Again, the _social usages of society_ have a powerful tendency to indulgence. Friendship and good cheer seem indissolubly intertwined. Cups that cheer have long been regarded as essential items. But it must be set down as an unquestionable fact that in the higher circles of society, far less is drunk than formerly. The London clubs are a very fair index of the condition of things existing within that sphere. In them, excess is now practically unknown; at any rate in the more select clubs. Their cellars teem with good wine now, as they did half a century ago, when we read:-- The value of the stores found in the cellars of the various Club-houses in London, may be adduced in evidence of the estimation in which wine is held, by a portion, at least, of the higher classes in the metropolis. Carlton Club, 1,500_l._; United University Club, not much under 2,000_l._ The Literary and Scientific Athenæum, 3,500_l._ to 4,000_l._ The Union Club appears to exceed the rest in the contents of its cellars, which remarks the writer, from whose work we extract this information, ‘disguise it as people will, is the most important matter after all.’ The stock of wine (the Chairman declares it to be an under-estimate) according to a recent valuation, amounts to 7,150_l._ The Junior United Service Club values its stock of wines at 3,722_l._ Those of the United Service Club are worth, it is said, 7,722_l._[244] But riot and rowdyism are things of the past. Among the middle classes, many of the compulsory drinking usages are swept away. In Mr. Dunlop’s interesting volume, no less than 297 of these _usages_ are specified as then rife.[245] A much improved tone is observable amongst _commercial travellers_ than some fifty years ago, when the modern Ramazzini wrote:-- Well fed, riding from town to town, and walking to the houses of the several tradesmen, they have an employment not only more agreeable, but more conducive to health than almost any other dependent on traffic. But they destroy their constitutions by intemperance; not generally by drunkenness, but by taking more liquor than nature requires. Dining at the traveller’s table, each drinks his pint or bottle of wine; he then takes negus or spirit with several of his customers, and at night he must have a glass or two of brandy and water. Few commercial travellers bear the employ for thirty years--the majority not twenty.[246] And Mr. Samuelson, in his _History of Drink_, sees traces of an improving tone amongst the operative classes; of which, amongst other things, the dissociation of benefit and other clubs from taverns, is an index. There are fewer now to sneer at the efforts for a moral regeneration. It may be doubted if Mr. Barham would to-day gloat over his lines in the _Milkmaid’s Story_:--