THE WHIPPER-IN 87 



that is to say, people who do not get bhnd drunk, but who are 

 always getting a drop. 



" Bless me ! " exclaimed old Peter Pigskin, as we were 

 jogging to cover together the other morning, " Bless me ! 

 there's Mr. Lapitup drinking a glass of grog at yon public- 

 house door. He's drank fifteen hundred a-year, and he's dry 

 still l" 



Gentlemen are not altogether exempt from the charge of 

 encouraging drinking. When hoimds meet at their houses, 

 they are very apt to send the butler, or Jeames Plush, out 

 with the brandy-bottle, or somethmg equally potent, and then 

 there's pretty crashing and flashing, leaping of gates, and 

 larking at rails. It is a bad principle, and a custom that had 

 better be commuted into a goose, or a whole bottle of some- 

 thing at Christmas ; after a long ride, or on a cold raw 

 morning, a glass may be all very well. It is against the abuse, 

 and not the use of spirits that we contend. 



We do not object to hospitality to servants ; far from it, but 

 then we advocate its exercise at seasonable times. After a 

 good run, no one would object to the frothing tankard flowing 

 round— not even Father Mathew himself, provided that great 

 water saint had first experienced the delightful delirium of a 

 wet shirt, got in a hard ridden run ; neither would a glass of 

 something hot and water after a cold wet trashing day be 

 objected to, but rather recommended, but it is indiscriminate 

 cold-blooded drinking that should be avoided. It is a dangerous, 

 a ruinous thing. One glass this year leads to two next, and so 

 they go on till ruin is the result. Servants may take our word 

 for it, that in no station or calling in life will drinking answer. 

 A drunken man is not a man, he is only half a man, sometimes 

 not so much. Hound servants, as we said before, are exposed 

 to great temptations. They have frequently to lie from home 

 at night, at inns and public-houses, and we all know the 

 customs of landlords, and the treating habits of tap-rooms. 



