Then I can
see all the ruined gentlemen, and all the fine fellows whose glittering
promise was so easily tarnished; they have crossed my track, and I
remember every one of them, but I never could haul back one from the
fate toward which he shambled so blindly; what could I do when Drink was
driving him? If I could not shake off the memories of squalor, hunger,
poverty--well-deserved poverty--despair, crime, abject wretchedness,
then life could not be borne. I can always call to mind the wrung hands
and drawn faces of well-nurtured and sweet ladies who saw the dull mask
of loathsome degradation sliding downward over their loved one's face.
Of all the mental trials that are cruel, that must be the worst--to see
the light of a beloved soul guttering gradually down into stench and
uncleanness. The woman sees the decadence day by day, while the blinded
and lulled man who causes all the indescribable trouble thinks that
everything is as it should be. The Drink mask is a very scaring thing;
once you watch it being slowly fitted on to a beautiful and spiritual
face you do not care over-much about the revenue.
And now the famous Russian's question comes up: What shall we do? Well,
so far as the wastrel poor are concerned, I should say, "Catch them when
young, and send them out of England so long as there is any place abroad
where their labour is sought.
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