have to pay. Here
are a host of city merchants discussing politics, and it is wonderful how
common-place is their conversation under the influence of alcohol.

"Palmerston is a great man, by ---, he is a great man, sir," says one.
"Yes, and no mistake," is the reply. "There is no humbug about
Palmerston," says another. And so they ring the changes, originating
nothing, gaining nothing, only getting redder in the face and more
indistinct in their pronunciation. At length they button over their
great coats, pay their bills, and generally very good-naturedly, but very
unsteadily, steer towards the door. It may be that a noisy discussion
takes place. One man a little more gone than the rest disturbs the
harmony of the evening by his flat contradictions, uttered somewhat too
rudely, and backed by a blow from the fist on the table, which breaks a
couple of glasses. But next morning he apologizes; "It was only my wine
contradicting your wine," he says, without any sense of shame. But this
rarely happens. The respectable classes have more command of their
temper, and do not get so idiotically drunk as the frequenters of low
public-houses, and so the _habitues_ are in no hurry to move and leave
the light and luxurious room for the muddy streets and the winter night.
But they must do so, and young men with their passions unnaturally
stimulated, and the conscience proportionately deadened, are left to the
temptations which await men who are out in the small hours; and old
fogies, believing that if they go to bed mellow, they live as they ought
to live, and die jolly fellows, find their way to their respective
dwelling-places in a state as lamentable as it is degrading. Yet next
Sunday you will see these men at church, and hear them joining in solemn
and contrite prayer. Do they think these purple faces tell no tales? Do
they think it is only the wife knows how they drink--in respectable
company--in respectable hotels? Do they forget that in the midst of
their revelry, under the flaming chandeliers, peering over the shoulders
of courteous waiters, listening to their vinous laughter and ancient
jokes, Death, with his dart, is there? Ay, and one night he will ride
home with his victim in the Hansom, and will see him placed, all smelling
with drink and under its influence, in the bed, side by side with his
wife, and next morning she will as usual give her husband the seidlitz
powder or soda water, and leave him to sleep f