"
This was too much even for Ernest. "I heard of an Irish-woman once," he
said, with a smile, "who said she was a martyr to the drink."
"And so she was," rejoined Pryer with warmth; and he went on to show that
this good woman was an experimentalist whose experiment, though
disastrous in its effects upon herself, was pregnant with instruction to
other people. She was thus a true martyr or witness to the frightful
consequences of intemperance, to the saving, doubtless, of many who but
for her martyrdom would have taken to drinking. She was one of a forlorn
hope whose failure to take a certain position went to the proving it to
be impregnable and therefore to the abandonment of all attempt to take
it. This was almost as great a gain to mankind as the actual taking of
the position would have been.
"Besides," he added more hurriedly, "the limits of vice and virtue are
wretchedly ill-defined. Half the vices which the world condemns most
loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than
total abstinence."
Ernest asked timidly for an instance.
"No, no," said Pryer, "I will give you no instance, but I will give you a
formula that shall embrace all instances.
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