ompanions 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 him and laughing at him until the inevitable
crash comes. I once heard with a kind of chilled horror a narrative
about a fine young man who had died of _delirium tremens_. The narrator
giggled so much that his story was often interrupted; but it ran
thus--"He was very shaky in the morning, and he began on brandy; he took
about six before his hand was steady, and I saw him looking over his
shoulder every now and again. In the afternoon a lot of fellows came in,
and he stood champagne like water to the whole gang. At six o'clock I
wanted him to have a cup of tea, but he said, 'I've had nothing but
booze for three days.' Then he got on to the floor, and said he was
catching rats--so we knew he'd got 'em on.[1] At night he came out and
cleared the street with his sword-bayonet; and it's a wonder he didn't
murder somebody. It took two to hold him down all night, and he had his
last fit at six in the morning. Died screaming!" A burst of laughter
hailed the climax, and then one appreciative friend remarked, "He was a
fool--I suppose he was drunk eleven months out of the last twelve." This
was the epitaph of a bright young athlete who had been possessed of
health, riches, and all fair prospects. No one warned him; none of those
who swilled expensive poisons for which he paid ever refused to accept
his mad generosity; he was cheered down the road to the gulf by the
inane plaudits of the lowest of men; and one who was evidently his
companion in many a frantic drinking-bout could find nothing to say but
"He was a fool!" At this moment there are thousands of youths in our
great towns and cities who are leading the heartless, senseless,
semi-delirious life of the bar, and every possible temptation is put in
their way to draw them from home, from refinement, from high thoughts,
from chaste and temperate modes of life. Horrible it is to hear fine
lads talking familiarl