I cast one indignant glance around me, and left the theatre, lamenting the
depravity of our nature, which is, alas! always ready to put the worst
construction upon actions in themselves most innocent; for if I had gone
to sleep in my own arm-chair, pray who would have accused me of inebriety?
How I got home I know not. As I hurried through the streets, a legion of
voices, in every variety of intonation, yelled in my ears--"Turn him
out--he's drunk!" and when I woke in the middle of the night, tormented by
a raging thirst (produced, I suppose, by the flurry of spirits I had
undergone), I seemed to hear screams, groans, and hisses, above all which
predominated loud and clear the malignant denunciation--"Turn him
out--he's drunk!"
Upon my subsequently mentioning the above adventure to Jack Withers, it
will hardly be credited that this villain without shame at once roundly
asserted that, when I left him on the afore-mentioned night, I was at
least three sheets and three quarters in the wind; adding with
praiseworthy candour, that he himself was so far gone as to be obliged, to
the infinite scandal of his staid old housekeeper, to creep up stairs _a
quatre pieds_, in order to gain his bedroom.
Now this latter may be true enough, for it is probable that friend Jack
freshened his nip a trifle after my departure, seeing that he was always
something of a drunken knave.
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