" I cannot agree with him "in liquor." There is a smoothness
and oiliness in wine that makes it go down by a natural channel, which I
am positive was made for that descending. Else, why does not wine choke
us? could Nature have made that sloping lane, not to facilitate the
down-going? She does nothing in vain. You know that better than I. You
know how often she has helped you at a dead lift, and how much better
entitled she is to a fee than yourself sometimes, when you carry off the
credit. Still there is something due to manners and customs, and I
should apologise to you and Mrs. Asbury for being absolutely carried
home upon a man's shoulders thro' Silver Street, up Parson's Lane, by
the Chapels (which might have taught me better), and then to be
deposited like a dead log at Gaffar Westwood's, who it seems does not
"insure" against intoxication. Not that the mode of conveyance is
objectionable. On the contrary, it is more easy than a one-horse chaise.
Ariel in the "Tempest" says

"On a Bat's back do I fly,
After sunset merrily."

Now I take it that Ariel must sometimes have stayed out late of nights.
Indeed, he pretends that "where the bee sucks, there lurks he," as much
as to say that his suction is as innocent as that little innocent (but
damnably stinging when he is provok'd) winged creature. But I take it,
that Ariel was fond of metheglin, of which the Bees are notorious
Brewers. But then you will say: What a shocking sight to see a
middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half riding upon a Gentleman's back up
Parson's Lane at midnight. Exactly the time for that sort of conveyance,
when nobody can see him, nobody but Heaven and his own conscience; now
Heaven makes fools, and don't expect much from her own creation; and as
for conscience, She and I have long since come to a compromise. I have
given up false modesty, and she allows me to abate a little of the true.
I like to be liked, but I don't care about being respected. I don't
respect myself. But, as I was saying, I thought he would have let me
down just as we got to Lieutenant Barker's Coal-shed (or emporium) but
by a cunning jerk I eased myself, and righted my posture. I protest, I
thought myself in a palanquin, and never felt myself so grandly carried.
It was a slave under me. There was I, all but my reason. And what is
reason? and what is the loss of it? and how often in a day do we do
without it, just as well? Reason is only counting, two