Movement in Troy--a social revolution of which we are only now, after
four long weeks, beginning to see the end.

You must not, of course, suppose that we had never heard of
temperance before. No, Prince, we do not live so far from Abyssinia
as all _that_. In a general way we understood it to be a good thing,
and upon that ground (optimists that we are) believed its ultimate
success to be but a question of time. But I think I may say we never
regarded it as a pressing question--such as the reform of the House
of Lords, for instance. The general impression (I call it no more)
was that we should all be temperate sooner or later; possibly as the
next step after espousing our Deceased Wife's Sister.

Well, our Vicar laid his copy of the 1894 almanack on the
reading-room table at 11.30 a.m., or thereabouts, looked over the
local papers for a few minutes, and left the building at ten minutes
to noon. I get this information from Matthias James, our respected
pilot, who happened to be in the room, reading the _Shipping
Gazette_. It is confirmed by Mr. Hansombody and four or five other
members. At noon precisely, Mr. Rabling (our gasman and an earnest
Methodist) came in. His eye, as it wandered round in search of an
unoccupied newspaper, was arrested by the scarlet and green binding
of Whitaker. He picked the book up, opened it casually, and read:

The proof gallons of spirits distilled during the year ending
March 31st, 1893, were 10,691,576 in England, 20,107,077 in
Scotland, and 13,615,668 in Ireland. . . .

He tells me he was on the point of closing the book as a voluptuous
work of fiction, when a second and even more dazzling paragraph took