is thought that the publican is reluctant to sell temperance drinks, and that a good deal might be done by exchanging him for some one having an interest in selling them. We will go into the Rose and Crown and see. I ask the landlord for a bottle of lemonade and he gives it me at once.

'You don't mind selling this then?' I ask.

Not at all. It's all one to me, or rather, to tell the truth, I prefer selling temperance drinks, as I make more profit on them. I keep all sorts, lemonade, gingerade, ginger-beer, and mineral waters. People have whatever they ask for. I have about one hundred teetotalers in during the week, and they are served with their lemonade or anything they like the same as anybody else.'

But there is one thing, at any rate, the publican can do for temperance, and that is, refuse to serve a person who has already had too much. Moreover, he is bound to do it by the Act of 1872, under a penalty of 10l. for the first offence, and 207. for the second. His enemies have a real handle against him here, for the record of convictions, which can only represent a fraction of the offences, proves that too many publicans are lax upon this point. Undoubtedly there is room for improvement, especially in villages and small places; but in large, wellpoliced centres of population, the possibilities of improvement are fewer than they may seem at first sight. An incident in this very public-house throws a light on the question. A woman of the poorest class, with bare head and shawl-probably Irish-is

sitting quietly on the bench having a glass of four, ale.' Presently she begins to talk to herself. 'I was drunk o' Palm Sunday,' she says meditatively; drunk o' Palm Sunday.' Then rising to her feet and flinging up her right hand dramatically, she shouts,' And may the Lord bless him as give me the job to earn the money-and that's Mr. Levi. May the Lord bless'm anschildnschildn-and proshperm!' She is drunk, not badly, but still undeniably drunk. She wants another glass. 'No, missis, that's enough for you-you had better be off home.' And she goes.

Why did you serve her at all?' I ask.

'She had no appearance of being drunk when she came in.'

And indeed she had not when I first saw her.

'You see,' continues the landlord, 'it's impossible to tell sometimes. Suppose I'm at the other end of the bar; some one comes in here, steadies himself up against the counter, and calls for a drink. I haven't seen him come in, his voice is all right, and he is standing steady with his hand on the counter. I can't possibly know he's drunk. We never serve them if we do know; it's not to our interest, as they are likely to annoy other customers.'

managed

The experience of the Scandinavian houses fully confirms this; with the best will in the world to prevent it, drunken people are still served. Women and Children in the Public-house.-The foregoing incident suggests a reference to the most deplorable feature of our liquor traffic, and one

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peculiar to ourselves. We have not exactly a monopoly of female drunkenness, but we have far more than any of our neighbours, and in no other country is it the custom for women and children to frequent the public-house as it is with us. The women are dreadful beyond all description. When once they take to it, they are more often drunk than the men, more violent, shameless, degraded, and incurable. In other words, they become real dipsomaniacs, and the habit of gin-drinking is the cause. So long as they confine themselves to beer they can retain some self-control, and no great harm is done; but women take very readily to spirits, because this concentrated form of alcohol heartens them up in the moments of weakness, pain, and depression entailed by their sex and want of physical strength. It is difficult to see, however, why our women should be so peculiarly given to the vice, except that public opinion in their own class attaches less shame to it than elsewhere. Apparently the infection caught them when first the wave of spirit-drinking, introduced from Holland and Germany, spread over this country at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the tradition has remained ever since. Happily it is now much less prevalent than formerly. We have certainly improved since the days of 1830, when seventy-two cases were brought to Bow Street on a Monday for absolute and beastly drunkenness, and what was worse, they were mostly women who had been picked up in the

streets, where they had fallen dead drunk;' and the following little scene emphasises this more cheerful view of the question. A woman stands at the halfopen door of a public-house as we pass, and calls to a man inside to come out.

'Come in, mate,' he shouts back, don't be a fool.'

'No,' she says, 'I shan't; I'm nearly tipsy already. Come on home.' And he comes.

Children in the public-house are, I believe, quite peculiar to this country. You see them of all ages, from extreme infancy upwards. Here, for instance, are two girls having glasses of stout, not in a hurry, but sitting down for a good long stay, and one of them suckles a baby not more than a fortnight old. In all cases the parents are wholly responsible. You never see children frequenting the public-house on their own account, they are either brought by their parents or sent to fetch beer. I have never seen any reason to suppose that the law about serving children is broken. Boys who find their way into the public-house to sell things are turned out promptly. The parents, however, not only bring them in, but teach them to drink. I lately saw a respectable-looking couple take four young children, the youngest in arms, into a public-house, and when they came out they were all wiping their mouths. I ventured to ask them if they thought it the right thing to do, and the man, to do him justice, did seem ashamed of himself. The woman, having nothing to say in defence of her conduct, took refuge in

abusing me. It is done, as I have already pointed out, in ignorance and thoughtlessness from a mistaken idea of kindness. It could only be prevented by prohibiting children under a certain age from entering licensed premises at all; and that is impossible so long as the law makes no distinction between hotels and pothouses.

Betting in Public-houses.-This is the greatest blot on the liquor trade, because it is deliberately countenanced, encouraged, and even carried on by some publicans; but it is confined to particular houses in particular quarters, and therefore a brief reference will suffice. Of course it is illegal, and the police know all about it, because they receive innumerable complaints from the relatives of those who squander their money in this fatuous way, but convictions are hard to obtain. The disappearance or reform of the public-house would not diminish the practice in the very slightest degree, as it would be carried on in shops and clubs, which are already more extensively used for the purpose than licensed premises.

To conclude this little study from the life, let me add that neither the occasion nor the locality was specially selected, and that the scenes and incidents presented themselves exactly as described in the course of a single evening. Similar scenes may be witnessed at any time in any working-class neighbourhood. The chief lesson to be drawn is the one with which I began. The public-house is not a nice place, but the fault lies mainly with the