nd in _Wine,
Water and Song_. Chesterton had meanwhile discovered the
wine-drinking peasants of France and Italy: he had discovered what
were left of the old-fashioned inns of England where cider or beer
are drunk by the sort of Englishmen he had come to love best--the
poor. In his revolt against that dreary and pretentious element that
he most hated in the middle classes he had come to feel that the life
of the poor, as they themselves had shaped it when they were free
men, was the ideal. And that ideal included moderate drinking,
drinking to express joy in life and to increase it.

Already in _Heretics_ (1904) he had in the essay called "Omar and the
Sacred Vine" attacked the evil of pessimistic drinking. A man should
never drink because he is miserable, he will be wise to avoid drink
as a medicine for, health being a normal thing, he will tend in
search of it to drink too much. But no man expects pleasure all the
time, so if he drinks for pleasure the danger of excess is less.

The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other
rules--a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you
are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you
will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when
you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing
peasants of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is
rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because
you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient
health of the world.*

[* _Heretics_. John Lane, chapter VII, p. 103.]

But the human will must be brought into action and the gifts of God
must be taken with the thanksgiving that is restraint. "We must thank
God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them." The
topic seemed to fascinate him; he returned to it again and again. In
one essay he described himself opening all the windows in a private
bar to get rid of the air of secrecy that he hated. Wine should be
taken, not secretly but

Frankly and in fellowship As men in inns do dine.

Cocktails he abominated--and in fact strong spirits were almost as
evil as wine and beer were good. In an essay "The Cowardice of
Cocktails"* he is especially scathing in his comment on those who
urge "that they give a man an appetite for his meals."

[* From _Sidelights on New London & Newer York,_ p. 45.]

This is unworthy of a ge