nk he'd be a lost man. He made a mania
of that. One curious effect was that, for some time after he left the
institution, he'd sometimes feel suddenly in high spirits--with nothing
to account for it--something like he used to feel when he had half a
dozen whiskies in him; then suddenly he'd feel depressed and sort of
hopeless--with nothing to account for that either--just as if he was
suffering a recovery. But those moods never lasted long and he soon grew
out of them altogether. He didn't flee temptation. He'd knock round the
pubs on Saturday nights with his old mates, but never drank anything
but soft stuff--he was always careful to smell his glass for fear of an
accident or trick. He drank gallons of ginger beer, milk-and-soda, and
lemonade; and he got very fond of sweets, too--he'd never liked them
before. He said he enjoyed the novelty of the whole thing and his mates
amused him at first; but he found he had to leave them early in the
evening, and, after a while, he dropped them altogether. They seemed
such fools when they were drunk (they'd never seemed fools to him
before). And, besides, as they got full, they'd get suspicious of him,
and then mad at him, because he couldn't see things as they could. That
reminds me that it nearly breaks a man's heart when his old drinking
chum turns teetotaller--it's worse than if he got married or died. When
two mates meet and one is drunk and the other sober there is only one
of two things for them to do if they want to hit it together--either the
drunken mate must get sober or the sober mate drunk. And that reminds
me: Take the case of two old mates who've been together all their lives,
say they always had their regular sprees together and went through the
same stages of drunkenness together, and suffered their recoveries and
sobered up together, and each could stand about the same quantity of
drink and one never got drunker than the other. Each, when he's
boozing, reckons his mate the cleverest man and the hardest case in
the world--second to himself. But one day it happens, by a most
extraordinary combination of circumstances, that Bill, being sober,
meets Jim very drunk, and pretty soon Bill is the most disgusted man
in this world. He never would have dreamed that his old mate could make
such a fool and such a public spectacle of himself. And Bill's disgust
intensifies all the time he is helping Jim home, and Jim arguing with
him and wanting to fight him, and slobbering over