ded to laugh for very bitterness.

And this sin, which begins in kindness and ends always in utter
selfishness--this sin, which pours accursed money into the
Exchequer--this sin, which consigns him who is guilty of it to a doom
worse than servitude or death--this sin is to be fought by Act of
Parliament! On the one hand, there are gentry who say, "Drink is a
dreadful curse, but look at the revenue." On the other hand, there are
those who say, "Drink is a dreadful thing; let us stamp it out by means
of foolscap and printers' ink." Then the neutrals say, "Bother both your
parties. Drink is a capital thing in its place. Why don't you leave it
alone?" Meantime the flower of the earth are being bitterly blighted. It
is the special examples that I like to bring out, so that the jolly lads
who are tempted into such places as the concert-room which I described
may perhaps receive a timely check. It is no use talking to me about
culture, and refinement, and learning, and serious pursuits saving a man
from the devouring fiend; for it happens that the fiend nearly always
clutches the best and brightest and most promising. Intellect alone is
not worth anything as a defensive means against alcohol, and I can
convince anybody of that if he will go with me to a common lodging-house
which we can choose at random. Yes, it is the bright and powerful
intellects that catch the rot first in too many cases, and that is why I
smile at the notion of mere book-learning making us any better. If I
were to make out a list of the scholars whom I have met starving and in
rags, I should make people gape. I once shared a pot of fourpenny ale
with a man who used to earn L2000 a year by coaching at Oxford. He was
in a low house near the Waterloo Road, and he died of cold and hunger
there. He had been the friend and counsellor of statesmen, but the vice
from which statesmen squeeze revenue had him by the throat before he
knew where he was, and he drifted toward death in a kind of constant
dream from which no one ever saw him wake. These once bright and
splendid intellectual beings swarm in the houses of poverty: if you pick
up with a peculiarly degraded one you may always be sure that he was one
of the best men of his time, and it seems as if the very rich quality of
his intelligence had enabled corruption to rankle through him so much
the more quickly. I have seen a tramp on the road--a queer, long-nosed,
short-sighted animal--who would read Greek with t