It did not strike me till
far into the evening that the pimply young reprobates were making
the girls drunk. They gave them red wine and then white, and the
voices rose slightly with the maidens' cheek flushes. I watched,
wishing to stay, and the youths drank till their speech thickened
and their eye-balls grew watery. It was sickening to see,
because I knew what was going to happen. My friend eyed the
group, and said: - "Maybe they're children of respectable people.
I hardly think, though, they'd be allowed out without any better
escort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every
one comes, as you see. They may be Little Immoralities - in which
case they wouldn't be so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of
wine. They may be - "
Whatever they were they got indubitably drunk - there in that
lovely hall, surrounded by the best of Buffalo society. One
could do nothing except invoke the judgment of Heaven on the two
boys, themselves half sick with liquor. At the close of the
performance the quieter maiden laughed vacantly and protested she
couldn't keep her feet. The four linked arms, and staggering,
flickered out into the street - drunk, gentlemen and ladies, as
Davy's swine, drunk as lords! They disappeared down a side
avenue, but I could hear their laughter long after they were out
of sight.
And they were all four children of sixteen and seventeen. Then,
recanting previous opinions, I became a prohibitionist. Better
it is that a man should go without his beer in public places, and
content himself with swearing at the narrow-mindedness of the
majority; better it is to poison the inside with very vile
temperance drinks, and to buy lager furtively at back-doors, than
to bring temptation to the lips of young fools such as the four I
had seen. I understand now why the preachers rage against drink.
I have said: "There is no harm in it, taken moderately;" and yet
my own demand for beer helped directly to send those two girls
reeling down the dark street to - God alone knows what end.
If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth taking a little trouble
to come at - such trouble as a man will undergo to compass his own
desires. It is not good that we should let it lie before the
eyes of children, and I have been a fool in writing to the
contrary. Very sorry for myself, I sought a hotel, and found in
the hall a reporter who wished to know what I thought of the
country. Him I lured into conversation about his own profession,
and from him gained much that confirmed me in my views of the
grinding tyranny of that thing which they call the Press here.
Thus: - I - But you talk about interviewing people whether they
like it or not.
