"I don't now travel," she answered, evidently offended at what seemed an obvious attempt to turn the conversation. "I find sufficient work near at hand which my conscience will not allow me to neglect, and therefore leave these pleasures for others."
"Let me urge you to go to Constantinople," said Sydney; "it is the best place in which thoroughly to study the temperance question. Degradation and misery have there reached such a perfection without the aid of drink that after a month of such experience I can almost fancy any one weeping tears of joy at the sight of an honest drunkard."
Seeing Lady Todman turning away in evident disgust, and wishing to know what my friend really thought on the matter, I asked whether the Turks might not possibly be even worse if they added to their other sins the vice of intemperance.
"Drink," he replied, "does not alter a man's character; it simply exposes it. That crime is generally associated with drunkenness is true, but that it causes it is unusual, and it is frequently a deterrent. The weakness in a man is sure to find vent through some channel, and I would rather not picture some of the crimes that our drunkards would probably have committed had not the absorption of this attraction turned their thoughts in another direction. Among weak natures and deformed characters we should expect to find both drunkards and criminals of all kinds."
"I quite agree with you," said Miss Folker. "I don't believe that it is any use trying to make people sober; our best whips always drink, don't they, father? And nothing you could do would ever stop them."
Our host seemed to think this was an unfortunate remark, for I noticed him glance at the butler as he replied, "If they do they soon have to go, I know that."
"You misunderstand me," Sydney said, turning to Miss Folker. "I believe there is great use in trying to make people sober, for weakness of any kind encouraged leads to disease; but one does little service to the cause of truth by telling lies."
"What would you do, then?" broke in Miss Smith, who had been listening intently.
"With the habitual drunkard," replied Sydney, "there is only at present one course open. He should be placed under restraint as a temporary lunatic, which he is. But drunkenness is a mere stage in the growth of mankind, and can only work itself out through the lessons of experience. To try to prohibit drink is to hinder progress; to say that there is more drunkenness now than formerly, is simply to say that the greater part of our race is considered strong enough to face the temptation. Give a savage as much spirit as he cares for, and he will kill himself in a few months. Our forefathers, in much the same way, though with more caution, used to lie nightly under the dinner-table; but now, among those classes which can afford to drink as much as they like, only persons with hereditary tendencies, or those who are unusually weak go to this extreme either in private or public. They have partially learned their lesson. Among the more ignorant there would be ten times the drunkenness if their wages allowed it. If you consider a man, though he starves his wife and children, cannot afford to get hopelessly drunk more than about twice a week; and this is one of the reasons why the poor have taken longer to learn by experience this lesson. But they, too, are slowly improving under increased temptations."
"Well, Sydney," said our host, "you are the most extraordinary man. You always seem to take a view of things from a reversed position."