Now let it be remembered that no real
friendships are contracted in those odious drinking-shops--something in
the very atmosphere of the place seems to induce selfishness, and a
drinker who goes wrong is never pitied; when evil days come, the smart
landlord shuns the failure, the barmaids sneer at him, and his boon
companions shrink away as though the doomed man were tainted. Monstrous
it is to hear the remarks made about a lost soul who is plunging with
accelerated speed down the steep road to ruin. His companions compare
notes about him, and all his bodily symptoms are described with
truculent glee in the filthy slang of the bar. So long as the wretch has
money he is received with boisterous cordiality, and encouraged to rush
yet faster on the way to perdition; his wildest feats in the way of
mawkish generosity are applauded; and the very men who drink at his
expense go on plucking him and laughing at him until the inevitable
crash comes. I once heard with a kind of chilled horror a narrative
about a fine young man who had died of _delirium tremens_. The narrator
giggled so much that his story was often interrupted; but it ran
thus--"He was very shaky in the morning, and he began on brandy; he took
about six before his hand was steady, and I saw him looking over his
shoulder every now and again.
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