in the city, where stimulant is often needed—­whisky, iron, quinine, coffee, tobacco, opium, or tea—­the men who waste the most nerve-tissue are more rigidly required to abstain from the abuse of stimulants than was the case fifteen years ago.  To put it plainer, fifteen years ago, a smart man would be employed on a newspaper to “write” or “report”.  If he were brilliant, he was entitled almost by custom to “go on the war-path” once a week—­that is, to be drunk that often, and to be totally unable or unwilling to do the current day’s work.

NOW-A-DAYS,

if a man in the same position were to get drunk once a year he would be superseded.  No matter how brilliant he may be, the drunkard at once sinks to the bottom.  The “fat jobs” are filled by men as steady as clock-work.  How has Society done this wonderful thing?  Hard to tell.  She has constantly tempted the steady man.  In fact, she inclines to treat him a shade the better if he can drink some stimulant each day without unbalancing himself—­some alcohol, some coffee or some tea—­but

WOE TO HIM

if he transgress her limits.  In the country it is asked “Does he drink?” In the city it is asked “Does he get drunk?” The two methods are essentially the results of two conditions.  The mistake of the one locality is to apply its own preliminary to the other.  Now, again, to this frightful question of woman-torture:  Society knows all about woman.  It knows that the wife must be the arbiter of her own sufferings.  Her brother, being less wise than Society, separates the wife from

THE OCCASIONAL BRUTE

who married her, takes her ills and her children to his house, kicks the brute on the street, and, for all his pains, is eventually either assassinated by the wretch or anathematized by the wife.  Having made matters much worse (by unanimous opinion), he abandons his reform, and then, with his valuable experience, joins Society and becomes a wave in the tide of events, instead of a presumptuous pebble rolling in small opposition on the beach of time.  How will Society approach the wife-beater?  Nobody knows.  Probably she will exterminate the breed.  The woman, like the newspaper proprietor, will at last awake.  The man who gets drunk will not gain her affections—­above all, he will not keep them.  The “old soak” will be wifeless.  Monsters will cease to propagate their species.  When once the strong hand of Bread-and-Butter gets hold of Whisky, then whisky will be as useful for good as it now is powerful in evil.  Society however deals with the affections cautiously, and wisely, because her experience is inconceivably great.

TRY PLAYING ON HEARTSTRINGS YOURSELF

to hear the music you make!  Let us then pray for the day when the “drop too much” with the bottle will be as nefarious as a cut too much with the razor or a blaze too much with the torch.