l to think of. It makes me shudder."

"We know little of what goes on at home after an entertainment like
this," said the other. "It all looks so glad and brilliant. Smiles,
laughter, gayety, enjoyment, meet you at every turn. Each one is at his
or her best. It is a festival of delight. But you cannot at this day
give wine and brandy without stint to one or two or three hundred men
and women of all ages, habits, temperaments and hereditary moral and
physical conditions without the production of many evil consequences.
It matters little what the social condition may be; the hurt of drink
is the same. The sphere of respectability may and does guard many.
Culture and pride of position hold others free from undue sensual
indulgence. But with the larger number the enticements of appetite are
as strong and enslaving in one grade of society as in another, and the
disturbance of normal conditions as great. And so you see that the wife
of an intoxicated army officer or lawyer or banker may be in as much
danger from his drunken and insane fury, when alone with him and
unprotected, as the wife of a street-sweeper or hod-carrier."

"I have never thought of it in that way."

"No, perhaps not. Cases of wife-beating and personal injuries, of
savage and frightful assaults, of terrors and sufferings endured among
the refined and educated, rarely if ever come to public notice. Family
pride, personal delicacy and many other considerations seal the lips in
silence. But there are few social circles in which it is not known that
some of its members are sad sufferers because of a husband's or a
father's intemperance, and there are many, many families, alas! which
have always in their homes the shadow of a sorrow that embitters
everything. They hide it as best they can, and few know or dream of
what they endure."

Dr. Angier joined the two men at this moment, and heard the last
remark. The speaker added, addressing him:

"Your professional experience will corroborate this, Dr. Angier."

"Corroborate what?" he asked, with a slight appearance of evasion in
his manner.

"We were speaking of the effects of intemperance on the more cultivated
and refined classes, and I said that it mattered little as to the
social condition; the hurt of drink was the same and the disturbance of
normal conditions as great in one class of society as in another, that
a confirmed inebriate, when under the influence of intoxicants, lost
all idea of respectabilit