poor little victim who first sees the light in the Borough or Shadwell, or in the noxious alleys of our reeking industrial towns, receives foul air, mere atmospheric garbage, into his lungs; he becomes thin-blooded, his unwholesome pallor witnesses to his weakness of vitality, his muscles are atrophied, and even his hair is ragged, lustreless, ill-nurtured. In time he transmits his feebleness to his successors; and we have the creatures who stock our workhouses, hospitals, and our gaols--for moral degradation always accompanies radical degradation of the physique. So, if we study the larger aspects of society, we find that in all grades we have large numbers of individuals who fall out of the line that is steadfastly progressing, and become stragglers, camp-followers--anything you will. Let a cool and an unsentimental observer bend himself to the study of degraded human types, and he will learn things that will sicken his heart if he is weak, and strengthen him in his resolve to work gallantly during his span of life if he is strong. Has any one ever fairly tried to face the problem of degradation? Has any one ever learned how it is that a distinct form of mental disease seems to lurk in all sorts of unexpected fastnesses, ready to breathe a numbing and poisonous vapour on those who are not fortified against the moral malaria? I am not without experience of the fell chances and changes of life; I venture therefore to use some portion of the knowledge that I have gathered in order to help to fortify the weak and make the strong wary. If you wander on the roads in our country, you are almost sure to meet men whom you instinctively recognize as fallen beings. What their previous estate in life may have been you cannot tell, but you know that there has been a fall, and that you are looking on a moral wreck. The types are superficially varied, but an essential sameness, not always visible at first sight, connects them and enables you to class them as you would class the specimens in a gallery of the British Museum. As you walk along on a lonely highway, you meet a man who carries himself with a kind of jaunty air. His woeful boots show glimpses of bare feet, his clothes have a bright gloss in places, and they hang untidily; but his coat is buttoned with an attempt at smartness, and his ill-used hat is set on rakishly. You note that the man wears a moustache, and you learn in some mysterious way that he was once accustomed to be very trim and spruce in person. When he speaks, you find that you have a hint of a cultivated accent; he sounds the termination "ing" with precision, and you also notice that such words as "here," "there," "over," are pronounced with a peculiar broad vowel sound at the end. He cannot look you boldly in the face, and it is hard to catch a sight of his eyes, but you may take for granted that the eyes are bad and shifty. The cheeks are probably a little pendulous, and the jaw hangs with a certain slackness. The whole visage looks as if it had been cast in a tolerably good mould and had somehow run out of shape a little. Your man is fluent and communicative; he mouths his sentences with a genteel roll in his voice, and he punctuates his talk with a stealthy, insincere laugh which hardly rises above the dignity of a snigger. Now how does such a man come to be tramping aimlessly on a public road? He does not know that he is going to any place in particular; he is certainly not walking for the sake of health, though he needs health rather badly. Why is he in this plight? You do not need to wait long for a solution, if the book of human experience has been your study. That man is absolutely certain to begin bewailing his luck--it is always "luck." Then he has a choice selection of abuse to bestow on large numbers of people who have trodden him down--he is always down-trodden; and he proves to you that, but for the ingratitude of A, the roguery of B, the jealousy of C, the undeserved credit obtained by the despicable D, he would be in "a far different position to-day, sir." If he is an old officer--and a few gentlemen who once bore Her Majesty's commission are now to be found on the roads, or in casual wards, or lounging about low skittle-alleys and bagatelle or billiard tables--he will allude to the gambling that went on in the regiment. "How could a youngster keep out of the swim?" All went well with him until he took to late hours and devilled bones; "then in the mornings we were all ready for a peg; and I should like to see the man who could get ready for parade after a hard night unless he had something in the shape of a reviver." So he prates on. He curses the colonel, the commander-in-chief, and the Army organization in general; he gives leering reminiscences of garrison belles--reminiscences that make a pure minded man long to inflict some sort of chastisement on him; and thus, while he thinks he is impressing you with an overpowering sense of his bygone rank and fashion, he really unfolds the history of a feeble unworthy fellow who carries a strong tinge of rascality about him. He is always a victim, and he illustrates the unvarying truth of the maxim that a dupe is a rogue minus cleverness. The final crash which overwhelmed him was of course a horse-racing blunder. He would have recovered his winter's losses had not a gang of thieves tampered with the favourite for the City and Suburban. "Do you think, sir, that Highflyer could not have given Stonemason three stone and a beating?" You modestly own your want of acquaintance with the powers of the famous quadrupeds, and the infatuated dupe goes on, "I saw how Bill Whipcord was riding; he eased at the corner, when I wouldn't have taken two thousand for my bets, and you could see that he let Stonemason up. I had taken seven to four eight times in hundreds, and that broke me." The ragged raffish man never thinks that he was quite ready to plunder other people; he grows inarticulate with rage only when he remembers how he was bitten instead of being the biter. His watery eyes slant as you near a roadside inn, and he is certain to issue an invitation. Then you see what really brought him low. It may be a lovely warm day, when the acrid reek of alcohol is more than usually abhorrent; but he must take something strong that will presently inflame the flabby bulge of his cheeks and set his evil eyes watering more freely than ever. Gin is his favourite refreshment, because it is cheap, and produces stupefaction more rapidly than any other liquid. Very probably he will mix gin and ale in one horrid draught--and in that case you know that he is very far gone indeed on the downward road. If he can possibly coax the change out of you when the waiter puts it down he will do so, for he cannot resist the gleam of the coins, and he will improvise the most courageous lies with an ease which inspires awe. He thanks you for nothing; he hovers between cringing familiarity and patronage; and, when you gladly part with him, he probably solaces himself by muttering curses on your meanness or your insolence. Once more--how does the faded military person come to be on the roads? We shall come to that presently. Observe the temporary lord of the tap-room when you halt on the dusty roads and search for tea or lunch. He is in black, and a soiled handkerchief is wound round his throat like an eel. He wears a soft felt hat which has evidently done duty as a night-cap many times, and he tries to bear himself as though the linen beneath his pinned-up coat were of priceless quality. You know well enough that he has no shirt on, for he would sell one within half an hour if any Samaritan fitted him out. His boots are carefully tucked away under the bench, and his sharp knees seem likely to start through their greasy casing. As soon as he sees you he determines to create an impression, and he at once draws you into the conversation. "Now, sir, you and I are scholars--I am an old Balliol man myself--and I was explaining to these good lads the meaning of the phrase which had puzzled them, as it has puzzled many more. _Casus belli_, sir--that is what we find in this local rag of a journal; and _status quo ante bellum_. Now, sir, these ignorant souls couldn't tell what was meant, so I have been enlightening them. I relax my mind in this way, though you would hardly think it the proper place for a Balliol man, while that overfed brute up at the Hall can drive out with a pair of two-hundred-guinea bays, sir. Fancy a gentleman and a scholar being in this company, sir! Now Jones, the landlord there, is a good man in his way--oh, no thanks Jones; it is not a compliment!--and I'd like to see the man who dared say that I'm not speaking the truth, for I used to put my hands up like a good one when we were boys at the old 'varsity, sir. Jones, this gentleman would like something; and I don't mind taking a double dose of Glenlivat with a brother-scholar and a gentleman like myself." So the mawkish creature maunders on until one's gorge rises; but the stolid carters, the idle labourers, the shoemaker from the shop round the corner, admire his eloquence, and enjoy the luxury of pitying a parson and an aristocrat. How very numerous are the representatives of this type, and how unspeakably odious they are! This foul weed in dirty clothing assumes the pose of a bishop; he swears at the landlord, he patronizes the shoemaker--who is his superior in all ways--he airs the feeble remnants of his Latin grammar and his stock quotations. He will curse you if you refuse him drink, and he will describe you as an impostor or a cad; while, if you are weak enough to gratify his taste for spirits, he will glower at you over his glass, and sicken you with fulsome flattery or clumsy attempts at festive wit. Enough of this ugly creature, whose baseness insults the light of God's day! We know how he will end; we know how he has been a fraud throughout his evil life, and we can hardly spare even pity for him. It is well if the fellow has no lady-wife in some remote quarter--wife whom he can rob or beg from, or even thrash, when he searches her out after one of his rambles from casual ward to casual ward. In the wastes of the great cities the army of the degraded swarm. Here is the loose-lipped rakish wit, who tells stories in the common lodging-house kitchen. He has a certain brilliancy about him which lasts until the glassy gleam comes over his eyes, and then he becomes merely blasphemous and offensive. He might be an influential writer or politician, but he never gets beyond spouting in a pot-house debating club, and even that chance of distinction does not come unless he has written an unusually successful begging-letter. Here too is the broken professional man. His horrid face is pustuled, his hands are like unclean dough, he is like a creature falling to pieces; yet he can show you pretty specimens of handwriting, and, if you will steady him by giving him a drink of ale, he will write your name on the edge of a newspaper in copper-plate characters or perform some analogous feat. All the degraded like to show off the remains of their accomplishments, and you may hear some odious being warbling. "_Ah, che la morte!_" with quite the air of a leading tenor. In the dreadful purlieus lurk the poor submissive ne'er-do-well, the clerk who has been imprisoned for embezzlement, the City merchant's son who is reduced to being the tout of a low bookmaker, the preacher who began as a youthful phenomenon and ended by embezzling the Christmas dinner fund, the forlorn brute whose wife and children have fled from him, and who spends his time between the police-cells and the resorts of the vilest. If you could know the names of the tramps who yell and make merry over their supper in the murky kitchen, you would find that people of high consideration would be touched very painfully could they be reminded of the existence of certain relatives. Degraded, degraded are they all! And why? The answer is brief, and I have left it until last, for no particular elaboration is needed. From most painful study I have come to the conclusion that nearly all of our degraded men come to ruin through idleness in the first instance; drink, gambling, and other forms of debauch follow, but idleness is the root-evil. The man who begins by saying, "It's a poor heart that never rejoices," or who refers to the danger of making Jack a dull boy, is on a bad road. Who ever heard of a worker--a real toiler--becoming degraded? Worn he may be, and perhaps dull to the influence of beauty and refinement; but there is always some nobleness about him. The man who gives way to idleness at once prepares his mind as a soil for evil seeds; the universe grows tiresome to him; the life-weariness of the old Romans attacks him in an ignoble form, and he begins to look about for distractions. Then his idleness, from being perhaps merely amusing, becomes offensive and suspicious; drink takes hold upon him; his moral sense perishes; only the husks of his refinement remain; and by and by you have the slouching wanderer who is good for nothing on earth. He is despised of men, and, were it not that we know the inexhaustible bounty of the Everlasting Pity, we might almost think that he was forgotten of Heaven. Stand against idleness. Anything that age, aches, penury, hard trial may inflict on the soul is trifling. Idleness is the great evil which leads to all others. Therefore work while it is day. _September, 1888._ _A REFINEMENT OF "SPORTING" CRUELTY._ I firmly believe in the sound manhood of the English people, and I know that in any great emergency they would rise and prove themselves true and gallant of soul; but we happen for the time to have amongst us a very large class of idlers, and these idlers are steadily introducing habits and customs which no wise observer can regard without solemn apprehensions. The simple Southampton poet has told us what "idle hands" are apt to do under certain guidance, and his saying--truism as it appears--should be studied with more regard to its vital meaning. The idlers crave for novelties; they seek for new forms of distraction; they seem really to live only when they are in the midst of delirious excitement. Unhappily their feverish unrest is apt to communicate itself to men who are not naturally idlers, and thus their influence moves outwards like some vast hurtful wind blown from a pestilent region. During the past few years the idlers have invented a form of amusement which for sheer atrocity and wanton cruelty is unparalleled in the history of England. I shall say some words about this remarkable amusement, and I trust that gentle women who have in them the heart of compassion, mothers who have sons to be ruined, fathers who have purses to bleed, may aid in putting down an evil that gathers strength every day. Most of my readers know what the "sport" of coursing is; but, for the benefit of strictly town-bred folk, I may roughly indicate the nature of the pursuit as it was practised in bygone times. A brace of greyhounds were placed together in the slips--that is, in collars which fly open when the man who holds the dogs releases a knot; and then a line of men moved slowly over the fields. When a hare rose and ran for her life, the slipper allowed her a fair start, and then he released the dogs. The mode of reckoning the merits of the hounds is perhaps a little too complicated for the understanding of non-"sporting" people; but I may broadly put it that the dog which gives the hare most trouble, the dog that causes her to dodge and turn the oftenest in order to save her life, is reckoned the winner. Thus the greyhound which reaches the hare first receives two points; poor pussy then makes an agonized rush to right or left, and, if the second dog succeeds in passing his opponent and turning the hare again, he receives a point, and so on. The old-fashioned open-air sport was cruel enough, for it often happened that the hare ran for two or three miles with her ferocious pursuers hard on her track, and every muscle of her body was strained with poignant agony; but there is this to be said--the men had healthy, matchless exercise on breezy plains and joyous uplands, they tramped all day until their limbs were thoroughly exercised, and they earned sound repose by their wholesome exertions. Moreover, the element of fair-play enters into coursing when pursued in the open spaces. Pussy knows every foot of the ground; nightly she steals gently to the fields where her succulent food is found, and in the morning she steals back again to her tiny nest, or form, amid the soft grass. All day she lies chewing the cud in her fashion, and moving her delicate ears hither and thither, lest fox or stoat or dog should come upon her unawares; and at nightfall she steals away once more. Every run, every tuft of grass, every rising of the ground is known to her; and, when at last the tramp of the approaching beaters rouses her, she rushes away with a distinct advantage over the dogs. She knows exactly whither to go; the other animals do not, and usually, on open ground, the quarry escapes. I do not think that any greyhound living could catch one of the hares now left on the Suffolk marshes; and there are many on the great Wiltshire plains which are quite capable of rushing at top speed for three miles and more. The chase in the open is cruel--there is no denying it--for poor puss dies many deaths ere she bids her enemies good-bye; but still she has a chance for life, and thus the sport, inhuman as it is, has a praiseworthy element of fairness in it. But the betting-man, the foul product of civilization's depravity, cast his eye on the old-fashioned sport and invaded the field. He found the process of walking up the game not much to his taste, for he cares only to exercise his leathern lungs; moreover, the courses were few and far between and the chances of making wagers were scanty. He set himself to meditate, and it struck him that, if a good big collection of hares could be got together, it would be possible to turn them out one by one, so that betting might go on as fast and as merrily on the coursing-ground as at the roulette-table. Thus arose a "sport" which is educating many, many thousands in callousness and brutality. Here and there over England are dotted great enclosed parks, and the visitor is shown wide and mazy coverts where hares swarm. Plenty of food is strewn over the grass, and in the wildest of winters pussy has nothing to fear--until the date of her execution arrives. The animals are not natives of those enclosures; they are netted in droves on the Wiltshire plains or on the Lancashire moors, and packed off like poultry to the coursing-ground. There their life is calm for a long time; no poachers or lurchers or vermin molest them; stillness is maintained, and the hares live in peace. But one day there comes a roaring crowd to the park, and, though pussy does not know it, her good days are passed. Look at the mob that surges and bellows on the stands and in the enclosures. They are well dressed and comfortable, but a more unpleasant gang could not be seen. Try to distinguish a single face that shows kindness or goodness--you fail; this rank roaring crowd is made up of betting-men and dupes, and it is hard to say which are the worse. There is no horse-racing in the winter, and so these people have come out to see a succession of innocent creatures die, and to bet on the event. The slow coursing of the old style would not do for the fiery betting-man; but we shall have fun fast and furious presently. The assembly seems frantic; flashy men with eccentric coats and gaudy hats of various patterns stand about and bellow their offers to bet; feverish dupes move hither and thither, waiting for chances; the rustle of notes, the chink of money, sound here and there, and the immense clamour swells and swells, till a stunning roar dulls the senses, and to an imaginative gazer it seems as though a horde of fiends had been let loose to make day hideous. A broad smooth stretch of grass lies opposite to the stands, and at one end of this half-mile stretch there runs a barrier, the bottom of which is fringed with straw and furze. If you examined that barrier, you would find that it really opens into a wide dense copse, and that a hare or rabbit which whisks under it is safe on the far side. At the other side of this field a long fenced lane opens, and seems to be closed at the blind end by a wide door. To the right of the blind lane is a tiny hut surrounded by bushes, and by the side of the hut a few scattered men loaf in a purposeless way. Presently a red-coated man canters across the smooth green, and then the diabolical tumult of the stands reaches ear-splitting intensity. Your betting-man is cool enough in reality; but he likes to simulate mad eagerness until it appears as though the swollen veins of face or throat would burst. And what is going on at the closed end of that blind lane? On the strip of turf around the wide field the demure trainers lead their melancholy-looking dogs. Each greyhound is swathed in warm clothing, but they all look wretched; and, as they pick their way along with dainty steps, no one would guess that the sight of a certain poor little animal would convert each doleful hound into an incarnate fury. Two dogs are led across to the little hut--the bellow of the Ring sounds hoarsely on--and the chosen pair of dogs disappear behind the shrubs. And now what is passing on the farther side of that door which closes the lane? A hare is comfortably nestling under a clump of furze when a soft step sounds near her. A man! Pussy would like to move to right or left; but, lo, here are other men! Decidedly she must move forward. Oh, joy! A swinging door rises softly, and shows her a delightful long lane that seems to open on to a pleasant open country. She hops gaily onward, and then a little uneasiness overtakes her; she looks back, but that treacherous door has swung down again, and there is only one road for her now. Softly she steals onward to the mouth of the lane, and then she finds a slanting line of men who wave their arms at her when she tries to shoot aside. A loud roar bursts from the human animals on the stand, and then a hush falls. Now or never, pussy! The far-off barrier must be gained, or all is over. The hare lowers her ears and dashes off; then from the hut comes a staggering man, who hangs back with all his strength as a pair of ferocious dogs writhe and strain in the leash; the hounds rise on their haunches, and paw wildly with their fore-feet, and they struggle forward until puss has gone a fair distance, while the slipper encourages them with low guttural sounds. Crack! The tense collars fly, and the arrowy rush of the snaky dogs follows. Puss flicks her ears--she hears a thud, thud, wallop, wallop; and she knows the supreme moment has come. Her sinews tighten like bowstrings, and she darts on with the lightning speed of despair. The grim pursuers near her; she almost feels the breath of the foremost. Twitch!--and with a quick convulsive effort she sheers aside, and her enemy sprawls on. But the second dog is ready to meet her, and she must swirl round again. The two serpentine savages gather themselves together and launch out in wild efforts to reach her; they are upon her--she must dart round again, and does so under the very feet of the baffled dogs. Her eyes are starting with overmastering terror; again and again she sweeps from right to left, and again and again the staunch hounds dash along in her track. Pussy fails fast; one dog reaches her, and she shrieks as she feels his ferocious jaws touch her; but he snatches only a mouthful of fur, and there is another respite. Then at last one of the pursuers balances himself carefully, his wicked head is raised, he strikes, and the long tremulous shriek of despair is drowned in the hoarse crash of cheering from the mob. Brave sport, my masters! Gallant Britons ye are! Ah, how I should like to let one of you career over that field of death with a brace of business-like boarhounds behind you! There is no slackening of the fun, for the betting-men must be kept busy. Men grow frantic with excitement; young fools who should be at their business risk their money heedlessly, and generally go wrong. If the hares could only know, they might derive some consolation from the certainty that, if they are going to death, scores of their gallant sporting persecutors are going to ruin. Time after time, in monotonous succession, the same thing goes on through the day--the agonized hares twirl and strain; the fierce dogs employ their superb speed and strength; the unmanly gang of men howl like beasts of prey; and the sweet sun looks upon all! Women, what do you think of that for Englishmen's pastime? Recollect that the mania for this form of excitement is growing more intense daily; as much as one hundred thousand pounds may depend on a single course--for not only the mob in the stands are betting, but thousands are awaiting each result that is flashed off over the wires; and, although you may be far away in remote country towns, your sons, your husbands, your brothers, may be watching the clicking machine that records the results in club and hotel--they may be risking their substance in a lottery which is at once childish and cruel. There is not one word to be said in favour of this vile game. The old-fashioned courser at least got exercise and air; but the modern betting-man wants neither; he wants only to make wagers and add to his pile of money. For him the coursing meetings cannot come too often; the swarming gudgeons flock to his net; he arranges the odds almost as he chooses--with the help of his friends; and simpletons who do not know a greyhound from a deerhound bet wildly--not on dogs, but on names. The "sport" has all the uncertainty of roulette, and it is villainously cruel into the bargain. Amid all those thousands you never hear one word of pity for the stricken little creature that is driven out, as I have said, for execution; they watch her agonies, and calculate the chances of pouching their sovereigns. That is all. Here then is another vast engine of demoralization set going, just as if the Turf were not a blight of sufficient intensity! A young man ventures into one of those cruel rings, buys a card, and resolves to risk pounds or shillings. If he is unfortunate, he may be saved; but, curiously enough, it often happens that a greenhorn who does not know one greyhound from another blunders into a series of winning bets. If he wins, he is lost, for the fever seizes him; he does not know what odds are against him, and he goes on from deep to deep of failure and disaster. Well for him if he escapes entire ruin! I have drawn attention to this new evil because I have peculiar opportunities of studying the inner life of our society, and I find that the gambling epidemic is spreading among the middle-classes. To my mind these coursing massacres should be made every whit as illegal as dog-fighting or bull-baiting, for I can assure our legislators that the temptation offered by the chances of rapid gambling is eating like a corrosive poison into the young generation. Surely Englishmen, even if they want to bet, need not invent a medium for betting which combines every description of noxious cruelty! I ask the aid of women. Let them set their faces against tin's horrid sport, and it will soon be known no more. If the silly bettors themselves could only understand their own position, they might be rescued. Let it be distinctly understood that the bookmaker cannot lose, no matter how events may go. On the other hand, the man who makes wagers on what he is pleased to term his "fancies" has everything against him. The chances of his choosing a winner in the odious new sport are hardly to be mathematically stated, and it may be mathematically proved that he must lose. Then, apart from the money loss, what an utterly ignoble and unholy pursuit this trapped-hare coursing is for a manly man! Surely the heart of compassion in any one not wholly brutalized should be moved at the thought of those cabined, cribbed, confined little creatures that yield up their innocent lives amid the remorseless cries of a callous multitude. Poor innocents! Is it not possible to gamble without making God's creatures undergo torture? If a man were to turn a cat into a close yard and set dogs upon it, he would be imprisoned, and his name would be held up to scorn. What is the difference between cat and hare? _March, 1887._ _LIBERTY_. "What things are done in thy name!" The lady who spoke thus of Liberty had lived a high and pure life; all good souls were attracted to her; and it seems strange that so sweet and pure and beautiful a creature could have grown up in the vile France of the days before the Revolution. She kept up the traditions of gentle and seemly courtesy even at times when Sardanapalus Danton was perforce admitted to her _salon_; and in an age of suspicion and vile scandal she kept a stainless name, for even the most degraded pamphleteer in Paris dared do no more than hint a fault and hesitate dislike. But this lady went to the scaffold with many and many of the young, the beautiful, the brave; and her sombre satire, "What things are done in thy name!" was remembered long afterwards when the despots and the invading alien had in turn placed their feet on the neck of devoted France. "What things are done in thy name!" Yes; and we, in this modern world, might vary the saying a little and exclaim, "What things are said in thy name!"--for we have indeed arrived at the era of liberty, and the gospel of Rousseau is being preached with fantastic variations by people who think that any speech which apes the forms of logic is reasonable and that any desire which is expressed in a sufficiently loud howl should be at once gratified. We pride ourselves on our knowledge and our reasoning power; but to judicious observers it often seems that those who talk loudest have a very thin vein of knowledge, and no reasoning faculty that is not imitative. By all means let us have "freedom," but let us also consider our terms, and fix the meaning of the things that we say. Perhaps I should write "the things that we think we say," because so many of those who make themselves heard do not weigh words at all, and they imagine themselves to be uttering cogent truths when they are really giving us the babble of Bedlam. If ladies and gentlemen who rant about freedom would try to emancipate themselves from the dominion of meaningless words, we should all fare better; but we find a large number of public personages using perfectly grammatical series of phrases without dreaming for a moment that their grave sentences are pure gibberish. A few simple questions addressed in the Socratic manner to certain lights of thought might do much good. For instance, we might say, "Do you ever speak of being free from good health, or free from a good character, or free from prosperity?" I fancy not; and yet copiously talkative individuals employ terms quite as hazy and silly as those which I have indicated. We have gone very far in the direction of scientific discovery, and we have a large number of facts at our disposal; but some of us have quite forgotten that true liberty comes only from submitting to wise guidance. Old Sandy Mackay, in Alton Locke, declared that he would never bow down to a bit of brains: and this highly-independent attitude is copied by persons who fail to see that bowing to the bit of brains is the only mode of securing genuine freedom. If our daring logicians would grant that every man should have liberty to lead his life as he chooses, so long as he hurts neither himself nor any other individual nor the State, then one might follow their argument; but a plain homespun proposal like that of mine is not enough for your advanced thinker. In England he says, "Let us have deliverance from all restrictions;" in Russia he says, "Anarchy is the only cure for existing evils." For centuries past the earth has been deluged with blood and the children of men have been scourged by miseries unspeakable, merely because powerful men and powerful bodies of men have not chosen to learn the meaning of the word "liberty." "How miserable you make the world for one another, O feeble race of men!" So said our own melancholy English cynic; and he had singularly good reason for his plaint. Rapid generalization is nearly always mischievous; unless we learn to form correct and swift judgments on every faculty of life as it comes before us, we merely stumble from error to error. No cut-and-dried maxim ever yet was fit to guide men through their mysterious existence; the formalist always ends by becoming a bungler, and the most highly-developed man, if he is content to be no more than a thinking-machine, is harmful to himself and harmful to the community which has the ill-luck to harbour him. If we take cases from history, we ought to find it easy enough to distinguish between the men who sought liberty wisely and those who were restive and turbulent. A wise man or a wise nation knows the kind of restraint which is good; the fool, with his feather-brained theories, never knows what is good for him--he mistakes eternal justice for tyranny, he rebels against facts that are too solid for him--and we know what kind of an end he meets. Some peculiarly daring personages carry their spirit of resistance beyond the bounds of our poor little earth. Only lately many of us read with a shock of surprise the passionate asseveration of a gifted woman who declared that it was a monstrous wrong and wickedness that ever she had been born. Job said much the same thing in his delirium; but our great novelist put forth her complaint as the net outcome of all her thought and culture. We only need to open an ordinary newspaper to find that the famous writer's folly is shared by many weaker souls; and the effect on the mind of a shrewd and contented man is so startling that it resembles the emotion roused by grotesque wit. The whole story of the ages tells us dismally what happens when unwise people choose to claim the measure of liberty which they think good; but somehow, though knowledge has come, wisdom lingers, and the grim old follies rear themselves rankly among us in the age of reason. When we remember the Swiss mountaineers who took their deaths joyously in defence of their homes, when we read of the devoted brave one who received the sheaf of spears in his breast and broke the oppressor's array, none of us can think of mere vulgar rebellion. The Swiss were fighting to free themselves from wrongs untold; and we should hold them less than men if they had tamely submitted to be caged like poultry. Again, we feel a thrill when we read the epitaph which says, "Gladly we would have rested had we won freedom. We have lost, and very gladly rest." The very air of bravery, of steady self-abnegation seems to exhale from the sombre, triumphant words. Russia is the chosen home of tyranny now, but her day of brightness will come again. It is safe to prophesy so much, for I remember what happened at one time of supreme peril. Prussia and Austria and Italy lay crushed and bleeding under the awful power of Napoleon, and it seemed as though Russia must be wiped out from the list of nations when the great army of invaders poured in relentless multitudes over the stricken land. The conqueror appeared to have the very forces of nature in his favour, and his hosts moved on without a check and without a failure of organization. So perfectly had he planned the minutest details that, although his stations were scattered from the Beresina to the Seine, not so much as a letter was lost during the onward movement. How could the doomed country resist? So thought all Europe. But the splendid old Russian, the immortal Koutousoff, had felt the pulse of his nation, and he was confident, while all the other chiefs felt as though the earth were rocking under them. The time for the extinction of Russia had not come; a throb of fierce emotion passed over the country; the people rose like one man, and the despot found himself held in check by rude masses of men for whom death had scant terrors. Koutousoff had a mighty people to support him, and he would have swept back the horde of spoilers, even if the winter had not come to his aid. Russia was but a dark country then, as now, but the conduct of the myriads who dared to die gave a bright presage for the future. Who can blame the multitudes of Muscovites who sealed their wild protest with their blood? The common soldiers were but slaves, yet they would have suffered a degradation worse than slavery had they succumbed, while, as to the immense body of people--that nation within a nation--which answered to our upper and middle classes, they would have tasted the same woes which at length drove Germany to frenzy and made simple burghers prefer bitter death to the tyranny of the French. The rulers of Russia have stained her records foully since the days of 1812, but their worst sins cannot blot out the memory of the national uprising. Years are but trivial; seventy-six of them seem a long time; but those who study history broadly know that the dawn of a better future for Russia showed its first gleam when the aroused and indignant race rose and went forward to die before the French cannon. When next Russia rises, it will be against a tyranny only second to Napoleon's in virulence--it will be against the terror that rules her now from within; and her success will be applauded by the world. The Italians, who first waited and plotted, and then fought desperately under Garibaldi, had every reason to cry out for freedom. If they had remained merely whimpering under the Bourbon and Austrian whips, they would have deserved to be spurned by all who bear the hearts of men. They were denied the meanest privileges of humanity; they lived in a fashion which was rather like the violent, oppressed, hideous existence which men imagine in evil dreams, and at length they struck, and declared for liberty or annihilation. Perhaps they did not gain much in the way of immediate material good, but that only makes their splendid movement the more admirable. They fought for a magnificent idea, and even now, though the populace have to bear a taxation three times as great as any known before in their history, the ordinary Italian will say, "Yes, signor--the taxes are very heavy; we toil very hard and pay much money; but who counts money? We are a nation now--a real nation; Italy is united and free." That is the gist of the matter. The people were bitterly ground down, and they are content to suffer privation in the present so long as they can ensure freedom from alien rule in the future. Nothing that the most hardly-entreated Briton suffers in any circumstances could equal the agonies of degradation borne by the people of the Peninsula, and their emancipation was hailed as if it had been a personal benefaction by all that was wisest and best in European society. The millions who turned out to welcome Garibaldi as if he had been an adored sovereign all had a true appreciation of real liberty; the masses were right in their instinct, and it was left for hysterical "thinkers" to shriek their deluded ideas in these later days. "But surely the Irish rose for freedom in 1641?" I can almost imagine some clever correspondent asking me that question with a view to taking me in a neat trap. It is true enough that the Irish rose; but here again we must learn to discriminate between cases. How did the wild folk rise? Did they go out like the Thousand of Marsala and pit themselves against odds of five and six to one? Did they show any chivalry? Alas for the wicked story! The rebels behaved like cruel wild beasts; they were worse than polecats in an aviary, and they met with about the same resistance as the polecats would meet. They stripped the Ulster farmers and their families naked, and sent them out in the bitter weather; they hung on the skirts of the agonized crowd; the men cut down the refugees wholesale, and even the little boys of the insurgent party were taught to torture and kill the unhappy children of the flying farmers. Poor little infants fell in the rear of the doomed host, but no mother was allowed to succour her dying offspring, and the innocents expired in unimaginable suffering. The stripped fugitives crowded into Dublin, and there the plague carried them off wholesale. The rebels had gained liberty with a vengeance, and they had their way for ten years and more. Their liberty was degraded by savagery; they ruled Ireland at their own sweet will; they dwelt in anarchy until the burden of their iniquity grew too grievous for the earth to bear. Then their villainous freedom was suddenly ended by no less a person than Oliver Cromwell, and the curses, the murders, the unspeakable vileness of ten bad years all were atoned for in wild wrath and ruin. Now is it not marvellous that, while the murderers were free, they were poverty-stricken and most wretched? As soon as Cromwell's voice had ceased to pronounce the doom on the unworthy, the great man began his work of regeneration; and under his iron hand the country which had been miserable in freedom became prosperous, happy, and contented. There is no mistaking the facts, for men of all parties swore that the six years which followed the storm of Drogheda were the best in all Ireland's history. Had Cromwell only lived longer, or had there been a man fit to follow him, then England and Ireland would be happier this day. In our social life the same conditions hold for the individual as hold for nations in the assembly of the world's peoples. Freedom--true freedom--means liberty to live a beneficent and innocent life. As soon as an individual chooses to set up as a law to himself, then we have a right--nay, it is our bounden duty--to examine his pretensions. If the sense of the wisest in our community declares him unfit to issue dicta for the guidance of men, then we must promptly suppress him; if we do not, our misfortunes are on our own heads. The "independent" man may cry out about liberty and the rest as much as he likes, but we cannot afford to heed him. We simply say, "You foolish person, liberty, as you are pleased to call it, would be poison to you. The best medicines for your uneasy mind are reproof and restraint; if those fail to act on you, then we must try what the lash will do for you." Let us have liberty for the wise and the good--we know them well enough when we see them; and no sophist dare in his heart declare that any charlatan ever mastered men permanently. Liberty for the wise and good--yes, and wholesome discipline for the foolish and froward--sagacious guidance for all. Of course, if a man or a community is unable to choose a guide of the right sort, then that man or community is doomed, and we need say no more of either. I keep warily out of the muddy conflict of politics; but I will say that the cries of certain apostles of liberty seem woful and foolish. Unhappy shriekers, whither do they fancy they are bound? Is it to some Land of Beulah, where they may gambol unrestrained on pleasant hills? The shriekers are all wrong, and the best friend of theirs, the best friend of humanity, is he who will teach them--sternly if need be--that liberty and license are two widely different things. _August, 1888._ _EQUALITY_. One of the strangest shocks which the British traveller can experience occurs to him when he makes his first acquaintance with the American servant--especially the male servant. The quiet domineering European is stung out of his impassivity by a sort of moral stab which disturbs every faculty, unless he is absolutely stunned and left gasping. In England, the quiet club servant waits with dignity and reserve, but he is obedient to the last degree, and his civility reaches the point of absolute polish. When he performs a service his air is impassive, but if he is addressed his face assumes a quietly good-humoured expression, and he contrives to make his temporary employer feel as though it was a pleasure to attend upon him. All over our country we find that politeness between employer and servant is mutual. Here and there we find a well-dressed ruffian who thinks he is doing a clever thing when he bullies a servant; but a gentleman is always considerate, quiet, respectful; and he expects consideration, quietness, and respect from those who wait upon him. The light-footed, cheerful young women who serve in hotels and private houses are nearly always charmingly kind and obliging without ever descending to familiarity; in fact, I believe that, if England be taken all round, it will be found that female post-office clerks are the only servants who are positively offensive. They are spoiled by the hurried, captious, tiresome persons who haunt post-offices at all hours, and in self-defence they are apt to convert themselves into moral analogues of the fretful porcupine. Perhaps the queenly dames in railway refreshment-rooms are almost equal to the post-office damsels; but both classes are growing more good-natured--thanks to Charles Dickens, Mr. Sullivan, and Mr. _Punch_. But the American servant exhibits no such weakness as civility; he is resolved to let you know that you are in the country of equality, and, in order to do that effectually, he treats you as a grovelling inferior. You ask a civil question, and he flings his answer at you as he would fling a bone at a dog. Every act of service which he performs comes most ungraciously from him, and he usually contrives to let you plainly see two things--first, he is ashamed of his position; secondly, he means to take a sort of indirect revenge on you in order to salve his lacerated dignity. A young English peer happened to ask a Chicago servant to clean a pair of boots, and his tone of command was rather pronounced and definite. That young patrician began to doubt his own identity when he was thus addressed--"Ketch on and do them yourself!" There was no redress, no possible remedy, and finally our compatriot humbled himself to a negro, and paid an exorbitant price for his polish. Here we have an absurdity quite fairly exposed. The young American student who acts as a reporter or waiter during his college vacation is nearly always a respectful gentleman who neither takes nor allows a liberty; but the underbred boor, keen as he is about his gratuities, will take even your gifts as though he were an Asiatic potentate, and the traveller a passing slave whose tribute is condescendingly received. In a word, the servant goes out of his way to prove that, in his own idea, he is quite fit to be anybody's master. The Declaration of Independence informs us that all men are born equal; the transatlantic servant takes that with a certain reservation, for he implies that, though men may be equal in a general way, yet, so far as he is concerned, he prefers to reckon himself the superior of anybody with whom business brings him into contact. It was in America that I first began to meditate on the problem of equality, and I have given it much thought at intervals during several years. The great difficulty is to avoid repeating stale commonplaces on the matter. The robust Briton bellows, "Equality! Divide up all the property in the world equally among the inhabitants, and there would be rich and poor, just as before, within a week!" The robust man thinks that settles the whole matter at once. Then we have the stock story of the three practical communists who forced themselves upon the society of Baron Rothschild, and explained their views at some length. The Baron said: "Gentlemen, I have made a little calculation, and I find that, if I divided my property equally among my fellow-citizens, your share would be one florin each. Oblige me by accepting that sum at once, and permit me to wish you good-morning." This was very neat in its way, but I want to talk just a little more seriously of a problem which concerns the daily life of us all, and affects our mental health, our placidity, and our self-respect very intimately. In the first place, we have to consider the deplorable exhibitions made by poor humanity whenever equality has been fairly insisted on in any community. The Frenchmen of 1792 thought that a great principle had been asserted when the President of the Convention said to the king, "You may sit down, Louis." It seemed fine to the gallery when the queenly Marie Antoinette was addressed as the widow Capet; but what a poor business it was after all! The howling familiarity of the mob never touched the real dignity of the royal woman, and their brutality was only a murderous form of Yankee servant's mean "independence." I cannot treat the subject at all without going into necessary subtleties which never occurred to an enraged mob or a bloodthirsty and insolent official; I cannot accept the bald jeers of a comfortable, purse-proud citizen as being of any weight, and I am just as loath to heed the wire-drawn platitudes of the average philosopher. If we accept the very first maxim of biology, and agree that no two individuals of any living species are exactly alike, we have a starting-point from which we can proceed to argue sensibly. We may pass over the countless millions of inequalities which we observe in the lower orders of living things: and there is no need to emphasize distinctions which are plain to every child. When we come to speak of the race of men we reach the only concern which has a passionate and vital interest for us; even the amazing researches and conclusions of the naturalists have no attraction for us unless they throw a light, no matter how oblique, on our mysterious being and our mysterious fate. The law which regulates the differentiation of species applies with especial significance when we consider the birth of human individuals; the law which ordains that out of countless millions of animalculae which once shed their remains on the floor of the deep sea, or that now swarm in any pond, there shall be no two alike, holds accurately for the myriads of men who are born and pass away. The type is the same; there are fixed resemblances, but exact similarity never. The struggle for existence, no matter what direction it may take, always ends in the singling out of individuals who, in some respect or other, are worthy to survive, while the weak perish and the elements of their bodies go to form new individuals. It soon becomes plain that the crazy cry for equality is really only a weak protest against the hardships of the battle for existence. The brutes have not attained to our complexity of brain; ideas are only rudimentary with them, and they decide the question of superiority by rude methods. Two lions fight until one is laid low; the lioness looks calmly on until the little problem of superiority is settled, and then she goes off with the victor. The horses on the Pampas have their set battles until one has asserted his mastery over the herd, and then the defeated ones cower away abjectly, and submit themselves meekly to their lord. All the male animals are given to issuing challenges in a very self-assertive manner, and the object is the same in every case. But we are far above the brutes; we have that mysterious, immaterial ally of the body, and our struggles are settled amid bewildering refinements and subtleties and restrictions. In one quarter, power of the soul gives its possessor dominion; in another, only the force of the body is of any avail. If we observe the struggles of savages, we see that the idea of equality never occurs to half-developed men; the chief is the strong man, and his authority can be maintained only by strength or by the influence that strength gives. As the brute dies out of man, the conditions of life's warfare become so complex that no one living could frame a generalization without finding himself at once faced by a million of exceptions that seem to negative his rule. Who was the most powerful man in England in Queen Anne's day? Marlborough was an unmatched fighter; Bolingbroke was an imaginative and masterful statesman; there were thousands of able and strong warriors; but the one who was the most respected and feared was that tiny cripple whose life was a long disease. Alexander Pope was as frail a creature as ever managed to support existence; he rarely had a moment free from pain; he was so crooked and aborted that a good-hearted woman like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was surprised into a sudden fit of laughter when he proposed marriage to her. Yet how he was feared! The only one who could match him was that raging giant who wrote "Gulliver," and the two men wielded an essential power greater than that of the First Minister. The terrible Atossa, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, shrank from contact with Pope, while for a long time the ablest men of the political sets approached Swift like lackeys. One power was made manifest by the waspish verse-maker and the powerful satirist, and each was acknowledged as a sort of monarch. It would be like playing at paradoxes if I went on to adduce many mysteries and contradictions that strike us when we consider man's dominion over man. We can only come to the same conclusion if we bring forward a million of instances; we can only see that the whole human race, individual by individual, are separated one from the other by differences more or less minute, and wherever two human beings are placed together one must inevitably begin to assert mastery over the other. The method of self-assertion may be that of the athlete, or that of the intriguer, or that of the clear-sighted over the purblind, or that of the subtle over the simple; it matters not, the effort for mastery may be made either roughly or gently, or subtly, or even clownishly, but made it will be. Would it not be better to cease babbling of equality altogether, and to try to accept the laws of life with some submission? The mistake of rabid theorists lies in their supposition that the assertion of superiority by one person necessarily inflicts wrong on another, whereas it is only the mastery obtained by certain men over others that makes the life of the civilized human creature bearable. The very servant who is insolent while performing his duty only dares to exhibit rudeness because he is sure of protection by law. All men are equal before the law. Yes--but how was the recognition of equality enforced? Simply by the power of the strong. No monarch in the world would venture to deal out such measure to our rude servitor as was dealt by Clovis to one of his men. The king regarded himself as being affronted by his soldier, and he wiped out the affront to his own satisfaction by splitting his follower's head in twain. But the civilized man is secured by a bulwark of legality built up by strong hands, and manned, like the great Roman walls, by powerful legionaries of the law. In this law of England, if a peer and a peasant fight out a cause the peer has the advantage of the strength given by accumulated wealth--that is one example of our multifarious complexities; but the judge is stronger than either litigant, and it is the inequality personified by the judge that makes the safety of the peasant. In our ordered state, the strong have forced themselves into positions of power; they have decided that the coarseness of brutish conflict is not to be permitted, and one ruling agency is established which rests on force, and force alone, but which uses or permits the use of force only in cases of extremity. We know that the foundation of all law is martial law, or pure force; we know that when a judge says, "You shall be hanged," the convict feels resistance useless, for behind the ushers and warders and turnkeys there are the steel and bullet of the soldier. Thus it appears that even in the sanctuary of equality--in the law court--the life and efficiency of the place depend on the assertion of one superior strength--that is, on the assertion of inequality. If we choose to address each other as "Citizen," or play any fooleries of that kind, we make no difference. Citizen Jourdain may go out equipped in complete _carmagnole_, and he may refuse to doff his red cap to any dignitary breathing; but all the while Citizen Barras is wielding the real power, and Citizen Buonaparte is awaiting his turn in the background. All the swagger of equality will avail nothing when Citizen Buonaparte gets his chance; and the very men who talked loudest about the reign of equality are the most ready to bow down and worship the strong. Instead of ostentatiously proclaiming that one man is as good as another--and better, we should devote ourselves to finding out who are our real superiors. When the true man is found he will not stand upon petty forms; and no one will demand such punctilios of him. He will treat his brethren as beings to be aided and directed, he will use his strength and his wisdom as gifts for which he must render an account, and the trivialities of etiquette will count as nothing. When the street orator yells, "Who is our ruler? Is he not flesh and blood like us? Are not many of us above him?" he may possibly be stating truth. It would have been hard to find any street-lounger more despicable than Bomba or more foolish than poor Louis XVI; but the method of oratory is purely destructive, and it will be much more to the purpose if the street firebrand gives his audience some definite ideas as to the man who ought to be chosen as leader. If we have the faculty for recognizing our best man, all chatter about equalities and inequalities must soon drop into silence. When the ragged Suwarrow went about among his men and talked bluffly with the raw recruits, there was no question of equality in any squad, for the tattered, begrimed man had approved himself the wisest, most audacious, and most king-like of all the host; and he could afford to despise appearances. No soldier ventured to think of taking a liberty; every man reverenced the rough leader who could think and plan and dare. Frederick wandered among the camp-fires at night, and sat down with one group after another of his men. He never dreamed of equality, nor did the rude soldiers. The king was greatest; the men were his comrades, and all were bound to serve the Fatherland--the sovereign by offering sage guidance, the men by following to the death. No company of men ever yet did worthy work in the world when the notion of equality was tried in practice; and no kind of effort, for evil or for good, ever came to anything so long as those who tried did not recognize the rule of the strongest or wisest. Even the scoundrel buccaneers of the Spanish Main could not carry on their fiendish trade without sinking the notion of equality, and the simple Quakers, the Society of Friends, with all their straitened ideas, have been constantly compelled to recognize one head of their body, even though they gave him no distinctive title. Our business is to see that every man has his due as far as possible, and not more than his due. The superior must perceive what is the degree of deference which must be rendered to the inferior; the inferior must put away envy and covetousness, and must learn to bestow, without servility, reverence and obedience where reverence and obedience may be rightfully offered. _August, 1888._ _FRATERNITY_. So far as we can see it appears plain that the wish for brotherhood was on the whole reasonable, and its fulfilment easier than the wild desire for liberty and equality. No doubt Omar and Cromwell and Hoche and Dumouriez have chosen in their respective times an odd mode of spreading the blessings of fraternity. It is a little harsh to say to a man, "Be my brother or I will cut your head off;" but we fear that men of the stamp of Mahomet, Cromwell, and the French Jacobins were given to offering a choice of the alternatives named. Perhaps we may be safe if we take the roughness of the mere proselytizers as an evidence of defective education; they had a dim perception of a beautiful principle, but they knew of no instrument with which they could carry conviction save the sword. We, with our better light, can well understand that brotherhood should be fostered among men; we are all children of one Father, and it is fitting that we should reverently acknowledge the universal family tie. The Founder of our religion was the earliest preacher of the divine gospel of pity, and it is to Him that we owe the loveliest and purest conception of brotherhood. He claimed to be the Brother of us all; He showed how we should treat our brethren, and He carried His teaching on to the very close of His life. So far from talking puerilities about equality, we should all see that there are degrees in our vast family; the elder and stronger brethren are bound to succour the younger and weaker; the young must look up to their elders; and the Father of all will perhaps preserve peace among us if we only forget our petty selves and look to Him. Alas, it is so hard to forget self! The dullest of us can see how excellent and divine is brotherhood, if we do assuredly carry out the conception of fraternity thoroughly; but again I say, How hard it is to banish self and follow the teaching of our divine Brother! If we cast our eyes over the world now, we may see--perhaps indistinctly--things that might make us weep, were it not that we must needs smile at the childish ways of men. In the very nation that first chose to put forward the word "fraternity" as one of the symbols for which men might die we see a strange spectacle. Half that nation is brooding incessantly on revenge; half the nation is bent only on slaying certain brother human beings who happen to live on the north and east of a certain river instead of on the south and west. The home of the solacing doctrine of fraternity is also the home of incessant preparations for murder, rapine, bitter and brutal vengeance. About a million of men rise every morning and spend the whole day in practising so that they may learn to kill people cleverly; hideous instruments, which must cause devastation, torture, bereavement, and wreck, should they ever be used in earnest, are lovingly handled by men who hope to see blood flow before long. The Frenchman cannot yet venture to smite his Teutonic brother, but he will do so when he has the chance; and thus two bands of brethren, who might have dwelt together amicably, may shortly end by inflicting untold agonies on each other. Both nations which so savagely await the beginning of a mad struggle are supposed to be followers of the Brother whose sweet message is read and repeated by nearly all the men who live on our continent, yet they only utter bitter words and think sullen thoughts, while the more acrid of the two adversaries is the country which once inscribed "Brotherhood" on its very banners. All round the arena wherein the two great peoples defy each other the nations wait anxiously for the delivery of the first stroke that shall give the signal for wrath and woe; and, strangely, no one can tell which of the onlookers is the more fervent professor of our Master's faith. "Let brotherly love continue!"--that was the behest laid on us all; and we manifest our brotherly love by invoking the spirit of murder. We know what exquisite visions floated around the twelve who first founded the Church on the principle of fraternity. No brother was to be left poor; all were to hold goods in common; every man should work for what he could, and receive what he needed; but evil crept in, and dissension and heart-burning, and ever since then the best of our poor besotted human race have been groping blindly after fraternity and finding it never. I always deprecate bitter or despondent views, or exaggerating the importance of our feeble race--for, after all, the whole time during which man has existed on earth is but as a brief swallow-flight compared with the abysmal stretches of eternity; but I confess that, when I see the flower of our race trained to become killers of men and awaiting the opportunity to exercise their murderous arts I feel a little sick at heart. Even they are compelled to hear the commands of the lovely gospel of fraternity, and, unless they die quickly in the fury of combat, their last moments are spent in listening to the same blessed words. It seems so mad and dreamlike that I have found myself thinking that, despite all our confidence, the world may be but a phantasmagoria, and ourselves, with our flesh that seems so solid, may be no more than fleeting wraiths. There is no one to rush between the scowling nations, as the poor hermit did between the gladiators in wicked Rome; there is no one to say, "Poor, silly peasant from pleasant France, why should you care to stab and torment that other poor flaxen-haired simpleton from Silesia? Your fields await you; if you were left to yourselves, then you and the Silesian would be brothers, worshipping like trusting children before the common Father of us all. And now you can find nothing better to do than to do each other to death!" Like the sanguine creatures who carried out the revolutionary movements of 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1860, the weak among us are apt to cry out--"Surely the time of fraternity has come at last!" Then, when the murderous Empire, or the equally murderous Republic, or the grim military despotism arrives instead of fraternity, the weak ones are smitten with confusion. I pity them, for a bitterness almost as of death must be lived through before one learns that God indeed doeth all things well. The poor Revolutionists thought that they must have rapid changes, and their hysterical visions appeared to them like perfectly wise and accurate glances into the future. They were in a hurry, forgetting that we cannot change our marvellous society on a sudden, any more than we can change a single tissue of our bodies on a sudden--hence their frantic hopes and frantic despair. If we gaze coolly round, we see that, in spite of a muttering, threatening France and a watchful Germany, in spite of the huge Russian storm-cloud that lowers heavily over Europe, in spite of the venomous intrigues with which Austria is accredited, there are still cheerful symptoms to be seen, and it may happen that the very horror of war may at last drive all men to reject it, and declare for fraternity. Look at that very France which is now so electric with passion and suspicion, and compare it with the France of long ago. The Gaul now thinks of killing the Teuton; but in the time of the good King Henry IV. he delighted in slaying his brother Gaul. The race who now only care to turn their hands against a rival nation once fought among themselves like starving rats in a pit. Even in the most polished society the men used to pick quarrels to fight to the death. In one year of King Henry's reign nine thousand French gentlemen were killed in duels! Bad as we are, we are not likely to return to such a state of things as then was seen. The men belonged to one nation, and they ought to have banded together so that no foreign foe might take advantage of them; and yet they chose rather to slaughter each other at the rate of nearly one hundred and ninety per week. Certainly, so far as France is concerned, we can see some improvement; for, although the cowardly and abominable practice of duelling is still kept up, only one man was killed during the past twelve months, instead of nine thousand. In England we have had nearly two hundred years of truce from civil wars; in Germany the sections of the populace have at any rate stopped fighting among themselves; in Italy there are no longer the shameful feuds of Guelf and Ghibelline. It would seem, then, that civil strife is passing away, and that countries which were once the prey of bloodthirsty contending factions are now at least peaceful within their own borders. If we reason from small things to great, we see that the squabbling nests of murderers, or would-be murderers, who peopled France, England, Germany, Austria, and Italy have given way to compact nations which enjoy unbroken internal peace. The struggles of business go on; the weak are trampled under foot in the mad rush of the cities of men, but the actual infliction of pain and death is not now dreamed of by Frenchman against Frenchman or German against German. We must remember that there never was so deadly and murderous a spirit displayed as during the Thirty Years' War, and yet the peoples who then wrestled and throttled each other are now peaceful under the same yoke. May we not trust that a time will come when nations will see on a sudden the blank folly of making war? Day by day the pressure of armaments is growing greater, and we may almost hope that the very fiendish nature of modern weapons may bring about a blessed _reductio ad absurdum_, and leave war as a thing ludicrous, and not to be contemplated by sane men! I find one gun specially advertised in our Christian country, and warranted to kill as many men in one minute as two companies of infantry could in five! What will be the effect of the general introduction of this delightful weapon? No force can possibly stand before it; no armour or works can keep out the hail of its bullets. Supposing, then, that benevolent science goes on improving the means of slaughter, must there not come a time when people will utterly refuse to continue the mad and miserable folly of war? Over the whole of Britain we may find even now the marks of cannon-shot discharged by Englishmen against the castles of other Englishmen. Is there one man in Britain who can at this present moment bring his imagination to conceive such an occurrence as an artillery fight between bodies of Englishmen? It is almost too absurd to be named even as a casual supposition. So far has fraternity spread. Now, if we go on perfecting dynamite shells which can destroy one thousand men by one explosion; if we increase the range of our guns from twelve miles to twenty, and fight our pieces according to directions signalled from a balloon, we shall be going the very best way to make all men rise with one spasm of disgust, and say, "No more of this!" We cannot hope to do away with evil speaking, with verbal quarrelling, with mean grasping of benefits from less fortunate brethren. Alas, the reign of brotherhood will be long in eradicating the primeval combative instinct; but, when we compare the quiet urbanity of a modern gathering with the loud and senseless brawling which so often resulted from social assemblies even at the beginning of this century we may take some heart and hope on for the best. Our Lord had a clear vision of a time when bitterness and evil-doing should cease, and His words are more than a shadowy prediction. The fact is that, in striving gradually to introduce the third of the conditions of life craved by the poor feather-witted Frenchmen, the nations have a comparatively easy task. We cannot have equality, physical conditions having too much to do with giving the powers and accomplishments of men; we can only claim liberty under the supreme guidance of our Creator; but fraternity is quite a possible consummation. Our greatest hero held it as the Englishman's first duty to hate a Frenchman as he hated the Devil; now that mad and cankered feeling has passed away, and why should not the spread of common sense, common honesty, bring us at last to see that our fellow-man is better when regarded as a brother than as a possible assassin or thief? Our corporate life and progress as nations, or even as a race of God's creatures, is much like the life and progress of the individual. The children of men stumble often, fall often, despair often, and yet the great universal movement goes on, and even the degeneracy which must always go on side by side with progress does not appreciably stay our advance. The individual man cannot walk even twenty steps without actually saving himself by a balancing movement from twenty falls. Every step tends to become an ignominious tumble, and yet our poor body may very easily move at the rate of four miles per hour, and we gain our destinations daily. The human race, in spite of many slips, will go on progressing towards good--that is, towards kindness--that is, towards fraternity--that is, towards the gospel, which at present seems so wildly and criminally neglected. The mild and innocent Anarcharsis Clootz, who made his way over the continent of Europe, and who came to our little island, in his day always believed that the time for the federation of mankind would come. Poor fellow--he died under the murderous knife of the guillotine and did little to further his beautiful project! He was esteemed a harmless lunatic; yet, notwithstanding the twelve millions of armed men who trample Europe, I do not think that Clootz was quite a lunatic after all. Moreover, all men know that right must prevail, and they know also that there is not a human being on earth who does not believe by intuition that the gospel of brotherhood is right, even as the life of its propounder was holy. The way is weary toward the quarter where the rays of dawn will first break over the shoulder of the earth. We walk on hoping, and, even if we fall by the way, and all our hopes seem to be tardy of fruition, yet others will hail the slow dawn of brotherhood when all now living are dead and still. _September, 1888._ _LITTLE WARS_. Just at this present our troops are engaged in fighting various savage tribes in various parts of the world, and the humorous journalist speaks of the affairs as "little wars." There is something rather gruesome in this airy flippancy proceeding from comfortable gentlemen who are in nice studies at home. The Burmese force fights, marches, toils in an atmosphere which would cause some of the airy critics to faint; the Thibetan force must do as much climbing as would satisfy the average Alpine performer; and all the soldiers carry their lives in their hands. What is a little war? Is any war little to a man who loses his life in it? I imagine that when a wounded fighter comes to face his last hour he regards the particular war in which he is engaged as quite the most momentous affair in the world so far as he is concerned. To me the whole spectacle of the little wars is most grave, both as regards the nation and as regards the individual Britons who must suffer and fall. Our destiny is heavy upon us; we must "dree our weirde," for we have begun walking on the road of conquest, and we must go forward or die. The man who has the wolf by the ears cannot let go his hold; we cannot slacken our grip on anything that once we have clutched. But it is terrible to see how we are bleeding at the extremities. I cannot give the figures detailing our losses in little wars during the past forty years, but they are far worse than we incurred in the world-shaking fight of Waterloo. Incessantly the drip, drip of national blood-shedding goes on, and no end seems to be gained, save the grim consciousness that we must suffer and never flinch. The graves of our best and dearest--our hardy loved ones--are scattered over the ends of the earth, and the little wars are answerable for all. England, in her blundering, half-articulate fashion, answers, "Yes, they had to die; their mother asked for their blood, and they gave it." So then from scores of punctures the life-blood of the mother of nations drops, and each new bloodshed leads to yet further bloodshed, until the deadly series looks endless. We sent Burnes to Cabul, and we betrayed him in the most dastardly way by the mouth of a Minister. England, the great mother, was not answerable for that most unholy of crimes; it was the talking men, the glib Parliament cowards. Burnes was cut to pieces and an army lost. Crime brings forth crime, and thus we had to butcher more Afghans. Every inch of India has been bought in the same way; one war wins territory which must be secured by another war, and thus the inexorable game is played on. In Africa we have fared in the same way, and thus from many veins the red stream is drained, and yet the proud heart of the mother continues to beat strongly. It is so hard for men to die; it is as hard for the Zulu and the Afghan and the Ghoorka as it is for the civilized man, and that is why I wish it were Britain's fortune to be allowed to cease from the shedding of blood. If the corpses of the barbarians whom we have destroyed within the past ten years could only be laid out in any open space and shown to our populace, there would be a shudder of horror felt through the country; yet, while the sweet bells chime to us about peace and goodwill, we go on sending myriads of men out of life, and the nation pays no more heed to that steady ruthless killing than it does to the slaughter of oxen. Alas! Then, if we think of the lot of those who fight for us and slaughter our hapless enemies by deputy as it were, their luck seems very hard. When the steady lines moved up the Alma slope and the men were dropping so fast, the soldiers knew that they were performing their parts as in a vast theatre; their country would learn the story of their deed, and the feats of individuals would be amply recorded. But, when a man spends months in a far-off rocky country, fighting day after day, watching night after night, and knowing that at any moment the bullet of a prowling Ghilzai or Afridi may strike him, he has very little consolation indeed. When one comes to think of the matter from the humorous point of view--though there is more grim fact than fun in it--it does seem odd that we should be compelled to spend two thousand pounds on an officer's education, and then send him where he may be wiped out of the world in an instant by a savage little above the level of the Bushman. I pity the poor savages, but I certainly pity the refined and highly-trained English soldier more. The latest and most delightful of our Anglo-Indians has put the matter admirably in verse which carries a sting even amidst its pathos. He calls his verses "Arithmetic on the Frontier." A great and glorious thing it is To learn for seven years or so The Lord knows what of that or this, Ere reckoned fit to face the foe, The flying bullet down the pass, That whistles clear, "All flesh is grass." Three hundred pounds per annum spent On making brain and body meeter For all the murderous intent Comprised in villainous saltpetre! And after--ask the Yusufzaies What comes of all our 'ologies. A scrimmage in a border station, A canter down some dark defile-- Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail! The crammer's boast, the squadron's pride Shot like a rabbit in a ride. No proposition Euclid wrote, No formulae the text-book know, Will turn the bullet from your coat Or ward the tulwar's downward blow; Strike hard who cares--shoot straight who can-- The odds are on the cheaper man. One sword-knot stolen from the camp Will pay for all the school expenses Of any Kurrum Valley scamp Who knows no word of moods and tenses, But, being blessed with perfect sight, Picks off our messmates left and right. With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem; The troop-ships bring us one by one, At vast expense of time and steam, To slay Afridis where they run. The captives of our bow and spear Are cheap, alas, as we are dear! There is a world of meaning in those half-sad, half-smiling lines, and many an hour-long discourse might fail to throw more lurid light on one of the strangest historical problems in the world. The flower of England's manhood must needs go; and our most brilliant scholars, our boldest riders, our most perfect specimens of physical humanity drop like rabbits to the fire of half-naked savages! The bright boy, the hero of school and college, the brisk, active officer, passes away into obscurity. The mother weeps--perhaps some one nearer and dearer than all is stricken: but the dead Englishman's name vanishes from memory like a fleck of haze on the side of the valley where he sleeps. England--cold, inexorable, indifferent--has other sons to take the dead man's place and perhaps share his obscurity; and the doomed host of fair gallant youths moves forward ever in serried, fearless lines towards the shadows. That is what it costs to be a mighty nation. It is sorrowful to think of the sacrificed men--sacrificed to fulfil England's imposing destiny; it is sorrowful to think of the mourners who cannot even see their darling's grave; yet there is something grandiose and almost morbidly impressive in the attitude of Britain. She waves her imperial hand and says, "See what my place in the world is! My bravest, my most skilful, may die in a fight that is no more than a scuffling brawl; they go down to the dust of death unknown, but the others come on unflinching. It is hard that I should part with my precious sons in mean warfare, but the fates will have it so, and I am equal to the call of fate." Thus the sovereign nation. Those who have no very pompous notions are willing to recognize the savage grandeur of our advance; but I cannot help thinking of the lonely graves, the rich lives squandered, the reckless casting away of human life, which are involved in carrying out our mysterious mission in the great peninsula. Our graves are spread thickly over the deadly plains; our brightest and best toil and suffer and die, and they have hardly so much as a stone to mark their sleeping-place; our blood has watered those awful stretches from the Himalayas to Comorin, and we may call Hindostan the graveyard of Britain's noblest. People who see only the grizzled veterans who lounge away their days at Cheltenham or Brighton think that the fighting trade must be a very nice one after all. To retire at fifty with a thousand a year is very pleasant no doubt; but then every one of those war-worn gentlemen who returns to take his ease represents a score who have perished in fights as undignified as a street brawl. "More legions!" said Varus; "More legions!" says England; and our regiments depart without any man thinking of _Morituri te salittant!_ Yes; that phrase might well be in the mind of every British man who fares down the Red Sea and enters the Indian furnace. Those about to die, salute thee, O England, our mother! Is it worth while? Sometimes I have my doubts. Moreover, I never talk with one of our impassive, masterful Anglo-Indians without feeling sorry that their splendid capacities should be so often cast into darkness, and their fame confined to the gossip of a clump of bungalows. Verily our little wars use up an immense quantity of raw material in the shape of intellect and power. A man whose culture is far beyond that of the mouthing politicians at home and whose statesmanship is not to be compared to the ignorant crudities of the pigmies who strut and fret on the English party stage--this man spends great part of a lifetime in ruling and fighting; he gives every force of a great intellect and will to his labours, and he achieves definite and beneficent practical results; yet his name is never mentioned in England, and any vulgar vestryman would probably outweigh him in the eyes of the populace. Carlyle says that we should despise fame. "Do your work," observes the sage, "and never mind the rest. When your duty is done, no further concern rests with you." And then the aged thinker goes on to snarl at puny creatures who are not content to be unknown. Well, that is all very stoical and very grand, and so forth; but Carlyle forgot human nature. He himself raged and gnashed his teeth because the world neglected him, and I must with every humility ask forgiveness of his _manes_ if I express some commiseration for the unknown braves who perish in our little wars. Our callousness as individuals can hardly be called lordly, though the results are majestic; we accept supreme services, and we accept the supreme sacrifice (Skin for skin: all that a man hath will he give for his life), and we very rarely think fit to growl forth a chance word of thanks. Luckily our splendid men are not very importunate, and most of them accept with silent humour the neglect which befalls them. An old fighting general once remarked, "These fellows are in luck since the telegraph and the correspondents have been at work. We weren't so fortunate in my day. I went through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and there was yet another affair in 1863 that was hotter than either, so far as close fighting and proportional losses of troops were concerned. A force of three thousand was sent against the Afghans, and they never gave us much rest night or day. They seemed determined to give their lives away, and they wouldn't be denied. I've seen them come on and grab at the muzzles of the rifles. We did a lot of fighting behind rough breastworks, but sometimes they would rush us then. We lost thirty officers out of thirty-four before we were finished. Well, when I came home and went about among the clubs, the fellows used to say to me, 'What was this affair of yours up in the hills? We had no particulars except the fact that you were fighting.' And that expedition cost ten times as many men as your Egyptian one, besides causing six weeks of almost constant fighting; yet not a newspaper had a word to say about it! We never grumbled much--it was all in the day's work; but it shows how men's luck varies." There spoke the old fighter, "Duty first, and take your chance of the rest." True; but could not one almost wish that those forlorn heroes who saved our frontier from savage hordes might have gained just a little of that praise so dear to the frivolous mind of man? It was not to be; the dead men's bones have long ago sunk into the kindly earth, the wind flows down the valleys, and the fighters sleep in the unknown glens and on far-distant hillsides with no record save the curt clerk's mark in the regimental list--"Dead." When I hear the merry pressman chatting about little wars and proudly looking down on "mere skirmishes," I cannot restrain a movement of impatience. Are our few dead not to be considered because they were few? Supposing they had swarmed forward in some great battle of the West and died with thousands of others amid the hurricane music of hundreds of guns, would the magnitude of the battle make any difference? Honour to those who risk life and limb for England; honour to them, whether they die amid loud battle or in the far-away dimness of a little war! _September, 1888._ _THE BRITISH FESTIVAL_. Again and again I have talked about the delights of leisure, and I always advise worn worldlings to renew their youth and gain fresh ideas amid the blessed calm of the fields and the trees. But I lately watched an immense procession of holiday-makers travelling mile after mile in long-drawn sequence--and the study caused me to have many thoughts. There was no mistake about the intentions of the vast mob. They started with a steadfast resolution to be jolly--and they kept to their resolution so long as they were coherent of mind. It was a strange sight--a population probably equal to half that of Scotland all plunged into a sort of delirium and nearly all forgetting the serious side of life. As I gazed on the frantic assembly, I wondered how the English ever came to be considered a grave solid nation; I wondered, moreover, how a great percentage of men representing a nation of conquerors, explorers, administrators, inventors, should on a sudden decide to go mad for a day. Perhaps, after all, the catchword "Merry England" meant really "Mad England"; perhaps the good days which men mourned for after the grim shade of Puritanism came over the country were neither more nor less than periods of wild orgies; perhaps we have reason to be thankful that the national carnivals do not now occur very often. Our ancestors had a very peculiar idea of what constituted a merry-making, and there are many things in ancient art and literature which tempt us to fancy that a certain crudity distinguished the festivals of ancient days; but still the latter-day frolic in all its monstrous proportions is not to be studied by a philosophic observer without profoundly moving thoughts arising. As I gazed on the endless flow of travellers, I could hardly help wondering how the mob would conduct themselves during any great social convulsion. Some gushing persons talk about the good humour and orderliness of the British crowd. Well, I allow that the better class of holiday-makers exhibit a kind of rough good nature; but, whenever "sport" is in question, we find that a certain class come to the front--a class who are not genial or merry, but purely lawless. While the huge carnival is in progress during one delirious day, we have a chance of seeing in a mild form what would happen if a complete national disaster caused society to become fundamentally disordered. The beasts of prey come forth from their lairs, the most elementary rules of conduct are forgotten or bluntly disregarded, and the law-abiding citizen may see robbery and violence carried on in broad daylight. In some cases it happens that organized bands of thieves rob one man after another with a brutal effrontery which quite shames the minor abilities of Macedonian or Calabrian brigands. Forty or fifty consummate scoundrels work in concert; and it often happens that even the betting-men are seized, raised from the ground, and shaken until their money falls and is scrambled for by eager rascaldom. Wherever there Is sport the predatory animals flock together; and I thought, when last I saw the crew, "If a foreign army were in movement against England and a panic arose, there would be little mercy for quiet citizens." On a hasty computation, I should say that an ordinary Derby Day brings together an army of wastrels and criminals strong enough to sack London if once the initial impetus were given; and who can say what blind chance may supply that impetus even in our day? There is not so much sheer foulness nowadays as there used to be; the Yahoo element--male and female--is not obtrusive; and it is even possible for a lady to remain in certain quarters of the mighty Downs without being offended in any way. Our grandfathers--and our fathers, for that matter--had a somewhat acrid conception of humour, and the offscourings of the city ministered to this peculiar humorous sense in a singular way. But a leaven of propriety has now crept in, and the evil beings who were wont to pollute the sweet air preserve some moderate measure of seemliness. I am willing to welcome every sign of improving manners; and yet I must say that the great British Festival is a sorry and even horrible spectacle. What is the net result or purpose of the whole display? Cheery scribes babble about "Isthmian games" and the glorious air of the Surrey hills, and they try to put on a sort of jollity and semblance of well-being; but the sham is a poor one, and the laughing hypocrites know in their hearts that the vast gathering of people means merely waste, idleness, thievery, villainy, vice of all kinds--and there is next to no compensation for the horrors which are crowded together. I would fain pick out anything good from the whole wild spectacle; but I cannot, and so give up the attempt with a sort of sick despair. There is something rather pleasant in the sight of a merry lad who attends his first Derby, for he sees only the vivid rush and movement of crowds; but to a seasoned observer and thinker the tremendous panorama gives suggestions only of evil. I hardly have patience to consider the fulsome talk of the writers who print insincerities by the column year by year. They know that the business is evil, and yet they persist in speaking as if there were some magic influence in the reeking crowd which, they declare, gives health and tone to body and mind. The dawdling parties who lunch on the Hill derive no particular harm; but then how they waste money and time! Plunderers of all sorts flourish in a species of blind whirl of knavery; but no worthy person derives any good from the cruel waste of money and strength and energy. The writers know all this, and yet they go on turning out their sham cordiality, sham congratulations, sham justifications; while any of us who know thoroughly the misery and mental death and ruin of souls brought on by racing and gambling are labelled as un-English or churlish or something of the kind. Why should we be called churlish? Is it not true that a million of men and women waste a day on a pursuit which brings them into contact with filthy intemperance, stupid debauch, unspeakable coarseness? The eruptive sportsman tells us that the sight of a good man on a good horse should stir every manly impulse in a Briton. What rubbish! What manliness can there be in watching a poor baby-colt flogged along by a dwarf? If one is placed at some distance from the course, then one may find the glitter of the pretty silk jackets pleasing; but, should one chance to be near enough to see what is termed "an exciting finish," one's general conception of the manliness of racing may be modified. From afar off the movement of the jockeys' whip-hands is no more suggestive than the movement of a windmill's sails; but, when one hears the "flack, flack" of the whalebone and sees the wales rise on the dainty skin of the immature horse, one does not feel quite joyous or manly. I have seen a long lean creature reach back with his right leg and keep on jobbing with the spur for nearly four hundred yards of a swift finish; I saw another manikin lash a good horse until the animal fairly curved its back in agony and writhed its head on one side so violently that the manly sporting-men called it an ungenerous brute. Where does the fun come in for the onlookers? There is one good old thoroughbred which remembers a fearful flogging that he received twenty-two years ago; if he hears the voice of the man who lashed him, he sweats profusely, and trembles so much that he is like to fall down. How is the breed of horses directly improved by that kind of sport? No; the thousands of wastrels who squander the day and render themselves unsettled and idle for a week are not thinking of horses or of taking a healthy outing; they are obeying an unhealthy gregarious instinct which in certain circumstances makes men show clear signs of acute mania. If we look at the unadulterated absurdity of the affair, we may almost be tempted to rage like Carlyle or Swift. For weeks there are millions of people who talk of little else save the doings of useless dumb animals which can perform no work in the world and which at best are beautiful toys. When the thoroughbreds actually engage in their contest, there is no man of all the imposing multitude who can see them gallop for more than about thirty seconds; the last rush home is seen only by the interesting mortals who are on the great stand; and the entire performance which interests some persons for a year is all over in less than three minutes. This is the game on which Englishmen lavish wild hopes, keen attention, and good money--this is the sport of kings which gluts the pockets of greedy knaves! A vast city--nay, a vast empire--is partially disorganized for a day in order that some dwarfish boys may be seen flogging immature horses during a certain number of seconds, and we learn that there is something "English," and even chivalrous, in the foolish wastrel proceedings. My conceptions of English virtues are probably rudimentary; but I quite fail to discover where the "nobility" of horse-racing and racecourse picnicing appears. My notion of "nobility" belongs to a bygone time; and I was gratified by hearing of one very noble deed at the moment when the flashy howling mob were trooping forward to that great debauch which takes place around the Derby racecourse. A great steamer was flying over a Southern sea, and the sharks were showing their fins and prowling around with evil eyes. The _Rimutaka_ spun on her way, and all the ship's company were cheerful and careless. Suddenly a poor crazy woman sprang over the side and was drifted away by a surface-current; while the irresistible rush of the steamer could not of course be easily stayed. A good Englishman--honour for ever to his name!--jumped into the water, swam a quarter of a mile, and, by heaven's grace, escaped the wicked sea-tigers and saved the unhappy distraught woman. That man's name is Cavell: and I think of "nobility" in connection with him, and not in connection with the manikins who rush over Epsom Downs. I like to give a thought to the nobility of those men who guard and rule a mighty empire; but I think very little of the creatures who merely consume food and remain at home in rascally security. What a farce to talk of encouraging "athletics"! The poor manikin who gets up on a racer is not an athlete in any rational sense of the term. He is a wiry emaciated being whose little muscles are strung like whipcord; but it is strange to dignify him as an athlete. If he once rises above nine stone in weight, his life becomes a sort of martyrdom; but, abstemious and self-contained as he is, we can hardly give him the name which means so much to all healthy Englishmen. For some time each day the wondrous specimen of manhood must stew in a Turkish bath or between blankets; he tramps for miles daily if his feet keep sound; he starts at five in the morning and perhaps rides a trial or two; then he takes his weak tea and toast, then exercise or sweating; then comes his stinted meal; and then he starves until night. To call such a famished lean fellow a follower of "noble" sport is too much. Other British men deny themselves; but then think of the circumstances! Far away among the sea of mountains on our Indian frontier a gallant Englishman remains in charge of his lonely station; his Pathans or Ghoorkas are fine fellows, and perhaps some brave old warrior will use the privilege of age and stroll in to chat respectfully to the Sahib. But it is all lonely--drearily lonely. The mountain partridge may churr at sunrise and sundown; the wily crows may play out their odd life-drama daily; the mountain winds may rush roaring through the gullies until the village women say they can hear the hoofs of the brigadier's horse. But what are these desert sounds and sights for the laboriously-cultured officer? His nearest comrade is miles off; his spirit must dwell alone. And yet such men hang on at their dreary toil; and who can ever hear them complain, save in their semi-humorous letters to friends at home? They often carry their lives in their hands; but they can only hope to rest unknown if the chance goes against them. I call those men noble. There are no excited thousands for them to figure before; they scarcely have the honour of mention in a despatch; but they go on in grim silence, working out their own destiny and the destiny of this colossal empire. When I compare them with the bold sportsmen, I feel something like disgust. The real high-hearted heroes do not crave rewards--if they did, they would reap very little. The bold man who risked everything to save the _Calliope_ will never earn as much in a year as a horse-riding manikin can in two months. That is the way we encourage our finest merit. And meantime at the "Isthmian games" the hordes of scoundreldom who dwell at ease can enjoy themselves to their hearts' content in their own dreadful way; they break out in their usual riot of foulness; they degrade the shape of man; and the burly moralists look on robustly, and say that it is good. I never think of the great British carnival without feeling that the dregs of that ugly crowd will one day make history in a fashion which will set the world shuddering. I have no pity for ruined gamblers; but I am indignant when we see the worst of human kind luxuriating in abominable idleness and luxury on the foul fringe of the hateful racecourse. No sumptuary law will ever make any inroad on the cruel evil; and my feeling is one of sombre hopelessness. _July, 1889._ _SEASONABLE NONSENSE_. The most hard-hearted of cynics must pity the poor daily journalist who is calmly requested nowadays to produce a Christmas article. For my own part I decline to meddle with holly and jollity and general goodwill, and I have again and again protested against the insane Beggars' Carnival which breaks out yearly towards the beginning of December. A man may be pleased enough to hear his neighbour express goodwill, but he does not want his neighbour's hand held forth to grasp our Western equivalent for "backsheesh." In Egypt the screeching Arabs make life miserable with their ceaseless dismal yell, "_Backsheesh, Howaji!