But the liquors consumed in London by the lower classes are probably the most execrable and vile that the ingenuity of the haters of mankind ever invented. The brandy they drink is liquid lightning--chain lightning--which goes crashing through the system, breaking down and destroying every pulsation towards anything good. The gin--well, their gin is the very acme, the absolute summit, of vileness. There is a quarrel in every gill of it, a wife-beating in every pint, and a murder in every quart. A smell of a glass of it nearly drove me to criminal recklessness. [Illustration: A LONDON GIN DRINKING WOMAN.] And yet they all drink it, and especially the women. The most disgusting sight the world can produce is a London gin drinking woman standing at a bar, waiting feverishly for her "drain," with unkempt hair, a small but intensely dirty shawl, with stockingless feet, and shoes down at the heel, with eyes rheumy and watery, that twinkle with gin light out from the obscurity of gin-swelled flesh, with a face on which the scorching fingers of a depraved appetite have set red lines, as ineffaceable as though they had been placed there by red-hot iron, every one of which is the unavailing protest of a long-outraged stomach. [Sidenote: THE GENERAL BOOZE.] There she stands, a blotch upon the face of nature and a satire upon womanhood. It is difficult to realize that this bloated mass was once a fair young girl, and had a mother who loved her, and it is equally difficult to comprehend how any power, even that of Nature, could ever make use of it. But the elements are kindly to man. When they have done their work, sweet flowers may grow out of this putridity. In America this sort of being exists, but it is herded somewhere out of sight. It does not stand at the bars in the best streets to offend the eyes of decent people. But it is everywhere here. It is in the Strand and on Piccadilly and Regent street. The average Englishman of the lower, and even the middle classes, dearly loves to booze. Drunkenness is not the result either of conviviality or desperation as it is in other countries. It is the one thing longed for and set deliberately about. [Illustration: THE POOR MAN IS SICK.] Rare John Leech, illustrated it in his picture in _Punch_, years ago. A man was lying very drunk at the foot of a lamp-post. A benevolent old lady of the Exeter Hall school seeing him, called a cabman. "The poor man is sick," quoth the kindly dame, "why don't you help him?" "Sick, is he," replied cabby, "sick! don't I vish I 'ad just 'arf of vot ails him?" The cabby spoke the honest sentiment of his heart. The Londoner of his class loves it for the effect it has upon him, and as he accomplishes his design with English gin, he carries with him a breath that suggests the tomb of a not very ancient king, a breath which has a density, a center, as one might say. [Illustration: "THAT NIGGER IS MINE, AND WORTH FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS."] [Sidenote: THE KIND OF LIQUOR.]