itution; it is a
religion, though men tell me that it is nothing to what it was. Take a
very common instance. At 10.30 A.M. a man is smitten with desire for
stimulants. He is in the company of two friends. All three adjourn to
the nearest bar,--seldom more than twenty yards away,--and take three
straight whiskys. They talk for two minutes. The second and third man
then treats in order; and thus each walks into the street, two of them
the poorer by three goes of whisky under their belt and one with two
more liquors than he wanted. It is not etiquette yet to refuse a treat.
The result is peculiar. I have never yet, I confess, seen a drunken man
in the streets, but I have heard more about drunkenness among white men,
and seen more decent men above or below themselves with drink, than I
care to think about. And the vice runs up into all sorts of circles and
societies. Never was I more astonished than at one pleasant dinner party
to hear a pair of pretty lips say casually of a gentleman friend then
under discussion, "He was drunk." The fact was merely stated without
emotion. That was what startled me. But the climate of California deals
kindly with excess, and treacherously covers up its traces. A man
neither bloats nor shrivels in this dry air. He continues with the false
bloom of health upon his cheeks, an equable eye, a firm mouth, and a
steady hand till a day of reckoning arrives, and suddenly breaking up,
about the head, he dies, and his friends speak his epitaph accordingly.
Why people who in most cases cannot hold their liquor should play with
it so recklessly I leave to others to decide. This unhappy state of
affairs has, however, produced one good result which I will confide to
you. In the heart of the business quarter, where banks and bankers are
thickest, and telegraph wires most numerous, stands a semi-subterranean
bar tended by a German with long blond locks and a crystalline eye. Go
thither softly, treading on the tips of your toes, and ask him for a
Button Punch. 'Twill take ten minutes to brew, but the result is the
highest and noblest product of the age. No man but one knows what is in
it. I have a theory it is compounded of the shavings of cherubs' wings,
the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and fragments of
lost epics by dead masters. But try you for yourselves, and pause a
while to bless me, who am always mindful of the truest interests of my
brethren.

But enough of the stale spilth of