_" The average British citizen is also hailed with importunate cries which are none the less piercing and annoying from the fact that they are translated into black and white. The ignoble frivolity of the swarming circulars, the obvious insincerity of the newspaper appeals, the house-to-house calls, tend steadily to vulgarize an ancient and a beautiful institution, and alienate the hearts of kindly people who do not happen to be abject simpletons. The outbreak of kindness is sometimes genuine on the part of the donors; but it is often merely surface-kindness, and the gifts are bestowed in a bitter and grudging spirit. Let me ask, What are the real feelings of a householder who is requested to hand out a present to a turncock or dustman whom he has never seen? The functionaries receive fair wages for unskilled labour, yet they come smirking cheerfully forward and prefer a claim which has no shadow of justification. If a flower-seller is rather too importunate in offering her wares, she is promptly imprisoned for seven days or fined; if a costermonger halts for a few minutes in a thoroughfare and cries his goods, his stock maybe confiscated; yet the privileged Christmas mendicant may actually proceed to insolence if his claims are ignored; and the meek Briton submits to the insult. I cannot sufficiently deplore the progress of this spirit of beggardom, for it is acting and reacting in every direction all over the country. Long ago we lamented the decay of manly independence among the fishermen of those East Coast ports which have become watering-places. Big bearded fellows whose fathers would have stared indignantly at the offer of a gratuity are ready to hold out their hands and touch their caps to the most vulgar dandy that ever swaggered. To any one who knew and loved the whole breed of seamen and fishermen, a walk along Yarmouth sands in September is among the most purely depressing experiences in life. But the demoralization of the seaside population is not so distressing as that of the general population in great cities. We all know Adam Bede--the very finest portrait of the old-fashioned workman ever done. If George Eliot had represented Adam as touching his cap for a sixpence, we should have gasped with surprise at the incongruity. Can we imagine an old-world stonemason like Hugh Miller begging coppers from a farmer on whose steading he happened to be employed? The thing is preposterous! But now a strong London artizan will coolly ask for his gratuity just as if he were a mere link-boy! It is pleasant to turn to kindlier themes; it is pleasant to think of the legitimate rejoicings and kindnesses in which the most staid of us may indulge. Far be it from me to emulate the crabbed person who proposed to form a "Society for the Abolition of Christmas." The event to be commemorated is by far the greatest in the history of our planet; all others become hardly worthy of mention when we think of it; and nothing more momentous can happen until the last catastrophe, when a chilled and tideless earth shall roll through space, and when no memory shall remain of the petty creatures who for a brief moment disturbed its surface. The might of the Empire of Rome brooded over the fairest portions of the known world, and it seemed as though nothing could shake that colossal power; the pettiest officer of the Imperial staff was of more importance than all the natives of Syria; and yet we see that the fabric of Roman rule has passed away like a vision, while the faith taught by a band of poor Syrian men has mastered the minds of the strongest nations in the world. The poor disciples whom the Master left became apostles; footsore and weary they wandered--they were scorned and imprisoned and tortured until the last man of them had passed away. Their work has subdued princes and empires, and the bells that ring out on Christmas Eve remind us not only of the most tremendous occurrence in history, but of the deeds of a few humble souls who conquered the fear of death and who resigned the world in order that the children of the world might be made better. A tremendous Event truly! We are far, far away from the ideal, it is true; and some of us may feel a thrill of sick despair when we think of what the sects have done and what they have not done--it all seems so slow, so hopeless, and the powers of evil assert themselves ever and again with such hideous force. Some withdraw themselves to fierce isolation; some remain in the world, mocking the ways of men and treating all life as an ugly jest; some refuse to think at all, and drag themselves into oblivion; while some take one frantic sudden step and leave the world altogether by help of bullet or bare bodkin. A man of light mind who endeavoured to reconcile all the things suggested to him by the coming of Christmas would probably become demented if he bent his entire intellect to solve the puzzles. Thousands--millions--of books have been written about the Christian theology, and half of European mankind cannot claim to have any fixed and certain belief which leads to right conduct. Some of the noblest and sweetest souls on earth have given way to chill hopelessness, and only a very bold or a very thick-sighted man could blame them; we must be tender towards all who are perplexed, especially when we see how terrible are the reasons for perplexity. Nevertheless, dark as the outlook may be in many directions, men are slowly coming to see that the service of God is the destruction of enmity, and that the religion of tenderness and pity alone can give happiness during our dark pilgrimage. Far back in last winter a man was forcing his way across a dreary marsh in the very teeth of a wind that seemed to catch his throat in an icy grip, stopping the breath at intervals and chilling the very heart. Coldly the grey breakers rolled under the hard lowering sky; coldly the western light flickered on the iron slopes of far-off hills; coldly the last beams struck on the water and made chance wavelets flash with a terrible glitter. The night rushed down, and the snow descended fiercely; the terrified cattle tried to find shelter from the scourge of the storm; a hollow roar rang sullenly amid the darkness; stray sea-birds far overhead called weirdly, and it seemed as if the spirit of evil were abroad in the night. In darkness the man fought onward, thinking of the unhappy wretches who sometimes lie down on the snow and let the final numbness seize their hearts. Then came a friendly shout--then lights--and then the glow of warmth that filled a broad room with pleasantness. All the night long the mad gusts tore at the walls and made them vibrate; all night the terrible music rose into shrieks and died away in low moaning, and ever the savage boom of the waves made a vast under-song. Then came visions of the mournful sea that we all know so well, and the traveller thought of the honest fellows who must spend their Christmas-time amid warring forces that make the works of man seem puny. What a picture that is--The Toilers of the Sea in Winter! Christmas Eve comes with no joyous jangling of bells; the sun stoops to the sea, glaring lividly through whirls of snow, and the vessel roars through the water; black billows rush on until their crests topple into ruin, and then the boiling white water shines fitfully like some strange lambent flame; the breeze sings hoarsely among the cordage; the whole surface flood plunges on as if some immense cataract must soon appear after the rapids are passed. Every sea that the vessel shatters sends up a flying waterspout; and the frost acts with amazing suddenness, so that the spars, the rigging, and the deck gather layer after layer of ice. Supposing the vessel is employed in fishing, then the men in the forecastle crouch round the little fire, or shiver on their soaked beds, and perhaps growl out a few words of more or less cheerful talk. Stay with the helmsman, and you may know what the mystery and horror of utter gloom are really like. There is danger everywhere--a sudden wave may burst the deck or heave the vessel down on her side; a huge dim cloud may start shapelessly from the murk, and, before a word of warning can be uttered, a great ship may crash into the labouring craft. In that case hope is gone, for the boat is bedded in a mass of ice and all the doomed seamen must take the deadly plunge to eternity. Ah, think of this, you who rest in the glow of beautiful homes! Then the morning--the grey desolation! No words can fairly picture the utter cheerlessness of a wintry dawn at sea. The bravest of men feel something like depression or are pursued by cruel apprehensions. The solid masses of ice have gripped every block, and the ropes will not run; the gaunt masts stand up like pallid ghosts in the grey light, and still the volleys of snow descend at intervals. All the ships seem to be cowering away, scared and beaten; even the staunch sea-gulls have taken refuge in fields and quiet rivers; and only the seamen have no escape. The mournful red stretches of the Asiatic deserts are wild enough, but there are warmth and marvellous light, and those who well know the moaning wastes say that their fascination sinks on the soul. The wintry sea has no fascination--no consolation; it is hungry, inhospitable--sometimes horrible. But even there Christ walks the waters in spirit. In an ordinary vessel the rudest seaman is made to think of the great day, and, even if he goes on grumbling and swearing on the morrow, he is apt to be softened and slightly subdued for one day at least. The fishermen on the wild North Sea are cared for, and merry scenes are to be witnessed even when landsmen might shudder in terror. Certain gallant craft, like strong yachts, glide about among the plunging smacks; each of the yachts has a brave blue flag at the masthead, and the vessels are laden with kindly tokens from thousands of gentle souls on shore. Surely there is no irreverence in saying that the Master walks the waters to this day? We Britons must of course express some of our emotions by eating and drinking freely. No political party can pretend to adjust the affairs of the Empire until the best-advertised members have met together at a dinner-table; no prominent man can be regarded as having achieved the highest work in politics, or art, or literature, or histrionics, until he has been delicately fed in company with a large number of brother mortals; and no anniversary can possibly be celebrated without an immense consumption of eatables and drinkables. The rough men of the North Sea have the national instinct, and their mode of recognizing the festive season is quite up to the national standard. The North Sea fisherman would not nowadays approve of the punch-bowls and ancient ale which Dickens loved so much to praise, for he is given to the most severe forms of abstinence; but it is a noble sight when he proceeds to show what he can do in the way of Christmas dining. If he is one of the sharers in a parcel from on shore, he is fortunate, for he may possibly partake of a pudding which might be thrown over the masthead without remaining whole after its fall on deck; but it matters little if he has no daintily-prepared provender. Jack Fisherman seats himself on a box or on the floor of the cabin; he produces his clasp-knife and prepares for action. When his huge tin dish is piled with a miscellaneous assortment of edibles, it presents a spectacle which might make all Bath and Matlock and Royat and Homburg shudder; but the seaman, despising the miserable luxuries of fork and spoon, attacks the amazing conglomeration with enthusiasm. His Christmas pudding may resemble any geological formation that you like to name, and it may be unaccountably allied with a perplexing maze of cabbage and potatoes--nothing matters. Christmas must be kept up, and the vast lurches of the vessel from sea to sea do not at all disturb the fine equanimity of the fellows who are bent on solemnly testifying, by gastronomic evidence, to the loyalty with which Christmas is celebrated among orthodox Englishmen. The poor lads toil hard, live hard, and they certainly feed hard; but, with all due respect, it must be said also that they mostly pray hard; and, if any one of the cynical division had been among the seamen during that awful time five years ago, he would have seen that among the sea-toilers at least the "glad" season is glad in something more than name--for the gladness is serious. Sights of the same kind may be seen on great ships that are careering over the myriad waterways that net the surface of the globe; the smart man-of-war, the great liner, the slow deep-laden barque toiling wearily round the Horn, are all manned by crews that keep up the aged tradition more or less merrily; and woe betide the cook that fails in his duty! That lost man's fate may be left to the eye of imagination. Under the Southern Cross the fair summer weather glows; but the good Colonists have their little rejoicings without the orthodox adjuncts of snow and frozen fingers and iron roads. Far up in the bush the men remember to make some kind of rude attempt at improvising Christmas rites, and memories of the old country are present with many a good fellow who is facing his first hard luck. But the climate makes no difference; and, apart from all religious considerations, there is no social event that so draws together the sympathies of the whole English race all over the world. At Nainee Tal, or any other of our stations in our wondrous Indian possession, the day is kept. Alas, how dreary it is for the hearts that are craving for home! The moon rises through the majestic arch of the sky and makes the tamarisk-trees gorgeous; the warm air flows gently; the dancers float round to the wild waltz-rhythm; and the imitation of home is kept up with zeal by the stout general, the grave and scholarly judge, the fresh subaltern, and by all the bright ladies who are in exile. But even these think of the quiet churches in sweet English places; they think of the purple hedges, the sharp scent of frost-bitten fields, the glossy black ice, and the hissing ring of the skates. I know that, religiously as Christmas is kept up even on the frontier in India, the toughest of the men long for home, and pray for the time when the blessed regions of Brighton and Torquay and Cheltenham may receive the worn pensioner. One poet says something of the Anglo-Indian's longing for home at Christmas-time; he speaks with melancholy of the folly of those who sell their brains for rupees and go into exile, and he appears to be ready, for his own part, to give up his share in the glory of our Empire if only he can see the friendly fields in chill December. I sympathize with him. Away with the mendicants, rich and poor--away with the gushing parasites who use a kindly instinct and a sacred name in order to make mean profit--away with the sordid hucksters who play with the era of man's hope as though the very name of the blessed time were a catchword to be used like the abominable party-cries of politicians! But when I come to men and women who understand the real significance of the day--when I come to charitable souls who are reminded of One who was all Charity, and who gave an impulse to the world which two thousand years have only strengthened--when I come among these, I say, "Give us as much Yule-tide talk as ever you please, do your deeds of kindness, take your fill of innocent merriment, and deliver us from the pestilence of quacks and mendicants!" It is when I think of the ghastly horror of our own great central cities that I feel at once the praiseworthiness and the hopelessness of all attempts to succour effectually the immense mass of those who need charity. Hopeless, helpless lives are lived by human creatures who are not much above the brutes. Alas, how much may be learned from a journey through the Midlands! We may talk of merry frosty days and starlit nights and unsullied snow and Christmas cheer; but the potter and the iron-worker know as much about cheeriness as they do about stainless snow. Then there is London to be remembered. A cheery time there will be for the poor creatures who hang about the dock-gates and fight for the chance of earning the price of a meal! In that blank world of hunger and cold and enforced idleness there is nothing that the gayest optimist could describe as joyful, and some of us will have to face the sight of it during the winter that is now at hand. What can be done? Hope seems to have deserted many of our bravest; we hear the dark note of despair all round, and it is only the sight of the workers--the kindly workers--that enables us to bear up against deadly depression and dark pessimism. _December, 1888._ _THE FADING YEAR_. Even in this distressed England of ours there are still districts where the simple reapers regard the harvest labour as a frolic; the dulness of their still lives is relieved by a burst of genuine but coarse merriment, and their abandoned glee is not unpleasant to look upon. Then come the harvest suppers--noble spectacles. The steady champ of resolute jaws sounds in a rhythm which is almost majestic; the fearsome destruction wrought on solid joints would rouse the helpless envy of the dyspeptics of Pall Mall, and the playful consumption of ale--no small beer, but golden Rodney--might draw forth an ode from a teetotal Chancellor of the Exchequer. August winds up in a blaze of gladness for the reaper. On ordinary evenings he sits stolidly in the dingy parlour and consumes mysterious malt liquor to an accompaniment of grumbling and solemn puffing of acrid tobacco, but the harvest supper is a wildly luxurious affair which lasts until eleven o'clock. Are there not songs too? The village tenor explains--with a powerful accent--that he only desires Providence to let him like a soldier fall. Of course he breaks down, but there is no adverse criticism. Friendly hearers say, "Do yowe try back, Willum, and catch that up at start agin;" and Willum does try back in the most excruciating manner. Then the elders compare the artist with singers of bygone days, and a grunting chorus of stories goes on. Then comes the inevitable poaching song. Probably the singer has been in prison a dozen times over, but he is regarded as a moral and law-abiding character by his peers; and even his wife, who suffered during his occasional periods of seclusion, smiles as he drones out the jolting chorus. When the sportsman reaches the climax and tells how-- We slung her on our shoulders, And went across the down; We took her to a neighbour's house, And sold her for a crown. We sold her for a crown, my boys, But I 'on't tell ye wheer, For 'tis my delight of a shiny night In the season of the year --then the gentlemen who have sold many a hare in their time exchange rapturous winks, and even a head-keeper might be softened by the prevailing enthusiasm. Hodge is a hunter by nature, and you can no more restrain him from poaching than you can restrain a fox. The most popular man in the whole company is the much-incarcerated poacher, and no disguise whatever is made of the fact. A theft of a twopenny cabbage from a neighbour would set a mark against a man for life; a mean action performed when the hob-nailed company gather in the tap-room would be remembered for years; but a sportsman who blackens his face and creeps out at night to net the squire's birds is considered to be a hero, and an honest man to boot. He mentions his convictions gaily, criticises the officials of each gaol that he has visited in the capacity of prisoner, and rouses roars of sympathetic laughter as he tells of his sufferings on the tread-mill. No man or woman thinks of the facts that the squire's pheasants cost about a guinea apiece to rear, that a hare is worth about three-and-sixpence, that a brace of partridges brings two shillings even from the cunning receiver who buys the poachers' plunder. No; they joyously think of the fact that the keepers are diddled, and that satisfies them. Alas, the glad and sad times alike must die, and the dull prose of October follows hard on the wild jollity of the harvest supper, while Winter peers with haggard gaze over Autumn's shoulder! The hoarse winds blow now, and the tender flush of decay has begun to touch the leaves with delicate tints. In the morning the gossamer floats in the glittering air and winds ropes of pearls among the stubble; the level rays shoot over a splendid land, and the cold light is thrillingly sweet. But the evenings are chill, and the hollow winds moan, crying, "Summer is dead, and we are the vanguard of Winter. Soon the wild army will be upon you. Steal the sunshine while you may." What is the source of that tender solemn melancholy that comes on us all as we feel the glad year dying? It is melancholy that is not painful, and we can nurse it without tempting one stab of real suffering. Each season brings its moods--Spring is hopeful; Summer luxurious; Autumn contented; and then comes that strange time when our thoughts run on solemn things. Can it be that we associate the long decline of the year with the dark closing of life? Surely not--for a boy or girl feels the same pensive, dreary mood, and no one who remembers childhood can fail to think of the wild inarticulate thoughts that passed through the immature brain. Nay, our souls are from God; they are bestowed by the Supreme, and they were from the beginning, and cannot be destroyed. From Plato downwards, no thoughtful man has missed this strange suggestion which seems to present itself unprompted to every mind. Cicero argued it out with consummate dialectic skill; our scientific men come to the same conclusion after years on years of labour spent in investigating phenomena of life and laws of force; and Wordsworth formulated Plato's reasoning in an immortal passage which seems to combine scientific accuracy with exquisite poetic beauty-- Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us--our life's star-- Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, Who is our home. Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows; He sees it in his joy. The youth who daily farther from the east Must travel still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away And fade into the light of coming day. Had Wordsworth never written another line, that passage would have placed him among the greatest. He follows the glorious burst with these awful lines-- But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized; High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised. That is like some golden-tongued utterance of the gods; and thousands of Englishmen, sceptics and believers, have held their breath, abashed, as its full meaning struck home. Yes; this mysterious thought that haunts our being as we gaze on the saddened fields is not aroused by the immediate impression which the sight gives us; it is too complex, too profound, too mature and significant. It was framed before birth, and it proceeds direct from the Father of all souls, with whom we dwelt before we came to this low earth, and with whom we shall dwell again. If any one ventures to deny the origin of our marvellous knowledge, our sweet, strange impressions, it seems to us that he must risk bordering on impiety. So far then I have wandered from the commonplace sweetness of the shorn fields, and I almost forgot to speak about the birds. Watch the swallows as they gather together and talk with their low pretty twitter. Their parliament has begun; and surely no one who watches their proceedings can venture to scoff at the transcendental argument which I have just now stated. Those swift, pretty darlings will soon be flying through the pitchy gloom of the night, and they will dart over three or four thousand miles with unerring aim till they reach the far-off spot where they cheated our winter last year. Some will nest amid the tombs of Egyptian kings, some will find out rosy haunts in Persia, some will soon be wheeling and twittering happily over the sullen breast of the rolling Niger. Who--ah, who guides that flight? Think of it. Man must find his way by the stars and the sun. Day by day he must use elaborate instruments to find out where his vessel is placed; and even his instruments do not always save him from miles of error. But the little bird plunges through the high gulfs of air and flies like an arrow to the selfsame spot where it lived before it last went off on the wild quest over shadowy continents and booming seas. "Hereditary instinct," says the scientific man. Exactly so; and, if the swallow unerringly traverses the line crossed by its ancestors, even though the old land has long been whelmed in steep-down gulfs of the sea, does not that show us something? Does it, or does it not, make my saying about the soul seem reasonable? I have followed the swallows, but the fieldfares and the buntings must also go soon. They will make their way South also, though some may go in leisurely fashion to catch the glorious burst of spring in Siberia. I have been grievously puzzled and partly delighted by Mr. Seebohm's account of the birds' pilgrimage, and it has given me hours of thought. We dwell amid mystery, and, as the leaves redden year by year, here recurs one of the chiefest mysteries that ever perplexed the soul of man. Indeed, we are shadowed around with mystery and there is not one red leaf whirled by the wind among those moaning woods which does not represent a miracle. We cannot fly from these shores, but our joys come each in its day. For pure gladness and keen colour nothing can equal one of these glorious October mornings, when the reddened fronds of the brackens are silvered with rime, and the sun strikes flashes of delight from them. Then come those soft November days when the winds moan softly amid the Aeolian harps of the purple hedgerows, and the pale drizzle falls ever and again. Even then we may pick our pleasures discreetly, if we dwell in the country, while, as for the town, are there not pleasant fires and merry evenings? Then comes the important thought of the poor. Ah, it is woful! "'Pleasant fires and merry evenings,' say you?"--so I can fancy some pinched sufferer saying, "What sort of merry evenings shall we have, when the fogs crawl murderously, or the sleet lashes the sodden roads?" Alas and alas! Those of us who dwell amid pleasant sights and sounds are apt in moments of piercing joy to forget the poor who rarely know joy at all. But we must not be careless. By all means let those who can do so snatch their enjoyment from the colour, the movement, the picturesque sadness of the fading year; but let them think with pity of the time that is coming, and prepare to do a little toward lifting that ghastly burden of suffering that weighs on so many of our fellows. Gazing around on the flying shadows driven by the swift wind, and listening to the quivering sough amid the shaken trees, I have been led far and near into realms of strange speculation. So it is ever in this fearful and wonderful life; there is not the merest trifle that can happen which will not lead an eager mind away toward the infinite. Never has this mystic ordinance touched my soul so poignantly as during the hours when I watched for a little the dying of the year, and branched swiftly into zigzag reflections that touched the mind with fear and joy in turn. Adieu, fair fields! Adieu, wild trees! Where will next year's autumn find us? Hush! Does not the very gold and red of the leaves hint to us that the sweet sad time will return again and find us maybe riper? _October, 1886._ _BEHIND THE VEIL_. "Men of all castes, if they fulfil their assigned duties, enjoy in heaven the highest imperishable bliss. Afterwards, when a man who has fulfilled his duties returns to this world, he obtains, by virtue of a remainder of merit, birth in a distinguished family, beauty of form, beauty of complexion, strength, aptitude for learning, wisdom, wealth, and the gift of fulfilling the laws of his caste or order. Therefore in both worlds he dwells in happiness, rolling like a wheel from one world to the other." Thus the Brahmans have settled the problem of the life that follows the life on earth. Those strange and subtle men seem to have reasoned themselves into a belief in dreams, and they speak with cool confidence, as though they were describing scenes as vivid and material as are the crowds in a bazaar. There is no hesitation for them; they describe the features of the future existence with the dry minuteness of a broker's catalogue. The Wheel of Life rolls, and far above the weary cycle of souls Buddha rests in an attitude of benediction; he alone has achieved Nirvana--he alone is aloof from gods and men. The yearning for immortality has in the case of the Brahman passed into certainty, and he describes his heavens and his hells as though the All-wise had placed no dim veil between this world and the world beyond. Most arithmetically minute are all the Brahman's pictures, and he never stops to hint at a doubt. His hells are twenty-two in number, each applying a new variety of physical and moral pain. We men of the West smile at the grotesque dogmatism of the Orientals; and yet we have no right to smile. In our way we are as keen about the great question as the Brahmans are, and for us the problem of problems may be stated in few words--"Is there a future life?" All our philosophy, all our laws, all our hopes and fears are concerned with that paralyzing question, and we differ from the Hindoo only in that we affect an extravagant uncertainty, while he sincerely professes an absolute certainty. The cultured Western man pretends to dismiss the problem with a shrug; he labels himself as an agnostic or by some other vague definition, and he is fond of proclaiming his idea that he knows and can know nothing. That is a pretence. When the philosopher says that he does not know and does not care what his future may be, he speaks insincerely; he means that he cannot prove by experiment the fact of a future life--or, as Mr. Ruskin puts it, "he declares that he never found God in a bottle"--but deep down in his soul there is a knowledge that influences his lightest action. The man of science, the "advanced thinker," or whatever he likes to call himself, proves to us by his ceaseless protestations of doubt and unbelief that he is incessantly pondering the one subject which he would fain have us fancy he ignores. At heart he is in full sympathy with the Brahman, with the rude Indian, with the impassioned English Methodist, with all who cannot shake off the mystic belief in a life that shall go on behind the veil. When the pagan emperor spoke to his own parting soul, he asked the piercing question that our sceptic must needs put, whether he like it or no-- Soul of me, floating and flitting and fond, Thou and this body were life-mates together! Wilt thou be gone now--and whither? Pallid and naked and cold, Not to laugh or be glad as of old! Theology of any description is far out of my path, but I have the wish and the right to talk gravely about the subject that dwarfs all others. A logician who tries to scoff away any faith I count as almost criminal. Mockery is the fume of little hearts, and the worst and craziest of mockers is the one who grins in presence of a mystery that strikes wise and deep-hearted men with a solemn fear which has in it nothing ignoble. I would as lief play circus pranks by a mother's deathbed as try to find flippant arguments to disturb a sincere faith. First, then, let us know what the uncompromising iconoclasts have to tell about the universal belief in immortality. They have a very pretentious line of reasoning, which I may summarise thus. Life appeared on earth not less than three hundred thousand years ago. First of all our planet hung in the form of vapour, and drifted with millions of other similar clouds through space; then the vapour became liquid; then the globular form was assumed, and the flying ball began to rotate round the great attracting body. We cannot tell how living forms first came on earth; for they could not arise by spontaneous generation, in spite of all that Dr. Bastian may say. Of the coming of life we can say nothing--rather an odd admission, by-the-way, for gentlemen who are so sure of most things--but we know that some low organism did appear--and there is an end of that matter. No two organisms can possibly be exactly alike; and the process of differentiation began in the very shrine. The centuries passed, and living organisms became more and more complex; the slowly-cooling ball of the earth was covered with greenery, but no flower was to be seen. Then insects were attracted by brightly-coloured leaves; then flowers and insects acted and reacted on each other. But there is no need to trace every mark on the scale. It is enough to say that infinitely-diversified forms of life branched off from central stocks, and the process of variation went on steadily. Last of all, in a strange environment, a certain small upright creature appeared. He was not much superior in development to the anthropoid apes that we now know--in fact, there is less difference between an orang and a Bosjesman than there is between the primitive man and the modern Caucasian man. This creature, hairy and brown as a squirrel, stunted in stature, skinny of limb, was our immediate progenitor. So say the confident scientific men. The owner of the queer ape-like skull found at Neanderthal belonged to a race that was ultimately to develop into Shakespeares and Newtons and Napoleons. In all the enormous series that had its first term in the primeval ooze and its last term in man, one supreme motive had actuated every individual. The desire of life, growing more intense with each new development, was the main influence that secured continuance of life. The beings that had the desire of life scantily developed were overcome in the struggle for existence by those in whom the desire of life was strong. Thus in man, after countless generations, the wish for life had become the master-power holding dominion over the body. As the various branches of the human race moved upward, the passionate love of life grew so strong that no individual could bear to think of resigning this pleasing anxious being and proceeding to fall into dumb forgetfulness. Men saw their comrades stricken by some dark force that they could not understand. The strong limbs grew lax first, and then hopelessly stiff; the bright eye was dulled; and it soon became necessary to hide the inanimate thing under the soil. It was impossible for those who had the quick blood flowing in their veins to believe that a time would come when feeling would be known no more. This fierce clinging to life had at last its natural outcome. Men found that at night, when the quicksilver current of sleep ran through their veins and their bodies were quiescent, they had none the less thoughts as of life. The body lay still; but something in alliance with the body gave them impressions of vivid waking vigour and action. Men fancied that they fought, hunted, loved, hated; and yet all the time their limbs were quiet. What could it be that forced the slumbering man to believe himself to be in full activity? It must be some invisible essence independent of the bones and muscles. Therefore when a man died it followed that the body which was buried must have parted permanently from the mystic "something" that caused dreams. That mystic "something" therefore lived on after the death of the body. The bodily organs were mere accidental encumbrances; the real "man" was the viewless creature that had the visions of the night. The body might go; but the thing which by and by was named "soul" was imperishable. I can see the drift of foggy argument. The writer means to say that the belief in immortality sprang up because the wish was father to the thought. Men longed to live, and thus they persuaded themselves that they would live; and, one refinement after another having been added to the vague-minded savage's animal yearning, we have the elaborate system of theology and the reverential faith that guide the lives of civilized human entities. Very pretty! Then the literary critic steps in and shows how the belief in immortality has been enlarged and elaborated since the days of Saul, the son of Kish. When the witch of Endor saw gods ascending from the earth, she was only anticipating the experience of sorcerers who ply their trade in the islands of the Pacific. Professor Huxley admires the awful description of Saul's meeting with the witch; but the Professor shows that the South Sea islanders also see gods ascending out of the earth, and he thinks that the Eastern natives in Saul's day encouraged a form of ancestor-worship. The literary critic says ancestor-worship is one of the great branches of the religion of mankind. Its principles are not difficult to understand, for they plainly keep up the social relations of the living world. The dead ancestor, now passed into a deity, goes on protecting his family and receiving suit and service from them as of old. The dead chief still watches over his own tribe, still holds his authority by helping friends and harming enemies, still rewards the right and sharply punishes the wrong. That, then, was the kind of worship prevalent in the time of Saul, and the gods were only the ancestors of the living. Well, this may be admirable as science, but, as I summarized the long argument, I felt as though something must give way. Then we are told that our sacred book, the Old Testament, contains no reference to the future life--rather ignores the notion, in fact. It appears that, when Job wrote about the spirit that passed before him and caused all the hair of his flesh to stand up, he meant an enemy, or a goat, or something of that species. Moreover, when it is asserted that Enoch "was not, for God took him," no reference is made to Enoch's future existence. The whole of the thesis regarding the Shadow Land has been built up little by little, just as our infinitely perfect bodily organization has been gradually formed. It took at least thirty thousand years to evolve the crystalline lens of the human eye, and it required many thousands of years to evolve from the crude savagery of the early Jews the elaborate theories of the modern Buddhists, Islamites, and Christians. Certainly this same evolution has much to answer for. I utterly fail to see how a wish can give rise to a belief that comes before the wish is framed in the mind. More than this, I know that, even when human beings crave extinction most--when the prospect of eternal sleep is more than sweet, when the bare thought of continued existence is a horror--the belief in, or rather the knowledge of, immortality is still there, and the wretch who would fain perish knows that he cannot. As for the mathematically-minded thinkers, I must give them up. They say, "Here are two objects of consciousness whose existence can be verified; one we choose to call the body, the other we call the soul or mind or spirit, or what you will. The soul may be called a 'function' of the body, or the body may be called a 'function' of the soul--at any rate, they vary together. The tiniest change in the body causes a corresponding change in the soul. As the body alters from the days when the little ducts begin to feed the bones with lime up to the days when the bones are brittle and the muscles wither away, so does the soul alter. The infant's soul is different from the boy's, the boy's from the adolescent man's, the young man's from the middle-aged man's, and so on to the end. Now, since every change in the body, no matter how infinitesimally small, is followed by a corresponding change in the soul, then it is plain that, when the body becomes extinct, its 'function,' the soul, must also become extinct." This is even more appalling than the reasoning of the biologist. But is there not a little flaw somewhere? We take a branch from a privet-hedge and shake it; some tiny eggs fall down. In time a large ugly caterpillar comes from each egg; but, according to the mathematical men, the caterpillar does not exist, since the egg has become naught. Good! The caterpillar wraps itself in a winding thread, and we have an egg-shaped lump which lies as still as a pebble. Then presently from that bundle of thread there comes a glorious winged creature which flies away, leaving certain ragged odds and ends. But surely the bundle of threads and the moth were as much connected as the body and the soul? Logically, then, the moth does not exist after the cocoon is gone, any more than the soul exists after the body is gone! I feel very unscientific indeed as we put forth this proposition, and yet perhaps some simple folk will follow me. God will not let the soul die; it is a force that must act throughout the eternity before us, as it acted throughout the eternity that preceded our coming on earth. No physical force ever dies--each force merely changes its form or direction. Heat becomes motion, motion is transformed into heat, but the force still exists. It is not possible then that the soul of man--the subtlest, strongest force of all--should ever be extinguished. Every analogy that we can see, every fact of science that we can understand, tells us that the essence which each of us calls "I" must exist for ever as it has existed from eternity. Let us think of a sweet change that shall merely divest us of the husk of the body, even as the moth is divested of the husk of the caterpillar. Space will be as nothing to the soul--can we not even now transport ourselves in an instant beyond the sun? We can see with the soul's eye the surface of the stars, we know what they are made of, we can weigh them, and we can prove that our observation is rigidly accurate even though millions of miles lie between us and the object which we describe so confidently. When the body is gone, the soul will be more free to traverse space than it is even now. _February, 1888._ Extracts from Reviews of the First Edition. "Mr. Runciman is terribly in earnest in the greater part of this volume, especially in the several articles on 'Drink.' He is eminently practical, withal; and not satisfied with describing and deploring the effects of drunkenness, he gives us a recipe which he warrants to cure the most hardened dipsomaniac within a week. We have not quoted even the titles of all Mr. Runciman's essays; but they are all wholesome in tone, and show a hearty love of the open air and of outdoor amusement, in spite of his well-deserved strictures on various forms of so-called 'sport,' while sometimes, notably in the Essay on 'Genius and Respectability,' he touches the higher notes of feeling."--_Saturday Review_. "Mr. Runciman is intensely earnest, and directs his arrows with force and precision against those 'joints in our social armour' which his keen vision detects. There is a purpose in all Mr. Runciman says; and although one cannot always share his enthusiasm or accept his conclusions, it is impossible to doubt his sincerity as a moral reformer and his zeal in the cause of philanthropy."--_Academy_. "Few sermons, one would fancy, could do more good than this book, honestly considered. It speaks plain sense on faults and follies that are usually gently satirised; and makes fine invigorating reading. The book warmly deserves success."--_Scotsman_. "Mr. Runciman expresses himself with a vigour which leaves nothing to be desired. He leaves no doubt of what he thinks,--and he thinks, anyhow, on the right side.... Altogether a very vigorous deliverance."--_Spectator_. "No one can read these pleasant thoughtful essays without being the better for it; all being written with the vigour and grace for which Mr. Runciman is distinguished."--_Newcastle Daily Chronicle_. "Essays which form a most important contribution to the literature of social reform."--_Methodist Times_. "Mr. Runciman has produced a book which will compel people to read, and it has many pages which ought to compel them to think, and to act as well."--_Manchester Examiner._ "Mr. Runciman is endowed with a vigorous and pleasing style, and his facile pen has obviously been made expert by much use. In dealing with some of the more threadbare problems, such as the drink question and the sporting mania, he brings considerable novelty and freshness to their treatment, and when fairly roused he hits out at social abuses with a vigour and indignant sincerity which are very refreshing to the jaded reader ...He has been successful in producing a delightfully readable book, and even when he does not produce conviction, he will certainly succeed in securing attention and inspiring interest."--_Bradford Observer_. "The essays are a fine contribution in the cause of manly self-culture and elevation of moral tone."--_Pall Mall Gazette_. "To those who enjoy essays on current topics, this will be found an acceptable and instructive volume."--_Public Opinion_. "His essays are always entertaining and suggestive ...Mr. Runciman, as is well-known, has a forcible and effective style."--_Star_. "Mr. Runciman is a bard hitter, and evidently speaks from conviction, and there is such an honest and clear-minded tone about these papers, that even those who do not agree with all the conclusions drawn in them will not regret having read what Mr. Runciman has to say on social questions."--_Graphic_. 
41139	----	the Google Books Library Project (http://books.google.com) Note: Images of the original pages are available through the the Google Books Library Project. See http://www.google.com/books?id=w7IWAAAAYAAJ THE DRUNKARD BY GUY THORNE AUTHOR OF "WHEN IT WAS DARK," "FIRST IT WAS ORDAINED," "MADE IN HIS IMAGE," ETC., ETC. New York STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1911 BY STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY Published January, 1912 Transcriber's Note: Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been retained as printed. The cover of this ebook was created by the transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain. DEDICATION TO LOUIS TRACY, ESQUIRE _My Dear Louis_: It is more than a year ago now that I asked you to accept the dedication of this story. It was on an evening when I was staying with you at your Yorkshire house and we had just come in from shooting. But I discussed the tale with you long before that. It was either--as well as I can remember--at my place in the Isle of Wight, or when we were all together in the Italian Alps. I like to think that it was at that time I first asked your opinion and advice about this book upon which I have laboured so long. One night comes back to me very vividly--yes, that surely was the night. Dinner was over. We were sitting in front of the brilliantly lit hotel with coffee and cigarettes. You had met all my kind Italian friends. Our wives were sitting together at one little table with Signora Maerdi and Madame Riva Monico--to whom be greeting! My father was at ours, and happy as a boy for all his white beard and skull-cap of black velvet. Your son, Dick, was dancing with the Italian girls in the bright salon behind us, and the piano music tinkled out into the hot night. The Alpine woods of ilex and pine rose up in the moonlight to where the snow-capped mountains of St. Gothard hung glistening silver-green. I ask you to take this book as a memorial of a happy, uninterrupted and dignified friendship, not less valuable and gracious because your wife and mine are friends also. _Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico!_ Yours ever sincerely, GUY THORNE. FOREWORD The sixth chapter in the third book of this story can hardly be called fiction. The notes upon which it is founded were placed in my possession by a brilliant man of letters some short time before he died. Serious students of the psychology of the Inebriate may use the document certain that it is genuine. I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to the illuminating study in heredity of Dr. Archdall Reed, M.B., C.M., F.R.S.E. His book "Alcoholism" ought to be read by every temperance reformer in Europe and America. "The Drink Problem," a book published by Messrs. Methuen and written in concert by the greatest experts on the subject of Inebriety, has been most helpful. I have not needed technical help to make my story, but I have found that it gives ample corroboration of protracted investigation and study. My thanks are due to Mr. John Theodore Tussaud for assistance in the writing of chapter four, book three. Lastly, I should be ungrateful indeed, if I did not put down my sincere thanks to my secretary Miss Ethel Paczensky for all she has done for me during the making of this tale. The mere careful typewriting, revision and arrangement of a long story which is to be published in America and Europe, requires considerable skill. The fact that the loyal help and sympathy of a young and acute mind have been so devotedly at my service, merits more thanks and acknowledgment than can be easily conveyed in a foreword. G. T. CONTENTS PROLOGUE PAGE PART I A BOOK OF POEMS ARRIVES FOR DR. MORTON SIMS 3 PART II THE MURDERER 14 BOOK ONE LOTHIAN IN LONDON CHAPTER I UNDER THE WAGGON-ROOF. A DINNER IN BRYANSTONE SQUARE 37 II GRAVELY UNFORTUNATE OCCURRENCE IN MRS. AMBERLEY'S DRAWING ROOM 58 III SHAME IN "THE ROARING GALLANT TOWN" 76 IV LOTHIAN GOES TO THE LIBRARY OF PURE LITERATURE 103 V "FOR THE FIRST TIME, HE WAS GOING TO HAVE A GIRL FRIEND" 121 BOOK TWO LOTHIAN IN NORFOLK I VIGNETTE OF EARLY MORNING. "GILBERT IS COMING HOME!" 145 II AN EXHIBITION OF DOCTOR MORTON SIMS AND DOCTOR MEDLEY, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HOW LOTHIAN RETURNED TO MORTLAND ROYAL 165 III PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INEBRIATE, AND THE LETTER OF JEWELLED WORDS 204 IV DICKSON INGWORTH UNDER THE MICROSCOPE 237 V A QUARREL IN THE "MOST SELECT LOUNGE IN THE COUNTY" 246 VI AN _OMNES_ EXEUNT FROM MORTLAND ROYAL 269 BOOK THREE FRUIT OF THE DEAD SEA I THE GIRLS IN THE FOURTH STORY FLAT 283 II OVER THE RUBICON 295 III THIRST 318 IV THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS 330 V THE NIGHT JOURNEY FROM NICE WHEN MRS. DALY SPEAKS WORDS OF FIRE 353 VI GILBERT LOTHIAN'S DIARY 367 VII INGWORTH REDUX: TOFTREES COMPLACENS 394 VIII THE AMNESIC DREAM-PHASE 409 IX A STARTLING EXPERIENCE FOR "WOG" 436 EPILOGUE A YEAR LATER WHAT OCCURRED AT THE EDWARD HALL IN KINGSWAY 453 PROLOGUE PART I A BOOK OF POEMS ARRIVES FOR DR. MORTON SIMS "How many bards gild the lapses of time A few of them have ever been the food Of my delighted fancy." --_Keats._ The rain came down through the London fog like ribands of lead as the butler entered the library with tea, and pulling the heavy curtains shut out the picture of the sombre winter's afternoon. The man poked the fire into a blaze, switched on the electric lights, and putting a late edition of the _Westminster Gazette_ upon the table, left the room. For five minutes the library remained empty. The fire crackled and threw a glancing light upon the green and gold of the book shelves or sent changing expressions over the faces of the portraits. The ghostly blue flame which burnt under a brass kettle on the tea table sang like a mosquito, and from the square outside came the patter of rain, the drone of passing taxi-cabs, and the occasional beat of horses' hoofs which made an odd flute-like noise upon the wet wood pavement. Then the door opened and Dr. Morton Sims, the leading authority in England upon Inebriety, entered his study. The doctor was a slim man of medium height. His moustache and pointed beard were grey and the hair was thinning upon his high forehead. His movements were quick and alert without suggesting nervousness or hurry, and a steady flame burned in brown eyes which were the most remarkable feature of his face. The doctor drew up a chair to the fire and made himself a cup of weak tea, pouring a little lime-juice into it instead of milk. As he sipped he gazed into the pink and amethyst heart of the fire. His eyes were abstracted--turned inwards upon himself so to speak--and the constriction of thought drew grey threads across his brow. After about ten minutes, and when he had finished his single cup of tea, Dr. Morton Sims opened the evening paper and glanced rapidly up and down the broad, well-printed columns. His eye fell upon a small paragraph at the bottom of the second news-sheet which ran thus:-- "Hancock, the Hackney murderer, is to be executed to-morrow morning in The North London Prison at eight o'clock. It is understood that he has refused the ministrations of the Prison Chaplain and seems indifferent to his fate." The paper dropped from the doctor's hands and he sighed. The paragraph might or might not be accurate--that remained to be seen--but it suggested a curious train of thought to his mind. The man who was to be hanged in a few hours had committed a murder marked by every circumstance of callousness and cunning. The facts were so sinister and cold that the horrible case had excited no sympathy whatever. Even the silly faddists who generally make fools of themselves on such an occasion in England had organised no petition for reprieve. Morton Sims was one of those rare souls whose charity of mind, as well as of action, was great. He always tried to take the other side, to combat and resist the verdict passed by the world upon the unhappy and discredited. But in the case of this murderer even he could have had no sympathy, if he had not known and understood something about the man which no one in the country understood, and only a few people would have been capable of realising if they had been enlightened. It was his life-work to understand why deeds like this were done. A clock upon the high mantel of polished oak struck five. The doctor rose from his chair and stretched himself, and as he did this the wrinkles faded from his forehead, while his eyes ceased to be clouded by abstraction. Morton Sims, in common with many successful men, had entire control over his own mind. He perfectly understood the structure and the working of the machine that secretes thought. In his mental context correct muscular co-ordination, with due action of the reflexes, enabled him to put aside a subject with the precision of a man closing a cupboard door. His mind was divided into thought-tight compartments. It was so now. He wished to think of the murderer in North London Prison no more at the moment, and immediately the subject passed away from him. At that moment the butler re-entered with some letters and a small parcel upon a tray. "The five o'clock post, sir," he said, putting the letters down upon the table. "Oh, very well, Proctor," the doctor answered. "Is everything arranged for Miss Sims and Mrs. Daly?" "Yes, sir. Fires are lit in both the bedrooms, and dinner is for half-past six. The boat train from Liverpool gets in to Euston at a quarter to. The brougham will be at the station in good time. They will have a cold journey I expect, sir." "No, I don't think so, Proctor. The Liverpool boat-trains are most comfortable and they will have had tea. Very well, then." The butler went away. Morton Sims looked at the clock. It was ten minutes past five. His sister and her friend, who had arrived at Liverpool from New York a few hours ago would not arrive in London before six. He looked at the four or five letters on the tray but did not open any of them. The label upon the parcel bore handwriting that he knew. He cut the string and opened that, taking from it a book bound in light green and a letter. Both were from his great friend Bishop Moultrie, late of Simla and now rector of Great Petherwick in Norfolk, Canon of Norwich, and a sort of unofficial second suffragan in that enormous diocese. "My dear John," ran the letter, "Here is the book that I was telling you of at the Athenæum last week. You may keep this copy, and I have put your name in it. The author, Gilbert Lothian, lives near me in Norfolk. I know him a little and he has presented me with another copy himself. You won't agree with some of the thoughts, one or two of the poems you may even dislike. But on the whole you will be as pleased and interested as I am and you will recognise a genuine new inspiration--such a phenomenon now-a-days. Such verse must leave every reader with a quickened sense of the beauty and compass of human feeling, to say nothing of its special appeal to Xn thinkers. Some of it is like George Herbert made musical. Lothian is Crashaw born again, but born greater--sometimes a Crashaw who has been listening to some one playing Chopin! But read for yourself. Give my regards to your sister when she returns. I hear from many sources of the great mark her speeches have made at the American Congress and I am anxiously hoping to meet Mrs. Daly during her stay over here. She must be a splendid woman! Helena sends all kind remembrances and hopes to see you here soon. Yours affectionately, W. D. MOULTRIE." Three quarters of an hour were at his disposal. Morton Sims took up the book, which bore the title "SURGIT AMARI" upon the cover, and began to read. Like many other members of his profession he was something of a man of letters. For him the life-long pursuit of science had been humanised and sweetened by art. Ever since his days at Harrow with his friend, the Bishop, he had loved books. He read very slowly the longish opening poem only, applying delicate critical tests to every word; analytic and scientific still in the temper of his mind, and distrusting the mere sensuous impression of a first glance. This new man, this Gilbert Lothian, would be great. He would make his way by charm, the charm of voice, of jewel-like language, above all by the intellectual charm of new, moving, luminous ideas. At three minutes to six the doctor closed the book and waited. Almost as the clock struck the hour, he heard his motor-brougham stop outside the house, and hurrying out into the hall had opened the door before the butler could reach it. Two tall women in furs came into the hall. The brother and sister kissed each other quietly, but their embrace was a long one and there was something that vibrated deep down in the voices of their greeting. Then Miss Morton Sims turned to the other lady. "Forgive me, Julia," she said, in her clear bell-like voice--in America they had said that her voice "tolled upon the ear"--"But I haven't seen him for five months. John, here is Julia Daly at last!" The doctor took his guest's hand. His face was bright and eager as he looked at the American woman. She was tall, dressed with a kind of sumptuous good taste, and the face under its masses of grey hair shone with a Minerva-like wisdom and serenity. "Welcome," the doctor said simply. "We have been friends so long, we have corresponded so often, it is a great joy to me to meet you at last!" The three people entered the library for a moment, exchanging the happy commonplaces of greeting, and then the two women went up to their rooms. "Dinner at half past six," the doctor called after them. "I knew you'd want it. We can have a long talk then. At eight I have to go out upon an important errand." He stood in front of the library fire, thinking about the new arrivals and smoking a cigarette. His sister Edith had always lived with him, had shared his hopes, his theories and his work. He was the great scientist slowly getting deep down, discovering the laws which govern the vital question of Alcoholism. She was the popular voice, one of the famous women leaders of the Temperance movement, the most lucid, the least emotional of them all. Her name was familiar to every one in England. Her brother gave her the weapons with which she fought. His theories upon Temperance Reform were quite opposed to the majority of those held by earnest workers in the same field, but he and his sister were beginning to form a strong party of influential people who thought with them. Mrs. Daly was, in America, very much what Edith Morton Sims was in Great Britain--perhaps even more widely known. Apart from her propaganda she was one of the few great women orators living, and in her case also, inspiration came from the English doctor, while she was making his beliefs and schemes widely known in the United States. As he waited in the library, the doctor thought that probably no man had ever had such noble helpers as these two women to whom such great gifts had been given. His heart was very full of love for his sister that night, of gratitude and admiration for the stately lady who had come to be his guest and whom he now met in the flesh for the first time. For the first part of dinner the ladies were very full of their recent campaign in America. There was an infinity of news to tell, experiences and impressions must be recorded, progress reported. The eager sparkling talk of the two women was delightful to the doctor, and he was especially pleased with the conversation of Mrs. Daly. Every word she spoke fell with the right ring and chimed, he seemed to have known her for years--as indeed he had done, through the medium of her letters. Conversation, which with people like these is a sort of music, resembles the progress of harmonics in this also--that a lull arrives with mathematical incidence when a certain stage is reached in the progress of a theme. It happened so now, at a certain stage of dinner. There was much more to be said, but all three people had reached a momentary pause. The butler came into the room just then, with a letter. "This has just come by messenger from North London Prison, sir," he said, unable to repress a faint gleam of curiosity in his eyes. With a gesture of apology, the doctor opened the envelope. "Very well," he said, in a moment or two. "I need not write an answer. But go to the library, Proctor, and ring up the North London Prison. Say Doctor Morton Sims' thanks and he will be there punctually at half past eight." The servant withdrew and both the ladies looked inquiringly at the doctor. "It is a dreadful thing," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "but I may as well tell you. It must go no further though. A wretched man is to be executed to-morrow and I have to go and see him." Edith shuddered. "How frightful," she said, growing rather pale; "but why, John? How does it concern you? Are you forced to go?" He nodded. "I must go," he said, "though it is the most painful thing I have ever had to do. It is Hancock, the Hackney murderer." Two startled faces were turned to him now, and a new atmosphere suddenly seemed to have come into the warm luxurious room, something that was cold, something that had entered from outside. "You don't know," he went on. "Of course you have been out of England for some months. Well, it is this. Hancock is a youngish man of five and twenty. He was a chemist at Hackney, and of quite exceptional intelligence. He was at one time an assistant at Williamsons' in Oxford Street, where some of my prescriptions are made up and where I buy drugs for experimental purposes. I took rather an interest in him several years ago. He passed all his examinations with credit and became engaged to a really charming young woman, who was employed in a big ladies' shop in Regent Street. He wanted to set up in business for himself, very naturally, and I helped him with a money loan. He married the girl, bought a business at Hackney, and became prosperous enough in a moderate sort of way. He paid me back the hundred pounds I lent him and from time to time I heard that things were going on very well. He was respected in the district, and his wife especially was liked. She was a good and religious woman and did a lot of work for a local church. They appeared to be a most devoted couple." The doctor stopped in his story and glanced at the set faces turned towards him. He poured some water into a tumbler and drank it. "Oh, it's a hideous story," he said, with some emotion and marked distaste in his voice. "I won't go into the details. Hancock poisoned his wife with the most calculating and wicked cunning. He had become enamoured of a girl in the neighbourhood and he wanted to get rid of his wife in order to marry her. His wife adored him. She had been a perfect wife to him, but it made no difference. The thing was discovered, as such things nearly always are, he was condemned to death and will be hanged to-morrow morning at breakfast time." "And you are going to see him _to-night_, John?" "Yes. It is my duty. I owe it to my work, and to the wretched man too. I was present at the trial. From the first I realised that there must have been some definite toxic influence at work on the man's mind to change him from an intelligent and well-meaning member of society into a ghastly monster of crime. I was quite right. It was alcohol. He had been secretly drinking for years, though, as strong-minded and cunning inebriates do, he had managed to preserve appearances. As you know, Edith, the Home Secretary is a friend of mine and interested in our work. Hancock has expressed a wish to see me, to give me some definite information about himself which will be of great use in my researches into the psychology of alcoholism. With me, the Home Secretary realises the value of such an opportunity, and as it is the convict's earnest wish, I am given the fullest facilities for to-night. Of course the matter is one of absolute privacy. There would be an outcry among the sentimental section of the public if it were known. But it is my clear duty to go." There was a dead silence in the room. Mrs. Daly played uneasily with her napkin ring. Suddenly it escaped her nervous fingers and rolled up against a tumbler with a loud ringing sound. She started and seemed to awake from a bitter dream. "Again!" she said in a low voice that throbbed with pain. "At all hours, in all places, we meet it! The scourge of humanity, the Fiend Alcohol! The curse of the world!--how long, how long?" PART II THE MURDERER "Ma femme est morte, je suis libre! Je puis donc boire tout mon soûl. Lorsque je rentrais sans un sou, Ses cris me déchiraient la fibre." --_Baudelaire._ The rain had ceased but the night was bitter cold, as Dr. Morton Sims' motor went from his house in Russell Square towards the North London Prison. A pall of fog hung a few hundred feet above London. The brilliant artificial lights of the streets glowed with a hard and rather ghastly radiance. As the car rolled down this and that roaring thoroughfare, the people in it seemed to Morton Sims to be walking like marionettes. The driver in front moved mechanically like a clockwork puppet, the town seemed fantastic and unreal to-night. A heavy depression weighed upon the doctor's senses. His heart beat slowly. Some other artery within him was throbbing like a funeral drum. It had come upon him suddenly as he left the house. He had never, in all his life, known anything like it before. Perhaps the mournful words of the American woman had been the cause. Her deep contralto voice tolled in his ears still. Some white cell in the brain was affected, the nerves of his body were in revolt. The depression grew deeper and deeper. A nameless malady of the soul was upon him, he had a sick horror of his task. The hands in his fur gloves grew wet and there was a salt taste in his mouth. The car left ways that were familiar. Presently it turned into a street of long houses. The street rose steeply before, and was outlined by a long, double row of gas-lamps, stretching away to a point. It was quite silent, and the note of the car's engine sank a full tone as the ascent began. Through the window in front, and to the left of the chauffeur, the doctor could see the lamps running past him, and suddenly he became aware of a vast blackness, darker than the houses, deeper than the sky, coming to meet him. Incredibly huge and sinister, a precipice, a mountain of stone, a nightmare castle whose grim towers were lost in night, closed the long road and barred all progress onward. It was the North London Prison, hideous by day, frightful by night, the frontier citadel of a land of Death and gloom and shadows. The doctor left his car and told the man to return in an hour and wait for him. He stood before a high arched gateway. In this gateway was a door studded with sexagonal bosses of iron. Above the door was a gas-lamp. Hanging to the side of this door was an iron rod terminating in a handle of brass. This was the bell. A sombre silence hung over everything. The roar of London seemed like a sound heard in a vision. A thin night wind sighed like a ghost in the doctor's ear as he stood before the ultimate reality of life, a reality surpassing the reality of dreams. He stretched out his arm and pulled the bell. The smooth and sudden noise of oiled steel bars sliding in their grooves was heard, and then a gentle "thud" as they came to rest. A small wicket door in the great ones opened. A huge sombre figure filled it and there was a little musical jingle of keys. The visitor's voice was muffled as he spoke. In his own ears it sounded strange. "I am Dr. Morton Sims," he said. "I have a special permit from the Home Secretary for an interview with the convict Hancock." The figure moved aside. The doctor stepped in through the narrow doorway. There was a sharp click, a jingle of keys, the thud of the steel bars as they went home and a final snap, three times repeated--snap--snap--snap. A huge, bull-necked man in a dark uniform and a peaked cap, stood close to the doctor--strangely close, he thought with a vague feeling of discomfort. From an open doorway set in a stone wall, orange-coloured light was pouring from a lit interior. Framed in the light were two other dark figures in uniform. Morton Sims stood immediately under the gate tower of the prison. A lamp hung from the high groined roof. Beyond was another iron-studded door, and on either side of this entrance hall were lit windows. "You are expected, sir," said the giant with the keys. "Step this way if you please." Sims followed the janitor into a bare room, brilliantly illuminated by gas. At the end near the door a fire of coke and coal was glowing. A couple of warders, youngish military-looking men, with bristling moustaches, were sitting on wooden chairs by the fire and reading papers. They rose and saluted as the doctor came in. At the other end of the room, an elderly man, clean shaved save for short side whiskers which were turning grey, was sitting at a table on which were writing materials and some books which looked like ledgers. "Good-evening, sir," he said, deferentially, as Doctor Sims was taken up to him. "You have your letter I suppose?" Sims handed it to him, and pulling on a pair of spectacles the man read it carefully. "I shall have to keep this, sir," he said, putting it under a paper-weight. "My orders are to send you to the Medical Officer at once. He will take you to the condemned cell and do all that is necessary. The Governor sends his compliments and if you should wish to see him after your interview he will be at your service." "I don't think I shall want to trouble Colonel Wilde, thank you," said the doctor. "Very good, sir. Of course you can change your mind if you wish, afterwards. But the Governor's time is certainly very much taken up. It always is on the night before an execution. Jones, take this gentleman to the Medical Officer." Again the cold air, as Morton Sims left the room with one of the warders. Again the sound of sliding bars and jingling keys, the soft closing of heavy doors. Then a bare, whitewashed hall, with a long counter like that of a cloak-room at a railway station, a weighing machine, gaunt anthropometrical instruments standing against the walls, and iron doors on every side--all seen under the dim light of gas-jets half turned down. "The reception room, sir," said the warder, in a quiet voice, unlocking one of the doors, and showing a long corridor, much better lighted, stretching away for a considerable distance. The man stepped through with the noiseless footfall of a cat. The doctor followed him, and as he did so his boots echoed upon the stone floor. The noise was startling in this place of silence, and for the first time Sims realised that his guide was wearing shoes soled with felt. They went down the corridor, the warder's feet making a soft padding sound, the steel chain that hung in a loop from his belt of black leather shining in the gas light. Almost at the end of the passage they came to a door--an ordinary varnished door with a brass handle--at which the man rapped. "Come in," cried a voice. The warder held the door open. "The gentleman to see Hancock, sir," he said. The chief prison doctor, a youngish-looking, clean-shaved man, rose from his chair. "Wait in the passage till I call you," he said. "How-do-you-do, Dr. Morton Sims. We had your telephone message some time ago. You are very punctual! Do sit down for a minute." Sims sank into an armchair, with a little involuntary sigh of relief. The room in which he found himself was comfortable and ordinary. A carpet was on the floor, a bright fire burned upon the hearth, there was a leather-covered writing table with books and a stethoscope upon it. The place was normal. "My name is Marriott, of 'Barts'," said the medical officer. "Do take off your coat, sir, that fur must be frightfully hot in here and you won't need it until you leave the prison again." "Thank you, I will," Sims answered, and already his voice had regained its usual calmness, his eyes their steady glow. Anticipation was over, the deep depression was passing away. There was work to be done and his nerves responded to the call upon them. "There is no hitch, I suppose?" "None whatever. Hancock is waiting for you, and anxious to see you." "It will be very painful," Sims answered in a thoughtful voice, looking at the fire. "I knew the man in his younger days, poor, wretched creature. Is he resigned?" "I think so. We've done all we could for him; we always do. As far as I can judge, and I have been present at nine executions, he will die quite calmly. 'I shall be glad when it's over,' he said to me this morning." "And his physical condition?" "Just beginning to improve. If I had him here for six months under the second class regulations--I should not certify him for hard labour--I could turn him out in fair average health. He's a confirmed alcoholic subject, of course. It's been a case of ammonium bromide and milk diet ever since his condemnation. For the first two days I feared delirium tremens from the shock. But we tided over that. He'll be able to talk to you all right, sir. He's extremely intelligent, and I should say that the interview should prove of great value." "He has absolutely refused to see the Chaplain? I read so in to-night's paper." "Yes. Some of them do you know. The religious sense isn't developed at all in him. It will be all the easier for him to-morrow." "How so?" "So many of them become religious on the edge of the drop simply out of funk--nervous collapse and a sort of clutching at a chance in the next world. They often struggle and call out when they're being pinioned. It's impossible to give them any sort of anæsthetic." "Is that done then? I didn't know." "It's not talked about, of course, sir. It's quite unofficial and it's not generally known. But we nearly always give them something if it's possible, and then they know nothing of what's happening." Sims nodded. "The best way," he said sadly, "the lethal chamber would be better still." There was a momentary silence between the two men. The prison doctor felt instinctively that his distinguished visitor shrank from the ordeal before him and was bracing himself to go through with it. He was unwilling to interrupt such a famous member of his profession. It was an event to meet him, a thing which he would always remember. Suddenly Sims rose from his chair. "Now, then," he said with a rather wan smile, "take me to the poor fellow." Dr. Marriott opened the door and made a sign to the waiting warder. Together the three men went to the end of the passage. Another door was unlocked and they found themselves in a low stone hall, with a roof of heavily barred ground glass. There was a door on each side of the place. "That's the execution room," said Dr. Marriott in a whisper, pointing to one of the doors. "The other's the condemned cell. It's only about ten steps from one to the other. The convict, of course, never knows that. But from the time he leaves his cell to the moment of death is rarely more than forty-five seconds." The voice of the prison doctor, though very low in key, was not subdued by any note of awe. The machinery of Death had no terrors for him. He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, with an unconscious note of the showman. The curator of a museum might have shown his treasures thus to an intelligent observer. For a second of time--so strange are the operations of the memory cells--another and far distant scene grew vivid in the mind of Morton Sims. Once more he was paying his first visit to Rome, and had been driven from his hotel upon the Pincio to the nine o'clock Mass at St. Peter's. A suave guide had accompanied him, and among the curious crowd that thronged the rails, had told in a complacent whisper of this or that Monsignore who said or served the Mass. Dr. Marriott went to the door opposite to the one he had pointed out as the death-chamber. He moved aside a hanging disc of metal on a level with his eyes, and peered through a glass-covered spy-hole into the condemned cell. After a scrutiny of some seconds, he slid the disc into its place and rapped softly upon the door. Almost immediately it was opened a foot or so, silently, as the door of a sick-room is opened by one who watches within. There was a whispered confabulation, and a warder came out. "This gentleman," said the Medical Officer, "as you have already been informed by the Governor, is to have an interview with the convict absolutely alone. You, and the man with you, are to sit just outside the cell and to keep it under continual observation through the glass. If you think it necessary you are to enter the cell at once. And at the least gesture of this gentleman you will do so too. But otherwise, Dr. Morton Sims is to be left alone with the prisoner for an hour. You quite understand?" "Perfectly, sir." "You anticipate no trouble?--how is he?" "Quiet as a lamb, sir. There's no fear of any trouble with him. He's cheerful and he's been talking a lot about himself--about his violin playing mostly, and a week he had in Paris. His hands are twitching a bit, but less than usual with them." "Very well. Jones will remain here and will fetch me at once if I am wanted. Now take Dr. Morton Sims in." The door was opened. A gust of hot air came from within as Morton Sims hesitated for a moment upon the threshold. The warm air, indeed, was upon his face, but once again the chill was at his heart. Lean and icy fingers seemed to grope about it. At the edge of what abysmal precipice, and the end of what sombre perspective of Fate was he standing? From youth upwards he had travelled the goodly highways of life. He had walked in the clear light, the four winds of heaven had blown upon him. Sunshine and Tempest, Dawn and Dusk, fair and foul weather had been his portion in common with the rest of the wayfaring world. But now he had strayed from out the bright and strenuous paths of men. The brave high-road was far, far away. He had entered a strange and unfamiliar lane. The darkness had deepened. He had come into a marsh of miasmic mist lit up by pale fires that were not of heaven and where dreadful presences thronged the purple gloom. This was the end of all things. A life of shame closed here--through that door where a living corpse was waiting for him "pent up in murderers' hole." He felt a kindly and deprecating hand upon his arm. "You will find it quite ordinary, really, sir. You needn't hesitate in the very least"--thus the consoling voice of Marriott. Morton Sims walked into the cell. Another warder who had been sitting there glided out. The door was closed. The doctor found himself heartily shaking hands with someone whom he did not seem to know. And here again, as he was to remember exactly two years afterwards, under circumstances of supreme mental anguish and with a sick recognition of past experience, his sensation was without precedent. Some one, was it not rather _something_? was shaking him warmly by the hand. A strained voice was greeting him. Yet he felt as if he were sawing at the arm of a great doll, not a live thing in which blood still circulated and systole and diastole still kept the soul co-ordinate and co-incident. Then that also went. The precipitate of long control was dropped into the clouded vessel of thought and it cleared again. The fantastic imaginings, the natural horror of a kind and sensitive man at being where he was, passed away. The keen scientist stood in the cell now, alert to perform the duty for which he was there. The room was of a fair size. In one corner was a low bed, with a blanket, sheet and pillow. In the centre, a deal table stood. A wooden chair, from which the convict had just risen, stood by the table, and upon it were a Bible, some writing materials, and a novel--bound in the dark-green of the prison library--by "Enid and Herbert Toftrees." Hancock wore a drab prison suit, which was grotesquely ill-fitting. He was of medium height, and about twenty-five years of age. He was fat, with a broad-shouldered corpulence which would have been less noticeable in a man who was some inches taller. His face was ordinarily clean-shaven, but there was now a disfiguring stubble upon it, a three weeks' growth which even the scissors of the prison-barber had not been allowed to correct and which gave him a sordid and disgusting aspect. The face was fattish, but even the bristling hairs, which squirted out all over the lower part, could not quite disguise a curious suggestion of contour about it. It should have been a pure oval, one would have thought, and in the gas-light, as the head moved, it almost seemed to have that for fugitive instants. It was a contour veiled by a dreadful something that was, but ought not to have been there. The eyes were grey and had a certain capability of expression. It was now enigmatic and veiled. The mouth was by far the most real and significant feature of the face. In all faces, mouths generally are. The murderer's mouth was small. It was clearly and definitely cut, with an undefinable hint of breeding in it which nothing else about the man seemed to warrant. But despite the approach to beauty which, in another face, it might have had, slyness and egotism lurked in every curve. . . . "So that's how it first began, Doctor. First one with one, then one with another. You know!" The conversation was in full swing now. The doll had come to life--or it was not quite a doll yet and some of the life that was ebbing from it still remained. The voice was low, confidential, horribly "just between you and me." But it was a pleased voice also, full of an eager and voluble satisfaction,--the last chance of toxic insanity to explain itself! The lurid swan-song of a conceited and poisoned man. . . . "Business was going well. There seemed no prospect of a child just then, so Mary got in with Church work at St. Philip's. That brought a lot more customers to the shop too. Fancy soaps, scents and toilette articles and all that. Dr. Mitchell of Hackney, was a church-warden at St. Philip's and in time all his prescriptions came to me. No one had a better chance than I did. And Mary was that good to me." . . . Two facile, miserable tears rolled from the man's glazing eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. "You can't think, sir, being a bachelor. Anything I'd a mind to fancy! Sweet-breads she could cook a treat, and Burgundy we used to 'ave--California wine, 'Big Bush' brand in flagons at two and eight. And never before half-past seven. Late dinner you might have called it, while my assistant was in the shop. And after that I'd play to her on the violin. Nothing common, good music--'Orer pro Nobis' and 'Rousoh's Dream.' You never heard me play did you? I was in the orchestra of the Hackney Choral Society. I remember one day . . ." "And then?" the Doctor said, gently. He had already gathered something, but not all that he had come to gather. The minutes were hurrying by. The man looked up at the doctor with a sudden glance, almost of hatred. For a single instant the abnormal egoism of the criminal, swelled out upon the face and turned it into the mask of a devil. Dr. Morton Sims spoke in a sharp, urgent voice. "Why did you ask me to come here, Hancock?" he said. "You know that I am glad to be here, if I can be of any use to you. But you don't seem to want the sort of sympathetic help that the chaplain here could give you far better than I can. What do you want to say to me? Have you really anything to say? If you have, be a man and say it!" There was a brief but horrible interlude. "Well, you are cruel, doctor, not 'arf!--and me with only an hour or two to live,"--the man said with a cringing and sinister grin. The doctor frowned and looked at the man steadily. Then he asked a sudden question. "Who were your father and mother?" he said. The convict looked at the doctor with startled eyes. "Who told you?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew!" "Answer my question, Hancock. Only a few minutes remain." "Will it be of use, sir?" "Of use?" "In your work--It was so that I could leave a warning to others, that I wanted to see you." "Of great use, if you will tell me." "Well, Doctor, I never thought to tell any one. It's always been a sore point with me, but I wasn't born legitimate! I tried hard to make up for it, and I did so too! No one was more respectable than I was in Hackney, until the drink came along and took me." "Yes? Yes?"--The hunter was on the trail now, Heredity? Reversion? At last the game was flushed!--"Yes, tell me!" "My father was a gentleman, Doctor. That's where I got my refined tastes. And that's where I got my love of drink--damn him! God Almighty curse him for the blood he gave me!" "Yes? Yes?" "My father was old Mr. Lothian, the solicitor of Grey's Inn Square. He was a well-known gentleman. My mother was his housekeeper, Eliza Hancock. My father was a widower when my mother went into his service. He had another son, at one of the big schools for gentlemen. That was his son by his real wife--Gilbert he was called, and what money was left went to him. My father was a drunkard. He never was sober--what you might rightly call sober--for years, I've heard . . . Mother died soon after Mr. Lothian did. She left a hundred pounds with my Aunt, to bring me up and educate me. Aunt Ellen--but I'm a gentleman's son, Doctor!--drunken old swine he was too! What about my blood now? Wasn't my veins swollen with drink from the first? Christ! _you_ ought to know--you with your job to know--_Now_ are you happy? I'm not a _love_ child, I'm a _drink_ child, that's what I am! Son of old Mr. Lothian, the gentleman-drunkard, brother of his son who's a gentleman somewhere, I don't doubt! P'r'aps 'e mops it up 'imself!--shouldn't wonder, this--brother of mine!" The man's voice had risen into a hoarse scream. "Have you got what you came to get?" he yelled. His eyes blazed, his mouth writhed. There was a crash as the deal table was overturned, and he leapt at the doctor. In a second the room was full of people. Dark figures held down something that yelled and struggled on the truckle bed. It was done with wonderful deftness, quickness and experience. . . . Morton Sims stood outside the closed door of the condemned cell. A muffled noise reached him from within, the prison doctor was standing by him and looking anxiously into his face. --"I can't tell you how sorry I am, Dr. Morton Sims. I really can't say enough. I had no idea that the latent toxic influence was so strong. . . ." On the other side of the little glass-roofed hall the door was open. Another cell was shown, brilliantly lit. Two men, in their shirt-sleeves, were bending over a square, black aperture in the wooden floor. Some carpenters' tools were lying about. An insignificant looking little man, with a fair moustache, was standing in the doorway. "That'll be quite satisfactory, thank you," he was saying, "with just a drop of oil on the lever. And whatever you do, don't forget my chalk to mark where he's to stand." From behind the closed door of the condemned cell a strangulated, muffled noise could still be heard. "Not now!" said Dr. Marriott, as the executioner came up to him--"In half an hour. Now Dr. Morton Sims, please come away to my room. This must have been most distressing. I feel so much that it is my fault." . . . The two men stood at the Prison gate, Sims was shaking hands with the younger doctor. "Thank you very much indeed," he was saying. "How could you possibly have helped it?--You'll take steps--?" "I'm going back to the cell now. It's incipient delirium tremens of course--after all this time too! I shall inject hyoscene and he will know nothing more at all. He will be practically carried to the shed--Good-night! _Good_-night, sir. I hope I may have the pleasure of meeting you again." * * * * * The luxurious car rolled away from the Citadel of Death and Shadows--down the hill into London and into Life. The man within it was thinking deeply, sorting out and tabulating his impressions, sifting the irrelevant from what was of value, and making a précis of what he had gained. There were a dozen minor notes to be made in his book when he reached home. The changing quality of the man's voice, the ebb and flow of uncontrolled emotion, the latent fear--"I must be present at the post mortem to-morrow," he said to himself as a new idea struck him. "There should be much to be learnt from an examination of the Peripheral Nerves. And the brain too--there will be interesting indications in the cerebellum, and the association fibres." . . . The carriage swung again into the familiar parts of town. As he looked out of the windows at the lights and movement, Morton Sims forgot the purely scientific side of thought. The kindly human side of him reasserted itself. How infinitely sad it was! How deep the underlying horror of this sordid life-tragedy at the close of which he had been assisting! Who should say, who could define, the true responsibility of the man they were killing up there on the North London Hill? Predisposition to Alcohol, Reversion, Heredity!--was not the drunken old solicitor, long since dust, the true murderer of the gentle-mannered girl in Hackney? _Lothian_, the father of Gilbert Lothian the poet! the poet who certainly knew nothing of what was being done to the young man in the prison, who had probably never heard of his existence even. The "Fiend Alcohol" at work once more, planting ghastly growths behind the scutcheons of every family! A cunning murderer with a poisoned mind and body on one side, the brilliant young poet in the sunlight of success and high approbation upon the other! Mystery of mysteries that God should allow so foul a thing to dominate and tangle the fair threads and delicate tissues of life! "Well, that's that!" said the doctor, in a phrase he was fond of using when he dosed an episode in his mind. "I'll make my notes on Hancock's case and forget it until I find it necessary to use them in my work. And I'll lock up the poems Moultrie has sent me and I won't look at the book again for a month. Then I shall be able to read the verses for themselves and without any arrière-penseé. "But, I wonder . . . ?" The brougham stopped at the doctor's house in Russell Square. * * * * * BOOK ONE LOTHIAN IN LONDON "Myself, arch traitor to myself, My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, My clog whatever road I go." THE DRUNKARD CHAPTER I UNDER THE WAGGON-ROOF. A DINNER IN BRYANSTONE SQUARE "Le véritable Amphitryon est l'Amphitryon où l'on dine." --_Molière._ It was a warm night in July when Mr. Amberley, the publisher, entertained a few friends at dinner to meet Gilbert Lothian, the poet. Although the evening was extremely sultry and the houses of the West End were radiating the heat which they had stored up from the sun-rays during the day, Mr. Amberley's dining room was deliciously cool. The house was one of those roomy old-fashioned places still to be found unspoiled in Bryanstone Square, and the dining room, especially, was notable. It was on the first floor, over-looking the square, a long and lofty room with a magnificent waggon-roof which was the envy of every one who saw it, and gave the place extraordinary distinction. The walls were panelled with oak, which had been stained a curious green, that was not olive nor ash-green but partook of both--the veritable colour, indeed, of the grey-green olive trees that one sees on some terrace of the Italian Alps at dawn. The pictures were very few, considering the size of the room, and they were all quite modern--"In the movement"--as shrewd Mr. Amberley was himself. A portrait of Mrs. Amberley by William Nicholson, which was quite famous in its way, displayed all the severe pregnancy and almost solemn reserve of this painter. There was a pastel of Prydes' which showed--rather suggested--a squalid room in which a gentleman of 1800, with a flavour of Robert Macaire about him, stood in the full rays of the wine and honey-coloured light of an afternoon sun. Upon yet another panel was a painting upon silk by Charles Conder, inspired of course, by Watteau, informed by that sad and haunting catching after a fairyland never quite reached, which is the distinctive note of Conder's style, and which might well have served for an illustration to a grotesque fantasy of Heine. Mrs. Amberley loved this painting. She had a Pater-like faculty of reading into--or from--a picture, something which the artist never thought about at all, and she used to call this little masterpiece "An Ode of Horace in Patch, Powder and Peruque!" She adored these perfectly painted little snuff-box deities who wandered through shadowy mists of amethyst and rouge-de-fer in a fantastic wood. It is extremely interesting to discover, know of, or to sit at ease in a room which, in its way, is historic, and this is what the Amberleys' guests always felt, and were meant to feel. In its present form, and with its actual decorations, this celebrated room only dated from some fifteen years back. The Waggon-roof alone remained unaltered from its earlier periods. The Publishing house of Ince and Amberley had been a bulwark of the Victorian era, and not without some growing celebrity in the earlier Georgian Period. Lord Byron had spoken well of the young firm once, Rogers was believed to have advanced them money, and when that eminent Cornish pugilist "The Lamorna Cove" wrote his reminiscences they were published by Ince and Amberley, while old Lord Alvanley himself contributed a preface. From small beginnings came great things. The firm grew and acquired a status, and about this time, or possibly a little later, the dining-room at Bryanstone Square had come into being. Its walls were not panelled then in delicate green. They were covered with rich plum-coloured paper festooned by roses of high-gilt. In the pictures, with their heavy frames of gold, the dogs and stags of Landseer were let loose, or the sly sleek gipsies of Mr. Frith told rustic fortunes beneath the spreading chestnut trees. But Browning had dined there--in the later times--an inextinguishable fire just covered with a sprinkling of grey ash. With solemn ritual, Charles Dickens had brewed milk punch in an old bowl of Lowestoft china, still preserved in the drawing-room. The young Robert Cecil, in his early _Saturday Review_ days, had cracked his walnuts and sipped his "pint of port" with little thought of the high destiny to which he should come, and Alfred Tennyson, then Bohemian and unknown, had been allowed to vent that grim philosophy which is the reaction of all imaginative and sensitive natures against the seeming impossibility of success and being understood. The traditions of Ince and Amberley--its dignified and quiet home was in Hanover Square--had always been preserved. Its policy, at the same time, had continually altered with the passage of years and the change of the public taste. Yet, so carefully, and indeed so genuinely, had this been accomplished that none of the historic prestige of the business had been lost. It still stood as a bulwark of the old dignified age. A young modern author, whatever his new celebrity, felt that to be published by Ince and Amberley hall-marked him as it were. Younger firms, greedy of his momentary notoriety, might offer him better terms--and generally did--but Ince and Amberley conferred the Accolade! He was admitted to the Dining Room. John Amberley (the Inces had long since disappeared), at fifty was a great publisher, and a charming man of the world. He was one of the personalities of London, carrying out what heredity and natural aptitude had fitted him to do, and was this evening entertaining some literary personages of the day in the famous Dining Room. The Waggon-roof, which had looked down upon just such gatherings as these for generations, would, if it could have spoken, have discovered no very essential difference between this dinner party and others in the past. True, the walls were differently coloured and pictures which appealed to a different set of artistic conventions were hanging upon them. The people who were accustomed to meet round the table in 19-- were not dressed as other gatherings had been. There was no huge silver epergne in the centre of that table now. Nor did the Amberley at one end of it display his mastery of ritual carving. But the talk was the same. Words only were different. The guests' vocabularies were wider and less restrained. It was the music of piano and the pizzicato plucking of strings--there was no pompous organ note, no ore rotundo any more. They all talked of what they had done, were doing, and hoped to do. There was a hurry of the mind, inherent in people of their craft and like a man running, in all of them. The eyes of some of them burned like restless ghosts as they tried to explain themselves, display their own genius, become prophets and acquire honour in the heart of their own country. Yes! it had always been so! The brightest and most lucent brains had flashed into winged words and illuminated that long handsome room. And ever, at the head of the long table, there had been a bland, listening Amberley, catching, tasting and sifting the idea, analysing the constituents of the flash, balancing the brilliant theory against the momentary public taste. A kind, uncreative, managing Amberley! A fair and honest enough Amberley in the main. Serene, enthroned and necessary. The publisher was a large man, broad in the shoulder and slightly corpulent. There was something Georgian about him--he cultivated it rather, and was delighted when pleated shirts became again fashionable for evening wear. He had a veritable face of the Regency, more especially in profile, sensual, fine, a thought gluttonous and markedly intelligent. His voice was authoritative but bland, and frequently capable of a sympathetic interest which was almost musical. His love of letters was deep and genuine, his taste catholic and excellent, while many an author found real inspiration and intense pleasure in his personal praise. This was the cultured and human side of him, and he had another--the shrewd business man of Hanover Square. He was not, to use the slang of the literary agent, a "knifer." He paid die market price without being generous and he was perfectly honest in all his dealings. But his business in life was to sell books, and he permitted himself no experiments in failure. A writer--whether he produced good work or popular trash--must generally have his definite market and his more or less assured position, before Ince and Amberley would take him up. It was distinctly something for a member of the upper rank and files to say in the course of conversation, "Ince and Amberley are doing my new book, you know." To-night Amberley, as he sat at the head of his table towards the close of dinner, was in high good humour, and very pleasant with himself and his guests. The ladies had not yet gone away, coffee was being served at the table, and almost every one was smoking a cigarette. The party was quite a small one. There were only five guests, who, with Mr. and Mrs. Amberley and their only daughter Muriel, made up eight people in all. There was nothing ceremonious about it, and, though three of the guests were well known in the literary world, none of these were great, while the remaining couple were merely promising beginners. There was, therefore, considerable animation and gaiety round this hospitable table, with its squat candlesticks, of dark-green Serpentine and silver, the topaz-coloured shades, its gleaming surface of dark mahogany (Mrs. Amberley had eagerly adopted the new habit of having no white table-cloth), its really interesting old silver, and the square mats of pure white Egyptian linen in front of each person. In age, with the exception of Mr. Amberley and his wife, every one was young, while both host and hostess showed in perfection that modern grace of perfect correspondence with environment which seems to have quite banished the evidences of time's progress among the folk of to-day who know every one, appreciate everything and are extremely well-to-do. On Amberley's right hand sat Mrs. Herbert Toftrees, while her husband was at the other end of the table at the right hand of his hostess--Gilbert Lothian, the guest of the evening, being on Mrs. Amberley's left. