eat quantum_) that I never exceeded in liquor but
once in my life: that once serving afterwards as a valuable life lesson
all through the wine-parties of Christ Church, the abounding
hospitalities of America, both North and South, through two long
visits--and the genialities of our own Great Britain during my several
Reading Tours. If it had not been for that three days' frightful
headache when I was a youth (in that sense a good providence), I could
not have escaped so many generous hosts and seductive beverages. That
one departure from sobriety happened thus. My uncle, Colonel Selwyn,
just returned from his nine years' command at Graham's Town, South
Africa, gave a grand dinner at the Opera Colonnade to his friends and
relatives, resolved (according to the fashion of the time) to fill them
all to the full with generous Bacchus by obligatory toasts, he himself
pretending to prefer his own bottle of brown sherry,--in fact, dishonest
toast and water; but that sort of practical joke was also a fashion of
the day. The result, of course, was what he desired; everybody but
himself had too much, whilst his mean sobriety, cruel uncle! enjoyed the
calm superiority of temperance over tipsiness. However, the lesson to me
(though never intended as such) was most timely,--just as I was entering
life to be forewarned by having been for only that once overtaken. I
have ever since been thankful for it as a mercy; and few have been so
favoured; how many can truly say, only that once? But I pass on, having
a great deal more to write about temperance. On my first visit to
America in 1851, all that mighty people indulged freely in strong drinks
of the strangest names and most delicious flavours: on my second in
1876,--just a quarter of a century after,--there was almost nothing to
be got but iced water. Accordingly when I was at Charleston I took up my
parable,--and spoke through a local paper as follows: I fear the extract
is somewhat lengthy, but as an exhaustive argument (and the piece,
moreover, being unprinted in any of my books), I choose to give it here
in full, to be skipped if the reader pleases. It is introduced thus by
an editor:--

"In these days of extreme abstinence from wine and spirits, it is
refreshing to see what the strong common-sense of an eminent moral
philosopher has to say about temperance. We make, then, a longish
extract, well-nigh exhaustive of the subject, which occurs in a
lecture, ent