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This was called a "toddy time-table," and I transcribe it here from a neat gilt-edged card for the warning and instruction of Eastern topers. My impression is that this time-table was not made for the latitude of Covelo, for they began to drink much earlier than 6 A.M. at the bar, near which I slept, and they left off later than midnight.
At half-past nine of the clock on the evening of this memorable day, a body of five-and-twenty stout young fellows, prize-winners, wrestlers, boxers, and topers, of the Hillford Club, set forth on a march to Ipley Common.
How the lungs of the feasters were choked with overpowering perfumes! What repulsive exhibitions met the eye! How shamelessly was all decency trodden under foot! The poisonous breath of unchecked license had blasted the noble moderation of the vapor of wine which floated round this chaos of riotous topers slowly rose the pale image of Satiety watching for victims on the morrow.
"I am an object lesson to teetotalers; a warning to topers; a modern helot made shameful to disgust youth with vice." "You had better go home, sir," said Lucian sharply. "I can't find home. It is somewhere hereabout, but where, I don't know." "You are in Geneva Square," said Denzil, trying to sharpen the dulled wits of the man. "I wish I was in No. 13 of it," sighed the stranger.
The people, too: where were his friends? The children who had romped with him, the rotund topers whom he had left cooling their hot noses in pewter pots at the tavern door, the dogs that used to bark a welcome, recognizing in him a kindred spirit of vagrancy: where were they?
At the counter stand, at almost all hours, certainly at all hours when I have chanced to observe, tipplers, either taking a solitary glass, or treating all round, veteran topers, flashy young men, visitors from the country, the various petty officers connected with the law, whom the vicinity of the Court-House brings hither.
He tried to lead them in singing some ribald parody of Adventist hymns, but his terror and theirs was too genuine, and their voices died down into husky whispers, and they were more alarmed than ever at discovering the extent of their own demoralization. The bottle, one of those small-necked, big-bodied quart-bottles that Western topers carry in yellow-cotton handkerchiefs, was passed round.
Drastic measures were adopted to suppress the fun. Another proclamation adorned the dead walls decreeing that native bars and canteens were to be closed altogether. To deal effectively with the hooligan school stern methods were necessary, and total prohibition was the initial step a step highly lauded by the public in general, and by the white topers of the city in particular.
Doubtless he sat longest and drank least of all the topers of Naishapur, and the bell for Saki rang not from his corner half often enough to please mine host. Certainly the longevity of some modern poets can only be accounted for by some such supposition in their case.
The room was divided into compartments in the approved manner, between which were screens of ground glass in mahogany framing, to prevent topers in one compartment being put to the blush by the recognitions of those in the next. On the inside of the counter two barmaids leant over the white-handled beer-engines, and the row of little silvered taps inside, dripping into a pewter trough.
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