CHAPTER XXX. PATERNAL DISCIPLINE
“ The Fair, Free, and Frisky”—as they called themselves, were not of a violent order at all, neither treasonable, nor even disloyal. Their Club, if it deserved the name, had not been of political, social, or even convivial intention, but had lapsed unawares into all three uses, and most of all that last mentioned. The harder the times are, the more confidential (and therefore convivial) do Englishmen become; and if Free-trade survives with us for another decade, it will be the death of total abstinence. But now they had bad times, without Free-trade—that Goddess being still in the goose-egg—and when two friends met, without a river between them, they were bound to drink one another's health, and did it, without the unstable and cold-blooded element. Th
