The Irish standard., 1911-09-30

pecially' of port. He used to say that
if he had a hard job to get through
and If there was a bottle of wine in
the room, he would be tempted to
drink every drop Of it, he found port
such q etimulus to the activity of his
brain. He never yielded to the temp
tation, in a degree to be harmful
however, being in his use of food and
wine as sternly temperate and regard
full of health as in all other actions.
In recent years the man who drinks
too much has almost entirely disap-
peared from the House Of Commons
Plenty OF men still have their cham
payne every night at dinner and now
and then pay the penalty in a sharp
attack Of govt. But govt which was
the outward and visible sign of over
consumption Of port is not the promi-
nent fact in public life which it used
to be in the old days when the disap-
pearance of Il prominent man for
weeks from the House of Commons
from govt was a periodic and univer-
sally expected occurrence
Many of the leading men in the
present ministry, for example, are tee
totalers. Runceman, minister of
education, is Il life teetotaler. John
Burns has never had a drink or a
smoke in his whole life. Lloyd-George
drinks a glass or two of wine when
he is on vacation or when he goes out
to dinner, but usually, and when he is
WE'LL he never touches wine. 1t is the
solace of hours of fatigue which
comes from his frightfully hard work.
The most ascetic party in the House
OF Commons are the labor men. This
used not to be the case in the old
drudgery and also the health of ac-
tivity of manual labor and trans
ferred to the sedentary and irregular
life of the Office of the trades union
official. used to let himself go and
many fine fellow was ruined in this
way. But today the labor men can
es of water beside them. Kerr Hardie
is a teetotaler. Ramsay Macdonald,
the present labor leader, is u tecto-
taller; Thomas Burt. the first labor
member Of the House of Commons,
and still the most universally re-
spected, is teetotaler. And so one
might so on through the list.
At evening parties, where you see
some of the wealthiest and most
prominent men at the table, you would
often find long row of glasses Of
water where. in the olden times, every
man would do his bottle OF cham
payne, followed by two or three glasses
OF port. Even at lunch time, in the
middle of the day, men used to have
their pint of wine and whisky and
soda. Nowadays most of them take
Apollinaris water. This is particu-
larly true Of barristers. Barristers
have, indeed, to be very careful as SO
much depends on them. and, there
fore. they take every precaution to
keep their heads cool during the day.
And their habits have become extra
ordinarily simple.
Little Coffee Shop Popular.
There is little coffee shop in Fleet
street, scarcely as big as the state
room of u good Atlantic liner. 1t is
called "Groom's" and now has OK
listed, I believe, for nearly a century.
1t supplies nothing whatever except
tea and coffee and the buttered buns
which Englishmen love so well. A
pot OF coffee and q buttered bun is
the lunch every day in this tiny shop
of some of the most prominent and
wealthy members OF the bar. 1 have
often seen Asquith there, taking this
simple lunch in the olden dax9 when
ne was a young barrister. How
changed are these ascetic timea from,
the days not more tAan seventy Years
ago when the two greatest Judges of
the English bench used to take lunch
at wine shop In Parliament street,
still in existence, and never rise until
they had each had full bottle of
port.