im. 'But no matter,' he recklessly added, and
thus continued his relation: 'In his desperate eagerness, he seized the
bottle and sucked away, till he suddenly dropped from his chair,
disappearing under the table amid a tempest of applause. The consequence
of this imprudence was something like an apoplectic fit, followed by a
rather severe brain fever--'

'And what did you think of yourself, sir?' said I, quickly.

'Of course, I was very penitent,' he replied. 'I went to see him once or
twice--nay, twice or thrice--or by'r lady, some four times--and when he
got better, I tenderly brought him back to the fold.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, I restored him to the bosom of the club, and compassionating the
feebleness of his health and extreme lowness of his spirits, I
recommended him to "take a little wine for his stomach's sake," and, when
he was sufficiently re-established, to embrace the media-via,
ni-jamais-ni-toujours plan--not to kill himself like a fool, and not to
abstain like a ninny--in a word, to enjoy himself like a rational
creature, and do as I did; for, don't think, Helen, that I'm a tippler;
I'm nothing at all of the kind, and never was, and never shall be. I
value my comfort far too much. I see that a man cannot give himself up
to drinking without being miserable one-half his days and mad the other;
besides, I like to enjoy my life at all sides and ends, which cannot be
done by one that suffers himself to be the slave of a single
propensity--and, moreover, drinking spoils one's good looks,' he
concluded, with a most conceited smile that ought to have provoked me
more than it did.

'And did Lord Lowborough profit by your advice?' I asked.

'Why, yes, in a manner. For a while he managed very well; indeed, he was
a model of moderation and prudence--something too much so for the tastes
of our wild community; but, somehow, Lowborough had not the gift of
moderation: if he stumbled a little to one side, he must go down before
he could right himself: if he overshot the mark one night, the effects of
it rendered him so miserable the next day that he must repeat the offence
to mend it; and so on from day to day, till his clamorous conscience
brought him to a stand. And then, in his sober moments, he so bothered
his friends with his remorse, and his terrors and woes, that they were
obliged, in self-defence, to get him to drown his sorrows in wine, or any
more potent beverage that came to hand; and when h