“‘Mr. Elliott,’ he continued, ’you have a position of sacred trust.  Your influence is large.  Set yourself, I pray you, against the evil which has wrought these great disasters.  Set yourself against the dangerous self-indulgence called “moderate drinking.”  It is doing far more injury to society than open drunkenness, more a hundred—­nay, a thousand—­fold.  If I had been a drunkard, no such catastrophe as this I have mentioned could have happened in my practice, for Mr. Carlton would not then have trusted his wife in my hands.  My drunkenness would have stood as a warning against me.  But I was a respectable moderate drinker, and could take my wine without seeming to be in any way affected by it.  But see how it betrayed me at last.’”

Mr. Birtwell had been sitting during this relation with his head bowed upon his breast.  When Mr. Elliott ceased speaking, he raised himself up in a slow, weary sort of way, like one oppressed by fatigue or weak from illness.

“Dreadful, dreadful!” he ejaculated.  “I never dreamed of anything like this.  Poor Carlton!”

“You see,” remarked Mr. Elliott, “how easily a thing like this may happen.  A man cannot go to one of these evening entertainments and indulge with anything like the freedom to which he is invited and be in a condition to do his best work on the day following.  Some of your iron-nerved men may claim an exemption here, but we know that all over-stimulation must leave the body in some degree unstrung when the excitement dies out, and they suffer loss with the rest—­a loss the aggregate of which makes itself felt in the end.  We have to think for a moment only to satisfy ourselves that the wine-and brandy-drinking into which men and women are enticed at dinner-parties and fashionable entertainments is a fruitful source of evil.  The effect upon body and mind after the indulgence is over is seen in headaches, clouded brain, nervous irritation, lassitude, inability to think, and sometimes in a general demoralization of both the physical and mental economy.  Where there is any chronic or organic ailment the morbid condition is increased and sometimes severe attacks of illness follow.

“Are our merchants, bankers, lawyers, doctors and men holding responsible trusts as fit for duty after a social debauch—­is the word too strong?—­as before?  If we reflect for a moment—­you see, Mr. Birtwell, in what current my thoughts have been running—­it must be clear to us that after every great entertainment such as you and other good citizens are in the habit of giving many business and professional mistakes must follow, some of them of a serious character.  All this crowds upon and oppresses me, and my wonder is that it did not long ago so crowd upon and oppress me.  It seems as though scales had dropped suddenly from my eyes and things I had never seen before stood out in clearest vision.”

CHAPTER XXVII.