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