1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

212 THE FLOWING BOWL not, be on the wane. The close student of these novels will discover that all which is good, and honest, and upright, and charitable is honoured in their pages, whilst meanness, deceit, hypocrisy, and cant are lashed with no uncertain hand. " The greatest of all gifts is Charity," is the lesson taught by Charles Dickens, who shevved at the same time that it is quite possible to enjoy the good things of life without making a beast of oneself. And he it was who clothed Christ mas in that warm, sumptuous robe of joviality and hospitality which makes all who keep that festival in the proper spirit forget for the time that a quarter's rent falls due on the same day. Dickens's drunkards are few and far between —and in this category I do not include such as Sydney Carton, the members of the Pickwick Club, and David Copperfield, on the occasion of his first dinner-party. Nobody has a right to call the man who makes merry with his friends, now and then, a sot ; and a careful study of Dickens shows that the real inebriates, the " habituals " described in his works, had all more or less rascality in their composition not even excepting Dick Swiveller, who, however, became a reformed character towards the close of the book. _ As for the drinks themselves, it is especially worthy of note that there is no mention whatever made of whisky in these works ; a fact which justifies everything which I have written in a former chapter as to the neglect with which this undoubtedly estimable and wholesome fortifier was treated by society, until within the last few