‘Exactly so. Laws against drunkenness are constantly broken, but they have a beneficial effect nevertheless. A prohibitory liquor law goes too far. To act on the idea that a glass of claret, or beer, or cider does mischief to anyone is absurd. Walter Mapes was right when he wrote in praise of drink. As the old monk writes— ‘“A glass of wine amazingly enliveneth one’s internals.”’ ‘You are right there,’ replied Wentworth. ‘Last summer I was at a seaside watering-place. There had been a regatta there, and I had written a description of it for our paper. In a day or two after the event was celebrated by a grand dinner at the leading hotel, to which I was invited. Unfortunately, on the day of the dinner I was desperately ill. My head was splitting; my skin was as tough as the hide of a rhinoceros; I ached in every limb. I went to the medical men of the district; there were two of them in partnership. No. 1 made me believe that I was in a bad way; No. 2 made me out worse. “Could I go to the dinner?” I asked. “By no means,” was the reply. “Take this medicine, go home and go to bed, and we will come and see you in the morning.” Ill as I was, I went to the dinner. It was a very jovial one, and I sat drinking champagne till late. I went home, slept like a top, and woke up as well as I ever was in my life. The next morning the doctor came. “Ah,” he said, “I see you look all the better for my medicine.” I said, “I did not take a drop of your medicine. I went to the dinner, drank champagne all night, and it was that which cured me.” “Very strange that,” said the doctor. “The very things we think poison have often quite a contrary effect.” My own opinion is that if I had taken the medicine I should have been ill for a week at least. I don’t take wine as a daily drink, because I can’t afford it, for one reason, and for another because I believe, taken daily, it has a mischievous effect. But there are times when it does good, and life is not so joyous that we can afford to dispense entirely with the pleasant stimulus of wine. I would not prevent its manufacture. No society has ever existed without the winecup for its feasts and holidays. I would not put down the liquor traffic. I would only shut up the drink shops. It is they that cause the drunkenness which does so much mischief, and there is no need for their existence at all. ‘But let us hear what her ladyship has to say,’ said Buxton. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘A regenerated State.’ ‘Ah, there is need for it,’ she said. ‘But how are you to get it? That is the question.’ ‘Oh, nothing is easier. Buy a farm in Essex and form there a model society.’ ‘With a cheap train to take your people to London in an hour or two? That will never do.’ ‘Well, then, let us go to Canada and plant our Utopia there.’ ‘And fail, as others have done,’ said she. ‘But we shall take picked men and women, and with them we cannot fail.’ ‘But they are not immortal.’