"In a railway station refreshment room, before half-past nine in the morning, the following scene passed before my eyes:--Three very respectably-dressed good-looking shop girls, evidently going out for a holiday, went straight to the bar and ordered, in the most unblushing way, a glass of bitter beer. Shortly afterwards, a fourth girl joined them, and she as unblushingly asked for three pennyworth of spirits, which she drank on the spot.... Not long ago, in this very town, I was in a well-known refreshment shop, and whilst I was there, a lady, respectable in appearance, with a child by her side, and a carriage waiting outside to take her home, consumed no less than three glasses of sherry one after the other. This was utterly unnecessary in the middle of the day, and it was probably unknown to the lady's husband.... You will help us, I am convinced, to put a stop to this state of things; you will sign the petition we are about to send to Parliament, and in which we ask our representatives to remove a very great cause of temptation from the homes of many of our brethren by withdrawing the grocers' licences." The Archdeacon was followed on the platform by some ladies, who gave the audience the benefit of their own experiences with regard to the drunken habits of Englishwomen; after which the hymn, "To the work," was sung; for if, in France, everything ends in songs, in England everything ends in hymns. "Why," I said to my spinster friend, "there is no common sense in all this. What! no more arguments than that! Because a few women have been to buy a little brandy of their grocer, with the most innocent intention perhaps, you are going to ask Parliament to prevent free and honest citizens, who object to going to the public-house, from getting a bottle of wine with their groceries. It is absurd." ----"Not at all," she replied; "I have been drinking nothing but water for forty years and more, and the day we all become water drinkers, we shall be a holy nation." ----"A nation of lunatics," thought I; and getting out of this atmosphere as quickly as I could I jumped into a cab and drove to the station. As I alighted, I noticed that my cabby had a bit of yellow ribbon in his buttonhole. "Hallo!" I said to him, "what decoration do you call that?" ----"Ah! you have been with the water drinkers, to the Blue Ribbon meeting, sir; I belong to the Yellow Ribbon Army, I do." ----"Indeed," cried I; "and what do they do in the Yellow Ribbon Army?" ----"Why," he answered; "you eats what you like, and you drinks what you like, and you don't care a damn for nobody." By Jove! it was quite a treat to see a _man_ again after having passed the evening with such a lot of old women. "Here, old fellow," said I to this free-born Briton, who had one of those good open faces such as you see so often in Devonshire, "take this, and go and drink my health;" and I turned away to the ticket office, reconciled with mankind.[8]