Drunken man

“ I go down with an air of surprise and alarm, clothes in disorder, hair uncombed: people turn to look and laugh when they meet me, and take me for a young rake who has passed the night at the ale-house or elsewhere. I am drunk to all intent, although I have drunk nothing, and I have the aspect of a drunken man even to the uncertain gait, now slow, now fast. ”

“ All of these talked with hoarse, harsh voices; and scolded, embracing the men as simply as though they were alone on the boulevard. Sometimes they would take a snack and a drop of vodka. It might happen that a drunken man would beat an equally drunken woman. ”

“ "No one entrusts a secret to a drunken man; but one will entrust a secret to a good man; therefore, the good man will not get drunk." ”

“ He was sentenced to the joys of the whipping-post, or to be laid in the stocks, or to pay a fine; thus again making [Pg 263] liquor pay a revenue to the State. We have an amusing description of what constitutes drunkenness, from a Colonial Dogberry of the seventeenth century, who sapiently observes: “Now, for to know a drunken man the better, the Scripture describes them to stagger and reel to and fro; And so, where the same legs which carry a man into the house can not bring him out again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness.” ”

“ Then I slip away to join the push, and see that man no more—though I shall always see him, sitting there in the starlight, somewhat dazed, a bit frightened, greatly dishevelled, and making quaint jerking movements of head and neck.
Drunken men are the especial prey of the road-kids. Robbing a drunken man they call "rolling a stiff"; and wherever they are, they are on the constant lookout for drunks. The drunk is their particular meat, as the fly is the particular meat of the spider. ”

“ The drunkard is, indeed, thus often exposed to the peril of his life; for an accident of itself not great, or a stroke, may suddenly put an end to his life.
The poet represents the drunken man as now speaking to himself. ”

“ He was, indeed, in a condition, in which, if reason had interposed, though only to advise, she might have received the answer which one Cleostratus gave many years ago to a silly fellow, who asked him, if he was not ashamed to be drunk? “Are not you,” said Cleostratus, “ashamed to admonish a drunken man?”—To say the truth, in a court of justice drunkenness must not be an excuse, yet in a court of conscience it is greatly so; ”

“ The young man stooped for an instant over the girl, and then turned fiercely round upon his father, who had reeled against the wall, and was gazing on the group with drunken stupidity.
‘Listen to me, father,’ he said, in a tone that made the drunkard’s flesh creep. ‘My brother’s blood, and mine, is on your head: I never had kind look, or word, or care, from you, and alive or dead, I never will forgive you. Die when you will, or how, I will be with you. ”

“ Is it a less evil to the community to make drunkards of sober men than it is to kill drunkards? Ask that widowed mother who did her the greatest evil: the man who only killed her drunken husband, or the man who made a drunkard of her only son? Ask those orphan children who did them the greatest injury: the man who made their once sober, kind, and affectionate father a drunkard, and thus blasted all their hopes, and turned their home, sweet home, into the emblem of hell ”

“ No, you're not a drunkard, Will Sears, more's the pity. When it comes to choosing between a man who gets openly drunk and staggers down Main Street in drunken penitence to his wife and children and the man who drinks just enough to be a surly, selfish brute and yet look half-way respectable on the outside, why, give me the drunk every time. ”

“ The combative man will quarrel, the amorous will love, the detractor will abuse his neighbour. I have known exceptions, but they are few in number. At one time they seemed more numerous, but closer observation convinced me that most of those whom I thought drunkenness had libelled, inherited, at bottom, the genuine dispositions which it brought forth. The exceptions, however, which now and then occur are sufficiently striking, and point out the injustice of always judging of a man’s real disposition from his drunken moments. ”

“ O mind your feet, O mind your feet,
Keep dancing like a wave,
And under every dancer
A dead man in his grave.
No ups and downs, my pretty,
A mermaid, not a punk;
A drunkard is a dead man,
And all dead men are drunk. ”

“ No mountain, on this side the holy hill above, can set us out of the reach of Satan's fiery darts. (2.) The peril of drunkenness. It is not only a great sin itself, but it is the inlet of many sins; it may prove the inlet of the worst and most unnatural sins, which may be a perpetual wound and dishonour. Excellently does Mr. Herbert describe it,
"He that is drunken may his mother kill
Big with his sister."—————————
A man may do that without reluctance, when he is drunk, which, when he is sober, he could not think of without horror. ”

“ Why should I not tell an open secret?—driven out by rum and the Unitarian clergy of Boston.
Whatsoever the causes may be, I think you see proofs enough of the fact, that drunkenness has increased within the last few years. You see it in the men drunken in the streets, in the numerous shops built to gratify the intemperate man. Some of these are elegant and costly, only for the rich; others so moan and dirty, that one must be low indeed to wallow therein. ”

“ Behold the man who reproveth one who is intoxicated: he is like a man who searcheth torch in hand one who is immersed under water.
930. The man who seeth while he is sober the drunken state of another man, cannot he picture to himself his own state when he is drunk? ”

“ Every mother suffers, I’m not even saying at the sight of her drunken son, but at mere a thought of this possibility, any master avoids a drunkard employee, every uncorrupt person is ashamed of himself that he was drunk. Everyone knows that drunkenness is bad. But here the educated, enlightened people get drunk and yet they are quite confident that there is nothing here is not only shameful and wrong, but that it is even cute, and with pleasure and laughter recall amusing episodes of their past drunkenness. ”