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees were novelists whose combined names were household words all over England. Their books were signed by both of them--"Enid and Herbert Toftrees" and they were quite at the head of their own peculiar line of business. They knew exactly what they were doing--"selling bacon" they called it to their intimate friends--and were two of the most successful trades-people in London. Unlike other eminent purveyors of literary trash they were far too clever not to know that neither of them had a trace of the real fire, and if their constant and cynical disclaimer of any real talent sometimes seemed to betray a hidden sore, it was at least admirably truthful. They were shallow, clever, amusing people whom it was always pleasant to meet. They entertained a good deal and the majority of their guests were literary men and women of talent who fluttered like moths round the candle of their success. The talented writers who ate their dinners found a bitter joy in cursing a public taste which provided the Toftrees with several thousands a year, but they returned again and again, in the effort to find out how it was done. They also had visions of just such another delightful house in Lancaster Gate, an automobile identical in its horse-power and appointments, and were certain that if they could only learn the recipe and trick, wrest the magic formula from these wizards of the typewriter, all these things might be theirs also! The Herbert Toftrees themselves always appeared--in the frankest and kindest way--to be in thorough sympathy with such aspirations. Their candour was almost effusive. "Any one can do what we do" was their attitude. Herbert Toftrees himself, a young man with a rather carefully-cultivated, elderly manner, was particularly impressive. He had a deep voice and slow enunciation, which, when he was upon his own hearthrug almost convinced himself. "There is absolutely no reason," he would say, in tones which carried absolute conviction to his hearer at the moment, "why you shouldn't be making fifteen hundred a year in six months." But that was as far as it went. That was the voice of the genial host dispensing wines, entrées and advice, easy upon his own hearth, the centre of the one picture where he was certain of supremacy. But let eager and hungry genius call next day for definite particulars, instructions as to the preparations of a "popular" plot, hints as to the shop-girl's taste in heroines,--with hopes of introductory letters to the great firms who buy serials--and the greyest of grey dawns succeeded the rosy-coloured night. It was all vague and cloudy now. General principles were alone vouchsafed--indeed who shall blame the tradesman for an adroit refusal to give away the secrets of the shop? Genius retired--it happened over and over again--cursing successful mediocrity for its evasive cleverness, and with a deep hidden shame that it should have stooped so low, and so ineffectually! . . . "That's very true. What Toftrees says is absolutely true," Mr. Amberley said genially, turning to young Dickson Ingworth, who was sitting by his daughter Muriel. He nodded to the eager youth with a little private encouragement and hint of understanding which was very flattering. It was as who should say, "Here you are at my house. For the first time you have been admitted to the Dining Room. I have taken you up, I am going to publish a book of yours and see what you are made of. Gather honey while you may, young Dickson Ingworth!" Ingworth blushed slightly as the great man's encouraging admonitions fell upon him. He was not down from Oxford more than a year. He had written very little, Gilbert Lothian was backing him and introducing him to literary circles in town, he was abnormally conscious of his own good fortune, all nervous anxiety to be adequate--all ears. "Yes, sir," he said, with the pleasant boyish deference of an undergraduate to the Provost of his college--it sat gracefully upon his youth and was gracefully said. Then he looked reverentially at Toftrees and waited to hear more. Herbert Toftrees' face was large and clean shaven. His sleek hair was smoothly brushed over a somewhat protruding forehead. There was the coarse determined vigour about his brow that the bull-dog jaw is supposed to indicate in another type of face, and the eyes below were grey and steadfast. Toftrees stared at people with tremendous gravity. Only those who realised the shrewd emptiness behind them were able to discern what some one had once called their flickering "R.S.V.P. expression"--that latent hope that his vis-à-vis might not be finding him out after all! "I mean it," Toftrees said in his resonant, and yet quiet voice. "There really is no reason, Mr. Ingworth, why you should not be making an income of at least eight or nine hundred a year in twelve months' time." "Herbert has helped such a lot of boys," said Mrs. Toftrees, confidentially, to her host, although there was a slight weariness in her voice, the suggestion of a set phrase. "But who is Mr. Dickson Ingworth? What has he done?--he is quite good-looking, don't you think?" "Oh, a boy, a mere boy!" the big red-faced publisher purred in an undertone. "Lothian brought him to me first in Hanover Square. In fact, Lothian asked if he might bring him here to-night. We are doing a little book of his--the first novel he will have had published." Mrs. Toftrees pricked up her ears, so to say. She was really the business head of the Toftrees combination. Her husband did the ornamental part and provided the red-hot plots, but it was she who had invented and carried out the "note," and it was she who supervised the contracts. As Mr. Amberley was well aware, what this keen, pretty and well-dressed little woman didn't know about publishing was worth nothing whatever. "Oh, really," she said, in genuine surprise. "Rather unusual for you, isn't it? Is the boy a genius then?" Amberley shook his head. He hated everything the worthy Toftrees wrote--he had never been able to read more than ten lines of any of the half-dozen books he had published for them. But the Hanover Square side of him had a vast respect for the large sums the couple charmed from the pockets of the public no less than the handsome percentage they put into his own. And a confidential word on business matters with a pretty and pleasant little woman was not without allurement even under the Waggon-roof itself. "Not at all. Not at all," he murmured into a pretty ear. "We are not paying the lad any advance upon royalties!" He laughed a well-fed laugh. "Ince and Amberley's list," he continued, "is accepted for itself!" Mrs. Toftrees smiled back at him. "_Of course_," she murmured. "But I wasn't thinking of the financial side of it. Why? . . . why are you departing from your usual traditions and throwing the shadow of your cloak over this fortunate boy?--if I may ask, of course!" "Well," Amberley answered, and her keen ear detected--or thought that she detected--a slight reluctance in his voice. . . . "Well, Lothian brought him to me, you know." Mrs. Toftrees' face changed and Amberley saw it. She was looking down the table to where Lothian was sitting. Her face was a little flushed, and the expression upon it--though not allowed to be explicit--was by no means agreeable. "Lothian's work is very wonderful," she said--and there was a question in her voice "--you think so, Mr. Amberley?" Bryanstone Square, the Dining Room, asserted itself. Truth to tell, Amberley felt a little uncomfortable and displeased with himself. The fun of the dinner table--the cigarette moment--had rather escaped him. He had got young people round him to-night. He wanted them to be jolly. He had meant to be a good host, to forget his dignities, to unbend and be jolly with them--this fiction-mongering woman was becoming annoying. "I certainly do, Mrs. Toftrees," he replied, with dignity, and a distinct tone of reproof in his voice. Mrs. Toftrees, the cool tradeswoman, gave the great man a soothing smile of complete understanding and agreement. Mr. Amberley turned to a girl upon his left who had been taken in by Dickson Ingworth and who had been carrying on a laughing conversation with him during dinner. She was a pretty girl, a friend of his daughter Muriel. He liked pretty girls, and he smiled half paternally, half gallantly at her. "Won't you have another cigarette, Miss Wallace?" he said, pushing a silver box towards her. "They are supposed to be rather wonderful. My cousin Eustace Amberley is in the Egyptian Army and an aide-de-camp to the Khedive. The Khedive receives the officers every month and every one takes away a box of five hundred when they leave the palace--His Highness' own peculiar brand. These are some of them, which Eustace sent me." "May I?" she answered, a rounded, white arm stretched out to the box. "They certainly are wonderful. I have to be content with Virginian at home. I buy fifty at a time, and a tin costs one and threepence." She lit it delicately from the little methyl lamp he passed her, and the big man's kind eyes rested on her with appreciation. She was, he thought, very like a Madonna of Donatello, which he had seen and liked in Florence. The abundant hair was a dark nut-brown, almost chocolate in certain lights. The eyes were brown also, the complexion the true Italian morbidezza, pale, but not pallid, like a furled magnolia bud. And the girl's mouth was charming--"delicious" was the word in the mind of this connoisseur. It was as clear-cut as that of a girl's face in a Grecian frieze of honey-coloured travertine, there was a serene sweetness about it. But when she smiled the whole face was changed. The young brown eyes lit up and visited others with their own, as a bee visits flowers. The smile was radiant and had a conscious provocation in it. The paleness of the cheeks showed such tints of pearl and rose that they seemed carved from the under surface of a sea-shell. And, as Amberley looked, wishing that he had talked more to her during dinner, startled suddenly to discover such loveliness, he saw her lips suddenly glow out into colour in an extraordinary way. It wasn't scarlet--unpainted lips are never really that--but of the veiled blood-colour that is warm and throbs with life; a colour that hardly any of the names we give to pigment can properly describe or fix. What did he know about her? he asked himself as she was lighting her second cigarette. Hardly anything! She was a girl friend of his daughter's--they had been to the same school together at Bath--an orphan he thought, without any people. She earned her own living--assistant Librarian, he remembered, at old Podley's library. Yes, Podley the millionaire nonconformist who was always endowing and inventing fads! And Muriel had told him that she wrote a little, short stories in some of the women's papers. . . . "At any rate," he said, while these thoughts were flashing through his mind "you smoke as if you liked it! All the girls smoke now, Muriel is inveterate, but I often have a suspicion that many of them do it because it's the fashion." Rita Wallace gave a wise little shake of her head. "Oh, no," she answered. "Men know so little about girls! You think we're so different from you in lots of things, but we aren't really. Muriel and I always used to smoke at school--it doesn't matter about telling now, does it?" Mr. Amberley made a mock expression of horror. "Good heavens!" he said, "what appalling revelations for a father to endure! I wish I had had an inkling of it at the time!" "You couldn't have, Mr. Amberley," she answered, and her smile was more provocative than ever, and delightfully naughty. "We used to do it in the bathroom. The hot vapour from the bath took all the smell of tobacco away. I discovered that!" "Tell me some more, my dear. What other iniquities did you all perpetrate--and I thought Muriel such a pattern girl." "Oh, we did lots of things, Mr. Amberley, but it wouldn't be fair to give them away. We were little devils, nearly all of us!" She gave him a little Parisian salute from the ends of her eyelids, instinct with a kind of impish innocence, the sort of thing that has an irresistible appeal to a middle-aged man of the world. "Muriel!" Mr. Amberley said to his daughter, "Miss Wallace has been telling me dreadful things about your schooldays. I am grieved and pained!" Muriel Amberley was a slim girl with dark smouldering eyes and a faint enigmatic smile. Her voice was very clear and fresh and there was a vibrant note in it like the clash of silver bells. She had been talking to Mrs. Toftrees, but she looked up as her father spoke. "Don't be a wretch, Cupid!" she said, to Rita Wallace over the table. "Cupid? Why Cupid?" Herbert Toftrees asked, in his deep voice. "Oh, it's a name we gave her at school," Muriel answered, looking at her friend, and both girls began to laugh. Mr. Amberley re-engaged the girl in talk. "You have done some literary work, have you not?" he asked kindly, and in a lower voice. Again her face changed. Its first virginal demureness, the sudden flashing splendour of her smile, had gone alike. It became eager and wistful too. "You can't call it _that_, Mr. Amberley," she replied in a voice pitched to his own key. "I've written a few stories which have been published and I've had three articles in the Saturday edition of the _Westminster_--that's nearly everything. But I can't say how I love it all! It is delightful to have my work among books--at the Podley Library you know. I learned typewriting and shorthand and was afraid that I should have to go into a city office--and then this turned up." She hesitated for a moment, and then stopped shyly. He could see that the girl was afraid of boring him. A moment before, she had been perfectly collected and aware--a girl in his own rank of life responsive to his chaff. Now she realised that she was speaking of things very near and dear to her--and speaking of them to a high-priest of those Mysteries she loved--one holding keys to unlock all doors. He took her in a moment, understood the change of mood and expression, and it was subtle flattery. Like all intelligent and successful men, recognition was not the least of his rewards. That this engaging child, even, knew him for what he was gave him an added interest in her. All Muriel's girl friends adored him. He was the nicest and most generous of unofficial Papas!--but this was different. "Don't say that, my dear. Never depreciate yourself or belittle what you have done. I suppose you are about Muriel's age, twenty-one or two--yes?--then let me tell you that you have done excellently well." "That is kind of you." "No, it is sincere. No man knows how hard--or how easy--it is to succeed by writing to-day." She understood him in a moment. "Only the other day, Mr. Amberley," she said, "I read Stevenson's 'Letter to a young gentleman who proposes to embrace the career of Art.' And if I _could_ write feeble things to tickle feeble minds I wouldn't even try. It seems so, so low!" Quite unconsciously her eye had fallen upon Mrs. Toftrees opposite, who was again chattering away to Muriel Amberley. He saw it, but gave no sign that he had done so. "Keep such an ideal, my dear. Whether you do small or great things, it will bring you peace of mind and dignity of conscience. But don't despise or condemn merely popular writers. In the Kingdom of Art there are many mansions you know." The girl made a slight movement of the head. He saw that she was touched and grateful at his interest in her small affairs, but that she wanted to dismiss them from his mind no less than from her own. "But I _am_ mad, crazy," she said, "about _other_ peoples' work, the big peoples' work, the work one simply can't help reverencing!" She had turned from him again and was looking down the table to where Gilbert Lothian was sitting. "Yes," he answered, following the direction of her glance, "you are quite right _there_!" She flushed with enthusiasm. "I did so want to see him," she said. "I've hardly ever met any literary people at all before, certainly never any one who mattered. Muriel told me that Mr. Lothian was coming; she loves his poems as much as I do. And when she wrote and asked me I was terribly excited. It's so good of you to have me, Mr. Amberley." Her voice was touching in its gratitude, and he was touched at this damsel, so pretty, courageous and forlorn. "I hope, my dear," he said, "that you will give us all the pleasure of seeing you here very often." At that moment Mrs. Amberley looked up and her fine, shrewd eyes swept round the table. She was a handsome, hook-nosed dame, with a lavish coronet of grey hair, stately and kindly in expression, obviously capable of many tolerances, but with moments when "ne louche pas à La Reine" could be very plainly written on her face. As she gathered up the three women and rose, Mr. Amberley knew in a moment that all was not quite well. No one else could have even guessed at it, but he knew. The years that had dealt so prosperously with him; Fate which had linked arms and was ever debonnair, had greatly blessed him in this also. He worshipped this stately madam, as she him, and always watched her face as some poor fisherman strives to read the Western sky. The door of the Dining Room was towards Mrs. Amberley's end of the table, and, as the ladies rose and moved towards it, Gilbert Lothian had gone to it and held it open. His table-napkin was in his right hand, his left was on the handle of the door, and as the women swept out, he bowed. Herbert Toftrees thought that there was something rather theatrical, a little over-emphasised, in the bow--as he regarded the poet, whom he had met for the first time that night, from beneath watchful eye-lids. And _did_ one bow? Wasn't it rather like a scene upon the stage? Toftrees, a quite well-bred man, was a little puzzled by Gilbert Lothian. Then he concluded--and his whole thoughts upon the matter passed idly through his mind within the duration of a single second--that the poet was an intimate friend of the house. Lothian was closing the door, and Toftrees was sinking back into his chair, when the latter happened to glance at his host. Amberley, still standing, was _watching_ Lothian--there was no other word which would correctly describe the big man's attitude--and Toftrees felt strangely uneasy. Something seemed tapping nervously at the door of his mind. He heard the furtive knocking, half realised the name of the thought that timidly essayed an entrance, and then resolutely crushed it. Such a thing was quite impossible, of course. The four men sat down, more closely grouped together than before. The coffee, which had been served by a footman, before the ladies had disappeared, was a pretence in cups no bigger than plovers' eggs. Amberley liked the modern affectation of his women guests remaining at the table and sharing the joys of the after-dinner-hour. But now, the butler entered with larger cups and a tray of liqueurs, while the host himself poured out a glass of port and handed the old-fashioned cradle in which the bottle lay to young Dickson Ingworth on his right. That curly-headed youth, who was a Pembroke man and knew the ritual of the Johnsonian Common Room at Oxford, gravely filled his own glass and pushed the bottle to Herbert Toftrees, who was in the vacated seat of his hostess, and pouring a little Perrier water into a tumbler. The butler lifted the wicker-work cradle with care, passed behind Toftrees, and set it before Gilbert Lothian. Lothian looked at it for a moment and then made a decisive movement of his head. "Thank you, no," he said, after a second's consideration, and in a voice that was slightly high-pitched but instinct with personality--it could never have been mistaken for any one else's voice, for instance--"I think I will have a whiskey and soda." Toftrees, at the end of the table, within two feet of Lothian, gave a mental start. The popular novelist was rather confused. A year ago no one had heard of Gilbert Lothian--that was not a name that counted in any way. He had been a sort of semi-obscure journalist who signed what he wrote in such papers as would print him. There were a couple of novels to his name which had obtained a sort of cult among minor people, and, certainly, some really eminent weeklies had published very occasional but signed reviews. As far as Herbert Toftrees could remember--and his jealous memory was good--Lothian had always been rather small beer until a year or so back. And then "Surgit Amari"--the first book of poems had been published. In a single month Lothian had become famous. For the ringing splendour of his words echoed in every heart. In this book, and in a subsequent volume, he had touched the very springs of tears. Not with sentiment--with the very highest and most electric literary art--he had tried and succeeded in irradiating the happenings of domestic life in the light that streamed from the Cross. ". . . Thank you, no. I think I will have a whiskey and soda." CHAPTER II GRAVELY UNFORTUNATE OCCURRENCE IN MRS. AMBERLEY'S DRAWING ROOM "[Greek: Misô mnêmona sumpotên], Procille." --_Martial._ --"One should not always take after-dinner amenities au pied de la lettre." --_Free Translation._ Toftrees, at the head of the table, shifted his chair a little so that he was almost facing Gilbert Lothian. Lothian's arresting voice was quite clear as he spoke to the butler. "That's not the voice of a man who's done himself too well," the novelist thought. But he was puzzled, nevertheless. People like Lothian behaved pretty much as they liked, of course. Convention didn't restrain them. But the sudden request was odd. And there was that flourishing bow as the women left the room, and certainly Amberley had seemed to look rather strangely at his guest. Toftrees disposed himself to watch events. He had wanted to meet the poet for some time. There was a certain reason. No one knew much about him in London. He lived in the country and was not seen in the usual places despite his celebrity. There had been a good deal of surmise about this new star. Lothian was like the photographs which had appeared of him in the newspapers, but with a great deal more "personality" than these were able to suggest. Certainly no one looked less like a poet, though this did not surprise the popular novelist, in an age when literary men looked exactly like every one else. But there was not the slightest trace of idealism, of the "thoughts high and hard" that were ever the clear watchwords of his song. "A man who wears a mask," thought Herbert Toftrees with interest and a certain half-conscious fellow-feeling. The poet was of medium height and about thirty-five years of age. He was fat, with a broad-shouldered corpulence which would have been far less noticeable in a man who was a few inches taller. The clean-shaven face was fattish also, but there was, nevertheless, a curious suggestion of contour about it. It should have been a pure oval, and in certain lights it almost seemed that, while the fatness appeared to dissolve and fall away from it. It was a contour veiled by something that was, but ought not to have been, there. The eyes were grey and capable of infinite expression--a fact which always became apparent to any one who had been half an hour in his company. But this feature also was enigmatic. For the most part the eyes seemed to be working at half-power, not quite doing or being what one would have expected of them. The upper lip was short, and the mouth by far the most real and significant part of the face. It was small, but not too small, clearly and delicately cut though without a trace of effeminacy. In its mobility, its sensitive life, its approach to beauty, it said everything in the face. Thick-growing hair of dark brown was allowed to come rather low over a high and finely modelled brow, hair which--despite a natural luxuriance--was cut close to the sides and back of the head. Such was Toftrees' view of Gilbert Lothian, and it both had insight and was fair. No one can be a Toftrees and the literary idol of thousands and thousands of people without being infinitely the intellectual superior of those people. The novelist had a fine brain and if he could have put a tenth of his observation and knowledge upon paper, he might have been an artistic as well as a commercial success. But he was hopelessly inarticulate, and æsthetic achievement was denied him. There was considerable consolation in the large income which provided so many pleasures and comforts, but it was bitter to know--when he met any one like Lothian--that if he could appreciate Lothian thoroughly he could never emulate him. And it was still more bitter to be aware that men like Lothian often regarded his own work as a mischief and dishonour. Toftrees, therefore, watched the man at his side with a kind of critical envy, mingled with a perfectly sincere admiration at the bottom of it all. He very soon became certain that something was wrong. His first half-thought was a certainty now. Something that some one had said to him a week ago at a Savage Club dinner--one of those irresponsible but dangerous and damaging remarks which begin, "D'you know, I'm told that so and so--" flashed through his mind. "Are you in town for long, Mr. Lothian?" he asked. "You don't come to town often, do you?" "No, I don't," Lothian answered. "I hate London. A damnable place I always think." The other, so thorough a Londoner, always getting so much--in every way--out of his life in London, looked at the speaker curiously, not quite knowing how to take him. Lothian seemed to see it. He had made the remark with emphasis, with a superior note in his voice, but he corrected himself quickly. It was almost as though Toftrees' glance had made him uneasy. His face became rather ingratiating, and there was a propitiatory note in his voice when he spoke again. He drew his chair a little nearer to the other's. "I knew too much of London when I was a young man," he went on with an unnecessarily confidential and intimate manner. "When I came down from Oxford first, I was caught up into the 'new' movement. It all seemed very wonderful to me then. It did to all of us. We divorced art from morals, we lived extraordinary lives, we sipped honey from every flower. Most of the men of that period are dead. One or two are insane, others have gone quite under and are living dreadful larva-like lives in obscene hells of the body and soul, of which you can have no conception. But, thank God, I got out of it in time--just in time! If it hadn't been for my dear wife . . ." He paused. The sensitive lips smiled, with an almost painful tenderness, a quivering, momentary effect which seemed grotesquely out of place in a face which had become flushed and suddenly seemed much fatter. There was a horrible insincerity about that self-conscious smile--the more horrible because, at the moment, Toftrees saw that Lothian believed absolutely in his own emotion, was pleased with himself sub-consciously, too, and was perfectly certain that he was making a fine impression--pulling aside the curtain that hung before a beautiful and holy place! The smile lingered for a moment. The light in the curious eyes seemed turned inward complacently surveying a sanctuary. Then there was an abrupt change of manner. Lothian laughed. There was a snap in his laughter, which, Toftrees was sure, was meant to convey the shutting down of a lid. "I like you," Lothian was trying to say to him--the acquaintance of ten minutes!--"I can open my heart to you. You've had a peep at the Poet's Holy of Holies. But we're men of the world--you and I!--enough of this. We're in society. We're dining at the Amberleys'. Our confidences are over!" "So you see," the _actual_ voice said, "I don't like London. It's no place for a gentleman!" Lothian's laugh as he said this was quite vague and silly. His hand strayed out towards the decanter of whiskey. His face was half anxious, half pleased, wholly pitiable and weak. His laugh ended in a sort of bleat, which he realised in a moment and coughed to obscure. There was a splash and gurgle as he pressed the trigger of the syphon. Intense disgust and contempt succeeded Toftrees' first amazement. So this, after all the fuss, was Gilbert Lothian! The man had talked like a provincial yokel, and then fawned upon him with his sickly, uninvited confidences. He was drunk. There was no doubt about that. He must have come there drunk, or nearly so. The last half hour had depressed the balance, brought out what was hidden, revealed the fellow's state. "If it hadn't been for my dear wife!"--the tout! How utterly disgusting it was! Toftrees had never been drunk in his life except at a bump-supper at B.N.C.--his college--nearly fifteen years ago.--The shocking form of coming to the Amberleys' like this!--He was horribly upset and a little frightened, too. He remembered where he was--such a thing was an incredible profanation _here_! . . . He heard a quiet vibrant voice speaking. He looked up. Gilbert Lothian was leaning back in his chair, holding a newly-lighted cigarette in a steady hand. His face was absolutely composed. There was not the slightest hint that it had been bloated and unsteady the minute before. Intellect and strength--STRENGTH! that was the incredible thing--lay calmly over it. The skin, surely it _had_ been oddly blotched? was of an even, healthy-seeming tint. A conversation between the Poet and his host had obviously been in progress for several minutes. Toftrees realised that he had been lost in his own thoughts for some time--if indeed this scene was real at all and he himself were sober! ". . . I don't think," Lothian was saying with precision, and a certain high air which sat well upon him--"I don't think that you quite see it in all its bearings. There must be a rough and ready standard for ordinary work-a-day life--that I grant. But when you penetrate to the springs of action----" "When you do that," Amberley interrupted, "naturally, rough and ready standards fall to pieces. Still we have to live by them. Few of us are competent to manipulate the more delicate machinery! But your conclusion is--?" "--That hypocrisy is the most misunderstood and distorted word in our mother tongue. The man whom fools call hypocrite may yet be entirely sincere. Lofty assertions, the proclamation of high ideals and noble thoughts may at the same time be allied with startling moral failure!" Amberley shook his head. "It's specious," he replied, "and it's doubtless highly comforting for the startling moral failure. But I find a difficulty in adjusting my obstinate mind to the point of view." "It _is_ difficult," Lothian said, "but that's because so few people are psychologists, and so few people--the Priests often seem to me less than any one--understand the meaning of Christianity. But because David was a murderer and an adulterer will you tell me that the psalms are insincere? Surely, if all that is good in a man or woman is to be invalidated by the presence of contradictory evil, then Beelzebub must sit enthroned and be potent over the affairs of men!" Mr. Amberley rose from his chair. His face had quite lost its watchful expression. It was genial and pleased as before. "King David has a great deal to answer for," he said. "I don't know what the unorthodox and the 'live-your-own-life' school would do without him. But let us go into the drawing room." With his rich, hearty laugh echoing under the Waggon roof, the big man thrust his arm through Lothian's. "There are two girls dying to talk to the poet!" he said. "That I happen to know! My daughter Muriel reads your books in bed, I believe! and her friend Miss Wallace was saying all sorts of nice things about you at dinner. Come along, come along, my dear boy." The two men left the dining room, and their voices could be heard in the hall beyond. Toftrees lingered behind for a moment with young Dickson Ingworth. The boy's face was flushed. His eyes sparkled with excitement and the three glasses of champagne he had drunk at dinner were having their influence with him. He was quite young, ingenuous, and filled with conceit at being where he was--dining with the Amberleys, brought there under the ægis of Gilbert Lothian, chatting confidentially to the great Herbert Toftrees himself! His immature heart was bursting with pride, Pol Roger, and satisfaction. He hadn't the least idea of what he was saying--that he was saying something frightfully dangerous and treacherous at least. "I say, Mr. Toftrees, isn't Gilbert splendid? I could listen to him all night. He talks like that to me sometimes, when he's in the mood. It's like Walter Pater and Dr. Johnson rolled into one. And then he sort of punctuates it with something dry and brown and freakish--like Heine in the 'Florentine Nights'!" With all his eagerness to hear more--the quiet malice in him welling up to understand and pin down this Gilbert Lothian--Toftrees was forced to pause for a moment. He knew that he could never have expressed himself as this enthusiastic and excited boy was able to do. Ingworth was a pupil then! Lothian could inspire, and was already founding a school . . . "You know Mr. Lothian very well, I suppose?" "Oh, yes. I go and stay with Gilbert in the country a lot. I'm nearly always there! I am like a brother to him--he was an only child, you know. But isn't he wonderful?" "Marvellous!" Toftrees chuckled as he said the word. He couldn't help it. Misunderstood as his chuckle was, it did the trick and brought confidence in full flood from the careless and excited boy. "Yes, and I know him so well! Hardly any one knows him so well as I do. Every one in town is crying out to find out all about him, and I'm really the only one who knows . . ." He looked towards the door. Thoughts of the two pretty girls beyond flushed the wayward, wine-heated mind. "I'm going to have a liqueur brandy," Toftrees said hastily--he had taken nothing the whole evening--"won't you, too?" "Now you'd never think," Ingworth said, sipping from his tiny glass, "that at seven o'clock this evening Prince and I--Prince is the valet at Gilbert's club--could hardly wake him up and get him to dress?" "No!" "It's a fact though, Mr. Toftrees. We had the devil of a time. He'd been out all day--it was bovril with lots of salt in it that put him right. As a matter of fact--of course, this is quite between you and me--I was in a bit of a funk that it was coming over him again at dinner. Stale drunk. You know! I saw he was paying a lot of compliments to Mrs. Amberley. At first she didn't seem to understand, and then she didn't quite seem to like it. But I was glad when I heard him ask the man for a whiskey and soda just now. I know his programme so well. I was sure that it would pull him together all right--or at least that number two would. I suppose you saw he was rather off when the ladies had gone and you were talking to him?" "Well, I wasn't sure of course." "I was, I know him so well. Gilbert's father was my father's solicitor--one of the old three bottle men. But when Gilbert collared number two just now I realised that it would be quite all right. You heard him with Mr. Amberley just now? Splendid!" "Yes. And now suppose we go and see how he's getting on in the drawing room," said Herbert Toftrees with a curious note in his voice. The boy mistook it for anxiety. "Oh, he'll be as right as rain, you'll find. It comes off and on in waves, you know," he said. Toftrees looked at the youth with frank wonder. He spoke in the way of use and wont, as if he were saying nothing extraordinary--merely stating a fact. The novelist was really shocked. Personally, he was the most temperate of men. He was _homme du monde_, of course. He touched upon life at other points than the decorous and above-board. He had known men, friends of his own, go down, down, down, through drink. But here, with these people, it was not the same. In Bohemia, in raffish literary clubs and the reprobate purlieus of Fleet Street, one expected this sort of thing and accepted it as part of the _milieu_. Under the Waggon roof, at Amberley's house, where there were charming women, it was shocking; it was an outrage! And the frankness of this well-dressed and well-spoken youth was disgusting in its very simplicity and non-moral attitude. Toftrees had gathered something of the young man's past during dinner. Was this, then, what one learnt at Eton? The novelist was himself the son of a clergyman, a man of some family but bitter poor. He had been educated at a country grammar school. His wife was the youngest daughter of a Gloucestershire baronet, impoverished also. Neither of them had enjoyed all that should have been theirs by virtue of their birth, and the fact had left a blank, a slight residuum of bitterness and envy which success and wealth could never quite smooth away. "Well, it doesn't seem to trouble you much," he said. Ingworth laughed. He was unconscious of his great indiscretion, frothy and young, entirely unaware that he was giving his friend and patron into possibly hostile hands and providing an opportunity for a dissection of which half London might hear. "Gilbert's quite different from any one else," he said lightly. "He is a genius. Keats taking pepper before claret, don't you know! One must not measure him by ordinary standards." "I suppose not," Toftrees answered drily, reflecting that among the disciples of a great man it was generally the Judas who wrote the biography--"Let's go to the drawing room." As they went out, the mind of the novelist was working with excitement and heat. He himself was conscious of it and was surprised. His was an intellect rather like dry ice. Very little perturbed it as a rule, yet to-night he was stirred. Wonder was predominant. Physically, to begin with, it was extraordinary that more drink should sober a man who a moment before had been making exaggerated and half-maudlin confidences to a stranger--in common with most decent living people, Toftrees knew nothing of the pathology of poisoned men. And, then, that sobriety had been so profound! Clearly reasoned thought, an arresting but perfectly sane point of view, had been enunciated with lucidity and force of phrase. Disgust, the keener since it was more than tinged by envy, mingled with the wonder. So the high harmonies of "Surgit Amari" came out of the bottle after all! Toftrees himself had been deeply moved by the poems, and yet, he now imagined, the author was probably drunk when he wrote them! If only the world knew!--it _ought_ to know. Blackguards who, for some reason or other, had been given angel voices should be put in the pillory for every one to see. Hypocrite! . . . Ingworth opened the door of the drawing room very quietly. Music had begun, and as he and Toftrees entered, Muriel Amberley was already half way through one of the preludes of Chopin. Mrs. Amberley and Mrs. Toftrees were sitting close together and carrying on a vigorous, whispered conversation, despite the music. Mr. Amberley was by himself in a big arm-chair near the piano, and Lothian sat upon a settee of blue linen with Rita Wallace. As he sank into a chair Toftrees glanced at Lothian. The poet's face was unpleasant. When he had been talking to Amberley it had lighted up and had more than a hint of fineness. Now it was heavy again, veiled and coarsened. Lothian's head was nodding in time to the music. One well-shaped but rather red hand moved restlessly upon his knee. The man was struggling--Toftrees was certain of it--to appear as if the music was giving him intense pleasure. He was thinking about himself and how he looked to the other people in the room. Drip, drip, drip!--it was the sad, graceful prelude in which the fall of rain is supposed to be suggested, the hot steady rain of the Mediterranean which had fallen at Majorca ever so many years ago and was falling now in sound, though he that caught its beauty was long since dust. Drip, drip!--and then the soft repetition which announced that the delicate and lovely vision had reached its close, that the august grey harmonies were over. For a moment, there was silence in the drawing room. Muriel's white fingers rested on the keys of the piano, the candles threw their light upwards upon the enigmatic maiden face. Her father sighed quietly--happily also as he looked at her--and the low buzz of Mrs. Amberley's and Mrs. Toftrees' talk became much more distinct. Suddenly Gilbert Lothian jumped up from the settee. He hurried to the piano, his face flushed, his eyes liquid and bright. It was consciously and theatrically done, an exaggeration of his bow in the dining room--not the right thing in the very least! "Oh, thank you! _Thank you!_" he said in a high, fervent voice. "How wonderful that is! And you played it as Crouchmann plays it--the _only_ interpretation! I know him quite well. We had supper together the other night after his concert, and he told me--no, that won't interest you. I'll tell you another time, remind me! Now, _do_ play something else!" He fumbled with the music upon the piano with tremulous and unsteady hands. "Ah! here we are!" he cried, and there was an insistent note of familiarity in his voice. "The book of Valses! You know the twelfth of course? Tempo giusto! It goes like this . . ." He began to hum, quite musically, and to wave his hands. Muriel Amberley glanced quickly at her father and there was distress in her eyes. Amberley was standing by the piano in a moment. He seemed very much master of himself, serene and dominant, by the side of Gilbert Lothian. His face was coldly civil and there was disgust in his eyes. "I don't think my daughter will play any more, Mr. Lothian," he said. An ugly look flashed out upon the poet's face, suspicion and realisation showed there for a second and passed. He became nervous, embarrassed, almost pitiably apologetic. The savoir-faire which would have helped some men to take the rebuke entirely deserted him. There was something assiduous, almost vulgar, a frightened acceptance of the lash indeed, which immensely accentuated the sudden _défaillance_ and break-down. In the big drawing room no one spoke at all. Then there was a sudden movement and stir. Gilbert Lothian was saying good-night. He had remembered that he really had some work to do before going to bed, some letters to write, as a matter of fact. He was shaking hands with every one. "I do hope that I shall have the pleasure of hearing you play some more Chopin before long, Miss Amberley! Thank you so much Mrs. Amberley--I'm going to write a poem about your beautiful Dining Room. I suppose we shall meet at the Authors' Club dinner on Saturday, Mr. Toftrees?--so interested to have met you at last." . . . The people in the drawing room heard him chattering vivaciously to Mr. Amberley, who had accompanied his departing guest into the hall. No one said a single word. They heard the front door close, and the steps of the master of the house as he returned to them. They were all waiting. When Amberley came in he made a courtly attempt at ignoring what had just occurred. The calm surface of the evening had been rudely disturbed--yes! For once even an Amberley party had gone wrong--there was to be no fun from this meeting of young folk to-night. But it was Mrs. Amberley who spoke. She really could not help it. Mrs. Toftrees had been telling her of various rumours concerning Gilbert Lothian some time before the episode at the piano, and with all her tolerance Mrs. Amberley was thoroughly angry. That such a thing should have happened in her house, before Muriel and her girl friend--oh! it was unthinkable! "So Mr. Gilbert Lothian has gone," she said with considerable emphasis. "Yes, dear," Mr. Amberley answered as he sat down again, willing enough that nothing more should be said. But it was not to be so. "We can never have him here again," said the angry lady. Amberley shook his head. "Very unfortunate, extremely unfortunate," he murmured. "I cannot understand it. Such a thing has never happened here before. Now I understand why Mr. Lothian hides himself in the country and never goes about. _Il y avait raison!_" "I don't say that genius is any _excuse_ for this sort of thing," Amberley replied uneasily, "and Lothian has genius--but one must take more than one thing into consideration . . ." He paused, not quite knowing how to continue the sentence, and genuinely sorry and upset. His glance fell upon Herbert Toftrees, and he had a sort of feeling that the novelist might help him out. "Don't you think so, Toftrees?" he asked. The novelist surveyed the room with his steady grey eyes, marshalling his hearers as it were. "But let us put his talent aside," he said. "Think of him as an ordinary person in our own rank of life--Mrs. Amberley's guest. Certainly he could not have taken anything here to have made him in the strange state he is in. Surely he must have known that he was not fit to come to a decent house." "I shall give his poems away," Muriel Amberley said with a little shudder. "I can never read them again. And I did love them so! I wish you hadn't asked Mr. Lothian to come here, Father." "There is one consolation," said Mrs. Toftrees in a hard voice; "the man must be realising what he has done. He was not too far gone for that!" A new voice broke into the talk. It came from young Dickson Ingworth who had slid into the seat by Rita Wallace when Lothian went to the piano. He blushed and stammered as he spoke, but there was a fine loyalty in his voice. "It seems rather dreadful, Mrs. Amberley," he said, quite thinking that he was committing literary suicide as he did so. "It is dreadful of course. But Gilbert _is_ such a fine chap when he's--when he's, all right! You can't think! And then, 'Surgit Amari'! Don't let's forget he wrote 'The Loom'--'Delicate Threads! O fairest in life's tissue,'" he quoted from the celebrated verse. Then Rita Wallace spoke. "He is great," she said. "He is manifesting himself in his own way. That is all. To me, at any rate, the meeting with Mr. Lothian has been wonderful." Mrs. Toftrees stared with undisguised dislike of such assertions on the part of a young girl. But Mrs. Amberley, always kind and generous-hearted, had been pleased and touched by Dickson Ingworth's defence of his friend and master. She quite realised what the lad stood to lose by doing it, and what courage on his part it showed. And when Rita Wallace chimed in, Mrs. Amberley dismissed the whole occurrence from her mind as she beamed benevolently at the two young people on the sofa. "Let's forget all about it," she said. "Mrs. Toftrees, help me to make my husband sing. He can only sing one song but he sings it excellently--'In cellar cool'--just the thing for a hot night. Joseph! do as I tell you!" The little group of people rearranged themselves, as Muriel sat down at the piano to accompany her father. "Le metier de poëte laisse a désirer," Toftrees murmured to his wife with a sneer which almost disguised the atrocious accent of his French. CHAPTER III SHAME IN "THE ROARING GALLANT TOWN" --"Is it for this I have given away Mine ancient wisdom and austere control?" "'Très volontiers' repartit le démon. 'Vous aimez les tableaux changeants; je veux vous contenter.'" --_Le Sage._ When the door of the house had closed after him, and with Mr. Amberley's courteous but grave good-night ringing in his ears, Gilbert Lothian walked briskly away across the Square. It was very hot. The July sun, that tempest of fire which had passed over the town during the day, had sucked up all the sweetness from the air and it was sickly, like air under a blanket which has been breathed many times. As it often is in July, London had been delightfully fresh at dawn, when the country waggons were bringing the sweet-peas and the roses to market, and although his mind had not been fresh as the sun rose over St. James' where he was staying, Lothian had enjoyed the early morning from the window of his bedroom. It had been clear and scentless, like a field with the dew upon it, in the country from which he had come five days ago. Now his mind was like a field in the full sun of noon, parched and full of hot odours. He was perfectly aware that he had made a _faux pas_. How far it went, whether he was not exaggerating it, he did not know. The semi-intoxicated person--more especially when speech and gait are more or less normal, as in his case--is quite incapable of gauging the impression he makes on others. In lax and tolerant circles where no outward indication is given him of his state, he goes on his way pleased and confident that he has made an excellent impression, sure that no one has found him out. But his cunning and self-congratulation quite desert him when he is openly snubbed or reproved. "Was I very far gone?" he afterwards asks some confidential friend who may have been present at his discomfiture. And whatever form the answer may take, the drunkard is abnormally interested in all the details of the event. Born of the toxic influences in his blood, there is a gaunt and greedy vanity which insists upon the whole scene being re-enacted and commented upon. Lothian had no one to tell him how far he had gone, precisely what impression he had made upon his hosts and their guests. He felt with a sense of injury that Dickson Ingworth ought to have come away with him. The young man owed so much to him in the literary life! It was a treachery not to have come away with him. As he got into a cab and told the man to drive him as far as Piccadilly Circus, he was still pursuing this train of thought. He had taken Ingworth to the Amberleys', and now the cub was sitting in the drawing room there, with those charming girls! quite happy and at ease. He, Gilbert Lothian himself! was out of it all, shut out from that gracious house and those cultured people whom he had been so glad to meet. . . . Again he heard the soft closing of the big front door behind him, and his skin grew hot at the thought. The remembrance of Amberley's quiet courtesy, but entire change of manner in the hall, was horrible. He felt as if he had been whipped. The dread of a slight, the fear of a quarrel, which is a marked symptom of the alcoholic--is indeed his torment and curse through life--was heavy upon Lothian now. The sense of impotence was sickening. What a weak fool he had been to break down and fly like that. To run away! What faltering and trembling incapacity for self-assertion he had shown. He had felt uneasy with the very servant who gave him his opera hat! And what had he done after all? Very little, surely. That prelude of Chopin always appealed to him strongly. He had written about it; Crouchmann had played it privately for him and pointed out new beauties. Certainly he had only met Miss Amberley for the first time that night and he may have been a little over-excited and effusive. His thoughts--a poet's thoughts after all--had come too quickly for ordered expression. He was too Celtic in manner, too artistic for these staid cold folk. He tried to depreciate the Amberleys in his thoughts. Amberley was only a glorified trades-man after all! Lothian tried to call up within him that bitter joy which comes from despising that which we really respect or desire. "Yes! damn the fellow! He _lived_ on poets and men of letters--privileged people, the salt of the earth, the real forces of life!" And yet he ought to have stayed on and corrected his mistake. He had made himself ridiculous in front of four women--he didn't care about the men so much--and that was horribly galling. As the cab swung down Regent Street, Lothian was sure that if his nerves had not weakened for a moment he would never have given himself away. It was, he felt, very unfortunate. He knew, as he could not help knowing, that not only had he a mind and power of a rare, high quality, but that he possessed great personal charm. What he did not realise was how utterly all these things fled from him when he was not quite sober. Certainly at this moment he was unable to comprehend it in the slightest. Realisation would come later, at the inevitable punishment hour. He over-paid his cabman absurdly. The man's quick and eager deference pleased him. He was incapable of any sense of proportion, and he felt somehow or other reinstated in his own opinion by this trivial and bought servility. He looked at his watch. It was not very much after ten, and he became conscious of how ridiculously early he had fled from the Amberleys'. But as he stood on the pavement--in the very centre of the pleasure-web of London with its roar and glare--he pushed such thoughts resolutely from him and turned into a luxurious "lounge," celebrated among fast youths and pleasure-seekers, known by an affectionate nick-name at the Universities, in every regimental mess or naval ward-room in Great Britain. As he went down a carpeted passage he saw himself in the long mirror that lined it. He looked quite himself, well-dressed, prosperous, his face under full control and just like any other smart man about town. At this hour, there were not many people in the place. It would become crowded and noisy later on. The white and green tiles of the walls gleamed softly in the shaded lights, electric fans and a huge block of ice upon a pedestal kept the air cool. There were palms which refreshed the eye and upon the porphyry counter at which he was served there was a mass of mauve hydrangea in a copper bowl. He drank a whiskey and soda very quickly--that was to remove the marked physical exhaustion which had begun to creep over him--ordered another and lit a cigarette. His nerves responded with magical quickness to the spirit. All day long he had been feeding them with the accustomed poison. The strain of the last half hour had used up more vitality than he had been aware. For the second time that night--a night so infinitely more eventful than he knew--he became master of himself, calm, happy, even, in the sense of power returned, and complete correspondence with his environment. The barmaid who served him was--like most of these Slaves of the Still in this part of London--an extremely handsome girl. Her face was painted--all these girls paint their faces--but it was done merely to conceal the pallor and ravages wrought upon it by a hard and feverish life. Lothian felt an immense pity for her, symbolic as she was of all the others, and the few remarks he made were uttered with an instinctive deference and courtesy. He had been married seven years before this time, and had at once retired into the country with his wife where, by slow degrees, he had felt his way to the work which had at last made him celebrated. But in the past he had known the under side of London well and had chosen it deliberately as his _milieu_. It had in no way been forced upon him. Struggling journalist and author as he was, good houses had been open to him, for he was a member of a well-known family and had made many friends at Oxford. But the other life was so much easier! If its pleasures were coarse, they were hot and strong! For years, as many a poet has done before him, he lived a bad life, tolerant of vice in himself and others, kind, generous often, but tossed and worn by his passions--rivetting the chains link by link upon his soul--until he had met and married Mary. And no one knew better than he the horrors of life behind the counters of a bar. He turned away, as two fresh-faced lads came noisily up to the counter, turned away with a sigh of pity. He was quite unconscious--though he would have been interested at the psychological fact--that the girl had wondered at his manner and thought him affected and dull. She would much rather have been complimented and chaffed. She understood that. Life is full of anodynes. Mercifully enough the rank and file of the oppressed are not too frequently conscious of their miseries. There is a half-truth in the philosophy of Dr. Pangloss, and if fettered limbs go lame, the chains are not always clanking. The poor barmaid went to bed that night in an excellent humour, for the two lads Lothian had seen brought her some pairs of gloves. And if she had known of Lothian's pity she would have resented it bitterly. "Like the fellow's cheek," she would have said. Lothian, as he believed, had absolutely recovered his own normal personality. He admitted now, as he left the "lounge," that he had not been his true self at the Amberleys'. "At this moment, as I stand here," he said to himself, "'I am the Captain of my Soul,'" not in the least understanding that when he spoke of his own "soul" he meant nothing more than his five senses. The man thought he was normal. He was not. On the morrow, when partially recovering from the excesses of to-day, there was a possibility that he might become normal--for a brief period, and until he began to drink again. For him to become really himself, perfectly clean from the stigmata of the inebriate mind, would have taken him at least six months of total abstinence from alcohol. Lothian's health, though impaired, had by no means broken down. A strong constitution, immense vitality, had preserved it, up to this point. At this period, though a poisoned man, an alcoholised body, there were frequent times of absolute normality--when he was, for certain definite spaces of time by the clock, exactly as he would have been had he never become a slave to alcohol at all. As he stood upon the pavement of Piccadilly Circus, he felt and believed that such a time had come now. He was mistaken. All that was happening was that there was a temporary lull in the ebb and flow of alcohol in his veins. The brain cells were charged up to a certain point with poison. At this point they gave a false impression of security. It must be remembered, and it cannot be too strongly insisted on, that the mental processes of the inebriate are _definite_, and are _induced_. The ordinary person says of an inebriate simply that "he is a drunkard" or "he drinks." Whether he or she says it with sympathetic sorrow, or abhorrence, the bald statement rarely leads to any further train of thought. It is very difficult for the ordinary person to realise that the mental processes are _sui generis_ a Kingdom--though with a debased coinage--which requires considerable experience before it can always be recognised from the ring of true metal. Alcoholism so changes the mental life of any one that it results in an ego which has _special_ external and internal characteristics. And so, in order to appreciate fully this history of Gilbert Lothian--to note the difference between the man as he was known and as he really was--it must always be kept in mind under what influence he moves through life, and that his steps have strayed into a dreadful kingdom unknown and unrealised by happier men. He had passed out of one great Palace of Drink. Had he been as he supposed himself to be, he would have sought rest at once. He would have hurried joyously from temptation in this freedom from his chains. Instead of that, the question he asked himself was, "What shall I do now?" The glutton crams himself at certain stated periods. But when repletion comes he stops eating. The habit is rhythmic and periodically certain. But the Drunkard--his far more sorrowful and lamentable brother--has not even this half-saving grace. In common with the inordinate smoker--whose harm is physical and not mental--the inebriate drinks as long as he is able to, until he is incapacitated. "Where shall I go now?" If God does indeed give human souls to His good angels, as gardens to weed and tend, that thought must have brought tears of pity to the eyes of the august beings who were battling for Gilbert Lothian. Their hour was not yet. They were to see the temple of the Paraclete fall into greater ruin and disaster than ever before. The splendid spires and pinnacles, the whole serene beauty of soul and body which had made this Temple a high landmark when God first built it, were crumbling to decay. Deep down among the strong foundations the enemy was at work. The spire--the "Central-one"--which sprang up towards Heaven was deeply undermined. Still--save to the eyes of experts--its glory rose unimpaired. But it was but a lovely shell with no longer any grip upon its base of weakened Will. And the bells in the wind-swept height of the Tower no longer rang truly. On red dawns or on pearl-grey evenings the message they sent over the country-side was beginning to be false. There was no peace when they tolled the Angelus. In oriel or great rose-window the colour of the painted glass was growing dim. The clear colour was fading, though here and there it was shot with baleful fire which the Artist had never painted there,--like the blood-shot eyes of the man who drinks. A miasmic mist had crept into the noble spaces of the aisles. The vast supporting pillars grew insubstantial and seemed to tremble as the vapour eddied round them. A black veil was quickly falling before the Figure above the Altar, and the seven dim lamps of the Sanctuary burned with green and flickering light. The bells of a Great Mind's Message, which had been cast with so much silver in them, rang an increasing dissonance. The trumpets of the organ echoed with a harsh note in the far clerestory; the flutes were false, the _dolce_ stop no longer sweet. The great pipes of the pedal organ muttered and stammered in their massive voices, as if dark advisers whispered in the ear of the musician who controlled them. Lothian had passed from one great Palace of Drink. "Where shall I go?" he asked himself again, and immediately his eye fell upon another, the brilliant illumination upon the façade of a well-known "Theatre of Varieties." His hot eye-balls drank in the flaring signs, and telegraphed both an impulse and a memory to his brain. "Yes!" he said. "I will revisit the 'Kingdom.' There is still two thirds of an hour before the performance will be over. How well I used to know it! What a nightly haunt it used to be. Surely, even now, there will be some people I know there? . . . I'll go in and see!" As Lothian turned in at the principal doors of the most celebrated Music Hall in the world, his pulses began to quicken. --The huge foyer, the purple carpets, with their wreaths of laurel in a purple which was darker yet, the gleaming marble stairway, with its wide and noble sweep, how familiar all this dignified splendour was, he thought as he entered the second Palace of Drink which flung wide its doors to him this night. A palace of drink and lust, vast and beautiful! for those who brought poisoned blood and vicious desires within its portals! Here, banished from the pagan groves and the sunlit temples of their ancient glory--banished also from the German pine-woods where Heine saw them in pallid life under the full moon--Venus, Bacchus and Silenus held their unholy court. For all the world--save only for a few wise men to whom they were but symbols--Venus and Bacchus were deities once. When the Acropolis cut into the blue sky of Hellas with its white splendour these were the chiefest to whom men prayed, and they ruled the lives of all. And, day by day, new temples rise in their honour. Once they were worshipped with blythe body and blinded soul. Now the tired body and the besotted brain alone pay them reverence. But great are their temples still. Such were the thoughts of Lothian--Lothian the Christian poet--and he was pleased that they should come to him. It showed how detached he was, what real command he had of himself. In the old wild days, before his marriage and celebrity, he had come to this place, and other places like it, to seize greedily upon pleasure, as a monkey seizes upon a nut. He came to survey it all now, to revisit the feverish theatre of his young follies with a bland Olympian attitude. The poison was flattering him now, placing him upon a swaying pedestal for a moment. He was sucking in the best honey that worthless withering flowers could exude, and it was hot and sweet upon his tongue. --Were any of the old set there after all? He hoped so. Not conscious of himself as a rule, without a trace of "side" and detesting ostentation or any display of his fame, he wanted to show off now. He wanted to console himself for his rebuff at the house in Bryanstone Square. Vulgar and envious adulation, interested praise from those who were still in the pit of obscurity from which his finer brain had helped him to escape, would be perfectly adequate to-night. After the episode at the Amberleys', coarse flattery heaped on with a spade would be as ice in the desert. And he found what he desired. He passed slowly through the promenade, towards the door which led to the stalls, and the great lounge where, if anywhere, he would find people who knew him and whom he knew. In a slowly-moving tide, like a weed-clogged wave, the women of the town ebbed and flowed from horn to horn of the moon-shaped crescent where they walk. Against the background of sea-purple and white, their dresses and the nodding plumes in their great hats moved languorously. Sickly perfumes, as from the fan of an odalisque, swept over them. Many beautiful painted masks floated through the scented aisle of the theatre, as they had floated up and down the bronze corridors of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus in the far off days of St. Paul. A mourning thrill shivered up from the violins of the orchestra below; the 'cellos made their plaint, the cymbals rattled, the kettledrums spoke with deep vibrating voices. . . . So had the sistra clanked and droned in the old temple of bronze and silver before the altars of Artemis,--the old music, the eternal faces, ever the same! A chill came to Lothian as he passed among these "estranged sad spectres of the night." He thought suddenly of his pure and gracious wife, alone in their little house in the country, he thought of the Canaanitish harlot whose soul was the first that Christ redeemed. For a moment or two his mind was like a darkened room in which a magic lantern is being operated and fantastic, unexpected pictures flit across the screen. And then he was in the big lounge. Yes, some of them were there!--a little older, perhaps, to his now much more critical eye, somewhat more bloated and coarsened, but the same still. "Good heavens!" said a huge man with a blood red face, startling in its menace, like a bully looking into an empty room, "Why, here's old Lothian! Where in the world have _you_ sprung from, my dear boy?" Lothian's face lit up with pleasure and recognition. The big evil-faced man was Paradil, the painter of pastels, a wayward drunken creature who never had money in his pocket, but that he gave it away to every one. He was a man spoken of as a genius by those who knew. His rare pictures fetched large prices, but he hardly ever worked. He was soaked, dissolved and pickled in brandy. A little elderly man like a diseased doll, came up and began to twitter. He was the husband of a famous dancer who performed at the theatre, a wit in his way, an adroit manager of his wife's affairs with other men, a man with a mind as hollow and bitter as a dried lemon. He was a well-known figure in upper Bohemia. His name was constantly mentioned in the newspapers as an entrepreneur of all sorts of things, a popular, evil little man. "Ah, Lothian," he said, as one or two other people came up and some one gave a copious order for drinks, "still alternating between the prayer book and the decanter? I must congratulate you on 'Surgit Amari.' I read it, and it made me green with envy to think how many thousand copies you had sold of it." "You've kept the colour, Edgar," he said, looking into the little creature's face, but the words stabbed through him, nevertheless. How true they were--superficially--how they expressed--and must express--the view of his old disreputable companions. They envied him his cunning--as they thought it--they would have given their ears to have possessed the same power of profitable hypocrisy--as they thought it. Meanwhile they spoke virtuously to each other about him. "Gilbert Lothian the author of 'Surgit Amari'!--it would make a cat laugh!" One can't throw off one's past like a dirty shirt--Gilbert began to wish he had not come here. "I ought never to be seen in these places," he thought, forgetting that it was only the sting of the little man's malice that provoked the truth. But Paradil, kindly Paradil with the bully's face and a heart bursting with dropsical good nature, speedily intervened. Other men joined the circle; "rounds of drinks" were paid for by each person according to the ritual of such an occasion as this. In half an hour, when the theatre began to empty, Lothian was really, definitely drunk. Hot circles expanded and contracted within his head. His face became pale and very grave in expression, as he walked out into Leicester Square upon Paradil's supporting arm. There was a portentous dignity in his voice as he gave the address of his club to the cabman. As he shook hands with Paradil out of the window, tears came into his eyes, as he thought of the other's drunken, wasted life. "If I can only help you in any way, old chap--" he tried to say, and then sank back in oblivion upon the cushions. He was quite unconscious of anything during the short drive to St. James's Street, and when the experienced cabman pulled down the flag of the taximeter and opened the door, he sat there like a log. The X Club was not fashionable, but it was reputable and of old establishment. It was fairly easy to get into--for the people whom the election committee wanted there--exceedingly difficult for the wrong set of people. Very many country gentlemen--county people, but of moderate means--belonged to it; the Major-General and the Admiral were not infrequent visitors; several Judges were on the members' list and looked in now and again. As far as the Arts went, they were but poorly represented. There was no sparkle, no night-life about the place. The painters, actors and writers preferred a club that began to brighten up about eleven o'clock at night--just when the X became dreary. Not more than a dozen suppers were served at the staid building in St. James' on any night of the week. Nevertheless, it was not an "old fogies'" club. There was a younger leaven working there. A good many younger men who also belonged to much more lively establishments found refreshment, quiet, and just the proper kind of atmosphere at the X. For young men of good families who were starting life in London, there was a certain sense of being at home there. The building had, in the past, been the house of a celebrated duke and something of comely and decent order clung to every room now. And, more than anything, the servants suggested a country or London house of name. Mullion, the grey-haired head-porter who sat in his glass box in the hall was a kind and assiduous friend to every one. He was reported to be worth ten thousand pounds and his manners were perfection. He was one of the most celebrated servants in London. His deference was never tinged by servility. His interest in your affairs and wants was delicately intimate and quite genuine. Great people had tried to lure this good and shrewd person from the X Club, but without success. For seventeen years he had sat there in the hall, and, if fate was kind, he meant to sit there for seventeen years more. All the servants of the X were like that. The youngest waiter in the smoking-rooms, library or dining room wore the face of a considerate friend, and Prince, the head bed-room valet was beloved by every one. Members of other clubs talked about him and Mullion, the head-porter, with sighs of regret. When Gilbert Lothian's taxi-cab stopped at the doors of the X Club, he was expected. Dickson Ingworth, who was a member also, had been there for a few moments, expectant of his friend. Old Mullion had gone for the night, and an under-porter sat in the quiet hall, but Prince, the valet, stood talking to Ingworth at the bottom of the stair-case. "It will be perfectly all right," said Prince. "I haven't done for Mr. Lothian for all these years without understanding his ways. Drunk or sober, sir, Mr. Gilbert is always a gentleman. He's the most pleasant country member in the club, sir! I understand his habits thoroughly, and he would bear me out in that at any time. I'm sure of that! His bowl of soup is being kept hot in the kitchens now. The small flask of cognac and the bottle of Worcester sauce are waiting on his dressing table. And there's a half bottle of champagne, which he takes to put him right when I call him in the morning, already on the ice!" "I know he appreciates it, Prince. He can't say enough about how you look after him when he's in London." "I thoroughly believe it, sir," said the valet, "but it gives me great pleasure to hear it from you, who are such a friend of Mr. Gilbert's. I may say, sir--if I may tell you without offence--that I'm not really on duty to-night. But when I see how Mr. Gilbert was when he was dressing for dinner, I made up my mind to stay. James begged me to go, but I would not. James is a good lad, but he's no memory for detail. He'd have forgot the bi-carbonate of soda for Mr. Gilbert's heart-burn, or something like that--I think that's him, sir!" Ingworth and the valet hurried over the hall as the inner doors swung open and Lothian entered. His shirt-front was crumpled. His face was white and set, his eyes fixed and sombre. It was as though the master of the house had returned, when the poet entered. The under-porter hurried out of his box, Prince had the coat and opera hat whisked away in a moment. In a moment more, like some trick of the theatre and surrounded by satellites, Lothian was mounting the stairs towards his bedroom. They put him in an arm-chair--these eager servitors! The electric lights in the comfortable bed-room were all switched on. The servant who loved him, not for his generosity, but for himself, vied with the young gentleman who loved him for somewhat different reasons. Both of them had been dominated by this personality for so long, that there was no sorrow nor pity in their minds. The faithful man of the people who had served gentlemen so long that any other life would have been impossible to him, the boy of position, united in their efforts of resuscitation. The Master's mind must be called back! The Master's body must be succoured and provided for. The two were there to do it, and it seemed quite an ordinary and natural thing. "You take off his boots, Prince, and I'll manage his collar." "Yes, sir." "Managed it?" "A little difficulty with the left boot, sir. The instep is a trifle swelled." "Good heavens! I do hope he's not going to have another attack of gout!" "I hope not, sir. But you can't ever tell. It comes very sudden. Like a thief in the night, as you may say." "There! I've broken the stud, but that doesn't matter. His neck's free." "And his boots are off. There's some one knocking. It's his soup. Would you mind putting his bed-room slippers on, sir? I don't like the cold for his feet." Prince hurried to the door, whispered a word or two to whoever stood outside, and returned with a tray. "Another few minutes," said Prince, as he poured the brandy and measured the Worcester sauce into the silver-plated tureen; "another few minutes and he'll be beautiful! Mr. Gilbert responds to anything wonderful quick. I've had him worse than this at half past twelve, and at quarter to one he's been talking like an archdeacon. You persuade him, sir." "Here's your soup, Gilbert!" "_It's all nothing, there's nobody, all nothing--dark--_," the voice was clogged and drowsy--if a blanket could speak, the voice might have been so. The boy looked hopelessly at the valet. Prince, an alert little man with a yellow vivacious countenance and heavy, black eye-brows, smiled superior. "When Mr. Gilbert really have copped the brewer--excuse the expression, sir--he generally says a few words without much meaning. Leave him to me if you please." He wheeled a little table up to the arm-chair, and caught hold of Lothian's shoulder, shaking him. "What? What? My soup?" "Yessir, your soup." The man's recuperative power was marvellous. His eyes were bleared, his face white, the wavy hair fell in disorder over his forehead. But he was awake and conscious. "Thank you, Prince," he said, in his clear and sweet voice, "just what I wanted. Hullo, Dicker! You here?--I'll just have my soup. . . ." He grasped the large ladle-spoon with curious eagerness. It was as though he found salvation in the hot liquid--pungent as it was with cognac and burning spices. He lapped it eagerly, coughing now and again, "gluck-gluck" and then a groan of satisfaction. The other two watched him with quiet eagerness. There was nothing horrible to them in this. Neither the valet nor the boy understood that they were "lacqueys in the house of shame." As they saw their muddy magic beginning to succeed, satisfaction swelled within them. Gilbert Lothian's mind was coming back. They were blind to the hideous necessity of their summons, untouched by disgust at the physical processes involved. "Will you require me any more, sir?" "No, thank you, Prince." "Very good, sir. I have made the morning arrangements." "Good-night, Prince." The bedroom door closed. Lothian heaved himself out of his chair. He seemed fifteen years older. His head was sunk forward upon his shoulders, his stomach seemed to protrude, his face was pale, blotchy, debauched, and appeared to be much larger than it ordinarily did. With a slow movement, as if every joint in his body creaked and gave him pain, he began to pace slowly up and down the room. Dickson Ingworth sat on the bed and watched him. Yet as the man moved slowly up and down the room, collecting the threads of his poisoned consciousness, slowly recapturing his mind, there was something big about him. Each heavy, semi-drunken movement had force and personality. The lowering, considering face spelt power, even now. He stopped in front of the bed. "Well, Dicker?" he said--and suddenly his whole face was transformed. Ten years fell away. The smile was sweet and simple, there was a freakish humour in the eyes,--"Well, Dicker?" The boy gave a great gasp of pleasure and relief. The "gude-man" had come home, the powerful mind-machine had started once more, the house was itself again! "How are you, Gilbert?" "Very tired. Horrible indigestion and heartburn, legs like lumps of brass and a nasty feeling as if an imprisoned black-bird were fluttering at the base of my spine! But quite sober, Dicker, now!" "Nor were you ever anything else, in Bryanstone Square," the young man said hotly. "It _was_ such a mistake for you to go away, Gilbert. So unnecessary!" "I had my reasons. Was there much comment? Now tell me honestly, was it very noticeable?--what did they say?" "No one said anything at all," Ingworth answered, lying bravely. "The evening didn't last long after you went. Every one left together--I say you ought to have seen the Toftrees' motor!--and I drove Miss Wallace home, and then came on here." "A beautiful girl," Lothian said sleepily. "I only talked to her for a minute or two and she seemed clever and sympathetic. Certainly she is lovely." Ingworth rose from the bed. He pointed to the table in the centre of the room. "Well, I'm off, old chap," he said. "As far as Miss Wallace goes, she's absolutely gone on you! She was quoting your verses all the way in the cab. She lives in a tiny flat with another girl, and I had to wait outside while she did up that parcel there! It's 'Surgit Amari,' she wants you to sign it for her, and there's a note as well, I believe. Good-night." "Good-night, Dicker. I can't talk now. I'm beautifully drunk to-night . . . Look me up in the morning. Then we'll talk." The door had hardly closed upon the departing youth, when Lothian sank into a heap upon his chair. His body felt like a quivering jelly, a leaden depression, as if Hell itself weighed him down. Mechanically, and with cold, trembling hands, he opened the brown paper parcel. His book, in its cover of sage-green and gold, fell out upon the table. He began to read the note--the hand-writing was firm, clear and full of youth--so he thought. The heading of the note paper was embossed-- "The Podley Pure Literature Institute. _Dear Mr. Lothian_: I am so proud and happy to have met you to-night. I am so sorry that I had not the chance of telling you what your poems have been to me--though of course you must always be hearing that sort of thing. So I will say nothing more, but ask you, only, to put your name in my copy of "Surgit Amari" and thus make it more precious--if that is possible--than before. Mr. Ingworth has kindly promised to give you this note and the book. Yours sincerely, RITA WALLACE." The letter dropped unheeded upon the carpet. Thick tears began to roll down Lothian's swollen face. "Mary! Mary!" he said aloud, "I want you, I want you!" . . . "Darling! there is no one else in the world but you." He was calling for his wife, always so good and kind to him, his dear and loving wife. At the end of his long foul day, lived without a thought of her, he was calling for her help and comfort like a sick child. Poisoned, abject, he whined for her in the empty room. --She was sleeping now, in the quiet house by the sea. The horn of a motor-car tooted in St. James' Street below--She was sleeping now in her quiet chamber. Tired lids covered the frank, blue eyes, the thick masses of yellow hair were straying over the linen pillow. She was dreaming of him as the night wind moaned about the house. He threw himself upon his knees by the bedside, in dreadful drunken surrender and appeal. --"Father help me! Jesus help me!--forgive me!"--he dare not invoke the Holy Ghost. He shrank from that. The Father had made everything and had made him. He was a beneficent, all-pervading Force--He would understand. The Lord Jesus was a familiar Figure. He was human; Man as well as God. One could visualise Him. He had cared for harlots and drunkards! . . . Far down in his sub-conscious brain Lothian was aware of what he was doing. He was whining not to be hurt. His prayers were no more than superstitious garrulity and fear. Something--a small despairing part of himself, had climbed upon the roof of the dishonoured Temple and was stretching trembling hands out into the overwhelming darkness of the Night. "Father, help me! Help me _now_. Let me go to bed without phantoms and torturing ghosts round me! Do not look into the Temple to-night. I will cleanse it to-morrow. I swear it! Father! Help me!" He began to gabble the Lord's Prayer--that would adjust things in a sort of way--wouldn't it? There was a promise--yes--one said it, and it charmed away disaster. Half-way through the prayer he stopped. The words would not come to him. He had forgotten. But that no longer distressed him. The black curtain of stupor was descending once more. "'Thy will be done'--what _did_ come after? Well! never mind!" God was good. He'd understand. After all, intention was everything! He scrambled into bed and instantly fell asleep, while the lovely face of Rita Wallace was the first thing that swam into his disordered brain. In a remote village of Norfolk, not a quarter of a mile from Gilbert Lothian's own house, a keen-faced man with a pointed beard, a slim, alert figure like an osier wand and steely brown eyes was reading a thin green-covered book of poems. Now and then he made a pencil note in the margin. His face was alive with interest, almost with excitement. It was as though he were tracing something, hunting for some secret hidden in the pages. More than once he gave a subdued exclamation of excitement. "It's there!" he said at last to himself. "Yes, it is there! I'm sure of it, quite apart from what I've heard in the village since I came." He rose, put the book carefully away in a drawer, locked it, blew out the lamp and went to bed. Three hundred miles away in Cornwall, a crippled spinster was lying on her bed of pain in a cottage by the sea. The windows of her room were open and the moon-rays touched a white Crucifix upon the wall to glory. The Atlantic groundswell upon the distant beaches made a sound as of fairy drums. The light of a shaded candle fell upon the white coverlet of her bed, and upon a book bound in sage-green and gold which lay there. The woman's face shone. She had just read for the fifth time, the poem in "Surgit Amari" which closes the first book. The lovely lines had fused with the holy rapture of the night, and her patient soul was caught up into commune with Jesus. "Soon! Oh, soon! Dear Lord," she gasped, "I shall be with Thee for ever. If it seemeth good to Thee, let me be taken up on some such tranquil night as this. And I thank Thee, Dear Saviour, that Thou hast poured Thy Grace into the soul of Gilbert Lothian, the Poet. Through the white soul of this poet, which Thou hast chosen to be a conduit of comfort to me, my night pain has gone. I am drawn nearer to Thee, Jesus who hast died for me! "Lord, bless the poet. Pour down Thy Grace upon him. Guard him, shield him and his for ever more. And, Sweet Lord, if it be Thy will, let me meet him in Heaven and tell him of this night--this fair night of summer when I lay dying and happy and thinking kindly and with gratitude of him. "Jesus!" CHAPTER IV LOTHIAN GOES TO THE LIBRARY OF PURE LITERATURE "I only knew one poet in my life: And this, or something like it, was his way." --_Browning._ The Podley Library in West Kensington was a fad of its creator. Mr. John Podley was a millionaire, or nearly so, and the head of a great pin-making firm. He was a public man of name and often preached or lectured at the species of semi-religious conversations known as "Pleasant Sunday Afternoons." Sunday afternoon in England--though Mr. Podley called it "The Sabbath"--represented the pin-maker's mental attitude with some fidelity. All avenues to pleasure of any kind were barred, though possibly amusement is the better word. A heavy meal clogged the intellect, an imperfectly-understood piece of Jewish religious politics was made into an idol, erected and bowed down to. Mr. Podley had always lived with the fear of God, and the love of money constantly before his eyes. "Sabbath observance" and total abstinence were his watchwords, and he also took a great interest in "Literature" and had pronounced views upon the subject. These views, like everything else about him, were confined and narrow, but were the sincere convictions of an ignorant, pompous and highly successful man. He had, accordingly, established the Podley Free Library in Kensington in order to enunciate and carry out his ideas in a practical way. What he considered--and not without some truth--the immoral tendency of modern writers, was to be sternly prohibited in his model house of books. Nothing should repose upon those shelves which might bring a blush to the cheeks of the youngest girl or unsettle the minds of any one at all. "Very unsettling" was a great phrase of this good, wealthy and stupid old man. He really was good, vulgar and limited as were all his tastes, and he had founded the Library to the glory of God. He found it impossible--when he became confronted by the task--to choose the books himself, as he had hoped to do. He had sat down one day in his elegant private sanctum at Tulse Hill with sheets of foolscap before him, to make a first list. The "Pilgrim's Progress" was written down immediately in his flowing clerkly hand. Then came the novels of Mrs. Henry Wood. "Get all of this line" was the pencilled note in the margin. Memories of his youth reasserted themselves, so "Jessica's First Prayer," "Ministering Children" and "A Peep Behind the Scenes" were quickly added, and then there had been a pause. "Milton, Shakespeare and the Bible?" said Mrs. Podley, when consulted. "They're pure enough, I'm sure!" and the pin-maker who had never been to a theatre, nor read a line of the great poets, wrote them down at once. As for the Bible, it was God's word, and so "would never bring a blush" etc. It was Mr. Podley's favourite reading--the Old Testament more than the New--and if any one had scoffed at the idea that the Almighty had written it Himself, in English and with a pen, Podley would have thought him infidel. The millionaire was quite out of date. The modern expansions of thought among the Non-conformists puzzled him when he was (rarely) brought into any contact with them. His grim, uncultured beliefs were such as exist only in the remote granite meeting houses of the Cornish moors to-day. "I see that Bunyan wrote another book, the 'Holy War,'" said Mr. Podley to his wife. "I never heard of it and I'm a bit doubtful. I don't like the name, shall I enter it up or not?" The good lady shook her head. "Not knowing, can't say," she remarked. "But if it is the same man who wrote 'Pilgrim's Progress' then it's sure to be pure." "It's the 'Holy' that puzzles me," he answered, "that's a papist word--'Holy Church' 'Holy Mary' and that." "Then I should leave it out. But I tell you what, my dear, choosing these books'll take up a lot of your valuable time, especially if each one's got to be chose separate. You might have to read a lot of them yourself, there's no knowing! And why should you?" "Why, indeed?" said Mr. Podley. "But I don't see how----" "Well, I do then, John. It's as simple as A. B. C. You want to establish a library in which there shan't be any wicked books." "That is so?" "Yes, my dear. Pure, absolutely pure!" "Well, then, have them bought for you by an expert--like you do the metal for the pins. You don't buy metal yourself any more. You pay high wages to your buyers to do it. Treat the books the same!" "There's a good deal in that, dear. But I want to take a _personal_ interest in the thing." "Now don't you worry, John. 'Tis right that we should all be conscientious in what we do, but them as has risen to the head of great businesses haven't any further call to trouble about minor details. I've heard you say it many a time. And so with this library. You're putting down the money for it. You've bought the land and the building is being erected. You've got to pay, and if that isn't taking a personal interest then I'm sure I don't know what is!" "You advise me?--" "To go to the best book shop in London--there's that place opposite the Royal Academy that is the King's booksellers. See one of the partners. Explain that you want the library furnished with pure books, state the number you want, and get an estimate of the cost. It's their business to know what books are pure and what aren't--and, besides, at a shop like that, they wouldn't sell any wicked books. It would be beneath them." Podley had taken his wife's advice. He had "placed an order" for an initial ten thousand pure volumes with the firm in question, and the thing was done. The shop in Piccadilly was a very famous shop indeed. It had all the _cachet_ of a library of distinction. Its director was a man of letters and an anthologist of repute. The men who actually sold the books were gentlemen of knowledge and taste, invaluable to many celebrated authors, mines of information, and all of them trained bibliophiles. "Now look here, Lewis," the director said, to one of his assistants, an Oxford man who translated Flaubert and wrote introductions to English editions of Gautier in his spare time, "you've got to fill a library with books." Mr. Lewis smiled. "Funny thing they should come to us," he said; "I should have thought they would have bought them by the yard, in the Strand. What is it, American millionaire? question of bindings and wall-space?" "No, not quite," said the director. "It's Mr. Podley, the pin millionaire and philanthropist. He's founding a public library of 'pure literature' in Kensington. The only books he has ever read, apparently, are the books of the Old Testament. He was with me for an hour this morning. Take a week and make a list. He wants ten thousand volumes for a start." The eyes of Mr. Lewis gleamed. "Certainly!" he said. "It will be quite delightful. It seems almost too good to be true. But will the list be scrutinised before the books are actually bought? Won't this Podley man take another opinion?" The director shook his head. "He doesn't know any one who could give him one," he answered. "It would only mean engaging another expert, and he's quite satisfied with our credentials. 'Pure books'! Good Lord! I wonder what he thinks he means. I should like to get inside that man's head and poke about for an hour. It would be interesting." Mr. Lewis provided for the Kensington Institute exactly the library he would have acquired for himself, if he could have afforded it. The result, for all real lovers of books, would have been delightful if any of them had known of it But the name frightened them away, and they never went there. Members of the general public were also deterred by the name of the Institute--though for quite different reasons--and folk of Mr. Podley's own mental attitude were too illiterate (like him), to want books--"pure" or otherwise--at all. Podley, again after consultation with his wife, appointed a clerk from the Birmingham pin works as chief librarian. "It won't matter," that shrewd woman had pointed out, "if he knows anything about literature or not! His duties will be to supervise the lending of the books, and a soft job he'll have too!" A Mr. Hands had been elected, a limpet-like adherent to Podley's particular shibboleth, and a person as anæmic in mind and body as could have been met with in a month of search. An old naval pensioner and his wife were appointed care-takers, and a lady-typist and sub-librarian was advertised for, at thirty-five shillings a week. Rita Wallace had obtained the post. Hardly any one ever came to the library. In the surge and swell of London life it became as remote as an island in the Hebrides. Podley had endowed it--it was the public excuse for the knighthood he purchased in a year from the Liberal Party--and there it was! Rita Wallace had early taken entire charge and command of her nominal superior--the whiskered and despondent Mr. Hands. The girl frightened and dazzled him. As he might have done at the foot of Etna or Stromboli, he admired, kept at a distance, and accepted the fact that she was there. The girl was absolute mistress of the solitary building full of beautiful books. Sometimes Hands, whose wife was dying of cancer, and who had no stated times of attendance, stayed away for several days. Snell and his wife--the care-takers--adored her, and she lunched every day with them in the basement. Mrs. Snell often spoke to her husband about "Miss Rita." "If that there Hands could be got rid of," she would say, "then it would be ever so much better. Poor silly thing that he is, with his face like the underside of a Dover sole! And two hundred a year for doing nothing more than what Miss Rita tells him! He calls her 'Miss'--as I'm sure he should, her being a Commander's daughter and him just a dirty Birmingham clerk! Miss Rita ought to have his two hundred a year, and him her thirty-five shillings a week. Thirty-five shillings! what is it for an officer's daughter, that was born at Malta too! I'd like to give that old Podley a piece of my mind, I would!" "In the first place he never comes here. In the second place he's not a gentleman himself, so that don't mean nothing to him," Snell would say on such occasion of talk. He had been at the Bombardment of Alexandria and could not quite forget it. . . . "Now if it was Lord Charles what had started this--'--Magneta--' library, then _'e_ could 'a' been spoke to--Podley!" It was four o'clock on the afternoon of the day after the Amberleys' dinner-party. Hands was away, staying beside his sick wife, and Rita Wallace proposed to close the library. She had just got rid of the curate from a neighbouring church, who had discovered the deserted place--and her. Snubbed with skill the boy had departed, and as no one else would come--or if they did what would it matter?--Rita was about to press the button of the electric bell upon her table and summon Snell. The afternoon sunlight poured in upon the books from the window in the dome. The place was cool and absolutely silent, save for the note a straying drone-bee made as his diapason swept this way and that. Even here, as the sunlight fell upon the dusty gold and crimson of the books, summer was calling. The bee came close to Rita and settled for a moment upon the sulphur-coloured rose that stood in a specimen-glass upon her writing-table. He was a big fellow, and like an Alderman in a robe of black fur, bearing a gold chain. "Oh, you darling!" Rita said, thinking of summer and the outside world. She would go to Kensington Palace Gardens where there were trees, green grass and flowers. "Oh, you darling! You're a little jewel with a voice, a bit of the real country! I believe you've actually been droning over the hop-fields of Kent!" She looked up suddenly, her eyes startled, the perfect mouth parted in vexation. Some one was coming, she might be kept any length of time--for the rare visitors to the Podley Library were generally bores. . . . That silly curate might have returned! The outer swing doors thudded in the hall, there was the click of a latch as the inner door was pushed open and Gilbert Lothian entered. The girl recognised him at once, as he made his way under the dome towards her, and her eyes grew wide with wonder. Lothian was wearing a suit of grey flannel, his hair as he took off his straw hat was a little tumbled, his face fresh and clear. "How do you do," he said, with the half-shy deference that came into his voice when he spoke to women. "It was such a lovely afternoon that I thought I might venture to bring back your copy of 'Surgit Amari' myself." Rita Wallace flashed her quick, humorous smile at him--the connection between the weather and his wish was not too obvious. But her smile had pleasure of another kind in it also--he had wanted to see her again. Lothian laughed boyishly. "I wanted to see you again," he said, in the very words of her thought. The girl was flattered and delighted. There was not the slightest hint of self-consciousness in her manner, and the flush that came into her cheeks was one of pure friendliness. "It is very kind of you to take so much trouble," she said in a voice as sweet as singing. "I was so disappointed when you had to go away so early from the Amberleys' last night." She did not say the conventional thing about how much his poems had meant to her. Girls that he met--and they were not many--nearly always did, and he always disliked it. Such things meant nothing when they came as part of ordinary greetings. They jarred upon the poet's sensitive taste and he was pleased and interested to find that this girl said nothing of the sort. "Well, here's the book," he said, putting it down upon Rita's table. "And I've written in it as you asked. Do you collect autographs then?" She shook her head. "Oh, dear me no," she answered. "I think it's silly to collect anything that isn't beautiful. But, in a book one values, and with which one has been happy, the author's autograph seems to add to the book's personality. But I hate crazes. There are lots of girls that wait outside stage doors to make popular actors write in their books. Did you know that, Mr. Lothian?" "No, I didn't! Little donkeys! Hard lines on the actors. Even I get a few albums now and then, and it's a fearful nuisance. I put off writing in them and they lie about my study until they get quite a battered and dissipated look." "And then?" "Oh, I write in them. It would be impolite not to, you know. I have an invaluable formula. I write, 'Dear Madam, I am very sorry to say that I cannot accede to your kind request for an autograph. The practice is one with which I am not in sympathy. Yours very truly, Gilbert Lothian!'" "That's splendid, Mr. Lothian, better than sending a telegram, as some one did the other day to an importunate girl. They were talking about it last night at the Amberleys' after you left. I suppose that's really what gave me courage to send 'Surgit Amari' by Mr. Dickson Ingworth. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees said that they always write passages from their novels when they are asked." "Perhaps that's a good plan," Lothian answered, listening to the "viols in her voice" and not much interested in the minor advertising arts of the Toftrees. What rare maiden was this with whom he was chatting? What had made him come to see her after all?--a mere whim doubtless--but was he not about to reap a very delightful harvest? For he was conscious of immense pleasure as he stood there talking to her, and there was excitement mingled with the pleasure. It was as though he was advancing upon a landscape, and at every step something fresh and interesting came into view. "I _did_ so dislike Mr. Toftrees and his wife," Rita said with a mischievous little gleam in her eyes. "Did you?" he asked in surprise. "They seemed very pleasant people I thought." "I expect that was because you thought nothing whatever about them, Mr. Lothian," she replied. He realised the absolute truth of the remark in a flash. The novelists had in no way interested him. He had not thought about these people at all--this maiden was a psychologist then! There was something subtly flattering in what she had said. His point of view had interested the girl, she had discovered it, small and unimportant though it was. "But why did you dislike poor Mr. Toftrees?" he said, with an eminently friendly smile--already an unconscious note of intimacy had been sounded, he was interested to hear why she disliked the man, not the woman. "He is pompous and insincere," she replied. "He tries to draw attention to his great success, or rather his notoriety, by pretending to despise it. Surely, it would be far more manly to accept the fact frankly, and not to hint that he could be a great artist if he could bring himself to do without a lot of money!" Lothian wondered what had provoked this little outburst. It was quiveringly sincere, that he saw. His eyes questioned hers. "It's such dreadful appalling treacle they write! I saw a little flapper in the Tube two days ago, with the Toftrees' latest book--'Milly Mine.' Her expression was ecstatic!" "For my part I think that's something to have done, do you know, to have taken that flapper out of the daily tube of her life into Romance. Heaven with electric lights and plush fittings is better than none at all. I couldn't grudge the flapper her ecstasy, nor Mr. Toftrees his big cheques. I should very much like to see the people in Tubes reading my books--it would be good for them--and to pouch enormous cheques myself--would be good for me! But there must be Toftrees sort of persons now that every one knows how to read!" "Well, I'll let his work alone," she answered, "but I certainly do dislike him. He was trying to run your work down last night--though we wouldn't let him." So the secret was out now! Lothian smiled and the quick, enthusiastic girl understood. A little ripple of laughter came from her. "Yes, that's it," she cried. "He did all he could." "Did he? Confound him! I wonder why?" Lothian asked the question with entire simplicity. Subtle-minded and complex as he was, he was incapable of mean thoughts and muddy envy when he was not under the influence of drink. Poisoned, alas, he was entirely different. All the evil in him rose to the surface. As yet it by no means obscured or overpowered the good, but it became manifest and active. In the case of this fine intellect and splendid artist, no less than in the worker in the slum or the labourer in the field, drink seemed an actual key to unlock the dark and secret doors of wickedness which are in every heart. Some coiled and sleeping serpent within him, no less than in them, raised its head into baleful life and sudden enmity of good. A few nights ago, half intoxicated in a club--intoxicated in mind that is, for he was holding forth with a caustic bitterness and sharp brilliancy that had drawn a crowd around him--he had abused the work of Herbert Toftrees and his wife with contemptuous and venomous words. He was quite unconscious that he had ever done so. He knew nothing about the couple and had never read a line of their works. The subject had just cropped up somehow, like a bird from a stubble, and he had let fly. It was pure coincidence that he had met the novelists at the Amberleys' and Lothian had entirely forgotten that he had ever mentioned their work at the club. But the husband and wife had heard of it the next day, as people concerned always do hear these things, and neither of them were likely to forget that their books had been called "as flat as champagne in decanters," their heroines "stuffy" and that compared to even "--" and "--" they had been stigmatised as being as pawn-brokers are to bankers. Lothian had made two bitter enemies and he had not the slightest suspicion of it. "I wonder why?" he said again. "I don't know the man. I've never done him any harm that I know of. But of course he has a right to his own opinions, and no doubt he really thinks----" "He knows nothing whatever about it," Rita answered. "If a man like that reads poetry at all he has to do it in a prose translation! But I can tell you why--Addison puts it far better than I can. I found the passage the other day. I'll show you." She was all innocent eagerness and fire, astonishingly sweet and enthusiastic as she hurried to a bookshelf and came back with a volume. Following her slim finger, he read:-- "There are many passions and tempers of mankind, which naturally dispose us to depress and vilify the merit of one rising in the esteem of mankind. All those who made their entrance into the world with the same advantages, and were once looked on as his equals, are apt to think the fame of his merits a reflection on their own deserts. Those, who were once his equals, envy and defame him, because they now see him their superior; and those who were once his superiors, because they look upon him as their equal." The girl was gazing at him in breathless attention, wondering whether she had done the right thing, hoping, indeed, that Lothian would be pleased. He was both pleased and touched by this lovely eager little champion, so unexpectedly raised up to defend him. "Thank you very much," he said. "How kind of you! My bruised vanity is now at rest. I am healed of my grievous wound! But this seems quite a good library. Are you here all alone, does nobody ever come here? I always heard that the Podley Library was where the bad books went when they died. Tell me all about it." His hand had mechanically slipped into his waistcoat and half withdrawn his cigarette case. He could never be long without smoking and he wanted a cigarette now more than ever. During a whole hour he had not had a drink. A slight suspicion of headache floated at the back of his head, he was conscious of something heavy at his right side. "Do smoke," she said. "No one minds--there never is any one to mind, and I smoke here myself. Mr. Hands, the head librarian, didn't like it at first but he does what I tell him now. I'm the assistant librarian." She announced her status with genuine pride and pleasure, being obviously certain that she occupied a far from unimportant position in public affairs. Lothian was touched at her simplicity. What a child she was really, with all her cleverness and quickness. He smoked and made her smoke also--"Delicious!" she exclaimed with pretty greediness. "How perfectly sweet to be a man and able to afford Ben Ezra's Number 5." "How perfectly sweet!"