Chapter XXVI

Drink, Temperance, And Thrift

>>>>Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend
>>>>thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a
>>>>man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country laborer to
>>>>practice thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready
>>>>to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal.
>>>>-- Oscar Wilde

The English working classes may be said to be
soaked in beer. They are made dull and sodden by
it. Their efficiency is sadly impaired, and they
lose whatever imagination, invention, and quickness
may be theirs by right of race. It may hardly
be called an acquired habit, for they are accus
tomed to it from their earliest infancy. Children
are begotten in drunkenness, saturated in drink be
fore they draw their first breath, born to the smell
and taste of it, and brought up in the midst of it.

The public house is ubiquitous. It flourishes on
every corner and between corners, and it is fre
quented almost as much by women as by men.
Children are to be found in it as well, waiting till
their fathers and mothers are ready to go home,
sipping from the glasses of their elders, listening to

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v?