“ But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.
Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt,—sometimes a misfortune,—as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it,—but oftenest of all a punishment. ”

“ Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.
And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; ”

“ Ah, you're drunk, you're drunk you silly old fool,
So drunk you can not see
That was just the tax man that the Queen she sent to me.
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But an Englishman who can last till three I've never seen before. ”

“ They are talkative from the beginning, and, during confirmed intoxication, perfectly obstreperous. It is men of this class who are the heroes of all drunken companies, the patrons of masonic lodges, the presidents and getters-up of jovial meetings. With them, eating and drinking are the grand ends of human life. Look at their eyes, how they sparkle at the sight of wine, and how their lips smack and their teeth water in the neighbourhood of a good dinner: they would scent out a banquet in Siberia. ”

“ Just as his sober self is forgotten when he is drunk, his drunken self is forgotten when he is sober—not wholly, it may be, but in part. He seems more readily to remember violence suffered than violence inflicted by him. ”

“ Examine the drunkard’s body after death, and you see in the stomach, in the liver, in the heart and brain signs of a diseased condition. At the same time, I am ready to admit that there are many who drink out of mere cussedness or who are so wretched that they take to it for temporary relief; or who just drink because they live in a drunken set, and like to do as others around them do. Whatever p. 232the immorality, the vice, or the sin of drunkenness, in a very large number of cases the drunkard is more to be pitied than blamed, as the subject of disease. ”

“ Whereas commonly those that are drunken are drunken in the night, when they have despatched the business of the day, these neglect business, abandon it, and give up themselves to the service of the flesh; for they sit at their cups all day, and continue till night, till wine inflame them—inflame their lusts (chambering and wantonness follow upon rioting and drunkenness) —inflame their passions ”

“ I can hear his voice now. 'You're a pretty bit of goods, if you don't mind my saying so.'”
The stout man's voice rose to a scream and broke.
“I was drunk—I was drunk! O my God! I didn't know what I was doing——”
“That was fifteen years ago.”
“You see—fifteen years—fifteen years—” He dropped to his knees. He crawled toward them. “You can't—you can't—you have hearts—you are women—good Christians. Besides, I tell you I was drunk. A man isn't responsible when he's drunk. You know it—you should have pity——”
They did not see him. They did not hear him. Madame Froissart picked up her knitting. ”

“ The drunkard is destined to suffer in the drunkard's eternity, as you have suffered; the enticement of drink is evanescent, the agony to follow is eternal. You have seen that the sub-regions of earth supply an intoxicant. Taste not again of any intoxicant; let your recent lesson be your last. Any stimulant is an enemy to man, any narcotic is a fiend. It destroys its victim, and corrupts the mind, entices it into pastures grotesque, and even pleasant at first, but destined to eternal misery in the end. Beware of the eternity that follows the snapping of the [Pg 276] life-thread of a drunkard. ”

“ Alas! such cases are of too frequent occurrence to be rare items in any man’s experience; and but too often arise from one cause—drunkenness—that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that oversteps every other consideration; that casts aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and station; and hurries its victims madly on to degradation and death. ”

“ They become sentimental over their cups; and, while in a state of debasement most offensive to God and man, they will weep at the wickedness of the human heart, entreat you to eschew swearing and profane company, and have a greater regard for the welfare of your immortal soul. These sanctimonious drunkards seem to consider ebriety as the most venial of offences.
During a paroxysm of drunkenness, the body is much less sensible to external stimuli than at other times: it is particularly capable of resisting cold. ”

“ said the old man, after drinking more and passing into his habitual state of drunken excitement. ”

“ Then in the dead, unhappy nights he suffers all the torments that can be endured if he wakes up while his day's supply of alcohol lies stagnant in his system. No imagination is so retrospective as the drunkard's, and the drunkard's remorse is the most terrible torture known. The wind cries in the dark and the trees moan; the agonized man who lies waiting the morning thinks of the times when the whistle of the wind was the gladdest of sounds to him ”

“ For drunkenness is nothing other than a loss of right reason, a derangement, and depriving the soul of its health.
(2) Therefore, I would not be making too strong a statement if I should say that we find a drunkard not only in the man who is a heavy drinker of strong wine but we also find one in the man who nurtures some other passion in his soul. For the man in love with a woman who is not his wife, the man who spends his time with prostitutes, is a drunkard. The heavy drinker cannot walk straight, his speech is rude, his eyes cannot see things as they really are. ”

“ So that the more one approaches to perfect sobriety the wiser he becomes, the nearer he comes to habitual drunkenness the greater his folly. For what position in God's fair creation does the drunkard hold? An angel is a pure creature that enjoys God; a man is a creature that thinks and reasons; a brute is a creature that follows his appetites, but never to excess; a tree is an ornament of the earth and useful to man; but the drunkard, what is he? The drunkard is only a drunkard, with nothing like him in all God's creation. ”

“ CHAPTER VII
“POCHARD”
Drunkards are not frequent sights in the Quarter; and yet when these people do get drunk, they become as irresponsible as maniacs. Excitable to a degree even when sober, these most wretched among the poor when drunk often appear in front of a café—gaunt, wild-eyed, haggard, and filthy—singing in boisterous tones or reciting to you with tense voices a jumble of meaningless thoughts.
The man with the matted hair, and toes out of his boots, will fold his arms melodramatically, and regard you for some moments as you sit in front of him on the terrace. ”