--it was a favourite expression of Rita's. He soon got to know it very well. He soon got to know all about the library and about her also, as she showed him round. She was twenty-one, only twenty-one. Her father, a captain in the Navy, had left her just sufficient money for her education, which had been at a first-class school. Then she had had to be dependent entirely upon her own exertions. She seemed to have no relations and not many friends of importance, and she lived in a tiny three-roomed flat with another girl who was a typist in the city. She chattered away to him just as if he were a girl friend as they moved among the books, and it was nearly an hour before they left the Library together. "And now what are you going to do?" "I must go home, Mr. Lothian," she said with a little sigh. "It has been so kind of you to come and see me. I was going to sit in Kensington Palace Gardens for a little while, but I think I shall go back to the flat now. How hot it is! Oh, for the sea, now, just think of it!" There was a flat sound in her voice. It lost its animation and timbre. He knew she was sorry to say good-bye to him, rather forlorn now that the stimulus and excitement of their talk was over. She was lonely, of course. Her pleasures could be but few and far between, and at twenty-one, when the currents of the blood run fast and free, even books cannot provide everything. Thirty-five shillings a week! He had been poor himself in his early journalistic days. It was harder for a girl. He thought of her sitting in Kensington Gardens--the pathetic and solitary pleasure the child had mapped out for herself! He could see the little three-roomed flat in imagination, with its girlish decorations and lack of any real comfort, and some appalling meal presently to be eaten, bread and jam, a lettuce! The idea came into his mind in a flash, but he hesitated before speaking. Wouldn't she be angry if he asked her? He'd only met her twice, she was a lady. Then he decided to risk it. "I wonder," he said slowly. "What are you wondering, Mr. Lothian?" --"If you realise how easy it is to be by the sea. I know it's cheek to ask you--or at least I suppose it is, but let's go!" "How do you mean, Mr. Lothian?" "Let's motor down to Brighton now, at once. Let's dine at the Metropole, and go and sit on the pier afterwards, and then rush home under the stars whenever we feel inclined. Will you!" "How splendid!" she cried, "now! at once? get out of everything?" "Yes, now. I am to be the fairy godmother. You have only to say the magic word, and I will wave my wand. The blue heat mists of evening will be over the ripe Sussex cornfields, and we shall see the poppies drinking in the blood of the sinking sun with their burnt red mouths. And then, when we have dined, the moon will wash the sea with silver, the stars will come out like golden rain and the Queen Moon will be upon her throne! We shall see the long, lit front of Brighton like a horned crescent of topaz against the black velvet of the downs. And while we watch it under the moon, the breeze shall bring us faint echoes of the fairy flutes from Prospero's enchanted Island--'But doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange--' And then the sea will take up the burthen 'Ding-dong, ding-dong bell.' Now say the magic word!" "There is magic in the Magician's voice already, and I needs must answer. Yes! and oh, yes, YES a thousand times!" "The commandments of convention mean nothing to you?" "They are the Upper Ten Commandments, not mine." "Then I will go and command my dragon. I know where you live. Be ready in an hour!" "How perfectly, _perfectly_ sweet! And may we, oh, may we have a lobster mayonnaise for dinner?" CHAPTER V "FOR THE FIRST TIME, HE WAS GOING TO HAVE A GIRL FRIEND" "Across the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, And deep into the dying day The happy princess followed him." --_Tennyson._ Lothian went back to his club in a taxi-cab, telling the man to drive at top speed. On the way he ordered a motor-car to go to Brighton and to call for him within twenty minutes. He was in a state of great exhilaration. He had not had such an adventure as this for years--if ever before. A girl so lovely, so clever, so young--and particularly of his own social rank--he had never met, save for a short space of time and under the usual social conditions which forbade any real intimacy. Even in the days before his marriage, flirtations, or indeed any companionship, with girls who were not of his class had not attracted him. He had never, unlike other men no less brilliant and gifted than himself, much cared for even the innocent side of Bohemian camaraderie with girls. And to have a girl friend--and such a girl as Rita Wallace--was a delightful prospect. He saw himself responding to all sorts of simple feminine confidences, exploring reverently the unknown country of the Maiden mind, helping, protecting; unfolding new beauties for the young girl's delight. Yes! he would have a girl friend! The thing should be ideal, pure and without a thought of harm. She understood him, she trusted herself to him at once and she should be repaid richly from the stores of his mind. None knew better than he what jewels he had to give to one who could recognise jewels when she saw them. He changed his hat for a cap and had a coat brought down from his bedroom. Should he write a note to Mary at home? He had not sent her more than two telegrams of the "All going splendidly, too busy to write," kind, during the five days he had been in London. He decided that he would write a long letter to-morrow morning. Not to-night. To-night was to be one of pure, fresh pleasure. Every prospect pleased. Nothing whatever would jar. He was not in the mood to write home now--to compose details of his time in Town, to edit and alter the true record for the inspection of loving eyes. "My darling!" he said to himself as he drank the second whiskey and soda which had been brought to him since he had come in, but there was an uncomfortable feeling in the back of his mind that the words did not ring true. More than ever exhilarated, as excited as a boy, he jumped into the motor-car when it arrived, and glided swiftly westwards, congratulating himself a dozen times on the idle impulse which had sent him to Kensington. He began to wonder how it had come. The impulse to bring the book himself had been with him all day. It had taken him till lunch time at least to put himself in any way right--to _appear_ right even. With a sick and bitter mind he had gone through the complex physical ritual necessary after the night before--the champagne at eight, the Turkish bath, the hair-dresser's in Regent Street where fast men slunk with hot and shaking hands to have the marks of their vices ironed out of their faces with vibrating hammers worked by electricity. All through the morning, the bitter, naked, grinning truth about himself had been horribly present--no new visitor, but the same leering ghost he knew so well. Escape was impossible until the bestial sequence of his morning cure had run its course. Coming down the bedroom stairs into the club there was the disgusting and anxious consciousness that his movements were automatic and jerky, the real fear of meeting any one--the longing to bolt upstairs again and hide. Then a tremendous effort of will had forced him to go on. Facial control was--as ever--the most difficult thing. When he passed the waiters in the smoking room he must screw his face into the appearance of absorbed thought, freeze the twitching mouth and the flickering eyes into immobility. He had hummed a little tune as he had sat down at a table and ordered a brandy and soda, starting as if from a reverie when it was brought him, and making a remark about the weather in a voice of effusive geniality which embarrassed the well-trained servant. By lunch time the convulsive glances in the mirror, the nervous straying of the hand to the hair, the see-saw of the voice had all gone. Black depression, fear, self-pity, had vanished. The events of the night before became like a landscape seen through the wrong end of a telescope, far away, and as if they concerned some one quite other than himself. He had not exactly forgotten the shame of his behaviour at the Amberleys' house. But, as he always did after events of this sort, and they were becoming far more general than he realised, he had pushed the thought away in some attic of the brain and closed the door. He would have these memories out some day--soon. It would not be pleasant, but it must of course be done. Then he would put everything right with himself, destroy all these corpses, and emerge into the free sunlight for ever more. But not to-day. He must put himself _quite_ right to-day. When he _was_ right then he wouldn't have another drink all day. Yes! then by to-morrow, after a quiet, pensive night, he would throw off all his habits as if he were throwing an old pair of gloves over a wall. He knew well what he could do! He knew himself better than any one else knew him. But not to-day. "Inshallah Bukra!"--"Please God, to-morrow!" It had all seemed perfectly natural, though it happened over and over again, and to-morrow never came. He did not know that this was but one more definite symptom of his poisoned state, as definite as the shaking hand, the maudlin midnight invocations of God, the frequent physical nausea of the morning, even. And if the man is to be understood and his history to become real in all its phases, then these things must be set down truly and without a veil. It was a joy to watch her pleasure as they swung out of London in the twenty-horse power Ford he had hired. She did not say much but leant back on the luxurious cushions by his side. There was a dream of happiness upon her face, and Lothian also felt that he was living in a dream, that it was all part of the painted scenes of sleep. The early evening was still and quiet. The Western sky, a faint copper-green with friths and locks of purple, was as yet unfired. In the long lights the landscape still retained its colour unaltered by the dying splendours of sunset. The engines of the car were running sweetly in a monotonous and drowsy hum, the driver sat motionless in front as they droned through the quiet villages and up and down the long white ribands of the road. It was an hour of unutterable content. Once they stopped in a village and drew up before the inn. It was a lovely place. A bell was tolling for evensong in the grey church and they saw the vicar pass under the lych-gate with slow footsteps. One of the long, painted windows was caught by the sun and gleamed like a red diamond. The road fell to a pond where green water-flags were growing and waxen-white water-lilies floated. Beyond it was a willow wood. The driver sat on a bench before the inn and drank his beer, but Gilbert and Rita passed through it into a garden that there was. The flowers were just beginning to cense the still air and the faint sound of a water-wheel down the river came to them--_tic, tac, lorelei!_ She would have milk, "Milk that one cannot get in London," and even he asked for no poison in this tranquil garden. Clematis hung the gables like tapestry of Tyrian purple. There were beds of red crocketed hollyhock and a hedge of honeysuckle with a hundred yellow trumpet mouths. At their feet were the flowers of belamour. "Men have died, trying to find this place which we have found," he said. A red-admiral floated by upon its fans of vermilion and black as Gilbert quoted, and a faint echo from the water-mill answered him. _Tic--tac--lorelei!_ "Magician! half an hour ago we were in London!" "You are happy?" "I can't find anything to say--yet. It is perfect." She leant back with a deep sigh and closed her eyes, and he was well content to say nothing, for in all the garden she seemed to him the most perfect thing, rosa-amorosa, the queen of all the roses! It was as a flower he looked at her, no more. It was all a dream, of course. It had come in dream-fashion, it would go in the fashion of a dream. At that moment she was not a warm human girl with a lovely face. She was not the clever, lonely, subtle-simple maiden in the house of books. She was a flower he had met. His mind began to weave words, the shuttle to glide in the loom of the poet, but words came to him that were not his own. "Come hither, Child! and rest; This is the end of day, Behold the weary West! "Now are the flowers confest Of slumber; sleep as they! Come hither, Child! and rest." And then he sighed, for he thought of the other poet who had written those lines and of what had brought him to his dreadful death. Why did thoughts like these come into the flower garden? How true--even here--were the words he had put upon the title-page of the book which had made him famous-- "_Say, brother, have you not full oft Found, even as the Roman did, That in Life's most delicious cup Surgit Amari Aliquid!_" The girl heard him sigh and turned quickly. She saw that her friend's face was overcast. It was so much to her, this moment, she was so happy since she had stepped from the hot streets of the city into fairyland with the Magician, that there must be no single shadow. "Come!" she said gaily, "this is perfect but there are other perfect things waiting. Wave your wand again, Prospero, and change the magic scene." Lothian jumped up from his seat. "Yes! on into the sunset. You are right. We must go before we are satisfied. That's the whole art of living--Miranda!" Her eyes twinkled with mischief. "How old you have grown all of a sudden," she said, but as they passed through the inn once more he thought with wonder that if six years were added to his age he might have been her father in very fact. Many a man of forty-one or two had girls as old as she. He sent her to the motor, on pretence of stopping to pay for the milk, but in the little bar-parlour he hurriedly ordered whiskey--"a large one, yes, only half the soda." The landlord poured it out with great speed, understanding immediately. He must have been used to this furtive taking in of the fuel, here was another accustomed acolyte of alcohol. "Next stop Brighton, sir," he said with a genial wink. Lothian's melancholy passed away like a stone falling through water as the car started once more. He said something wildly foolish and discovered, with a throb of amazement and recognition, that she could play! He had never met a girl before who could play, as he liked to play. There was a strain of impish, freakish humour in Lothian which few people understood, which few _sensible_ people ever can understand. It is hardly to be defined, it seems incredibly childish and mad to the majority of folk, but it sweetens life to those who have it. And such people are very rare, so that when one meets another there is a surprised and delighted welcome, a freemason's greeting, a shout of joy in Laughter Land! "Good heavens!" he said, "and you can play then!" There was no need to mention the name of the game--it has none indeed--but Rita understood. Her sweet face wrinkled into impish mischief and she nodded. "Didn't you know?" "How could I possibly?" "No, you couldn't of course, but I never thought it of _you_." "Nor I of you," he answered. "I'll test you. 'The cow is in the garden.'" "'The cat is in the lake,'" she answered instantly. "'The pig is in the hammock?'" "'What difference _does_ it make?'" she shouted triumphantly. For the rest of the drive to Brighton their laughter never stopped. Nothing draws a man and a woman together as laughter does--when it is intimate to themselves, a mutual language not to be understood of others. They became extraordinary friends, as if they had known each other from childhood, and the sunset fires in all their glory passed unheeded. Although he could hear nothing of what they said, there was a sympathetic grin upon the chauffeur's face at the ringing mirth behind him. "It's your turn to suppose now, Mr. Lothian." "Well--wait a minute--oh, let's suppose that Mr. Podley once wrote a moral poem--you to play!" Rita thought for a minute or two, her lips rippling with merriment, her young eyes shining. A little chuckle escaped her, her shoulders began to shake and then she shrieked with joy. "I've got it, splendid! Listen! It's to inculcate kindness to animals. "I am only a whelk, Sir, Though if you but knew, Although I'm a whelk, Sir, The Lord made me too!" "Magnificent!--your turn." "Well, what will the title of the Toftrees' next novel be?" "'Cats' meat!'--I say, do you know that I have invented the one _quite_ perfect opening for a short story. You'll realise when you hear it that it stands alone. It's perfect, like Giotto's Campanile or 'The Hound of Heaven.'" "Tell me quickly!" "Mr. Florimond awoke from a deep sleep. There was nobody there but the Dog Trust." "You are wonderful. I see it, of course. It's style itself! And how would you end the story? Have you studied the end yet?" "Yes. I worked at it all the time I was in Italy last year. You shall hear that too. Mr. Florimond sank into a deep sleep. There was nobody there but the Dog Trust." . . . He told her of his younger days in London when he shared a flat with a brother journalist named Passhe. "We lived the most delightful freakish lives you can imagine," he said. "When we came into breakfast from our respective bedrooms we had a ritual which never varied. We neither looked at each other nor spoke, but sat down opposite at the table. We each had our newspaper put in our place by the man who looked after us. We opened the papers and pretended to read for a moment. Then Basil looked over the top of his at me, very gravely. 'We live in stirring times, Mr. Lothian!' he would say, and I used to answer, 'Indeed, Mr. Passhe, we do!' Then we became as usual." "How perfectly sweet! I must do that with Ethel--that's the girl I live with, you know--only we don't have the papers. It runs up so!" she concluded, with a wise little air that sent a momentary throb of pain through a man who had never understood (even in his poorest days) what money meant; and probably never would understand. Poor, dear little girl! Why couldn't he give her-- "We're here, Mr. Lothian! Look at the lights! Brighton at last!" Rita had been whisked away by a chambermaid and he was waiting for her in the great hall of the Metropole. He had washed, reserved a table, and swallowed a gin and bitters. He felt rather tired physically, and a little depressed also. His limbs had suddenly felt cramped as he left the motor car, the wild exhilaration of their fun had made him tired and nervous now. His bad state of health asserted itself unpleasantly, his forehead was clammy and the palms of his hands wet. No champagne for him! Rita should have champagne if she liked, but whiskey, whiskey! that was the only thing. "I can soon pull myself together," he thought. "She won't know. I'll tell the fellow to bring it in a decanter." Presently she came to him among the people who moved or sat about under the lights of the big, luxurious vestibule. She was a little shy and nervous, slightly flushed and anxious, for she had never been in such a splendid public place before. He gathered that from her whispered remarks, as with a curious and pleasant air of proprietorship he took her to the dining rooms. There was a bunch of amber-coloured roses upon her plate as she sat down at their table, which he had sent there a few minutes before. She pressed them to her face with a shy look of pleasure as he conferred with the head waiter, who himself came hurrying up to them. Lothian was not known at the hotel, but it was always the same wherever he went. His wife often chaffed him about it. She said that he had a "tipping face." Whether that was so or not, the result was the same, he received immediate and marked attention. Rita noticed it with pride. He had been, from the first moment he entered the Library in his simple flannel suit, just a charming and deferential companion. There had been no preliminaries. The thing had just happened, that was all. In all her life she had never met any one so delightful, and in her excitement and pleasure she had quite forgotten that he was Gilbert Lothian. But it came back to her very vividly now. How calmly he ordered the dinner and conferred with the wine-man, who had a great silver chain hanging on his shirt front! What an accustomed man-of-the-world air there was about him, how they all ran to serve him. She blushed mentally as she thought of her simple confidences and girlish chatter--and yet he hadn't seemed to mind. She looked round her. "It is difficult to realise," she said, as much to herself as to her host, "that there are people who dine in places like this every day." Lothian looked round him. "Yes," he said a trifle bitterly, as his eye fell upon a party of Jews who had motored down from London,--"people who rule over three-quarters of the world--and an entire eclipse of the intellect! You can see it here, unimportant as it is, compared to the great places in London and Paris--'the feasting and the folly and the fun, the lying and the lusting and the drink'!" Rita looked at him wonderingly, following the direction of his eyes. "Those people seem happy," she said, not understanding his sudden mood, "they are all laughing and they all seem amused." "Yes, but people don't always laugh because they are amused. Slow-witted, obese brained people--like those Israelites there--laugh very often on the chance that there is something funny which eludes them. They don't want to betray themselves. When I see people like that I feel as if my mind ought to be sprinkled with some disinfecting fluid." As a matter of fact, the party at the other table with their handsome Oriental faces and alert, vivacious manner did not seem in the least slow-witted, nor were they. One of them was a peer and great newspaper proprietor, another a musician of world celebrity. Lothian's cynicism jarred on the pleasure of the moment. For the first time the girl did not feel quite _en rapport_, and was a little uneasy. He struck too harsh a note. But at that moment waiters bustled up with soup, champagne in an ice pail, and a decanter of some bright amber liquid for Lothian. He poured and drank quickly, with an involuntary sigh of satisfaction. "How I wanted that!" he said with a frank smile. "I was talking nonsense, Miranda, but I was tired. And I'm afraid that when I get tired I'm cross. I've been working very hard lately and am a little run down," he added, anxious that she should not think that their talk had tired him, and feeling the necessity of some explanation. It satisfied her immediately. His change of voice and face reassured her, the little shadow passed. "Oh, I _am_ enjoying myself!" she said with a sigh of pleasure, "but what's this? How strange! The soup is _cold_!" "Yes, didn't you know? It's iced consommé, awfully good in hot weather." She shook her head. "No, I didn't," she said. "I've never been anywhere or seen anything, you know. When Ethel and I feel frightfully rich, we have dinner at Lyons, but I've never been to a swagger restaurant before." "And you like it?" "It's heavenly! How good this soup is. But what a waste it seems to put all that ice round the champagne. Ice is so dreadfully expensive. You get hardly any for fourpence at our fishmongers." But it was the mayonnaise with its elaborate decoration that intrigued her most. Words failed at the luscious sight and it was a sheer joy to watch her. "Oh, what a pig I am!" she said, after her second helping, with her flashing, radiant smile, "but it was too perfectly sweet for anything." The champagne and excitement had tinted her cheeks exquisitely, it was as though a few drops of red wine had been poured into a glass of clear crystal water. With little appetite himself, Lothian watched her eat with intense pleasure in her youth and health. His depression had gone, he seemed to draw vitality from her, to be informed with something of her own pulsing youth. He became quite at his best, and how good that was, not very many people knew. It was his hour, his moment, every sense was flattered and satisfied. He was dining with the prettiest girl in the room, people turned to look at her. She hung on his words and was instantly appreciative. A full flask of poison was by his side, he could help himself without let or hindrance. Her innocence of what he was doing--of what it was necessary for him to do to remain at concert-pitch--was supreme. No one else knew or would have cared twopence if they did. He was witty, in a high courtly way. The hour of freakish fun was over, and his shrewd insight into life, his poetic and illuminating method of statement, the grace and kindliness of it all held the girl spellbound. And well it might. His nerves, cleared and tempered, telegraphed each message to his brilliant, lambent brain with absolute precision. There was an entire co-ordination of all the reflexes. And Rita knew well that she was hearing what many people would have given much to hear, knew that Lothian was exerting himself to a manifestation of the highest power of his brain--for her. For her! It was an incredible triumph, wonderfully sweet. The dominant sex-instinct awoke. Unconsciously she was now responding to him as woman to man. Her eyes, her lips showed it, everything was quite different from what it had been before. In all that happened afterwards, neither of them ever forgot that night. For the girl it was Illumination. . . . She had mentioned a writer of beautiful prose whom she had recently discovered in the library and who had come as a revelation to her. "Nothing else I have ever read produces the same impression," she said. "There are very few writers in prose that can." "It is magic." "But to be understood. You see, some of his chapters--the passages on Leonardo da Vinci for instance, are intended to be musical compositions as it were, in which words have to take the place and perform the functions of notes. It has been pointed out that they are impassioned, not so much in the sense of expressing any very definite sentiment, but because, from the combination and structure of the sentences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion." She understood. The whole mechanism and intention of the writer were revealed to her in those lucent words. And then a statement of his philosophy. "In telling me of your reading just now, you spoke of that progress of the soul that each new horizon in literature seems to stimulate and ensure for you. And you quoted some hackneyed and beautiful lines of Longfellow. Cling always to that idea of progress, but remember that we don't really rise to higher things upon the stepping stones of our dead selves so much as on the stepping stones of our dead opinions. That is Progress. _Progress means the capability of seeing new forms of beauty._" "But there are places where one wants to linger." "I know, but it's dangerous. You were splendidly right when you bade me move from that garden just now. The road was waiting. It is so with states of the soul. The limpet is the lowest of organisms. Movement is everything. One life may seem to be like sunlight moving over sombre ground and another like the shadow of a cloud traversing a sunlit space. But both have meaning and value. Never strike an average and imagine you have found content. The average life is nothing but a pudding in a fog!" Lothian had been talking very earnestly, his eyes full of light, fixed on her eyes. And now, in a moment, he saw what had been there for many minutes, he saw what he had roused. He was startled. During this delightful evening that side of their intercourse had not been very present in his mind. She was a delightful flower, a flower with a mind. It is summed up very simply. _He had never once wanted to touch her._ His face changed and grew troubled. A new presence was there, a problem rose where there had been none before. The realisation of her physical loveliness and desirability came to him in a flood of new sensation. The strong male impulse was alive and burning for the first time that night. A waiter had brought a silver dish of big peaches, and as she ate the fruit there was that in her eyes which he recognised, though he knew her mind was unconscious of it. In the sudden stir and tumult of his thoughts, one became dominant. It was an evil thought, perhaps the most subtle and the most evil that can come to a man. The pride of intellect in its most gross and devilish manifestation awoke. He was not a vain man. He did not usually think much about his personal appearance and charm. But he knew how changed in outward aspect he was becoming. His glass told him that every morning at shaving time. His vice was marking him. He was not what he was, not what he should and might be, in a physical regard. And girls, he knew, were generally attracted by physical good-looks in a man. Young Dickson Ingworth, for instance, seemed able to pick and choose. Lothian had often laughed at the boyish and conceited narratives of his prowess. And now, to the older man came the realisation that his age, his growing corpulence, need mean nothing at all--if he willed it so. A girl like this, a pearl among maidens, could be dominated by his intellect. He knew that he was not mistaken. Over a fool, however lovely and attractive by reason of her sex, he would have no power. But here . . . An allurement more dazzling than he had thought life held was suddenly shown him. There was an honest horror, a shudder and recoil of all the good in him from this monstrous revelation, so sudden, so unexpected. He shuddered and then found an instant compromise. It could not concern _himself_, it never should. But it might be regarded--just for a few brief moments!--from a detached point of view, as if it had to do with some one else, some creation of a fiction or a poem. And even that was unutterably sweet. It should be so, only for this night. There would be no harm done. And it was for the sake of his Art, the psychological experience to be gathered. . . . There is no time in thought. The second hand of his watch had hardly moved when he leant towards her a little and spoke. "Cupid!" he said. "I think I know why they used to call you Cupid at your school!" Just as she had been a dear, clever and deferential school-girl in the Library, a girl-poet in the garden, a freakish companion-wit after that, so now she became a woman. He had fallen. She knew and tasted consciousness of power. Another side of the girl's complex personality appeared. She led him on and tried to draw back. She became provocative at moments when he did not respond at once. She flirted with a finished art. As he lit a cigarette for her, she tested the "power of the hour" to its limit, showing without possibility of mistake how aware she was. "What would Mrs. Lothian think of your bringing me here to dinner?" she said very suddenly. For a moment he did not know what to answer, the attack was so direct, the little feline thrust revealing so surely where he stood. "She would be delighted that I was having such a jolly evening," he answered, but neither his smile nor his voice was quite true. She smiled at him in girlish mockery, rejoicing! "You little devil!" he thought with an embarrassed mental grin. "How dare you." She should pay for that. "Would you mind if my wife did care," he asked, looking her straight in the eyes. "I ought to, but--I shouldn't!" she answered recklessly, and all his blood became fired. Yet at that, he leant back in his chair and laughed a frank laugh of amusement. The tension was over, the dangerous moment passed, and soon afterwards they wandered out into the night, to go upon the pier "just for half an hour" before starting for London. And neither of them saw that upon one of the lounges in the great hall, sipping coffee and talking to the newspaper-peer Herbert Toftrees was sitting. He saw them at once and started, while an ugly look came into his eyes. "Look," he said. "There's Gilbert Lothian, the Christian Poet!" "So that's the man!" said Lord Morston, "deuced pretty wife he's got. And very fine work he does too, by the way." "Oh, that's not his wife," Toftrees answered with contempt. "I know who that is quite well. Lothian keeps his wife somewhere down in the country and no one ever sees her." And he proceeded to pour the history of the Amberleys' dinner-party into a quietly amused and cynical ear. The swift rush back to London under the stars was quiet and dreamy. Repose fell over Gilbert and Rita as they sat side by side, repose "from the cool cisterns of the midnight air." They felt much drawn to each other. Laughter and all feverish thoughts were swept away by the breezes of their passage through the night. They were old friends now! An affection had sprung up between them which was to be a real and enduring thing. They were to be dear friends always, and that would be "perfectly sweet." Rita had been so lonely. She had wanted a friend so. He was going home on the morrow. He had been too long away. But he would be up in town again quite soon, and meanwhile they would correspond. "Dear little Rita," he said, as he held her hand outside the door of the block of flats in Kensington. "Dear child, I'm so glad." It was a clear night and the clocks were striking twelve. "And I'm glad, too," she answered,--"Gilbert!" He was soon at his club, had paid the chauffeur and dismissed him. There was no one he wanted to talk to in either of the smoking rooms, and so, after a final peg he went upstairs to bed. He was quite peaceful and calm in mind, very placidly happy and pleased. To-morrow he would go home to Mary. He said his prayers, begging God to make this strange and sweet friendship that had come into his life of value to him and to his little friend, might it always be fine and pure! So he got into bed and a pleasant drowsiness stole over him; he had a sense of great virtue and peace. All was well with his soul. "Dear little Rita," were the words he murmured as he fell asleep and lay tranquil in yet another phase of his poisoned life. No dreams disturbed his sleep. No premonition came to tell him whither he had set his steps or whither they would lead him. A mile or two away there was a nameless grave of shame, within a citadel where "pale Anguish keeps the gate and the Warder is Despair." But no spectre rose from that grave to warn him. END OF THE FIRST BOOK BOOK TWO LOTHIAN IN NORFOLK "Not with fine gold for a payment, But with coin of sighs, But with rending of raiment And with weeping of eyes, But with shame of stricken faces And with strewing of dust, For the sin of stately places And lordship of lust." CHAPTER I VIGNETTE OF EARLY MORNING. "GILBERT IS COMING HOME!" "Elle se repand dans ma vie Comme un air imprégné de sel, Et dans mon âme inassouvie Verse le goût de l'éternel." --_Baudelaire._ The white magic of morning was at work over the village of Mortland Royal. From a distant steading came the thin brazen cry of a cock, thin as a bugle, and round the Lothians' sleeping house the bubble of bird-song began. In the orchard before the house, which ran down to the trout stream, Trust, the brown spaniel dog, came out of a barrel in his little fenced enclosure, sniffed the morning air, yawned, and went back again into his barrel. White mist was rising from the water-meadows, billowed into delicate eddies and spirals by the first breeze of day, and already touched by the rosy fingers of dawn. In the wood beyond the meadows an old cock-pheasant made a sound like high hysteric laughter. The house, with its gravel-sweep giving directly on to the unfenced orchard, was long and low. The stones were mellowed by time, and orange, olive, and ash-coloured lichens clung to them. The roof was of tiles, warm red and green with age, the windows mullioned, the chimney-stack, which cut deep into the roof, high and with the grace of Tudor times. The place was called the "Old House" in the village and was a veritable sixteenth century cottage, rather spoilt by repairs and minor extensions, but still, in the silent summer morning, with something of the grace and fragrance of an Elizabethan song. It was quite small, really, a large cottage and nothing more, but it had a personality of its own and it was always very tranquil. On such a summer dawn as this with the rabbits frisking in the pearl-hung grass, on autumn days of brown and purple, or keen spring mornings when the wind fifed a tune among the bare branches of the apple-trees; on dead winter days when sea-birds from the marshes flitted against the grey sky like sudden drifts of snow, a deep peace ever brooded over the house. The air began to grow fresher and the mists to disperse as the breeze came over the great marshes a mile beyond the village. Out on the mud-flats with their sullen tidal creeks the sun was rising like a red Host from the far sea which tolled like a Mass bell. The curlews with their melancholy voices were beginning to fly inland from the marshes, high up in the still sky. The plovers were calling, the red-shanks piping in the marrum grass, and a sedge of herons shouted their hoarse "frank, frank" as they clanged away over the saltings. Only the birds were awake in this remote Norfolk village, the cows in the meadows had but just turned in their sleep, and not even the bees were yet a-wing. Peace, profound and brooding, lay over the Poet's house. Dawn blossomed into perfect morning, all gold and blue. It began, early as it was, to grow hot. Trust came out of his barrel and began to pad round his little yard with bright brown eyes. There was a sound of some one stirring in the silent house, and presently the back door, in the recess near the entrance gates, was flung wide open and a housemaid with untidy hair and eyes still heavy with sleep, stood yawning upon the step. There was a rattle of cinders and the cracking of sticks as the fire was lit in the kitchen beyond. Trust, in the orchard, heard the sound. He could smell the wood-smoke from the chimney. Presently one of the Great Ones, the Beloved Ones, would let him out for a scamper in the dew. Then there would be biscuits for the dog Trust. And now brisk footsteps were heard upon the road outside the entrance gates. In a moment more these were pushed open with a rattle, and Tumpany swung in humming a little tune. Tumpany was a shortish thick-set man of fifty, with a red clean-shaven face. He walked with his body bent forward, his arms hanging at his sides, and always seemed about to break into a short run. It was five years since he had retired even from the coast-guard, but Royal Navy was written large all over him, and would be until he tossed off his last pint of beer and sailed away to Fidler's Green--"Nine miles to windward of Hell," as he loved to explain to the housemaid and the cook. Tumpany's wife kept a small shop in the village, and he himself did the boots and knives, cleaned Gilbert's guns and went wild-fowling with him in the winter, was the more immediate Providence of the Dog Trust, and generally a most important and trusted person in the little household of the Poet. There was an almost exaggerated briskness in Tumpany's walk and manner as he turned into the kitchen. Blanche, the housemaid, was now "doing" the dining-room, in the interior of the house, but Phoebe, the cook--a stalwart lass of three and twenty--had just got the fire to her liking and was giving a finishing touch of polish to the range. "Morning, my girl!" said Tumpany in a bluff, cheery voice. Phoebe did not answer, but went on polishing the handle of the oven door. He repeated the salutation, a shade less confidently. The girl gave a final leisurely twist of the leather, surveyed her work critically for a moment, and then rose to her feet. "There are them knives," she said shortly, pointing to a basket upon the table, "and the boots is in the back kitchen." "You needn't be so short with a man, Phoebe." "You needn't have been so beastly drunk last night. Then them knives wouldn't want doing this morning. If it hadn't been for me the dog wouldn't have had no food. If the mistress knew she would have given you what for, as I expect your missis have already if the truth were known." "Damn the mistress!" said Tumpany. He adored Mary Lothian, as Phoebe very well knew, but his head burned and he was in the uncertain temper of the "morning after." The need of self-assertion was paramount. "Now, no beastly language in my kitchen," said the girl. "You go and do your damning--and them knives--in the outhouse. I wonder you've the face to come here at all, Master being away too. Get out, do!" With a very red and sulky face, Tumpany gathered up the knives and shambled away to his own particular sanctum. The ex-sailor was confused in his mind. There was a buzzing in his head like that of bees in a hive. He had a faint recollection of being turned out of the Mortland Arms just before ten o'clock the night before. His muddy memories showed him the stern judicial face of the rather grim old lady who kept the Inn. He seemed to feel her firm hands upon his shoulders yet. But had he come back to the Old House? He was burning to ask the cook. One thing was satisfactory. His mistress had not seen him or else Phoebe's threat would have meant nothing. Yet what had happened in his own house? He had woke up in the little parlour behind the shop. Some one had covered him with an overcoat. He had not dared to go upstairs to his wife. He hoped--here he began to rub a knife up and down the board with great vigour--he did hope that he hadn't set about her. There was a sick fear in the man's heart as he polished his knives. In many ways a better fellow never breathed. He was extremely popular in the village, Gilbert Lothian swore by him, Mary Lothian liked him very well. He was a person of some consequence in the village community where labourers worked early and late for a wage of thirteen shillings a week. His pension was a good one, the little shop kept by his wife was not unprosperous, Lothian was generous. He only got drunk now and then--generally at the time when he drew his pension--but when he did his wife suffered. He would strike her, not knowing what he did. The dreadful marks would be on her face in the morning and he would suffer an agony of dull and inarticulate remorse. So, even in the pretty cottage of this prosperous and popular man--so envied by his poorer neighbours--_surgit amari aliquid_! . . . If only things had been all right last night! Tumpany put down his knife with a bang. He slipped from his little outhouse, and slunk across the orchard. Then he opened the iron gate of the dog's kennel. The dog Trust exploded over Tumpany like a shell of brown fur. He leapt at him in an ecstasy of love and greeting and then, unable to express his feelings in any other way, rolled over on his back with his long pink tongue hanging out, and his eyes blinking in the sun. "Goodorg," said Tumpany, a little comforted, and then both he and Trust slunk back to the outhouse. There was a sympathetic furtiveness in the animal also. It was as though the Dog Trust quite understood. Tumpany resumed his work. Two rabbits which he had shot the day before were hanging from the roof, and Trust looked up at them with eager eyes. A rabbit represented the unattainable to Trust. He was a hard-working and highly-trained sporting dog, a wild-fowling dog especially, and he was never allowed to retrieve a rabbit for fear of spoiling the tenderness of his mouth. When one of the delicious little creatures bolted under his very nose, he must take no notice of it at all. Trust held the (wholly erroneous) belief that if only he had the chance he could run down a rabbit in the open field. He did not realise that a dog who will swim over a creek with a snipe or tiny ring-plover in his mouth and drop it without a bone being broken must never touch fur. His own greatness forbade these baser joys, but like the Prince in the story who wanted to make mud pies with the beggar children, he was unconscious of his position, and for him too--on this sweet morning--surgit amari aliquid. But life has many compensations. The open door of the brick shed was darkened suddenly. Phoebe, who in reality had a deep admiration for Mr. Tumpany, had relented, and in her hand was a mug of beer. "There!" she said with a grin, "and take care it don't hiss as it goes down. Pipes red hot I expect! Lord what fools men are!" Tumpany said nothing, but the deep "gluck gluck" of satisfaction as he drank was far more eloquent than words. Phoebe watched him with a pitying and almost maternal wonder in her simple mind. "A good thing you've come early, and Mistress ain't up yet," she said. "I went into the cellar as quiet as a cat, and I held a dish-cloth over the spigot when I knocked it in again so as to deaden the sound. You can hear the knock all over the house else!" "Thank ye, Phoebe, my dear. That there beer's in lovely condition; and I don't mind saying I wanted it bad." "Well, take care, as you don't want it another day so early. I see your wife last night!" She paused, maliciously enjoying the anxiety which immediately clouded the man's round, red face. "It's all right," she said at length. "She was out when you come home from the public, and she found you snoring in the parlour. There was no words passed. I must get to work." She hurried back to her kitchen. Tumpany began to whistle. The growing warmth of the morning had melted the congealed blood which hung from the noses of the rabbits. One or two drops fell upon the flags of the floor and the Dog Trust licked them up with immense relish. Thus day began for the humbler members of the Poet's household. At a few minutes before eight o'clock, the mistress of the house came down stairs, crossed the hall and went into the dining room. Mary Lothian was a woman of thirty-eight. She was tall, of good figure, and carried herself well. She was erect, without producing any impression of stiffness. She walked firmly, but with grace. Her abundant hair was pale gold in colour and worn in a simple Greek knot. The nose, slightly aquiline, was in exact proportion to the face. This was of an oval contour, though not markedly so, and was just a little thin. The eyes under finely drawn brows, were a clear and steadfast blue. In almost every face the mouth is the most expressive feature. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, the mouth is its revelation. It is the true indication of what is within. The history of a man or woman's life lies there. For those who can read, its subtle changing curves at some time or another, betray all secrets of evil or of good. It is the first feature that sensual vices coarsen or self-control refines. The sin of pride moulds it into shapes that cannot be hidden. Envy, hatred and malice must needs write their superscription there, and the blood stirs about our hearts when we read of an angelic smile. The Greeks knew this, and when their actors trod the marble stage of Dionysius at Athens, or the theatre of Olympian Zeus by the hill Kronian, their faces were masked. The lips of Hecuba were always frozen into horror. The mouths of the heralds of the Lysistrata were set in one curve of comedy throughout the play. Voices of gladness or sorrow came from lips of wax or clay, which never changed as the living lips beneath them needs must do. A certain sharpness and reality, as of life suddenly arrested at one moment of passion, was aimed at. Men's real mouths were too mobile and might betray things alien to the words they chanted. The mouth of Mary Lothian was beautiful. It was rather large, well-shaped without possessing any purely æsthetic appeal, and only a very great painter could have realised it upon canvas. In a photograph it was nothing, unless a pure accident of the camera had once in a way caught its expression. The mouth of this woman was absolutely frank and kind. Its womanly dignity was overlaid with serene tenderness, a firm sweetness which never left it. In repose or in laughter--it was a mouth that could really laugh--this kindness and simplicity was always there. Always it seemed to say "here is a good woman and one without guile." The whole face was capable without being clever. No freakish wit lurked in the calm, open eyes, there was nothing of the fantastic, little of the original in the quiet comely face. All kind and simple people loved Mary Lothian and her-- "Sweet lips, whereon perpetually did reign The Summer calm of golden charity." Men with feverish minds and hectic natures could see but little in her--a quiet woman moving about a tranquil house. There was nothing showy in her grave distinction. She never thought about attracting people, only of being kind to them. Not as a companion for their lighter hours nor as a sharer in their merriment, did people come to her. It was when trouble of mind, body or estate assailed them that they came and found a "most silver flow of subtle-paced counsel in distress." Since the passing of Victoria and the high-noon of her reign, the purely English ideal of womanhood has disappeared curiously from contemporary art and has not the firm hold upon the general mind that it had thirty years ago. The heroines of poems and fictions are complex people to-day, world-weary, tempestuous and without peace of heart or mind. The two great voices of the immediate past have lost much of their meaning for modern ears. "So just A type of womankind, that God sees fit to trust Her with the holy task of giving life in turn." --Not many pens nor brushes are busy with such ladies now. "Crown'd Isabel, thro' all her placid life, The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife." --Who sings such Isabels to-day? It is Calypso of the magic island of whom the modern world loves to hear, and few poets sing Penelope faithful by the hearth any more. But when deep peace broods over a dwelling, it is from the Mary Lothians of England that it comes. Mary was very simply dressed, but there was an indescribable air of distinction about her. The skirt of white piqué hung perfectly, the cream-coloured blouse with drawn-thread work at the neck and wrists was fresh and dainty. On her head was a panama hat with a scarf of mauve silk tied loosely round it and hanging down her back in two long ends. In one hand she held a silver-headed walking cane, in the other a small prayer-book, for she was going to matins before breakfast. She spoke a word to the cook and went out of the back door, calling a good-morning to Tumpany as she passed his shed, and then went through the entrance-gate into the village street. By this hour the labourers were all at work in the fields and farmyards--the hay harvest was over and the corn cutting about to begin--but the cottage doors were open and the children were gathering in little groups, ready to proceed to school. There was a fresh smell of wood-smoke in the air and the gardens of the cottages were brilliant with flowers. Mary Lothian, however, was thinking very little about the village--to which she was Lady Bountiful. She hardly noticed the sweet day springing over the country side. She was thinking of Gilbert. He had been away for a week now and she had heard no news of him except for a couple of brief telegrams. For several days before he went to London, she had seen the signs of restlessness and ennui approaching. She knew them well. He had been irritable and moody by fits and starts. After lunch he had slept away the afternoons, and at dinner he had been feverishly gay. Once or twice he had driven into Wordingham--the local town--during the afternoon, and had returned late at night, very angry on one of these occasions to find her sitting up for him. "I wish to goodness you would go to bed, Mary," he had said with a sullen look in his eyes. "I do hate being fussed over as if I were a child. I hate my comings and goings spied upon in this ridiculous way. I must have freedom! Kindly try and remember that you have married a poet--an artist!--and not some beef-brained ordinary fool!" The servants had gone to bed, but she had lit candles in old silver holders, and spread a dainty supper for him in case he should be hungry, taking especial care over the egg sandwiches and the salad which he said she made so perfectly. She had gone to bed without a word, for she knew well what made him speak to her like that. She lay awake listening, her room was over the dining room, and heard the clink of a glass and the gurgle of a syphon. He was having more drink then. When he came upstairs he went into the dressing room where he sometimes slept, and before long she heard him breathing heavily in sleep. He always came to her room when he was himself. Then she had gone downstairs noiselessly to find her little supper untouched, a smear of cigarette ash upon the tablecloth, and that he had forgotten to extinguish the candles. There came a day when he was especially kind and sweet. His recent irritation and restlessness seemed to have quite gone. He smoked pipes instead of cigarettes, always a good sign in him, and in the afternoon they had gone for a long tramp together over the marshes. She was very happy. For the last year, particularly since his name had become well-known and he was seriously counted among the celebrities of the hour, he had not cared to be with her so much as in the past. He only wanted to be with her when he was depressed and despondent about the future. Then he came for comfort and clung to her like a boy with his mother. "It's for the sake of my Art," he would say often enough, though she never reproached him with neglect. "I _must_ be a great deal alone now. Things come to me when I am alone. I love being with you, sweetheart, but we must both make a sacrifice for my work. It means the future. It means everything for both of us!" He used not to be like this, she sometimes reflected. In the earlier days, when he was actually doing the work which had brought him fame, he had never wanted to be away from her. He used to read her everything, ask her opinion about all his work. Life had been more simple. She had known every detail of his. He had not drunk much in those days. In those days there had been no question of that at all. After the success it was different. She had gone to his study in the morning, after nights when he had been working late, and had been struck with fear when she had looked at the tantalus. But, then, he had been spruce and cheerful at breakfast and had made a hearty meal. Her remonstrances had been easily swept away. He had laughed. "Darling, don't be an old goose! You don't understand a bit. What?--Oh, yes, I suppose I did have rather a lot of whiskey last night. But I did splendid work. And it is only once in a way. I'm as fit this morning as I ever was in my life. But I'm working double tides now. You know what an immense strain it is. Just let me consolidate my reputation, become absolutely secure, and--well, then you'll see!" But for months now things had not improved, and on this particular day, a week ago now, the sudden change in Gilbert, when the placidity of the old time seemed to have returned, was like cool water to a wound. They had been such friends again! In the evening they had got out all her music and while he played, she had sung the dear old songs of their courtship and early married life. They had the "Keys Of Heaven," "The Rain Is on the River," "My Dear Soul" and the "Be My Dear and Dearest!" of Cotsford Dick. On the next morning the post had brought letters calling Gilbert to London. He had to arrange with Messrs. Ince and Amberley about his new book. Mr. Amberley had asked him to dine--"You don't perhaps quite understand, dear, but when Amberley asks one, one _must_ go"--there were other important things to see after. Gilbert had not asked her to come with him. She would have liked to have gone to London very much. It was a long time since she had been to a theatre, ages since she had heard a good concert. And shopping too! It seemed such a good opportunity, while the sales were on. She had hinted as much, but he had shaken his head with decision: "No, dear, not now. I am going strictly on business. I couldn't give you the time I should want to, and I should hate that. It wouldn't be fair to you. We'll go up in the Autumn, just you and I together and have a really good time. That will be far jollier. For heaven's sake, don't let's try to mix up business with pleasure. It's fatal to both." Had he known that he was to be called to London? Had he arranged it beforehand, itching to be free of her gentle yoke, her wise, restraining hand? Was that the reason that he had been so affectionate the day before he went away? His conscience was uneasy perhaps . . . ? And why had he not written--was there a sordid, horrible reason for his silence; when was he coming back . . . ? These were the sad, disturbing thoughts stirring in Mary's mind as the near tolling of the bell smote upon her ears and she entered the Churchyard. The church at Mortland Royal was large and noble. It would have held the total population of the village three times over. Relic of Tudor times when Norfolk was the rich and prosperous centre of the wool industry of England, it was only one of the many pious monuments of a vanished past which still keep watch and ward over the remote, forgotten villages of the North East Coast. Stately still the fane, in its noble masses, its fairness, majesty and strength, the slender intricacy and rich meshes of its tracery in which no single cusp or finial is in vain, no stroke of the chisel useless. Stately the grey towers also, foursquare for centuries to the winds of the Wash. Dust the man who made it, but uncrumbled stone the body of his dream. He had thought in light and shadow. He had seen these immemorial stones when the sun of July mornings was hot upon them, or the early dusks of December left them to the dark. Out of the spaces of light and darkness in the vision of his mind this strong tower had been built. Inviolate, it was standing now. But as Mary passed through the great porch with its worn and weathered saints into the Church itself, the breath of the morning was damp and there was a chill within. The gallant chirrup of the swallows flying round the tower, sank to a faint "cheep, cheep," the voice of the tolling bell became muffled and funereal, and mildew lay upon the air. "Non sum qualis eram," the lorn interior seemed to echo to her steps, "bonae sub regno Ecclesiæ." There was a little American organ in the Chancel. No more would the rich plainsong of Gregory echo under these ancient roofs like a flowing tide in some cavern of the sea. The stone Altar was covered with a decaying web of crimson upon which was embroidered a symbol of sickly, faded yellow. Perhaps never again would a Priest raise the Monstrance there, while the ceremonial candle-flames were pallid in the morning light and hushed voices hymned the Lamb of God. These, all these, were in the olden time and long ago. But the Presence of God, the Peace of God, were in the Church still, soul-saving, and as real as when the gracious ceremonies of the past symbolised them for those who were there to worship. Mr. Medley, the old Priest who was curate to a Rector who was generally away, walked in from the vestry with the patient footsteps of age and began the office. . . . _Almighty and most merciful Father; we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep._ The old and worthy man with his tremulous voice, the sweet matron with her grave beauty just matured to that St. Martin's Summer of Youth which is the youth of perfect wifehood, said the sacred words together. His cultured and appealing voice, her warm contralto echoed under the high roof in ebb and flow and antiphon of sound. It was the twenty-sixth day of the month. . . . "Trouble and heaviness have laid hold upon me: Yet is my delight in thy commandments." "The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: O grant me understanding and I shall live." The morning was lighter than ever when Mary came out of Church, and its smile was reflected on her face. In the village street an old labourer leading a team of horses, touched his cap and grinned a welcome while his wistful eyes plainly said, "God bless you, Ma'am," as Mary went by. A merry "ting-tang clank" came from the blacksmith's shop, ringing out brightly in the bright air, and as she drew near the gate of the Old House, whom should she see but the postman! "No. There ain't no letter for you," said the Postman--a sly old crab-apple of a man who always knew far too much--"but what should you say," he dangled it before her as a sweetmeat before a child, "what should you say if as how I had a telegram for 'ee?" --"That you were talking nonsense, William. There can't be a telegram. It's far too early!" "Well, then, there _is_!" said William triumphantly, "'anded in at the St. James' Street office, London, at eight-two! Either Mr. Lothian's up early or he ain't been to bed. It come over the telephone from Wordingham while I was a sorting the letters. Mrs. Casley took'n down. So there! Mr. Lothian's a coming home by the nine-ten to-night." Mary tore open the orange envelope:-- "_Arrive nine-ten to-night all my love Gilbert_" was what she read. Then, with quick footsteps, she hurried through the gates. Her eyes sparkled, her lips had grown red, and as she smiled her beautiful, white teeth flashed in the sunlight. She looked like a girl. Tumpany was propped against the lintel of the back door. Phoebe was talking to him, the Dog Trust basked at his feet, and he had a short briar pipe in his mouth. "Master is coming home this evening, Tumpany!" Mary said. Tumpany snatched the pipe from his mouth and stood to attention. The cook vanished into the kitchen. "Can I see you then, Mum?" Tumpany asked, anxiously. "After breakfast. I've not had breakfast yet. Then we'll go into everything." She vanished. "Them peas," said Tumpany to himself, "he'll want to know about them peas--Goodorg!"--accompanied by Trust, Tumpany disappeared in the direction of the kitchen garden. But Mary sat long over breakfast that morning. The sunlight painted oblongs of gold upon the jade-green carpet. A bee visited the copper bowl of honeysuckle upon the sideboard, a wasp became hopelessly captured by the marmalade, and from the bedrooms the voice of Blanche, the housemaid, floated down--tunefully convinced that every nice girl loves a sailor. And of all these homely sounds Mary Lothian's ear had little heed. Sound, light, colour, the scent of the flowers in the garden--a thing almost musical in itself--were as nothing. One happy fact had closed each avenue of sense. Gilbert was coming home! Gilbert was coming home! CHAPTER II AN EXHIBITION OF DOCTOR MORTON SIMS AND MR. MEDLEY, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HOW LOTHIAN RETURNED TO MORTLAND ROYAL "Seest thou a man diligent in his business: He shall stand before Kings. He shall not stand before mean men." --_The Bible._ About eleven-thirty in the morning, Mr. Medley, the curate, came out of the rectory where he lived, and went into the village. Mortland Royal was a rich living, worth, with the great and lesser tythe, some eight or nine hundred a year. The rector, the Hon. Leonard O'Donnell, was the son of an Irish peer who owned considerable property in Norfolk and in whose gift the living was. Mr. O'Donnell was a man of many activities, a bachelor, much in request in London, and very little inclined to waste his energies in a small country village. He was a courtly, polished little man who found his true _milieu_ among people of his own class, and neither understood, nor particularly cared to understand, a peasant community. His work, as he said, lay elsewhere, and he did a great deal of good in his own way with considerable satisfaction to himself. Possessed of some private means, Mortland Royal supplemented his income and provided him with a convenient _pied à terre_ where he could retire in odd moments to a fashionable county in which a number of great people came to shoot in the season. The rectory itself was a large old-fashioned house with some pretensions to be called a country mansion, and for convenience sake, Mr. Medley was housed there, and became de facto, if not de jure, the rector of the village. Mr. O'Donnell gave his colleague two hundred a year, house room, and an absolutely free hand. The two men liked one another, if they had not much in common, and the arrangement was mutually convenient. Medley was a pious priest of the old-fashioned type. His flock claimed all the interest of his life. He had certain fixed and comely habits belonging to his type and generation. He read his Horace still and took a glass of port at dinner. Something of a scholar, he occasionally reviewed some new edition of a Latin classic for the _Spectator_, though he was without literary ambitions. He had a little money of his own, and three times a year he dined at the high table in Merton College Hall, where every one was very pleased to see him. A vanishing type to-day, but admirably suited to his environment. The right man in the right place. The real rector was regarded with awe and some pride in the village. His name was often in the newspapers. He was an eloquent speaker upon Temperance questions at important congresses. He went to garden parties at Windsor and theatricals at Sandringham. When he was in residence and preached in his own church, it was fuller than at other times. He was a draw. His distinguished face and high, well-bred voice were a pleasant variation of monotony. And the theology which had made him so welcome in Mayfair was not without a pleasing titillation for even the rustic mind. Mr. O'Donnel was convinced, and preached melodiously, the theory that the Divine Mercy extends to all human beings. He asserted that, in the event, all people would enter Paradise--unless, indeed, there was no Paradise, which in his heart of hearts he thought exceedingly likely. But he did good work in the world, though probably less than he imagined. It was as an advocate of Temperance that Leonard O'Donnell was particularly known, and it was as that he was welcomed by Society. He was a sort of spiritual Karlsbad and was nicknamed the Dean of Vichy. The fact was one that had a direct bearing on Gilbert Lothian's life. The Rector of Mortland Royal was a "managing" man. His forte was to be a sort of earthly Providence to all sorts of people within his sphere, and his motive was one of genuine good nature and a wish to help. As a woman he would have been an inveterate matchmaker. Did old Marchioness, who liked to keep an eye upon her household affairs, bewail the quality of London milk--then she must have it from Mr. Samuel, the tenant of the Glebe Farm at Mortland Royal! Did a brother clergyman ask to be recommended a school for his son, the Rector knew the very place and was quite prepared to take the boy down himself and commend him specially to the Headmaster. With equal eagerness, Mr. O'Donnell would urge a confessor or a pill, and the odd thing about it was, that he was nearly always right, and all sorts of people made use of the restless, kindly little man. One day, Dr. Morton Sims, the bacteriologist and famous expert upon Inebriety, had walked from a meeting of the Royal Commissioners upon Alcoholism to the Junior Carlton with Mr. O'Donnell. Both were members and they had dined there together. "I am run down," said Morton Sims, during the meal. "I have been too much in London lately. I've got a lot of important research work to do. I'm going to take a house in the country for a few months, only I don't know where." The mind of the man occupied with big things was impatient of detail; the mind of the man occupied with small ones responded instantly. "I know of the very place, Sims. In my own village. How fortunate! The 'Haven.' Old Admiral Custance used to have it, but he's dead recently. There are six months of the lease still to run. Mrs. Custance has gone to live at Lugano. She wants to let the place furnished until the lease is up." "It sounds as if it might do." "But, my dear fellow, it's the very place you want! Exactly the thing! I can manage it for you in no time. Pashwhip and Moger--the house agents in our nearest town--have the letting. Do let me be of use!" "It's very kind of you, O'Donnell." "Delighted. It will be so jolly to have you in the village. I'm not there as much as I could wish, of course. My other work keeps me so much in London. But Medley, my colleague, is an excellent fellow. He'll look after you in every way." "Who lives round about?" "Well, as far as Society is concerned, we are a little distance from anywhere. Lord Fakenham's is the nearest house----" "Not in that way, O'Donnell. I mean interesting people. Lord Fakenham is a bore--a twelve-bore one might say. I hate the big shooting houses in East England." The Rector was rather at a loss. "Well," he said, reluctantly, "I don't know about what you'd probably call _interesting_ people. Sir Ambrose McKee, the big Scotch distiller--Ambrosia whiskey, you know--has the shooting and comes down to the Manor House in September. Oh, and Gilbert Lothian, the poet, has a cottage in the place. I've met him twice, but I can't say that I know much about him. Medley swears by his wife, though. She does everything in the village I'm told. She was a Fielding, the younger branch." The doctor's face became strangely interested. It was alert and watchful in a moment. "Gilbert Lothian! He lives there does he! Now you tempt me. I've heard a good deal about Gilbert Lothian." The Rector was genuinely surprised. "Well, most people have," he answered. "But I should hardly have thought that a modern poet was much in your line." Morton Sims smiled, rather oddly. "Perhaps not," he said, "but I'm interested all the same. I have my own reasons. Put me into communication with the house agents, will you, O'Donnell?" The affair had been quickly arranged. The house proved satisfactory, and Dr. Morton Sims had taken it. On the morning when Mary Lothian had heard from Gilbert that he was returning that evening, Mr. Medley, reminded of his duty by a postcard from the Rector at Cowes, set out to pay a call and offer his services to the distinguished newcomer. The "Haven" was a pleasant gabled house standing in grounds of about three acres, not far from the Church and Rectory. The late Admiral Custance had kept it in beautiful order. The green, pneumatic lawns suggested those of a college quadrangle, the privet hedges were clipped with care, the whole place was taut and trim. Mr. Medley found Dr. Morton Sims smoking a morning pipe in the library, dressed in a suit of grey flannel and with a holiday air about him. The two men liked each other at once. There was no doubt about that in the minds of either of them. There was a certain dryness and mellow humour in Mr. Medley--a ripe flavour about him, as of an old English fruit crushed upon the palate. "Here is a rare bird," the doctor thought. And Morton Sims interested the clerygman no less. The doctor's great achievements and the fact that he was a definite feature in English life were quite familiar. When, on fugitive occasions any one of this sort strayed into the placid domains of his interest Medley was capable of welcoming him with eagerness. He did so now, and warmed himself in the steady glow from the celebrated man with whom he was sitting. That they were both Oxford men, more or less of the same period, was an additional link between them. . . . "Two or three times a year I go up," Medley said, "and dine in Hall at Merton. I'm a little out of it, of course. The old, remembered faces become fewer and fewer each year. But there are friends left still, and though I can't quite get at their point of view, the younger fellows are very kind to me. Directly I turn into Oriel Street; I breathe the old atmosphere, and I confess that my heart beats a little quicker, as Merton tower comes into view." "I know," the doctor said. "I was at Balliol you know--a little different, even in our day. But when I go up I'm always dreadfully busy, at the Museum or in the Medical School. It's the younger folk, the scientific dons and undergraduates who are reading science that I have to do with. I have not much time for the sentiments and caresses of the past. Life is so short and I have so much yet that I hope to do in it, that I simply refuse my mind the pleasures of retrospection. You'll call me a Philistine, but when I go to lecture at Cambridge--as I sometimes do--it stimulates me far more than Oxford." "Detestable place!" said Mr. Medley, with a smile. "A nephew of mine is a tutor there, Peterhouse. He has quite a name in his way, they tell me. He writes little leprous books in which he conducts the Christian Faith to the frontier of modern thought with a consolatory cheque for its professional services in the past. And, besides, the river at Cambridge is a ditch." The doctor's eyes leapt up at this. "Yes, isn't it marvellous that they can row as they do!" he said with the eagerness of a boy. "You rowed then?" "Oh, yes. I was in the crew of--74--our year it was." "Really! really!--I had no idea, Dr. Morton Sims! I was in the Trials of--71, when Merton was head of the river, but we were the losing boat and I never got into the Eight. How different it all was then!" Both men were silent for a minute. The priest's words had struck an unaccustomed chord of memory in the doctor's mind. "Those times will never come again," Morton Sims said, and puffed rather more quickly than usual at his pipe. He had spoken truly enough when he had said that he had not time in his strenuous life for memories of his youth, that he shut his eyes to the immemorial appeal of Oxford when he went there. But he responded now, instinctively, for there is a Freemasonry, greater than all the ritual of King Solomon, among those who have rowed upon the Isis, in the happy, thrice-happy days of Youth! To weary clergymen absorbed in the _va_ and _vient_ of sordid parishes, to grave Justices upon the Bench, the strenuous cynics of the Bar, plodding masters of schools, the suave solicitor, the banker, the painter, or the poet, these vivid memories of the Loving Mother, must always come now and again in life. The Bells of Youth ring once more. The faint echo of the shouts from river or from playing field, make themselves heard with ghostly voices. In the Chapels of Wayneflete, or of Laud, some soprano choir is singing yet. In the tower of the Cardinal, Big Tom tolls out of the past, bidding the College porters close their doors. White and fretted spires shoot upwards into skies that will never be so blue again. Again the snap-dragon blooms over the grey walls of Trinity, the crimson creeper stains the porch of Cranmer, and Autumn leaves of bronze, purple and yellow carpet all the Magdalen Walks. These things can never be quite forgotten by those who have loved them and been of them. The duration of a reverie is purely accidental. There is no time in thought. The pictures of a lifetime may glow in the brain, while a second passes by the clock, a single episode may inform the retrospection of an hour. These two grey-headed men, upon this delightful summer morning, were not long lost in thought. "And now," said the clergyman, "have you seen anything of the village yet?" "Not yet. For the three days that I have been here I have been arranging my books and instruments, and turning that big room over the barn into a laboratory." "Oh, yes. Where the Admiral used to keep his Trafalgar models. An excellent room! Now what do you say, Dr. Morton Sims, to a little progress through the village with me? I'm quite certain that every one is agog to see you, and to sum you up. Natural village curiosity! You might as well make your appearance under my wing." "Teucro auspice, auspice Teucro?" "Precisely," said Medley, with a smile of pleasure at the quotation from his beloved poet, and the two men left the house together in high glee, laughing like boys. They visited the Church, in which Morton Sims took a polite interest, and then the clergyman took his guest over the Rectory. It was a fine house, standing in the midst of fair lawns upon which great beech trees grew here and there, giving the extensive grounds something of the aspect of a park. The rooms were large and lofty, with fine ceilings of the Adams' school, florid braveries of stucco that were quite at home in a house like this. There were portraits everywhere, chiefly members of the O'Donnell family, and the faces in their fresh Irish comeliness were gay and ingenuous, as of privileged young people who could never grow old. "Really, this is a delightful house," the Doctor said as he stood in the library. "I wonder O'Donnell doesn't spend more time in Mortland Royal. Few parsons are housed like this." "It's not his _metier_, Doctor. He hasn't the faculty of really understanding peasants, and I think he is quite right in what he is doing. And, of course, from a selfish point of view, I am glad. I have refused two college livings to stay on here. In all probability I shall stay here till I die. O'Donnell does a great work for Temperance all over England--though doubtless you know more about that than I do." "Er, yes," Morton Sims replied, though without any marked enthusiasm. "O'Donnell is very eloquent, and no doubt does good. My dear old friend, Bishop Moultrie, in Norfolk here is most enthusiastic about his work. I like O'Donnell, he's sincere. But I belong to the scientific party, and while I welcome anything that really tends to stem inebriety, I believe that O'Donnell and Moultrie and all of them are on the wrong tack entirely." "I know very little about the modern temperance movement in any direction," said Mr. Medley with a certain dryness. "Blue Ribbons and Bands of Hope are all very well, I suppose, but there is such a tendency nowadays among Non-conformists and the extreme evangelical party to exalt abstinence from alcohol into the one thing necessary to salvation, that I keep out of it all as much as I can. I like my glass of port, and I don't mean to give it up!" Morton Sims laughed. "It doesn't do you the least good really," he said, laughing. "I could prove to you in five minutes, and with entire certainty, that your single glass of port is bad, even for you! But I quite agree with your attitude towards all the religious emotionalism that is worked up. The drunkard who turns to religion simply manifests the class of ideas, which is one of the features of the epileptic temperament. It is a confession of ineptitude, and a recourse to a means of salvation from a condition which is too hard for him to bear. That is to say, Fear is at the bottom of his new convictions!" Certainly Medley was not particularly sympathetic to the modern Temperance movement among religious people. Perhaps Mr. O'Donnell's somewhat vociferous enthusiasm had something to do with it. But on the other hand, he was very far from accepting such a cold scientific doctrine as this. He knew that the Holy Spirit does not always work through fear. But like the wise and quiet-minded man that he was, he forbore argument and listened with intellectual pleasure to the views of his new friend. "I know," he said, with a courtly hint of deference in his voice, that became him very well, "of your position in the ranks of those who are fighting Intemperance. But, and you must pardon the ignorance of a country priest who is quite out of all 'movements,' I don't know anything of your standpoint. What is your remedy, Dr. Morton Sims?" The great man smiled inwardly. It did really seem extraordinary to him that a cultured professional man of this day should actually know nothing of his hopes, aims and propaganda. And then, ever on the watch for traces of egoism and vain-glory in himself, he accepted the fact with humility. Who was he, who was any one in life, to imagine that his views were known to all the world? "Well," he said, "what we believe is just this: It is quite impossible to abolish or to prohibit alcohol. It is necessary in a thousand industries. Prohibition is futile. It has been tried, and has failed, in the United States. While alcohol exists, the man predisposed to abuse it will get it. You, as a clergyman, know as well as I do, as a doctor, that it is impossible to make people moral by Act of Parliament." This was entirely in accordance with Medley's own view. "Of course," he said, "the only thing that can make people moral is an act of God, cooperating with an act of their own." "Possibly. I am not concerned to affirm or deny the power of an Act of the Supreme Being. Nor am I able to say anything about its operation. Science tells me nothing upon this point. About the act of the individual I have a good deal to say." --"I am most interested" . . . "Well then, what we want to do is to root out drunkenness by eliminating inebriates from society by a process of Artificial Selection. It is within the power of science to evolve a sober race. We must forbid inebriates to have children and make it penal for them to do so." Medley started. "Forbid them to marry?" he asked. "It would be futile. Drunkenness often develops after marriage. There is only one way--by preventing Drunkards from reproducing their like--by forbidding the procreation of children by them. If drunkards were taken before magistrates sitting in secret session, and, on conviction, were warned that the procreation of children would subject them to this or that penalty, then the birthrate of drunkards would certainly fall immensely." "But innumerable drunkards would inevitably escape the meshes of the law." "Yes. But that is an argument against all laws. And this law would be more perfect in its operation than any other, for if the drunken father evaded it in one generation, the drunken son would be taken in the next." The Priest said nothing for a moment. The latent distrust and dislike of science which is an inherent part of the life and training of so many Priests, was blazing up in him with a fury of antagonism. What impious interference with the laws of God was this? It seemed a profanation, horrible! Like all good Christians of his temper of mind, he was quite unable to realise that God might be choosing to work in this way, and by the human hands of men. He had not the slightest conception of the great truth that every new discovery of Science and each fresh extension of its operations is not in the least antagonistic to Christianity when surveyed by the clear, unbiassed mind. Mr. Medley was a dog-lover. He was a member of the Kennel-Club, and sent dogs to shows. He knew that, in order to breed a long-tailed variety of dogs, it would be ridiculous to preserve carefully all the short-tailed individuals and pull vigorously at their tails. He exercised the privilege of Artificial Selection carefully enough in his own kennels, but the mere proposal that such a thing should be done in the case of human beings seemed impious to him. Dr. Morton Sims was also incapable of realising that his scheme for the betterment of the race was perfectly in accordance with the Christian Philosophy. But Morton Sims was not a professing Christian and was not concerned with the Christian aspect. Mr. Medley was, and although one of his favourite hymns began, "God Moves in a Mysterious Way," he was really chilled to the bone for a minute at the words of the Scientist. He remained silent for a moment or so. "But that seems to me quite horrible," he said, at length. "It is opposed to the best instincts of human nature--as horrible as Malthusianism, as horrible and as impracticable." His expression as he looked at his guest was wistful. "I don't want to be discourteous," it seemed to say, "but this is really my thought." "Perhaps," the other answered with a half-sigh. He was well used to encounter just such a voice, just such a shocked countenance as that of his host--"But by '_best instincts_' people often mean strong prejudices. Our scheme is undoubtedly Malthusian. I am no believer in Malthusianism as a check to what is called 'over-population.' That _does_ seem to me immoral. Nature requires no help in that regard. But Inebriety is an evil the extent of which no one but an expert can possibly measure. _The ordinary man simply doesn't know!_ But supposing I admit what you say. Let us agree that my scheme is horrible, that in a sense it is immoral--or a-moral--that it is possibly impracticable. "The alternative is more horrible and more immoral still. There is absolutely no choice between Temperance Reform, by the abolition of drink, and Temperance Reform by the abolition of the drunkard. An ill thing is not rendered worse by being bravely confronted. An unavoidable evil is not made more evil by being turned to good account. It rests with us to extract what good we can from the evil. Horrible? Immoral? Perhaps; but we are confronted by two horrors and two immoralities, and we are compelled to make a choice. Which is best; to live safe because strong, or to tremble behind fortifications; to be temperate by Nature or sober by Law?" . . . They stood in the quiet sunlit library, with its placid books and pictures irradiated by the light of approaching noon. The slim, bearded man in his grey suit, faced the dry, elderly clergyman. His voice rang with challenge, his whole personality was redolent of ardour, conviction, an aroma of the War he spent his life in waging far away from this quiet room of books. For years, this had been Medley's home. Each night, with his Horace and his pipe, he spent the happy, sober hours between dinner and bedtime here. His sermons were written on the old oak table. Over the high carved marble of the mantel the engraving of Our Lord knocking at the weed-grown door of a human heart, had looked down upon all his familiar, quiet evenings. In summer the long windows were open and the moonlight washed the lawns with silver, and the shadows of the trees seemed like pieces of black velvet nailed to the grass. In winter the piled logs glowed upon the hearth and the bitter winds from the Marshes, sang like a flight of arrows round the house. What was this that had come into the library, what new disturbing, insistent element? The Rector brought no such atmosphere into the house when he arrived. He would sip his coffee and smoke his pipe and linger for a gracious moment with the Singer of Mantua, or dispute about the true birthplace of him who sent Odysseus sailing over wine-coloured and enchanted seas. An insistent voice seemed to be calling to the clergyman--"Awake from your slumber--your long slumber! Hear the words of Truth!" He said nothing. His whole face showed reluctance, bewilderment, misease. The far keener intelligence of the other noted it at once. The mind of the Medico-Psychologist appreciated the episode at its exact value. He had troubled a still pool, and to no good purpose. Words of his--even if they carried an uneasy conviction--would never rouse this man to action. Let it be so! Why waste time? The clergyman was a delightful survival, a "rare Bird" still! "Well, that is my theory, at any rate, since you asked for it," Morton Sims said, the urgency and excitement quite gone from his voice. "And now, some more of the village, please!" Mr. Medley smiled cheerfully. He became suddenly conscious of the light and comfortable morning again. He felt his feet upon the carpet, he was in a place that he knew. "We'll go through the wicket-gate in the south wall," he said, with alacrity. "It's our nearest way, and there is a good view of the Manor House to be got from there. It's a fine old place, empty for most of the year, but always full for the shooting. Sir Ambrose McKee has it." "The whiskey man?" "Yes. The great distiller," Medley answered nervously--most anxious to sheer off from any further controversial subjects. They went out into the village. The old red-brick manor house was surveyed from a distance, and Morton Sims remarked absently upon its picturesqueness. His mind was occupied with other and far alien thoughts. Then they went down the white dusty road--the bordering hedges were all pilm-powdered for there had been no rain for many days--to the centre of the village. Four roads met there, East, South, West and North, and it was known to the village as "The Cross." On one side of the little central green was the Post office and general shop. On the other was the Mortland Royal Arms, and on the South, to the right of the old stone bridge, which ran over the narrow river, were the roof and chimneys of Gilbert Lothian's house nestling among the trees and with a vista of the orchard which stretched down to the stream. "That's a nice little place," the doctor said. "Whose is that?" "It's the house of our village celebrity," Mr. Medley replied--with a rather hostile crackle in his voice, or at least the other thought so. "Our local celebrity," Medley continued, "Mr. Gilbert Lothian, the poet." Neither the face nor the voice of the doctor changed at all. But his mind came to attention. This was a moment he had been waiting for. "Oh, I know," he said, with an assumed indifference which he was well aware would have its effect of provocation upon the simple mind of the Priest. "The name is quite familiar to me. Bishop Moultrie sent me a book of Lothian's poems last winter. And now that I come to think of it, O'Donnell told me that Mr. Lothian lived here. What sort of a man is he?" Medley hesitated. "Well," he said at length, "the truth is that I don't like him much personally, and I don't understand him in any way. I speak with prejudice I'm afraid, and I do not wish that any words of mine should make you share it." "Oh, we all have our likes and dislikes. Every one has his private Dr. Fell and it can't be helped. But tell me about Lothian. I will remember your very honest warning! Don't you like his work?" "I confess I see very little in it, Doctor. But then, my taste is old-fashioned and not in accord with modern literary movements. My 'Christian Year' supplies all the religious verse I need." "Keble wrote some fine verse," said the doctor tentatively. "Exactly. Sound prosody and restrained style! There is fervour and feeling in Lothian's work. It is impossible to deny it. But it's too passionate and feverish. There is a savage, almost despairing, clutching at spiritual emotion which strikes me as thoroughly unhealthy. The Love of Jesus, the mysterious operations of the Holy Ghost--these seem to me no proper vehicles for words which are tortured into a wild and sensuous music. As I read the poems of Gilbert Lothian I am reminded of the wicked and yet beautiful verses of Swinburne, and of others who have turned their lyre to the praise of lust. The sentiment is different, but the method is the same. And I confess that it revolts me to see the verbal tricks and polished brilliance of modern Pagan writers adapted to a fugitive and delirious ecstasy of Christian Faith." Morton Sims understood thoroughly. This was the obstinate and prejudiced voice of an older literary generation, suddenly become vindictively vocal. "I know all that you mean," he said. "I don't agree with you in the least, but I appreciate your point of view. But let me keep myself out of the discussion for a moment. I am not what you would probably be prepared to call a professing Christian. But how about Moultrie? He sent me Lothian's poems first of all. I remember the actual evening last winter when they arrived. A contemporaneous circumstance has etched it into my memory with certainty. Moultrie is a deeply convinced Christian. He is a man of the widest culture also. Yet he savours his palate with every _nuance_, every elusive and delicate melody that the genius of Lothian gives us. How about Moultrie's attitude?--it is a very general one." Mr. Medley laughed, half with apology, half with the grim humour which was personal to him. "I quite admit all you say," he replied, "but, as I told you, I belong to another generation and I don't in the least mean to change or listen to the voice of the charmer! I am a prejudiced old fogey, in short! I am still so antiquated and foolish as to have a temperamental dislike for a French-man, for instance. I like a picture to tell a story, and I flatly refused to get into Moultrie's abominable automobile when he brought it to the Rectory the other day!" Morton Sims was not in the least deceived by this half real, half mocking apologia. It was not merely a question of style that had roused this heat in the dry elderly man when he spoke of the things which he so greatly disliked in the poet's work. There was something behind this, and the doctor meant to find out what it was. He was in Mortland Royal, in the first instance, in order to follow up the problem of Gilbert Lothian. His choice of a country residence had been determined by the Poet's locality. Every instinct of the scientist and hunter was awake in him. He had dreadful reasons, reasons which he could never quite think of without a mental shudder, for finding out everything about the unknown and elusive genius who had given "Surgit Amari," to the world. He looked his companion full in the face, and spoke in a compelling, searching voice that the other had not heard before. "What's the real antagonism, Mr. Medley?" he said. Then the clergyman spoke out. "You press me," he said, "very well, I will tell you. I don't believe Lothian is a good man. It is a stern and terrible thing to say,--God grant I am mistaken!--but he appears to me to write of supreme things with insincerity. Not vulgarly, you'll understand. Not with his tongue in his cheek, but without the conviction that imposes conduct, and perhaps even with his heart in his mouth!" "Conduct?" ". . . I fear I am saying too much." "Hardly to me! Then Mr. Lothian--?" "He drinks," the Priest said bluntly, "you're sure to hear of it in some indirect way since you are going to stay in the village for six months. But that's the truth of it!" The face of Dr. Morton Sims suddenly became quite pale. His brown eyes glittered as if with an almost uncontrollable excitement. "Ah!" he exclaimed, and there was something so curious in his voice that the clergyman was alarmed at what he had said. He knew, and could know, nothing of what was passing in the other's mind. A scrupulously fair and honest man within his lights, he feared that he had made too harsh a statement--particularly to a man who thought that even an after-dinner glass of port was an error in hygiene! "I don't mean to say that he gets drunk," Medley continued hastily, "but he really does excite himself and whip himself up to work by means of spirits." The clergyman hesitated. The doctor spurred him on. "Most interesting to the scientific man--please go on." "Well, I don't know that there is much to say--I do hope I am not doing the man an injustice, because I am getting on for twice his age and envy the modern brilliance of his brain! But about a fortnight ago I went to see Crutwell--a poor fellow who is dying of phthisis--and found Lothian there. He was holding Crutwell's hand and talking to him about Paradise in a monotonous musical voice. He had been drinking. I saw it at once. His eyes were quite wild." "But the patient was made happier?" "Yes. He was. Happier, I freely confess it, than my long ministrations have ever been able to make him. But that is certainly not the point. It is very distressing to a parish Priest to meet with these things in his visitations. Do you know," here Mr. Medley gave a rueful chuckle, "I followed this alcoholic missioner the other day into the house of an old bed-ridden woman whom he helps to support. Lothian is extremely generous by the way. He would literally take off his coat and give it away--which really means, of course, that he has no conception of what money means. "At any rate, I went into old Sarah's cottage about half an hour after Lothian had been there. The old lady in question lived a jolly, wicked life until senile paralysis intervened. She is now quite a connoisseur in religion. I found her, on the occasion of which I speak, lying back upon her pillows with a perfectly rapturous expression on her wicked and wrinkled old face. 'Oh, Mr. Lothian's been, sir!' she said, 'Oh, 'twas beautiful! He gave me five shillings and then he knelt down and prayed. I never heard such praying--meaning no disrespect, sir, of course. But it was beautiful. The tears were rolling down Mr. Lothian's cheeks!' 'Mr. Lothian is very kind,' I said. 