Among the classes who are better off from the worldly point of view, we
shall have sacrifices offered to the fiend from time to time. Drink has
wound like some ubiquitous fungus round and round the tissues of the
national body, and we are sure to have a nasty growth striking out at
intervals. It tears the heart-strings when we see the brave, the
brilliant, the merry, the wise, sinking under the evil clement in our
appalling dual nature, and we feel, with something like despair, that we
cannot be altogether delivered from the scourge yet awhile. I have stabs
of conscience when I call to mind all I have seen and remember how
little I have done, and I can only hope, in a shame-faced way, that the
use of intoxicants may be quietly dropped, just as the practice of
gambling, and the habit of drinking heavy, sweet wines, have passed away
from the exclusive society in which cards used to form the main
diversion. Frankly speaking, I have seen the degradation, the
abomination, and the measureless force of Drink so near at hand that I
am not sanguine. I can take care of myself, but I am never really sure
about many other people, and I had good reason for not being sure of
myself. One thing is certain, and that is that the creeping enemy is
sure to attack the very last man or woman whom you would expect to see
attacked. When the first symptoms are seen, the stricken one should be
delivered from _ennui_ as much as possible, and then some friend should
tell, in dull, dry style, the slow horror of the drop to the Pit. Fear
will be effective when nothing else will. Many are stronger than I am
and can help more. By the memory of broken hearts, by the fruitless
prayers of mothers and sorrowing wives, for the sake of the children who
are forced to stay on earth in a living death, I ask the strong to help
us all. Blighted lives, wrecked intellects, wasted brilliancy, poisoned
morality, rotted will--all these mark the road that the King of Evils
takes in his darksome progress. Out of the depths I have called for aid