“Here, policeman,” said the beershop-keeper, “take this man away, he has insulted me.” And the policeman complied with his request, and the poor fellow, who was too drunk to stand upright, speedily embraces mother earth. On another occasion a policeman displayed unusual activity. He was after a man who had stolen actually an oyster, and for this the policeman was on his track, and the man was to be conveyed at the expense of the country to Rochford gaol. Let me draw a veil over the horrors of the return home of an excursion train with its tipsy occupants, swearing eternal friendship one moment while trying to tear each other’s eyes out the next. It is bad enough to see the excursionists making their way back to the railway station; here a couple of men will be holding up a drunken mate, there are flushed boys and girls yelling and shrieking like so many escaped lunatics. Now let us retrace our steps. You can tell by the disorder and ruin all around where the excursionists have been, their steps are as manifest to the observer as an invading army. Is there no remedy for this state of things? Is a quiet watering-place, to which people go to recover health and strength, to be at the mercy of any drunken swarms who happen to have the half-crowns in their pockets requisite for the purchase of an excursion ticket? Of course this is a free country, and the right of a man to go to the devil his own way is a right of which I would be the last to deprive my fellow citizens; but an excursion train is a monster nuisance, of which our ancestors never dreamed, and for which in their wisdom they made no provision. Of course total abstinence is a remedy; but then the British workman is not a total abstainer, and that is a question which I am not about to discuss. All I want is to call attention to what is a daily scandal in the summer-time; and to bid good people remember—while they are talking of heathenism abroad—that heathenism at home, which, under the influence of strong drink threatens to destroy all that is lovely and of good report in our midst. Lest it be said that I exaggerate, that I give an erroneous idea of the drinking customs of the working classes, let me quote the following confession of a working man, when examined before a coroner’s jury, as to the way in which he had spent his holiday last Good Friday: “We went for a walk, and had two pints of beer on the road. We got as far as the Holloway Road Railway Station, and turned back. Deceased saw me home, and then left me.” “Did he again call on you?” “Yes; at about twenty minutes to three o’clock.” “By appointment?”