“Do I then excuse drunkenness? God forbid. Nay, rather do I plead with all that they should quit the accursed thing and not purchase for themselves that Fool’s Paradise, so costly, and from which they awake to find the world still harder. But I am here to-night to plead with all who may hear me, rich or poor, high or low, master or man, to try to live in all things the Christ-life. There are miserable sinners enough besides the poor drunkard. I daresay some of you have stopped to listen just on purpose to hear the faults and vices of the very poor and very lost denounced. It is soothing, no doubt, to see other people soundly trounced, to hear vices _we_ haven’t got, and imagine we are never likely to have, scathingly lashed. But I think we’ll let the _poor_ sinner have a rest to-night. There are sins in high as well as in low places, and first and foremost I count the sin and folly of setting all your heart and all your mind on the mad haste to be rich, caring to stand well with the world, to have the seat of honour at the feast, to surround yourself with all the garb and trappings of wealth—in a word, to get on. It is a mean and paltry ambition. Who are you that you should want to thrust yourself head and shoulders above your fellows? When the final judgment comes, what will it avail you to have piled up riches and be driven to church in a carriage and pair. “I tell you, there are a few other matters that will have to be inquired into there—” “Oh! come along, Beaumont,” said Storth, “we’ve had about enough of this bally rot. Canting humbug, I call it. Chuck the girl a bob, and let’s slide,” and he flung the silver coin towards the tambourine of Happy Sal and moved away. Beaumont flung no coin, but, raising his hat, followed his companion. “I’d have liked to hear the end of it, Storth,” he said. “The young lady, for she’s that you can see with half an eye, has tackled a big subject. I fancy that’s not the usual kind of Salvation Army harangue. If it is, I think I must hunt up their barracks.” “A lot of blooming nonsense, I call it. That is so far as I could understand what the dickens the girl was driving at. But I say, though, if she’s a fair sample of Salvation Army lasses, I think I’ll put in an hour or two at the Barracks myself. Face like a Mary Magdalene, hasn’t she? ’Spose that’s about the time of day with her, eh, Beaumont?” “You’ll have to read faces better than that, Sam, or you’ll never be any good in Court,” said Beaumont. “Do you believe in anything or anybody? Is there no good thing under the sun?”