to his orchestra.

The other sight of the evening was a horror. The little tragedy played
itself out at a neighboring table where two very young men and two very
young women were sitting. It did not strike me till far into the evening
that the pimply young reprobates were making the girls drunk. They gave
them red wine and then white, and the voices rose slightly with the
maidens' cheek flushes. I watched, wishing to stay, and the youths drank
till their speech thickened and their eye-balls grew watery. It was
sickening to see, because I knew what was going to happen. My friend
eyed the group, and said:--"Maybe they're children of respectable
people. I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better
escort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every one
comes, as you see. They may be Little Immoralities--in which case they
wouldn't be so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of wine. They may
be--"

Whatever they were they got indubitably drunk--there in that lovely
hall, surrounded by the best of Buffalo society. One could do nothing
except invoke the judgment of Heaven on the two boys, themselves half
sick with liquor. At the close of the performance the quieter maiden
laughed vacantly and protested she couldn't keep her feet. The four
linked arms, and staggering, flickered out into the street--drunk,
gentlemen and ladies, as Davy's swine, drunk as lords! They disappeared
down a side avenue, but I could hear their laughter long after they were
out of sight.

And they were all four children of sixteen and seventeen. Then,
recanting previous opinions, I became a prohibitionist. Better it is
that a man should go without his beer in public places, and content
himself with swearing at the narrow-mindedness of the majority; better
it is to poison the inside with very vile temperance drinks, and to buy
lager furtively at back-doors, than to bring temptation to the lips
of young fools such as the four I had seen. I understand now why the
preachers rage against drink. I have said: "There is no harm in it,
taken moderately;" and yet my own demand for beer helped directly to
send those two girls reeling down the dark street to--God alone knows
what end.

If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth taking a little trouble to come
at--such trouble as a man will undergo to compass his own desires. It
is not good that we should let it lie before the eyes of children, and
I have been a fool in writing t