Let Him (Said I)
Drink Red Wine And White, Good Beer And Mead - If He Could Get
It - Liqueurs Made
By monks, and, in a word, all those feeding,
fortifying, and confirming beverages that our fathers drank in old
time;
But not whisky, nor brandy, nor sparkling wines, not absinthe,
nor the kind of drink called gin. This he promised to do, and all went
well. He became a merry companion, and began to write odes. His prose
clarified and set, that had before been very mixed and cloudy. He
slept well; he comprehended divine things; he was already half a
republican, when one fatal day - it was the feast of the eleven
thousand virgins, and they were too busy up in heaven to consider the
needs of us poor hobbling, polyktonous and betempted wretches of
men - I went with him to the Society for the Prevention of Annoyances
to the Rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a paper on the
cruelty of Spaniards to their mules. As we were all seated there round
a table with a staring green cloth on it, and a damnable gas pendant
above, the host of that evening offered him whisky and water, and, my
back being turned, he took it. Then when I would have taken it from
him he used these words -
'After all, it is the intention of a pledge that matters;' and I saw
that all was over, for he had abandoned definition, and was plunged
back into the horrible mazes of Conscience and Natural Religion.
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