Danger in the Dark - ZseZse

DANGER IN TTI~ DARK.
"0 pshaw! such drinking as that does a fellow so
little good!- When a man begins, he might just as
well take enough to make him forget his sins."
"That's the doctrine!" responded the principal
drinker in the crowd, whom they called Captain.-
"Come, Mr. Carleton, away with your squeamishness;
and let us consider ourselves on a bust! I perceive
you have sickly notions of propriety; they are altoether
too stale, and should have been buried with
your andfather I Young men of genius must keep
up with the car of progr ss."
" Provided, it keeps the track, and never runs backward
down hill."
"Never fear for that; it's always upward in its
course; but no longer drawn by donkeys."
"One might have thought you on the fast line of
progress, captain," observed Mr. Brown, "to have
seen you the other night, three sheets in the wind I"
"But you ought to have staid to see him in the
fourth sheet," said another.
" How was that, Dick ~"
"He got so boozy he found it a hard matter to keep
the towpath, as we came up from Whisky Point, and
so managed to tumble heels over head into the canal."
" And like to have broke my infernal neck, and got
drowned in the bargain," ad ed the captain.
"So it will sometimes happen," remarked Alonzo;
"there are, at best, some slippery places in our way
through life, which, if we do not overleap, we must
fall down upon." .