"Before it seemed expedient to follow the reform bandwagon, I held certain principles touching the drinking habit. But the American bar has destroyed drinking as a fine art, and it has now become a vulgar habit. In the good old times no gentleman ever jumped at his liquor. He took it with a casual air, even with a sanctifying reluctance. The idea of rushing into a public place and gulping your liquor is repugnant to the most primary of the instincts that govern gentlemen. To precipitate a gill of applejack into that most delicate organism, the human stomach, without the slightest warning, is an insult to the human body,--ay, more, it is an outrage upon man's very soul. The aim of liquor, ladies and gentlemen, is to stay and lift the spirit, not to degrade it. Drinking at proper intervals ceased to be respectable at a fixed date in human progress--to be exact, at the moment when it was no longer a mere incident of personal or social recreation but had become a sociological and political issue, staggering drunkenly under a weary burden of most painful statistics." "You are eminently right, Governor Dangerfield," said the governor of South Carolina, helping himself to the salted almonds; "but you have used a phrase which piques my curiosity. Will you kindly enlighten us as to how you interpret proper intervals?" "With greatest pleasure," responded Governor Dangerfield. "I remember, as though it were yesterday, my venerable grandfather saying that no gentleman should ever approach the sideboard oftener than once before breakfast, and he was himself a very early riser. I discount this, however, because he always slept with a jug of Cuban rum--the annual offering of a West Indian friend--easily within his reach at the head of his bed. It was his practice for years to sip a little rum and water while he shaved. He was a gentleman if ever I knew one and as I look upon him as a standard authority in all matters of deportment and morals, I may safely cite him further in answer to your question. "During the long open season in our country my grandfather constantly rode over the plantation in immaculate white duck followed by a darky on a mule carrying a basket. On our ancestral estate there were many springs giving the purest and coldest of water, and these were providentially scattered at the most convenient intervals for my grandfather's comfort. And as a slight return to nature for what she had done for him in this particular, my grandfather, in his early youth, had planted mint around all these springs. I need hardly point out the advantages of this happiest of combinations--a spring of clear, icy water; the pungent bouquet of lush mint; the ample basket home by a faithful negro, and my grandfather, in his white duck suit and a Panama hat a yard wide, seated by the mossy spring, selecting with the most delicate care the worthiest of the fragrant leaves.