'He's wonnerful,' she replied, 'for he was really as drunk as a Lord the whole time, though he didn't see as I saw it. Fancy praying so beautiful and him like that. What a brain!'" Morton Sims burst out laughing, he could not help it. "All the same," he said at length, "it's certainly rather scandalous." Medley made a hurried deprecating movement of his hands. "No, no!" he said, "don't think that. I am over-emphasising things. Those two instances are quite isolated. In a general way Lothian is just like any one else. To speak quite frankly, Doctor, I'm not a safe guide when Gilbert Lothian is discussed." "Yes?" "For this reason. I admire and reverence Mrs. Lothian as I have never reverenced any other woman. Now and then I have met saint-like people, and the more saint-like they were--I hope I am not cynical--the less of comely humanity they seemed to have. Only once have I met a saint quietly walking this world with sane and happy footsteps. And that is Mary Lothian." There was a catch and tremble in the voice of the elderly clergyman. Morton Sims, who had liked him from the first, now felt more drawn to him than at any other time during their morning talk and walk. "Now you see why I am a little bitter about Gilbert Lothian! I don't think that he is worthy of such a perfect wife as he has got! I'll take you to tea with her this afternoon and you will see!" "I should like to meet her very much. Lothian is not here then?" "He has been away for a week or so, but he is returning to-night. Our old postman, who knows everything, told me so at least." The two men continued their walk through the village until lunch time, when they separated. At three o'clock a maid brought a note from the Rectory to the "Haven." In the letter Medley said that he had been summoned to Wordingham by telegram and could not take the doctor to call on Mrs. Lothian. The doctor spent the afternoon reading in the garden. He took tea among the flowers there, and after dinner, as it was extremely hot, he once more sought his deck chair under the mulberry tree in front of the house. Not a breath of air stirred. Now and then a cockchafer boomed through the heavy dark, and at his feet some glowworms had lit their elfin lamps. There was thunder in the air too, it was murmuring ten miles away over the Wash, and now and again the sky above the marshes was lit with flickering green and violet fires. A definite depression settled down upon the doctor's spirits and something seemed to be like a load upon lungs and brain. He always kept himself physically fit. In London, during his busy life, walking, which was the exercise he loved best, was not possible. So he fenced, and swam a good deal at the Bath Club, of which he was a member. For three days now, he had taken no exercise whatever. He had been arranging his new household. "Liver!" he thought to himself. "That is why I am melancholy and depressed to-night. And then the storm that is hanging about has its effect too. But hardly any one realises that the liver is the seat of the emotions! It should be said--more truly--that such a one died of a broken liver, not a broken heart!" . . . He sighed. His imaginings did not amuse him to-night. His vitality was lowered. That sick ennui which lies behind the thunder was upon him. As the storm grew nearer through the vast spaces of the night, so his psychic organism responded to its approach. Some uneasy imp had got into the barracks of his brain and was beating furiously upon the cerebral drum. The vast and level landscape, the wide night, were alike to be dramatised by the storm. And so, also, in the sphere of his thought, upon that secret stage where, after all, everything really happens, there was drama and disturbance. The level-minded scientist in Dr. Morton Sims drooped its head and bowed to the imperious onslaught. The man of letters in him awoke. Strange and fantastic influences were abroad this night and would have their way even with this cool sane person. He knew what was happening to him as the night grew hotter, the lightning more frequent. He, the Ego of him, was slipping away from the material plane and entering that psychic country which he knew of and dreaded for its strange allurements. Imaginative by nature and temperament, with a something of the artist in him, it was his habit to starve and repress that side of him as much as he was able. He knew the unfathomable gulf that separated the psychical from the physiological. It was in the sphere of physiology that his work lay, here he was great, there must be no divided allegiance. There was a menacing stammer of thunder. A certain line of verse came into his mind, a line of Lothian's. "_Oh dreadful trumpets sounding, Pealing and resounding, From the hid battlements of eternity!_" "I will take a ten mile walk to-morrow," he said to himself, and resolutely wrenched his thoughts towards material things. There was, he remembered with a slight shudder, that appalling passage in a recent letter from Mrs. Daly-- . . . "Six weeks ago a tippler was put into an alms-house in this State. Within a few days he had devised various expedients to procure rum, but had failed. At length he hit on one that was successful. He went into the wood yard of the establishment, placed one hand upon the block, and with an axe in the other struck it off at a single blow. With the stump raised and streaming he ran into the house and cried, 'Get some rum. Get some rum. My hand is off.' In the confusion and bustle of the occasion a bowl of rum was brought, into which he plunged the bleeding member of his body, then raising the bowl to his mouth, drank freely and exultantly exclaimed, 'Now I am satisfied!'" Horrible! Why was it possible that men might poison themselves so? Would all the efforts of himself and his friends ever make such monstrous happenings cease? Oh, that it might be so! They were breaking up stubborn land. The churches were against them, but the Home Secretary of the day was their friend--in the future the disease might be eradicated from society. Oh, that it might be so! for the good of the human race! How absolutely horrible it was that transparent, coloured liquids in bottles of glass--liquids that could be bought everywhere for a few pence--should have the devilish power to transform men, not to beasts, but to monsters. The man of whom Mrs. Daly had written--hideously alcoholised and insane! Hancock, the Hackney murderer, poisoned, insane! The doctor had been present at the post-mortem, after the execution. It had all been so pitiably clear to the trained eye! The liver, the heart, told him their tale very plainly. Any General Practitioner would have known. Ordinary cirrhosis, the scar tissue perfectly plain; the lime-salts deposited in the wasting muscles of the heart. But Morton Sims had found far more than this in that poisoned shell which had held, also, a poisoned soul. He had marked the little swellings upon the long nerve processes that run from the normal cell of the healthy brain. Something that looked like a little string of beads under the microscope had told him all he wanted to know. And that little string of beads, the lesions which interfered with the proper passage of nerve impulses, the scraps of tissue which the section-cutter had thinned and given to the lens, had meant torture and death to a good woman. How dreadfully women suffered! Their husbands and lovers and brothers became brutes to them. The women who were merely struck or beaten now and then were fortunate. The women whose lives were made one long ingenious torture were legion. Dr. Morton Sims was a bachelor. He was more. He was a man with a virgin mind. Devoted always to the line of work he had undertaken he had allowed nothing else to disturb his life. For him passion was explained by pathological and physiological occurrences. That is to say, passion in others. For himself, he had allowed nothing that was sensual to interfere with his progress, or to influence the wise order of his days. Therefore, he reverenced women. Hidden in his mind was that latent adoration that the Catholic feels about the Real Presence upon an altar. A good Knight of Science, he was as pure and pellucid in thought upon these matters as any Knight who bore the descending Dove upon his shield and flung into the _mêlée_ calling upon the name of the Paraclete. In his own fashion, and with his own vision of what it was, Morton Sims, also, was one of those seeking the Holy Grail. He adored his sister, a sweet woman made for love and motherhood but who had chosen the virgin life of renunciation that she might help the world. Women! Yes, it was women who suffered. There were tears in his mind as he thought of Women. Before a good woman he always wished to kneel. How heavy the night was! He identified it with the sorrowful weight and pressure of the Fiend Alcohol upon the world. And there was a woman, here near him, a woman with a sweet and fragrant nature--so the old clergyman had said. On her, too, the weight must be lying. For Mary Lothian there must be horror in the days. . . . "One thing I _will_ do," he said to the dark--and that he spoke aloud was sufficient indication of his state of mind--"I'll get hold of Gilbert Lothian while I am here. I'll save him at any rate, if I can. And it is quite obvious that he cannot be too far gone for salvation. I'll save him from an end no less frightful than that of his brother of whom he has probably never heard. The good woman he seems to have married shall be happy! The man's fine brain shan't be lost. This shall be my special experiment while I am down here. Coincidence, no less than good-will, makes that duty perfectly plain for me." As he stood there, glad to have found some definite material thing with which to occupy his mind, a housemaid came through the French windows of the library. She hurried towards him, ghost-like in her white cap and apron. "Are you there, sir?" she said, peering this way and that in the thick dark. "Yes, here I am, Condon, what is it?" "Please, sir, there's been an accident. A gentleman has been thrown out of a dog-cart. It's a Mr. Lothian. His man's here, and the gentleman's wife has heard you're in the village and there's no other doctor nearer than Wordingham." "I'll come at once," Morton Sims said. He hurried through the quiet library with its green-shaded reading lamp and went into the hall. Tumpany was standing there, his cap held before him in two hands, naval-fashion. His round red face was streaming with perspiration, his eyes were frightened and he exhaled a strong smell of beer. His hand went up mechanically and his left foot scraped upon the oilcloth of the hall as Morton Sims entered. "Beg your pardon, sir," Tumpany began at once, "but I'm Mr. Gilbert Lothian's man. Master have had an accident. I was driving him home from the station when the horse stumbled just outside the village. Master was pitched out on his head. My mistress would be very grateful if you could come at once." "Certainly, I will," Sims answered, looking at the man with a keen, experienced eye which made him shift uneasily upon his feet. "Wait here for a moment." He hurried back into the library and put lint, cotton-wool and a pair of blunt-nosed scissors into a hand-bag. Then, calling for a candle and lighting it, he went out into the stable yard and up to the room above the big barn, emerging in a minute or two with a bottle of antiseptic lotion. These were all the preparations he could make until he knew more. The thing might be serious or it might be little or nothing. Fortunately Lothian's house was not five minutes' walk from the "Haven." If instruments were required he could fetch them in a very short time. As he left the house with Tumpany, he noticed that the man lurched upon the step. Quite obviously he was half intoxicated. With a cunning born of long experience of inebriate men, the doctor affected a complete unconsciousness of what he had discovered. If he put the man upon his guard he would get nothing out of him, that was quite certain. "He's made a direct statement so far," the doctor thought. "He's only on the border-land of intoxication. For as long as he thinks I have noticed nothing he will be coherent. Directly he realises that I have spotted his state he'll become confused and ashamed and he won't be able to tell me anything." "This is very unfortunate," he said in a smooth and confidential voice. "I do hope it is nothing very serious. Of course I know your master very well by name." "Yessir," Tumpany answered thickly, but with a perceptible note of pleasure in his voice. "Yessir, I should say Master is one of the best shots in Norfolk. You'd have heard of him, of course." "But how did it happen?" "This 'ere accident, sir?" said Tumpany rather vaguely, his mind obviously running upon his master's achievements among the wild geese of the marshes. "Yes, the accident," the doctor answered in his smooth, kindly voice--though it would have given him great relief to have boxed the ears of his beery guide. "I was driving master home, sir. It's not our trap. We don't keep one. We hires in the village, but the man as the trap belongs to couldn't go. So I drove, sir." Movement had stirred up the fumes of alcohol in this barrel! Oh, the interminable repetitions, the horrid incapacity for getting to the point of men who were drunk! Lives of the utmost value had been lost by fools like this--great events in the history of the world had turned upon an extra pot of beer! But patience, patience! "Yes, you drove, and the horse stumbled. Did the horse come right down?" "I'm not much of a whip, sir, as you may say, though I know about ordinary driving. They say that a sailor-man is no good with a horse. But that isn't true." Yet despite the irritation of his mind, the necessity for absolute self-control, the expert found time to make a note of this further instance of the intolerable egotism that alcohol induces in its slaves. "But I expect you drove very well, indeed! Then the horse did _not_ come right down!" Just at the right moment, carefully calculated to have its effect, the doctor's voice became sharper and had a ring of command in it. There was an instant response. "No, sir. The cob only stumbled. But master was sitting loose like. He fell out like a log, sir. He made a noise like a piece of luggage falling." "Oh! Did he fall on his head?" "Yessir. But he had a stiff felt hat on. I got help and as we carried him into the house he was bleeding awful." "Curious that he should fall like that. Was he, well, was he quite himself should you think?" It was a bow drawn at a venture, and it provoked a reply that instantly told Morton Sims what he wanted to know. "Oh, yessir! By all means, sir! Most cert'nly! Master was as sober as a judge, sir!" "Of _course_," Sims replied in a surprised tone of voice. "I thought that he might have been tired by the journey from London." . . . So it was true then! Lothian was drunk. The thing was obvious. But this was a good and loyal fellow, not to give his master away. Morton Sims liked that. He made a note that poor beery Tumpany should have half a sovereign on the morrow, when he was sober. Then the two men turned in through the gates of the Old House. The front door was wide open to the night. The light which flowed out from the tall lamp upon an oak table in the hall cut into the black velvet of the drive with a sharply defined wedge of orange-yellow. There was something ominous in this wide-set door of a frightened house. The doctor walked straight into the hall, a small old-fashioned place panelled in white. To the right another door stood open. In the doorway stood a maid-servant with a frightened face. Beyond her, through the archway of the door, showed the section of a singularly beautiful room. The maid started. "Oh, you've come, sir!" she said--"in here please, sir." The doctor followed the girl into the lit room. This is what he saw:-- A room with the walls covered with canvas of a delicate oat-meal colour up to the height of seven feet. Above this a moulded beading of wood which had been painted vermilion--the veritable post-box red. Above this again a frieze of pure white paper. At set intervals upon the canvas were brilliant colour-prints in thin gold frames. The room was lit with many candles in tall holders of silver. At one side of it was a table spread for supper, gleaming with delicate napery and cut glass, peaches in a bowl of red earthenware, ruby-coloured wine in a jug of German glass with a lid of pewter shaped like a snake's head. At the other side of the room was a huge Chesterfield couch, upholstered in broad stripes of black and olive linen. The still figure of a man in a tweed suit lay upon the couch. There was blood upon his face and clotted rust-like stains upon his loosened collar. A washing-bowl of stained water stood upon the green carpet. Upon a chair, by the head of the couch a tall woman with shining yellow hair was sitting. She wore a low-cut evening dress of black, pearls were about the white column of her throat, a dragon fly of emeralds set in aluminium sparkled in her hair, and upon her wrists were heavy Moorish bracelets of oxydised silver studded with the bird's egg blue of the turquoise stone. For an instant, not of the time but of thought, the doctor was startled. Then, as the stately and beautiful woman rose to meet him, he understood. She had decked herself, adorned her fair body with all the braveries she had so that she might be lovely and acceptable to her husband's eyes as he came home to her. Came home to her . . . like this! Morton Sims had shaken the slim hand, murmured some words of condolence, and hastened to the motionless figure upon the couch. His deft fingers were feeling, pressing, touching with a wonderful instinct, the skull beneath the tumbled masses of blood-clotted hair. Nothing there, scalp wounds merely. Arms, legs--yes, these were uninjured too. The collar-bone was intact under the flesh that cushioned it. The skin of the left wrist was lacerated and bruised--Lothian, of course, had been sitting on the left side of the driver when he fell like a log from the gig--but the bones of the hand and arm were normal. There was not a single symptom of brain concussion. The deep gurgling breathing, the alarming snore-like sound that came from between the curiously pure and clear-cut lips, meant one thing only. Morton Sims stood up. Mary Lothian was waiting. There was an agony of expectation in her eyes. "Not the least reason to be alarmed," said the doctor. "Some nasty cuts in the scalp, that is all." She gave a deep sigh, a momentary shudder, and then her face became calm. "It is so kind of you to come, Doctor," she said.--"Then that deep spasmodic breathing--he has not really hurt his head?" "Not in the least as far as I can say, and I am fairly certain. We must get him up to bed. Then I can cut away the hair and bandage the wounds. I must take his temperature also. It's possible--just possible that the shock may have unpleasant results, though I really don't think it will. I will give him some bromide though, as soon as he wakes up." "Ah!" she said. That was all, but it meant everything. He knew that to this woman, at least, plain-speaking was best. "Yes," he continued, "I am sorry to say that he is under the influence of alcohol. He has obviously been drinking heavily of late. I am a specialist in such matters and I can hardly be mistaken. There is just a possibility that this may bring on delirium tremens--only a possibility. He has never suffered from that?" "Oh, never. Thank God never!" A sob came into her voice. Her face glowed with the love and tenderness within, the blue eyes seemed set in a soul rather than in a face, so beautiful had they become. "He's so good," she said with a wistful smile. "You can't think what a sweet boy he is when he doesn't drink any horrible things." "Madam, I have read his poems. I know what an intellect and force lies drugged upon that sofa there. But we will soon have the flame burning clearly once more. It has been the work of my life to study these cases." "Yes, I know, Doctor. I have heard so much of your work." "Believe then that I am going to save this foolish young man, to give him back to you and to the world. A free man once more!" "Free!" she whispered. "Oh, free from his vice!" "_Vice_, Madam! I thought that all intelligent people understood by this time. For the last ten years I and my colleagues have been trying to make them understand! It is not a _vice_ from which your husband suffers. It is a _disease_!" He saw that she was pleased that he had spoken to her thus--though he was in some doubt if she appreciated what he had actually said. But already the shuttle of an incipient friendship was beginning to dart between them. Two high clear souls had met and recognised each other. "Well, suppose we get him to bed, Doctor," she said. "We can carry him up between us. There are two maids, and Tumpany is quite sober enough to help." "Quite!" the doctor answered. "I rather like that man upon a first meeting." Mary laughed--a low contralto laugh. "She has a sense of humour too!" the doctor thought. "Yes," she said, "Tumpany is a good fellow at heart. And, like most people who drink, when he is himself he is a quite delightful person." She went out into the hall, tall and beautiful, the jewels in her hair and on her hands sparkling in the candlelight. Morton Sims took one of the candles from the table and went up to the couch. A shadow flickered over the face of the man who was lying there. It was but momentary, but in that instant the watcher became cold. The silver of the candle-stick stung the palm of a hand which was suddenly wet. This tranquil, lovely room with its soft yellow light, dissolved and shifted like a scene in a dream. . . . . . . It was a raw winter's morning. The walls were the whitewashed walls of a prison mortuary. There was a smell of chloride of lime. . . . And lying upon a long zinc slab, with little grooves and depressions running down to the eye-hole of a drain, was a still figure whose face was a ghastly caricature of this face, hideously, revoltingly alike . . . Mary Lothian, Tumpany, and two maid-servants came into the room, and with some difficulty the poet was carried upstairs. He was hardly laid upon his bed when the rain came, falling in great sheets with a loud noise, cooling and purging the hot air. CHAPTER III PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INEBRIATE, AND THE LETTER OF JEWELLED WORDS "Verbosa ac grandis epistola venit a Capreis." --_Juvenal._ It was three days after the accident. Gilbert lay in bed. His head was crossed with bandages, his wrist was wrapped with lint and a wet compress was upon the ankle of his strained left foot. The windows of his bedroom were wide to the sun and air of the morning. There were two pleasant droning sounds. A bee was flying round the room, and down below in the garden Tumpany was mowing the strip of lawn before the house. Gilbert was very tranquil. He was wrapped round with a delicious peace of mind and body. He seemed to be floating in some warm ether of peace. There was a table by the side of his bed. In a slender vase upon it was a single marguerite daisy with its full green stem, its rays of white--Chinese white in a box of colours--round the central gold. Close to his hand, upon the white turned down sheet was a copy of "John Inglesant." It was a book he loved and could always return to, and he had had his copy bound in most sumptuous purple. Mary came into the bedroom. She was carrying a little tray upon which there was a jug of milk and a bottle of soda water. There was a serene happiness upon her face. She had him now--the man she loved! He was hers, her own without possibility of interference. She was his Providence, he depended utterly upon her. There are not many women like this in life, but there are some. Perhaps they were more frequent in the days of the past. Women who have no single thought of Self: women whose thoughts are always prayers: women in whose veins love takes the place of blood, whose hearts are cisterns of sweet charity, whose touch means healing, whose voices are like harps that sound forgiveness and devotion alone. She put the tray upon the bedside table and sat down upon the bed, taking his unwounded hand in hers, stroking it with the soft cushions of her fingers, holding up its well-shaped plumpness as if it were a toy. "There is something so comic about your hands, darling!" she said. "They are so nice and fat and jolly. They make me want to laugh!" To Gilbert his wife's happy voice seemed but part of the dream-like peace which lay upon him. He was drowsy with incense. How fresh and fragrant she was! he thought idly. He pulled her down to him and kissed her and the gilded threads of her hair brushed his forehead. Her lips were cool as violets with the dew upon their petals. She belonged to him. She was part of the pleasant furniture of the room, the hour! "How are you feeling, darling? You're looking so much better!" "My head hurts a little, but not much. But my nerves are ever so much better. Look how steady my hand is." He held it out with childish pride. "And you'll see, Molly dear, that when I'm shaved, my complexion will be quite nice again! It's a horrid nuisance not to be able to shave. Do I look very bad?" "No, you wicked image! You're a vain little wretch, Gillie, really!" "I'm quite sure that I'm not. But, Molly, it's so nice to be feeling better. Master of one's self. Not frightened about things." "Of course it is, you old stupid! If you were always good how much happier you'd be! Take my advice. Do what I tell you, and everything will come right. You've got a great big brain, but you're a silly boy, too! Think how much more placid you are now. Never take any more spirits again!" "No, I won't, darling. I promise you I won't." "That's right, dear. And this nice new doctor will help you. You like him, don't you?" "Molly! What a dear simple fool you are! _Like_ him? You don't in the least realise who he is. It's Morton Sims, Morton Sims himself! He's a fearfully important person. Twice, they say, he's refused to take a baronetcy. He's come down here to do research work. It's an enormous condescension on his part to come and plaster up my head. It's really rather like Lord Rosebery coming to shave one! And he'll send in a bill for about fifty pounds!" "He won't, Gillie dear. I'm sure. But if he does, what's the use of worrying? I'll pay it out of my own money, and I've got nearly as much as you--nasty miser!" They laughed together at this. Mary had three or four hundreds a year of her own, Gilbert a little more, independently of what he earned by writing. Mary was mean with her money. That is to say, she saved it up to give to poorer people and debated with herself about a new frock like a chancellor of the Exchequer about the advisability of a fresh tax. And Lothian didn't care and never thought about money. He had no real sense of personal property. He liked spending money. He was extravagant for other people. If he bought a rare book, a special Japanese colour-print, any desirable thing--he generally gave it away to some one at once. He really liked people with whom he came into contact to have delightful things quite as much as he liked to have them himself. Nor was this an outcome of the poisoned state of his body, his brain, and--more terrible than all!--of his mind. It was genuine human kindness, an eager longing that others should enjoy things that he himself enjoyed so poignantly. But what he gave must be the things that _he_ liked, though to all _necessity_ he was liberal. A sick poor person without proper nourishment, a child without a toy, some wretched tramp without tobacco for his pipe--to him these were all tragedies, equal in their appeal to his charity. And this was because of his trained power of psychology, his profound insight into the minds of others, though even that was marred by a Rousseau-like belief that every one was good and decent at heart! Still, the need of the dying village consumptive for milk and calf's-foot jelly, was no more vivid in his mind than the need of the tramp for a smoke. As far as he was able, it was his Duty, his happy duty, to satisfy the wants of both. Mary was different. The consumptive, yes! Stout flannel shirts for old shepherds who must tend the birth of lambs on bitter Spring midnights. Food for the tramp, too--no dusty wayfarer should go unsatisfied from the Lothians' house! But not the subsequent shilling for beer and shag and the humble luxury of the Inn kitchen that Gilbert would have bestowed. Such was her wise penuriousness in its calm economy of the angels! Yet, her husband had his economy also. Odd as it was, it was part of his temperament. If he had bought a rare and perfect object of art, and then met some one who he saw longed for it, but couldn't afford to have it in the ordinary way, he took a real delight in giving it. But it would have been easier for him to lop off a hand than to present one of the Toftrees' novels to any one who was thirsting for something to read. He would have thought it immoral to do so. He had a great row with his wife when she presented a gaudy pair of pink-gilt vases to an ex-housemaid who was about to be married. "But dear, she's _delighted_," Mary had said. "You've committed a crime! It's disgraceful. Oblige me by never doing anything of the sort again. Why didn't you give her a ham?" "Molly, may I have a cigarette?" "Hadn't you better have a pipe? The doctor said that you smoked far too many cigarettes and that they were bad for you." For three days Lothian had had nothing to drink but a glass of Burgundy at lunch and dinner. Lying in bed, perfectly tranquil, calling upon no physical resources, the sense of nerve-rest within him was grateful and profound. But the inebriate lives almost entirely upon momentary sensation. The slightest recrudescence of health makes him forget the horrors of the past. In the false calm of his quiet room, his tended state, the love and care surrounding him, Gilbert had already come to imagine that he was what he hoped to be in his saner moments. He had, at the moment, not the least desire for a drink. In three days he was already complacent and felt himself strong! Yet his nerves were still unstable and every impulse was on a hair trigger, so to speak. The fact became evident at once. He knew well enough that when he began to smoke pipes the most pressing desire of the other narcotic, alcohol, became numbed. Cigarettes stimulated that desire, or at least accompanied it. He could not live happily without cigarettes. He knew that Mary knew this also--experience of him had given her the sad knowledge--and he was quite certain that Dr. Morton Sims must know too. The extraordinary transitions of the drunkard from one mental state to another are more symptomatic than any other thing about him. Gilbert's face altered and became sullen. A sharp and acid note tuned his voice. "I see," he said, "you've been talking me over with Morton Sims. Thank you so _very_ much!" He began to brag about himself, a thing he would have been horrified to do to any one but Mary. Even with her it was a weak weapon, and sometimes in his hands a mean and cruel one too. ". . . You were kind enough to marry me, but you don't in the least seem to understand whom you have married! Is my art nothing to you? Do you realise who I am at all--in any way? Of course you don't! You're too big a fool to do so. But other women know! At any rate, I beg you will not talk over your husband with stray medical men who come along. You might spare me that at least. I should have thought you would have had more sense of personal dignity than that!" She winced at the cruelty of his words, at the wounding bitterness which he knew so well how to throw into his voice. But she showed no sign of it. He was a poisoned man, and she knew it. Morton Sims had made it plainer than ever to her at their talks downstairs during the last three days. It wasn't Gillie who said these hard things, it was the Fiend Alcohol that lurked within him and who should be driven out. . . . It wasn't her Gilbert, really! In her mind she said one word. "Jesus!" It was a prayer, hope, comfort and control. The response was instant. That secret help had been discovered long since by her. Of her own searching it had come, and then, one day she had picked up one of her husband's favourite books and had read of this very habit she had acquired. "Inglesant found that repeating the name of Jesus simply in the lonely nights kept his brain quiet when it was on the point of distraction, being of the same mind as Sir Charles Lucas when 'Many times calling upon the sacred name of Jesus,' he was shot dead at Colchester." The spiritual telegraphy that goes on between Earth and Heaven, from God to His Saints is by no means understood by the World. "You old duffer," Mary said. "Really, you are a perfect blighter--as you so often call me! Haven't you just been boasting about feeling so much better? And, fat wretch! am I not doing everything possible for you. _Of course_ I've talked you over with the doctor. We're going to make you right! We're going to make you slim and beautiful once more. My dear thing! it's all arranged and settled. Don't bubble like a frog! Don't look at your poor Missis as if she were a nasty smell! It's no use, Gillie dear, we've got you now!" No momentary ill-humour could stand against this. He was, after all, quite dependent upon the lady with the golden hair who was sitting upon his bed. And it was with no more Oriental complacence, but with a very humble-minded reverence, that the poet drew his wife to him and kissed her once more. ". . . But I may have a cigarette, Molly?" "Of course you may, if you want one. It was only a general sort of remark that the doctor made. A few cigarettes can't harm any one. Don't I have two every day myself--since you got me into the habit? But you've been smoking fifty a day, for _weeks_ before you went to town." "Oh, Molly! What utter rot! I _never_ have!" "But you _have_, Gilbert. You smoke the Virginian ones in the tins of fifty. You always have lots of tins, but you never think how they come into the house. I order them from the grocer in Wordingham. They're put down in the monthly book--so you see I _know_!" "Fifty a day! Of course, it's appalling." "Well, you're going to be a good boy now, a perfect angel. Here you are, here are three cigarettes for you. And you're going to have a sweet-bread for lunch and I'm going to cook it for you myself!" "Dear old dear!" "Yes, I am. And Tumpany wants to see you. Will you see him? Dr. Morton Sims won't be here for another half hour." "Yes, I'll have Tumpany up. Best chap I know, Tumpany is. But why's the doctor coming? My head's healed up all right now." There was a whimsical note in his voice as he asked the question. "You know, darling! He wants to have a long talk with you." "Apropos of the reformation stakes I suppose." "To give you back your wonderful brain in peace, darling!" she answered, bending down, catching him to her breast in her sweet arms. ". . . Gillie! Gillie! I love you so!" "And now suppose you send up Tumpany, dear." "Yes, at once." She went away, smiling and kissing her hand, hoping with an intensity of hope which burned within her like a flame, that when the doctor came and talked to Gilbert as had been arranged, the past might be wiped out and a new life begun in this quiet village of East England. In a minute there was a knock at the bedroom door. "Come in," Gilbert called out. Tumpany entered. Upon the red face of that worthy person there was a grin of sheer delight as he made his bow and scrape. Then he held up his right arm. He was grasping a leash of mallard, and the metallic blue-green and white upon the wings of the ducks shone in the sun. Gilbert leapt in his bed, and then put his hand to his bandaged head with a half groan.--"Good God!" he cried, "how the deuce did you get those?" "First of August, sir. Wildfowling begins!" "Heavens! so it is. I ought to have been out! I never thought about the date. Damn you for pitching me out of the dog-cart, William!" "Yessir! You've told me so before," Tumpany answered, his face reflecting the smile upon his master's. "What are they, flappers?" "No, sir, mature birds. I was out on the marshes before daylight. The birds were coming off the meils--and North Creake flat. First day since February, sir! You know what I was feeling like!" "Don't I, oh, don't I, by Jove! Now tell me. What were you using?" "Well, sir, I thought I would fire at nothing but duck on the first day. Just to christen the day, sir. So I used five and a half and smokeless diamond. Your cartridges." "What gun?" "Well, I used my old pigeon gun, sir. It's full choke, both barrels and on the meils it's always a case of long shots." "Why didn't you have one of my guns? The long-chambered twelve, or the big Greener ten-bore--they're there in the cupboard in the gun room, you've got the key! Did a whole sord of mallard come over, or were those three stragglers?" "A sord, sir. The two drakes were right and left shots and this duck came down too. As I said to the mistress just now, 'last year,' I said, 'Mr. Gilbert and I were out for two mornings after the first of August and we never brought back nothing but a brace of curlew--and now here's a leash of duck, M'm.'" "If you'd had a bigger gun, and a sord came over, you'd have got a bag, William! Why the devil didn't you take the ten-bore?" "Well, sir, I won't say as I didn't go and have a look at 'im in the gun room--knowing how they're flighting just now and that a big gun would be useful. But with you lying in bed I couldn't do it. So I went out and shot just for the honour of the house, as it were." "Well, I shall be up in a day or two, William, and I'll see if I can't wipe your eye!" "I hope you will, sir, I'm sure. There's quite a lot of mallard about, early as it is." "I'll get among them soon, Tumpany!" "Yessir--the Mistress I think, sir, and the doctor." Tumpany's ears were keen, like those of most wildfowlers,--he heard voices coming along the passage towards the bedroom. The door opened and Morton Sims came in with Mary. He shook hands with Gilbert, admired Tumpany's leash of duck, and then, left alone with the poet, sat down upon the bed. The two men regarded each other with interest. They were both "personalities" and both of them made their mark in their several ways. "Good heavens!" the doctor was thinking. "What a brilliant brain's hidden behind those lint bandages! This is the man who can make the throat swell with sorrow and the heart leap high with hope! With all my learning and success, I can only bring comfort to people's bowels or cure insomnia. This fellow here can heal souls--like a priest! Even for me--now and then--he has unlocked the gates of fairyland." "Good Lord!" Gilbert said to himself. "What wouldn't I give to be a fellow like this fellow. He is great. He can put a drug into one's body and one's soul awakes! He's got a magic wand. He waves it, and sanity returns. He pours out of a bottle and blind eyes once more see God, dull ears hear music! I go and get drunk at Amberleys' house and cringe before a Toftrees, Mon Dieu! This man can never go away from a house without leaving a sense of loss behind him." --"Well, how are you, Mr. Lothian?" "Much better, thanks, Doctor. I'm feeling quite fit, in fact." "Yes, but you're not, you know. I made a complete examination of you yesterday, you remember, and now I've tabulated the results." "Tell me then." "If you weren't who you are, I wouldn't tell you at all, being who you are, I will." Lothian nodded. "Fire away!" he said with his sweet smile, his great charm of manner--all the greater for the enforced abstinence of the last three days--"I shan't funk anything you tell me." "Very well, then. Your liver is beginning--only beginning--to be enlarged. You've got a more or less permanent catarrh of the stomach, and a permanent catarrh of the throat and nasal passages from membranes inflamed by alcohol and constant cigarette smoking. And there is a hint of coming heart trouble, too." Lothian laughed, frankly enough. "I know all that," he said. "Really, Doctor, there's nothing very dreadful in that. I'm as strong as a horse, really!" "Yes, you are, in one way. Your constitution is a fine one. I was talking to your man-servant yesterday and I know what you are able to go through when you are shooting in the winter. I would not venture upon such risks myself even." "Then everything is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds?" Gilbert answered lightly, feeling sure that the other would take him. "Unfortunately, in your case, it's _not_," Morton Sims replied. "You seem to forget two things about 'Candide'--that Dr. Pangloss was a failure and a fool, and that one must cultivate one's garden! Voltaire was a wise man!" Gilbert dropped his jesting note. "You've something to say to me," he answered, "probably a good deal more. Say it. Say anything you like, and be quite certain that I shan't be offended." "I will. It's this, Mr. Lothian. Your stomach will go on digesting and your heart performing its functions long after your brain has gone." Then there was silence in the sunlit bedroom. "You think that?" Lothian said at length, in a quiet voice. "I know it. You are on the verge of terrible nervous and mental collapse. I'm going to be brutal, but I'm going to speak the truth. Three months more of drinking as you have been of late and, for all effective purposes you go out!" Gilbert's face flushed purple with rage. "How dare you say such a thing to me, sir?" he cried. "How dare you tell me, tell _me_, that I have been drinking heavily. You are certainly wise to say it when there is no witness here!" Morton Sims smiled sadly. He was quite unmoved by Lothian's rage. It left him cool. But when he spoke, there was a hypnotic ring in his voice which caught at the weak and tremulous will of the man upon the bed and held it down. "Now really, Mr. Lothian!" he said, "what on earth is the use of talking like that to me? It means nothing. It does not express your real thought. Can you suppose that your condition is not an open book to _me_? You know that you wouldn't speak as you're doing if your nerves weren't in a terrible state. You have one of the finest minds in England; don't bring it to irremediable ruin for want of a helping hand." Lothian lay back on his pillow breathing quickly. He felt that his hands were trembling and he pushed them under the clothes. His legs were twitching and a spasm of cramp-pain shot into the calf of one of them. "Look here, Doctor," he said after a moment, "I spoke like a fool, which I'm not. I have been rather overdoing it lately. My work has been worrying me and I've been trying to whip myself up with alcohol." Morton Sims nodded. "Well, we'll soon put you right," he said. Mary Lothian had told him the true history of the case. For three years, at least, her husband had been drinking steadily, silent, persistent, lonely drinking. For a long time, a period of months to her own fear and horror-quickened knowledge, Lothian had been taking a quantity of spirits which she estimated at two-thirds of a bottle a day. Without enlightening her, and adding what an inebriate of this type could easily procure in addition, the doctor put the true quantity at about a bottle and a half--say for the last two months certainly. He knew also, that whatever else Lothian might do, either now or when he became more confidential, he would lie about the _quantity_ of spirits he was in the habit of consuming. Inebriates always do. "Of course," he said, talking in a quiet man-of-the-world voice, "_I_ know what a strain such work as yours must be, and there is certainly temptation to stimulate flagging energies with some drug. Hundreds of men do it, doctors too!--literary men, actors, legal men!" He noted immediately the slight indication of relief in the patient, who thought he had successfully deceived him, and he saw also that sad and doubting anxiety in the eyes, which says so poignantly, "what must I do to be saved?" Could he save this man? Everything was against it, his history, his temperament, the length to which he had already gone. The whole stern and horrible statistics of experience were dead against it. But he could, and would, try. There was a chance. A great doctor must think more rapidly than a general upon the field of battle; as quickly indeed as one who faces a deadly antagonist with the naked foil. There was one way in which to treat this man. He must tell him more about the psychology--and even if necessary the pathology--of his own case than he could tell any ordinary patient. "I'll tell you something," he said, "and I expect your personal experience will back me up. You've no 'craving' for alcohol I expect? On the sensual side there's no sense of indulging in a pleasurable self-gratification?" Lothian's face lighted up with interest and surprise. "Not a _bit_," he said excitedly, "that's exactly where people make a mistake! I don't mind telling you that when I've taken more than I ought, people, my wife and so on, have remonstrated with me. But none of them ever seem to understand. They talk about a 'craving' and so on. Religious people, even the cleverest, don't seem to understand. I've heard Bishop Moultrie preach a temperance sermon and talk about the 'vice' of indulgence, the hideous 'craving' and all that. But it never seemed to explain anything to me, nor did it to all the men who drink too much, I ever met." "There _is_ no craving," the Doctor answered quietly--"in the sense these people use the word. And there is no vice. It is a disease. They mean well, they even effect some cures, but they are misinformed." "Well, it's very hard to answer them at any rate. One somehow knows within oneself that they're all wrong, but one can't explain." "I can explain to you--I couldn't explain to, well to your man Tumpany for instance, _he_ couldn't understand." "Tumpany only drinks beer," Lothian answered in a tone of voice that a traveller in Thibet would use in speaking of some one who had ventured no further from home than Boulogne. It was another indication, an unconscious betrayal. His defences were fast breaking down. Morton Sims felt the keen, almost æsthetic pleasure the artist knows when he is doing good work. Already this mind was responsive to the skilled touch and the expected, melancholy music sounding from that injured instrument. "He seems a very good sort, that fellow of yours," the doctor continued indifferently, and then, with a more eager and confidential manner, "But let me explain where the ordinary temperance people are wrong. First, tell me, haven't you at times quarrelled with friends, because you've become suspicious of them, and have imagined some treacherous and concealed motive in the background?" "I don't know that I've quarrelled much." "Well, perhaps not. But you've felt suspicious of people a good deal. You've wondered whether people were thinking about you. In all sorts of little ways you've had these thoughts constantly. Perhaps if a correspondent who generally signs himself 'yours sincerely' has inadvertently signed 'yours truly' you have worried a good deal and invented all sorts of reasons. If some person of position you know drives past you, and his look or wave of the hand does not appear to be as cordial as usual, don't you invent all kinds of distressing reasons to account for what you imagine?" Lothian nodded. His face was flushed again, his eyes--rather yellow and bloodshot still--were markedly startled, a little apprehensive. "If this man knew so much, a wizard who saw into the secret places of the mind, what more might he not know?" But it was impossible for him to realise the vast knowledge and supreme skill of the pleasant man with the cultured voice who sat on the side of the bed. The fear was perfectly plain to Morton Sims. "May I have a cigarette?" he said, taking his case from his pocket. Lothian became more at ease at once. "Well,"--puff-puff--"these little suspicions are characteristic of the disease. The man who is suffering from it says that these feelings of resistance cannot arise in himself. Therefore, they must be caused by somebody. Who more likely then than by those who are in social contact with him?" "I see that and it's very true. Perhaps truer than you can know!" Lothian said with a rather bitter smile. "But how does all this explain what we were talking about at first. The 'Craving' and all that?" "I am coming to it now. I had to make the other postulate first. In this way. We have seen in this suspicion--one of many instances--that an entirely fictitious world is created in the mind of a man by alcohol. It is one in which he _must_ live. It is peopled with unrealities and phantasies. As he goes on drinking, this world becomes more and more complex. Then, when a man becomes in a state which we call 'chronic alcoholism' a new Ego, a new self is created. _This new personality fails to recognise that it was ever anything else_--mark this well--_and proceeds to harmonise everything with the new state_. And now, as the new consciousness, the new Ego, is the compelling mind of the moment, the Inebriate is terrified at any weakening in it. _The preservation of this new Ego seems to be his only guard against the_ imagined _pitfalls and treacheries_. Therefore he does all in his power to strengthen his defences. He continues alcohol, because it is to him the only possible agent by which he can _keep grasp of his identity_. For him it is no poison, no excess. It sustains his very being. His _stomach_ doesn't crave for it, as the ignorant will tell you. It has no _sensual_ appeal. Lots of inebriates hate the taste of alcohol. In advanced stages it is quite a matter of indifference to a man what form of alcohol he drinks. If he can't get whiskey, he will drink methylated spirit. He takes the drug simply because of the necessity for the maintenance of a condition the falsity of which he is unable to appreciate." Lothian lay thinking. The lucid statement was perfectly clear to him and absorbingly interesting in its psychology. He was a profound psychologist himself, though he did not apply his theories personally, a spectator of others, turning away from the contemplation of himself during the past years in secret terror of what he might find there. How new this was, yet how true. It shed a flood of light upon so much that he had failed to understand! "Thank you," he said simply. "I feel certain that what you say is true." Morton Sims nodded with pleasure. "Perhaps nothing is quite true," he said, "but I think we are getting as near truth in these matters as we can. What we have to do, is to let the whole of the public know too. When once it is thoroughly understood what Inebriety is, then the remedy will be applied, the only remedy." "And that is?" "I'll tell you our theories at my next visit. You must be quiet now." "But there are a dozen questions I want to ask you--and my own case?" "I am sending you some medicine, and we will talk more next time. And, if you like, I will send you a paper upon the Psychology of the Alcoholic, which I read the other day before the Society for the Study of Alcoholism. It may interest you. But don't necessarily take it all for gospel! I'm only feeling my way." "I'll compare it with such experiences as I have had--though of course I'm not what you'd call an _inebriate_." There was a lurking undercurrent of suspicion creeping into his voice once more. "Of course not! Did I ever say so, Mr. Lothian! But what you propose will be of real value to me, if I may have your conclusions." Lothian was flattered. He would show this great scientist how entirely capable he could be of understanding and appreciating his researches. He would collaborate with him. It would be new and exhilarating! "I'll make notes," he replied, "and please use them as you will!" The doctor rose. "Thanks," he answered. "It will be a help. But what we really require is an alcoholic De Quincey to detail in his graphic manner the memories of his past experiences--a man who has the power and the courage to lay open the cravings and the writhings of his former slavery, and to compare them with his emancipated self." Lothian started. When the kindly, keen-faced man had gone, he lay long in thought. In the afternoon Mary came to him. "Do you mind if I leave you for an hour or two, dear?" she asked. "I have some things to get and I thought I would drive into Wordingham." "Of course not, I shall be quite all right." "Well, be sure and ring for anything you want." "Very well. I shall probably sleep. By the way, I thought of asking Dickson Ingworth down for a few days. There are some duck about, you know, and he can bring his gun." "Do, darling, if you would like him." "Very well, then. I wonder if you'd write a note for me, explaining that I'm in bed, but shall be up to-morrow. Supposing you ask him to come in a couple of days." "Yes, I will," she replied, kissing him with her almost maternal, protective air, "and I'll post it in Wordingham." When she had left the room he began to smoke slowly. He felt a certain irritation at all this love and regard, a discontent. Mary was always the same. With his knowledge of her, he could predict with absolute accuracy what she would do in almost every given moment. She would do the right thing, the kind and wise thing, but the certain, the predicted thing. She lived from a great depth of being and peace personified was hers, the peace of God indeed!--but-- "She has no changes, no surprises," he thought, "all even surface, even depth." He admired all her care and watchfulness of him with deep æsthetic pleasure. It was beautiful and he loved beauty. But now and then, it bored him as applied to himself. After six months of the unchanging gold and blue of Italy and Greece, he remembered how he had longed for a grey, weeping sky, with ashen cirrus clouds, heaped tumuli of smoke-grey and cold pearl. And sometimes after a lifeless, rotting autumn and an iron-winter, how every fibre cried out for the sun and the South! He remembered that a man of letters, who had got into dreadful trouble and had served a period of imprisonment, had remarked to him that the food of penal servitude was plentiful and good, but that it was its dreadful monotony that made it a contributory torture. And who could live for ever upon honey-comb? Not he at any rate. Mary was "always her sweet self"--just like a phrase in a girl's novel. There were men who liked that, and preferred it, of course. Even when she was angry with him, he knew exactly how the quarrel would go--a tune he had heard many times before. The passion of their early love had faded; as it must always do. She was beautiful and desirable still, but too calm, too peaceful, sometimes! This was one of those times. One must be trained to appreciate Heaven properly, Paradise must be experienced first--otherwise, would not almost every one want a little holiday sometimes? He thought of a meeting of really good people, men and women--one stumbled in upon such a thing now and then. How appallingly dull they generally were! Did they never crave for madder music and stronger wine? . . . He could not read. Restless and rebellious thoughts occupied his mind. The Fiend Alcohol was at work once more, though Lothian had no suspicion of it. The new and evil Ego, created by alcohol, which the doctor had told him of, was awake within him, asserting itself, stirring uneasily, finding its identity diminishing, its vitality lowered and thus clamant for its rights. And if this, in all its horror, is not true demoniacal possession, what else is? What more does the precise scientific language of those who study the psychology of the inebriate mean than "He was possessed of a Devil"? The fiend, the new Ego, went on with its work as the poet lay there and the long lights of the summer afternoon filled the room with gold-dust. The house was absolutely still. Mary had given orders that there was to be no noise at all, "in order that the Master might sleep, if he could." It was a summer's afternoon, the scent of some flowers below in the garden came up to Gilbert with a curious familiarity. What _was_ the scent? What memory, which would not come, was it trying to evoke? A motor-car droned through the village beyond the grounds. Memory leaped up in a moment. Of course! The ride to Brighton, the happy afternoon with Rita Wallace. That was it! He had thought of her a good deal on the journey down from London--until he had sat in the dining car with those shooting men from Thetford and had had too many whiskeys and sodas. During the last three days in bed, she had not "occurred" to him vividly. Yet all the time there had been something at the back of his mind of which he had been conscious, but was unable to explain to himself. The nasty knock on his head, when he had taken a toss from the dogcart, was the reason, no doubt. Yet, there had been a distinct sense of hidden thought-treasure, something to draw upon as it were. And now he knew! and abandoned himself to the luxury of the discovery. He must write to her, of course. He had promised to do so at once. Already she would be wondering. He would write her a wonderful letter. Such a letter as few men could write, and certainly such as she had never received. He would put all he knew into it. His sweet girl-friend should marvel at the jewelled words. The idea excited him. His pulses began to beat quicker, his eyes grew brighter. But he would not do it now. Night was the time for such a present as he would make for her, when all the house was sleeping and Mary was in her own room. Then, in the night-silence, his brain should be awake, weaving a coloured tapestry of prose with words for threads, this new, delicious impulse of friendship the shuttle to carry them. Like some coarser epicure, arranging and gloating over the details of a feast to come, he made his plans. He pressed the electric button at the side of the bed and Blanche, the housemaid, answered the summons. "Where is Tumpany, Blanche?" he asked. "In the garden, sir." "Well, tell him to come up, please. I want to speak to him." In a minute or two heavy steps resounded down the corridor, accompanied by a curious scuffling noise. There was a knock, the door opened, a yelp of joy, and the Dog Trust had leapt upon the bed and was rolling over and over upon the counterpane, licking his master's hands, making loving dashes for his face, his faithful little heart bursting with emotions he was quite unable to express. "Thought you'd like to see him, sir," said Tumpany. "He know'd you'd come back right enough, and he's been terrible restless." Lothian captured the dog at last, and held him pressed to his side. "I am very glad to see the old chap again. Look here, William, just you go quietly over to the Mortland Arms, don't look as if you were going on any special errand,--but you know--and get a bottle of whiskey. Draw the cork and put it back in the bottle so that I can take it out with my fingers when I want to. Then bring it quietly up here." "Yessir," said Tumpany. "That'll be all right, sir," and departed with a somewhat ludicrous air of secrecy and importance that tickled his master's sense of humour and made him smile. It was by no means the first time that Tumpany had carried out these little confidential missions. In ten minutes the man was back again, with the bottle. "Shall I leave the dog, sir?" "Yes, you may as well. He's quite happy." Tumpany went away. Gilbert rose from bed, the bottle in his hand, and looked round for a hiding-place. The wardrobe! That would do. He put it in one of the big inside pockets of a shooting-coat which was hanging there and carefully closed the door. As he did so, he caught sight of his face in the panel-mirror. It was sly and unpleasant. Something horrible seemed to be peeping out. He shook his head and a slight blush came to his cheeks. The eyes under the bandaged brow, the smirk upon the clear-cut mouth. . . . "Beastly!" he said aloud, as if speaking of some one else--as indeed he really was, had he but realised it. Now he would sleep, to be fresh for the night. Bromide--always a good friend, though not so certain in its action as in the past--Ammonium Bromide should paralyse his racing brain to sleep. He dissolved five tablets in a little water and drank the mixture. When Mary came noiselessly into the room, three hours later, he was sleeping calmly. One arm was round the Dog Trust, who was sleeping too. Her husband looked strangely youthful and innocent. A faint smile hung about his lips and her whole heart went out to him as he slept. * * * * * It was after midnight. Deep peace brooded over the poet's household. Only he was awake. The dog slumbered in his kennel, the servants in their rooms, the Sweet Chatelaine of the Old House lay in tranquil sleep in her own chamber. . . . On a small oak table by Gilbert's bedside, three tall candles were burning in holders of silver. Upon it also was an open bottle of whiskey, the carafe of water from the washstand and a bedroom tumbler. The door was locked. Gilbert was sitting up in bed. Upon his raised knees a pad of white paper was resting. In his hand was a stylographic pen of red vulcanite, and a third of the page was covered with small delicate writing. His face was flushed but quite motionless. His whole body in its white pyjama suit was perfectly still. The only movement was that of the hand travelling over the page, the only sound that of the dull grinding of the stylus, as it went this way and that. There was something sinister about this automaton in the bed with its moving hand. And in our day there is always something a little fantastic and unreal about candlelight. . . . How absolutely still the night was! Not a breath of air stirred. The movements, the stir and tumult of the mind of the person so rigid in the bed were not heard. _What_ was it, _who_ was it, that was writing in the bed? Who can say? Was it Gilbert Lothian, the young and kindly-natured man who reverenced all things that were pure, beautiful and of good report? Or was it that dreadful other self, the Being created out of poison, that was laying sure and stealthy fingers upon the Soul, that "glorious Devil large of heart and brain"? Who can tell? The subtle knowledge of the great doctor could not have said, the holy love of the young matron could not have divined. These things are hidden yet, and still will be. The hump of the bed-clothes sank. The pad fell flat. The figure stretched out towards the table, there was the stealthy trickle of liquid, the gurgle of a body, drinking. Then the bed-clothes rose once more, the pad went to its place, the figure stiffened; and the red pen moved obedient to that which controlled it, setting down the jewelled words upon the page. --The first of the long series of letters that the Girl of the Library was destined to receive! Not the most beautiful perhaps, not the most wonderful. Passion was not born yet, and if love was, there was no concrete word of it here. No one but Gilbert Lothian ever knew what was born on that fated midnight, when he wrote this first subtle letter, deadly for this girl to receive, perhaps, from such a man, at such a time in her life. A love letter without a word of love. These are passages from the letter:-- . . . "So, Rita, I am going to write a great poem for you. Will you take it from your friend? I think you will, for it will be made for you in the first place and wrought with all my skill. "I am going to call it 'A Lady in a Library.' No one will know the innermost inwardness of it but just you and me. Will not that be delightful, Rita mia amica? When you answer this letter, say that it will be delightful, please! "'A Lady in a Library!' Are not the words wonderful--say it quietly to yourself--'A Lady in a Library!'" This was the poem which appeared two months afterwards in the _English Review_ and definitely established Gilbert Lothian's claim to stand in the very forefront of the poets of his decade. It is certain to live long. More than one critic of the highest standing has printed his belief that it will be immortal, and many lovers of the poet's work think so too. . . . "The Lady and the Poet meet in a Library upon a golden afternoon. She is the very Spirit and Genius of the place. She has drawn beauty from many brave books. They have told her their secrets as she moves among them, and lavished all their store upon her. Some of the beauty which they hold has passed into her face, and the rosy tints of youth become more glorious. "Oh, they have been very generous! "The thin volume of Keats gave her eyes their colour, but an old and sober-backed edition of Coleridge opened its dun boards and robbed the magic stanzas of 'Kubla Khan' to give them their mystery and wonder. "Milton bestowed the music of her voice, but it came from the second volume in which Comus lies hid. Her smile was half Herrick and half Heine, and her hair was spun in a 'Wood near Athens' by the fairies--Tom III, _Opera Glmi Shakespeare, Editio e Libris Podley!_--upon a night in Midsummer." "Random thoughts, Cupid! random thoughts! They come to me like moths through the still night, and I put them down for you. A grey-fawn _Papillon de nuit_ is fluttering round my candles now and sometimes he falls flapping and whirring on my paper like a tiny clock-work toy. But I will not kill him. I am happy in writing to my friend, distilling my friendship for you in the lonely laboratory of self, so he shall go unharmed. His ancestors may have feasted upon royal tapestries and laid their eggs in the purple robes of kings! "What are the moths like in Kensington this night, Cupid?--But of course you are asleep now. I make a picture for myself of you sleeping. "The whole village is asleep now, save only me, and I am trying to reconstruct our afternoon and evening together, five days ago or was it six? It is more than ever possible to do that at midnight and alone, though every detail is etched upon my memory and I am only adding colour. "How happy we were! It is so strange to me to think how instantly we became friends--as we are agreed we are always to be, you and I. And think of all we still have to find out about each other! There are golden days coming in our friendship, all sorts of revelations and surprises. There are so many enchanted places in the Kingdom of Thought to which I have the key, so many doors I shall open for you. "Ours shall be a perfect friendship--of your bounty I crave again what you have already given!--and I will build it up as an artificer in rare woods or stained marbles, a carver of moon-stones, a builder of temples in honey-coloured Travertine, makes beautiful states in which the soul can dwell, out of beautiful perishable things. "How often do two people meet as you and I have met? Most rarely. Men and women fall in love, sometimes too early, sometimes too late. There is a brief summer, and then a long winter of calm grey days which numb the soul into acquiescence, or stab the dull tranquillity with the lightnings of tragedy and woe. "We have the better part! We are to be friends, Rita, you and I--that is the rivulet of repeated melody which runs through my first letter to you. Some sad dawn will rise for me, when you tell of something nearer and more poignant than anything I can offer you. It will be a dawn in which, for you the trumpets, the sackbuts and the psalteries of Heaven will sound. And your friend will bless you; and retire to the back of the scene with a most graceful bow! "In the last act of the play, when all the players appear as Nymphs and Graces, and Seasons, your friend will be found wearing the rich yet sober liveries of Autumn, saluting Spring and her Partner with a courtly song, and a dance which expresses his sentiments according to the best choreographic traditions. "But, as he retires among the last red leaves of the year, and walks jauntily down the forest rides as the setting sun shows the trees already bare, he will know one thing, even if Spring does not know it then--when she turns to her Partner. "He will know that in her future life, his voice, his face, can never be quite forgotten. Sometimes, at the feast, 'surgit amari aliquid' that he is not present there with the wistful glance, the hands that were ever reverent, the old familiar keys! "For a brief instant of recollection, he will have for you '_L'effet d'un clair-de-lune par une nuit d'été'_. And you will say to yourself, '_Ami du temps passés, vos paroles me reviennent comme un écho lointain, comme le son d'un cloche apporté par le vent; et il me semble que vous êtes là quand je lis des passages d'amour dans vos livres_'." A click of glass against glass, the low sound of drinking, a black shadow parodied and repeated upon the ceiling in the candle-glow. The letter is nearly finished now--the bottle is nearly empty. "'Tiens!' I hear you say--by the way, Rita, where did you learn to speak such perfect French? They tell me in Paris and, Mon Dieu! in Tours even! that I speak well. Mais, toi! . . . "Well 'How stupid!' I hear you say. 'Why does Gilbert strike this note of the 'cello and the big sobbing flutes at the very beginning of things?' "Why, indeed? I hardly know myself. But it is very late now. The curtains of the dark are already shaken by the birth-pangs of the morning. Soon the jocund noises of dawn will begin. "Let it be so for you and me. There are long and happy days coming in our friendship. The end is not yet! Soon, quite soon, I will return to London with a pocket-full of plans for pleasure, and the magician's wand polished like the poker in the best parlour of an evangelical household, and charged with the most superior magic! "Meanwhile I shall write you my thoughts as you must send me yours. "I kiss your hand, "GILBERT LOTHIAN." The figure rose from the bed, gathering the papers together, putting them into a drawer of the dressing-table. It staggered a little. "I'm drunk," came in a tired voice, from lips that were parched and dry. With trembling hands the empty bottle was hidden, the glass washed out and replaced, the door noiselessly unlocked. Then Lothian lurched to the open window. It was as he had said, dawn was at hand. But a thick grey mist hid everything. Phantoms seemed to sway in it, speaking to each other with tiny doll-like squeaks. There were no jocund noises as he crept back into bed and fell into a stupor, snoring loudly. No jocund noises of Dawn. CHAPTER IV DICKSON INGWORTH UNDER THE MICROSCOPE "On n'est jamais trahi que par ses siens." --_Proverb of Provence._ Lothian and Dickson Ingworth were driving into Wordingham. It was just after lunch and there was a pleasant cold-snap in the air, a hint of Autumn which would soon be here. The younger man was driving, sending the cob along at a good pace, quite obviously a skilful and accustomed whip. His host sat by his side and looked up at him with some curiosity, a curiosity which had been growing upon him during the last few days. Ingworth was certainly good-looking, in a boyish, rather rakish fashion. There were no indications of dissipation in his face. He was not a dissipated youth. But there was, nevertheless, in the cast of the features, something that suggested rather more than staidness. The hair was dark red and very crisp and curly, the mouth was well-shaped and rather thick in the lips. Upon it, more often than not, was the hint of a smile at some inward thought, "rather like some youthful apprentice pirate, not adventured far upon the high seas yet, but with sufficient experience to lick the chops of memory now and then" . . . thus Gilbert's half amused, half wondering thought. And the eyes?--yes, there was something a little queer about the eyes. They were dark, not very steady in expression, and the whites--by Jove! that was it--had a curious opalescence at times. Could it possibly be that his friend had a touch of the tar-brush somewhere? It was faint, elusive, born more of a chance thought than of reality perhaps, and yet as the dog-cart bowled along the straight white road Gilbert wondered more and more. He had known the lad, who was some two and twenty years of age, for twelve months or more. Where had he met him?--Oh, yes, at an exhibition of caricatures in the Carfax Gallery. Cromartie had introduced them. Ingworth had made friends at once. In a graceful impulsive way he had taken Lothian into a corner, and, blushing a good deal, had told him how much he had wanted to know him. He had just come down from Oxford; he told the poet how eagerly he was being read by the younger men there. That was how it had begun. Friendship was an immediate result. Lothian, quite impervious to flattery and spurning coteries and the "tea-shops," had found this young man's devotion a pleasant thing. He was a gentleman and he didn't bore Gilbert by literary talk. He was, in short, like an extremely intelligent fag to a boy in the sixth form of a public school. He spoke the same language of Oxford and school that Gilbert did--the bond between them was just that, and the elder and well-known man had done all he could for his protégé. From Gilbert's point of view, the friendship had occurred by chance, it had presented no jarring elements, and he had drifted into it with good-natured acquiescence. It was a fortnight after Mary had sent the invitation to Ingworth, who could not come at the moment, being kept in London by "important work." He had now arrived, and this was the eighth day of his visit. "I can't understand Tumpany letting this beast down," Ingworth said. "He's as sure footed as possible. Was Tumpany fluffed?" "I suppose he was, a little." "Then why didn't you drive, Gilbert?" "I? Oh, well, I did myself rather well in the train coming down, and so I thought I'd leave it to William!" Gilbert smiled as he said this, his absolutely frank and charming smile--it would have disarmed a coroner! Ingworth smiled also, but here was something self-conscious and deprecating. He was apologising for his friend's rueful but open statement of fact. The big man had said, in effect, "I was drunk," the small man tried to excuse the plain statement with quite unnecessary sycophancy. "But you couldn't have been very bad?" "Oh, no, I wasn't, Dicker. But I was half asleep as we got into the village, and as you see this cart is rather high and with a low splashboard. My feet weren't braced against the foot-bar and I simply shot out!" Ingworth looked quickly at Lothian, and chuckled. Then he clicked his tongue and the trap rolled on silently. Lothian sat quietly in his place, smoking his cigar. He was conscious of a subtle change in this lad since he had come down. It interested him. He began to analyse as Ingworth drove onwards, quite oblivious of the keen, far-seeing brain beside him. --That last little laugh of Ingworth's. There was a new note in it, a note that had sounded several times during the last few days. It almost seemed informed with a slight hint of patronage, and also of reservation. It wasn't the admiring response of the past. The young man had been absolutely loyal in the past, though no great strain had been put upon his friendship. It was not difficult to be friends with a benefactor--while the benefactions last. Certainly on one occasion--at the Amberleys' dinner-party--he had behaved with marked loyalty. Gilbert had heard all about it from Rita Wallace. But that, after all, was an isolated instance. Lothian decided to test it. . . . "Of course I wasn't tight," he said suddenly and with some sharpness. "My dear old chap," the lad replied hastily--too hastily--"don't I know?" It wasn't sincere! How badly he did it! Lothian watched him out of the corner of his eye. There was certainly _something_. Dickson was changed. Then the big mind brushed these thoughts away impatiently. It had enough to brood over! This small creature which was just now intruding in the great and gathering sweep of his daily thoughts might well be dissected some other time. Lothian's head sank forward upon his chest. His eyes lost light and speculation, the mouth set firm. Instinctively he crossed his arms upon his breast, and the clean-shaved face with the growing heaviness of contour mingled with its youth, made an almost Napoleonic profile against the bright grey arc of sky over the marshes. Ingworth saw it and wondered. "One can see he's a big man," he thought with a slight feeling of discomfort. "I wonder if Toftrees is right and his reputation is going down and people are beginning to find out about him?" He surveyed the circumstances of the last fortnight--two very important weeks for him. Until his arrival in Norfolk about a week ago he had not seen Lothian since the night of the party at the Amberleys', the poet having left town immediately afterwards. But he had met, and seen a good deal of Herbert Toftrees and his wife. These worthy people liked an audience. Their somewhat dubious solar system was incomplete without a whole series of lesser lights. The rewards of their industry and popularity were worth little unless they were constantly able to display them. Knowing their own disabilities, however, quite aware that they were in literature by false pretences so to speak, they preferred to be reigning luminaries in a minor constellation rather than become part of the star dust in the Milky Way. Courtier stars must be recruited, little eager parasitic stars who should twinkle pleasantly at their hospitable board. Dickson Ingworth, much to his own surprise and delight, had been swept in. He thought himself in great good luck, and perhaps indeed he was. Nephew of a retired civilian from the Malay Archipelago, he had been sent to Eton and Oxford by this gentleman, who had purchased a small estate in Wiltshire and settled down as a minor country squire. The lad was destined to succeed to this moderate establishment, but, at the University, he had fallen into one of those small and silly "literary" sets, which are the despair of tutors and simply serve as an excuse for general slackness. The boy had announced his intention of embracing a literary career when he had managed to scrape through his pass schools. He had a hundred a year of his own--always spent before he received it--and the Wiltshire squire, quite confident in the ultimate result, had cut off his allowance. "Try it," he had said. "No one will be more pleased than I if you make it a success. You won't, though! When you're tired, come back here and take up your place. It will be waiting for you. But meanwhile, my dear boy, not a penny do you get from me!" So Dickson Ingworth had "embraced a literary career." The caresses had not as yet been returned with any ardour. Conceit and a desire to taste "ginger in the mouth while it was hot" had sent him to London. He had hardly ever read a notable book. He had not the slightest glimmerings of what literature meant. But he got a few short stories accepted now and then, did some odd journalism, and lived on his hundred a year, a fair amount of credit, and such friends as he was able to make. In his heart of hearts the boy knew himself for what he was. But his good looks, his youth--most valuable asset of all!--and the fact that he would some day have some sort of settled position, enabled him to rub along pretty well for the time. Without much real harm in him--he was too lacking in temperament to be really wicked--he was as cunning as an ape and justified his good opinions of his cleverness by the fact that his laborious little tricks constantly succeeded. He was always achieving infinitesimal successes. He had marked out Gilbert Lothian, for instance, and had succeeded in making a friend of him easily enough. Lothian rarely thought ill of any one and any one could take him in. To do Ingworth justice he liked Lothian very much, and really admired him. He did not understand him in the least. His poems were rather worse Greek to him than the Euripidean choruses he had learnt by heart at school. At the same time it was a great thing to be Fidus Achates to the poet of the moment, and it was extremely convenient--also--to have a delightful country house to retire to when one was hard up, and a patron who not only introduced one to editors, but would lend five pounds as a matter of course. Perhaps there was really some Eastern taint in the young fellow's blood. At any rate he was sly by nature, had a good deal of undeveloped capability for treachery latent within him, and, encouraged by success, was becoming a marked parasite. Lazy by nature, he soon discovered how easy it was--to take one example--to look up the magazines of three years back, steal a situation or a plot, adapt it to the day, and sell it for a guinea or two. His small literary career had hitherto been just that. If he had been put upon the rack he could not have confessed to an original thought. And it was the same in many other aspects of his life. He made himself useful. He was always sympathetic and charming to some wife in Bohemia who bewailed the inconstancy of her husband, and earned the title of a "nice, good-hearted boy." On the next evening he would gladly sup with the husband and the chorus girl who was the cause of the trouble, and flatter them both. Master Dickson Ingworth, it will be seen, was by no means a person of fine nature. He was simply very young, without any sort of ideals save the gratification of the moment, and would, no doubt, become a decent member of society in time. In a lower rank of life, and without the comfortable inheritance which awaited him, he would probably have become a sneak-thief or a blackmailer in a small way. In the event, he was destined to live a happy and fairly popular life in the Wiltshire Grange, and to die a much better man than he was at two and twenty. He was not to repent of, but to forget, all the calculated meannesses of his youth, and at fifty he would have shown any one to the door with horror who suggested a single one of the tricks that he had himself been guilty of in his youth. And, parasite always, he is displayed here because of the part he is destined to take in the drama of Gilbert Lothian's life. "I've been seeing a good deal of Toftrees lately, Gilbert," Ingworth said with a side glance. Lothian looked up from his reverie. "What? Oh, yes!--the Toftrees. Nice chap, Toftrees, I thought, when I met him the other night. Awfully clever, don't you think, to get hold of such an enormous public? Mind you, Dicker, I wouldn't give one of his books to any one if I could help it. But that's because I want every one to care for real literature. That's my own personal standpoint. Apart from that, I do think that Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees deserve all they get in the way of money and popularity and so on. There must be such people under the modern conditions, and apart from their work they both seem most interesting." This took the wind from the young man's sails. He was sensitive enough to perceive--though not to appreciate--the largeness of such an attitude as this. He felt baffled and rather small. Then, something that had been instilled into him by his new and influential friends not only provided an antidote to his momentary discomfiture but became personal to himself. A sense of envy, almost of hate, towards this man who had been so consistently kind to him, bloomed like some poisonous and swift-growing fungus in his unstable mind. "I say," he said maliciously, though there was fear in his voice, too, "Herbert Toftrees has got his knife into you, Gilbert." Lothian looked at the young man in surprise. "Got his _knife into me_?" he said, genuinely perplexed. "Well, yes. He's going about town saying all sorts of unpleasant things about you." Lothian laughed. "Yes!" he said, "I remember! Miss Wallace told me so not long ago. How intensely amusing!" Ingworth hated him at the moment. There was a disgusting sense of impotence and smallness, in that he could not sting Lothian. "Toftrees is a very influential man in London," he said sententiously. At that moment all the humour in Lothian awoke. He leant back and laughed aloud. "Oh, Dicker!" he said, "what a babe you are!" Ingworth grew red. He was furious, but dared say nothing more. He felt as if he had been trying to bore a tunnel through the Alps with a boiled carrot and had wasted a franc in paying some one to hold his shadow while he made the attempt! Lothian's laughter was perfectly genuine. He cared absolutely nothing what Toftrees said or thought about him. But he did care about the young man at his side. . . . The other Self, the new Ego, suddenly became awake and dominant. Suspicion reared its head. For days and days now he had drunk hardly anything. The anti-alcoholic medicines that Morton Sims had administered were gradually strengthening the enfeebled will and bringing back the real tenant of his soul. But now . . . Here was one whom he had thought his friend. It was not so then! An enemy sat by his side?--he would soon discover. And then, with a skill which made the lad a plaything in his hands, with a cunning a hundred times deeper than Ingworth's immature shiftiness, Lothian began his work. But it was not the real Lothian. It was the adroit devil waked to life that set itself to the task as the dog-cart rattled into the little country town and drew up before the George Hotel in the Market Square. "Thanks awfully, old chap," Lothian said cheerfully as they turned under the archway into the stable yard. "You're a topping whip, you know, Dicker. I can't drive a bit myself. But I like to see you." For a moment Ingworth forgot his rancour at the praise. Unconscious of the dominant personality and the mental grin behind the words, he swallowed the compliment as a trout gulps a fly. They descended from the trap and the stable-men began to unharness the cob. Lothian thrust his arm through the other's. "Come along, Jehu!" he said. "I want a drink badly, and I'm sure you do, after the drive. I don't care what you say, that cob is _not_ so easy to handle." . . . His voice was lost in the long passage that led from the stable yard to the "saloon-lounge." CHAPTER V A QUARREL IN THE "MOST SELECT LOUNGE IN THE COUNTY" "I strike quickly, being moved. . . . A dog of the house of Montague moves me." --_Romeo and Juliet._ The George Hotel in Wordingham was a most important place in the life and economy of the little Norfolk town. The town drank there. In the handsome billiard room, any evening after dinner, one might find the solicitor, the lieutenant of the Coast-guards, in command of the district, a squire or two, Mr. Pashwhip and Mr. Moger the estate agents and auctioneers, Mr. Reeves the maltster and local J.P.--town, not county--and in fact all the local notabilities up to a certain point, including Mr. Helzephron, the landlord and Worshipful Master of the Wordingham Lodge of Freemasons for that year. The Doctor, the Bank Manager and, naturally, the Rector, were the only people of consequence who did not "use the house" and make it their club. They were definitely upon the plane of gentlefolk and could not well do so. Accordingly they formed a little bridge playing coterie of their own, occasionally assisted by the Lieutenant, who preferred the Hotel, but made fugitive excursions into the somewhat politer society which was his _milieu_ by birth. Who does not know them, these comfortable, respectable hotels in the High Streets or Market Places of small country towns? Yet who has pointed the discovering finger at them or drawn attention to the smug and _convenable_ curses that they are? "There was a flaunting gin palace at the corner of the street,"--that is the sort of phrase you may read in half a hundred books. The holes and dens where working people get drunk, and issuing therefrom make night hideous at closing time, stink in the nostrils of every one. They form the texts and illustrations of many earnest lectures, much fervent sermonizing. But nothing is said of the suave and well-conducted establishments where the prosperous inebriates of stagnant county towns meet to take their poison. When the doors of the George closed in Wordingham and its little coterie of patrons issued forth, gravely, pompously, a little unsteadily perhaps, to seek their homes, the Police Inspector touched his cap--"The gentlemen from the George, going home!" But the wives knew all about such places as the George. It is upon the women that the burden falls, gentle or simple, nearly always the women. Mrs. Gaunt, the naval officer's wife, knew very well why her husband had never got his ship, and why he "went into the Coast-guard." She was accustomed to hear unsteady steps upon the gravel sweep a little after eleven, to see the flushed face of the man she loved, to know that he had spent the evening tippling with his social inferiors, to lie sad and uncomplaining by his side while his snores filled the air and the bedroom was pervaded by the odour of spirits--an Admiral's daughter she, gently nurtured, gently born, well accustomed to these sordid horrors by now. Mrs. Reeves, the Maltster's wife, was soured in temper and angular of face. She had been a pretty and trusting girl not so long ago as years measure. She "gave as good as she got," and the servants of the big bourgeois house with its rankly splendid furniture only turned in their sleep when, towards midnight and once or twice a month, loud recriminations reached them from the downstairs rooms. The solicitor, a big genial brute with a sense of humour, only frightened to tears the elderly maiden sister who kept his house. He was never unkind, never used bad language, and was merely noisy, but at eight o'clock on the mornings following an audit dinner, a "Lodge Night," or the evening of Petty Sessions, a little shrivelled, trembling spinster would creep out of the house before breakfast and kneel in piteous supplication at the Altar rails for the big, blond and jovial brother who was "dissolving his soul" in wine--the well-remembered phrase from the poem of Longfellow which she had learned at school was always with her and gave a bitter urgency to her prayers. All the company who met almost nightly at the George were prosperous, well-to-do citizens. The government of the little town was in their hands. They administered the laws for drunkards, fined them or sent them to prison at Norwich. Their prosperity did not suffer. Custom flowed to Mr. Pashwhip and Mr. Moger, who were always ready to take or stand a drink. The malt of Mr. Reeves was bought by the great breweries of England and deteriorated nothing in quality, while more money than the pompous and heavy man could spend rolled into his coffers. The solicitor did his routine conveyancing and so on well enough. No one did anything out of the ordinary. There were no scandals, "alarums and excursions." It was all decent and ordered. The doctor could have given some astonishing evidence before a Medical Commission. But he was a wise and quiet general practitioner who did his work, held his tongue and sent his three boys to Cambridge. The Rector might have had an illuminating word to say. He was a good but timid man, and saw how impossible it was to make any movement. They were all his own church-wardens, sidesmen, supporters! How could he throw the sleepy, stagnant, comfortable town into a turmoil and disorder in which souls might be definitely lost for ever? He could only pray earnestly as he said the Mass each morning during the seasons of the year. It is so all over England. Deny it who may. In Whitechapel the Fiend Alcohol is a dishevelled fury shrieking obscenities. In the saloons and theatres of the West End he is a suave Mephistopheles in evening dress. In Wordingham and the other provincial towns and cities of England, he appears as a plump and prosperous person in broadcloth, the little difficulty about his feet being got over by well-made country shoes, and with a hat pressed down over ears that may be a trifle pointed or may not. But the mothers, the wives, the sisters recognise him anywhere. The number of martyrs is uncounted. Their names are unknown, their hidden miseries unsung. Who hears the sobs or sees the tears shed by the secret army of Slaves to the Slaves of Alcohol? It is they who must drink the cup to the last dregs of horror and of shame. The unbearable weight is upon them, that is to say, upon tenderness and beauty, on feebleness and Love. Women endure the blows, or cruel words more agonising. They are the meek victims of the Fiend's malice when he enters into those they love. It is womanhood that lies helpless upon the rack for ruthless hands to torture. Cujus animam geminentem! --She whose soul groaning, condoling and grieving the sword pierced through! Saviours sometimes, sufferers always. * * * * * Into the "lounge" of the George Hotel came Gilbert Lothian and Dickson Ingworth. They were well-dressed men of the upper classes. Their clothes proclaimed them--for there will be (unwritten) sumptuary laws for many years in England yet. Their voices and intonation stamped them as members of the upper classes. A railway porter, a duke, or the Wordingham solicitor would alike have placed them with absolute certainty. They were laughing and talking together with bright, animated faces, and in this masked life that we all lead to-day no single person could have guessed at the forces and tragedies at work beneath. They sat down in a long room with a good carpet upon the floor, dull green walls hung with elaborate pictures advertising whiskeys, in gold frames, and comfortable leather chairs grouped in threes round tables with tops of hammered copper. Mr. Helzephron did everything in a most up-to-date fashion--as he could well afford. "The most select lounge in the county" was a minor heading upon the hotel note-paper. At one end of the room was a semicircular counter, upon which were innumerable regiments of tumblers and wine-glasses and three or four huge crystal vessels of spirits, tulip-shaped, with gilded inscriptions and shining plated taps. Behind the counter was Miss Molly Palmer, the barmaid of the hotel, and, behind her, the alcove was lined with mirrors and glass shelves on which were rows of liqueur flasks, bottles of brandy and dummy boxes of chocolates tied up with scarlet ribands. "Now tell me, Dicker," Lothian said, lighting a cigarette, "how do you mean about Toftrees?" The glamour of the past was on the unstable youth now, the same influence which had made him--at some possible risk to himself--defend Lothian so warmly in the drawing room at Bryanstone Square. The splendour of Toftrees was far away, dim in Lancaster Gate. "Oh, he's jealous of you because you really can write, Gilbert! That must be it. But he really has got his knife into you!" Internally, Lothian winced. "Oh, but I assure you he has not," was all that he said. Ingworth finished his whiskey and soda. "Well, you know what I mean, old chap," he replied. "He's going about saying that you aren't sincere, that you're really fluffed when you write your poems, don't you know. The other night, at a supper at the Savoy, where I was, he said you were making a trade of Christianity, that you didn't really believe in what you wrote, and couldn't possibly." Lothian laughed. "Have another whiskey," he said. "And what did you say, Dicker?" There was a sneer in Lothian's voice which the other was quite quick to hear and to resent. On that occasion he had not defended his friend, as it happened. "Oh, I said you meant well," Ingworth answered with quick impertinence, and then, afraid of what he had done hurriedly drained the second glass which the barmaid had just brought him. "Well, I do, really," Lothian replied, so calmly that the younger man was deceived, and once more angry that his shaft had glanced upon what seemed to be impenetrable armour. Yet, below the unruffled surface, the poet's mind was sick with loathing and disgust. He was not angry with Ingworth, against Toftrees he felt no rancour. He was sick, deadly sick with himself, inasmuch as he had descended so low as to be touched by such paws as these. "I'll get through his damned high-and-mighty attitude yet," Ingworth thought to himself. "I say," he remarked, "did you enjoy your trip to Brighton with Rita Wallace? Toftrees saw you there, you know. He was dining at the Metropole the same night." He had pierced--right through--though he did not know it. "Rather dangerous, wasn't it?" he continued. "Suppose your wife got to know, Gilbert?" Something, those letters, near his heart, began to throb like a pulse in Lothian's pocket. One of the letters had arrived that very morning. "Look here, Ingworth," he said, and his face became menacing, "you rather forget yourself, I think, in speaking to me in this way. You're a good sort of boy--at least I've thought so--and I've taken you up rather. But I don't allow impudence from people like you. Remember!" The ice-cold voice frightened the other, but he had to the full that ape-like semi-courage which gibbers on till the last moment of a greater animal's patience. The whiskey had affected him also. His brain was becoming heated. "Well, I don't know about impudence," he answered pertly and with a red face. "Anyhow, Rita dined with _me_ last week!" He brought it out with a little note of triumph. Lothian nodded. "Yes, and you took her to that disgusting little café Maréchale in Soho. You ought not to take a lady to such a place as that. You've been long enough in London to know. Don't be such a babe. If you ever get a nice girl to go out with you again try and think things out a little more." Tears of mortified vanity were in the young man's eyes. "She's been writing to you!" he said with a catch in his voice, and suddenly his whole face seemed to change and dissolve into something else. Did the lips really grow thicker? Did the angry blood which suffused the cheeks give them a dusky tinge which was not of Europe? Would the tongue loll out soon? "I _beg_ your pardon?" Lothian said coolly. "Yes, she has!" the young fellow hissed. "You're trying on a game with the girl. She's a lady, and a good girl, and you're a married man. She's been telling you about me, though I've a right to meet her and you've not!--Look here, if she realised and knew what I know, and Toftrees and Mr. Amberley know, what every one in London knows, by Jove, she'd never speak to you again!" Gilbert lifted his glass and sipped slowly. His face was composed. It bore the Napoleonic mask it had worn during the last part of their drive to the town. Suddenly Gilbert rose up in his chair. "You dirty little hanger-on," he said in a low voice, "how dare you mention any woman's name in this way!" Without heat, without anger, but merely as a necessary measure of precaution or punishment, he smashed his left fist into Ingworth's jaw and laid him flat upon the carpet. The girl behind the bar, who knew who Gilbert Lothian was very well, had been watching what was going on with experienced eyes. She had seen, or known with the quick intuition of her training, that a row was imminent between the famous Mr. Lothian--whose occasional presences in the "lounge" were thought to confer a certain lustre upon that too hospitable rendezvous--and the excited young man with the dark red and strangely curly hair. Molly Palmer had pressed the button of her private bell, which called Mr. Helzephron himself from his account books in the office. Mr. Helzephron was a slim, bearded man, black of hair and saffron of visage. He was from Cornwall, in the beginning, and combined the inherent melancholy and pessimism of the Celt with the Celt's shrewd business instincts when he transplants himself. He entered at that moment and caught hold of the wretched Ingworth just as the young man had risen, saw red, and was about to leap over the table at Lothian, whom, in all probability he would very soon have demolished. Helzephron's arms and hands were like vices of steel. His voice droned like a wasp in a jam jar. "Now, then," he said, "what's all this? What's all this, sir? I can't have this sort of thing going on. Has this gentleman been insulting you, Mr. Lothian?" Ingworth was powerless in the Cornishman's grip. For a moment he would have given anything in the world to leap at the throat of the man at the other side of the table, who was still calmly smoking in his chair. But quick prudence asserted itself. Lothian was known here, a celebrity. He was a celebrity anywhere, a public brawl with him would be dreadfully scandalous and distressing, while in the end it would assuredly not be the poet who would suffer most. And Ingworth was a coward; not a physical coward, for he would have stood up to any one with nothing but glee in his heart, but a moral one. Lothian, he knew, wouldn't have minded the scandal a bit, here or anywhere else. But to Ingworth, cooled instantly by the lean grip of the landlord, the prospect was horrible. And to be held by another man below one in social rank, landlord of an inn, policeman, or what not, while it rouses the blood of some men to frenzy, in others brings back an instant sanity. Ingworth remained perfectly still. For a second or two Lothian watched him with a calm, almost judicial air. Then he flushed suddenly, with a generous shame at the position. "It's all right, Helzephron," he said. "It's a mistake, a damned silly mistake. As a matter of fact I lost my temper. Please let Mr. Ingworth go." Mr. Helzephron possessed those baser sides of tact which pass for sincerity with many people. "Very sorry, I'm sure," he droned, and stood waiting with melancholy interest to see what would happen next. "I'm very sorry, Dicker," Lothian said impulsively; "you rather riled me, you know. But I behaved badly. It won't do either of us any good to have a rough and tumble here, but of course" . . . he looked significantly at the door. Ingworth took him, and admired him for his simplicity. The old public school feeling was uppermost now. He knew that Gilbert knew he was no coward. He knew also that he could have knocked the other into a cocked hat in about three minutes. "I was abominably rude, Gilbert," he said frankly. "Don't let's talk rot. I'm sorry." "It's good of you to take it in that way, Dicker. I'm awfully sorry, too." Mr. Helzephron interposed. "All's well that ends well," he remarked sententiously. "That's the best of gentlemen, they do settle these matters as gentlemen should. Now if you'll come with me, sir, I'll take you to the lavatory and you can sponge that blood off your face. You're not marked, really." With a grin and a wink to Lothian, both of which were returned, Ingworth marched away in the wake of the landlord. The air was cleared. Gilbert was deeply sorry for what he had done. He had quite forgotten the provocation that he had received. "Good old sportsman, Dicker!" he thought; "he's a fine chap. I was a bounder to hit him. It would have served me jolly well right if he'd given me a hiding." And the younger man, as he went to remove the stain of combat, had kindly and generous thoughts of his distinguished friend. But, _che sara sara_, these kindly thoughts were but to bloom for an hour and fade. Neither knew that one of them was so soon to be brought to the yawning gates of Hell itself, and, at the very last moment, the unconscious action of the other was to snatch him from them. Already the threads were being woven in those webs of Time, whereof God alone knows the pattern and directs the loom. Neither of them knew. The barmaid, a tall, fresh-faced young girl, came down the room and took the empty glasses from the table. "I say, Mr. Lothian," she remarked, "it's no business of mine, and no offence meant, but you didn't ought to have hit him." "I know," Gilbert answered, "but why do you say so?" "He's got such nice curly hair!" she replied with a provocative look from her bright eyes, and whisked away to the shelter of her counter. Lothian sighed. During the years he had lived in Norfolk he had seen many fresh-faced girls come and go. Only a few days before, he had read a statement made by Mrs. Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army that the number of immoral women in the West End of London who have been barmaids is one quarter of the whole. . . . At that moment, this Miss Molly Palmer was the _belle des coulisses_ of Wordingham. The local bloods quarrelled about her, the elder men gave her gloves on the sly, her pert repartees kept the lounge in a roar from ten to eleven. Once, with a sneer and as one man of the world to another, Helzephron had shown Lothian a trade paper in which these girls are advertised for-- "Barmaid wanted, must be attractive." "Young lady wanted for select wine-room in the West End, gentlemen only, must be well educated and of good appearance, age not over twenty-five." "Required at once, attractive young lady as barmaid--young. Photograph." . . . A great depression fell upon the poet. Everywhere he turned just now ennui and darkness seemed to confront him. His youth was going. His fame brought no pleasure nor contentment. The easy financial circumstances of his life seemed to roll over him like a weed-clogged wave. His wife's love and care--was not that losing its savour also? The delightful labour of writing, the breathless and strenuous clutching at the waiting harps of poetry, was not he fainting and failing in this high effort, too? His life was a grey, numbed thing. He was reminded of it whichever way he turned. There was a time when the Holy Mysteries brought him a joy which was priceless and unutterable. Yes! when he knelt at the Mass with Mary by his side, he had felt the breath of Paradise upon his brow. Emptied of all earthly things his soul had entered into the mystical Communion of Saints. To husband and wife, in humble supplication side by side, the still small voice had spoken. The rushing wind of the Holy Ghost had risen around them and the Passion of Jesus been more near. And now?--the man rose from his chair with a laugh so sad and hollow, a face so contorted with pain, that it startled the silly girl behind the bar. She made a rapid calculation. "He was sober when 'e come," she thought in the vernacular, "and 'e can stand a lot, can Mr. Lothian. It's nothing. Them poets!" "Something amusing you?" she said with her best smile. Lothian nodded. "Oh, just my thoughts," he replied. "Give me another whiskey and soda--a fat one, yes, a little more, yes, that'll do." For a moment, a moment of hesitation, he held it out at arm's length. The sunlight of the afternoon blazed into the glass and turned the liquid to molten gold. The light came from a window in the roof, just over the bar itself. The remainder of the room was in quiet shadow. He looked down into the room and shuddered. It was typical of his life now. He looked up at the half open window from which the glory came. "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!" he said, with a sad smile. Molly Palmer watched him. "Juggins!" she thought, "them poets!" But Lothian's words seemed to call for some rejoinder and the girl was at a loss. "Wish you meant it!" she said at length, wondering if that would meet the occasion--as it often met others. Lothian laughed, and drank down the whiskey. The light from above faded almost instantly--perhaps a cloud was passing over the sun. But, _au contraire_, the shadow of the room beyond had invitation now. It no longer seemed sombre. He went into the shadows and sat down in the same chair where he had been before. He smiled as he lit another cigarette. How strange moods were! how powerful for a moment, but how quickly over! The letters in his breast pocket seemed to glow out with material warmth, a warmth that went straight to his heart through the cloth and linen of his clothing. The new Ego was fed. Rita! Yes! at least life had given him this and was it not the treasure of treasures? There was nothing coarse nor earthly in this at least! The music of the Venusberg throbbed in all his pulses, calling, calling from the hollow hill. He did not realise from where it came--this magic music--and that there is more than one angelic choir. Rita and Gilbert. Gilbert and Rita! The words and music of one song! So we observe that now the masked musicians in the unseen orchestra are in their places. Any little trouble with the Management is over. Opposition players have sorrowfully departed. The Audience has willed it so, and the band only awaits its leader. Monsieur L'Ame du Vin, that celebrated conductor, has just slid into his seat. He smirks at his players, gives an intelligent glance at the first violin, and taps upon the desk. Three beats of the baton, a raised left hand, and once more the oft repeated overture to the Dance of Death commences, with the Fiend Alcohol beating time. Ingworth came back soon. There was a slight bruise upon his upper lip, but that was all. The two men--it was to be the last time in lives which had so strangely crossed--were friends in a sense that they had never been before. Both of them looked back upon that afternoon during the immediate days to come with regret and sorrow. Each remembered it differently, according to the depth of individual temperament. But it was remembered, as an hour when strife and turmoil had ceased; when, trembling on the brink of unforeseen events to come, there was pause and friendship, when the good in both of them rose to the surface for a little space and was observed of both. "Now, Dicker, you just watch. They'll all be here soon for their afternoon drink--the local bloods, I mean. It's their substitute for afternoon tea, don't you know. They sit here talking about nothing to friends who have devoted their lives to the subject. Watch it for your work. You'll learn a lot. That must have been the way in which Flaubert got his stuff for 'Madame Bovary.'" Something of the artist's fire animated the lad. He was no artist. He hadn't read "Madame Bovary," and it wouldn't have interested him if he had. But the plan appealed to him. It fitted in with his method of life. It was getting something for nothing. Yet he realised, to give him his due, a little more than this. He was sitting at the feet of his Master. But as it happened, on that afternoon the local bloods were otherwise employed, for at any rate they made no appearance. Lothian felt at ease. He had one or two more pegs. He had been so comparatively abstemious since his accident and under the regime of Dr. Morton Sims, that what he took now had only a tranquillising and pleasantly narcotic influence. The nervous irritation of an hour before which had made him strike his friend, the depression and hollow misery which succeeded it, the few minutes of lyrical exaltation as he thought of Rita Wallace, all these were merged in a sense of _bien être_ and drowsiness. He enjoyed an unaccustomed and languid repletion in his mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie down for a time. Mr. Helzephron sat down at their table after a time and prosed away in his monotonous voice. He was a man of some education, had read, and was a Dickens lover. He did not often have the opportunity of conversation with any one like Lothian and he made the most of it. Like many common men who are anxious to ingratiate themselves with their superiors, he thought that the surest way to do so was to abuse his neighbours, thus, as he imagined, proclaiming himself above them and flattering his hearer. Lothian always said of the landlord of the George that he was worth his weight in gall, and for a time he was amused. At five o'clock the two visitors had some tea and toast and at the half hour both were ready to go. "I'll run round to the post office," Ingworth said, "and see if there are any late letters." "Very well," Gilbert answered, "and I'll have the horse put in." The afternoon post for Mortland Royal left the town at three, and letters which came in by the five o'clock mail were not delivered at the village until the next morning unless--as now--they were specially called for. Ingworth ran off. "Well, Mr. Lothian," said the landlord. "I don't often have the pleasure of a talk with you. Just one more with me before you go?" They were standing together at the bar counter when a page boy entered the lounge and went up to his master. "Please, sir," he said, "the new young lady's come." "Oh, very well," Helzephron answered. "I'll be out in a minute. Where is she?" "In the hall, sir. And shall Boots go down for her trunk?" "Yes; tell him to go to the station at once with the hand-cart. A new barmaid," he said, turning to Gilbert, "for the four ale bar, a woman of about thirty, not much class, you understand, wouldn't do for the lounge, but will keep the working men in order. It's astonishing how glad they are to get a job when they're about thirty! They're no draw then, and they know it. The worst of it is that these older women generally help themselves from the till or the bottle! I've had fifty applications for this job." He led the way out into the hall of the hotel, followed by Lothian, who was on his way to the stable yard. A woman was sitting upon a plush-covered bench by the wall. She was a dark gipsy looking creature, coarsely handsome and of an opulent figure. She stood up as Helzephron came out into the hall, and there seemed to be a suggestion of great boldness and flaunting assertion about her, oddly restrained and overlaid by a timidity quite at variance with her appearance. The landlord was in front, and for a moment Lothian was concealed. Then, as he was about to wish Helzephron good afternoon and turned for the purpose, he came into view of the new barmaid. She saw him full face and an instant and horrible change came over her own. It faded to dead paper-white. The dark eyes became fixed like lenses. The jaw dropped like the jaw of a ventriloquist's puppet, a strangled gurgle came from the open mouth and then a hoarse scream of terror. The woman's arms jerked up in the air as if they had been pulled by strings, and her hands in shabby black gloves curved into claws and were rigid. Then she spun round, caught her boot in the leg of the chair and fell in a swoon upon the floor. The landlord swore in his surprise and alarm. Then, keen as a knife, he whipped round and looked at Lothian. Lothian's face expressed nothing but the most unbounded astonishment. Help was summoned and the woman was carried into the landlord's private office, where restoratives were applied. In three or four minutes she opened her eyes and moaned. Lothian, Helzephron and a chambermaid who was attending on her, were the only other people in the office. "There, there," said the landlord irritably, when he saw that consciousness was returning. "What in heaven's name did you go off like that for? You don't belong to do that sort of thing often I hope. If so I may as well tell you at once that you'll be no good here." "I'm very sorry, sir," said the poor creature, trembling and obviously struggling with rising hysteria. "It took me sudden. I'm very strong, really, sir. It shan't happen again." "I hope not," Helzephron answered in a rather more kindly tone. "Elsie, go into the lounge and ask Miss Palmer for a little brandy and water--but what took you like this?" The woman hesitated. Her glance fell upon Lothian who was standing there, a pitying and perplexed spectator of this strange scene. She could not repress a shudder as she saw him, though both men noticed that the staring horror was going from her eyes and that her face was relieved. "I'm very sorry," she said again, "but the sight of that gentleman coming upon me sudden and unexpected was the cause of it." "This gentleman!" Helzephron replied. "This is Mr. Gilbert Lothian, a famous gentleman and one of our country gentleman in Norfolk. What can you have to do with him?" "Oh, nothing sir, nothing. But there's a very strong resemblance in this gentleman to some one"--she hesitated and shuddered--"to some one I once knew. I thought it was him come back at first. I see now that there's lots of difference. I've had an unhappy life, sir." She began to sob quietly. "Now, drink this," said the landlord, handing her the brandy which the chambermaid had just brought. "Stop crying and Elsie will take you up to your room. Your references are all right and I don't want to know nothing of your history. Do your duty by me like a good girl and you'll find me a good master. Your past's nothing to me." Lothian and the landlord went out into the stable yard where the rainbow-throated pigeons were murmuring on the tiled roofs, and the ostler--like Mousqueton--was spitting meditatively. They discussed this strange occurrence. "I never saw a woman so frightened!" said Mr. Helzephron. "You might have been old Bogy himself, Mr. Lothian. I didn't know what to think for a moment! I hope she doesn't drink." "Well, I suppose we've all got a double somewhere or other," Lothian answered. "I suppose she saw some likeness in me to some one who has ill used her, poor thing." "Oh, yes, sir," Helzephron replied. "That's it--she said as much. Half the plays and novels turn on such likenesses. I used to be a great play-goer when I was in London and I've seen all the best actresses. But I'm damned if I ever see such downright horror as there was in that girl's face. He must have been a bad un whoever he was. Real natural tragedy in that face--William, put in Mr. Lothian's horse." He said good-bye and re-entered the hotel. Lothian remained in the centre of the yard. He lit a cigarette and watched the horse being harnessed. His face was clouded with thought. It was very strange! How frightful the poor woman had looked. It was a nightmare face, a face of Gustave Doré from the Inferno engravings! He never saw the woman again, as it happened, and never knew who she was. If he had read of the Hackney murder in the papers of the year before he had given it no attention. He knew nothing of the coarse siren for whose sake the poisoned man of Hackney had killed the wife who loved him, and who, under an assumed name, was living out her obscure and haunted life in menial toil. Dr. Morton Sims might have thrown some light upon the incident at the George perhaps. But then Dr. Morton Sims never heard of it and it soon passed from the poet's mind. No doubt the Fiend Alcohol who provided the incidental music at the head of his orchestra was smiling. For the Overture to the Dance of Death is curiously coloured music and there are red threads of melody interwoven with the sable chords. CHAPTER VI AN OMNES EXEUNT FROM MORTLAND ROYAL "Wenn Menschen auseinandergehn So sagen sie--auf Wiedersehn! Ja Wiederseh'n." --_Goethe._ Dickson Ingworth returned from the post office with several letters. He handed three of them to Lothian. One was a business letter from the firm of Ince and Amberley, the other an invitation to a literary dinner at the Trocadero, the third, with foreign stamp and postmark, was for Mary Lothian. As they drove out of the town, Ingworth was in high spirits. His eyes sparkled, he seemed excited. "Good news by this post, Dicker?" Gilbert asked. Ingworth had been waiting for the question. He tried to keep the tremulous pleasure out of his voice as he answered. "Well, rather. I've just heard from Herbert Toftrees. When I saw him last, just before I came down here, he hinted that he might be able to influence things for me in a certain quarter." . . . He paused. Gilbert saw how it was. The lad was bursting with news but wanted to appear calm, wanted to be coaxed. Well, Gilbert owed him that! "Really! Has something come off, Dicker, then? Do tell me, I should be so glad." "Yes, Gilbert. It's the damnedst lucky thing! Toftrees is a topping chap. The other day he hinted at something he might be able to do for me in his deep-voiced, mysterious way. I didn't pay much attention because they say he's rather like that, and one mustn't put too much trust in it. But, by Jove! it's come off. The editor of the _Wire_--Ommany you know--wants somebody to go to Italy with the delegation of English Public School Masters, as special correspondent for a month. They've offered it to me. It's a big step, Gilbert, for me! They will pay awfully well for the job and it means that I shall get in permanently with the _Wire_." "I'm awfully glad, Dicker. Splendid for you! But what is it exactly?" "The new movement in Italy, anti-Papal and National. It's the schools, you know. The King and the Mayor of Rome are frightfully keen that all the better class schools, like our public schools, you know--shall be taken out of the hands of the Jesuits and the seminary priests. Games and a healthy sort of school life are to be organised for the boys. They're going to try and introduce our system if they can. A Harrow tutor, a Winchester man, undermasters from Haileybury, Repton and Denstone are going out to organise things." "And you're going with them to tell England all about it! I congratulate you, Dicker. It's a big chance. You can make some fine articles out of it, if you take care. It should introduce your name." "Thanks awfully, I hope so. It's because I got my running blue I expect. But it's jolly decent of the old Toffer all the same." "Oh, it is. When do you go?" "At once. They start in four days. I shall have to go up to town by the first train to-morrow." "I'm sorry, but of course, if you must" . . . "Oh, I must," Ingworth said importantly. "I have to see Ommany to-morrow night." Unconsciously, as he urged the cob onwards, his head sank forward a little, and he imitated the grave pre-occupation of Lothian upon the drive out. Mary Lothian was sitting in a deck chair in front of the house when the two men came through the gate. A little table stood by the side of her chair, and on it was a basket of the thin silk socks her husband wore. She was darning one of the expensive gossamer things with a tiny needle and almost invisible thread. Mary looked up quickly as the two men came up to her. There was a swift interrogation in her eyes, instantly suppressed but piteous in its significance. But now, she smiled. Gilbert was all right! She knew it at once. He had come back from Wordingham quite sober, and in her tender anxious heart she blessed God and Dr. Morton Sims. She was told of Dickson's opportunity. Gilbert was as anxious to tell, and as excited as his friend. "Oh, I _am_ so glad, Dicker!" she said over and over again. "My dear boy, I _am_ so glad! Now you've got your chance at last. Your real chance. Never come down here again if you don't make the most of it!" Ingworth sat down upon the lawn at her feet. Dusk was at hand. The sun was sinking to rest and the flowers of the garden were almost shouting with perfume. Rooks winged homeward through the fading light, and the Dog Trust gambolled in the middle-distance of the lawn as the cock-chafers went booming by. . . . "Think I shall be able to do it, Mrs. Gilbert?" "Of course you will, Dicker! Put your very heart into it, won't you! It's your chance at last, isn't it?" Ingworth jumped to his feet. "I shall do it," he said gravely, as who should say that the destinies of kingdoms depended upon his endeavours. "And now I must go in and write some letters. I shall have to be off quite early to-morrow, Mrs. Gilbert." "I'll arrange all that. Go in and do your letters. We're not going to dine till eight to-night." Ingworth crossed the lawn and went into the house. Gilbert drew his chair up to his wife. She held out her hand. He took it, raised it to his lips and kissed it. He was at home. "I'm glad, dear," Mary said, "that Dicker has got something definite to do. It will steady him. If he is successful it will give him a new sense of responsibility. I wouldn't say anything to you, Gillie, but I have not liked him so much this time as I used to." "Why?" "He doesn't seem to have been treating you quite in the way he used to. He's been talking a good deal to me of some people who seem to have taken him up in London. And I can't help knowing that you've done everything for him in the past. Really, Gillie, I have had to snub him quite severely, for me, once or twice." "Yes." "_Yes._ He assumed a confidential, semi-superior sort of air and manner. In a clumsy, boyish sort of way he's tried to suggest that I'm not happy with you." Lothian laughed bitterly. "I know," he said, "so many people are like that. Ingworth has good streaks like all of us. But speaking generally he's unstable. I've found it out lately, too. Never mind. He's off to-morrow. Oh, by the way, here's a letter for you, dear, I forgot." Mary took the letter and rose from her chair. Arm in arm they entered the house together and went upstairs to dress for dinner. Gilbert had had his bath, had changed, and was tying his tie in front of the dressing table mirror, when the door of his room opened and Mary hurried in. Her hair was coiled in its masses of pale gold, and a star of emeralds which he had given her was fixed in it. She wore a long dressing robe of green silk fringed with dull red arabesques--he had bought it for her in Tunis. A rope of camels' hair gathered it in round her slender waist and the lovely column of her neck, the superb white arms were bare. "What is it, dear?" he said, for his wife's fair face was troubled. "Oh, darling," she answered, with a sob in her voice, "I've had bad news from Nice." "About Dorothy?" "Yes, Miss Dalton, the lady nurse who is with her has written. It's all been no use, Gillie, no use at all! She's dying, dear. The doctor from Cannes who has been attending her has said so. And Sir William Larus who is at Mentone was called in too. They give her three weeks or a month. They've cabled to India but it's a forlorn hope. Harold won't be able to get to her in time--though there's just a chance." She sank down upon the bed and covered her face with her hands. She was speaking of her sister, Lady Davidson, who was stricken with consumption. Sir Harold Davidson was a major in the Indian Army, a baronet without much money, and a keen soldier. Mary's sister had developed the disease in England, where she had been ordered from Simla by the doctors there. She was supposed to be "run down" and no more then. Phthisis had been diagnosed in London--incipient only--and she had been sent to the Riviera at once. The reports from Nice had become much worse during the last few weeks, and now--this letter. Gilbert went to his wife and sat down beside her upon the bed, drawing her to him. He was fond of Dorothy Davidson and also of her husband, but he knew that Mary adored her sister. "Darling," he said, "don't give way. It may not be so bad after all. And so much depends upon the patient in all illnesses--doesn't it? Morton Sims was telling us so the other night, you remember? Dolly is an awfully sporting sort of girl. She won't give in." Mary leant her head upon his shoulder. The strong arms that held her brought consolation. The lips of the husband and wife met. "It's dear of you to say so," Mary said at length, "but I know, dear. The doctor and the nurse have been quite explicit. Dorothy is dying, Gillie, I can't let her die alone, can I?" "No, dear, of course not," he replied rather vaguely, not quite understanding what she meant for a moment. "She must have some one of her own people with her. Harold will most likely not arrive in time. I must go--mustn't I?" Then Gilbert realised. His swift imagination pictured a lonely hotel death-bed among the palms and mimosa of the Côte d'Azur, a pretty and charming girl fading away from the blue white and gold with no loving hands to tend her, and only the paid services of strangers to speed or assuage the young soul's passage from sunshine and laughter to the unknown. "You must go to her at once, sweetheart," he said gravely. "Oh, I _must_! You don't mind my leaving you?" "How can you ask it? But I will come with you. We will both go. You will want a man." Mary hesitated for a second, and then she shook her head. "I shall manage quite well by myself," she said. "It will be better so. I'm quite used to travelling alone as you know. And the journey to Nice is nothing. I shall be in one carriage all the way from Calais. You could come out after, if necessary." "I would come gladly, dear." "I know, Gillie, and it's sweet of you. But you couldn't be of use and it would be miserable for you. It is better that I should be alone with Dolly. I can always wire if I want you." "As you think best, dear. Then I will stay quietly down here." "Yes, do. You have that poem to work on, 'A Lady in a Library.' It is a beautiful fancy and will make you greater than ever! It's quite the best thing you've done so far. And then there's the shooting." "Oh, I shall do very well, Molly. Don't bother about me, dear." She held him closer. Her cool white arms were around his neck. "But I always do bother about you, husband," she whispered, "because I love you better than anything else in the world. It is sweet of you to let me go like this. And I feel so much happier about you now, since the doctor has come to the village." He winced with pain and shame at her loving words. A pang went right through him. It passed as swiftly as it had come. Sweet and loving women too often provide men with excuses for their own ill conduct. Lothian knew that--under the special circumstances of which his wife knew nothing--it was his duty to go with Mary. But he didn't want to go. He would have hated going. Already a wide vista was opening before him--a freedom, an absolute freedom! Wild music! The Wine of Life! Now, if ever, Fate, Destiny, call it what he would, was preparing the choicest banquet. He had met Rita. Rita was waiting, he could be with Rita! And yet, so subtle and tortuous is the play of egoism upon conscience, he felt pleased with himself for his ready concurrence in his wife's plans. He assumed the rôle she gave him with avidity, and when he answered her she thought him the best and noblest of men. "It will be dreadful without you, darling, but you are quite right to go. Send for me if you want me. I'll catch the next boat. But I have my work to do, and I can see a good deal of Morton Sims"--he knew well, and felt with shame, the cunning of this last statement--"and if I'm dull I can always run up to town for a day or two and stay at the club." "Of course you can, dear. You won't feel so lonely then. Now about details. I must pack to-night." "Yes, dear, and then you can go off with Dicker in the morning, and catch the night boat. If you like, that is." "Well, I shouldn't gain anything by that, dear. I should only have to wait about in Calais until one o'clock the next day when the train de luxe starts. But I should like to go first thing to-morrow. I couldn't wait about here the whole day. Dicker will be company of sorts. I shall get to town about two, and go to the Charing Cross Hotel. Then I shall do some shopping, go to bed early, and catch the boat train from the station in the morning. I would rather do it like that." Both of them were experienced travellers and knew the continental routes well. It was arranged so. Mary did not come down to dinner. A tray was sent up to her room. Lothian dined alone with Ingworth. The voices of the two men were hushed to a lower tone in deference to the grief of the lady above. But there was a subdued undercurrent of high spirits nevertheless. Ingworth was wildly excited by the prospect before him; Gilbert fell into his mood with no trouble at all. He also had his own thoughts, his own private thoughts. --"I say, Dicker, let's have some champagne, shall we?--just to wish your mission success." "Yes, do let's. I'm just in the mood for buzz-water to-night." The housemaid went to the cellar and fetched the wine. "Here's to you, Dicker! May you become a G. W. Stevens or a Julian Ralph!" "Thanks, old chap. I'll do my best, now that my chance has come. I say I am awfully sorry about Lady Davidson. It's such rough luck on Mrs. Gilbert. You'll be rather at a loose end without your wife, won't you?--or will you write?" He tossed off his second glass of Pol Roger. "Oh, I shall be quite happy," Lothian answered, and as he said it a quiet smile came placidly upon his lips. It glowed out from within, as from some comfortable inward knowledge. Ingworth saw it, and his mind, quickened by wine and excitement, found the truth unerringly. Anger and envy flushed the young man's veins. He hated his host once more. "So that is his game, damned hypocrite!" Ingworth thought. "I shall be away, his wife will be out of the way and he will make the running with Rita Wallace just as he likes." He looked at Lothian, and then had a mental vision of himself. "He's fat and bloated," he thought. "Surely a young and lovely girl like Rita _can't_ care for him?" But even as he endeavoured to comfort his greedy conceit by these imaginings, he felt the shadow of the big mind falling upon them. He knew, as he had known so often of late, the power of that which was cased in its envelope of flesh, and which could not be denied. Perhaps there is no hate so bitter, no fear so impotent and distressing, as that which is experienced by the surface for the depth. It is the fury of the brilliant scabbard against the sword within, decoration versus that which cleaves. Ingworth wished that he were not going away--leaving the field clear. . . . "Have a cigar, Dicker. No?--well, here's the very best of luck." "Thanks, the same to you!" END OF BOOK TWO BOOK THREE FRUIT OF THE DEAD SEA "Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth." "Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe: let her breasts satisfy thee at all times: and be thou ravished always with her love." "And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?" "_His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins._" CHAPTER I THE GIRLS IN THE FOURTH STORY FLAT "We were two daughters of one race; She was the fairest in the face;" --_Tennyson._ In the sitting room of a small forty-five pound flat, upon the fourth floor of a tall red-brick building in West Kensington known as Queens Mansions, Ethel Harrison, the girl who lived with Rita Wallace, sat sewing by the window. It was seven o'clock in the evening and though dusk was at hand there was still enough light to sew by. The flat, moreover, was on the west side of the building and caught the last rays of the sun as he sank to rest behind the quivering vapours of London. Last week in August as it was, the heat which hung over the metropolis for so long was in no way abated. All the oxygen was gone from the air, and for those who must stay in London--the workers, who could only read in the papers of translucent sunlit seas in Cornwall where one bathed from the beaches all day long; of bright northern moors where dew fell upon the heather at dawn--life was become stifling and hard. In the window hung a bird-cage and the canary within it--the pet of these two lonely maidens--drooped upon its perch. It was known as "The Lulu Bird" and was a recurring incident in their lives. Ethel was six and twenty, short, undistinguished of feature and with sandy hair. She was the daughter of a very poor clergyman in Lancashire, and she was the principal typist in the busy office of a firm of solicitors in the city. She had ever so many certificates for shorthand, was a quick and accurate machine-writer, understood the routine of an office in all its details, and was invaluable to her employers. They boasted of her, indeed, trusted her in every way, worked her from nine to six on normal days, to any hours of the night at times of pressure, and paid her the highest salary in the market. That is to say, that this girl was at the very top of her profession and received two pounds ten shillings a week. Dozens of girls envied her, she was more highly paid than most of the men clerks in the city. She knew herself to be a very fortunate girl. She gave high technical ability, a good intelligence, unceasing, unwearying and most loyal service for fifty shillings a week. Each year she had a holiday of fourteen days, when she clubbed with some other girls and they all went to some farmhouse in the country, or even for a cheap excursion abroad, with everything calculated to the last shilling. This girl did all this, dressed like a lady, had a little home of her own with Rita, preserved her dignity and independence, and sent many a small postal order to help the poor curate's wife, her mother, with the hungry brood of younger ones. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison in Lancashire spoke of their eldest daughter with pride. She had "her flat in town." She was "doing extraordinarily well"; "Sister Ethel" was a fairy godmother to her little brothers and sisters. She was a good girl, good and happy. The graces were denied her; she had made all sweet virtues her own. No man wooed her, no man looked twice at her. She had no religious ecstasies, and--instead of a theatre where one had to pay--asked no thrills from sensuous ceremonial. She simply went to the nearest church and said her prayers. It is the shame of most of us that when we meet such women as these, we pass them by with a kindly laugh or a patronising word. Men and women of the world prefer more decorative folk. They like to watch holiness in a picturesque setting, Elizabeth of Hungary washing the beggar's feet upon the palace steps. . . . A little worker-bee saint, making a milk pudding for a sick washerwoman on a gas-stove in a flat--that comes rather too close home, does it not? The light was really fading now, and Ethel put down her sewing, rose from her basket-work chair, and lit the gas. It was an incandescent burner, hanging from the centre of the ceiling, and the girls' living room was revealed. It was a very simple, comely, makeshift little home. On one side of the fireplace--now filled with a brown and gasping harts-tongue fern in an earthen pot--was Ethel's bookshelf. Up-to-date she had a hundred and thirty-two books, of the "Everyman" and "World's Classics" series. She generally managed a book and a half each fortnight, and her horizon was bounded by the two-hundredth volume. Dickens she had very much neglected of late, the new Ruskin had kept the set at "David Copperfield" for weeks, but she was getting on steadily with her Thackeries. Rita had no books. She was free of that Kingdom at the Podley Institute, but the little black piano was hers. The great luxury of the Chesterfield was a joint extravagance. Both ends would let down to make a couch when necessary, and though it had cost the girls three pounds ten, it "made all the difference to the room." All the photographs upon the mantel-shelf were Ethel's. There was her father in his cassock--staring straight out of the frame like a good and patient mule. . . . Her sisters and brothers also, of all ages and sizes, and all clothed with an odd suggestion of masquerading, of attempting the right thing. Not but what they were all perfect to poor Ethel, whose life was far too busy and limited to understand the tragedy of clothes. Rita's photographs were on the piano. There were several of her school-friends--lucky Rita had been to a smart school!--and the enigmatic face of Muriel Amberley with its youthful Mona Lisa smile looked out from an oval frame of red leather stamped with an occasional fleur-de-lys in gold. There was a portrait of Mr. Podley, cut from the _Graphic_ and framed cheaply, and there were two new photographs. One of them was that of a curly-headed, good-looking young man with rather thick lips and a painful consciousness that he was being photographed investing the whole picture with suspense. Ethel had heard Rita refer to the original of this portrait once or twice as "Dicker" or "Curly." But, then, there was another photograph. A large one this time, done in cloudy browns, nearly a foot square and with the name of a very famous artist of the camera stamped into the card. This was a new arrival, also, of the past few weeks, and it was held in a massive frame of thick plain silver. The frame, with the portrait in it, had arrived at the flat some fortnight ago in an elaborate wooden box. Ethel had recognised the portrait at once. It was of Mr. Gilbert Lothian, the great poet. Rita had met him at a dinner-party, and, if she didn't exaggerate, the great man had almost shown a disposition to be friendly. It was nice of him to send Rita his photograph, but the frame was rather too much. All that massive silver!--"it must have cost thirty shillings at least," she had thought in her innocence. When the gas was turned up, for some reason or other her eye had fallen at once upon the photograph upon the top of the piano. She had read some of Lothian's poems, but she had found nothing whatever in them that had pleased her. Even when her father had written to her and recommended them for her to read the poems meant less than nothing, and the face--no! she didn't like the face. "I hardly think that it's quite a _good_ face," she said to herself, not recognising that--the question of morality quite apart--her hostility rose from the fact that it was a face utterly outside her limited experience, a face that was eloquent of a life, of things, of thoughts that she could never even begin to understand. In the middle of the room the small round table was spread with a fair white cloth and set for a meal. There was a green bowl of bananas, a loaf of brown bread, some sardines in a glass dish. But a place was laid for one person only. Rita was in their mutual bedroom dressing. Rita was going to dine out. The two girls had lived together for a year now. At the beginning of their association one thing had been agreed between them. Their outside lives were to be lived independently of their home life. No confidences were to be expected or demanded as a matter of course. If confidences were made they were to be free and spontaneous, at the wish or whim of each. The contract had been loyally observed. Ethel never had any secrets. Rita had had several during the year of their association, but they had proved only minor little secrets after all. Sooner or later she had told them, and they had been food for virginal laughter for them both. But now, during the last few weeks?--Ethel's glance flitted uneasily from the big photograph upon the piano to a little round table of bamboo work in one corner of the sitting room. Upon this table lay a huge bunch of dark red roses. The stalks were fitted into a holder of finely-woven white grass--as delicate in texture as a panama hat--and the bouquet was tied with graceful bows and streamers of purple satin--broad, expensive ribbon. A boy messenger, most unusual visitor, had brought them an hour ago. "For Miss Rita Wallace." The quiet mind, the crystal soul of this girl, dimly discerned something alien and disturbing. The door of the sitting-room opened and Rita came in. She was radiant. Her one evening dress was not an expensive affair, a simple, girl's frock of olive-green _crêpe de chene_ in the Empire fashion, but the girl and her clothes were one. The high "waist," coming just under the curve of the breast, was edged with an embroidery of dull silver thread, and the gleam of this upon its olive setting threw up the fair column of the throat the rounded arms, the whiteness of the girlish bosom, with a most striking and arresting lustre. Round her neck the girl wore a riband of dark green velvet, and as a pendant from it hung a little star of amethysts and olivines set in a filigree of platinum, no rare nor costly jewel, but a beautiful one. She was pulling her long white gloves up to the elbow as she entered the room. Ethel loved Rita dearly. Rita was her romance, the art and colour of her life. She was always saying or doing astonishing things, she was always beautiful. To-night, though the frock was an old friend, the pendant quite familiar, Ethel thought that she had never seen her friend so lovely. The nut-brown hair was shining, the young, brown eyes lit up with excitement and joy, the tints of rose and pearl upon Rita's cheeks came and went as her heart beat. "A Duke might be glad to marry her," the plain girl thought without a throb of envy. She was perfectly right. If Rita had been in society or on the stage she probably would have married a peer--not a Duke though, that was Ethel's inexperience. There are so few dukes that they have not the same liberty of action as other noblemen. The Beauty Market is badly organised--curious fact in an age when to purvey cats' meat is a specialised industry. But the fact remains. The prettiest girls in England don't have their pictures in the papers and advertise no dentrifice or musical comedy on the one hand, nor St. Peter and St. George, their fashionable West End temples, on the other. Buyers of Beauty have but a limited choice, and on the whole it is a salutary thing, though doubtless hard upon loveliness that perforce throws itself away upon men without rank or fortune for want of proper opportunity! "How do I look, Wog dear?" Rita asked. "Splendid, darling," Ethel answered eagerly--a pretty junior typist in Ethel's office, who had been snubbed, had once sent her homely senior a golliwog doll, and since then the good-humoured Ethel was "Wog" to her friends. "I'm so glad. I want to look my best to-night." "Well, then, you do," Ethel replied, and with an heroic effort forbore further questioning. She always kept loyally to the compact of silence and non-interference with what went on outside the flat. Rita chuckled and darted one of her naughty, provocative glances. "Wog! You're dying to know where I'm going!" Some girls would have affected indifference immediately. Not so the simple Wog. "Of course I am, Cupid," she said. "I'm going to dine with Gilbert." "Gilbert?" "Gilbert Lothian I mean, of course. We are absolute friends, Wog dear--he and I. I haven't told you before, but I will now. You remember that night I was home so late, nearly a month ago? Yes?--well I had been motoring to Brighton with Gilbert. I met him for the first time at the Amberleys'--but that you know. Since then we have become friends--such a strange and wonderful friendship it is, Ethel! It's made things so different for me." "But how friends? Have you seen him often, then? But you can't have?" Rita shook her head, impatiently for a moment, and then she smiled gently. How could poor old Wog know or understand! "No!" she cried, with a little tap of her shoe upon the carpet. "But there are such things as letters aren't there?" "Has he been writing to you, then?" "Writing! I have had four of the most beautiful letters that a poet ever wrote. It took him days to write each one. He chose every word, over and over again. Every sentence is music, every word a note in a chord!" Ethel went up to her friend and kissed her. "Dear old Cupid," she said, "I'm so glad, so very glad. I don't understand his poems myself, but Father simply loves them. I am sure you will be very happy. Only I do hope he is a good man--really worthy of my dear! And so"--she continued, with a struggle to get down to commonplace brightness of manner--"And so he's coming for you to-night! Now I know why you look so beautiful and are so happy." Two tears gathered in the kind green eyes, tears of joy at her dear girl's happiness, but with a tincture of sadness too. With a somewhat unaccustomed flash of imagination, she looked into the future and saw herself lonely in the flat, or with another girl who could never be to her what Rita was. She looked up at Rita again, trying to smile through her tears. What she saw astounded her. Rita's face was flushed. A knot of wrinkles had sprung between her eyebrows. Her mouth was mutinous, her brown eyes lit with an angry and puzzled light. "I don't understand you, Ethel," she said in a voice which was so cold and unusual that the other girl was dumb.--"What on earth do you mean?" "Mean, dear," Ethel faltered. "I don't quite understand. I thought you meant--I thought . . ." "What did you think?" "I thought you meant that you were engaged to him, Cupid darling!" "Engaged!--_Why Gilbert is married._" Ethel glanced quickly at the flowers, at the photograph upon the piano. Things seemed going round and round her--the heat, that was it--"But the letters!" she managed to say at length, "and, and--oh, Cupid, what _are_ you doing? He can't be a good man. I'm certain of it, dear! I'm older than you are. I know more about things. You don't realise,--but how should you poor darling! He can't be a good man! Rita, _does his wife know_?" The girl frowned impatiently. "How limited and narrow you are, Ethel," she said. "Have you such low ideals that you think friendship between a man and a woman impossible? Are you entirely fettered by convention and silly old puritanical nonsense? Wouldn't you be glad and proud to have a man with a wonderful mind for your friend--a man who is all chivalry and kindness, who pours out the treasures of his intellect for one?" Ethel did not answer. She did not, in truth, know what to say. There _was_ no reason she could adduce why Rita should not have a man friend. She knew that many singular and fine natures despised conventionality or ordinary rules and seemed to have the right to do so. And then--_honi soit_! Yet, inarticulate as she was, she felt by some instinct that there was something wrong. Mr. Gilbert Lothian was married. That meant everything. A married man, and a poet too! oughtn't to have any secret and very intimate friendships with beautiful, wilful and unprotected girls. . . . "You have nothing to say! Of course! There _is_ nothing that any wide-minded person could say. Ethel, you're a dear old stupe!"--she crossed the room and kissed her friend. And Ethel was so glad to hear the customary affection return to Rita's voice, the soft lips upon her cheek set her gentle and loving heart in so warm a glow, that her fears and objections dissolved and she said no more. The electric bell at the front door whirred. Rita tore herself from Ethel's embrace. There was a mirror over the mantel-shelf. She gazed into it for a few seconds and then hurried away into the little hall. There was the click of the latch as it was drawn back, a moment of silence, and then Ethel heard a voice with a peculiar vibration and timbre--an altogether unforgettable voice--say two words. "At last!" Then there was a murmur of conversation, the words of which she could not catch, interrupted once by Rita's happy laughter. Finally she heard Rita hurry into the bedroom, no doubt for her cloak, and return with an excited word. Then the door closed and there was an instant of footsteps upon the stone stairs outside. Ethel was left alone. She went to her bookshelf--she did not seem to want to think just now--and after a moment's hesitation took down "Sesame and Lilies." Then she sat at the table with a sigh and looked without much interest at the bananas, the sardines and the brown bread. Ethel was left alone. CHAPTER II OVER THE RUBICON "Inside the Horsel here the air is hot; Right little peace one hath for it, God wot; The scented dusty daylight burns the air, And my heart chokes me till I hear it not." --_Swinburne._ Gilbert and Rita said hardly anything to each other as the motor-cab drove them to the restaurant where they were to dine. There was a sort of constraint between them. It was not awkwardness, it was not shyness. Nevertheless, they had little to say to each other--yet. They had become extraordinarily intimate during the last weeks by means of the letters that had passed between them. In all his life Lothian had never written anything like these letters. Those already written, and those that were to be written before the end, would catch the imagination of Europe and America could they ever be published. In prose of a subtle beauty, which was at the same time virile and with the organ-note of a big, revealing mind, he had poured his thoughts upon the girl. She was the inspiration, the _raison d'être_, of these letters. That "friendship" which his heated brain had created and imposed upon hers, he had set up before him like a picture and had woven fervent and critical rhapsodies about it. The joy that he had experienced in the making of these letters was more real and utterly satisfying than any he had ever known. He was filled and exalted by a sense of high power as he wrote the lovely words. He knew how she would read, understand and be thrilled by them. Paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence, were designed to play upon some part of the girl's mind and temperament--to flatter her own opinion at a definite point, and to flatter it with a flattery so subtle and delicate, so instinct with knowledge, that it came to her as a discovery of herself. He would please her--since she was steeped in books and their appeal, utterly ignorant of Life itself--with a pleasure that he alone could give. He would wrap her round with the force and power of his mind, make her his utterly in the bonds of a high intellectual friendship, dominate her, achieve her--through the mind. He had set himself to do this thing and he had done it. Her letters to him, in their innocent, unskilful, but real and vivid response had shown him everything. From each one he gathered new material for his reply. He had lived of late in a new world, where, neglecting everything else, he sat Jove-like upon the Olympus of his own erection and drew a young and supremely beautiful girl nearer and nearer to him by his pen. He had fallen into many mortal sins during his life. Until now he had not known the one by which the angels fell, the last sin of Pride which burns with a fierce, white consuming flame. All these wonderful letters had been wrought under the influence of alcohol. He would go to his study tired in body and so wearied in brain that he felt as if his skull were literally packed with grey wool. "I must write to Rita," he would think, and sit down with the blank sheet before him. There would not be an idea. The books upon the walls called to him to lose himself in noble company. The Dog Trust gambolling with Tumpany in the garden invited him to play. The sight of Mary with her basket on her arm setting out upon some errand of mercy in the village, spoke of the pleasant, gracious hours he might spend with her, watching how sweet and wise she was with the poor people and how she was beloved. But no, he must write to Rita. He felt chained by the necessity. And then the fat cut-glass bottle from the tantalus would make an appearance, the syphon of soda-water in its holder of silver filigree. The first drink would have little or no effect--a faint stirring of the pulses, a sort of dull opening of tired mental eyes, perhaps. Yet even that was enough to create the desire for the moment when the brain should leap up to full power. Another drink--the letter begun. Another, and images, sentences which rang and chimed, gossamer points of view, mosaics and vignettes glowing with color, merry sunlight laughter, compliments and _devoirs_ of exquisite grace and refinement, all flowed from him with steady, uninterrupted progress. . . . But now, as he sat beside Rita, touching her, with the fragrance of her hair athwart his face, all ideas and thoughts had to be readjusted. The dream was over. The dream personality, created and worshipped by his Art in those long, drugged reveries, was a thing of the past. He had never realised Rita to himself as being quite a human girl. No grossness had ever entered into his thoughts about her. He was not gross. The temper of his mind was refined and high. The steady progress of the Fiend Alcohol had not progressed thus far as yet. Sex was a live fact in this strangely-coloured "friendship" which he had created, but, as yet, in his wildest imaginings it had always been chivalrous, abstract and pure. Passion had never soiled it even in thought. It had all been mystical, not Swinburnian. And the fact had been as a salve to his Conscience. His Conscience told him from the first--when, after the excursion to Brighton he had taken up his pen to continue the association--that he was doing wrong. He knew it with all the more poignancy because he had never done sweet Mary a treachery in allegiance before. She had always been the perfect and utterly satisfying woman to him. His "fountain was blessed; and he rejoiced with the wife of his youth." But the inhabiting Devil had found a speedy answer. It had told him that such a man as he was might well have a pure and intellectual friendship with such a girl as Rita was. It harmed none, it was of mutual and uplifting benefit. Who of the world could point an accusing finger, utter a word of censure upon this delightful meeting of minds and temperaments through the medium of paper and pen? "No one at all," came the satisfactory answer. Lothian at the prompting of Alcohol was content to entertain and welcome a low material standard of conduct, a debased ideal, which he would have scorned in any other department of life. And as for Rita, she hadn't thought about such things at all. She had been content with the music which irradiated everything. It was only now, with a flesh and blood man by her side in the little box of the taxi-cab, that she glanced curiously at the Musician and felt--also--that revision and re-statement were at hand. So they said very little until they were seated at the table which had been reserved for them at a celebrated restaurant in the Strand. Rita looked round her and gave a deep sigh of pleasure. They sat in a long high hall with a painted ceiling. At the side opposite to them and at the end were galleries with gilded latticework. At the other end, in the gilded cage which hid the performers from view, was an orchestra which discoursed sweet music--a little orchestra of artists. The walls of the white and gold hall were covered with brilliantly painted frescoes of scenes in that Italy from where the first proprietor had come. The blue seas, the little white towns clustering round the base of some volcanic mountain, the sunlight and gaiety of Italy were there, in these paintings so cunningly drawn and coloured by a great scenic artist. A soft, white and bright light pervaded everything. There was not a sound of service as the waiters moved over the thick carpets. The innumerable tables, for two or four, set with finest crystal and silver and fair linen had little electric lamps of silver with red shades upon them. Beautiful, radiant women with white arms and shining jewels sat with perfectly dressed men at the tables covered with flowers. It was a succession of little dinner parties; it seemed as if no one could come here without election or choice. The ordinary world did not exist in this kingdom of luxury, ease and wealth. She leant over the little table against the wall. "It's marvellous," she said. "The whole atmosphere is new. I did not think such a place as this existed." "And the Metropole at Brighton?" "It was like a bathing machine is to Buckingham Palace, compared to this. How exquisite the band is! Oh, I am so happy!" "That makes me happy, Cupid. This is the night of your initiation. Our wonderful weeks have begun. I have thought out a whole series of delights and contrasts. Every night shall be a surprise. You will never know what we are going to do. London is a magic city and you have known nothing of it." "How could the 'Girl from Podley's' know?--That's what I am, the Girl from Podley's. I feel like Cinderella must have felt when she went to the ball. Oh, I am so happy!" He smiled at her. Something had taken ten years from his age to-night. Youth shone out upon his face, the beauty of his twenties had come back. "Lalage!" he murmured, more to himself than to her--"dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem!" "What--Gilbert?" "I was quoting some Latin to myself, Cupid dear." "And it was all Greek to me!" she said in a flash. "Oh! who _ever_ saw so many hors d'oeuvres all at one time! I love hors d'oeuvres, advise me, don't let me have too many different sorts, Gilbert, or I shan't be able to eat anything afterwards." How extraordinarily fresh and innocent she was! She possessed in perfection that light, reckless and freakish humour which was so strong a side of his own temperament. She had stepped from her dingy little flat, from a common cab, straight into the Dance of the Hours, taking her place with instant grace in the gay and stately minuet. For it was stately. All this quintessence of ordered luxury and splendour had a most powerful influence upon the mind. It might have made Caliban outwardly courteous and debonnair. Yes, she was marvellously fresh! He had never met any one like her. And it _was_ innocence, it _must_ be. Yet she was very conscious of the power of her beauty and her sex--over him at any rate. She obviously knew nothing of the furtive attention she was exciting in a place where so many jaded experts came to look at the flowers. It was the naïve and innocent Aspasia in every young girl bubbling up with entire frankness. She was amazed and half frightened at herself--he could see that. Well! he was very content to be Pericles for a space, to join hands and tread a measure with her and the rosy-bosomed hours in their dance. It was as though they had known each other for ever and a day, ere half the elaborate dinner was over. She had called him "Gilbert" at once, as if he were her brother, her lover even. He could have found or forged no words to describe the extraordinary intimacy that had sprung up between them. It almost seemed unreal, he had to wonder if this were not a dream. She became girlishly imperious. When they brought the golden plovers--king and skipper, as good epicures know, of all birds that fly--she leant over the table till her perfect face was close to his. "Oh, Gilbert dear! what is it now!" He told her how these little birds, with their "trail" upon the toast and their accompaniment of tiny mushrooms stewed in Sillery, were said to be the rarest flower in the gourmet's garden, one of the supreme pleasures that the cycle of the seasons bring to those who love and live to eat. "How _perfectly_ sweet! Like the little roast pigling was to Elia! Gilbert, I'm so happy." She chattered away to him, as he sat and watched her, with an entire freedom. She told him all about her life in the flat with Ethel Harrison. Her brown eyes shone with happiness, he heard the silver ripple of her voice in a mist of pleasure. Once he caught a man whom he knew watching them furtively. It was a very well-known actor, who at the moment was rehearsing his autumn play. This celebrated person was, as Gilbert well knew, a monster. He lived his life with a dreadful callousness which made him capable of every bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. The poet shuddered as he caught that evil glance, and then, listening anew to Rita's joyous confidences, he became painfully aware of the brute that is in every man, in himself too, though as yet he had never allowed it to be clamant. The happy girl went on talking. Suddenly Gilbert realised that she was telling him something, innocent enough in her mouth, but something that a woman should tell to a woman and not to a man. The decent gentleman in him became wide awake, the sense of comeliness and propriety. He wasn't in the least shocked--indeed there was nothing whatever to be shocked about--but he wanted to save her, in time, from an after-realisation of a frankness that might give her moments of confusion. He did it, as he did everything when he was really sober, really himself, with a supreme grace and delicacy. "Cupid dear," he said with his open and boyish smile, "you really oughtn't to tell me that, you know. I mean--well, think!" She looked at him with puzzled eyes for a moment and then she took his meaning. A slight flush came into her cheeks. "Oh, I see," she replied thoughtfully, and then, with a radiant smile and the provocative, challenging look--"Gilbert dear, you seem just like a girl to me. I quite forgot you were a man. So it doesn't matter, does it?" Who was to attempt to preserve _les convenances_ with such a delightful child as this? "Here is the dessert," he said gaily, as waiters brought ices, nectarines, and pear-shaped Paris bon-bons filled with Benedictine and Chartreuse. A single bottle of champagne had served them for the meal. Gilbert lit a cigarette and said two words to a waiter. In a minute he was brought a carafe of whiskey and a big bottle of Perrier in a silver stand. It was a dreadful thing to do, from a gastronomic or from a health point of view. Whiskey, now! He saw the look of wonder on the waiter's face, a pained wonder, as who should say, "Well, I shouldn't have thought _this_ gentleman would have done such a thing." But Lothian didn't care. It was only upon the morning after a debauch, when with moles' eyes he watched every one with suspicion and with fear, that he cared twopence what people thought about anything he did. He was roused to a high pitch of excitement by his beautiful companion. Recklessness, an entire abandon to the Dance of the Hours was mounting up within him. But where there's a conscience, there's a Rubicon. The little brook stretched before him still, but now he meant to leap over it into the forbidden, enchanted country beyond. He ordered "jumping powder." He drank deeply, dropped his cigarette into the copper bowl of rose water at his side and lit another. "Cupid!" he said suddenly, in a voice that was quite changed, "Rita dear, I'm going to show you something!" She heard the change in his voice, recognised it instantly, must have known by instinct, if not by knowledge, what it meant. But there was no confusion, nor consciousness in her face. She only leant over the narrow table and blew a spiral of cigarette smoke from her parted lips. "What, Gilbert?" she said, and he seemed to hear a caress in her voice that fired him. "You shall hear," he said in a low and unsteady voice. He drew a calling card from the little curved case of thin gold he carried in his waistcoat pocket, and wrote a sentence or two upon the back in French. A waiter took the card and hurried away. "Oh, Gilbert dear, what is the surprise?" "Music, sweetheart. I've sent up to the band to play something. Something special, Cupid, just for you and me alone on the first of our Arabian Nights!" She waited for a minute, following his eyes to the gilded gallery of the musicians which bulged out into the end of the room. There was a white card with a great black "7" upon it, hanging to the rail. And then a sallow man with a moustache of ink came to the balcony and removed the card, substituting another for it on which was printed in staring sable letters--"BY DESIRE." It was all quite new to Rita. She was awed at Gilbert's almost magical control of everything! She understood what was imminent, though. "What's it going to be, Gilbert?" she whispered. Her hand was stretched over the table. He took its cool virginal ivory into his for a moment. "The 'Salut d'Amour' of Elgar," he answered her in a low voice, "just for you and me." The haunting music began. To the end of her life Rita Wallace never heard the melody without a stab of pain and a dreadful catch of horror at her heart. Perhaps the thing had not been played lately, perhaps the hour was ripe for it in the great restaurant. But as the violins and 'cello sobbed out the first movement, a hush fell over the place. It was the after-dinner hour. The smoke from a hundred cigarettes curled upwards in delicate spirals like a drawing of Flaxman's. Bright eyes were languorous and spoke, voices sank to silence. The very waiters were congregated in little groups round the walls and service tables. Salut d'Amour! The melody wailed out into the great room with all the exquisite appeal of its rose-leaf sadness, its strange autumnal charm. It was perfectly rendered. And many brazen-beautiful faces softened for a moment, many pleasure-sodden hearts had a diastole of unaccustomed tenderness as the music pulsed to its close. Gilbert's acquaintance, the well-known actor, who was personified animal passion clothed in flesh if ever a man was, felt the jews-harp which he called his heart vibrate within him. He was a luxurious pariah-dog in his emotions as in everything else. The last sob of the violins trembled into silence. There was a loud spontaneous burst of applause, and a slim foreign man, grasping his fiddle by the neck, came from behind the gilded screen and looked down into the hall below with patient eyes. Lothian rose from his chair and bowed to the distant gallery. The musician's face lighted up and he bowed twice to Lothian. Monsieur Toché had recognised the name upon the card. And the request, written in perfect, idiomatic French, had commenced, "_Cher Maitre et Confrère_." The lasting hunger of the obscure artist for recognition by another and greater one was satisfied. Poor Toché went to his bed that night in Soho feeling as if he had been decorated with the Order of Merit. And though, during the supper hours from eleven to half past twelve he had to play "selections" from the Musical Comedy of the moment, he never lost the sense of _bien être_ conferred upon him by Gilbert Lothian at dinner. Gilbert was trembling a little as the music ended. Rita sat back in her chair with downcast eyes and lips slightly parted. Neither of them spoke. Gilbert suddenly experienced a sense of immense sorrow, of infinite regret too deep for speech or tears. "This is the moment of realisation," he thought, "the first real moment in my life, perhaps. _I know what I have missed._ Of all women this was the one for me, as I for her. We were made for each other. Too late! too late!" He struggled for mastery over his emotion. "How well they play," he said. She made a slight motion with her hand. "Don't let's talk for a minute," she answered. He was thrilled through and through. Did she also, then, feel and know . . . ? Surely that could not be. His youth was so nearly over, the keen æsthetic vision of the poet showed him so remorselessly how changed he was physically from what he had been in years gone by, for ever. Mechanically, without thinking, obeying the order given by the new half-self, that spawn of poison which was his master and which he mistook for himself, he filled his glass once more and drank. In forty seconds after, triumph and pride flared up within him like a sheet of thin paper lit suddenly with a match. Yes! She was his, part of him--it was true! He, the great poet, had woven his winged words around her. He had bent the power of his Mind upon her--utterly desirable, unsoiled and perfect--and she was his. The blaze passed through him and upwards, a thing from below. Then it ended and only a curl of grey ash floated in the air. The most poignant and almost physical sorrow returned to him. His heart seemed to ache like a tooth. Yet it wasn't dull, hopeless depression. It was, he thought, a high tragic sorrow ennobling in its strength; a sorrow such as only the supreme soul-wounded artists of the world could know--had known. "She was for me!" his heart cried out. "Ah, if only I had met her first!" Yes! he was fain of all the tragic sorrows of the Great Ones to whom he was brother, of whose blood he was. In a single flash of time--as the drowning man is said to experience all the events of his life at the penultimate moment of dissolution--he felt that he knew the secrets of all sorrow, the pangs of all tragedy. The inevitable thought of his wife passed like a blur across the fire-lit heights of his false agony. "I cannot love her," he said in his mind. "I have never loved her. I have been blind until this moment." A tear of sentiment welled into his eye at the thought of poor Mary, bereft of his love. "How sad life was!" Nearly every man, at some time or other, has found a faint reflection of this black thought assail him and has put it from him with a prayer and the "vade retro Sathanas." Few men would have chosen their present wives if they had met--let us assume--fifty other women before they married. And when the ordinary, normal, decent man meets a woman better, clever, more desirable than the one he has, it is perfectly natural that he should admire her. He would be insensible if he did not. But with the normal man it stops there. He is obliged to be satisfied with his own wife. The chaos that riotous and unbalanced minds desire has not come yet. And if a man says that he _cannot_ love a wife who is virtuous and good, then Satan is in him. "I cannot love her," Lothian thought of his wife, and in the surveyal of this fine brain and noble mind poisoned by alcohol it is proper to remember that two hours before he could not have thought this thing. It would have been utterly impossible. Was it then the few recent administrations of poison that had changed him so terribly, brought him to this? The Fiend Alcohol has a myriad dominations. A lad from the University gets drunk in honour on boat-race night--for the first time in his life--and tries to fight with a policeman. But he is only temporarily insane, becomes ashamed and wiser in the morning, and never does such a thing again. Lothian had been poisoning himself, slowly, gradually, certainly for years. The disease which was latent in his blood, and for which he was in no way personally responsible, had been steadily undermining the forces of his nature. He had injured his health and was coming near to gravely endangering his reputation. His work, rendered more brilliant and appealing at first by the unfair and unnatural stimulus of Alcohol, was trembling upon the brink of a débâcle. He had inflicted hundreds of hours of misery and despair upon the woman he had married. This, all this, was grave and disastrous enough. But the awful thing that he was feeding and breeding within him--the "false Ego," to use the cold, scientific, and appallingly accurate definition of the doctors--had not achieved supreme power. Even during the last year of the three or four years of the poisoning process it had not become all-powerful. It had kept him from Church; it had kept him from the Eucharist; it had drawn one thick grey blanket after another between the eye of his soul and the vision of God. But kindly human instinct had remained unimpaired, and he had done many things _sub specie Crucis_--under the influence of, and for the sake of that Cross which was so surely and steadily receding from his days and passing away to a dim and far horizon. But there arrives a time when the pitcher that is filled drop by drop becomes full. The liquid trembles for a moment upon the brim and trickles over. And there comes a sure moment in the life of the alcoholic when the fiend within waxes strong enough finally to strangle the old self, fills all the house and reigns supreme. It is always something of relatively small importance that hastens the end--ensures the final plunge. It was the last few whiskeys that sent honour and conscience flying away with scared faces from this man's soul. But they acted upon the poison of years, now risen to the very brim of the cup. One more drop . . . People were getting up from the tables and leaving the restaurant. The band was resting, there was no more music at the moment, and the remaining diners were leaning over the tables and talking to each other in low, confidential tones. Rita looked up suddenly. "What are we going to do now?" she said with her quick bright smile. "When we went to Brighton together," Gilbert answered, "you told me that you had never been to a Music Hall. A box at the Empire is waiting for us. Let us go and see how you like it. If you don't, we can come away and go for a drive round London in a taxi. The air will be cooler now, and in the suburbs we may see the moon. But come and try. The night is yours, and I am yours, also. You are the Queen of the Dance of the Hours and I your Court Chamberlain." "Oh, how perfectly sweet! Take me to the Empire." As they stood upon the steps of the restaurant and the commissionaire whistled up a cab, Gilbert spoke to Rita in a low, husky voice. "We ought to get there in time for the ballet," he said, "because it is the most perfect thing to be seen in Europe, outside Milan or St. Petersburg. But we've ten minutes yet, at least. Shall I tell him to drive round?" "Yes, Gilbert." The taxi-meter glided away through the garish lights of the Strand, and then, unexpectedly, swerved into Craven Street towards the Embankment. Almost immediately the interior of the cab grew dark. Gilbert put his arm round Rita's waist and caught her hand with his. He drew her closer to him. "Oh, my love!" he said with a sob in his voice. "My dear little Love; at last, at last!" She did not resist. He caught her closer and closer and kissed her upon the cheeks, the eyes, the low-falling masses of nut-brown, fragrant hair. "Turn your face to me, darling." His lips met hers for one long moment. . . . He hardly heard her faint-voiced, "Gilbert, you mustn't." He sank back upon the cushions with a strange blankness and emptiness in his mind. He had kissed her, her lovely lips had been pressed to his. And, behold, it was nothing after all. It was just a little girl kissing him. "Kiss met Kiss me again!" he said savagely. "You must, you must! Rita, my darling, _my darling_!" She pressed her cool lips to his once more--how cool they were!--almost dutifully, with no revolt from his embrace, but as she might have kissed some girl friend at parting after a day together. All evil, dominant passions of his nature, hidden and sleeping within him for so long, were awake at last. He had held Rita in his arms. Yet, whatever she might say or do in her reckless school-girl fashion, she was really absolutely innocent and virgin, untouched by passion, incredibly ignorant of the red flame which burned within him now and which he would fain communicate to her. "Are you unhappy, dearest?" he asked suddenly. "Unhappy, Gilbert? With you? How could I be?" And so daring innocence and wicked desire drove on through the streets of London--innocence a little tarnished, ignorance no longer, but pulsing with youth and the sense of adventure; absolutely unaware that it was playing with a man's soul. The girl had read widely, but ever with the hunger for beauty, colour, music, the sterile, delicate emotions of others. One of the huge facts of life, the central, underlying fact of all the Romance, all the Poetry on which she was fed, had come to her at last and she did not recognise it. Gilbert had held her in his arms and had kissed her. It was pleasant to be kissed and adored. It wasn't right--that she knew very well. Ethel would be horrified, if she knew. All sorts of proper, steady, ordinary people would be horrified, if _they_ knew. But they didn't and never would! And Gilbert wanted to kiss her so badly. She had known it all the time. Why shouldn't he, poor boy, if it made him happy? He was so kind and so charming. He was a magician with the key of fairyland. He made love beautifully! This was the Dance of the Hours! The cab stopped in front of the Empire. Led by a little page-boy who sprung up from somewhere, they passed through the slowly-moving tide of men and women in the promenade to their box. For a little space Rita said nothing. She settled herself in her chair and leaned upon the cushioned ledge of the box, gazing at the huge crowded theatre and at the shifting maze of colour upon the stage. She had removed the long glove from her right hand and her chin was supported by one white rounded arm. A very fair young Sybil she seemed, lost in the vague, empty spaces of maiden thought. Gilbert began to tell her about the dancers and to explain the ballet. She had never seen anything like it before, and he pointed out its beauty, what a marvellous poem it really was; music, movement, and colour built up by almost incredible labour into one stupendous whole. A dozen minor geniuses, each one a poet in his or her way, had been at work upon this triumphant shifting beauty, evanescent and lovely as a dream painted upon the sable curtains of sleep. She listened and seemed to understand but made little comment. Once she flashed a curious speculative look at him. And, on his part, though he saw her lovelier than ever, he was chilled nevertheless. Grey veils seemed to be falling between him and the glow of his desire, falling one by one. "Surgit amari aliquid?"--was it that?--but he could not let the moment escape him. It must and should be captured. He made an excuse about cigarettes, and chocolates for her, and left the box, hurrying to the little bar in the promenade, drinking there almost furiously, tasting nothing, waiting, a strange silent figure with a white face, until he felt the old glow re-commencing. It came. The drugged mind answered to the call, and he went back to the box with light footsteps, full of riotous, evil thoughts. Rita had withdrawn her chair into the box a little. She looked up with a smile of welcome as he entered and sat down by her side. She began to eat the chocolates he had brought, and he watched her with greedy eyes. Suddenly--maid of moods as she was--she pushed the satin-covered box away. He felt a little white arm pushed through his. "Gilbert, let's pretend we're married, just for this evening," she said, looking at him with dancing eyes. "What do you mean, Rita?" he said in a hoarse whisper. The girl half-smiled, flushed a little, and then patted the black sleeve of his coat. "It's so nice to be together," she whispered. "I am so happy with you. London is so wonderful with you to show it to me. I only wish it could go on always." He caught her wrist with his hot hand. "It can, always, if you wish," he said. She started at the fierce note in his voice. "Hush," she said. "You mustn't talk like that." Her face became severe and reproving. She turned it towards the stage. The remainder of the evening alternated between wild fits of gaiety and rather moody silences. There was absolutely nothing of the crisp, delightful friendship of the drive to Brighton. A new relation was established between them, and yet it was not, as yet, capable of any definition at all. She was baffling, utterly perplexing. At one moment he thought her his, really in love with him, prepared for all that might mean, at another she was a shy and rather dissatisfied school girl. The nervous strain within him, as the fires of his passion burned and crackled, was intense. He fed the flame with alcohol whenever he had an opportunity. All the old reverence and chivalry of that ideal friendship of which he had sung so sweetly vanished utterly. A faint, but growing brutality of thought came to him as he considered her. Her innocence did not seem so insistent as before. He could not place her yet. All he knew was that she was certainly not the Rita of his dreams. Yet with all this, his longing, his subjection to her every whim and mood, grew and grew each moment. He was absolutely pervaded by her. Honour, prudence, his keen insight were all thrust away in the gathering storm of desire. They had supper at a glittering palace in the Haymarket. In her simple girlish frock, without much adornment of any sort, she was the prettiest girl in the room. She enjoyed everything with wild avidity, and not the least of the exhilarations of the night was the knowledge--ripe and unmistakable now--of her complete power over him. Gilbert ate nothing at the Carlton, but drank again. Distinguished still, an arresting personality in any room, his face had become deeply flushed and rather satyr-like as he watched Rita with longing, wonder, and an uneasy suspicion that only added fuel to the flame. It was after midnight when he drove her home and they parted upon the steps of Queens Mansions. He staggered a little in the fresh air as he stood there, though Rita in her excitement did not notice it. He had drunk enough during that day and night to have literally _killed_ two ordinary men. "To-morrow!" he said, trying to put something that he knew was not there into his dull voice. "To-morrow night." "To-morrow!" she replied. "At the same time," and evading his clumsy attempt at an embrace, she swirled into the hall of the flat with a last kiss of her hand. And even Prince, at the club, had never seen "Mr. Gilbert" so brutishly intoxicated as he was that night. CHAPTER III THIRST "_A little, passionately, not at all?_" She casts the snowy petals on the air. . . . --_Villanelle of Marguerites._ Lothian had taken chambers for a short time in St. James' and near his club. Prince, the valet, had found the rooms for him and the house, indeed, was kept by the man's brother. Gilbert would not stay at the club. Rita could not come to him there. He wanted a place where he could be really alone with her. During the first few days, though they met each night and Gilbert ransacked London to give her varied pleasure, Rita would not come and dine in his chambers. "I couldn't possibly, Gilbert dear," she would say, and the refusal threw him into a suppressed fever of anger and irritation. He dare show little or nothing of it, however. Always he had a haunting fear that he might lose her. If she was silent or seemed cold he trembled inwardly and redoubled his efforts to please, to gratify her slightest whim, to bring her back to gaiety and a caressing, half lover-like manner. She knew it thoroughly and would play upon him like a piano, striking what chords she wished. He spent money like water, and in hardly any time at all, the girl whose salary was thirty-five shillings a week found a delirious joy in expensive wines and foods, in rare flowers, in what was to her an astounding _vie de luxe_. If they went to a theatre--"Gilbert, we simply must have the stage box. I'm not in the mood to sit _anywhere_ else to-night,"--and the stage box it was. There is a shop in Bond Street where foolish people buy cigarettes which cost three pence or four pence each and a box of a hundred is bought for two guineas or so. Rita wouldn't smoke any others. Rita knew no more about wine than she did about astronomy, but she would pucker her pretty brows over the _carte des vins_ in this or that luxurious restaurant, and invariably her choice would fall upon the most expensive. Once, it was at the Ritz, she noticed the word Tokay--a costly Johannesburger wine--and asked Gilbert what it was. He explained, and then, to interest her, went on to tell of the Imperial Tokay, the priceless wine which is almost unobtainable. "But surely one could get it _here_?" she had said eagerly. "It's not on the card, dear." "_Do_ ask, Gilbert!" He asked. A very special functionary was called, who hesitated, hummed and hawed. "There _was_ some of the wine in the cellars, a half bin, just as there _was_ some of the famous White Hermitage--but, but"--he whispered in Gilbert's ear, "The King of Spain, um um um--The Grand Duke Alexis--you'll understand, sir, 'm 'm." They were favoured with a bottle at last. Rita was triumphant. Gilbert didn't touch it. Rita drank two glasses and it cost five pounds. Lothian did not care twopence. He had been poor after he left Oxford. His father, the solicitor, who never seemed to understand him or to care much about him, had made him an infinitesimal allowance during the young man's journalistic days. Then, when the old man died he had left his son a comfortable income. Mary had money also. The house at Mortland Royal was their own, they lived in considerable comfort but neither had really expensive tastes and they did not spend their mutual income by a long way. Gilbert's poems had sold largely also. He was that rare bird, a poet who actually made money--probably because he could have done very well without it. It did not, therefore, incommode him in the least to satisfy every whim of Rita's. If it amused her to have wine at five pounds a bottle, what on earth did it matter? Frugal in his tastes and likings himself--save only in a quantity of cheap poison he procured--he was lavish for others. Although, thinking it would amuse him, his wife had begged him to buy a motor-car he had always been too lazy or indifferent to do so. So he had plenty of money. If Rita Wallace had been one of the devouring harpies of Paris, who--if pearls really would melt in champagne--would drink nothing else, Gilbert could have paid the piper for a few weeks at any rate. But Rita was curious. He would have given her anything. Over and over again he had pressed her to have things--bracelets, a ring, a necklace. She had refused with absolute decision. She had let him give her a box of gloves, flowers she could not have enough of, the more costly the amusement of the night the better she seemed to like it. But that was all. In his madness, his poisoned madness, he would have sold his house to give her diamonds had she asked for them--she would not even let him make her a present of a trumpery silver case for cigarettes. She was baffling, elusive, he could not understand her. For several days she had refused to dine alone with him in his rooms. One night, when he was driving her home after the dinner at the Ritz and a box at the Comedy theatre, he had pressed her urgently. She had once more refused. And then, something unveiled and brutal had risen within him. The wave of alcohol submerged all decency and propriety of speech. He was furiously, coarsely angry. "Damn you!" he said. "What are you afraid of?--of compromising yourself? If there were half a dozen people in London who knew or cared what you did, you've done that long ago. And for heaven's sake don't play Tartuffe with me. Haven't I been kissing you as much as ever I wanted to for the last three days? Haven't you kissed me? You'll dine with me to-morrow night in St. James' Street or I'll get out of town at once and chuck it all. I've been an ass to come at all. I'm beginning to see that now. I've been leaving the substance for the shadow." She answered nothing to this brutal tirade for a minute or two. The facile anger died away from him. He cursed himself for his insane folly in jeopardising everything and felt compunction for his violence. He was just about to explain and apologise when he heard a chuckle from the girl at his side. He turned swiftly to her. Her face was alight with pleasure, mingled with an almost tender mischief. She laughed aloud. "Of course I'll come, Gilbert dear," she said softly--"since you _command_ me!" He realised at once that, like all women, she found joy in abdication when it was forced upon her. The dominant male mind had won in this little contest. He had bullied her roughly. It was a new sensation and she liked it. But when she dined in the rooms and he tried to accomplish artificially what he had achieved spontaneously, she was on her guard and it was quite ineffectual. They sat at a little round table. The dinner was simple, but perfectly served. During the meal, for once,--once again--he had talked like his old self, brilliantly touching upon literary things and illuminating much that had been dark to her before with that splendour of intellect which came back to him to-night for a space; and brought a trace of spirituality to his coarsening face. And after dinner he had made her play to him on the little Bord piano against the wall. She was not a good pianist but she was efficient, and certain things that she knew well, and _felt_, she played well. With some technical accomplishment she certainly rendered the "Bees' Wedding" of Mendelssohn with astonishing vivacity that night. The elfin humour of the thing harmonised so much with certain aspects of her own temperament! The swarming bees of Fairyland were in the room! And then, with merry malice, and at Gilbert's suggestion, she improvised a Podley Polonaise. Then she gave a little melody of Dvôrak that she knew--"A mad scarlet thing by Dvôrak," he quoted to her, and finally, at Gilbert's urgent request, she attempted the Troisième Ballade of Chopin. It reminded him of the first night on which he had met her, at the Amberleys' house. She did not play it well but his imagination filled the lacunae; his heated mind rose to a wild ecstasy of longing. He put his arm round her and embraced her with tears in his eyes. "Sweetheart," he said, "you are wonderful! See! We are alone here together, perfectly alone, perfectly happy. Let us always be for each other. Dear, I will sacrifice everything for you. You complete me. You were made for me. Come away with me, come with me for ever and ever. My wife will divorce me and we can be married; always to be together." He had declared himself, and his wicked wish at last. He made an open proffer of his shameful love. There was not a single thought in his mind of Mary, her deep devotion, her love and trust. He brushed aside the supreme gift that God had allowed him as a man brushes away an insect from his face. All that the girl had said in answer was that he must not talk in such a way. Of course it could never be. They must be content as they were, hard as it was. "I am very sorry, Gilbert dear, you can never know how sorry I am. But you know I care for you. That must be all." He had sent her home by herself that night, paying the cabman and giving him the address in Kensington. Then for an hour before going to bed he had walked up and down his sitting room in a welter of hope, fear, regret, desire, wonder and deep perplexity. He had now lost all sense of honour, all measure of proportion. His desire filled him and racked his very bones. Sometimes he almost hated Rita; always he longed for her to be his, his very own. Freed from all possible restraint, lord of himself--"that heritage of woe!"--he was now drinking more deeply, more madly than ever before in his life. He was abnormal in an abnormal world which his insanity created. The savage torture he inflicted on himself shall be only indicated here. There are deeper hells yet, blacknesses more profound in which we shall see this unhappy soul! Suffice it to say that for three red weeks he drove the chariot of his ruin more recklessly and furiously than ever towards hell. And the result, as far as his blistering hunger was concerned, was always the same. The girl led him on and repulsed him alternately. He never advanced a step towards his desire. Yet the longing grew in intensity and never left him for a moment. He tried hard to fathom Rita's character, to get at the springs of her thoughts. He failed utterly, and for two reasons. Firstly, he was in no state to see anything steadily. The powers of insight and analysis were alike deserting him. His _mind_ had been affected before. Now his _brain_ was becoming affected. One morning, with shaking hand, bloodshot eyes and a bottle of whiskey before him on the table, he sat down to write out what he thought of Rita. The accustomed pen and paper, the material implements of his power, might bring him back what he seemed to be losing. This is what he wrote, in large unsteady characters, entirely changed from the neat beautiful caligraphy of the past. "Passionate and yet calculating at the same time; eager to rule and capable of ruling, though occasionally responsive to the right control; generous in confidence and trust, though with suspicion never very far away. "Merrily false and frankly furtive in many of the actions of life. A dear egoist! yet capable of self-abandoning enthusiasm, a brilliant embryo really wanting the guiding hand and master brain but reluctant to accept them until the last moment." There was more of it, all compact of his hopes and fears, an entirely false conception of her, an emanation of poison which, nevertheless, affords some indication of his mental state. The sheet concluded:-- "A white and graceful yacht seriously setting out into dangerous waters with no more certainty than hangs upon the result of a toss up or the tinkle of a tambourine. Deeply desiring a pilot, but unwilling that he should come aboard too soon and spoil the fun of beating up into the wind to see what happens. Weak, but not with the charm of dependence and that trusting weakness which stiffens a man's arm." A futile, miserable dissection with only a half-grain of truth in it. Gilbert knew it for what it was directly it had been written. He crumpled it up with a curse and flung it into the fireplace. Yet the truth about the girl was simple enough. She was only an exceptionally clever and attractive example of a perfectly well-defined and numerous type. Lothian was ignorant of the type, had never suspected its existence in his limited experience of young women, that was all. Rita Wallace was just this. Heredity had given her a quick, good brain and an infinite capacity for enjoyment. It was an accident also that she was a very lovely girl. All beautiful people are spoiled. Rita was spoiled at school. Girls and mistresses alike adored her. With hardly any interregnum she had been plumped into Podley's Pure Literature Library and begun to earn her own living. She lived with a good, commonplace girl who worshipped her. Except that she could attract them and that on the whole they were silly moths she knew nothing of men. Her heart, unawakened as yet save by school-girl affections, was a kind and tender little organ. But, with all her beauty and charm she was essentially shallow, from want of experience rather than from lack of temperament. Gilbert Lothian had come to her as the most wonderful personality she had ever known. His letters were things that any girl in the world might be proud of receiving. He was giving her, now, a time which, upon each separate evening, was to her like a page out of the "Arabian Nights." Every day he gave her a tablet upon which "Sesame" was written. Had he been free to ask her honourably, she would have married Gilbert within twenty-four hours, had it been possible. He was delightful to be with. She liked him to kiss her and say adoring things to her. Even his aberrations--of which of course she had become aware--only excited her interest. The bad boy drank far too many whiskies and sodas. Of course! She would cure him of that. If any one had told her that her nightly and delightful companion was an inebriate approaching the last stages of lingering sanity, Rita would have laughed in her informant's face. She knew what a drunkard was! It was a horrid wretch who couldn't walk straight and who said, "My dearsh"--like the amusing pictures in "Punch." Poor dear Gilbert's wife would be in a fury if she knew. But fortunately she didn't know, and she wasn't in England. Meanwhile, for a short time, life was entrancing, and why worry about the day after to-morrow? It was ridiculous of Gilbert to want her to run away with him. That would be really wicked. He might kiss her as much as he liked, and when Mrs. Lothian came back they could still go on much as before. Certainly they would continue being friends and he would write her beautiful letters again. "I'm a wicked little devil," she said to herself once or twice with a naughty inward chuckle, "but dear old Gilbert is so perfectly sweet, and I can do just what I like with him!" Nearly three weeks had gone by. Gilbert and Rita had been together every evening, on the Saturday afternoons when she was free of Podley's Library, and for the whole of Sunday. Gilbert had almost exhausted his invention in thinking out surprises for her night after night. There had been many dull moments and hours when pleasure trembled in the balance. But no night had been quite a failure. The position was this. Lothian, almost convinced that Rita was unassailable, assailed her still. She was sweet to him, gave her caresses but not herself. They had arrived at a curious sort of understanding. He bewailed with bitter and burning regret that he could not marry her. Lightly, only half sincerely, but to please him, she joined in his sorrow. She had been seen about with him, constantly, in all sorts of places, and that London that knew him was beginning to talk. Of this Rita was perfectly unconscious. He had written to his wife at Nice, letters so falsely sympathetic that he felt she must suspect something. He followed up every letter with a long, costly telegram. A telegram is not autograph and the very lesions of the prose conceal the lesions of the sender's dull intention. His physical state was beginning to be so alarming that he was putting himself constantly under the influence of bromide and such-like drugs. He went regularly to the Turkish Bath in Jermyn Street, had his face greased and hammered in the Haymarket each morning, and fought with a constantly growing terror against an advancing horror which he trembled to think might not be far off now. Delirium Tremens. But when Rita met him at night, drugs, massage and alcohol had had their influence and kept him still upon the brink. In his well-cut evening clothes, with his face a little fatter, a little redder perhaps, he was still her clever, debonnair Gilbert. A necessity to her now. CHAPTER IV THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS "Let us have a quiet hour, Let us hob-and-nob with Death." --_Tennyson._ Three weeks passed. There was no change in the relations of Rita Wallace and Gilbert Lothian. She was gay, tender, silent by turns, and her thirst for pleasure seemed unquenchable. She yielded nothing. Things were as they were. He was married: there was no more to be said, they must "dree their wierd"--endure their lot. Often the man smiled bitterly to hear her girlish wisdom, uttered with almost complacent finality. It was not very difficult for _her_ to endure. She had no conception of the dreadful state into which he had come, the torture he suffered. When he was alone--during the long evil day when he could not see her--the perspiration his heated blood sent out upon his face and body seemed like the very night dews of the grave. He was the sensualist of whom Ruskin speaks, the sensualist with the shroud about his feet. All day long he fought for sufficient mastery over himself to go through the evening, fought against the feverish disease of parched throat and wandering eyes; senseless, dissolute, merciless. And one dreadful flame burned steadily in the surrounding gloom-- "_Love, which is lust, is the lamp in the tomb. Love, which is lust, is the call from the gloom._" "Je me nourris de flammes" was the proud motto of an ancient ducal house in Burgundy. With grimmer meaning Lothian might have taken it for his own during these days. He had heard from his wife that she was coming home almost at once. Lady Davidson had rallied. There was every prospect of her living for a month or two more. Sir Harold Davidson was on his way home from India. He would go to her at once and it was now as certain as such things can be that he would be in time. Mary wrote with deep sadness. To bid her beloved sister farewell on this earth was heart-rending. "And yet, darling,"--so the letter had run--"how marvellous it is to know, not to just hope, but to _know_ that I shall meet Dorothy again and that we shall see Jesus. When I think of that, tears of happiness mingle with the tears of sorrow. Sweet little Dorothy will be waiting for us when we too go, my dearest, dearest husband. God keep you, beloved. Day and night I pray for my dear one." This letter had stabbed the man's soul through and through. It had been forwarded from Mortland Royal and was brought to him as he lay in bed at breakfast time. His heavy tears had bedewed the pillow upon which he lay. "Like bitter wine upon a sponge was the savour of remorse." Shuddering and sobbing he had crawled out of bed and seized the whiskey bottle which stood upon the dressing table--his sole comforter, hold-fast and standby now; very blood of his veins. And then, warmth, comfort--remorse and shame fading rapidly away--oblivion and a heavy sleep or stupor till long after midday. He must go home at once. He must be at home to receive Mary. And, in the quiet country among familiar sights and sounds, he would have time to think. He could write to Rita again. He could say things upon paper with a force and power that escaped him _à vive voix_. He could pull himself together, too, recruit his physical faculties. He realised, with an ever growing dread, in what a shocking state he was. Yes, he would go home. There would be peace there, some sort of kindly peace for a day or two. What would happen when Mary returned, how he would feel about her, what he would do, he did not ask. Sufficient for the day! He longed for a few days' peace. No more late midnights--sleep. No nights of bitter hollow pleasure and longing. He would be among his quiet books again in his pleasant little library. He would talk wildfowling with Tumpany and they would go through the guns together. The Dog Trust who loved him should sleep on his bed. It was Saturday. He was going down to Norfolk by the five o'clock train from St. Pancras. He would be able to dine on board--and have what drinks he wanted en route. The dining-car stewards on that line knew him well. He would arrive at Wordingham by a little after nine. By ten he might be in bed in his peaceful old house. The Podley Library closed at 12:30 on Saturday. He was to call for Rita, when they were to lunch together, and at five she would come to the station to see him off. It was a dull, heavy day. London was chilly, there was a gloom over the metropolis; leaden opaque light fell from a sky that was ashen. It was as though cold thunder lurked somewhere up above, as Lothian drove to Kensington. He had paid for his rooms and arranged for his luggage to be taken to the station where a man was to meet him with it a little before five. Then he had crossed St. James' Street and spent a waiting hour at his club. For some reason or other, this morning he had more control over his nerves. There was a lull in his rapid physical progress downwards. Perhaps it was that he had at any rate made some decision in his mind. He was going to do something definite. He was going home. That was something to grasp at--a real fact--and it steadied him a little. He had smoked a cigar in the big smoking room of the club. It was rather early yet and there was hardly any one there. Two whiskies and sodas had been sufficient for the hour. The big room, however, was so dark that all the electric lamps were turned on and he read the newspapers in an artificial daylight that harmonised curiously with the dull, numbed peace of the nerves which had come to him for a short time. He opened _Punch_ and there was a joke about him--a merry little paragraph at the bottom of the column. It was the fourth or fifth time his name had appeared in the paper. He remembered how delighted he and Mary had been when it first happened. It meant so definitely that one had "got there." He read it now without the slightest interest. He glanced at the _Times_. Many important things were happening at home and abroad, but he gazed at all the news with a lack-lustre eye. Usually a keen and sympathetic observer of what went on in the world, for three weeks now he hadn't opened a paper. As he closed the broad, crackling sheet on its mahogany holding rod, his glance fell upon the Births, Deaths and Marriages column. A name among the deaths captured his wandering attention. A Mr. James Bethune Dickson Ingworth, C.B., was dead at Hampton Hall in Wiltshire. It was Dicker's uncle, of course! The boy would come into his estate now. "It's a good thing for him," Lothian thought. "I don't suppose he's back from Italy yet. The old man must have died quite suddenly. I hope he'll settle down and won't be quite so uppish in the future." He was thinking drowsily, and quite kindly of Dickson, when he suddenly remembered something Mary had said on the night before she went to Nice. He had tried to make mischief between them--so he had! And then there was that scene in the George at Wordingham, which Lothian had forgotten until now. "What a cock-sparrow Beelzebub the lad really is," he said in his mind. "And yet I liked him well enough. Even now he's not important enough to dislike. Rita likes him. She often talks of him. He took her out to dinner--yes, so he did--to some appalling little place in Wardour Street. She was speaking of it yesterday. He's written to her from Milan and Rome, too. She wanted to show me the letters and she was cross because I wasn't interested. She tried to pique me and I wouldn't be! What was it she said, oh, 'he's such nice curly hair.'" He gazed into the empty fireplace before which he was sitting in a huge chair of green leather. The remembered words had struck some chords of memory. He frowned and puzzled over it in his drowsy numbed state, and then it came to him suddenly. Of course! The barmaid at Wordingham, Molly what's-her-name whom all the local bloods were after, had said just the same thing about Ingworth. Little fools! They were all alike, fluffy little duffers. . . . He looked up at the clock. It was twenty minutes to one. He had to meet Rita at the library as the hour struck. He started. The door leading into the outside world shut with a clang. His chains fell into their place once more upon the limbs of his body and soul. He called a waiter, gulped down another peg, and got into a cab for the Podley Institute. The pleasant numbness had gone from him now. Once more he was upon the rack. What he saw with his mental vision was as the wild phantasmagoria of a dream . . . a dark room in which a magic lantern is being worked, and fantastic, unexpected pictures flit across the screen. Pictures as disconnected as a pack of cards. Rita was waiting upon the steps of the Institute. She wore a simple coat and skirt of dark brown tweed with a green line in it. Her face was pale. Her eyes were without sparkle--she also was exhausted by pleasure, come to the end of the Arabian Nights. She got into the taxi-cab which was trembling with the power of the unemployed engines below it. Tzim, tzim, tzim! "Where shall we go, Gilbert?" she said, in a languid, uninterested voice. He answered her in tones more cold and bloodless than her own. "I don't know, Rita, and I don't care. Ce que vous voulez, Mademoiselle des livres sans reproche!" She turned her white face on him for a moment, almost savage with impotent petulance. Then she thrust her head out of the window and coiled round to the waiting driver. "Go to Madame Tussaud's," she cried. Tzim, tzim, bang-bang-bang, and then a long melancholy drone as the rows of houses slid backwards. Gilbert turned on her. "Why did you say that?" he asked bitterly. "What difference _does_ it make?" she replied. "You didn't seem to care where we went for this last hour or two. I said the first thing that came into my mind. I suppose we can get lunch at Madame Tussaud's. I've never been there before. At any rate, I expect they can manage a sponge cake for us. I don't want anything more." --"Yes, it's better for us both. It's a relief to me to think that the end has come. No, Rita dear, I don't want your hand. Let us make an end now--a diminuendo. It must be. Let it be. You've said it often yourself." She bit her lips for a second. Then her eyes flashed. She put her arms round his neck and drew him to her. "You shan't!" she said. "You shan't glide away from me like this." Every nerve in his body began to tremble. His skin pricked and grew hot. "What will you give?" he asked in a muffled voice. "I? What I choose to give!" she replied. "Gillie, I'll do what I like with you." She shrank back in the corner of the cab with a little cry. Lothian's face was red and blazing with anger. "No names like that, Rita!" he said roughly. "You shan't call me that." It was a despairing cry of drowning conscience, honour bleeding to death, dissolving dignity and manhood. However much he might long for her: however strongly he was enchained, it was a blot, an indignity, an outrage, that this girl should call him by the familiar home name. That was Mary's name for him. Mrs. Gilbert Lothian alone had the right to say that. Just then the taxi-metre stopped outside the big red erection in the Marylebone Road, an unusual and fantastic silhouette against the heavy sky. They went in together, and there was a chill over them both. They felt, on this grey day, as people who have lived for pleasure, sensation, and have fed too long on honeycomb, must ever feel; the bitterness of the fruit with the fair red and yellow rind. Ashes were in their mouths, an acrid flavour within their souls. It is always and for ever thus, if men could only realise it. Since the Cross rose in the sky, the hectic joys of sin have been mingled with bitterness, torture, cold. The frightful "Colloque Sentimental" of Verlaine expresses these two people, at this moment, well enough. Written by a temperamental saint turned satyr and nearly always influenced by drink; translated by a young English poet whose wings were always beating in vain against the prison wall he himself had built; you have these sad companions. . . . _Into the lonely park all frozen fast, Awhile ago there were two forms who passed. Lo, are their lips fallen and their eyes dead, Hardly shall a man hear the words they said. Into the lonely park all frozen fast There came two shadows who recall the past. "Dost thou remember our old ecstasy?" "Wherefore should I possess that memory?" "Doth thy heart beat at my sole name alway? Still dost thou see my soul in visions?" "Nay!"