While the moderate realized the truth and acted accordingly, these
others insisted upon regarding it as genuine Scotch--with inevitable and
dire results. They succumbed. During the first year of Freddy Parker's
reign, eight of these stubborn sinners were carried to their graves.
And year by year, the same causes being in action, the process of
betterment went on. Extremists dropped off, moderates survived. The
Club was purged of its grosser elements, the moral tone of the
establishment was raised, through the operation of Parker's poison. It
was Napoleon's way with the Paris Parliament, he once explained to his
lady, who wondered vaguely how long the hero himself would have
outlived the effects of that mixture which she brewed, with her own
fair hands, in the dim vaults of the Residency.
Even now it was a pretty tough place. New crooks, like the dubious Mr.
Hopkins, new fire-eaters, new cranks, new sots, were always dropping in
from different corners of the globe to spread their infection among the
more recent crowd of curio-hunters, gentlemen of commerce, nautical
wrecks, decayed missionaries, painters, authors and other vagrant
riff-raff who frequented the premises.
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