dry-rot of the soul has begun. The drinker is tremulous; he finds that
light beverages are useless to him, and he tries something that burns:
his nerve recovers tone; he laughs at himself for his early morning
fears, and he gets over another day. But the dry-rot is spreading; body
and soul react on each other, and the forlorn one soon begins to be
fatally false and weak in morals, and dirty and slovenly in person. Then
in the dead, unhappy nights he suffers all the torments that can be
endured if he wakes up while his day's supply of alcohol lies stagnant
in his system. No imagination is so retrospective as the drunkard's, and
the drunkard's remorse is the most terrible torture known. The wind
cries in the dark and the trees moan; the agonized man who lies waiting
the morning thinks of the times when the whistle of the wind was the
gladdest of sounds to him; his old ambitions wake from their trance and
come to gaze on him reproachfully; he sees that fortune (and mayhap
fame) have passed him by, and all through his own fault; he may whine
about imaginary wrongs during the day when he is maudlin, but the night
fairly throttles him if he attempts to turn away from the stark truth,
and he remains pinned face to face with his beautiful, dead self. Then,
with a start, he remembers that he has no friends. When he crawls out in
the morning to steady his hand he will be greeted with filthy
public-house cordiality by the animals to whose level he has dragged
himself, but of friends he has none. Now, is it not marvellous? Drink is
so jolly; prosperous persons talk with such a droll wink about vagaries
which they or their friends committed the night before; it is all so
very, very lightsome! The brewers and distillers who put the
mirth-inspiring beverages into the market receive more consideration,
and a great deal more money, than an average European prince;--and yet
the poor dry-rotted unfortunate whose decadence we are tracing is like a
leper in the scattering effects which he produces during his shaky
promenade. He is indeed alone in the world, and brandy or gin is his
only counsellor and comforter. As to character, the last rag of that
goes when the first sign of indolence is seen; the watchers have eyes
like cats, and the self-restrained men among them have usually seen so
many fellows depart to perdition that every stage in the process of
degradation is known to them. No! there is not a friend, and dry, clever
gentlemen say,