I knew a man once—­or, rather, I knew of a man—­who was a confirmed drunkard.  He became and continued a drunkard, not through weakness, but through will.  When his friends remonstrated with him, he told them to mind their own business, and to let him mind his.  If he saw any reason for not getting drunk he would give it up.  Meanwhile he liked getting drunk, and he meant to get drunk as often as possible.

He went about it deliberately, and did it thoroughly.  For nearly ten years, so it was reported, he never went to bed sober.  This may be an exaggeration—­it would be a singular report were it not—­but it can be relied upon as sufficiently truthful for all practical purposes.

Then there came a day when he did see a reason for not getting drunk.  He signed no pledge, he took no oath.  He said, “I will never touch another drop of drink,” and for twenty-six years he kept his word.

At the end of that time a combination of circumstances occurred that made life troublesome to him, so that he desired to be rid of it altogether.  He was a man accustomed, when he desired a thing within his reach, to stretch out his hand and take it.  He reviewed the case calmly, and decided to commit suicide.

If the thing were to be done at all, it would be best, for reasons that if set forth would make this a long story, that it should be done that very night, and, if possible, before eleven o’clock, which was the earliest hour a certain person could arrive from a certain place.

It was then four in the afternoon.  He attended to some necessary business, and wrote some necessary letters.  This occupied him until seven.  He then called a cab and drove to a small hotel in the suburbs, engaged a private room, and ordered up materials for the making of the particular punch that had been the last beverage he had got drunk on, six-and-twenty years ago.

For three hours he sat there drinking steadily, with his watch before him.  At half-past ten he rang the bell, paid his bill, came home, and cut his throat.

For a quarter of a century people had been calling that man a “reformed character.”  His character had not reformed one jot.  The craving for drink had never died.  For twenty-six years he had, being a great man, held it gripped by the throat.  When all things became a matter of indifference to him, he loosened his grasp, and the evil instinct rose up within him as strong on the day he died as on the day he forced it down.

That is all a man can do, pray for strength to crush down the evil that is in him, and to keep it held down day after day.  I never hear washy talk about “changed characters” and “reformed natures” but I think of a sermon I once heard at a Wesleyan revivalist meeting in the Black Country.

“Ah! my friends, we’ve all of us got the devil inside us.  I’ve got him, you’ve got him,” cried the preacher—­he was an old man, with long white hair and beard, and wild, fighting eyes.  Most of the preachers who came “reviving,” as it was called, through that district, had those eyes.  Some of them needed “reviving” themselves, in quite another sense, before they got clear out of it.  I am speaking now of more than thirty years ago.