The doctor, of course, ought to be able to do a great deal in the way of restraining those individual cases where there is plainly an evil thirst; and beyond that the only hope would seem to be in some increase, or, rather, some concentration of ordinary public opinion on the subject.  I have always held consistently my own modest theory on the subject.  I believe that if by some method the local public-house could be as definite and isolated a place as the local post-office or the local railway station, if all types of people passed through it for all types of refreshment, you would have the same safeguard against a man behaving in a disgusting way in a tavern that you have at present against his behaving in a disgusting way in a post-office:  simply the presence of his ordinary sensible neighbours.  In such a place the kind of lunatic who wants to drink an unlimited number of whiskies would be treated with the same severity with which the post office authorities would treat an amiable lunatic who had an appetite for licking an unlimited number of stamps.  It is a small matter whether in either case a technical refusal would be officially employed.  It is an essential matter that in both cases the authorities could rapidly communicate with the friends and family of the mentally afflicted person.  At least, the postmistress would not dangle a strip of tempting sixpenny stamps before the enthusiast’s eyes as he was being dragged away with his tongue out.  If we made drinking open and official we might be taking one step towards making it careless.  In such things to be careless is to be sane:  for neither drunkards nor Moslems can be careless about drink.

DEMAGOGUES AND MYSTAGOGUES

I once heard a man call this age the age of demagogues.  Of this I can only say, in the admirably sensible words of the angry coachman in “Pickwick,” that “that remark’s political, or what is much the same, it ain’t true.”  So far from being the age of demagogues, this is really and specially the age of mystagogues.  So far from this being a time in which things are praised because they are popular, the truth is that this is the first time, perhaps, in the whole history of the world in which things can be praised because they are unpopular.  The demagogue succeeds because he makes himself understood, even if he is not worth understanding.  But the mystagogue succeeds because he gets himself misunderstood; although, as a rule, he is not even worth misunderstanding.  Gladstone was a demagogue:  Disraeli a mystagogue.  But ours is specially the time when a man can advertise his wares not as a universality, but as what the tradesmen call “a speciality.”  We all know this, for instance, about modern art.  Michelangelo and Whistler were both fine artists; but one is obviously public, the other obviously private, or, rather, not obvious at all.  Michelangelo’s frescoes are doubtless finer than the popular judgment, but