we lent him some money -- a very little -- with which to keep along
a few days, on which he got drunk immediately, and did fall into the hands
of the police, and was sent to jail as before. This, in fact,
was his regular round: into jail, out of jail; a little spell of sobriety,
"an accidental fall", which occurred as soon as he could get a drop of liquor,
and into jail again for thirty or sixty days, according to the degree
of resistance he gave the police -- who always, by their own account,
simply tried to get him to go home, and, by his, insulted him --
and to the violence of the language he applied to them. In this he excelled;
for although as quiet as possible when he was sober, when he was drunk
he was a terror, so the police said, and his resources of vituperation
were cyclopedic. He possessed in this particular department an eloquence
which was incredible. His blasphemy was vast, illimitable, infinite.
He told me once that he could not explain it; that when he was sober
he abhorred profanity, and never uttered an oath; when he was in liquor
his brain took this turn, and distilled blasphemy in volumes.
He said that all of its energies were quickened and concentrated
in this direction, and then he took not only pleasure, but pride in it.

He told me a good deal of his life. He had got very low
at this time, much lower than he had been when I first knew him.
He recognized this himself, and used to analyze and discuss himself
in quite an impersonal way. This was when he had come out of jail,
and after having the liquor "dried out" of him. In such a state
he always referred to his condition in the past as being something
that never would or could recur; while on the other hand,
if he were just over a drunk, he frankly admitted his absolute slavery
to his habit. When he was getting drunk he shamelessly maintained,
and was ready to swear on all the Bibles in creation, that he had not
touched a drop, and never expected to do so again -- indeed,