ur sanity and dignity, abstain, which is to clip,
impoverish, imprison the soul: or else, taking wings of wine, we go
aloft over capes, and islands, and seas, but are even as balloons that
cannot make for any line, and are at the mercy of the winds--without
a choice, save to come down by virtue of a collapse. Could we say to
ourselves, in the great style, This is the point where desire to embrace
humanity is merged in vindictiveness toward individuals: where radiant
sweet temper culminates in tremendous wrath: where the treasures of
anticipation, waxing riotous, arouse the memory of wrongs: in plain
words, could we know positively, and from the hand of science, when we
have had enough, we should stop. There is not a doubt that we should
stop. It is so true we should stop, that, I am ready to say, ladies have
no right to call us horrid names, and complain of us, till they have
helped us to some such trustworthy scientific instrument as this which
I have called for. In its absence, I am persuaded that the true natural
oinometer is the hat. Were the hat always worn during potation; were
ladies when they retire to place it on our heads, or, better still,
chaplets of flowers; then, like the wise ancients, we should be able to
tell to a nicety how far we had advanced in our dithyramb to the theme
of fuddle and muddle. Unhappily the hat does not forewarn: it is simply
indicative. I believe, nevertheless, that science might set to work upon
it forthwith, and found a system. When you mark men drinking who wear
their hats, and those hats are seen gradually beginning to hang on the
backs of their heads, as from pegs, in the fashion of a fez, the bald
projection of forehead looks jolly and frank: distrust that sign: the
may-fly of the soul is then about to be gobbled up by the chub of the
passions. A hat worn fez-fashion is a dangerous hat. A hat on the brows
shows a man who can take more, but thinks he will go home instead, and
does so, peaceably. That is his determination. He may look like
Macduff, but he is a lamb. The vinous reverses the non-vinous passionate
expression of the hat. If I am discredited, I appeal to history,
which tells us that the hats of the Hillford five-and-twenty were all
exceedingly hind-ward-set when the march was resumed. It followed that
Peter Bartholomew, potboy, made irritable objections to that old joke
which finished his name as though it were a cat calling, and the offence
being repeated, he dealt an