Although six-bottle men are now regarded as monstrosities, and drinking parties are nearly exploded, tippling and dram-drinking among the lower orders are perhaps more indulged in than ever.

The gilded and gorgeous temples—­devoted to the worship of the reeling-goddess Geneva—­blaze forth in every quarter of the vast metropolis.

Is it matter of wonder, then, that while men of superior intellect and education are still weak enough to seek excitement in vinous potations, that the vulgar, poor, and destitute, should endeavour to drown their sorrows by swallowing the liquid fires displayed under various names, by the wily priests of Silenus!

That such a deduction is illogical we are well aware, but great examples are plausible excuses to little minds.

Both my parents were naturally inclined to sobriety; but, unfortunately, and as it too frequently happens, in low and crowded neighbourhoods, drunkenness is as contagious as the small-pox, or any other destructive malady.

Now, it chanced that in the first-floor of the house in which we dwelt, there also resided one Stubbs and his wife.  They had neither chick nor child.  Stubbs was a tailor by trade, and being a first-rate workman, earned weekly a considerable sum; but, like too many of his fraternity, he was seldom sober from Saturday night until Wednesday morning.  His loving spouse ’rowed in the same boat’—­and the ‘little green-bottle’ was dispatched several times during the days of their Saturnalia, to be replenished at the never-failing fountain of the ‘Shepherd and Flock.’

Unhappily, in one of her maudlin fits, Mrs. Stubbs took a particular fancy to my mother; and one day, in the absence of the ‘ninth,’ beckoned my unsuspecting parent into her sittingroom,—­and after gratuitously imparting to her the hum-drum history of her domestic squabbles, invited her to take a ‘drop o’ summat’—­to keep up her I sperrits.’

Alas! this was the first step—­and she went on, and on, and on, until that which at first she loathed became no longer disagreeable, and by degrees grew into a craving that was irresistible;—­and, at last, she regularly hob-and-nobb’d’ with the disconsolate rib of Stubbs, and shared alike in all her troubles and her liquor.

Fain would I draw a veil over this frailty of my unfortunate parent; but, being conscious that veracity is the very soul and essence of history, I feel myself imperatively called upon neither to disguise nor to cancel the truth.

My father remonstrated in vain-the passion had already taken too deep a hold; and one day he was suddenly summoned from his work with the startling information, that ’Mother Mullins’—­(so the kind neighbour phrased it) was sitting on the step of a public house, in the suburbs, completely ‘tosticated.’

He rushed out, and found the tale too true.  A bricklayer in the neighbourhood proposed the loan of his barrow, for the poor senseless creature could not walk a step.  Placing her in the one-wheel-carriage, he made the best of his way home, amid the jeers of the multitude.  Moorfields was then only partially covered with houses; and as he passed a deep hollow, on the side of which was placed a notice, intimating that