All the heavy-heartedness which a man feels, but never puts into words, flies away with the first or second glass of grog.

If a man was suffering pains of any kind, or was being stretched on the rack (I never knew what a rack was till I'd time for reading in gaol, except a horse-rack), or was being flogged, and a glass of anything he could swallow would make him think he was on a feather bed enjoying a pleasant doze, wouldn't he swig it off, do you think?
And suppose there are times when a man feels as if hell couldn't be much worse than what he's feeling all the long day through--and I tell you there are--I, who have often stood it hour after hour--won't he drink then?
And why shouldn't he?
We began to find that towards the end of the day we all of us found the way to father's brandy keg--that by nightfall the whole lot of us had quite as much as we could stagger under.

I don't say we regularly went in for drinking; but we began to want it by twelve o'clock every day, and to keep things going after that till bedtime.

In the morning we felt nervous and miserable; on the whole we weren't very gay till the sun was over the foreyard.
Anyhow, we made it up to clear out and have the first go-in for a touch on the southern line the next week as ever was.

Father was as eager for it as anybody.