A Private Chivalry by Francis Lynde

THE rounds in the descending ladder of dissipation are many or few according to the temperament of the man who makes use of them: the man, I say, for women rarely descend -- they fall. As in a galloping consumption it is not infrequently the strongest who succumb first, so in a moral lapse it is often the self-contained who set the pace.

Antrim's sudden plunge into the stream of excess was fairly illustrative of this. Beginning with the mild debauch in the company of Grotter, the division engineer, he went from bad to worse with such breathtaking celerity that the end of a single week found him shattered and nerveless, and already dependent upon stimulants for the inspiration needful to keep him up to his work.