"Come," said Jack, "sit down, my friends; sit down, all of you. Now then, what will you drink? What shall it be? Call for what you like best. Here is a barrel of beer; here is stout; here are gin, whiskey, rum, Hollands, and brandy. What will you have? Call for what you please. Take your pipes. Why, it is the old time over again." They looked at each other stupidly. The very names of these drinks had been long forgotten by them. But they presently accepted the invitation, and began to drink greedily. At seven o'clock, when the Supper Bell rang, there were at least three hundred men lying about, in various stages of drunkenness. Some were fast asleep, stretched at their full length on the ground; some lay with their heads on the table; some sat, clutching at the pewter mugs; some were vacuously laughing or noisily singing. "What do you make of your experiment?" asked Dr. Linister. "Have you struck your chord?" "Well, they have done once more what they used to do," said Jack, despondently; "and they have done it in the same old way. I don't think there could ever have been any real jolliness about the dogs, who got drunk as fast as ever they could. I expected a more gradual business. I thought the drink would first unloose their tongues, and set them talking. Then I hoped that they would, in this way, be led to remember the Past; and I thought that directly they began to show any recollection at all, I would knock off the supply and carry on the memory. But the experiment has failed, unless"--here a gleam of hope shone in his face--"to-morrow's hot coppers prove a sensation so unusual as to revive the memory of their last experience in the same direction--never mind how many years ago. Hot coppers _may_ produce that result." He ordered the casks to be rolled back to the cellars. That evening the Rebels, headed by Dr. Linister--all dressed in scarlet and gold, with swords--and with them the ladies--(they were called ladies now, nothing less--not women of the People any more)--came to the Public Hall, dressed for the evening in strange garments, with bracelets, necklaces, jewels, gloves, and things which most of the People had never seen. But they seemed to take no heed of these things. "They are hopeless," said Jack. "Nothing moves them. We shall have to begin our new life with our own company of thirty." "Leave them to us," said Mildred. "Remember, it was by dress that Christine aroused us from our stagnant condition; and it was by us that you men were first awakened. Leave them to us."