In my youth, the pendulum swung towards excess, now its reaction being exactly opposite; both extremes to my mind are wrong.

And here let me state (_valeat quantum_) that I never exceeded in liquor but once in my life: that once serving afterwards as a valuable life lesson all through the wine-parties of Christ Church, the abounding hospitalities of America, both North and South, through two long visits--and the genialities of our own Great Britain during my several Reading Tours.

If it had not been for that three days' frightful headache when I was a youth (in that sense a good providence), I could not have escaped so many generous hosts and seductive beverages.

That one departure from sobriety happened thus.

My uncle, Colonel Selwyn, just returned from his nine years' command at Graham's Town, South Africa, gave a grand dinner at the Opera Colonnade to his friends and relatives, resolved (according to the fashion of the time) to fill them all to the full with generous Bacchus by obligatory toasts, he himself pretending to prefer his own bottle of brown sherry,--in fact, dishonest toast and water; but that sort of practical joke was also a fashion of the day.