"With the habitual drunkard," replied Sydney, "there is only at present one course open. He should be placed under restraint as a temporary lunatic, which he is. But drunkenness is a mere stage in the growth of mankind, and can only work itself out through the lessons of experience. To try to prohibit drink is to hinder progress; to say that there is more drunkenness now than formerly, is simply to say that the greater part of our race is considered strong enough to face the temptation. Give a savage as much spirit as he cares for, and he will kill himself in a few months. Our forefathers, in much the same way, though with more caution, used to lie nightly under the dinner-table; but now, among those classes which can afford to drink as much as they like, only persons with hereditary tendencies, or those who are unusually weak go to this extreme either in private or public. They have partially learned their lesson. Among the more ignorant there would be ten times the drunkenness if their wages allowed it. If you consider a man, though he starves his wife and children, cannot afford to get hopelessly drunk more than about twice a week; and this is one of the reasons why the poor have taken longer to learn by experience this lesson. But they, too, are slowly improving under increased temptations." "Well, Sydney," said our host, "you are the most extraordinary man. You always seem to take a view of things from a reversed position." "It is an excellent plan," Sydney replied, laughing, "now and then to stand on your head; in that position you see the world from quite a new aspect, for instead of your eyes being turned naturally to the earth with only an occasional glimpse of the heavens above, your view for the time is altered. It does not, however, do to keep in that attitude too long, or the blood will flow to your brain." "But," asked Miss Smith, "do you not think that such doctrines might be very dangerous?" "All truth is dangerous to those who wish for an excuse for weakness," he replied. "But there are many at the present time who want a little light thrown on the subject; for the man who does any action, however right in itself, feeling that thereby he may be throwing his influence on the side of selfishness, must therein be damned. Alcohol is probably one of our greatest gifts if rightly used, and being so, must of necessity be a frightful curse if abused." "Gift indeed!" sniffed Lady Todman, "when every doctor will tell you it has no feeding property."