Then--the
subscriptions. For of course the accounts were never audited; nobody
bothered about such things on Nepenthe, with all that south wind
hanging about. If they had been he would have squared the auditor up to
any sum--a hundred francs, almost; it was worth while. Pickings, he
called hem. The place, the system suited him down to the ground. He had
lived all his life on pickings. He was a retail welsher; he lacked the
nerve for sweeping enterprises.
On his accession, the Club was in such a state of demoralization, had
become such a public scandal, that Mr. Parker, in his capacity of
moralist, would have been the first person to dissolve that assembly of
topers and rakes. As financier, he meant to live by it. But how was the
place to be purified?
Parker's poison solved that problem, besides yielding a fine slice of
additional revenue. The hardest drinkers, the inveterate rowdies,
refused to believe that it was anything but the ordinary whisky to
which they had been accustomed from childhood; or believing, refused
out of sheer boastfulness, or force of habit, to reduce their doses.
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