There is only one end; if the doomed one escapes _delirium tremens_ he is likely to have cirrhosis, and if he misses both of these, then dropsy or Bright's disease claims him. Those who once loved him pray for his death, and greet his last breath with an echoing sigh of thankfulness and relief: he might have been cheered in his last hour by the graceful sympathy of troops of friends; but the State-protected vice has such a withering effect that it scorches up friendship as a fiery breath from a furnace might scorch a grass blade. If one of my joyous, delightful lads could just watch the shambling, dirty figure of such a failure as I have described; if he could see the sneers of amused passers-by, the timid glances of women, the contemptuous off-hand speech of the children--"Oh! him! That's old, boozy Blank;" then the youths might well tremble, for the woebegone beggar that snivels out thanks for a mouthful of gin was once a brave lad--clever, handsome, generous, the delight of friends, the joy of his parents, the most brilliantly promising of all his circle. He began by being jolly; he was well encouraged and abetted; he found that respectable men drank, and that Society made no demur. But he forgot that there are drinkers and drinkers, he forgot that the cool-headed men were not tainted by heredity, nor were their brains so delicately poised that the least grain of foreign matter introduced in the form of vapour could cause semi-insanity. And thus the sacrifice of Society--and the Exchequer--goes to the tomb amid contempt, and hissing, and scorn; while the saddest thing of all is that those who loved him most passionately are most glad to hear the clods thump on his coffin. I believe, if you let me keep a youngster for an hour in a room with me, I could tell him enough stories from my own shuddery experience to frighten him off drink for life. I should cause him to be haunted.