But the liquors consumed in London by the lower classes are probably the most execrable and vile that the ingenuity of the haters of mankind ever invented. The brandy they drink is liquid lightning—chain lightning—which goes crashing through the system, breaking down and destroying every pulsation towards anything good. The gin—well, their gin is the very acme, the absolute summit, of vileness. There is a quarrel in every gill of it, a wife-beating in every pint, and a murder in every quart. A smell of a glass of it nearly drove me to criminal recklessness.
A LONDON GIN DRINKING WOMAN.
And yet they all drink it, and especially the women. The most disgusting sight the world can produce is a London gin drinking woman standing at a bar, waiting feverishly for her “drain,” with unkempt hair, a small but intensely dirty shawl, with stockingless feet, and shoes down at the heel, with eyes rheumy and watery, that twinkle with gin light out from the obscurity of gin-swelled flesh, with a face on which the scorching fingers of a depraved appetite have set red lines, as ineffaceable as though they had been placed there by red-hot iron, every one of which is the unavailing protest of a long-outraged stomach.
THE GENERAL BOOZE.
There she stands, a blotch upon the face of nature and a satire upon womanhood. It is difficult to realize that this bloated mass was once a fair young girl, and had a mother who loved her, and it is equally difficult to comprehend how any power, even that of Nature, could ever make use of it. But the elements are kindly to man. When they have done their work, sweet flowers may grow out of this putridity.