This thirsty gentleman is threatened with extinction. His Sabbatical
pint is in danger. He has been reported against by a Royal Commission.
Threatened men, I know, live long, and it is not for me to raise
false alarms, but though the end of the _bonâ-fide_ traveller may be
not yet, his glory has departed. His more than Sabbath-day journeys
in search of the liquor that he loves, extended though they are
by statute over three dreary, dusty miles of turnpike, have been
ridiculed, and, worse than that, his _bonâ-fide_ character--hitherto
his proud passport to intoxication--has been roughly condemned as
pleonastic. A pretty pleonasm, truly, which has broached many a barrel.
The Commissioners say, ‘We think it would be advisable to eliminate
the words _bonâ-fide_. No sensible person could suppose that the
Legislature in using the word “traveller” meant to include persons who
make a pretence only of being such, and are not travellers really and
in fact.’ At present there are two classes of Sunday travellers: there
is the real traveller and there is the _bonâ-fide_ traveller. It is the
latter whose existence is menaced. The sooner he dies the better, for,
in plain English, he is a drunken dog.
The Report of the Royal Commission as to the operation of the Welsh
Sunday Closing Act of 1881 has been published, and, as the phrase
runs, will repay perusal. It is full of humanity and details about
our neighbours, their habits and customs. However true it may have
been, or still may be, that one half of the world does not know how
the other half lives, it is a libel upon the curiosity of mankind to
attribute this ignorance to indifference. No facts are more popular,
than those which relate to people’s lives. Could it be discovered how
many people prefer tea without sugar, the return would be printed in
every newspaper of Great Britain, and be made the text of tens of
thousands of leading articles. We are all alike in this respect, though
some of us are ashamed to own it. We are by no means sure that the man
answered badly who, when asked which of George Eliot’s characters was
lodged most firmly in human memories, replied boldly, Mrs. Linnet.
Everybody remembers Mrs. Linnet, and grins broadly at the very mention
of her name. ‘On taking up the biography of a celebrated preacher,
she immediately turned to the end to see what disease he died of; and
if his legs swelled as her own occasionally did, she felt a stronger
interest in ascertaining any earlier facts in the history of the
dropsical divine; whether he had ever fallen off a stage-coach, whether
he had married more than one wife, and, in general, any adventures
or repartees recorded of him prior to the epoch of his conversion.
Then she glanced over the letters and diary, and wherever there was a
predominance of Zion, the River of Life, and notes of exclamation, she
turned over to the next page; but any passage in which she saw such
promising nouns as “small-pox,” “pony,” or “boots and shoes,” at once
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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