of skin which give such a charm to a healthy lad’s appearance.  Would any mother like to see her favourite among that hateful crowd?  I do not think that mothers rightly know the sort of places which their darlings enter; I do not think they guess the kind of language which the youths hear when the chimes sound at midnight; they do not know the intricacies of a society which half encourages callow beings to drink, and then kicks them into the gutter if the drink takes hold effectually.  The kindly, seemly woman remains at home in her drawing-room, papa slumbers if he is one of the stay-at-home sort; but Gerald, and Sidney, and Alfred are out in the drink-shop hearing talk fit to make Rabelais turn queasy, or they are in the billiard-room learning to spell “ruin” with all convenient speed, or perhaps they have “copped it”—­that is the correct phrase—­rather early, and they are swaggering along, shadowed by some creature—­half girl, 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;