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paralysis of the body, drink having unstrung the whole nervous system, which, when so unstrung leaves the body like a ship without sails or ropes – an unmovable or unmanageable thing. Alcohol may have its uses in the medical world, to which it should be relegated; but once a man becomes its victim, it is a terrible and a merciless master, and he finds himself in that dreadful state when all will-power is gone and he becomes a helpless imbecile, tortured at times by remorse and despair. Conclusion of the foregoing.
    On the other hand, young men of my acquaintance who were in the habit of voluntarily placing themselves under the influence of alcohol had often surprised me with a recital of their strange adventures. The mind may be impaired by alcohol, I mused, but withal it may be pleasantly impaired. Personal experience appeared to me to be the only satisfactory means to the resolution of my doubts. Knowing it was my first one, I quietly fingered the butt of my glass before I raised it. Lightly I subjected myself to an inward interrogation.
    Nature of interrogation
: Who are my future cronies, where our mad carousals? What neat repast shall feast us light and choice of Attic taste with wine whence we may rise to hear the lute well touched or artful voice warble immortal notes or Tuscan air? What mad pursuit? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
    Here’s to your health, said Kelly.
    Good luck, I said.
    The porter was sour to the palate, but viscid, potent. Kelly made long noise as if releasing air from his interior.
    I looked at him from the corner of my eye and said:
    You can’t beat a good pint.
    He leaned over and put his face close to me in an earnest manner.
    Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man.
    Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I became subsequently addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite thepainful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me.
    I proceeded home one evening in October after leaving a gallon of half-digested porter on the floor of a public-house in Parnell Street and put myself with considerable difficulty into bed, where I remained for three days on the pretence of a chill. I was compelled to secrete my suit beneath the mattress because it was offensive to at least two of the senses and bore an explanation of my illness contrary to that already advanced.
    The two senses referred to
: Vision, smell.
    On the evening of the third day, a friend of mine, Brinsley, was admitted to my chamber. He bore miscellaneous books and papers. I complained on the subject of my health and ascertained from him that the weather was inimical to the well-being of invalids…. He remarked that there was a queer smell in the room.
    Description of my friend
: Thin, dark-haired, hesitant; an intellectual Meath-man; given to close-knit epigrammatic talk; weak-chested, pale.
    I opened wide my windpipe and made a coarse noise unassociated with the usages of gentlemen.
    I feel very bad, I said.
    By God you’re the queer bloody man, he said.
    I was down in Parnell Street, I said with the Shader Ward, the two of us drinking pints. Well, whatever happened to me, I started to puke and I puked till the eyes nearly left my head. I made a right haimes of my suit. I puked till I puked air.
    Is that the way of it? said Brinsley.
    Look at here, I said.
    I arose in my bed, my body on the prop of an elbow.
    I was talking to the Shader, I said, talking about God and one thing and another, and suddenly I felt something inside me like a man trying to get out of my stomach. The next minute my head was in the grip of the Shader’s hand and I was letting it out in great style. O Lord save us….
    Here Brinsley interposed a laugh.
    I thought my stomach was on the