ery town of importance is very well known to
me, and the same abomination is steadily destroying the higher life in
all. The Chancellors of the Exchequer gaily repeat the significant
figures which give the revenue from alcohol; the optimist says that
times are mending; the comfortable gentry who mount the pulpits do not
generally care to ruffle the fine dames by talking about unpleasant
things--and all the while the curse is gaining, and the betting,
scoffing, degraded crew of drinkers are sliding merrily to destruction.
Some are able to keep on the slide longer than others, but I have seen
scores--hundreds--stop miserably, and the very faces of the condemned
men, with the last embruted look on them, are before me. My subject has
so many thousands of facets that I am compelled to select a few of the
most striking. Take one scene through which I sat not very long ago, and
then you may understand how far the coming regenerator will have to go.
A great room was filled by about 350 men and lads, all of the middle
class; a concert was going on, and I was a little curious to know the
kind of entertainment which the well-dressed company liked. Of course
there was drink in plenty, and the staff of waiters had a busy time; a
loud crash of talk went on between the songs, and, as the drink gathered
power on excited brains, this crash grew more and more discordant. Nice
lads, with smooth, pleasant faces, grew flushed and excited, and I am
afraid that I occupied myself in marking out possible careers for a good
many of them as I studied their faces. There was not much fun of the
healthy kind; fat, comfortable, middle-aged men laughed so heartily at
the faintest indecent allusion that the singers grew broader and
broader, and the hateful music-hall songs grew more and more risky as
the night grew onward. By the way, can anything be more loathsomely
idiotic than the average music-hall ditty, with its refrain and its
quaint stringing together of casual filthiness? If I had not wanted to
fix a new picture on my mind I should have liked better to be in a
tap-room among honestly brutal costers and scavengers than with that
sniggering, winking gang. The drink got hold, glasses began to be broken
here and there, the time was beaten with glass crushers, spoons, pipes,
and walking-sticks; and then the bolder spirits felt that the time for
good, rank, unblushing blackguardism had come. A being stepped up and
faced a roaring audience of enthusias