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London Films by William Dean Howells
page 102 of 220 (46%)
pardon with warning was given. Even a glad good-night was exchanged, the
wheelman's voice rising in a quaver of grateful affection. Then he
seemed to try riding off again, and then he was stayed as before by the
victim, whose sense of public duty flamed up at the prospect of his
escape. I do not know how the affair ended; perhaps it never ended; but
exhausted nature sank in sleep, and I at least was saved from its
continuance. I suppose now that the almost injured person was, if not
drunk, at that stage of tipsiness when the sensibilities are keenest and
self-respect is most alert. An American could not, at least, have been
so tedious in his sober senses, and I will not believe that an
Englishman could.

It is to be considered, in any view of the comparative drunkenness of
the great Anglo-Saxon race, which is the hope and example of the human
race in so many things, that much if not most of our American
drunkenness is alien, while English drunkenness is almost entirely
native. If the inebriety of the spirited Celt, which in the early years
of his adoption with us is sometimes conspicuous, were added to the sum
of our home-born intoxication, there could be no doubt which was the
greater. As it is, I am afraid that I cannot claim to have seen more
drunken men in London than in New York; and when I think of the Family
Entrance, indicated at the side-door of every one of our thousands of
saloons, I am not sure I can plume myself on the superior sobriety of
our drinking men's wives. As for poverty--if I am still partially on
that subject--as for open misery, the misery that indecently obtrudes
itself upon prosperity and begs of it, I am bound to say that I have met
more of it in New York than ever I met during my sojourns in London.
Such misery may be more rigidly policed in the English capital, more
kept out of sight, more quelled from asking mercy, but I am sure that in
Fifth Avenue, and to and fro in the millionaire blocks between that
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