A Plea for Total Abstinence
One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock in the forenoon, there suddenly
rode into the field of view commanded by the windows of my lodging an equestrian
phenomenon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner.
The fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature's
breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof the
skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the waist-band of the said breeches; no coat; a red
shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military scarlet hat, with a feathered ornament in front,
which, to the uninstructed human vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock. I
laid down the newspaper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man
in question with astonishment. Whether he had been sitting to any painter as a
frontispiece for a new edition of 'Sartor Resartus;' whether 'the husk or shell of him,' as
the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey, on a circus, on
General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy shop, on Guy Fawkes, on waxwork, on
gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on all, - were doubts that greatly exercised my mind.
Meanwhile, my fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the
slippery stones of my Covent-garden street, and elicited shrieks from several sympathetic
females, by convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his horse's head. In the
very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his charger's tail
was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined
by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and
slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and,
looking northward, waved their three right hands as commanding unseen troops, to 'Up,
guards! and at 'em.' Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be
instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the direction of the Surrey Hills.
Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I threw up my window,
and, craning out, had the satisfaction of beholding it advancing along the streets. It was a
Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to consume twenty
minutes in passing. There were a great number of children in it, some of them so very
young in their mothers' arms as to be in the act of practically exemplifying their
abstinence from fermented liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the
procession defiled. The display was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any good-humoured
holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people should be. It was
bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those latter
trophies had come up in profusion under much watering. The day being breezy, the
insubordination of the large banners was very reprehensible. Each of these being borne
aloft on two poles and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite books in
the last century used to be written, by 'various hands,' and the anxiety expressed in the
upturned faces of those officers, - something between the anxiety attendant on the
balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying, with a touch of the
angler's quality in landing his scaly prey, - much impressed me. Suddenly, too, a banner
would shiver in the wind, and go about in the most inconvenient manner. This always
happened oftenest with such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman in