--_ And on such a day as this, with such a weight as this upon their tired hearts, they entered the halls of Waxwork and stood forlorn among that dumb cloistered company. They passed through "Room No. 1. Commencing Right-hand side" and their steps echoed upon the floor. On this day and at this hour hardly any visitors were there; only a few groups moved from figure to figure and talked in hissing whispers as if they were in some church. All around them they saw lifeless and yet half convincing dolls in rich tarnished habiliments. They walked, as it were, in a mausoleum of dead kings, and the livid light which fell upon them from the glass roof above made the sordid unreality more real. "There's Charles the First," Rita said drearily. Gilbert glanced at the catalogue. "He was fervently pious, a faithful husband, a fond parent, a kind master, and an enthusiastic lover and patron of the fine arts." "How familiar that sort of stuff sounds," she answered. "It's written for the schools which come here to see history in the flesh--or wax rather. Every English school girl of the upper middle classes has been brought here once in her life. Oh, here's Milton! What does it say about him?" --"Sold his immortal poem 'Paradise Lost' for the sum of five pounds," Lothian answered grimly. "_Much_ better to be a modern poet, Gilbert dear! But I'm disappointed. These figures don't thrill one at all. I always thought one was thrilled and astonished here." "So you will be, Cupid, soon. Don't you see that all these people are only names to us. Here they are names dressed up in clothes and with pink faces and glass eyes. They're too remote. Neither of us is going to connect that thing"--he flung a contemptuous movement of his thumb at Milton--"with 'Lycidas.' We shall be interested soon, I'm sure. But won't you have something to eat?" "No. I don't want food. After all, this is strange and fantastic. We've lots more to see yet, and these kings and queens are only for the schools. Let's explore and explore. And let's talk about it all as we go, Gilbert! Talk to me as you do in your letters. Talk to me as you did at the beginning, illuminating everything with your mind. That's what I want to hear once again!" She thrust her arm in his, and desire fled away from him. The Dead Sea Fruit, the "Colloque Sentimental" existed no more, but, humour, the power of keen, incisive phrase awoke in him. Yes, this was better!--their two minds with play and interplay. It would have been a thousand times better if it had never been anything else save this. They wandered into the Grand Saloon, made their bow to Sir Thomas Lipton--"Wog and I find his tea really the best and cheapest," Rita said--decided that the Archbishop of Canterbury had a suave, but uninteresting face, admired the late Mr. Dan Leno, who was posed next to Sir Walter Scott, and gazed without much interest at the royal figures in the same room. King George the Fifth and his spouse; the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn--Prince Arthur William Patrick Albert, K.G., K.T., K.P., G.C.M.C.; Princess Royal of England--Her Royal Highness Princess Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar; and, next to these august people, little Mr. Dan Leno! "Poor little man," Rita said, looking at the sad face of the comedian. "Why should they put him here with the King and the Queen? Do they just plant their figures anywhere in this show?" Gilbert shook his head. In this abnormal place--one of the strangest and most psychologically interesting places in the world--his freakish humour was to the fore. "What a little stupid you are, Rita!" he said. "The man who arranges these groups is one of the greatest philosophers and students of humanity who ever lived. In this particular case the ghost of Heine must have animated him. The court jester! The clown of the monarch--I believe he did once perform at Sandringham--set cheek by jowl with the great people he amused. It completes the picture, does it not?" "No, Gilbert, since you pretend to see a design in the arrangement, I don't think it _does_ complete the picture. Why should a mere little comic man be set to intrude--?" He caught her up with whimsical grace. "Oh, but you don't see it at all!" he cried, and his vibrating voice, to which the timbre and life had returned, rang through "Room No. 2." --"This place is designed for the great mass of the population. They all visit it. It is a National Institution. People like you and me only come to it out of curiosity or by chance. It's out of our beat. Therefore, observe the genius of the plan! The Populace has room in its great stupid heart for only a few heroes. The King is always one, and the popular comedian of the music halls is always another. These, with Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Toftrees, satisfy all the hunger for symbols to be adored. Thus Dan Leno in this splendid company. Room No. 2 is really a subtle and ironic comment upon the psychology of the crowd!" Rita laughed happily. "But where are the Toftrees?" she said. "In the Chamber of Horrors, probably, for murdering the public taste. We are sure to find them here, seated before two Remingtons and with the actual books with which the crime was committed on show." "Oh, I've heard about the 'Chamber of Horrors.' Can we go, Gilbert? Do let's go. I want to be thrilled. It's such a funereal day." "Yes it is, grey as an old nun. I'm sorry I was unkind in the cab, dear. Forgive me." "I'll forgive you anything. I'm so unhappy, Gilbert. It's dreadful to think of you being gone. All my days and my nights will be grey now. However shall I do without you?" There was genuine desolation in her voice. He believed that she really regretted _his_ departure and not the loss of the pleasures he had been giving her. His blood grew hot once more--for a single moment--and he was about to embrace her, for they were alone in the room. And then listlessness fell upon him before he had time to put his wish into action. His poisoned mind was vibrating too quickly. An impulse was born, only to be strangled in the brain before the nerves could telegraph it to the muscles. His whole machinery was loose and out of control, the engines running erratically and not in tune. They could not do their work upon the fuel with which he fed them. He shuddered. His heart was a coffer of ashes and within it, most evil paramours, dwelt the quenchless flame and the worm that dieth not. . . . They went through other ghostly halls, thronged by a silent company which never moved nor spake. They came to the entrance of that astounding mausoleum of wickedness, The Chamber of Horrors. There they saw, as in a faint light under the sea, the legion of the lost, the horrible men and women who had gone to swell the red quadrilles of hell. In long rows, sitting or standing, with blood-stained knives and hangmen's ropes in front of them, in their shameful resurrection they inhabited this place of gloom and death. Here, was a man in shirt-sleeves, busy at work in a homely kitchen lit by a single candle. Alone at midnight and with sweat upon his face he was breaking up the floor; making a deep hole in which to put something covered with a spotted shroud which lay in a bedroom above. There, was the "most extraordinary relic in the world," the knife of the guillotine that decapitated Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and twenty thousand human beings besides. The strange precision of portraiture, the somewhat ghastly art which had moulded these evil faces was startlingly evident in its effect upon the soul. When a _great_ novelist or poet creates an evil personality it shocks and terrifies us, but it is never wholly evil. We know of the monster's antecedents and environment. However stern we may be in our attitude towards the crime, sweet charity and deep understanding of the motives of human action often give us glimmerings which enable us to pity a lamentable human being who is a brother of ours whatever he may have done. But here? No. All was sordid and horrible. Gilbert and Rita saw rows upon rows of faces which differed in every way one from the other and were yet dreadfully alike. For these great sinister dolls, so unreal and so real, had all a likeness. The smirk of cruelty and cunning seemed to lie upon the waxen masks. Colder than life, far colder than death, they gave forth emanations which struck the very heart with woe and desolation. To many visitors the Chamber of Horrors is all its name signifies. But it is a place of pleasure nevertheless. The skin creeps but the sensation is pleasant. It provides a thrill like a switchback railway. But it is not a place that artists and imaginative people can enter and easily forget. It epitomises the wages of sin. It ought to be a great educational force. Young criminals should be taken there between stern guardians, to learn by concrete evidence which would appeal to them as no books or sermons could ever do, the Nemesis that waits upon unrepentant ways. The man and the girl who had just entered were both in a state of nervous tension. They were physically exhausted, one by fierce indulgence in poison, the other by three weeks of light and feverish pleasure. And more than this. Each, in several degree, knew that they were doing wrong, that they had progressed far down the primrose path led by the false flute-players. "I couldn't have conceived it was so, so unnerving, Gilbert," Rita said, shrinking close to him. "It is pretty beastly," Lothian answered. "It's simply a dictionary of crime though, that's all--rather too well illustrated." "I don't want to know of these horrors. One sees them in the papers, but it means little or nothing. How dreadful life is though, under the surface!" Gilbert felt a sudden pang of pity for her, so young and fair, so frightened now.--Ah! _he_ knew well how dreadful life was--under the surface! For a moment, in that tomb-like place a vision came to him, sunlit and splendid, calm and beautiful. He saw his life as it might be--as doubtless God meant it to be, a favoured, fortunate and happy life, for God does not, in His inscrutable wisdom chastise all men. Well-to-do, brilliant of mind, with trained capacity to exact every drop of noble joy from life; blessed with a sweet and beautiful woman to watch over him and complement him; did ever a man have a fairer prospect, a luckier chance? His Hell was so real. Heaven was so near. He had but to say, "I will not," and the sun would rise again upon his life. To the end he would walk dignified, famous, happy, loving and deeply-loved--if only he could say those words. A turn of the hand would banish the Fiend Alcohol for ever and ever! But even as the exaltation of the thought animated him, the dominant false Ego, crushed momentarily by heavenly inspiration, growled and fought for life. Immediately the longing for alcohol burned within him. They had been nearly an hour among the figures. Lothian longed for drink, to satisfy no mere physical craving, but to keep the Fiend within quiescent. He had come to that alternating state--the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" has etched it upon the plate for all time--when he must drug the devil in order to have a little license in which to speak the words and think the thoughts of a clean man leading a Christian life. So the vision of what might be faded and went. The present asserted itself, and asserted itself merely as a brutish desire for poison. All these mental changes and re-adjustments took place in a mere second of time. Rita had hardly made an end of speaking before he was ready with an answer. "Poor little Rita," he said. "It was your choice you know. It _is_ horrible. But I expect that the weather, and the inexorable fact that we have to part this afternoon for a time, has something to do with it. Oh, and then we haven't lunched. There's a great influence in lunch. I want a drink badly, too. Let's go." Rita was always whimsical. She loved to assert herself. She wanted to go at least as ardently as her companion, but she did not immediately agree. "Soon," she said. "Look here, Gilbert, we'll meet at the door. I'm going to flit down this aisle of murderers on the other side. You go down this side. And if you meet the Libricides--Toftrees et femme I mean, call out!" She vanished with noiseless tread among the stiff ranks of figures. Gilbert walked slowly down his own path, looking into each face in turn. . . . This fat matronly woman, a sort of respectable Mrs. Gamp who probably went regularly to Church, was a celebrated baby farmer. She "made angels" by pressing a gimlet into the soft skulls of her charges--there was the actual gimlet--and save for a certain slyness, she had the face of a quite motherly old thing. Yet she, too, had dropped through the hole in the floor--like all her companions here. . . . He turned away from all the faces with an impatient shudder. He ought never to have come here. He was a donkey ever to have let Rita come here. Where was she?--he was to meet her at the end of this horrid avenue. . . . But the place was large. Rita had disappeared among the waxen ghosts. The door must be this way. . . . He pressed onwards, walking silently--as one does in a place of the dead--but disregarding with averted eyes, the leers, the smiles, the complacent appeal, of the murderers who had paid their debt to the justice of the courts. He was beginning to be most unpleasantly affected. Walking onwards, he suddenly heard Rita's voice. It was higher in key than usual--whom was she speaking to? His steps quickened. . . . "Gilbert, how silly to try and frighten me! It's not cricket in this horrid place, get down at once--oh!" The girl shrieked. Her voice rang through the vault-like place. Gilbert ran, turned a corner, and saw Rita. She was swaying from side to side. Her face was quite white, even the lips were bloodless. She was staring with terrified eyes to where upon the low dais and behind the confining rail a figure was standing--a wax-work figure. Gilbert caught the girl by the hands. They were as cold as ice. "Dear!" he said in wild agitation. "What is it? I'm here, don't be frightened. What is it, Rita?" She gave a great sob of relief and clung to his hands. A trace of colour began to flow into her cheeks. "Thank goodness," she said, gasping. "Oh, Gilbert, I'm a fool. I've been so frightened." "But, dear, what by?" "By that----" She pointed at the big, still puppet immediately opposite her. Gilbert turned quickly. For a moment he did not understand the cause of her alarm. "I talked to _it_," she said with an hysterical laugh. "I thought _it_ was you! I thought you'd got inside the railing and were standing there to frighten me." Gilbert looked closely at the effigy. He was about to say something and then the words died away upon his lips. It was as though he saw himself in a distorting glass--one of those nasty and reprehensible toys that fools give to children sometimes. There was an undeniable look of him in the staring face of coloured wax. The clear-cut lips were there. The shape of the head was particularly reminiscent, the growing corpulence of body was indicated, the hair of the stiff wig waved as Lothian's living hair waved. "Good God!" he said. "It _is_ like me! Poor little girl--but you know I wouldn't frighten you for anything. But it _is_ like! What an extraordinary thing. We looked for the infamous Toftrees! the egregious Herbert who has split so many infinitives in his time, and we find--Me!" Rita was recovering. She laughed, but she held tightly to Gilbert's arm at the same time. "Let's see who the person is--or was--" Gilbert went on, drawing the catalogue from his pocket. "Key of the principal gate of the Bastille--no, that's not it. Number 365, oh, here we are! Hancock, the Hackney Murderer. A chemist in comfortable circumstances, he----" Rita snatched the book from his hand. "I don't want to hear any more," she said. "Let's go away, quick!" In half an hour they were lunching at a little Italian restaurant which they found in the vicinity. The day was still dark and lowering, but a risotto Milanese and something which looked like prawns in _polenta_, but wasn't, restored them to themselves. There was a wine list in this quite snug little place, but the proprietor advanced and explained that he had no license and that money must be paid in advance before the camerière could fetch what was required from an adjacent public house. It was a bottle of whiskey that Gilbert ordered, politely placed upon the table by a pathetic little Genoese whose face was sallow as spaghetti and who was quite unconscious that for the moment the Fiend Alcohol had borrowed his poor personality. . . . "You must have a whiskey and soda, Rita. I dare not let you attempt any of the wines from the public house at the corner." "I've never tried it in my life. But I will now, out of curiosity. I'll taste what you are so far too fond of." Rita did so. "Horrible stuff," she said. "It's just like medicine." Gilbert had induced the pleasant numbness again. "You've said exactly what it is," he replied in a dreamy voice.--"'Medicine for a mind diseased.'" They hardly conversed at all after that. The little restaurant with its red plush seats against the wall, its mirrors and hanging electric lights, was cosy. They lingered long over their coffee and cigarettes. No one else was there and the proprietor sidled up to them and began to talk. He spoke in English at first, and then Gilbert answered him in French. Gilbert spoke French as it is spoken in Tours, quite perfectly. The Italian spoke it with the soft, ungrammatical fluency of his race. The interlude pleased the tired, jaded minds of the sad companions, and it was with some fictitious reconstruction of past gaiety and animation that they drove to St. Pancras. The train was in. Gilbert's dressing-case was already placed in a first-class compartment, his portmanteau snug in the van. When he walked up the long platform with Rita, a porter, the Guard of the train and the steward of the dining-car, were grouped round the open door. He was well known. All the servants of the line looked out for him and gave him almost ministerial honours. They knew he was a "somebody," but were all rather vague as to the nature of his distinction. He was "Mr. Gilbert Lothian" at least, and his bountiful largesse was generally spoken of. The train was not due to start for six minutes. The acute guard, raising his cap, locked the door of the carriage. Gilbert and Rita were alone in it for a farewell. He took her in his arms and looked long and earnestly into the young lovely face. He saw the tears gathering in her eyes. "Have you been happy, sweetheart, with me?" "Perfectly happy." There was a sob in the reply. "You really do care for me?" "Yes." His breath came more quickly, he held her closer to him--only a little rose-faced girl now. "Do you care for me more than for any other man you have ever met?" She did not answer. "Tell me, tell me! Do you?" "Yes." "Rita, my darling, say, if things had been different, if I were free to ask you to be my wife now, would you marry me?" "Yes." "Would you be my dear, dear love, as I yours, for ever and ever and ever?" She clung to him in floods of tears. He had his answer. Each tear was an answer. The guard of the train, looking the other way, opened the door with his key and coughed. "Less than a minute more, sir," said the guard. . . . "Once more, say it once more! You _would_ be my wife if I were free?" "I'd be your wife, Gilbert, and I'd love you--oh, what shall I do without you? How dull and dreadful everything is going to be now!" "But I shall be back soon. And I shall write to you every day!" "You will, won't you, dear? Write, write--" The train was almost moving. It began to move. Gilbert leaned out of the window and waved his hand for a long time, to a forlorn little girl in a brown coat and skirt who stood upon the platform crying bitterly. The waiter of the dining-car, knowing his man well, brought Lothian a large whiskey and soda before the long train was free of the sordid Northwest suburbs. Lothian drank it, arranged about dinner, and sank back against the cushions. He lit a cigarette and drew the hot smoke deep into his lungs. The train was out of the town area now. There was no more jolting and rattling over points. Its progress into the gathering night was a continuous roar. Onwards through the gathering night. . . . "_I'd be your wife, Gilbert, and I'd love you--if you were free._" CHAPTER V THE NIGHT JOURNEY FROM NICE WHEN MRS. DALY SPEAKS WORDS OF FIRE "Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time; I press God's lamp Close to my breast: its splendour, soon or late Shall pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day." --_Browning._ A carriage was waiting outside a white and gilded hotel on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice. The sun was just dipping behind the Esterelle mountains and the Mediterranean was the colour of wine. Already the Palais du Jetée was being illuminated and outlined itself in palest gold against the painted sky above the Cimiez heights, where the olive-coloured headland hides Villefranche and the sea-girt pleasure city of Monte Carlo. The tall palms in the gardens which front the gleaming palaces of the Promenade were bronze gold in the fading light, and their fans clicked and rustled in a cool breeze which was eddying down upon the Queen of the Mediterranean from the Maritime Alps. Mary Lothian came out of the hotel. Her face was pale and very sad. She had been crying. With her was a tall, stately woman of middle-age; grey-haired, with a massive calmness and peace of feature recalling the Athena of the Louvre or one of those noble figures of the Erectheum crowning the hill of the Acropolis at Athens. She was Mrs. Julia Daly, who had been upon the Riviera for two months. Dr. Morton Sims had written to her. She had called upon Mary and the two had become fast friends. Such time as Mary could spare from the sickbed of her sister, she spent in the company of this great-souled woman from America, and now Mrs. Daly, whose stay at Nice was over, was returning to London with her friend. The open carriage drove off, by the gardens and jewellers' shops in front of the Casino and Opera House and down the Avenue de la Gare. The glittering cafés were full of people taking an apéritif before dinner. There was a sense of relaxation and repose over the pleasure city of the South, poured down upon it in a golden haze from the last level rays of the sun. Outside one of the cafés, as the carriage turned to the station, some Italians were singing "_O Soli Mio_" to the accompaniment of guitars and a harp, with mellow, passionate voices. The long green train rolled into the glass-roofed station, the brass-work of the carriage doors covered thick with oily dust from the Italian tunnels through which it had passed. The conductor of the sleeping-car portion found the two women their reserved compartment. Their luggage was already registered through to Charing Cross and they had only dressing bags with them. As the train started again Mrs. Daly pulled the sliding door into its place, the curtains over it and the windows which looked out into the corridor. Then she switched on the electric light in the roof and also the lamp which stood on a little table at the other end. "There, my dear," she said, "now we shall be quite comfortable." She sat down by Mary, took her hand in hers and kissed her. "I know what you are experiencing now," she said in her low rich voice, "and it is very bitter. But the separation is only for a short, short time. God wants her, and we shall all be in heaven together soon, Mrs. Lothian. And you're leaving her with her husband. It is a great mercy that he has come at last. They are best alone together. And see how brave and cheery he is!--There's a real man, a Christian soldier and gentleman if ever one lived. His wife's death won't kill him. It will make him live more strenuously for others. He will pass the short time between now and meeting her again in a high fever of righteous works and duty. There is no death." Mary held the firm white hand. "You comfort me," she said. "I thank God that you came to me in my affliction. Otherwise I should have been quite alone till Harold came." "I'm real glad that dear good Morton Sims asked me to call. Edith Sims and I are like" . . . She broke off abruptly. "Like sisters," she was about to say, but would not. Mary smiled. Her friend's delicacy was easy to understand. "I know," she answered, "like sisters! You needn't have hesitated. I am better now. All you tell me is just what I am _sure_ of and it is everything. But one's heart grows faint at the moment of parting and the reassuring voice of a friend helps very much. I hope it doesn't mean that one's faith is weak, to long for a sympathetic and confirming voice?" "No, it does not. God has made us like that. I know the value of a friend's word well. Nothing heartens one so. I have been in deep waters in my time, Mary. You must let me call you Mary, my dear." "Oh, do, do! Yes, it is wonderful how words help, human living words." "Nothing is more extraordinary in life than the power of the spoken word. How careful and watchful every one ought to be over words. Spoken, they always seem to me to have more lasting influence than words in a book. They pass through mind after mind. Just think, for instance, how when we meet a man or woman with a sincere intellectual belief which is quite opposed to our own, we are chilled into a momentary doubt of our own opinions--however strongly we may hold them. And when it is the other way about, what strength and comfort we get!" "Thank you," Mary said simply, "you are very helpful. Dr. Morton Sims"--she hesitated for a moment--"Dr. Morton Sims told me something of your life. And of course I know all about your work, as the whole world knows. I know, dear Mrs. Daly, how much you have suffered. And it is because of that that you help me so, who am suffering too." There was silence for a space. The train had stopped at Cannes and started again. Now it was winding and climbing the mountain valleys towards Toulon. But neither of the two women knew anything of it. They were alone in the quiet travelling room that money made possible for them. Heart was meeting heart in the small luxurious place in which they sat, remote from the outside world as if upon some desert island. "Dear Morton Sims," the American lady said at length. "The utter sane goodness of that man! My dear, he is an angel of light, as near a perfect character as any one alive in the world to-day. And yet he doesn't believe in Jesus and thinks the Church and the Sacraments--I've been a member of the Episcopalian Church from girlhood--only make-believe and error." "He is the finest natured man I have ever met," Mary answered. "I've only known him for a short time, but he has been so good and friendly. What a sad thing it is that he is an infidel. I don't use the word in the popular reprehensible sense, but as just what it means--without faith." "It's a sad thing to us," Mrs. Daly said briskly, "but I have no fears for him. God hasn't given him the gift of Faith. Now that's all we can say about it. In the next world he will have to go through a probation and learn his catechism, so to speak, before he steps right into his proper place. But he won't be a catechumen long. His pure heart and noble life will tell where hearts and wills are weighed. There is a place by the Throne waiting for him." "Oh, I am sure. He is wonderfully good. Indeed one seems to feel his goodness more than one does that of our clergyman at home, though Mr. Medley is a good man too!" "Brains, my dear! Brains! Morton Sims, you see, is of the aristocracy. Your clergyman probably is not." "Aristocracy?" "The only aristocracy, the aristocracy of brain-power. Don't forget I'm an American woman, Mary! Goodness has the same value in Heaven however it is manifested upon earth. The question of bimetallism doesn't trouble God and His Angels. But a brilliant-minded Saint has certainly more influence down here than a fool-saint." Mary nodded. Such a doctrine as this was quite in accord with what she wished to think. She rejoiced to hear it spoken with such sharp lucidity. She also worshipped at a shrine, that of no saint, certainly, but where a flaming intellect illuminated the happenings of life. In his way, quite a different way, of course, she knew that Gilbert had a finer mind than even Morton Sims. And yet, Gilbert wasn't good, as he ought to be. . . . How these speculations and judgments coiled and recoiled upon themselves; puzzled weary minds and, when all was done, were very little good after all! At any rate, she loved Gilbert more than anything or anybody in the world. So that was that! But tears came into her eyes as she thought of her husband with deep and yearning love. If he would only give up alcohol! _Why_ wouldn't he? To her, such an act seemed so simple and easy. Only a refusal, that was all! The young man who came to Jesus in the old days was asked to give up so much. Even for Jesus and immortality he found himself unable to do it. But Gilbert had only to give up one thing in order to be good and happy, to make her happy. It was true that Dr. Morton Sims had told her many scientific facts, had explained and explained. He had definitely said that Gilbert was in the clutches of a disease; that Gilbert couldn't really help himself, that he must be cured as a man is cured of gout. And then, when she had asked the doctor how this was to be done, he had so little comfort to give. He had explained that all the advertised "cures"--even the ones backed up by people of name, bishops, magistrates, and so on, were really worthless. They administered other drugs in order to sober up the patient from alcohol. That was easy and possible--though only with the thorough co-operation of the patient. After a few weeks, when health appeared to be restored, and the will power was certainly strengthened, the "cure" did nothing more. The _pre-disposition_ was not eradicated. That was an affair to be accomplished only by two or three years of abstinence and not always then. --"I'll talk to Mrs. Daly about it," the sad wife said to herself. "She is a noble, Christian woman. She understands more than even the doctor. She _must_ do so. She loves our Lord. Moreover she has given her life to the cause of temperance." . . . But she must be careful and diplomatic. The natural reticence and delicacy of a well-bred woman shrank from the unveiling, not only of her own sorrow, but of a beloved's shame. The coarse, ill-balanced and bourgeois temperament bawls its sorrow and calls for sympathy from the sweepings of any Pentonville omnibus. It writes things upon a street wall and enjoys voluptuous public hysterics. The refined and gracious mind hesitates long before the least avowal. "You said," she began, after a period of sympathetic silence, "that you had been in deep waters." Julia Daly nodded. "I guess it's pretty well known," she said with a sigh. "That's the worst of a campaign like mine. It's partly because every one knows all about what you've gone through that they give you a hearing. In the States the papers are full of my unhappy story whenever I lecture in a new place. But I'm used to it now and it doesn't hurt me. Most of the stories are untrue, though. Mr. Daly was a pretty considerable ruffian when he was in drink. But he wasn't the monster he's been made out to be, and he couldn't help himself, poor, poisoned man. But which story have you read, Mary?" "None at all. Only Dr. Morton Sims, when he wrote, told me that you had suffered, that your husband, that----" "That Patrick was an alcoholic. Yes, that's the main fact. He did a dreadful thing when he became insane through drink. There's no need to speak of it. But I loved him dearly all the same. He might have been such a noble man!" "Ah, that's just what I feel about my dear boy. He's not as bad as--as some people. But he does drink quite dreadfully. I hate telling you. It seems a sort of treachery to him. But you may be able to help me." "I knew," Mrs. Daly said with a sigh. "The doctor has told me in confidence. I'd do anything to help you, dear girl. Your husband's poems have been such a help and comfort to me in hours of sadness and depression. Oh, what a dreadful scourge it is! this frightful thing that seizes on noble and ignoble minds alike! It is the black horror of the age, the curse of nations, the ruin of thousands upon thousands. If only the world would realise it!" "No one seems to realise the horror except those who have suffered dreadfully from it." "More people do than you think, Mary, but, still, they are an insignificant part of the whole. People are such fools! I was reading 'Pickwick' the other day, a great English classic and a work of genius, too, in its way, I suppose. The principal characters get drunk on every other page. Things are better now, as far as books are concerned, though the comic newspapers keep up their ghastly fun about drunken folk. But the cause of Temperance isn't a popular one, here or in my own country." "A teetotaller is so often called a fanatic in England," Mary said. "I know it well. But I say this, with entire conviction, absolute bed-rock certainty, my dear, the people who have joined together to go without alcohol themselves and to do all they can to fight it, are in the right whatever people may say of them. And it doesn't matter what people say either. As in all movements, there is a lot of error and mistaken energy. The Bands of Hope, the Blue Ribbon Army, the Rechabites are not always wise. Some of them make total abstinence into a religion and think that alcohol is the only Fiend to fight against. Most of them--as our own new scientific party think--are fighting on wrong lines. That's to say they are not doing a tenth as much good as they might do, because the scientific remedy has not become real to them. That will come though, if we can bring it about. But I tire you?" "Please go on." "Well, you know our theory. It is a certain remedy. You can't stop alcohol. But by making it a penal offence for drunkards to have children, drunkenness must be almost eliminated in time." "Yes," Mary said. "Of course, I have read all about it. But I know so little of science. But what is the _individual_ cure? Is there none, then? Oh, surely if it is a disease it can be cured? Dr. Morton Sims tried to be encouraging, but I could see that he didn't think there really _was_ much chance for a man who is a slave to drink. It is splendid, of course, to think that some day it may all be eliminated by science. But meanwhile, when women's hearts are bleeding for men they love . . ." Her voice broke and faltered. Her heart was too full for further speech. The good woman at her side kissed her tenderly. "Do not grieve," she said. "Listen. I told you just now that so many of the great Temperance organisations err in their rejection of scientific advice and scientific means to a great end. They place their trust in God, forgetting that science only exists by God's will and that every discovery made by men is only God choosing to reveal Himself to those who search for Him. But the Scientists are wrong, too, in their rejection--in so many cases--of God. They do not see that Religion and Science are not only non-antagonistic, but really complement each other. It is beginning to be seen, though. In time it will be generally recognised. I read the admission of a famous scientist the other day, to this effect. He said, 'It is generally recognised that any form of treatment in which the "occult," the "supernatural," or anything secret or mysterious is allowed to play a dominant part in so neurotic an affection as inebriety, often succeeds.' And he closed a most helpful and able essay on the arrest of alcohol with something like these words: "'The reference to agencies for the uplifting of the drink-victim would be sadly incomplete without a very definite acknowledgment of the incalculable assistance which the wise worker and unprejudiced physician may obtain by bringing to bear upon the whole life of the patient that Power, the majesty and mystery, the consolation and inspiration of which it is the mission of religion to reveal.'" "Then even the doctors are coming round?" Mary said. "And it means exactly, you would say--?" "I would tell you what has been proved without possibility of dispute a thousand times. I would tell you that when all therapeutic agencies have failed, the Holy Spirit has succeeded. The Power which is above every other power can do this. No loving heart need despair. However black the night _that_ influence can enlighten it. Ask those who work among the desolate and oppressed; the outcast and forlorn, the drink-victims and criminals. Ask, here in England, old General Booth or Prebendary Carlile. Ask the clergy of the Church in the London Docks, ask the Nonconformist ministers, ask the Priests of the Italian Mission who work in the slums. "They will tell you of daily miracles of conversion and transformations as marvellous and mystical as ever Jesus wrought when He was visible on earth. Mary! It goes on to-day, it _does_ go on. There is the only cure, the only salvation. Jesus." There was a passionate fervour in her voice, a divine light upon her face. She also prophesied, and the Spirit of God was upon her as upon the holy women of old. And Mary caught that holy fire also. Her lips were parted, her eyes shone. She re-echoed the sacred Name. "I would give my life to save Gilbert," she said. "I have no dear one to save, now," the other answered. "But I would give a thousand lives if I had them to save America from Alcohol. I love my land! There is much about my country that the ordinary English man or woman has no glimmering of. Your papers are full of the extravagances and divorces of wealthy vulgarians--champagne corks floating on cess-pools. You read of trusts and political corruption. These are the things that are given prominence by the English newspapers. But of the deep true heart of America little is known here. We are not really a race of money-grubbers and cheap humourists. We are great, we shall be greater. The lamps of freedom burn clearly in the hearts of millions of people of whom Europe never hears. God is with us still! The Holy Spirit broods yet over the forests and the prairies, the mountains and the rivers of my land. Read the 'Choir Invisible' by James Lane Allen and learn of us who are America." "I will, dear Mrs. Daly. How you have comforted me to-night! God sent you to me. I feel quite happy now about my darling sister. I feel much happier about my husband. Whatever this life has in store, there is always the hereafter. It seems very close to-night, the veil wears thin." "We will rest, Mary, while these good thoughts and hopes remain within us. But before we go to bed, listen to this." Julia Daly felt in her dressing bag and withdrew a small volume bound in vermilion morocco. "It's your best English novel," she said, "far and away the greatest--Charles Reade's 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' I mean. I'm reading it for the fifth time. For five years now I have done so each year." "For ever?" she began in her beautiful voice, that voice which had brought hope to so many weary hearts in the great Republic of the West. "'For ever? Christians live "for ever," and love "for ever" but they never part "for ever." They part, as part the earth and sun, only to meet more brightly in a little while. You and I part here for life. And what is our life? One line in the great story of the Church, whose son and daughter we are; one handful in the sand of time, one drop in the ocean of "For ever." Adieu--for the little moment called "a life!" We part in trouble, we shall meet in peace; we part in a world of sin and sorrow, we shall meet where all is purity and love divine; where no ill passions are, but Christ is, and His Saints around Him clad in white. There, in the turning of an hour-glass, in the breaking of a bubble, in the passing of a cloud, she, and thou, and I shall meet again; and sit at the feet of angels and archangels, apostles and saints, and beam like them with joy unspeakable, in the light of the shadow of God upon His throne, for ever--and ever--and ever.'" The two women undressed and said their prayers, making humble supplication at the Throne of Grace for themselves, those they loved and for all those from whom God was hidden. And as the train bore them through Nimes and Arles, Avignon and the old Roman cities of southern France, they slept as simple children sleep. CHAPTER VI GILBERT LOTHIAN'S DIARY "It comes very glibly off the tongue to say, 'Put yourself in his position,'--'What would you have done under the circumstances?' but if self-analysis is difficult, how much more so is it to appreciate the 'Ego' of another, to penetrate within the veil of the maimed and debased inner temple of the debauched inebriate?"--"_The Psychology of the Alcoholic_," by T. Claye Shawe, M.D., F.R.C.P., Lecturer on psychological medicine. St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. "Like one, that on a lonesome road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread." --_Coleridge._ When Mary Lothian returned home to Mortland Royal she was very unwell. The strain of watching over Lady Davidson, and the wrench of a parting which in this world was to be a final one, proved more than she was able to endure. She had been out of doors, imprudently, during that dangerous hour on the Riviera between sunset and nine o'clock. Symptoms of that curious light fever, with its sharp nervous pains, which is easily contracted at such times along the Côte d'Azur, began to show themselves. Dr. Morton Sims was away in Paris for a few weeks upon a scientific engagement he was unable to refuse, and Mary was attended by Dr. Heywood, the general practitioner from Wordingham. There was nothing very serious the matter, but the Riviera fever brings collapse and great depression of spirits with it. Mary remained in bed, lying there in a dreamy, depressed state of both physical and mental faculties. She read but little, preferred to be alone as much as possible, and found it hard to take a lively interest in anything at all. Gilbert was attentive enough. He saw that every possible thing was done for her comfort. But his manner was nervous and staccato, though he made great efforts at calm. He was assiduous, eager to help and suggest, but there was no repose about him. In her great longing for rest and solitude--a necessary physical craving resulting upon her illness--Mary hardly wanted to see very much even of Gilbert. She was too weak and dispirited to remonstrate with him, but it was quite obvious to her experienced eyes that he was drinking heavily again. His quite unasked-for references to the fact that he was taking nothing but a bottle of beer in the middle of the morning, a little claret at meals and a single whiskey and soda before going to bed, betrayed him at once. His tremulous anxiety, his furtive manner, the really horrible arrogation of gaiety and ease made upon a most anxious hope that he was deceiving her, told their own tale. So did the heavy puffed face, yellowish red and with spots appearing upon it. His eyes seemed smaller as the surrounding tissues were dilated, they were yellowish, streaked with little veins of blood at the corners, and dull in expression. His head jerked, his hands trembled and when he touched her they were hot and damp. Her depression of mind, her sense of hopelessness, were greatly increased. Darkness seemed to be closing round her, and prayer--for it happens thus at times with even the most saintly souls--gave little relief. "I shall be better soon," she kept repeating to herself. "The doctor says so. Then, when I am well, I shall be able to take poor Gillie really in hand. It won't be long now. Then I will save him with God's help." In her present feebleness she knew that it was useless to attempt to do anything in this direction. So she pretended to believe her husband, said nothing at all, and prayed earnestly to recover her health that she might set about the task of succour. She did not know, had not the very slightest idea, of Lothian's real state. Nobody knew, nobody could know. On his part, freed of all restraint, his mind a cave of horror, a chamber of torture, he drank with lonely and systematic persistence. It was about this time that he began to make these notes in the form of a diary which long afterwards passed into the hands of Dr. Morton Sims. The record of heated horror, the extraordinary glimpse into an inferno incredible to the sane man, has proved of immense value to those who are engaged in studying the psychology of the inebriate. From much that they contain, it is obvious that the author had no intention of letting them be seen by any other eyes than his own, at the time of writing them. Dr. Morton Sims had certainly suggested the idea in the first place, but there can be no doubt whatever that Lothian soon abandoned his original plan and wrote for the mere relief of doing so, and doubtless with a sinister fascination at the spectacle of his own mind thus revealed by subtle analysis and the record of a skilled pen. Alcoholised and impaired as his mind was, it was nevertheless quite capable of doing this accurately and forcibly, and there are many corroborative instances of such an occurrence. More than one medical man during the progress of a protracted death agony has left minute statements of his sensations for the good of Society. Such papers as these, for use in a book which has an appeal to all sorts of people, cannot, of course, be printed entire. There are things which it would serve no good purpose for the layman to know, valuable as they are to the patient students of morbid states. And what can be given is horrible enough. The selected passages follow herewith, and with only such comment as is necessary to elucidate the text. . . . Last night a letter came from a stranger, one of the many that I get, thanking me for some of the poems in "Surgit Amari" which he said had greatly solaced and helped him throughout a period of mental distress. When I opened the letter it was after dinner, and I had dined well--my appetite keeps good at any rate, and while that is so there is no fear of it--according to the doctors and the medical books. I opened the letter and read it without much interest. I am not so touched and pleased by these letters as I used to be. Then, after I had said good-night to my wife, I went into the library. After two or three whiskies and a lot of cigarettes the usual delusion of greatness and power came over me. I know, of course, that I have great power and am in a way celebrated, but at ordinary times I have no overmastering consciousness and bland, suave pride in this. When I am recovering from the effects of too much alcohol I doubt everything. My own work seems to me trivial and worthless, void of life and imitations of greater work. Well, I had the usual quickening, but vague and incoherent sense of greatness, and I picked up the letter again. I walked up and down the room smoking furiously, and then I had some more whiskey. The constant walking up and down the room, by the way, is a well-marked symptom of my state. The nerves refuse me calm. I can't sit down for long, even with the most alluring book. Some thought comes into my mind like a stone thrown suddenly into a pool, and before I am aware of it I am marching up and down the room like a forest beast in a cage. When I had read the letter twice more I sat down and wrote a most effusive reply to my correspondent. I almost wept as I read it. I went into high things, I revealed myself and my innermost thoughts with the grave kindness and wish to be of help that a great and good man; intimate with a lesser and struggling man; might use. In the morning I read the letter which I had thought so wonderful. As usual, I tore it up. It was written in a handwriting which might have betrayed drunkenness to a child. Long words lacked a syllable, words ending in "ing" were concluded by a single stroke, the letter "l" was the same size as the letter "e" and could not be distinguished from it. But what was worse, was the sickly sentiment, expressed in the most feeble sloppy prose. It was sort of educated Chadband or Stiggins and there was an appalling lack of reticence. It is a marked symptom of my state, that when I am drunk I always want to write effusive letters to strangers or mere acquaintances. Sometimes, if I have been reading a book that I liked, I sit down and turn out pages of gush to the unknown author, hailing him as a brother and a master. Thank goodness I always tear the wretched things up next day. It is a good thing I live in the country. In London these wretched letters, which I am impelled to write, would be in some adjacent pillar box before I realised what I had done. Oh, to be a sane man, a member of the usual sane army of the world who never do these things! The above passage must have been re-read some time after it was written and been the _raison d'être_ of what follows. The various passages are only occasionally dated, but their chronological order can be determined with some certainty by these few dates, changes of handwriting, and above all by the progress and interplay of thought. It had not occurred to me before, with any strength that is, how very far my inner life diverges now from ordinary paths! It is, I see in a moment such as the present when I am able to contemplate it, utterly abnormal. I am glad to realise this for a time. It is so intensely interesting from the psychologist's point of view. I can so very, very rarely realise it. Immediately that I slip back into the abnormal life, long custom and habit reassert themselves and I become quite unaware that it is abnormal. I live mechanically according to the _bizarre_ and fantastic rules imposed upon me by drink. Now, for a time, I have a breathing space. I have left the dim green places under the sea and my head is above water. I see the blue sky and feel the winds of the upper world upon my face. I used to belong up there, now I am an inhabitant of the under world, where the krakens and the polyps batten in their sleep and no light comes. I will therefore use my little visit to "glimpse the moon" like the Prince of Denmark's sepulchral father. I will catalogue the ritual of the under world which has me fast. I will, that is, write as much as I can. Before very long my eyes will be tired and little black specks will dance in front of them. The dull pain in my side--cirrhosis of course--which is quiet and feeding now--will begin again. Something in my head, at the back of the skull on the left hand side--so it seems--will begin to throb and ache. Little shooting pains will come in my knees and round about my ankles and drops of perspiration which taste bitter as brine will roll down my face. And, worse than all, the fear of It will commence. Slight "alcoholic tremors" will hint of what might be. After a few minutes I shall feel that it is going to be. I will define all that I mean by "It" another time. Well, then I shall send "It" and all the smaller "Its" to the right about. I shall have two or three strong pegs. Then physical pains, all mental horrors, will disappear at once. But I shall be back again under the sea nevertheless. I shan't realise, as I am realising now, the abnormality of my life. But I should say that I have an hour at least before I need have any more whiskey, before that becomes imperative. So here goes for a revelation more real and minute than de Quincey, though, lamentable fact! in most inferior prose! Here this passage ends. It is obvious from what follows that the period of expected freedom came to an end long before the author expected. Excited by what he proposed to do, he had spent too much of his brief energy in explaining it. Mechanically he had taken more drink to preserve himself upon the surface--the poisoned mind entirely forgetting what it had just set down--and with mathematic certainty the alcohol had plunged the poet once more beneath the ruining waters. The next entry, undated, is written in a more precise and firmer handwriting. It recalls the small and beautiful caligraphy of the old days. There is no preamble to the bald and hideous confession of mental torture. I wish that my imagination was not so horribly acute and vivid when it is directed towards horrors--as indeed it always seems to be now. I wish, too, that I had never talked curiously to loquacious medical friends and read so many medical books. I am always making amateur, and probably perfectly ridiculous, tests for Locomotor Ataxy and General Paralysis--always shrinking in nameless fear from what so often seems the inevitable onslaught of "It." Meanwhile, with these fears never leaving me for a moment, to what an infinity of mad superstitions I am slave! How I strive, by a bitter, and (really) hideously comic, ritual to stave off the inevitable. Oh, I used to love God and trust in Him. I used to pray to Jesus. Now, like any aborigine I only seek to ward off evil, to propitiate the Devil and the Powers of the Air, to drag the Holy Trinity into a forced compliance with my conjuring tricks. _I can hardly distinguish the devil from God._ Both seem my antagonists. Hardly able to distinguish Light from dark, I employ myself with dirty little conjuring tricks. I well know that all these are the phantasms of a disordered brain! I am not really fool enough to believe that God can be propitiated or Satan kept at bay by movements: touchings and charms. But I obey my demon. These things are a foolish network round my every action and thought. I can't get out of the net. Touching, I do not so much mind. In me it is a symptom of alcoholism, but greater people have known it as a mere nervous affection quite apart from drink. Dr. Johnson used to stop and return to touch lamp-posts. In "Lavengro," Borrow has words to say about this impulse--I think it is in Lavengro or it may be in the Spanish book. Borrow used to "touch wood." I began it a long time ago, in jest at something young Ingworth said. I did it as one throws spilt salt over one's shoulder or avoids seeing the new moon through glass. Together with the other things I _have_ to do now, it has become an obsession. I carry little stumps of pencil in all my pockets. Whenever a thought of coming evil, a radiation from the awful cloud of Apprehension comes to me, then I can thrust a finger into the nearest pocket and touch wood. Only a fortnight ago I was frightened out of my senses by the thought that I had never been really touching wood at all. The pencil stumps were all varnished. I had been touching varnish! It took me an hour to scrape all the varnish off with a pocket knife. I must have about twenty stumps in constant use. At night I always put one in the pocket of my pyjama coat--one wakes up with some fear--but, half asleep and lying as I do upon my left side, the pocket is often under me and I can't get to the wood quickly. So I keep my arm stretched out all night and my hand can touch the wooden top of a chair by the bed in a second. I made Tumpany sand-paper all the varnish off the top of the chair too. He thought I was mad. I suppose I am, as a matter of fact. But though I am perfectly aware of the damnable foolishness of it, these things are more real to me than the money-market to a business man. * * * * * If it were only this compulsion to touch wood I should not mind. But there are other tyrannies coincident which are more urgent and compelling. My whole mind--at times--seems taken up by the necessity for ritual actions. I have no time for quiet thought. Everything is broken in upon. There is the Sign of the Cross. I have linked even _that_ in the chain of my terrors. I touch wood and then I make this sign. I do it so often that I have invented all sorts of methods of doing it secretly in public, and quickly when I am alone. I do it in a sort of imaginary way. For instance, I bend my head and in so doing draw an imaginary line with my right eye upon the nearest wall, or upon the page of the book that I am reading. Then I move my head from side to side and make another fictitious line to complete the cross. A propos of making the sign, the imaginary lines nearly always go crooked in my brain. This especially so when I am doing it on a book. I follow two lines of type on both pages and use the seam of the binding between them to make the down strokes. But it hardly ever comes right the first time. I begin to notice people looking at me curiously as I try to get it right and my head moves about. If they only knew! Then another and more satisfactory way--for the imaginary method always makes my head ache for a second or two--I accomplish with the thumb of my right hand moving vertically down the first joint of the index finger, and then laterally. I can do this as often as I like and no one can possibly see me. I have a little copper Cross too, with "In hoc vinces" graved upon it. But I don't like using this much. It is too concrete. It reminds me of the use I am making of the symbol of salvation. "In hoc vinces"! Not I. There are times when I think that I am surely doomed. But I think that the worst of all the foul, senseless, and yet imperative petty lordships I endure, is the dominion of the two numbers. The Dominion of The Two Numbers!--capital letters shall indicate this! For some reason or other I have for years imagined mystical virtue in the number 7 and some maleficent influence in the number 13. These, of course, are old superstitions, but they, and all the others, ride me to a weariness of spirit which is near death. Although I got my first in "Lit. Hum." at Oxford, have read almost everything, and can certainly say that I am a man of wide culture and knowledge, Figures always gave me aversion and distaste. I got an open scholarship at my college and was as near as nothing ploughed in the almost formal preliminary exam of Responsions by Arithmetic. I can't add up my bank-book correctly even now, and I have no sense whatever of financial amounts and affairs. But I am a slave to the good but stern fairy 7 and the hell-hag 13. I attempt lightness and the picturesque. There is really nothing of the sort about my unreasoning and mad servitude. It's bitter, naked, grinning truth. In my bath I sponge myself seven times--first. Then I begin again, but I stop at six in the second series and cross myself upon the breast with the bath sponge. Seven and six make thirteen. If I did not cancel out that thirteen by the sign of the Cross I should walk in fear of some dreadful thing all day. Every time I drink I sip seven times first and then again seven times. When six times comes in the second seven, I make the Cross with my head. My right hand is holding the glass so that the thumb and finger joint method won't work. It would be disastrous to make the sign with the left hand. That is another thing. . . . I use my left hand as little as I can. It frightens me. I _always_ raise a glass to my lips with the right hand. If I use the left hand owing to momentary thoughtlessness, I have to go through a lengthy purification of wood-touching, crossing, and counting numbers. All my habits re-act one upon the other and the rules are added to daily until they have become appallingly intricate. A failure in one piece of ritual entails all sorts of protracted mental and physical gestures in order to put it right. I wonder if other men who drink know this heavy, unceasing slavery which makes the commonest actions of life a burden? I suppose so. It must be so. All drugs have specific actions. Men don't tell, of course. Neither do I! Sometimes, though, when I have gone to some place like the Café Royal, or perhaps one of the clubs which are used by fast men, I have had a disgusting glee when I met men whom I knew drank heavily to think that they had their secrets--must have them--as well as I. On reading through these notes that I have been making now and then, I am, of course, horrified at what they really seem to mean. Put down in black and white they convey--or at least they would convey to anyone who saw them--nothing but an assurance of the fact that I am mad. Yet I am not really mad. I have two lives. . . . I see that I have referred constantly to "It." I have promised myself to define exactly what I mean by "IT." I am writing this immediately after lunch. I didn't get up till eleven o'clock. I am under the influence of twenty-five grains of ammonium bromide. I had a few oysters for lunch and nothing else. I am just about as normal as any man in my state can hope to be. Nevertheless when I come to try and define "It" for myself I am conscious of a deep horror and distrust. My head is above water, I am sane, but so powerful is the influence of the continual FEAR under which I live my days and nights, that even now I am afraid. "It" is a protean thing. More often than not it is a horrible dread of that Delirium Tremens which I have never had, but ought to have had long ago. I have read up the symptoms until I know each one of them. When I am in a very nervous and excited condition--when, for example, I could not face anybody at all and must be alone in my room with my bottle of whiskey--I stare at the wall to see if rats or serpents are running up it. I peer into the corners of the library to detect sheeted corpses standing there. I do not see anything of the sort. Even the imaginings of my fear cannot create them. I am, possibly, personally immune from Delirium Tremens, some people are. All the same, the fear of it racks me and tears me a hundred times a day. If it really seized me it surely would be almost enjoyable! Nothing, at any rate, can be more utterly dreadful than the continual apprehension. Then I have another and always constant fear--these fears, I want to insist, are fantastically intermingled with all the crossings, wood-touchings and frantic calculations I have to do each minute of my life. The other fear is that of Prison. Now I know perfectly well that I have done nothing in my life that could ever bring me near prison. All the same I cannot now hear a strange voice without a start of dread. A knock at the front door of my house unnerves me horribly. I open the door of whatever room I am in and listen with strained, furtive attention, slinking back and closing the door with a sob of relief when I realise that it is nothing more than the postman or the butcher's boy. I can hardly bear to read a novel now, because I so constantly meet with the word "arrest." "He was arrested in the middle of his conversation,"--"She placed an arresting hand upon his arm." . . . These phrases which constantly occur in every book I read fill me with horror. A wild phantasmagoria of pictures passes through my mind. I see myself being led out of my house with gyves upon my wrists like the beastly poem Hood made upon "Eugene Aram." Then there is the drive into Wordingham in a cab. All the officials at the station who know me so well cluster round. I am put into a third class carriage and the blinds are pulled down. At St. Pancras, where I am also known, it is worse. The next day there is the Magistrate's Court and all the papers full of my affair. I know it is all fantastic nonsense--moonshine, wild dream. But it is so appallingly real to me that I sometimes long to have got the trial over and to be sitting with shaven head, wearing coarse prison clothes, in a lonely cell. Then, I think to myself, I should really have peace. The worst would have happened and there would be an end of it all. There would be an end of deadly Fear. I remember "----" telling me at Bruges, where so many _mauvais sujets_ go to kill themselves with alcohol, that wherever he went, night and day, he was always afraid of a tiger that would suddenly appear. He had never experienced Delirium Tremens either. He knew how mad and fantastic this apprehension was but he was quite unable to get rid of it. * * * * * At other times I have the Folie de Grandeur. My reading has told me that this is the sure sign of approaching General Paralysis. General paralysis means that one's brain goes, that one loses control of one's limbs and all acts of volition go. One is simply alive, that is all. One is alive and yet one is fed and pushed about, and put into this place or that as the entomologist would use a snail. So, in all my wild imaginings the grisly fear is never far away. The imaginings are, in themselves, not without interest to a student of the dreadful thing I have become. I always start from one point. That is that I have become suddenly enormously rich. I have invented all sorts of ways in which this might happen, but lately, in order to save trouble, and to have a base to start from I have arranged that Rockefeller, the American oil person, has been so intrigued by something that I have written that he presents me with two million pounds. I start in the possession of two million pounds. I buy myself a baronetcy at once and I also purchase some historic estate. I live the life of the most sporting and beneficent country gentleman that ever was! I see myself correcting the bucolic errors of my colleagues on the Bench at Quarter Sessions. I am a Providence to all the labourers and small farmers. My name is acclaimed throughout the county of which I am almost immediately made Lord Lieutenant. After about five minutes of this prospect I get heartily sick of it. I buy a yacht then. It is as big as an Atlantic liner. I fit it up and make it the most perfect travelling palace the world has ever seen. I go off in it to sail round the globe--to see all the most beautiful things in the world, to suck the last drop of honey that the beauty of unknown seas, fairy continents, fortunate islands can yield. During this progress I am accompanied by charming and beautiful women. Some are intellectual, some are artistic--all are beautiful and charming. I, I myself, am the central star around which all this assiduous charm and loveliness revolve. Another, and very favourite set of pictures, is the one in which I receive the two millions from Mr. Rockefeller--or whoever he is--and immediately make a public renunciation of it. With wise fore-thought I found great pensions for underpaid clergy. I inaugurate societies by means of which authors who could do really artistic work, but are forced to pot-boil in order to live, may take a cheque and work out their great thoughts without any worldly embarrassments. I myself reserve one hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds a year and go and work among the poor in an East-end slum. At the same time I am most anxious that this great renunciation should be widely spoken of. I must be interviewed in all the papers. The disdainful nobility of my sacrifice for Christ's sake must be well advertised. Indeed all my Folies de Grandeur are nothing else but exaggerated megalomania. I must be in the centre of the picture always. Spartan or Sybarite I must be glorified. * * * * * Another symptom which is very marked is that of spasmodic and superstitious prayer. When my heated brain falls away from its kaleidoscopic pictures of grandeur owing to sheer weariness; when my wire-tight nerves are strained to breaking point by the despotism of "touchings," the tyranny of "Thirteen" and "Seven," the nervous misery of the Sign of the Cross, I try to sum up all the ritual and to escape the whole welter of false obligation by spasmodic prayer. I suppose that I say "God-the-Father-help-me" about two or three hundred times a day. I shut my eyes and throw the failing consciousness of myself into the back of my head, and then I say it--in a sort of hot feverish horror, "God-the-Father-help-me." I vary this, too. When my thoughts or my actions have been more despicable than usual, I jerk up an appeal to God the Father. When fluid _sentiment_ is round me it is generally Jesus on whom I call. . . . I cannot write any more of this, it is too horrible even to write. But God knows how true it is! * * * * * This morning I went out for a walk. I was feeling wretchedly ill. I had to go to the Post Office and there I met little O'Donnell, the Rector, and dear old Medley his curate. It was torture to talk to them, to preserve an ordinary appearance. I felt that old Medley's eyes were on me the whole time. I like him very much. I know every corner of his good simple mind as if I had lived in it. He is a good man, and I can't help liking him. He dislikes and distrusts me intensely, however. He doesn't know enough--like Morton Sims for instance--to understand that I want to be good, that I am of his company really. The Rector himself was rather too charming. He fussed away about my poems, asked after Dorothy Davidson at Nice, purred out something that the Duke of Perth had said to him about the verses I had in the "Spectator" a month ago. Yet O'Donnell must know that I drink badly. Neither he nor Medley know, of course, how absolutely submerged I really am. No one ever realises that about a "man who drinks" until they read of his death in the paper. Only doctors, wives, experienced eyes know. I funked Medley's keen old eyes in the Post Office and I couldn't help disgust at O'Donnell's humbug, as I thought it, though it may have been meant kindly. Curious! to fear one good man because he detects and reprobates one's wickedness, to feel contempt for another because he is civil. I hurried away from them and went into the Mortland Royal Arms. Two strong whiskies gave myself back to me. I felt a stupid desire to meet the two clergymen again, with my nerves under proper control--to show them that I was myself. Going back home, however, another nerve wave came over me. I knew how automatic and jerky my movements were really. I knew that each movement of my legs was dictated by a _conscious_ exercise of command from the brain. I imagined that everyone I met--a few labourers--must know it and observe it also. I realise, now that I am safe in my study again, that this was nonsense. They couldn't have seen--or _could_ they? --I am sure of nothing now! . . . It is half an hour ago since I wrote the last words. I began to feel quite drunk and giddy for a moment. I concentrated my intelligence upon the "Telegraph" until the lines became clear and I was appreciating what I read. Now I am fairly "possible" I think. Reading a passage in the leading article aloud seems to tell me that my voice is under control. My face twitched a little when I looked in the mirror over the mantel-shelf, but if I have a biscuit, and go to my room and sponge my face, I think that I shall be able to preserve sufficient grip on myself to see Mary for ten minutes now. Directly my eyes go wrong--I can feel when they are beginning to betray me--I will make an excuse and slip away. Then I'll lunch, and sleep till tea-time. After two cups of strong tea and the sleep, I shall be outwardly right for an hour at least. I might have tea taken up to her room and sit by the bed--if she doesn't want candles brought in. I can be quite all right in the dusk. The next entry of these notes dates, from obvious evidence, three or four days afterwards. They are all written on the loose sheets of thick and highly glazed white paper, which Lothian, always sumptuous in the tools of his work, invariably used. It will be seen that the last paragraphs have, for a moment, strayed into a reminiscence of the hour. That is to say they have recorded not only continuous sensations, but those which were proper to an actual experience. The Notes do so no more. The closing paragraphs that are exhibited here once more fall back into the key of almost terrified interest with which this keen, incisive mind surveys its own ruin. There are no more records of actual happenings. Yet, nevertheless, while Gilbert Lothian was making this accurate diagnosis of his state, it is as well to remember that _there is no prognosis_. He _refuses to look into the future_. He really refuses to give any indication of what is going on in the present. He puts down upon the page the symptoms of his disease. He catalogues the tortures he endures. But in regard to where his state is leading him in his life, what it is all going to result in, he says nothing whatever. Psychologically this is absolutely corroborative and true. He studies himself as a diseased subject and obviously takes a horrible pleasure in writing down all that he endures. But there are things and thoughts so terrible that even the most callous and most poisoned mind dare not chronicle them. While the very last of what was Gilbert Lothian is finding an abnormal pleasure, and perhaps a terrible relief, in the surveyal of his extinguishing personality, the other self, the False Ego--the Fiend Alcohol--was busy with a far more dreadful business. We may regard the excerpts already given, and the concluding ones to come, as really the last of Lothian--until his resurrection. Sometimes a lamp upon the point of expiration flares up for a final second. Then, with a splutter, it goes out. And in the circle of confining glass a dull red glow fades, disappears, and only an ugly, lifeless black circle of exhausted wick is left. I didn't mean in making these notes--confound Morton Sims that he should have suggested such a thing to me!--Well, I didn't mean to bring in any daily happenings. My only idea was, for a sort of pitiful satisfaction to myself, to make a record of what I am going through. It has been a relief to me--that is quite certain. While I have been writing these notes I have had some of the placidity and quiet that I used to know when I was engaged upon purely literary pursuits. I can't write now--that is to say, I can't create. My poetic faculty seems quite to have left me. I write certain letters, to a certain person, but they are no longer the artistic and literary productions that they were in the first stages of my acquaintance with this person. All the music that God gave me is gone out of me now. Well, even this relief is passing, I have more in my mind and heart than will allow me to continue this fugitive journal. Here, obviously, Lothian makes a slight reference to the ghastly obsession which, at this time, must have had him well within its grip. Well, I will round it up with a few final words. * * * * * One thing that strikes me with horror and astonishment is that I have become quite unable to understand how what I am doing, the fact of what I have become, hurts, wounds and makes other people unhappy. I try to put myself--sympathetically--in the place of those who are around me and who must necessarily suffer by my behaviour. _I can't do it._ When I try to do it my mind seems full of grey wool. The other people seem a hundred miles away. Their sentiments, emotions, wishes--their love for me . . . It is significant that here Lothian uses the plural pronoun as if he was afraid of the singular. --dwindle to vanishing point. I used to be able to be sympathetic to the sorrows and troubles of almost everyone I met. I remember once after helping a man in this village to die comfortably, after sitting with him for hours and hours and hours during the progress of a most loathsome disease after closing his eyes, paying for his poor burial and doing all I could to console his widow and his daughters, that the widow and the daughters spoke bitterly about me and my wife--who had been so good to them--because one of our servants had returned the cream they sent to the kitchen because it was of inferior quality. These poor women actually made themselves unpleasant. For a day at least I was quite angry. It seemed so absolutely ungrateful when my wife and I had done everything for them for so long. But, I remember quite well, how I thought out the whole petty little incident one night when I was out with Tumpany after the wild geese. We were waiting in a cold midnight when scurrying clouds passed beneath the moon. It was bitter cold and my gun barrels burnt like fire. I thought it out with great care, and on the icy marshes a sort of understanding of narrow brains and unimaginative natures came to me. The next day I told my servants to still continue taking cream from the widow, and I have been friendly and kind to her ever since. But now, I can't possibly get into the mind of anyone else with sympathy. I think only of myself, of my own desires, of my own state. . . . * * * * * Although I doubt it in my heart of hearts, I must put it upon record that I still have a curious and ineradicable belief that I can, by a mere effort of volition, get rid of all the horrors that surround me and become good and normal once more. When I descend into the deepest depths of all I am yet conscious of a little jerky, comfortable, confidential nudge from something inside me. "You'll be all right," it says. "When you want to stop you will be able to all right!" This false confidence, though I know it to be utterly false, never deserts me in moments of exhilarated drunkenness. And finally, I add, that when my brain is becoming exhausted the last moment before stupor creeps over it, I constantly make the most supreme and picturesque pronunciations of my wickedness. I could not pray the words aloud--or at least if I did they would be somewhat tumbled and incoherent--but I mentally pray them. I wring my hands, I abase my soul and mind, I say the Pater Noster and the Credo, I stretch out my hot hands, and I give it all up for ever and ever and ever. I tumble into bed with a sigh of unutterable relief. The Fiend that stands beside my bed on all ordinary nights assumes the fantastic aspect of an angel. I fall into my drunken sleep, murmuring that "there is joy in Heaven when one sinner repenteth." I wake up in the morning full of evil thoughts, blear-eyed, and trembling. I am a mockery of humanity, longing, crying for poison. There is only a dull and almost contemptuous memory of the religious ecstasies of the night before. My dreams, my confession, have not the slightest influence upon me. I don't fall again into ruining habits--I continue them, without restraint, without sorrow. * * * * * I will write no more. I am adding another Fear to all the other Fears. I have been making a true picture of what I am, and it is so awful that even my blinded eyes cannot bear to look upon it. Thus these notes, in varying handwriting, indicating the ebb and flow of poison within the brain, cease and say no more. At the bottom of the last page--which was but half filled by the concluding words of the Confession--there is something most terribly significant, most horrible to look at in the light of after events. There is a greenish splash upon the glossy paper, obviously whiskey was spilt there. Beginning in the area of the splashed circle, the ink running, a word of four letters is written. Two letters are cloudy, the others sharp and clear. The word is "Rita." A little lower down, and now right at the bottom of the page, the word is repeated again in large tremulous handwriting, three times. "Rita, Rita, Rita!" The last "Rita" sprawls and tumbles towards the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Two exclamation marks follow it, and it is heavily underscored three times. CHAPTER VII INGWORTH REDUX: TOFTREES COMPLACENS "Les absents ont toujours tort." --_Proverb._ Mr. Herbert Toftrees was at work in the splendidly furnished library of his luxuriously appointed flat at Lancaster Gate--or at least that is how he would have put it in one of his stories, while, before _her_ Remington in the breakfast room Mrs. Herbert Toftrees would have rapped out a detailed description of the furniture. The morning was dark and foggy. The London pavements had that disgustingly cold-greasy feeling beneath the feet that pedestrians in town know well at this time of year. Within the library, with its double windows that shut out all noise, a bright fire of logs burned in the wide tiled hearth. One electric pendant lit the room and another burned in a silver lamp upon the huge writing table covered with crimson leather at which the author sat. The library was a luxurious place. The walls were covered with books--mostly in series. The Complete Scott, the Complete Dickens, the Complete Thackeray reposed in gilded fatness upon the shelves. Between the door and one of the windows one saw every known encyclopedia, upon another wall-space were the shelves containing those classical French novels with which "culture" is supposed to have a nodding acquaintance--in translations. Toftrees threw away his cigarette and sank into his padded chair. The outside world was raw and cold. Here, the fire of logs was red, the lamps threw a soft radiance throughout the room, and the keyboard of the writing-machine had a dapper invitation. "Confound it, I _must_ work," Toftrees said aloud, and at once proceeded to do so. To his left, upon the table, in something like an exaggerated menu holder was a large piece of white cardboard. At the moment Toftrees and his wife were engaged in tossing off "Claire" which went into its fifth hundred thousand, at six-pence, within the year. The sheet of cardboard bore the names of the principal characters in the story, and what they looked like, in case the prolific author should forget. There was also marked upon the card, in red ink, exactly how far Toftrees had got with the plot--which was copied out in large round hand, for instant reference, by his secretary upon another card. Clipped on to the typewriter was a note which ran as follows: Chapter VII. Book V. Love scene between Claire and Lord Quinton. To run, say, 2,000 words. Find Biblical chapter caption. Mrs. T. at work on Chapter 145 in epilogue--discovery by Addie that Lord Q is really John Boone. With experienced eyes, Toftrees surveyed the morning's work-menu as arranged by Miss Jones from painstaking scrutiny and dovetailing of the husband and wife's work on the preceding day. "Biblical chapter caption"--that should be done at once. Toftrees stretched out his hand and took down a "Cruden's Concordance." It was nearly two years ago now that he had discovered the Bible as an almost unworked mine for chapter headings. "Love! hm, hm, hm,--why not 'Love one another'--? Yes, that would do. It was simple, direct, and expressed the sentiment of chapter VII. If there were any reason against it Miss Jones would spot it at once. She would find another quotation and so make it right." Now then, to work! "Claire, I am leaving here the day after to-morrow." "Yes?" "Have you no idea, cannot you guess what it is that I have come to say to you?" He moved nearer to her and for a moment rested his hand on her arm. "I have no idea," she told him with great gravity of manner. "I have come to ask you to be my wife. Ah, wait before you bid me be silent. I love you--you surely cannot have failed to see that?--I love you, Claire!" "Do not," she interrupted, putting up a warning hand. "I cannot hear you." "But you must. Forgive me, you shall. I love you as I never loved any woman in my life, and I am asking you to be my wife." "You do me much honour, Lord Quinton," she returned--and was it his fancy that made it seem to him that her lips curled a little?--"but the offer you make me I must refuse." "Refuse!" There was almost amusing wonder and a good deal of anger in his tone and look. "You force me to repeat the word--refuse." "And why?" "I do not want to marry you." "You do not love me?"--incredulously. "I do not love you,"--colouring slightly. "But I would teach you, Claire"--catching her arm firmly in his hold now and drawing her to him,--"I would teach you. I can give you all and more of wealth and luxury than----" "Hush! And please let go my arm. If you could give me the world it would make no difference." "Claire, reconsider it! During the whole of my life I have never really wanted to marry any other woman. I will own that I have flirted and played at love." "No passport to my favour, I assure you, Lord Quinton." "Pshaw! I tell you women were all alike to me, all to be amusing and amused with, all so many butterflies till I met you. I won't mind admitting"--making his most fatal step--"that even when I first saw you--and it was not easy to do considering Warwick Howard kept you well in the background--I only thought of your sweet eyes and lovely face. But after--after--Oh, Claire, I learned to love you!" "Enough!" cried the girl-- And enough also said the Remington, for the page was at an end. Toftrees withdrew it with a satisfied smile and glanced down it. "Yes!" he thought to himself, "the short paragraph, the quick conversation, that's what they really want. A paragraph of ten consecutive lines would frighten them out of their lives. Their minds wouldn't carry from the beginning to the end. We know!" At that moment there was a knock at the door and the butler entered. Smithers was a good servant and he enjoyed an excellent place, but it was the effort of his life to conceal from his master and mistress that he read Shakespeare in secret, and, in that household, his sense of guilt induced an almost furtive manner which Toftrees could never quite understand. "Mr. Dickson Ingworth has called, sir," said Smithers. "Ask him to come in," Toftrees said in his deep voice, and with a glint of interest in his eye. Young Dickson Ingworth had been back from his journalistic mission to Italy for two or three weeks. His articles in the "Daily Wire" had attracted a good deal of attention. They were exceedingly well done, and Herbert Toftrees was proud of his protégé. He did not know--no one knew--that the Denstone master on the committee was a young man with a vivid and picturesque style who had early realised Ingworth's incompetence as mouthpiece of the expedition and representative of the Press. The young gentleman in question, anxious only for the success of the mission, had written nearly all Ingworth's stuff for him, and that complacent parasite was now reaping the reward. But there was another, and greater, reason for Toftrees' welcome. Old Mr. Ingworth had died while his nephew was in Rome. The young man was now a squire in Wiltshire, owner of a pleasant country house, a personage. "Ask Mr. Dickson Ingworth in here," Toftrees said again. Ingworth came into the library. He wore a morning coat and carried a silk hat--the tweeds and bowler of bohemia discarded now. An unobtrusive watch chain of gold had taken the place of the old silver-buckled lip-strap, and a largish black pearl nestled in the folds of his dark tie. He seemed, in some subtle way, to have expanded and become less boyish. A certain gravity and dignity sat well upon his fresh good looks and the slight hint of alien blood in his features was less noticeable than ever. Toftrees shook his young friend warmly by the hand. The worthy author was genuinely pleased to see the youth. He had done him a good service recently, pleased to exercise patronage of course, but out of pure kindness. Ingworth would not require any more help now, and Toftrees was glad to welcome him in a new relation. Toftrees murmured a word or two of sorrow at Ingworth's recent bereavement and the bereaved one replied with suitable gravity. His uncle's sudden death had been a great grief to him. He would have given much to have been in England at the time. "And the end?" asked Toftrees in a low voice of sympathy. "Quite peaceful, I am glad to say, quite peaceful." "That must be a great consolation!" This polite humbug disposed of, both men fell immediately into bright, cheerful talk. The new young squire was bubbling over with exhilaration, plans for the future, the sense of power, the unaccustomed and delightful feeling of solidity and _security_. He told his host, over their cigars, that the estate would bring him in about fifteen or sixteen hundred a year; that the house was a fine old Caroline building--who his neighbours were, and so on. "Then I suppose you'll give up literature?" Toftrees asked. Dickson Ingworth was about to assent in the most positive fashion to this question, when he remembered in whose presence he was, and his native cunning--"diplomacy" is the better word for a man with a Caroline mansion and sixteen hundred a year--came to his aid. "Oh, no," he said, "not entirely. I couldn't, you know. But I shall be in a position now only to do my best work!" Toftrees assented with pleasure. The trait interested him. "I'm glad of that," he said. "To the artist, life without expression is impossible." Toftrees spoke quite sincerely. Although his own production was not of a high order he was quite capable of genuine appreciation of greater and more serious writers. It does not follow--as shallow thinkers tell us--that because a man does not follow his ideal that he is without one at all. They smoked cigars and talked. As a matter of form the host offered Ingworth a drink, which was refused; they were neither of them men who took alcohol between meals from choice. They chatted upon general matters for a time. "And what of our friend the Poet?" Toftrees asked at length, with a slight sneer in his voice. Ingworth flushed up suddenly and a look of hate came into his curious eyes. The acute man of the world noticed it in a second. Before Ingworth had left for his mission in Italy, he had been obviously changing his views about Gilbert Lothian. He had talked him over with Toftrees in a depreciating way. Even while he had been staying at Mortland Royal he had made confidences about Lothian's habits and the life of his house in letters to the popular author--while he was eating the Poet's salt. But Toftrees saw now that there was something deeper at work. Was it, he wondered, the old story of benefits forgot, the natural instinct of the baser type of humanity to bite the hand that feeds? Toftrees knew how lavish with help and kindness Lothian had been to Dickson Ingworth. For himself, he detested Lothian. The bitter epigrams Lothian had made upon him in a moment of drunken unconsciousness were by no means forgotten. The fact that Lothian had probably never meant them was nothing. They had some truth in them. They were uttered by a superior mind, they stung still. "Oh, he's no friend of mine," Ingworth said in a bitter voice. "Really? I know, of course, that you have disapproved of much that Mr. Lothian seems to be doing just now, but I thought you were still friends. It is a pity. Whatever he may do, there are elements of greatness in the man." "He is a blackguard, Toftrees, a thorough blackguard." "I _am_ sorry to hear that. Well, you needn't have any more to do with him, need you? He isn't necessary to your literary career any more. And even if you had not come into your inheritance, your Italian work has put you in quite a different position." Ingworth nodded. He puffed quickly at his cigar. He was bursting with something, as the elder and shrewder man saw, and if he was not questioned he would come out with it in no time. There was silence for a space, and, as Toftrees expected, it was broken by Ingworth. "Look here, Toftrees," he said, "you are discreet and I can trust you." The other made a grave inclination of his head--it was coming now! "Very well. I don't want to say anything about a man whom I have liked, and who _has_ been kind to me. But there are times when one really must speak, whatever the past may have been--aren't there?" Toftrees saw the last hesitation and removed it. "Oh, he'll get over that drinking habit," he said, though he knew well that Ingworth was not bursting with that alone. "It's bad, of course, that such a man should drink. I was horribly upset--and so was my wife--at that dinner at the Amberleys'. But he'll get over it. And after all you know--poets!" "It isn't that, Toftrees. It's a good deal worse than that. In fact I really do want your advice." "My dear fellow you shall have it. We are friends, I hope, though not of long standing. Fire away." "Well, then, it's just this. Lothian's wife is one of the most perfect women I have ever met. She adores him. She does everything for him, she's clever and good looking, sympathetic and kind." Toftrees made a slight, very slight, movement of repugnance. He was a man who was temperamentally well-bred, born into a certain class of life. He might make a huge income by writing for housemaids at sixpence, but old training and habit became alive. One did not listen to intimate talk about other men's wives. But the impulse was only momentary, a result of heredity. His interest was too keen for it to last. "Yes?" "Lothian doesn't care a bit for his wife--he can't. I know all about it, and I've seen it. He's doing a most blackguardly thing. He's running after a girl. Not any sort of girl, but a _lady_."