"Indeed, no!" exclaimed Henry; "but both the subject and your way of
treating it are, I confess, a little new to me."

"You are surprised to find one who is what is popularly known as a
drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it?
Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only
the oyster fascinated by the pearl that is killing it."

"You should write some 'Confessions' after the manner of De Quincey,"
said Henry.

"Indeed, I've often thought of it, for there's so much that needs saying
on the subject. There is nothing with which we are at once so familiar
and of which we know so little. For example"--and now he was quite
plainly off again--"for example, the passion for, I might say the dream
of, drink is usually regarded as a sensual appetite, a physical
indulgence. No doubt in its first crude stages it often is so; but soon
it becomes something much more strange and abstract. It becomes a
mysterious command, issuing we know not whence. It is hardly a desire,
and it is not so much a joyless, as a quite colourless, obedience to an
imperious necessity, decreed by some unknown will. You might well
imagine that I like the taste of this brandy there, as a child is
greedily fond of sweetstuff; but it would be quite a mistake. For my own
personal taste, there is no drink like a cup of tea; it is the demon,
the strange will that has imposed itself upon me, that has a taste
for brandy.

"I sometimes wonder whether we poor drunkards are not the victims of
disembodied powers of the air who, by some chance, have contracted a