the patrons—many of whom are more or less under the influence of liquor—are dangerous and noisy, and on frequent occasions the slumbers of all are disturbed by a row that may end in murder. The proprietor is indifferent to such possibilities, and if a lodger objects on the ground that he wants to sleep he will quite likely be met with the argument on the part of the owner:
"I sells you the place fer sleepin', but I don't sell the sleep with it."
How true is that striking passage from the twenty-third chapter of Proverbs in which the baneful effects of intemperance are vividly described: "Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder."
Shakespeare makes even his clowns and fools expose the vice of intemperance and the degradation of drunkards.
Olivia.—What's a drunken man like, fool?
Clown.—Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman; one draught makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him.
What a sermon, too, on the blessings of temperance, is contained in "As You Like It," when Adam says to his young master:—
"Let me be your servant!
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility:
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly; let me go with you:
I'll do the service of a younger man
In all your business and necessities."
