Part 10 (2/2)
It was while this half resolve was on him that he was one evening returning home after a day's fis.h.i.+ng, Juniper Graves being with him. He had refused the spirit-flask which his servant held out to him more than once, alleging disinclination. At last he said,--
”I've been seriously thinking, Juniper, of becoming a total abstainer; and it would do you a great deal of good if you were to be one too.”
The only reply on the part of Juniper was an explosion of laughter, which seemed as if it would tear him in pieces. One outburst of merriment followed another, till he was obliged to lean against a tree for support. Frank became quite angry.
”What _do_ you mean by making such an abominable fool of yourself;” he cried.
”Oh dear, oh dear,” laughed Graves, the tears running over in the extremity of his real or pretended amus.e.m.e.nt, ”you must pardon me, sir; indeed, you must. I really couldn't help it; it did put me so in mind of Jerry Ogden, the Methodist parson. Mr Frank and his servant Juniper, two whining, methodistical, parsimonious teetotallers! oh dear, it _was_ rich.” And here he relapsed into another explosion.
”Methodist parson! I really don't know what you mean, sir,” cried Frank, beginning to get fairly exasperated. ”You seem to me quite to forget yourself. If you don't know better manners, the sooner you take yourself off the better.”
”Oh, sir, I'm very sorry, but really you must excuse me; it did seem so very comical. _You_ a total abstainer, Mr Frank, and me a-coming arter you. I think I sees you a-telling James to put the water on the table, and then you says, 'The water stands with you, Colonel Coleman.'”
”Don't talk so absurdly,” said Frank, amused in spite of himself at the idea of the water-party, with himself for the host. ”And what has my becoming a total abstainer to do with Jerry What-do-you-call-him, the Methodist parson?”
”Oh, just this, sir. Jerry Ogden's one of those long-faced gentlemen as turns up their eyes and their noses at us poor miserable sinners as takes a little beer to our dinners. Ah! to hear him talk you'd have fancied he was too good to breathe in the same alt.i.tude with such as me.
Such lots of good advice he has for us heathens, such sighing and groaning over us poor deluded drinkers of allegorical liquors. Ah! but he's a tidy little cask of his own hid snug out of the way. It's just the case with them all.”
”I'm really much obliged to you,” said his master, laughing, ”for comparing me to Jerry Ogden. He seems, from your account, to have been a regular hypocrite; but that does not show that total abstinence is not a good thing when people take it up honestly.”
”Bless your simplicity, sir,” said the other; ”they're all pretty much alike.”
”Now there, Juniper, I know you are wrong. Mr Oliphant has many men in his society who are thoroughly honest teetotallers, men who are truly reformed, and, more than that, thorough christians.”
”Reformed! Christians!” sneered Juniper, venomously; ”a pretty likely thing indeed. You don't know them teetotallers as well as I do, sir.
'Oh dear, no; not a drop, not a drop: wouldn't touch it for the world.'
But they manage to have it on the sly for all that. I've no faith in 'em at all. I'd rather be as I am, though I says it as shouldn't say it, an honest fellow as gets drunk now and then, and ain't ashamed to own it, than one of your canting teetotallers. Why, they're such an amphibious set, there's no knowing where to have them.”
”Amphibious?” said his master, laughing; ”why, I should have thought 'aquatic' would have been a better word, as they profess to confine themselves to the water; unless you mean, indeed, that they are only half water animals.”
”Oh, sir,” said Graves, rather huffed, ”it was only a phraseology of mine, meaning that there was no dependence to be placed on 'em.”
”Well but, Juniper, I am not speaking of hypocrites or sham teetotallers, but of the real ones. There's Mr Oliphant and the whole family at the rectory, you'll not pretend, I suppose, that _they_ drink on the sly?”
”I wouldn't by no means answer for that,” was the reply; ”that depends on circ.u.mstantials. There's many sorts of drinks as we poor ignorant creatures calls intoxicating which is quite the thing with your tip-top teetotallers. There's champagne, that's quite strict teetotal; then there's cider, then there's cherry-brandy; and if that don't do, then there's teetotal physic.”
”Teetotal physic! I don't understand you.”
”Don't you, sir? that's like your innocence. Why, it's just this way.
There's a lady teetotaller, and she's a little out of sorts; so she sends a note to the doctor, and he sends back a nice bottle of stuff.
It's uncommon good and spirituous-like to smell at, but then it's medicine, only the drugs ain't down in what the chemists call their 'Farming-up-here.'”
”I never heard of that before,” remarked Frank.
”No, I don't suppose, sir, as ever you did. And then there's the teetotal gents; they does it much more free and easy. They've got what the Catholics calls a 'dispensary' from their Pope, (and their Pope's the doctor), to take just whatever they likes as a medicine--oh, only as a medicine; so they carries about with 'em a doctor's superscription, which says just this: 'Let the patient take as much beer, or wine, or spirits, as he can swallow.'”
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