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THE DRUNKARD
BY
GUY THORNE
AUTHOR OF "WHEN IT WAS DARK," "FIRST IT WASORDAINED,"
"MADE IN HIS IMAGE," ETC., ETC.
New York
STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
1912
Copyright, 1911
BY
STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Published January, 1912
DEDICATION
TO LOUIS TRACY, ESQUIRE
My Dear Louis:
It is more than a year ago now that I asked you to accept thededication of this story. It was on an evening when I was staying withyou at your Yorkshire house and we had just come in from shooting.
But I discussed the tale with you long before that. It was either—aswell as I can remember—at my place in the Isle of Wight, or when wewere all together in the Italian Alps. I like to think that it was atthat time I first asked your opinion and advice about this book uponwhich I have laboured so long.
One night comes back to me very vividly—yes, that surely was thenight. Dinner was over. We were sitting in front of the brilliantly lithotel with coffee and cigarettes. You had met all my kind Italianfriends. Our wives were sitting together at one little table withSignora Maerdi and Madame Riva Monico—to whom be greeting! My fatherwas at ours, and happy as a boy for all his white beard and skull-capof black velvet.
Your son, Dick, was dancing with the Italian girls in the bright salonbehind us, and the piano music tinkled out into the hot night. TheAlpine woods of ilex and pine rose up in the moonlight to where thesnow-capped mountains of St. Gothard hung glistening silver-green.
I ask you to take this book as a memorial of a happy, uninterrupted anddignified friendship, not less valuable and gracious because your wifeand mine are friends also.
Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico!
Yours ever sincerely,
Guy Thorne.
FOREWORD
The sixth chapter in the third book of this story can hardly be calledfiction. The notes upon which it is founded were placed in mypossession by a brilliant man of letters some short time before hedied. Serious students of the psychology of the Inebriate may use thedocument certain that it is genuine.
I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to the illuminating study inheredity of Dr. Archdall Reed, M.B., C.M., F.R.S.E. His book"Alcoholism" ought to be