-- Toftrees grinned mentally, he saw how it was at once with the lad. "No?" he said. "Indeed, yes. She's a sweet and innocent girl whom he's getting round somehow or other by his infernal poetry and that. He's compromising her horribly and she can't see it. I've, I've seen something of her lately and I've tried to tell her as well as I could. But she doesn't take me seriously enough. She's not really in love with Lothian--I don't see how any young and pretty girl could really be in love with a man who looks like he's beginning to look. But they write--they've been about together in the most dreadfully compromising way. One never knows how far it may go. For the sake of the nicest girl I have ever known it ought to be put a stop to." Toftrees smiled grimly. He knew who the girl was now, and he saw how the land lay. Young Ingworth was in love and frightened to death of his erstwhile friend's influence over the girl. That was natural enough. "Suppose any harm were to come to her," Ingworth continued with something very like a break in his voice. "She's quite alone and unprotected. She is the daughter of a man who was in the Navy, and now she has to earn her own living as an assistant librarian in Kensington. A man like Lothian who can talk, and write beautiful letters--damned scoundrel and blackguard!" Toftrees was not much interested in his young friend's stormy love-affairs. But he _was_ interested in the putting of a spoke into Gilbert Lothian's wheel. And he had a genuine dislike and disgust of intrigue. A faithful husband to a faithful wife whose interests were identical with his, the fact of a married man of his acquaintance running after some little typewriting girl whose people were not alive to look after her, seemed abominable. Nice girls should not be used so. He thought of dodges and furtive meetings, sly telephone calls, and anxious country expeditions with a shudder. And if he thanked God that he was above these things, it was perhaps not a pharisaical gratitude that animated him. "Look here," he said suddenly. "You needn't go on, Ingworth. I know who it is. It's Miss Wallace, of the Podley Library. She was at the Amberleys' that night when Lothian made such a beast of himself. She writes a little, too. Very pretty and charming girl!" Ingworth assented eagerly. "Yes!" he cried, "that's just it! She's clever. She's intrigued by Lothian. She doesn't _love_ him, she told me so yesterday----" He stopped, suddenly, realising what he had said. Toftrees covered his confusion in a moment. Toftrees wanted to see this to the end. "No, no," he said with assumed impatience. "Of course, she knows that Lothian is married, and, being a decent girl, she would never let her feelings--whatever they may be--run away with her. She's dazzled. That's what it is, and very natural, too! But it ought to be stopped. As a matter of fact, Ingworth, I saw them together at the Metropole at Brighton one night. They had motored down together. And I've heard that they've been seen about a lot in London at night. Most people know Lothian by sight, and such a lovely girl as Miss Wallace everyone looks at. From what I saw, and from what I've heard, they are very much in love with each other." "It's a lie," Ingworth answered. "She's not in love with him. I know it! She's been led away to compromise herself, poor dear girl, that's all." Now, Toftrees arose in his glory, so to speak. "I'll put a stop to it," he said. The emperor of the sixpenny market was once more upon his virtuous throne. His deep voice was rich with promise and power. "I know Mr. Podley," he said. "I have met him a good many times lately. We are on the committee of the 'Pure Penny Literature Movement.' He is a thoroughly good and fatherly man. He's quite without culture, but his instincts are all fine. I will take him aside to-night and tell him of the danger--you are right, Ingworth, it is a real and subtle danger for that charming girl--that his young friend is in. Podley is her patron. She has no friends, no people, I understand. She is dependent for her livelihood upon her place at the Kensington Library. He will tell her, and I am sure in the kindest way, that she must not have anything more to do with our Christian poet, or she will lose her situation." Ingworth thought for a moment. "Thanks awfully," he said, almost throwing off all disguise now. Then he hesitated--"But that might simply throw her into Lothian's arms," he said. Toftrees shook his head. "I shall put it to Mr. Podley," he said, "and he, being receptive of other people's ideas and having few of his own, will repeat me, to point out the horrors of a divorce case, the utter ruin if Mrs. Lothian were to take action." Ingworth rose from his seat. "To-night?" he said. "You're to see this Podley to-night?" "Yes." "Then when do you think he will talk to Rit--to Miss Wallace?" "I think I can ensure that he will do so before lunch to-morrow morning." "You will be doing a kind and charitable thing, Toftrees," Ingworth answered, making a calculation which brought him to the doors of the Podley Institute at about four o'clock on the afternoon of the morrow. Then he took his leave, congratulating himself that he had moved Toftrees to his purpose. It was an achievement! Rita would be frightened now, frightened from Gilbert for ever. The thing was already half done. "Mine!" said Mr. Dickson Ingworth to himself as he got into a taxi-cab outside Lancaster Gate. "I think I shall cook master Lothian's goose very well to-night," Herbert Toftrees thought to himself. Mixed motives on both sides. Half bad, perhaps, half good. Who shall weigh out the measures but God? Ingworth was madly in love with Rita Wallace, who had become very fond of him. He was young, handsome, was about to offer her advantageous and honourable marriage. Ingworth's passion was quite good and pure. Here he rose above himself. "All's fair"--treacheries grow small when they assist one's own desire and can be justified upon the score of morality as well. Toftrees was outside the fierce burning of flames beyond his comprehension. He was a cog-wheel in the machinery of this so swiftly-weaving loom. But he also paid himself both ways--as he felt instinctively. He and his wife owed this upstart and privately disreputable poet a rap upon the knuckles. He would administer it to-night. And it was a _duty_, no less than a fortunate opportunity, to save a good and charming girl from a scamp. When Toftrees told his wife all about it at lunch that morning she quite agreed, and, moreover, gave him valuable feminine advice as to the conduct of the private conversation with Podley. CHAPTER VIII THE AMNESIC DREAM-PHASE "In the drunkenness of the chronic alcoholic the higher brain centres are affected more readily and more profoundly than the rest of the nervous system, with the result that the drinker, despite the derangement of his consciousness, is capable of apparently deliberate and purposeful acts. It is in this dream-state, which may last a considerable time, that the morbid impulses of the alcoholic are most often carried into effect." _The Criminology of Alcoholism_ by William C. Sullivan, M.D., Medical Officer H.M. Prison Service. "The confirmed toper, who is as much the victim of drug-habit as the opium eater, may have amnesic dream phases, during which he may commit automatically offensive acts while he is mentally irresponsible." _Medico-Legal Relations of Alcoholism_ by Stanley B. Atkinson, M.A., M.B., B.Sc. Barrister at Law. At nine o'clock one evening Lothian went into his wife's room. It was a bitterly cold night and a knife-like wind was coming through the village from the far saltings. There was a high-riding moon but its light was fitful and constantly obscured by hurrying clouds. Mary was lying in bed, patiently and still. She was not yet better. Dr. Heywood was a little puzzled at her continued listlessness and depression. A bright fire glowed upon the hearth and sent red reflections upon the bedroom ceiling. A shaded candle stood upon the bedside table, and there were also a glass of milk, some grapes in a silver dish, and the "Imitatio Christi" there. Lothian was very calm and quiet in demeanour. His wife had noticed that whenever he came to see her during the last two or three days, there had been an unusual and almost drowsy tranquillity in his manner. His hands shook no more. His movements were no longer jerky. They were deliberate, like those of an ordinary and rather ponderous man. And now, too, Gilbert's voice had become smooth and level. The quick and pleasant vibration of it at its best, the uneasy rise and fall of it at its worst, had alike given place to a suave, creamy monotone which didn't seem natural. The face, also, enlarged and puffed by recent excesses, had further changed. The redness had gone from the skin. Even the eyes were bloodshot no longer. They looked fish-like, though. They had a steady introspective glare about them. The lips were red and moist, in this new and rather horrible face. The clear contour and moulding were preserved, but a quiet dreamy smile lurked about and never left them. . . ."Gilbert, have you come to say goodnight?" "Yes, dear,"--it _was_ an odd purring sort of voice--"How do you feel?" "Not very well, dear. I am going to try very hard to sleep to-night. You're rather early in coming, are you not?" "Yes, dear, I am. But the moon and the tides are right to-night and the wild duck are flighting. I am going out after widgeon to-night. I ought to do well." "Oh, I see. I hope you'll have good luck, dear." "I hope so. Oh, and I forgot, Mary, I thought of going off for three days to-morrow, down towards the Essex coast. I should take Tumpany. I've had a letter from the Wild Fowlers' Association man there to say that the geese are already beginning to come over. Would you mind?" Mary saw that he had already made up his mind to go--for some reason or other. "Yes, go by all means, dear," she said, "the change and the sport will do you good." "You will be all right?"--how soapy and mechanical that voice was. . . . "Oh, of course I shall. Don't think a _bit_ about me. Perhaps--" she hesitated for a moment and then continued with the most winning sweetness--"perhaps, Gillie darling, it will buck you up so that you won't want to . . ." The strange voice that was coming from him dried the longing, loving words in her throat. "Well, then, dear, I shall say good-bye, now. You see I shall be out most of this night, and if Tumpany and I are to catch the early train from Wordingham and have all the guns ready, we must leave here before you will be awake. I mean, you sleep into the morning a little now, don't you?" He seemed anxious as he asked. "Generally, Gillie. Then if it is to be good-bye for two days, good-bye my dear, dear husband. Come----" She held out her arms, lying there, and he had to bend into her embrace. "I shall pray for you all the time you are away," she whispered. "I shall think of my boy every minute. God bless you and preserve you, my dear husband." She was doubtless about to say more, to murmur other words of sacred wifely love, when her arms slid slowly away from him and lay motionless upon the counterpane. Immediately they did so, the man's figure straightened itself and stood upright by the side of the bed. "Well, I'll go now," he said. "Good-night, dear." He turned his full, palish face upon her, the yellow point of flame, coming through the top of the candle shade, showed it in every detail. Fixed, introspective eyes, dreamy painted smile, a suave, uninterested farewell. The door closed gently behind him. It was closed as a bland doctor closes a door. Mary lay still as death. The room was perfectly silent, save for the fall of a red coal in the fire or the tiny hiss and spurt of escaping gas in thin pencils of old gold and amethyst. Then there came a loud sound into the room. It was a steady rhythmic sound, muffled but alarming. It seemed to fill the room. In a second or two more Mary knew that it was only her heart beating. "But I am frightened," she said to herself. "I am really frightened. This is FEAR!" And Fear it was, such as this clear soul had not known. This daughter of good descent, with serene, temperate mind and body, had ever been high poised above gross and elemental fear. To her, as to the royal nature of her friend Julia Daly, God had early given a soul-guard of angels. Now, for the first time in her life, Mary knew Fear. And she knew an unnameable disgust also. Her heart drummed. The back of her throat grew hot--hotter than her fever made it. And, worse, a thousand times more chilling and dreadful, she felt as if she had just been holding something cold and evil in her arms. . . . The voice was unreal and almost incredible. The waxen mask with its set eyes and the small, fine mouth caught into a fixed smile--oh! this was not her husband! She had been speaking with some _Thing_. Some _Thing_, dressed in Gilbert's flesh had come smirking into her quiet room. She had held it in her arms and prayed for it. Drum, drum!--She put her left hand, the hand with the wedding ring upon it, over the madly throbbing heart. And then, in her mind, she asked for relief, comfort, help. The response was instant. Her life had always been so fragrant and pure, her aims so single-hearted, her delight in goodness and her love of Jesus so transparently immanent, that she was far nearer the Veil than most of us can ever get. She asked, and the amorphous elemental things of darkness dissolved and fled before heavenly radiance. The Couriers of the Wind of the Holy-Ghost came to her with the ozone of Paradise beating from their wings. Doubtless it was now that some Priest-Angel gave Mary Lothian that last Viaticum which was to be denied to her from the hands of any earthly Priest. It was a week ago that Mr. Medley had brought the Blessed Sacrament to Mary. It was seven days since she had thus met her Lord. But He was with her now. Already of the Saints, although she knew it not, a Cloud of Witnesses surrounded her. Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven were loving her, waiting for her. * * * * * Lothian went along the corridor to the library, which was on the first floor of the house. His footsteps made no noise upon the thick carpet. He walked softly, resolutely, as a man that had much to do. The library was not a large room but it was a very charming one. A bright fire burned upon the hearth. Two comfortable saddle-back chairs of olive-coloured leather stood on either side of it, and there was a real old "gate-table" of dark oak set by one of the chairs with a silver spirit-stand upon it. Along all one side, books rose to the ceiling, his beloved friends of the past, in court-dress of gold and damson colour, in bravery of delicate greens; in leather which had been stained bright orange, some of them; while others showed like crimson aldermen and red Lord Mayors. Let into the wall at the end of the room--opposite to the big Tudor window--was the glass-fronted cupboard in which the guns were kept. The black-blue barrels gleamed in rows, the polished stocks caught the light from the candles upon the mantel-shelf. The huge double eight-bore like a shoulder-cannon ranked next to the pair of ten-bores by Greener. Then came the two powerful twelve-gauge guns by Tolley, chambered for three inch shells and to which many geese had fallen upon the marshes. . . . Lothian opened the glass door and took down one of the heavy ten-bores from the rack. He placed it upon a table, opened a cupboard, took out a leather cartridge bag and put about twenty "perfect" cases of brass, loaded with "smokeless diamond" and "number four" shot, into the bag. Then he rang the bell. "Tell Tumpany to come up," he said to Blanche who answered the summons. Presently there was a somewhat heavy lurching noise as the ex-sailor came up the stairs and entered the library with his usual scrape and half-salute. Tumpany was not drunk, but he was not quite sober. He was excited by the prospect of the three days' sport in Essex and he had been celebrating the coming treat in the Mortland Royal Arms. He had enjoyed beer in the kitchen of the old house--by Lothian's orders. "Now be here by seven sharp to-morrow, Tumpany," Lothian said, still in his quiet level voice. "We must catch the nine o'clock from Wordingham without fail. I'm going out for an hour or two on the marshes. The widgeon are working over the West Meils with this moon and I may get a shot or two." "Cert'nly, sir. Am I to come, sir?" "No, I think you had better go home and get to bed. You've a long day before you to-morrow. I shan't be out late." "Very good, sir. You'll take Trust? Shall I go and let him out?" Lothian seemed to hesitate, while he cast a shrewd glance under his eyelids at the man. "Well, what do you think?" he asked. "I ought to be able to pick up any birds I get myself in this light, and on the West Meils. I shan't stay out long either. You see, Trust has to go with us to-morrow and he's always miserable in the guard's van. He'll have to work within a few hours of our arrival and I thought it best to give him as much rest as possible beforehand. He isn't really necessary to me to-night. But what do you think?" Tumpany was flattered--as it was intended that he should be flattered--at his advice being asked in this way. He agreed entirely with his master. "Very well then. You'd better go down again to the kitchen. I'll be with you in ten minutes. Then you can walk with me to the marsh head and carry the bag." Tumpany scrambled away to kitchen regions for more beer. Lothian walked slowly up and down the library. His head was falling forward upon his chest. He was thinking, planning. Every detail must be gone into. It was always owing to neglect of detail that things fell through, that _things_ were found out. Nemesis waited on the failure of fools! A week ago the word "Nemesis" would have terrified him and sent him into the labyrinth of self-torture--crossings, touchings, and the like. Now it meant nothing. Yes: that was all right. Tumpany would accompany him to the end of the village--the farthest end of the village from the "Haven"--there could be no possible idea. . . . Lothian nodded his head and then opened a drawer in the wall below the gun cupboard. He searched in it for a moment and withdrew a small square object wrapped in tissue paper. It was a spare oil-bottle for a gun-case. The usual oil-receptacle in a gun-case is exactly like a small, square ink-bottle, though with this difference; when the metal top is unscrewed, it brings with it an inch long metal rod, about the thickness of a knitting needle but flattened at the end. This is used to take up beads of oil and apply them to the locks, lever, and ejector mechanisms of a gun. Lothian slipped the thing into a side pocket of his coat. In a few minutes, dressed in warm wildfowling clothes of grey wool and carrying his gun, he was tramping out of the long village street with Tumpany. The wind sang like flying arrows, the dark road was hard beneath their feet. They came to Tumpany's cottage and little shop, which were on the outskirts of the village. Then Lothian stopped. "Look here," he said, "you can give me the bag now. There really isn't any need for you to come to the marsh head with me, Tumpany.--Much better get to bed and be fresh for to-morrow." The man was nothing loth. The lit window of his house invited him. "Thank you, sir," he said, sobered now by the keen night wind, "then I'll say good-night." --"Night Tumpany." "G'night, sir." Lothian tramped away into the dark. The sailor stood for a moment with his hand upon the latch of his house door, listening to the receding footsteps. "What's wrong with him?" he asked himself. "He speaks different like. Yesterday morning old Trust seemed positive afraid of him! Never saw such a thing before! And to-night he seems like a stranger somehow. I felt queer, in a manner of speaking, as I walked alongside of him. But what a bloody fool I am!" Tumpany concluded, using the richest adjective he knew, as his master's footsteps died away and were lost. In less than ten minutes Lothian stood upon the edge of the vast marshes. It was a ghostly place and hour. The wind wailed over the desolate miles like a soul sick for the love it had failed to win in life. The wide creeks with their cliff-like sides of black mud were brimming with sullen tidal water, touched here and there by faint moonbeams--lemon colour on lead. Night birds passed high over head with a whistle of wings, heard, but not seen in the gloom. From distant Wordingham to far Blackney beyond which were the cliffs of Sherringham and Cromer, for twelve miles or more, perhaps not a dozen human beings were out upon the marshes. A few bold wildfowlers in their frail punts with the long tapering guns in the bows, might be "setting to birds"; enduring the bitter cold, risking grave danger, and pursuing the wildest and most wary of living things with supreme endurance throughout the night. Once the wind brought two deep booms to Lothian. His trained ear knew and located the sound at once. One of the Wordingham fowlers was out upon the flats three miles away, and had fired his double eight-bore, the largest shoulder gun that even a strong man can use. But the saltings were given over to the night and the things of the night. The plovers called, "'Tis dark and late." "'Tis late and dark." The wind sobbed coldly; wan clouds sped to hood the moon with darkness. Brown hares crouched among the coarse marrum grasses, the dun owls were afloat upon the air, sounding their oboe notes, and always the high unseen flight of whistling ducks went on all over the desolate majesty of the marshes. And beyond it all, through it all, could be heard the hollow organs of the sea. Lothian was walking rapidly. His breathing was heavy and muffled. He skirted the marsh and did not go upon it, passing along the grass slope of foreshore which even a full marsh tide never conquered; going back upon his own trail, parallel to the village. There were sharp pricking pains in his knees and ankles. Hot sweat clotted his clothes to his body and rained down his face. But he was unaware of this. His alarming physical condition was as nothing. He went on through the dark, hurriedly, like a man in ambush. Now and then he stumbled at inequalities of the ground or caught his foot in furze roots. Obscene words escaped him when this happened. They burst from between the hot cracked lips, mechanical and thin. The weak complaints of some poor filthy-minded ghost! He knew nothing of what he said. But with knife-winds upon his face, thin needles in his joints; sodden flesh quivering with nervous tremors and wet with warm brine, he went onwards with purpose. He was in the Amnesic Dream-phase. Every foul and bestial impulse which is hidden in the nature of man was riotous and awake. The troglodytes showed themselves at last. All the unnameable, unthinkable things that lie deep below the soul, far below the conscience, in the lowest and sealed cellars of personality, had burst from their hidden prisons. The Temple of the Holy Ghost was full of the squeaking, gibbering Powers of utmost, nethermost Hell. --These are similes which endeavour to hint at the frightful Truth. Science sums it up in a simple statement. Lothian was now in "The Amnesic dream-phase." He came to where a grass road bounded by high hedges led down to the foreshore. Crouching under the sentinel hedge of the road's end, he lit a match and looked at his watch. It was fifteen minutes past ten o'clock. Old Phoebe Hannett and her daughter, the servants of Morton Sims at the "Haven," would now be fast in slumber. Christopher, the doctor's personal servant, was in Paris with his master. The Person who walked in a Dream turned up the unused grass-grown road. He was now at the East end of the village. The path brought him out upon the highroad a hundred yards above the rectory, Church, and the schools. From there it was a gentle descent to the very centre of the village, where the "Haven" was. There were no lights nor lamp-posts in the village. By now every one would be gone to bed. . . . There came a sudden sharp chuckle into the night. Something was congratulating itself with glee that it had put water-boots with india-rubber soles upon its feet; noiseless soles that would make no sound upon the gravelled ways about the familiar house that had belonged to Admiral Custance. . . . Lothian lifted the latch of the gate which led to the short gravel-drive of the "Haven" with delicate fingers. An expert handles a blown bird's-egg so. It rose. It fell. Not a crack came from the slowly-pushed gate which fell back into its place with no noise, leaving the night-comer inside. The gables of the house rose black and stark against the sky. The attic-windows where old dame Hannett and her daughter slept were black. They were fast in sleep now. The night-intruder set his gun carefully against the stone pillar of the gate. Then he tripped over the pneumatic lawns before the house with almost a dance in his step. He frisked over the lawns, avoiding the chocolate patches that meant flower-beds, with complacent skill. Just then no clouds obscured the moon, which rode high before the advancing figure. A fantastic shadow followed Lothian, coquetting with the flower beds, popping this way and that, but ever at his heels. It threw itself about in swimming areas of grey vagueness and then concentrated itself into a black patch with moving outlines. There was an ecstasy about this dancing shadow. And now, the big building which had been a barn and which Admiral Custance had re-built and put to various uses, cut wedge-like into the lit sky. The Shadow crept close to the Dream Figure and crouched at its heels. It seemed to be spurring that figure on, to be whispering in its ear. . . . We know all about the Dream Figure. Through the long pages of this chronicle we have learned how, and of what, It has been born. And were it not that experts of the Middle Age--when Demonology was a properly recognised science--have stated that a devil has never a shadow, we should doubtless have been sure that it was our old friend, the Fiend Alcohol, that contracted and expanded with such fantastic measures over the moon-lit grass. Lothian knew his way well about this domain. Admiral Custance had been his good friend. Often in the old sailor's house, or in Lothian's, the two had tippled together and drank toasts to the supremacy which Queen Britannia has over the salt seas. The lower floor of the barn had been used as a box-room for trunks and a general store-house, though the central floor-space was made into a court for Badminton; when nephews and nieces, small spars of Main and Mizzen and the co-lateral Yardarms, came to play upon a retired quarter-deck. The upper floor had ever been sacred to the Admiral and his hobbies. From below, the upper region was reached by a private stairway of wood outside the building. Of this entrance the sailor had always kept the key. A little wooden balcony ran round the angle of the building to where, at one end, a large window had been built in the wall. Lothian went up the outside stairs noiselessly as a cat, and round the little gallery to the long window. Here he was in deep shadow. The two leaves of the window did not quite meet. The wood had shrunk, the whole affair was rickety and old. As he had anticipated, the night-comer had no difficulty in pushing the blade of his shooting knife through the crevice and raising the simple catch. He stepped into the room, long empty and ghostly. First, he closed the window again, and then let down the blue blind over it. A skylight in the sloped roof provided all the other light. Through this, now, faint and fleeting moonlights fell. By the gallery door there was a mat. Lothian stepped gingerly to it and wiped the india-rubber boots he wore. Then he took half a wax candle from a side-pocket and lit it. It was quite impossible that the light could be seen from outside, even if spectators there were, in the remote slumbering village. In the corners of the long room, black-velvet shadows lurked as the yellow candle flame moved. A huge spider with a body as big as sixpence ran up one canvas-covered wall. Despite the cold, the air was lifeless and there was a very faint aroma of chemical things in it. On all sides were long deal tables covered with a multiplicity of unusual objects. Under a big bell of glass, popped over it to keep the dust away, was a large microscope of intricate mechanism. Close by was a section-cutter that could almost make a paring of a soul for scrutiny. Leather cases stood here and there full of minute hypodermic syringes, and there was a box of thin glass tubes containing agents for staining the low protoplasmic forms of life which must be observed by those who wish to arm the world against the Fiend Alcohol. At the far end of the room, on each side of the fireplace were two glass-fronted cupboards, lined with red baize. In one of them Admiral Custance had kept his guns. These cupboards had been constructed by the village carpenter--who had also made the gun cupboard in Lothian's library. They were excellent cupboards and with ordinary locks and keys--the Mortland Royal carpenter, indeed, buying these accessories of his business of one pattern, and by the gross, from Messrs. Pashwhip and Moger's iron-mongery establishment in Wordingham. Lothian took the key of his own gun cupboard from his waistcoat pocket. It fitted the hole of the cupboard here--on the right side of the fireplace, exactly as he had expected. The glass doors swung open with a loud crack, and the contents on the shelves were clearly exposed to view. Lothian set his candle down upon the edge of an adjacent table and thought for a moment. During their intimate conversations--before Lothian's three weeks in London with Rita Wallace, while his wife was at Nice, Dr. Morton Sims had explained many things to him. The great man had been pleased to find in a patient, in an artist also, the capability of appreciating scientific truth and being interested in the methods by which it was sought. Lothian knew therefore, that Morton Sims was patiently following and extending the experiments of Professor Fraenkel at his laboratory in Halle, varying the investigation of Deléarde and carrying it much farther. Morton Sims was introducing alcohol into rabbits and guinea pigs, sub-cutaneously or into the stomach direct, exhibiting the alcohol in well-diluted forms and over long periods. He was then inoculating these alcoholised subjects, and subjects which had not been alcoholised, with the bacilli of consumption--tubercle bacilli--and diphtheria toxin--the poison produced by the diphtheria bacillus. He was endeavouring to obtain indisputable evidence of increased susceptibility to infection in the animal body under alcoholic influences. Of all this, Lothian was thoroughly aware. He stood now--if indeed it _was_ Gilbert Lothian the poet who stood there--in front of an open cupboard; the cupboard he had opened by secrecy and fraud. Upon those shelves, as he well knew, organic poisons of immeasurable potency were resting. In those half-dozen squat phials of glass, surrounded with felt and with curious stoppers, an immense Death was lurking. All the quick-firing guns of the navies of the world were not so powerful as one of these little glass receptacles. The breath came thick and fast from the intruder. It went up in clouds from his heated body; vapourised into steam which looked yellow in the candlelight. After a minute he drew near to the cupboard. A trembling, exploring finger pushed among the phials. It isolated one. Upon a label pasted on the glass, were two words in Greek characters, "[Greek: diphth. toxin.]" Here, in this vessel of gelatinous liquid, lurked the destroying army of diphtheria bacilli, millions strong. The man held up the candle and its light fell full upon the neat cursive Greek, so plain for him to read. He stared at it with focussed eyes. His head was pushed forward a little and oscillated slowly from side to side. The sweat ran down it and fell with little splashes upon the floor. Then his hand began to tremble and the light flickered and danced in the recesses of the cupboard. He turned away, shaking, and set the candle end upon the table. It swayed, toppled over, flared for a moment and went out. But he could not wait to light it again. His attendant devil was straying, he must be called back . . . to help. Lothian plunged his hand into his breast pocket and withdrew a flat flask of silver. It was full of undiluted whiskey. He took a long steady pull, and the fire went through him instantly. With firm fingers now, he screwed on the top of the flask and re-lit the candle stump. Then he took the marked phial from the cupboard shelf and set it on the table. From a side pocket he took the little oil-bottle belonging to a travelling gun-case and unscrewed the top of that. And now, with cunning knowledge, he takes the thick, grey woollen scarf from his neck and drenches a certain portion of its folds with raw whiskey from his flask. He binds the muffler round the throat and nose in such fashion that the saturated portion confines all the outlets of his breathing. One must risk nothing one's self when one plays and conjures with the spawn and corruptions of death! . . . It is done, done with infinite nicety and care--no trembling fingers now. The vial is unstopped, the tube within has poured a drop or two of its contents into the oil-bottle, the projecting needle of which is damp with death. The cupboard is closed and locked again. Ah! there is candle grease upon the table! It is scraped up, to the minutest portion, with the blade of the shooting knife. Then he is out upon the balcony again. One last task remains. It is to close the long windows so that the catch will fall into its rusty holder and no trace be left of its ever having been opened. This is not easy. It requires preparation, dexterity and thought. Cunning fingers must use the thin end of the knife to bend the little brass bracket which is to receive the falling catch. It must be bent outwards, and in the bending a warning creak suggests that the screws are parting from the rotten wood. But it is done at last, surely dexterously. No gentlemanly burglar of the magazines could have done it better. . . . There is no moon now. It is necessary to feel one's way in silence over the lawn and reach the outer gate. This is done successfully, the Fiend is a good quick valet-fiend to-night and aids at every point. The gate is closed with a gentle "click," there is only the "pad, pad" of the night-comer's footsteps passing along the dark village street towards the Old House with poison in his pocket and murder in his heart. Outside his own gate, Lothian's feet assume a brisk and confidential measure. He rattles the latch of the drive gate and tries to whistle in a blithe undertone. Bedroom windows may be open, it will be as well that his low, contented whistle--as of one returning from healthy night-sport--may be heard. His lips are too cracked and salt to whistle, however. He tries to hum the burden of a song, but only a faint "croak, croak," sounds in the cold, quiet night--for the wind has fallen now. Not far away, behind the palings of his little yard, The Dog Trust whines mournfully. Once he whines, and then with a full-throat and opened muzzle Dog Trust bays the moon behind its cloud-pall. When he hears the footfall of one he knows and loves, Dog Trust greets it with low, anxious whines. He is no watch-dog. His simple duties are unvaried from the marsh and field. Growl of hostility to night-comers he knows not. His faithful mind has been attuned to no reveillé note. But he howls mournfully now. The step he hears is like no step he knows. Perhaps, who can say? the dim, untutored mind discerns dimly something wicked, inimical and hostile approaching the house. So The Dog Trust howls, stands for a moment upon his cold concrete sniffing the night air, and then with a sort of shudder plunges into the warm straw of his kennel. Deep sleep broods over the Poet's house. The morning was one of those cold bright autumn days without a breath of wind, which have an extraordinary exhilaration for every one. The soul, which to the majority of folk is like an invisible cloud anchored to the body by a thin thread, is pulled down by such mornings. It reenters flesh and blood, reanimates the body, and sounds like a bugle in the mind. Tumpany, his head had been under the pump for a few minutes, arrived fresh and happy at the Old House. He was going away with The Master upon a Wild-fowling expedition. In Essex the geese were moving this way and that. There was an edge upon anticipation and the morning. In the kitchen Phoebe and Blanche partook of the snappy message of the hour. The guns were all in their cases. A pile of pigskin luggage was ready for the four-wheel dogcart. "Perhaps when the men are out of the way for a day or two, Mistress will have a chance to get right. . . . Master said good-bye to Mistress last night, didn't he?" the cook said to Blanche. "Yes, but he may want to go in again and disturb her." "I don't believe he will. She's asleep now. Those things Dr. Heywood give her keep her quiet. But still you'd better go quietly into her room with her morning milk, Blanche. If she's asleep, just leave it there, so she'll find it when she wakes up." "Very well, cook, I will," the housemaid said--"Oh, there's that Tumpany!" Tumpany came into the kitchen. He wore his best suit. He was quite dictatorial and sober. He spoke in brisk tones. "What are you going to do, my girl?" he said to Blanche in an authoritative voice. "Hush, you silly. Keep quiet, can't you?" Phoebe said angrily. "Blanche is taking up Mistress' milk in case she wakes." "Where's master, then?" "Master is in the library. He'll be down in a minute." "Can I go up to him, cook? . . . There's something about the guns----" "No. You can _not_, Tumpany. But Blanche will take any message.--Blanche, knock at the library door and say Tumpany wants to see Master. But do it quietly. Remember Missis is sleeping at the other end of the passage." As Blanche went up the stairs with her tray, the library door was open, and she saw her master strapping a suit case. She stopped at the open door. --"Please, sir, Tumpany wants to speak to you." Lothian looked up. It was almost as if he had expected the housemaid. "All right," he said. "He can come up in a moment. What have you got there--oh? The milk for your Mistress. Well, put it down on the table, and tell Tumpany to come up. Bring him up yourself, Blanche, and make him be quiet. We mustn't risk waking Mistress." The housemaid put the tray down upon the writing table and left the room, closing the door after her. It had hardly swung into place when Lothian had whipped open a drawer in the table. Standing upon a pile of note-paper with its vermilion heading of "The Old House, Mortland Royal" was a square oil bottle with its silver plated top. In a few twists of firm and resolute fingers, the top was loosened. The man took the bottle from the drawer and set it upon the tray, close to the glass of milk. Then, with infinite care, he slowly withdrew the top. The flattened needle which depended from it was damp with the dews of death. A tiny bead of crystalline liquid, no bigger than a pin's head, hung from the slanting point. Lothian plunged the needle into the glass of milk, moving it this way and that. He heard footsteps on the stairs, and with the same stealthy dexterity he replaced the cap of the bottle and closed the drawer. He was lighting a cigarette when Blanche knocked and entered, followed by Tumpany. "What is it, Tumpany?" he said, as the maid once more took up her tray and left the room with it. "I was thinking, sir, that we haven't got a cleaning rod packed for the ten-bores. I quite forgot it. The twelve-bore rods won't reach through thirty-two-and-a-half barrels. And all the cases are strapped and locked now, sir. You've got the keys." "By Jove, no, we never thought of it. But those two special rods I had made at Tolley's--where are they?" "Here, sir," the man answered going to the gun-cupboard. "Oh, very well. Unscrew one and stick it in your pocket. We can put it in the case when we're in the train. It's a corridor train, and when we've started you can come along to my carriage and I'll give you the key of the ten-bore case." "Very good, sir. The trap's come. I'll just take this suit case down and then I'll get Trust. He can sit behind with me." "Yes. I'll be down in a minute." Tumpany plunged downstairs with the suit case. Lothian screwed up the bottle in the drawer and, holding it in his hand, went to his bedroom. He met Blanche in the corridor. "Mistress is fast asleep, sir," the pleasant-faced girl said, "so I just put her milk on the table and came out quietly." "Thank you, Blanche. I shall be down in a minute." In his bedroom, Lothian poured water into the bowl upon the washstand and shook a few dark red crystals of permanganate of potash into the water, which immediately became a purplish pink. He plunged his hands into this water, with the little bottle, now tightly stoppered again, in one of them. For two minutes he remained thus. Then he withdrew his hands and the bottle, drying them on a towel. . . . There was no possible danger of infection now. As for the bottle, he would throw it out of the window of the train when he was a hundred miles from Mortland Royal. He came out into the corridor once more. His face was florid and too red. Close inspection would have disclosed the curiously bruised look of the habitual inebriate. But, in his smart travelling suit of Harris tweed, with well-brushed hair, white collar and the "bird's eye" tie that many country gentlemen affect, he was passable enough. A dreamy smile played over his lips. His eyes--not quite so bloodshot this morning--were drowsed with quiet thought. As he was about to descend the stairs he turned and glanced towards a closed door at the end of the passage. It was the door of Mary's room and this was his farewell to the wife whose only thought was of him, with whom, in "The blessed bond of board and bed" he had spent the happy years of his first manhood and success. A glance at the closed door; an almost complacent smile; after all those years of holy intimacy this was his farewell. As he descended the stairs, the Murderer was humming a little tune. The two maid servants were in the hall to see him go. They were fond of him. He was a kind and generous master. "You're looking much better this morning, sir," said Phoebe. She was pretty and privileged. . . . "I'm feeling very well, Phoebe. This little trip will do me a lot of good, and I shall bring home lots of birds for you to cook. Now mind both you girls look after your Mistress well. I shall expect to see her greatly improved when I return. Give her my love when she wakes up. Don't forward any letters because I am not certain where I shall be. It will be in the Blackwater neighbourhood, Brightlingsea, or I may make my headquarters at Colchester for the three days. But I can't be quite sure. I shall be back in three days." "Good morning, sir. I hope you'll have good sport." "Thank you, Phoebe--that's right, Tumpany, put Trust on the seat first and then get up yourself--what's the matter with the dog?--never saw him so shy. No, James, you drive--all right?--Let her go then." The impatient mare in the shafts of the cart pawed the gravel and was off. The trap rolled out of the drive as Lothian lit a cigar. It really was a most perfect early morning, and there was a bloom upon the stubble and Mortland Royal wood like the bloom upon a plum. The air was keen, the sun bright. The pheasants chuckled in the wood, the mare's feet pounded the hard road merrily. "What a thoroughly delightful morning!" Lothian said to the groom at his side and his eyes were still dreamy with subtle content. CHAPTER IX A STARTLING EXPERIENCE FOR "WOG" "The die rang sideways as it fell, Rang cracked and thin, Like a man's laughter heard in hell. . . ." --_Swinburne._ It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening; a dry, acrid, coughing cold lay over London. In the little Kensington flat of Rita Wallace and Ethel Harrison, the fire was low and almost out. The "Lulu bird" drooped on its perch and Wog was crying quietly by the fire. How desolate the flat seemed to the faithful Wog as she looked round with brimming eyes. The state and arrangement of a familiar room often seem organically related to the human mind. Certainly we ourselves give personality to rooms which we have long inhabited; and that personality re-acts upon us at times when event disturbs it. It was so now with the good and tender-hearted clergyman's daughter. The floor of the sitting-room was littered with little pieces of paper and odds and ends of string. Upon the piano--it was Wog's piano now, a present from Rita--was a massive photograph frame of silver. There was no photograph in it, but some charred remains of a photograph which had been burned still lay in the grate. Wog had burnt the photograph herself, that morning, early. "You do it, darling," Rita had said to her. "I can't do it myself. And take this box. It's locked and sealed. It has the letters in it. I cannot burn them, but I don't want to read them again. I must not, now. But keep it carefully, always. If ever I _should_ ask for it, deliver it to me wherever I am." "You must _never_ ask for it, my darling girl," Wog had said quickly. "Let me burn the box and its contents." "No, no! You must not, dearest Wog, my dear old friend! It would be wrong. Rossetti had to open the coffin of his wife to get back the poems which he had buried with her. Keep it as I say." Wog knew nothing about Rossetti, and the inherent value of works of art in manuscript didn't appeal to her. But she had been able to refuse her friend nothing on this morning of mornings. Wog was wearing her best frock, a new one, a present also. She had never had so smart a frock before. She held her little handkerchief very carefully that none of the drops that streamed from her eyes should fall upon the dress and stain it. "My bridesmaid dress," she said aloud with a choke of melancholy laughter. "We mustn't spoil it, must we, Lulu bird?" But the canary remained motionless upon its perch like a tiny stuffed thing. In one corner of the room was a large corded packing-case. It contained a big and costly epergne of silver, in execrable taste and savouring strongly of the mid-Victorian, a period when a choir of great voices sang upon Parnassus but the greatest were content to live in surroundings that would drive a minor poet of our era to insanity. This was to be forwarded to Wiltshire in a fortnight or so. It was Mr. Podley's present. Wog's eyes fell upon it now. "What a kind good man Mr. Podley is," she thought. "How anxious he has been to forward everything. And to give dear Rita away also!" Then this good girl remembered what a happy change in her own life and prospects was imminent. She was to be the head librarian of the Podley Pure Literature Institute, vice Mr. Hands, retired. She was to have two hundred a year and choose her own assistant. Mr. and Mrs. Podley--at whose house Ethel had spent some hours--were not exactly what one would call "cultured" people. They were homely; but they were sincere and good. "Now you, my dear," Mrs. Podley had said to her, "are just the lady we want. You are a clergyman's daughter. You have had a business training. The Library will be safe in your hands. And we like you! We feel friends to you, Miss Harrison. 'Give it to Miss Harrison,' I said to my husband, directly I had had a talk with you." "But I know so little about literature," Wog had answered. "Of course I read, and I have my own little collection of books. But to take charge of a public library--oh, Mrs. Podley, _do_ you think I shall be able to do it to Mr. Podley's satisfaction?" Mrs. Podley had patted the girl upon her arm. "You're a good girl, my dear," she said, "and that is enough for us. We mayn't be literary, my husband and me, but we know a good woman when we meet her. Now you just take charge of that library and do exactly as you like. Come and have dinner with us every week, dearie. When all's said we're a lonely old couple and a good girl like you, what is clever too, and born a lady, is just what I want. Podley shall do something for your dear Father. I'll see to that. And your brothers too, just coming from school as they are. Leave it to me, my dear!" About Rita the good dame had been less enthusiastic. "The evening after Podley had to talk to her" (thus Mrs. Podley) "I asked you both up here. I fell in love with you at once, my dear. Her, I didn't like. Pretty as a picture; yes! But different somehow! Yet sensible enough--really--as P. has told me. When he gave her a talking to, as being an elderly and successful man who employed her he had well a right to do, she saw at once the scandal and wrong of going about with a married man--be he poet or whatnot. It was only her girlish foolishness, of course. Poor silly lamb, she didn't know. But what a blessing that all the time she was being courted by that young country squire. I tell you, Miss H., that I felt like a mother to them in the Church this morning." These kindly memories of this great day passed in reverie through the tear-charged heart of Wog. But she was alone now, very much alone. She had adored Rita. Rita had flown away into another sphere. The Lulu Bird was a poor consoler! Still, Wog's sister Beatrice was sixteen now. She would have her to live with her and pay her fees for learning secretarial duties at Kensington College and Mr. Munford would find Bee a post. . . . Wog pulled herself together. She had lost her darling, brilliant, flashing Rita. _That was that!_ She must reconstruct her life and press forward without regrets. Life had opened out for her, after all. But now, at this immediate moment, there was a necessity for calling all her forces together. She did not know, she had refused to know, how Rita had dealt with Mr. Lothian during the past three weeks. The poet had not written for a fortnight; that she believed she knew, and she had hoped it meant that his passion for her friend was over. Rita, in her new-found love, her _legitimate_ love, had never mentioned the poet to Wog. Ethel knew nothing of love, as far as it could have affected her. Yet the girl had discerned--or thought she had--an almost frightened relinquishment and regret on the part of Rita. Rita had expanded with joyous maiden surrender to the advances and love-making of Dickson Ingworth. That was her youth, her body. But there had been moments of revolt, moments when the "wizards peeped and muttered," when the intellect of the girl seemed held and captured, as the man who wooed her, and was this day her husband, had never captured it--perhaps never would or could. Rita Wallace had once said to Gilbert Lothian that she and Ethel did not take a daily paper because of the expense. Neither of these girls, therefore, was in the habit of glancing down the births, marriages and deaths column. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees had run over to Nice for a month, Ingworth was far too anxious and busy with his appeal to Rita--none of the people chiefly concerned had read that the Hon. Mary Lothian, third daughter of the Viscount Boultone and wife of Gilbert Lothian, Esquire, of the Old House, Mortland Royal, was dead. For a fortnight--this was all Ethel Harrison knew--Rita had received no communication from the Poet. Ethel imagined that Rita had finally sent him about his business, had told him of her quick engagement and imminent marriage. She knew that something had happened with Mr. Podley--nearly three weeks ago. Details she had none. Yet, on the mantel-shelf, was a letter in Rita's handwriting. It was addressed to Gilbert Lothian. Wog was to forward this to him. The letter was unnerving. It was a letter of farewell, of course, but Ethel did not like to handle any message from her dear young bride to a man who was of the past and ought never, _never_! to have been in it. And there was more than this. When Ethel had returned from Charing Cross Station, after the early wedding in St. Martin's Church and the departure of the happy couple for Mentone, she had found a telegram pushed through the letter-box of the flat, addressed "Miss Wallace." She had opened it and read these words: "_Arriving to you at 7:30 to-night, carissima, to explain all my recent silence if you do not know already. We are coming into our own._ GILBERT." Wog didn't know what this might mean. She regarded it as one more attempt, on the part of the married man who ought never to have had any connection with Rita. She realised that Lothian must be absolutely ignorant of Rita's marriage. And, knowing nothing of Mary Lothian's death, she regarded the telegram with disgust and fear. "How dreadful," she thought, in her virgin mind, untroubled always by the lusts of the flesh and the desire of the eyes, "that this great man should run after Cupid. He's got his own wife. How angry Father would be if he knew. And yet, Mr. Lothian couldn't help loving Cupid, I suppose. Every one loves her." "I must be as kind as I can to him when he comes," she said to herself. "He ought to be here almost at once. Of course, Cupid knows nothing about the telegram saying that he's coming. I can give her letter into his own hands." . . . The bell whirred--ring, ring, ring--was there not something exultant in the shrill purring of the bell? Wog looked round the littered room, saw the letter on the mantel, the spread telegram upon the table, breathed heavily and went out into the little hall-passage of the flat. "Click," and she opened the door. Standing there, wearing a fur coat and a felt hat, was some one she had never met, but whom she knew in an instant. It was Gilbert Lothian. Yet it was not the Gilbert Lothian she had imagined from his photograph. Still less the poet of Rita's confidences and the verses of "Surgit Amari." He looked like a well-dressed doll, just come there, like a quite _convenable_ but rather unreal figure from Madame Tussaud's! He looked at her for a quick moment and then held out his hand. "I know," he said; "you're Wog! I've heard such a lot about you. Where's Rita? May I come in?--she got my wire?" . . . He was in the little hall before she had time to answer him. Mechanically she led the way into the sitting-room. In the full electric light she saw him clearly for the first time. Ethel Harrison shuddered. She saw a large, white face, with pinkish blotches on it here and there--more particularly at the corners of the mouth and about the nostrils. The face had an impression of immense _power_--of _concentration_. Beneath the wavy hair and the straight eyebrows, the eyes gleamed and shot out fire--shifting this way and that. With an extraordinary quickness and comprehension these eyes glanced round the flat and took in its disorder. . . . "She got my wire?" the man said--finding the spread-out pink paper upon the table in an instant. "No, Mr. Lothian," Ethel Harrison said gravely. "Rita never got your wire. It came too late." The glaring light faded out of the man's eyes. His voice, which had been suave and oily, changed utterly. Ethel had wondered at his voice immediately she heard it. It was like that of some shopman selling silks--a fat voice. It had been difficult for her to believe that _this_ was Gilbert Lothian. Rita's great friend, the famous man, her father's favourite modern poet. But she heard a _voice_ now, a real, vibrant voice. "Too late?" he questioned. "Too late for _what_?" Ethel nodded sadly. "I see, Mr. Lothian," she said, "that you are already beginning to understand that you have to hear things that will distress you." Lothian bowed. As he did so, _something_ flashed out upon the great bloated mask his face had become. It was for a second only, but it was sweet and chivalrous. "And will you tell me then, Miss Harrison?" he said in a voice that was beginning to tremble violently. His whole body was beginning to shake, she saw. With one hand he was opening the button of his fur coat. He looked up at her with a perfectly white, perfectly composed, but dreadfully questioning face. Certainly his body _was_ shaking all over--it was as though little ripples were running up and down the flesh of it--but his face was a white mask of attention. "Oh, Mr. Lothian!" the girl cried, "I am so sorry. I am so very sorry for you. You couldn't help loving her perhaps, I am only a girl, I don't pretend to know. But you must be brave. Rita is married!" Puffed and crinkled lids fell over the staring eyes for a moment--as if automatic pressure had suddenly pushed them down. "_Married?_ Rita?" "Oh, she ought to have told you! It was cruel of her! She ought to have told you. But you have not written to her for two or three weeks--as far as I know. . . ." "_Married?_ Rita?" "Yes, this morning, and Mr. Podley gave her away. But I have a letter for you, Mr. Lothian. Rita asked me to post it. She gave it me in bed this morning, before I dressed her for her marriage. Of course she didn't know that you were going to be in town. I will give it to you now." She gave him the letter. His hands took it with a mechanical gesture, though he made a little bow of thanks. Underneath the heavy fur coat, the man's body was absolutely rippling up and down--it was horrible. The eyelids fell again. The voice became sleepy, childish almost. . . . "But _I_ have come to marry Rita!" Wog became indignant. "Mr. Lothian," she said, "you ought not to speak like that before me. How could you have married Rita. You _are_ married. Please don't even hint at such things." "How stupid you are, Wog," he said, as if he had known her for years; in much the same sort of voice that Rita would have said it. "My wife's dead, dead and buried. . . . I thought you would both have known. . . ." His trembling hands were opening the letter which Rita Wallace had left for him. He drew the page out of the envelope and then he looked up at Ethel Harrison again. There was a dreadful yearning in his voice now. "Yes, yes, but _whom_ has my little Rita married?" Real fear fell upon Ethel now. She became aware that this man had not realised what had happened in any way. But the whole thing was too painful. It must be got over at once. "Mr. Ingworth Dickson, of course," she answered, with some sharpness in her tones. For a minute Lothian looked at her as if she were the horizon. Then he nodded. "Oh, Dicker," he said in a perfectly uninterested voice--"Yes, Dicker--just her man, of course. . . ." He was reading the letter now. This was Rita's farewell letter. "_Gilbert dear_: "I shall always read your books and poems, and I shall always think of you. We have been tremendous friends, and though we shall never meet again, we shall always think of each other, shan't we? I am going to marry Dicker to-morrow morning, and by the time you see this--Wog will send it--I shall be married. Of course we mustn't meet or write to each other any more. You are married and I'm going to be to-morrow. But do think of your little friend sometimes, Gilbert. She will often think of you and read _all_ you write." Lothian folded up the letter and replaced it in its envelope with great precision. Then he thrust it in the inner breast pocket of his coat. Wog watched him, in deadly fear. She knew now that elemental forces had been at work, that her lovely Rita had evoked soul-shaking, sundering strengths. . . . But Gilbert Lothian came towards her with both hands outstretched. "Oh, I thank you, I thank you a thousand times," he said, "for all your goodness to Rita--How happy you must have been together--you two girls----" He had taken both her hands in his. Now he dropped them suddenly. Something, something quite beautiful, which had been upon his face, snapped away. The kindness and welcome in his eyes changed to a horror-struck stare. He began to murmur and burble at the back of his throat. His arms shot stiffly this way and that, like the arms of railway signals. He ran to one wall and slapped a flat palm upon it. "Tumpany!" he said with a giggle. "My wild-fowling man! Mary used to like him, so I suppose he's all right. But, damn him, looking out of the wall like that with his ugly red face!--" He began to sing. His lips were dark-red and cracked, his eyes fixed and staring. "Tiddle-iddle, iddle-tiddle, so the green frog said in the garden!" Saliva dropped from the corners of his mouth. His body was jerking like a puppet of a marionette display, actuated by unseen strings. He began to dance. Blazing eyes, dropping sweat and saliva, twitching, awful body. . . . She left him dancing clumsily like a performing bear. She fled hurriedly down to the office of the commissionaire. When the man, his assistant and Miss Harrison returned to the flat, Lothian was writhing on the floor in the last stages of delirium tremens. As they carried him, tied and bound, to the nearest hospital, they had to listen to a cryptic, and to them, meaningless mutter that never ceased. ". . . Dingworth Ickson, Rary, Mita. Sorten Mims. Ha, ha! ha! Tubes of poison--damn them all, blast them all--Jesus of the Cross! my wife's face as she lay there dead, forgiving me! "--Rita you pup of a girl, going off with a boy like Dicker. Rita! Rita! You're mine--don't make such a howling noise, my girl, you'll create a scandal--Rita! Rita!--damn you, _can't_ you keep quiet? "All right, Mary darling. But why have you got on a sheet instead of a nightdress? Mary! Why have they tied your face up under the chin with that handkerchief? And what's that you're holding out to me on your pale hand? Is that the _membrane_? Is that really the diphtheria _membrane_ which choked you?--Come closer, let me see, old chalk-faced girl. . . ." At the hospital the house-surgeon on duty who admitted him said that death _must_ supervene within twelve or fourteen hours. He had not seen a worse case. But when he realised who the fighting, tied, gibbering and obscene object really was, bells rang in the private rooms of celebrated doctors. The pulsing form was isolated. Young doctors came to look with curiosity upon the cursing mass of flesh that quivered beneath the broad bands of webbing which held it down. Older doctors stood by the bed with eyes full of anxiety and pain as they regarded what was once Gilbert Lothian; bared the twitching arms and pressed the hypodermic needles into the loose bunches of skin that skilled, pitiful fingers were pinching and gathering. When they had calmed the twitching figure somewhat, the famous physicians who had been hastily called, stood in a little group some distance from the bed, consulting together. Two younger men who sat on each side of the cot looked over the body and grinned. "The Christian Poet, oh, my eye!" said one. "Surgit amari aliquid," the other replied with a disgusted sneer. END OF BOOK THREE EPILOGUE A Year Later "A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, Thou wilt not despise." WHAT OCCURRED AT THE EDWARD HALL IN KINGSWAY "Ah! happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?" --_The Ballad of Reading Gaol._ A great deal of interest in high quarters, both in London and New York was being taken in the meeting of Leading Workers in the cause of Temperance that was to be held in Kingsway this afternoon. The new Edward Hall, that severe building of white stone which was beginning to be the theatre of so many activities and which was so frequently quoted as a monument of good taste and inspiration on the part of Frank Flemming, the new architect, had been engaged for the occasion. The meeting was to be at three. It was unique in this way--The heads of every party were to be represented and were about to make common cause together. The scientific and the non-scientific workers for the suppression and cure of Inebriety had been coming very much together during the last years. Never hostile to each other, they had suffered from a mutual lack of understanding in the past. Now there was to be an _entente cordiale_ that promised great things. One important fact had contributed to this _rapprochement_. The earnest Christian workers and ardent sociologists were now all coming to realise that Inebriety is a disease and not, specifically, a vice. The doctors had known this, had been preaching this for years. But the time had arrived when religious workers in the same cause were beginning to find that they could with safety join hands with those who (as they had come to see) _knew_ and could define the springs of action which made people intemperate. The will of the intemperate individual was weakened by a _disease_. The doctors had shown and proved this beyond possibility of doubt. It was a _disease_. Its various causes were discovered and put upon record. Its pathology was as clearly stated as a proposition in Euclid. Its psychology was, at last, beginning to be understood. And it was on the basis of psychology that the two parties were meeting. Science could take a drunkard--though really only with the drunkard's personal connivance and earnest wish to reform--and in a surprisingly short time, varying with individual cases, restore him to the world sane, and in health. But as far as individual cases went, science professed itself able to do little more than this. It could give a man back his health of mind and body, it could--thus--enable him to recall his soul from the red hells where it had strayed. But it could not enable the man to _retain_ the gifts. Religion stepped in here. Christianity and those who professed it said that faith in Christ, and that only, could preserve the will; that, to put it shortly, a personal love of Jesus, a heart that opened itself to the mysterious operations of the Holy Spirit would be immune from the disease for ever more. Christian workers proved their contention by statistics as clear and unmistakable as any other. There was still one great question to be agreed upon. Religion and Science, working together, _could_, and _did_, cure the _individual_ drunkard. Sometimes Science had done this without the aid of Religion, more often Religion had done it without the aid of Science--that is to say that while Science had really been at work all the time Religion had not been aware of it and had not professedly called Science in to help. To eradicate the disease from individuals was being done every day by the allied forces. To eradicate the disease from nations, to stamp it out as cholera, yellow fever, and the bubonic plague was being stamped out--that was the question at issue. That was, after all, the supreme question. Now, every one was beginning--only beginning--to understand that recent scientific discovery had made this wonderful thing possible. Yellow fever had been destroyed upon the Isthmus of Panama. Small-pox which ravaged countries in the past, was no more than a very occasional and restricted epidemic now. Soon--in all human probability--tuberculosis and cancer would be conquered. The remedy for the disease of Inebriety was at hand. Sanitary Inspectors and Medical Officers had enormous power in regard to other diseases. People who disregarded their orders and so spread disease were fined and imprisoned. It was penal to do so. In order that this beneficent state of things should come about, the scientists had fought valiantly against many fetishes. They had fought for years, and with the spread of knowledge they had conquered. Now the biggest Fetish of all was tottering on its foolish throne. The last idol in the temples of Dagon, the houses of Rimmon and the sacred groves was attacked. The great "Procreation Fetish" remained. Were drunkards to be allowed to have children without State restriction, or were they not? That was the question which some of the acutest and most altruistic minds of the English speaking races were about to meet and discuss this afternoon. * * * * * Dr. Morton Sims drove down to the Edward Hall a little after two o'clock. The important conference was to begin at three, but the doctor had various matters to arrange first and he was in a slightly nervous and depressed state. It was a grey day and a sharp East wind was blowing. People in the streets wore furs and heavy coats; London seemed excessively cheerless. It was but rarely that Morton Sims felt as he did as this moment. But the day, or probably (as he thought) a recent spell of over-work, took the pith out of him. "It is difficult to avoid doing too much--for a man in my position," he thought. "Life is so short and there is such an infinity of work. Oh, that I could see England in a fair way to become sober before I die! Still I must go on hard. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.'" He went at once to a large and comfortable room adjoining the platform of the big hall and communicating with it by a few steps and two doors, one of red baize. It was used as the artists' room when concerts were given, as a committee room now. A bright fire burned upon the hearth, round which were several padded armchairs, and over the mantel-shelf was an excellent portrait in oils of King Edward the Seventh. The Doctor took up a printed agenda of the meeting from a table. Bishop Moultrie was to be in the chair and the list of names beneath his was in the highest degree influential and representative. There were two or three peers--not figure heads but men who had done and were doing great work in the world. Mr. Justice Harley--Sir Edward Harley on the programme--would be there. Lady Harold Buckingham, than whose name none was more honoured throughout the Empire for her work in the cause of Temperance, several leading medical men, and--Mrs. Julia Daly, who had once more crossed the Atlantic and had arrived the night before at the Savoy. Edith Morton Sims, who was lecturing in the North of England, could not be present to-day, but she was returning to town at the end of the week, when Mrs. Daly was to leave the hotel and once more take up her residence with Morton Sims and his sister. In a few minutes there was a knock at the door. The doctor answered, it was opened by a commissionaire, and Julia Daly came in. Morton Sims took her two hands and held them, his face alight with pleasure and greeting. "This is good," he said fervently. "I have waited for this hour. I cannot say how glad I am to see you, Julia. You have heard from Edith?" "The dear girl! Yes. There was a letter waiting for me at the Savoy when I arrived last night. I am to come to you both on Saturday." "Yes. It will be so jolly, just like old times. Now let me congratulate you a thousand times on your great work in America. Every one over here has been reading of your interview with the President. It was a great stroke. And he really is interested?" "Immensely. It is genuine. He was most kind and there is no doubt but that he will be heart and soul with us in the future. The campaign is spreading everywhere. And, most significant of all, _we are capturing the prohibitionists_." "Ah! that will mean everything." "Everything, because they are the most earnest workers of all. But they have seen that Prohibition has proved itself an impossibility. They have failed despite their whole-hearted and worthy endeavours. Naturally they have become disheartened. But they are beginning to see the truth of our proposal. The scientific method is gaining ground as they realise it more and more. In a year or two those states which legislated Prohibition, will legislate in another way and penalise the begetting of children by known drunkards. That seems to me certain. After that the whole land may, I pray God, follow suit." She had taken off her heavy sable coat and was sitting in a chair by the fireside. Informed with deep feeling and that continuous spring of hope and confidence which gave her so much of her power, the deep contralto rang like a bell in the room. Morton Sims leant against the mantel-shelf and looked down on his friend. The face was beautiful and inspired. It represented the very flower of intellect and patriotism, breadth, purity, strength. "Ah!" he thought, "the figure of Britannia upon our coins and in our symbolic pictures, or the Latin Dame of Liberty with the Phrygian cap, is not so much England or France as this woman is America, the soul of the West in all its power and beauty. . . ." His reverie was broken in upon by her voice, not ringing with enthusiasm now, but sad and purely womanly. "Tell me," she was saying, "have you heard or found out anything of Gilbert Lothian, the poet?" Morton Sims shook his head. "It remains an impenetrable mystery," he said. "No one knows anything." Tears came into Mrs. Daly's eyes. "I loved that woman," she said. "I loved Mary Lothian. A clearer, more transparent soul never joined the saints in Paradise. Among the many, many things for which I have to thank you, there is nothing I have valued more than the letter from you which sent me to her at Nice. Mary Lothian was the sweetest woman I have ever met, or ever shall meet. Sometimes God puts such women into the world for examples. Her death grieved me more than I can say." "It was very sudden." "Terribly. We travelled home together. She was leaving her dying sister in the deepest sadness. But she was going home full of holy determination to save her husband. I never met any woman who loved a man more than Mary Lothian loved Gilbert Lothian. What a wonderful man he must have been, might have been, if the Disease had not ruined him. I think his wife would have saved him had she lived. He is alive, I suppose?" "It is impossible to say. I should say not. All that is known is as follows. A fortnight or so after his wife's funeral, Lothian, then in a very dangerous state, travelled to London. He was paying a call at some house in the West End when Delirium Tremens overtook him at last. He was taken to the Kensington Hospital. Most cases of delirium tremens recover but it was thought that this was beyond hope. However, as soon as it was known who he was, some of the best men in town were called. I understand it was touch and go. The case presented unusual symptoms. There was something behind it which baffled treatment for a time." "But he _was_ cured?" "Yes, they pulled him through somehow. Then he disappeared. The house in Norfolk and its contents were sold through a solicitor. A man that Lothian had, a decent enough servant and very much attached to his master, has been pensioned for life--an annuity, I think. He may know something. The general opinion in the village is that he does know something--I have kept on my house in Mortland Royal, you must know. But this Tumpany is as tight as wax. And that's all." "He has published nothing?" "Not a line of any sort whatever. I was dining with Amberley, the celebrated publisher, the other day. He published the two or three books of poems that made Lothian famous. But he has heard nothing. He even told me that there is a considerable sum due to Lothian which remains unclaimed. Of course Lothian is well off in other ways. But stay, though, I did hear a rumour!" "And what was that?" "Well, I dined at Amberley's house--they have a famous dining-room you must know, where every one has been, and it's an experience. There was a party after dinner, and I was introduced to a man called Toftrees--he's a popular novelist and a great person in his own way I believe." Julia Daly nodded. She was intensely interested. "I know the name," she said. "Go on." "Well, this fellow Toftrees, who seems a decent sort of man, told me that he believed that Gilbert Lothian was killing himself with absinthe and brandy in Paris. Some one had seen him in Maxim's or some such place, a dreadful sight. This was three or four months ago, so, if it's true, the poor fellow must be dead by now." "Requiescat," Julia Daly said reverently. "But I should have liked to have known that his dear wife's prayers in Heaven had saved him here." Morton Sims did not answer and there was a silence between them for a minute or two. The doctor was remembering a dreadful scene in the North London Prison. . . . "If Gilbert Lothian still lived he must look like that awful figure in the condemned cell had looked--like his insane half-brother, the cunning murderer--" Morton Sims shuddered and his eyes became fixed in thought. He had told no living soul of what he had learned that night. He never would tell any one. But it all came back to him with extreme vividness as he gazed into the fire. Some memory-cell in his brain, long dormant and inactive, was now secreting thought with great rapidity, and, with these dark memories--it was as though some curtain had suddenly been withdrawn from a window unveiling the sombre picture of a storm--something new and more horrible still started into his mind. It passed through and vanished in a flash. His will-power beat it down and strangled it almost ere it was born. But it left his face pale and his throat rather dry. It was now twenty minutes to three, as the square marble clock upon the mantel showed, and immediately, before Julia Daly and Morton Sims spoke again, two people came into the room. Both were clergymen. First came Bishop Moultrie. He was a large corpulent man with a big red face. Heavy eyebrows of black shaded eyes of a much lighter tint, a kind of blue green. The eyes generally twinkled with good-humour and happiness, the wide, genial mouth was vivid with life and pleasant tolerance, as a rule. A fine strong, forthright man with a kindly personality. Morton Sims stepped up to him. "My dear William," he said, shaking him warmly by the hand. "So here you are. Let me introduce you to Mrs. Daly. Julia, let me introduce the Bishop to you. You both know of each other very well. You have both wanted to meet for a long time." The Bishop bowed to Mrs. Daly and both she and the doctor saw at once that something was disturbing him. The face only held the promise and possibility of geniality. It was anxious, and stern with some inward thought; very distressed and anxious. And when a large, fleshy, kindly face wears this expression, it is most marked. "Please excuse me," the Bishop said to Julia Daly. "I have indeed looked forward to the moment of meeting you. But something has occurred, Mrs. Daly, which occupies my thoughts, something very unusual. . . ." Both Morton Sims--who knew his old friend so well--and Julia Daly--who knew so much of the Bishop by repute--looked at him with surprise upon their faces and waited to hear more. The Bishop turned round to where the second Priest was standing by the door. "This is Father Joseph Edward," he said, "Abbot of the Monastery upon the Lizard Promontory in Cornwall. He has come with me this afternoon upon a special mission." The newcomer was a slight, dark-visaged man who wore a black cape over his cassock, and a soft clerical hat. He seemed absolutely undistinguished, but the announcement of his name thrilled the man and woman by the fire. The Priest bowed slightly. There was little or no expression to be discerned upon his face. But the others in the room knew who he was at once. Father Joseph Edward was a hidden force in the Church or England. He was a peer's son who had flashed out at Oxford, fifteen years before, as one of the cleverest, wildest, most brilliant and devil-may-care undergraduates who had ever been at "The House." Both by reason of wealth and position, but also by considered action, he had escaped authoritative condemnation and had been allowed to take his first in Lit. Hum. But, as every one knew at his time Adrian Rathlone had been one of the wildest, wealthiest and wickedest young men of his generation. And then, as all the world heard, Adrian Rathlone had taken Holy Orders. He had worked in the East End of London for a time, and had then founded his Cornish Monastery by permission of the Chapter and Bishop of Truro. From the far west of England, where She stretches out her granite foot to spurn the onslaught of the Atlantic, it had become known that broken and contrite hearts might leave London and life, to seek, and find Peace upon the purple moors of the West. "But now, John," the Bishop said to Morton Sims, "I want to tell you something. I want to explain a very important alteration in the agenda. . . ." There was no doubt about it whatever, the Bishop's usually calm and suave voice was definitely disturbed. He and Morton Sims bent over the table together looking at the printed paper. The Bishop had a fat gold pencil case in his hand and was pointing to names upon the programme. Mrs. Daly, from her seat by the fire, watched her friend, Morton Sims, with _his_ friend, William Denisthorpe Moultrie, Father in God, with immense interest. She was interested extremely in the Bishop's obvious perturbation, but even more so to see these two celebrated men standing together and calling each other by their Christian names like boys. She knew that they had been at Harrow and Oxford together, she knew that despite their disagreements upon many points they had always been fast friends. "What boys nice men are after all," she thought with a slight sympathetic contraction of her throat. "'William'! 'John'!--Our men in America are not very often like that--but what, what is the Bishop saying?" Her face became almost rigid with attention as she caught a certain name. Even as she did so the Bishop spoke in an undertone to Morton Sims, and then glanced slightly in her direction with a hint of a question in his eyes. "Mrs. Daly, William," Morton Sims said, "is on the Committee. She is one of my greatest friends and, perhaps, the greatest friend Edith has in the world. She was also a great friend of Mrs. Lothian and knew her well. You need not have the slightest hesitation in saying anything you wish before her." Julia Daly rose from her seat, her heart was beating strangely. "What is this?" she said in her gentle, but almost regal way. "Why, my lord, the doctor and I were only talking of Gilbert Lothian and his saintly wife a moment or two ago. Have you news of the poet?" The Bishop, still with his troubled, anxious face, turned to her with a faint smile. "I did not know, Mrs. Daly," he said, "that you took any interest in Lothian, but yes, I have news." "Then you can solve the mystery?" Julia Daly said. The Bishop sighed. "If you mean," he said, "why Mr. Lothian has disappeared from the world for a year, I can at least tell you what he has been doing. John here tells me that you have known all about him, so that I am violating no confidences. After his wife's death, poor Lothian became very seriously ill in consequence of his excesses. He was cured eventually, but one night--it was late at night in Norfolk--some one, quite unlike the Gilbert Lothian I had known, came to my house. It was like a ghost coming. He told me many strange and terrible things, and hinted that he could have told me more, though I forbade him. With every appearance of contrition, with his face streaming with tears--ah, if ever during my career as a Priest I have seen a broken and a contrite heart I saw it then--he wished, he told me, to work out his soul's release, to go away from the world utterly and to fight the Fiend Alcohol. He would go into no home, would submit to no legal restraint. He wished to fight the devil that possessed him with no other aids than spiritual ones. I sent him to Father Joseph Edward." "And he has cured himself?" the American lady said in a tone which so rang and vibrated through the Committee room, with eyes in which such gladness was dawning, that the three men there looked at her as if they had seen a vision. The monkish-looking clergyman replied. "Quite cured," he said gravely. "He is saved in body and saved in soul. You say his wife, Madam, was a Saint: I think, Madam, that our friend is not very far from it now." He stopped suddenly, almost jerkily, and his dark, somewhat saturnine face became watchful and with a certain fear in it. What all this might mean John Morton Sims was at a loss to understand. That it meant something, something very out of the ordinary, he was very well aware. William Moultrie was not himself--that was very evident. And he had brought this odd, mediæval parson with him for some special reason. Morton Sims was not very sympathetic toward the Middle Age. Spoken to-day the word "Abbot" or "Father"--used ecclesiastically--always affected him with slight disgust. Nevertheless, he nodded to the Bishop and turned to Mrs. Daly. "Gilbert Lothian is coming here during this afternoon," he said. "The Bishop has specially asked me to arrange that he shall speak during the Conference. It seems he has come specially from Mullion in Cornwall to be present this afternoon. Father Joseph Edward has brought him. It seems that he has something important to say." For some reason or other, what it was the doctor could not have said, Julia Daly seemed strangely excited at the news. "Such testimony as his," she said, "coming from such a man as that, will be a wonderful experience. In fact I do not know that there will ever have been anything like it." Morton Sims had not quite realised this aspect of the question. He had wondered, when Moultrie had insisted upon putting Lothian's name down as the third speaker during the afternoon. Moultrie was perfectly within his rights, of course, as Chairman, but it seemed rather a drastic thing to do. It was a disturbance of settled order, and the scientific mind unconsciously resented it. Now, however, the scientific mind realised the truth of what Julia Daly had said. Of course, if Gilbert Lothian was really going to make a confession, and obviously that was what he was coming here for under the charge of this dark-visaged "Abbot"--then indeed it would be extremely valuable. Thousands of people who had been "converted" and cured from drunkenness had "given their experiences" upon temperance platforms, but they had invariably been people of the lower classes. While their evidence as to the reality of their conversion--their change--was valuable and real, they were incapable one and all of giving any details of value to the student and psychologist. "Yes!" Morton Sims said suddenly, "if Mr. Lothian is going to speak, then we shall gain very much from what he says." But he noticed that the Bishop's face did not become less troubled and anxious than before. He saw also that the silent clergyman sitting by the opposite wall showed no sympathetic interest in his point of view. He himself began to experience again that sense of uneasiness and depression which he had experienced all day, and especially during his drive to the Edward Hall, but which had been temporarily dispelled by the arrival of Mrs. Daly. In a minute or two, however, great people began to arrive in large numbers. The Bishop, Morton Sims and Mrs. Daly were shaking hands and talking continuously. As for Morton Sims, he had no time to think any more about the somewhat untoward incidents in the Committee room. The Meeting began. The Edward Hall is a very large building with galleries and boxes. The galleries now, by a clever device, were all hung round with dark curtains. This made the hall appear much smaller and prevented the sparseness of the audience having a depressing effect upon those who addressed it. Only some three hundred and fifty people attended this Conference. The general public were not asked. Admission was by invitation. The three hundred and fifty people who had come were, however, the very pick and élite of those interested in the Temperance cause and instrumental in forwarding it from their various standpoints. Bishop Moultrie made a few introductory remarks. Then he introduced Sir Edward Harley, the Judge. The Judge was a small keen-faced man. Without his frame of horse hair and robe of scarlet he at first appeared insignificant and without personality. But that impression was dispelled directly he began to speak. The quiet, keen, incisive voice, so precise and scholarly of phrase, so absolutely germane to the thought, and so illuminating of it, held some of the keenest minds in England as with a spell for twenty minutes. Mr. Justice Harley advocated penal restriction upon the multiplication of drunkards in the most whole-hearted way. He did not go into the arguments for and against the proposed measure, but he gave illustrations from his own experience as to its absolute necessity and value. He mentioned one case in which he had been personally concerned which intensely interested his audience. It was that of a murderer. The man had murdered his wife under circumstances of callous cunning. In all other respects the murderer had lived a hard-working and blameless life. He had become infatuated with another woman, but the crime, which had taken nearly a month in execution, had been committed entirely under the influence of alcohol. "Under the influence of that terrible amnesic dream-phase which our medical friends tell us of," the Judge said. "As was my duty as an officer of the law I sent that man to his death. Under existing conditions of society I think that what I was compelled to do was the best thing that could have been done. But I may say to you, my lord, my lords, ladies and gentlemen that it was not without a bitter personal shrinking that I sent that poor man to pay the penalty of his crime. The mournful bell which Dr. Archdall Reed has tolled is his 'Study in Heredity' was sounding in my ears as I did so. That is one of the reasons why I am here this afternoon to support the only movement which seems to have within it the germ of public freedom from the devastating disease of alcoholism." The Judge concluded and sat down in his seat. Bishop Moultrie rose and introduced the next speaker with a few prefatory remarks. Morton Sims who was sitting next Sir Edward whispered in his ear. "May I ask, Sir Edward," he said, "if you were referring just now to Hancock, the Hackney murderer?" The little Judge nodded. "Yes," he whispered, "but how did you know, Sims?" "Oh, I knew all about him before his condemnation," the doctor replied. "In fact I took a special interest in him. I was with him the night before his execution and I assisted at the autopsy the next day." The Judge gave a keen glance at his friend and nodded. The Bishop in the Chair now read a few brief statements as to the progress of the work that was being done. Lady Harold Buckingham was down to speak next. She sat on the Bishop's left hand, and it was obvious to the audience that she understood his next remark. "You all have the printed programme in your hands," said the Bishop, "and from it you will see that Lady Harold is set down to address you next. But I have--" his voice changed a little and became uncertain and had a curious note of apprehension in it--"I have to ask you to give your attention to another speaker, whose wish to address the Meeting has only recently been conveyed to me, but whose right to do so is, in my judgment, indubitable. He has, I understand from Father Joseph who has brought him here, something to say to us of great importance." There was a low murmur and rustle among the audience, as well as among the semicircle of people on the dais. The name of Father Joseph Edward attracted instant attention. Every one knew all about him; the slight uneasiness on the Bishop's face had not been unremarked. They all felt that something unusual and stimulating was imminent. "It is Mr. Gilbert Lothian," the Bishop went on, "who wishes to address you. His name will be familiar to every one here. I do not know, and have not the least idea, as to what Mr. Lothian is about to say. All I know is that he is most anxious to speak this afternoon, and, even at this late hour pressure has been put upon me to alter the programme in this regard, which it is impossible for me to resist." Now every one in the hall knew that some sensation was impending. People nodded and whispered; people whispered and nodded. There was almost an apprehension in the air. Why had this poet risen from the tomb as it were--this poet whose utter disappearance from social and literary life had been a three weeks' wonder--this poet whom everybody thought was dead, who, in his own personality, had become but a faint name to those who still read and were comforted by his poems. Very many of that distinguished company had met Gilbert Lothian. Nobody had known him well. His appearances in London society had been fugitive and he had shown no desire to enter into the great world. But still the best people had nearly all met him once or twice, and in the minds of most of them, especially the women, there was a not ungrateful memory of a man who talked well, had quite obviously no axe to grind, no personal effort to further, who was only himself and pleased to be where he was. They were all talking to each other in low voices, wondering what the scandal was, wondering why Gilbert Lothian had disappeared, waked up to the fact of him, when Lothian himself came upon the platform. Mr. Justice Harley vacated his seat and took the next chair, while Lothian sat down on the right of the Chairman. Some people noticed--but those were only a very few--that the dark figure of a clergyman in a monastic cape and cassock came upon the platform at the same time and sat down in the far background. Afterwards, everybody said that they had noticed the entrance of Father Joseph Edward and wondered at it. As a matter of fact hardly anybody did. The Bishop rose and placed his hands upon the little table before him. He coughed. His voice was not quite as adequate as usual. This is what he said. "Mr. Gilbert Lothian, whose name all of you must know and whose works I am sure most of you, like myself, have in the most grateful remembrance, desires to address you." That was all the Bishop said--he made a motion with his hand and Gilbert Lothian rose from his chair and took two steps to the front of the platform. Those present saw a young man of medium height, neither fat nor slim, and with a very beautiful face. It was pale but the contour was perfect. Certainly it was very pale, but the eyes were bright and the æsthetic look and personality of the poet fitted in very well with what people had known of him in the past. Only Morton Sims, who was sitting within arm's reach of Lothian--and perhaps half a dozen other people who knew rather more than the rest--were startled at what seemed to be a transformation. As Lothian began to speak Father Joseph Edward glided from his seat, and leant over the back of Dr. Morton Sims' chair. This was a rather extraordinary proceeding and at any other time it would have been immediately remarked upon. As it was, the first words which Gilbert Lothian spoke held the audience so immediately that they forgot, or did not see the watchful waiting "Abbot of Mullion." In the first place Gilbert Lothian was perfectly self-possessed. He was so self-possessed that his initial sentence created a sensation. His way and manner were absolutely different from the ordinary speaker--however self-possessed he may be. The poet's self-possession had a quality of rigidity and automatism which thrilled every one. Yet, it was not an automaton which spoke in the clear, vibrating voice that Gilbert Lothian used. The voice was terrible in its appeal--even in the first sentence of the memorable speech. It was the sense of a personality standing in bonds, impelled and controlled by something outside it and above it--it was this that hushed all movement and murmur, that focussed all eyes as the poet began. The opening words of the poet were absolutely strange and unconventional, but spoken quite simply and in very short sentences. In the first instance it had been decided that reporters were not to be admitted to this Conference. Eventually that decision had been altered and a gentleman representing the principal Press Agency, together with a couple of assistants, sat at a small table just below the platform. It is from the shorthand transcript of the Press Agent and his colleagues that the few words Gilbert Lothian spoke have been arranged and set down here. Those who were present have read the words over and over again. They have remembered the gusts of emotion, of fear, of gladness--all wafted from the wings of tragedy, and perhaps illuminated by the light of Heaven, that passed through the Edward Hall on this afternoon. . . . He was speaking. "I have only a very few words to say. I want what I say to remain in your minds. I am speaking to you, as I am speaking, for that reason. I beg and pray that this will be of help. You see--" he made an infinitely pathetic gesture of his hands and a wan smile came upon his face--"You see you will be able to use my confession for the sake of others. That is the reason----" Here Lothian stopped. His face became whiter than ever. His hand went up to his throat as if there was some obstruction there. Bishop Moultrie handed him a glass of water. He took it, with a hand that trembled exceedingly. He drank a little but spilt more than he drank. The black clothed figure of the Priest half rose and took the glass from the poet. All the people there sat very still. Some of them saw the Priest hold up something before the speaker's face--a little bronze something. A Crucifix. The Bishop covered his face with his hands and never looked up again. Gilbert went on. "You have come here," he said, "to make a combined effort to kill alcoholism. I have come to show you in one single instance what alcoholism means." Some one right at the back of the hall gave a loud hysterical sob. The speaker trembled, recovered himself by a great effort and went on. "I had everything;" he said with difficulty, "God gave me everything, almost. I had money to live in comfort; I achieved a certain sort of fame; my life, my private life, was surrounded by the most angelic and loving care." His figure swayed, his voice fainted into a whisper. Dr. Morton Sims had now covered his face with his hands. Mrs. Julia Daly was staring at the speaker. Her eyes were just interrogation. There was no horror upon her face. Her lips were parted. The man continued. "Drink," he said, "began in me, caught me up, twisted me, destroyed me. The terrible False Ego, which many of you must know of, entered into my mind, dominated, and destroyed it. "I was possessed of a devil. All decent thoughts, all the natural happinesses of my station, all the gifts and pleasant outlooks upon life which God had given went, not gradually, but swiftly away. Something that was not myself came into me and made me move, and walk, and talk as a minion of hell. "I do not know what measure of responsibility remained to me when I did what I did. But this I know, that I have been and am the blackest, most hideous criminal that lives to-day." The man's voice was trembling dreadfully now, quite unconsciously his left hand was gripping the shoulder of the Abbot of Mullion. His eyes blazed, his voice was so forlorn, so hopeless and poignant that there was not a sound among the several hundreds there. "My lord,--" he turned to the Bishop with the very slightest inclination of his head--"ladies and gentlemen, I killed my wife. "My wife--" The Bishop had risen from his chair and Father Joseph Edward was supporting the swaying figure with the pale, earnest face.--"My wife loved me, and kept me and held me and watched over me as few men's wives have ever done. I stole poison with which to kill her. I stole poison from, from you, doctor!" He turned to Dr. Morton Sims and the doctor sat in his seat as if frozen to it by fear. "Yes! I stole it from you! You were away in Paris. You had been making experiments. In the cupboard in the laboratory which you had taken from old Admiral Custance, I knew that there were phials of organic poisons. My wife died of diphtheria. She died of it because I had robbed your bottles--I did so and took the poison home and arranged that Mary. . . ." There was a loud murmur in the body of the hall. A loud murmur stabbed with two or three faint shrieks from women. The Bishop again leant over the table with his hands over his face. Morton Sims was upon his feet. His hands were on Lothian's arm, his voice was pleading. "No! no!" he stammered. "You mustn't say these things. You, you----" Gilbert Lothian looked into the face of his old friend for a second. Then he brushed his arm away and came right to the edge of the platform. As he spoke once more he did not seem like any quite human person. His face was dead white, his hands fell at his sides--only his eyes were awake and his voice was vibrant. "I am a murderer. I killed and murdered with cunning, long-continued thought, the most sweet and saintly woman that I have ever known. She was my wife. Why I did this I need not say. You can all make in your minds and formulate the picture of a poisoned man lusting after a strange woman. "But I did this. I did this thing--you shall hear it and it shall reverberate in your minds. I am a murderer. I say it quite calmly, waiting for the inevitable result, and I tell you that Alcohol, and that Alcohol alone has made me what I am. "This, too, I must say. Disease, or demoniacal possession, as it may be, I have emerged from both. I have held God's lamp to my breast. "There is only one cure for Alcoholism. There is only one influence that can come and catch up and surround and help and comfort the sodden man. "That is the influence of the Holy Spirit." As he concluded there was a loud uproar in the Edward Hall. Upon the platform the well-known people there were gazing at him, surrounding him, saying, muttering this and that. The people in the body of the hall had risen in horrified groups and were stretching out their hands towards the platform. The Meeting which had promised so much in the Cause of Temperance was now totally dissolved--as far as its agenda went. The people dispersed very gradually, talking among themselves in low and horror-struck voices. It was now a few minutes before five o'clock. In the Committee room--where the bright fire was still burning--Gilbert Lothian remained. The Judge, the several peers, had hurried through without a glance at the man sitting by the fireside. Lady Harold Buckingham, as she went through, had stopped, bowed, and held out her hand. She had been astonished that Gilbert Lothian had risen, taken her hand and spoken to her in quite the ordinary fashion of society. She too had gone. The Bishop had shaken Gilbert Lothian by the hand and nodded at him as who should say, "Now we understand each other--Good-bye." Only Morton Sims, Julia Daly and the Priest had waited. They had not to wait long. There came a loud and authoritative knock at the door, within an hour of the breaking up of the Conference. Gilbert Lothian rose, as a pleasant-looking man in dark clothes with a heavy moustache entered the room. "Mr. Gilbert Lothian, I think," the pleasant-looking man said, staring immediately at the poet. Gilbert made a slight inclination of his head. The pleasant-looking man pulled a paper out of his pocket and read something. Gilbert bowed again. "It is only a short distance, Mr. Lothian," said the pleasant-looking man cheerfully, "and I am sure you will go with me perfectly quietly." As he said it he gave a half jerk of his head towards the corridor where, quite obviously, satellites were waiting. Gilbert Lothian put out his hands. One wrist was crossed over the other. "I am not at all sure," he said, "that I shall come with you quietly, so please put the manacles upon my wrists." The pleasant gentleman did so. Father Joseph Edward followed the pleasant gentleman and Gilbert Lothian. As the little cortège turned out of the Committee room, Julia Daly turned to Dr. Morton Sims. Her face was radiant. "Oh," she said, "at last I know!" "You know?" he said, horror still struggling within him, much as he would have wished to control it, "you know nothing, Julia! You do not know that the dreadful power of heredity has repeated itself within a circumscribed pattern. You do not know that this man, Lothian, has done--in his own degree and in his own way--just what a bastard brother of his did two years ago. The man who was begotten by Gilbert Lothian's father killed his wife. Gilbert Lothian has done so too." The woman put her hands upon the other's shoulders and looked squarely into his face. "Oh, John," she said--it was the first time she had ever called him by his Christian name--"Oh, John, be blind no more. This afternoon our Cause has been given an Impetus such as it has never had before. "Just think how splendidly Gilbert Lothian is going to his shameful death." "Oh, it won't be death. We shall make interest and it will be penal servitude for life." Julia Daly made a slight motion of her hands. "As you will," she said, "and as you wish. I think he would prefer death. But if he is to endure a longer punishment, that also will bring him nearer, and nearer, and nearer to his Mary." * * * * * Transcriber's note: Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been retained as printed.