Horrible it is to hear fine
lads talking familiarly about the "jumpy" sensations which they feel in
the morning. The "jumps" are those involuntary twitchings which
sometimes precede and sometimes accompany _delirium tremens_; the
frightful twitching of the limbs is accompanied by a kind of depression
that takes the very heart and courage out of a man; and yet no one who
travels over these islands can avoid hearing jokes on the dismal
subject made by boys who have hardly reached their twenty-fifth
year. The bar encourages levity, and the levity is unrelieved
by any real gaiety--it is the hysterical feigned merriment of
lost souls.
[Footnote 1: This is the elegant public-house mode of describing
_delirium tremens_.]
There are bars of a quieter sort, and there are rooms where middle-aged
topers meet, but these are, if possible, more repulsive than the
clattering dens frequented by dissipated youths. Stout staid-looking
men--fathers of families--gather night after night to sodden themselves
quietly, and they make believe that they are enjoying the pleasures of
good-fellowship. Curious it is to see how the fictitious assertion of
goodwill seems to flourish in the atmosphere of the bar and the parlour.
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