Why, it’s just the mixture I so long have sought! Here I’ll be a fixture Till I’ve drunk the quart! Just the stuff to suit yer. Waiter, do you hear? Make it, for the future, _Three_ parts ginger-beer! _Third Verse_ (_requiring violet-tinted slide_). By-and-by, the ale discarding, ginger-beer he craves alone. Undiluted he procures it, buys it bottled up in stone. (_The earthenware bottles are said by connoisseurs to contain liquor of superior strength and quality._) From his lips the foam he brushes--crimson overspreads his brow. To his brain the ginger’s mounting! Could his mother see him now! _Refrain_ (_depicting the horrors of a solitary debauch poisoned by remorse_). Shall I have another? Only ginger-pop! (_Wildly._) Ah! I promised mother Not to touch a drop! Far too much I’m tempted. (_Recklessly._) Let me drink my fill! That’s the fifth I’ve emptied-- Oh, I feel so ill! [_Here the singer will stagger about the boards._ _Fourth Verse._ (_Turn on lurid crimson ray for this._) Next with drinks they style “teetotal” he his manhood must degrade; Swilling effervescent syrups--“ice-cream-soda,” “raspberry-ade,” Koumiss tempts his jaded palate--payment he’s obliged to bilk-- Then, reduced to destitution, finds forgetfulness in--milk! _Refrain_ (_indicating rapid moral deterioration_). What’s that on the railings? [_Point dramatically at imaginary area._ Milk--and in a can! Though I have my failings, I’m an honest man. [_Spark of expiring rectitude here._ I can _not_ resist it. [_Pantomime of opening can._ That celestial blue! Has the milkman missed it? [_Melodramatically._ _I_’ll be missing too! _Fifth Verse_ (_in pale blue light_). Milk begets a taste for water, so comparatively cheap, Every casual pump supplies him, gratis, with potations deep; He at every drinking-fountain pounces on the pewter cup, Conscious of becoming bloated, powerless to give it up! _Refrain_ (_illustrative of utter loss of self-respect_). “Find one straight before me?” Bobby, you’re a trump! Faintness stealing o’er me-- Ha--at last--a pump! If that little maid ’ll Just make room for one, I could grab the ladle After she has done. _The last verse is the culminating point of this moral drama:--The miserable wretch has reached the last stage. He shuts himself up in his cheerless abode, and there, in shameful secrecy, consumes the element for which he is powerless to pay--the inevitable Nemesis following._ _Sixth Verse_ (_All lights down in front. Ghastly green light at wings_).