inds the pains of the world too much for him; he takes alcohol to bring
on forgetfulness; he forgets, and he pays for his pleasure by losing
alike the desire and capacity for work. The man of the slums fares
exactly like the gentleman: both sacrifice their moral sense, both
become idle; the bad in both is ripened into rankness, and makes itself
villainously manifest at all seasons; the good is atrophied, and finally
dies. Goodness may take an unconscionable time a-dying, but it is
sentenced to death by the fates from the moment when alcoholism sets in,
and the execution is only a matter of time.

England, then, is a country of grief. I never yet knew one family which
had not lost a cherished member through the national curse; and thus at
all times we are like the wailing nation whereof the first-born in every
house was stricken. It is an awful sight, and as I sit here alone I can
send my mind over the sad England which I know, and see the army of the
mourners. They say that the calling of the wounded on the field of
Borodino was like the roar of the sea: on my battle-field, where drink
has been the only slayer, there are many dead; and I can imagine that I
hear the full volume of cries from those who are stricken but still
living. The vision would unsettle my reason if I had not a trifle of
Hope remaining. The philosophic individual who talks in correctly frigid
phrases about the evils of the Liquor Trade may keep his reason balanced
daintily and his nerve unhurt. But I have images for company--images of
wild fearsomeness. There is the puffy and tawdry woman who rolls along
the street goggling at the passengers with boiled eye. The little pretty
child says, "Oh! mother, what a strange woman. I didn't understand what
she said." My pretty, that was Drink, and you may be like that one of
these days, for as little as your mother thinks it, if you ever let
yourself touch the Curse carelessly. Bless you, I know scores who were
once as sweet as you who can now drink any costermonger of them all
under the stools in the Haymarket bar. The young men grin and wink as
that staggering portent lurches past: I do not smile; my heart is too
sad for even a show of sadness. Then there are the children--the
children of Drink they should be called, for they suck it from the
breast, and the venomous molecules become one with their flesh and
blood, and they soon learn to like the poison as if it were pure
mother's milk. How they hunger--those