Drink is a capital thing in its place. Why don't you leave it
alone?" Meantime the flower of the earth are being bitterly blighted. It
is the special examples that I like to bring out, so that the jolly lads
who are tempted into such places as the concert-room which I described
may perhaps receive a timely check. It is no use talking to me about
culture, and refinement, and learning, and serious pursuits saving a man
from the devouring fiend; for it happens that the fiend nearly always
clutches the best and brightest and most promising. Intellect alone is
not worth anything as a defensive means against alcohol, and I can
convince anybody of that if he will go with me to a common lodging-house
which we can choose at random. Yes, it is the bright and powerful
intellects that catch the rot first in too many cases, and that is why I
smile at the notion of mere book-learning making us any better. If I
were to make out a list of the scholars whom I have met starving and in
rags, I should make people gape. I once shared a pot of fourpenny ale
with a man who used to earn L2000 a year by coaching at Oxford. He was
in a low house near the Waterloo Road, and he died of cold and hunger
there. He had been the friend and counsellor of statesmen, but the vice
from which statesmen squeeze revenue had him by the throat before he
knew where he was, and he drifted toward death in a kind of constant
dream from which no one ever saw him wake.
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