,
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
min