The toper always carefully eschews any thing like direct and open personal contact with the enemy, in the shape of discussions on the merits of the question of abstinence. There is, in fact, nothing he so much abominates as any attempt at reasoning on the subject, where such reasoning has for its object to show the advantages of temperance or intemperance. The toper thus at all times prefers keeping out of the teetotaller’s way, and, although professing the most entire disregard of him, will at any time go a mile about to avoid him. He has an instinctive dislike of him, and this because he is a living personified reflection on himself.
Turning now to the teetotaller, we find two or three things in his conduct, too, with reference to the toper, that are rather curious in their way. In the first place, it is curious to mark the deep interest he takes in what may be called the tippling statistics of his neighbourhood; and the amount of knowledge which he contrives to acquire on this subject is really amazing. He knows all the topers in his vicinity, and keeps a sharp eye on their proceedings. He knows every one of their haunts too—knows the different degrees of dissipation to which each has attained, and could almost tell on any given day what quantity each drank on the preceding night. In short, so vigilantly does he watch all the outgoings and incomings of these marked men, and yet without seeming to notice them, that they can hardly swallow a single cropper without his knowing it. The whole thing, in fact, is a sort of private study of his own, and one to which he devotes a great deal of quiet observation and secret reflection: he takes a deep interest in it, and hence the proficiency he makes out in the knowledge of its details.
But our teetotaller not only knows all the professed, undisguised topers of his locality; he knows—much more striking proof of his vigilance—every man also whose habits, although not yet sufficiently intemperate to attract the attention of any one but a teetotaller, exhibit signs and symptoms of becoming gradually worse. The tippling progress of these persons he watches with the deepest interest, and keeps himself accurately informed regarding the extent and frequency of their debauches. The teetotaller, in short, keeps a vigilant eye over the entire drinking system of his neighbourhood, and professes an astonishing knowledge of what every one is doing in this way. If the teetotaller’s residence be in a small town, his surveillance then embraces its whole extent, and hardly can a single bumper be swallowed within its limits, of which he does not, somehow or other, obtain notice.
Abhorring dissipation itself, the teetotaller naturally extends that abhorrence to its signs and symptoms. On flushed and pimpled faces he looks with aversion and distrust, but on a red nose with absolute horror. We once saw a curious instance of this:—A gentleman with a highly illumed proboscis one evening entered a teetotal coffee-room in which we happened to be seated. The nose—for we sink the gentleman, its owner, altogether, as an unnecessary incumbrance—passed, although with deliberate movement, like a fiery meteor, up the entire length of the room, exciting in its progress the utmost horror and dismay amongst the teetotallers with whom the apartment was thronged. The sensation, in fact, created by the red nose was immense, although not noisy in its expression.
It was indicated merely by an extensive and earnest whispering, by a shuffling of feet, and a general fidgetty sort of movement, giving, though in an unobtrusive form, a very vivid idea of the presence of some exceedingly disagreeable object. The whole room, in short, was shocked by the red nose, although they refrained from expressing that feeling by any more marked demonstration than those we have mentioned. The red nose seemed for some time unconscious of the effects it was producing, but the detection of a number of horror-stricken faces peering eagerly over the edges and round the corners of boxes, to get a glimpse of the detestable object, betrayed the real state of the case. The red nose, however, evinced no emotion on making the discovery, but passed quietly into an unoccupied box, took up a paper, and ordered a glass of lemonade. The landlord looked queer at the nose as he tabled the order, but of course said nothing.
Now, we thought at the time, how different would have been the reception of the gentleman with the red nose by a club of topers! In such case, his nose, in place of being looked on with horror, would have been viewed with respect. It would have been a passport to the highest favour of the jolly fraternity, and would have at once admitted its owner to their confidence and good-fellowship. We do not know, indeed, that its entrance would not have been hailed by a shout of acclamation; for, viewed as one of the chief insignia of a boon companion, it was truly a splendid nose.
C.
MORAL EVIL MAN’S OWN CREATION.
Man brings upon himself a thousand calamities, as consequences of his artifices and pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls evil:—
He compromises every natural pleasure to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death; and seeks to render his name celebrated among posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though posterity and himself can have no contemporaneous feeling.