‘Well! it puzzles me what you can find to be so merry about. What you see in life I don’t know—I see only the blackness of darkness, and a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation!’
“All the company simultaneously pushed up their glasses to him, and I set them before him in a semicircle, and, tenderly patting him on the back, bid him drink, and he would soon see as bright a prospect as any of us; but he pushed them back, muttering,—
“‘Take them away! I won’t taste it, I tell you. I won’t—I won’t!’ So I handed them down again to the owners; but I saw that he followed them with a glare of hungry regret as they departed. Then he clasped his hands before his eyes to shut out the sight, and two minutes after lifted his head again, and said, in a hoarse but vehement whisper,—
“‘And yet I must! Huntingdon, get me a glass!’
“‘Take the bottle, man!’ said I, thrusting the brandy-bottle into his hand—but stop, I’m telling too much,” muttered the narrator, startled at the look I turned upon him. “But no matter,” he recklessly added, and thus continued his relation: “In his desperate eagerness, he seized the bottle and sucked away, till he suddenly dropped from his chair, disappearing under the table amid a tempest of applause. The consequence of this imprudence was something like an apoplectic fit, followed by a rather severe brain fever—”
“And what did you think of yourself, sir?” said I, quickly.
“Of course, I was very penitent,” he replied. “I went to see him once or twice—nay, twice or thrice—or by’r lady, some four times—and when he got better, I tenderly brought him back to the fold.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I restored him to the bosom of the club, and compassionating the feebleness of his health and extreme lowness of his spirits, I recommended him to ‘take a little wine for his stomach’s sake,’ and, when he was sufficiently re-established, to embrace the media-via, ni-jamais-ni-toujours plan—not to kill himself like a fool, and not to abstain like a ninny—in a word, to enjoy himself like a rational creature, and do as I did; for, don’t think, Helen, that I’m a tippler; I’m nothing at all of the kind, and never was, and never shall be. I value my comfort far too much. I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one-half his days and mad the other; besides, I like to enjoy my life at all sides and ends, which cannot be done by one that suffers himself to be the slave of a single propensity—and, moreover, drinking spoils one’s good looks,” he concluded, with a most conceited smile that ought to have provoked me more than it did.
“And did Lord Lowborough profit by your advice?” I asked.