When Colburne entered Carter's presence he found him somewhat sobered in manner; and although the bottles and glasses were still on the table, the bold-faced girls had disappeared.
"Captain, sit down. Take glass plain whiskey," were the Colonel's first words. "Good for your arm—good for every thing. Glad you got off without a—cut-off."
He would have used the word amputation, only he knew that his tongue could not manage it.
"Thank you, Colonel. Here are two letters, sir, from Mrs. Carter and the Doctor. Just as I was leaving, when it was too late to write, Mrs. Carter charged me to say to you that her father had decided to go at once to New Orleans, so that your letters must be directed to her there."
"I understand," answered Carter slowly and with the solemnity of enforced sobriety. "Thank you."
He broke open his wife's letter and glanced hurriedly through it.
"Captain, I'm 'bliged to you," he said. "You've saved my wife from im-prisn—ment. She's 'bliged to you. You're noble fellah. I charge myself with your pro—mosh'n."
It was so painful to see him struggle in that humiliating manner to appear sober, that Colburne cut short the interview by pretexting a necessity of reporting immediately to his regiment.
"Come to-morrow," said Carter. "All right to-morrow. Business to-morrow. To-day—celebrash'n."
The Colonel, although not aware of the fact, was far advanced in the way of the drunkard. He had long since passed the period when it was necessary to stimulate his appetite for spirituous liquors by sugar, lemon-peel, bitters and other condiments. He had lived through the era of fancy drinks, and entered the cycle of confirmed plain whiskey. At the New Orleans bars he did not call for the fascinating mixtures for which those establishments are famous; he ran his mind's eye wearily over the milk-punches, claret-punches, sherry-cobblers, apple-toddies, tom-and-jerries, brandy-slings, and gin-cocktails; then said in a slightly hoarse basso profondo, "Give me some plain whiskey." He had swallowed a great deal of strong drink during the siege, and since the surrender he had not known a sober waking moment. His appetite was poor, especially at breakfast. His face was constantly flushed, his body had an appearance of being bloated, and his hands were tremulous. Nevertheless, obedient to a delusion common to men of his habits, he did not consider himself a hard drinker. He acknowledged that he got intoxicated at times and thoroughly, but he thought not more frequently or thoroughly than the average of good fellows. He was kept in countenance by a great host of comrade inebriates in the old service and in the new, in the navy as well as in the army, in high civilian position and at the front, in short throughout almost every grade and class of American society. He could point to men whose talents and public virtues the nation honors, and say, "They get as drunk as I do, and as often." He could point to such cases on this side of the water and on the other. Does anybody remember the orgies of the viri clari et venerabili, who gathered at Boston to celebrate the obsequies of John Quincy Adams, and at Charleston to lament over the remains of John C. Calhoun? Does anybody remember the dinner speeches on board of Sir Charles Napier's flagship, just before the Baltic fleet set out for Cronstadt? Latterly this vice has increased upon us in America, thanks to the reaction against the Maine liquor law, thanks to the war. Perhaps it is for the best; perhaps it is a good thing that hundreds of leading Americans and hundreds of thousands of led Americans should be drunkards; it may be, in some incomprehensible manner, for the interest of humanity. To my unenlightened mind the contrary seems probable; but I am liable to error, and sober at this moment of writing: a pint of whiskey might illuminate me to see behind the veil. It is wonderful to me, a member of the guzzling Anglo-Saxon race, that the abstemious Latin nations have not yet got the better of us. Nothing can account for it, unless it is that spiritual, and intellectual, and political tyranny more than counterbalance the advantages of temperance. Boozing John Bull and Jonathan have kept an upper hand because their geographical conditions have enabled them to remain free; and on their impregnable islands and separated quarters of the globe they have besotted themselves for centuries with political impunity.