AN AMAZING TOPER.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1112, 14 November 1883, Page 2

AN AMAZING TOPER.

A notable drunkard, who has died at Paris in his 70th year, has kept a diary of his “ drinks ” for (he last half centur} f . This curious book contains a scrupulous account of all that he drank from day to day. It appears that it was bis custom to take four bottles of wine as bis daily allowance ; so that in fifty years he must have emptied down no fewer than seventythree thousand bottles ! Ho could never eat until he had taken a dram of absinthe, and, as he regularly had three meals every day, ho must have swallowed down 109,500 drams of absinthe in the half century. In addition to this deleterious appetiser, he found it necessary to his comfort to drink about twelve petils verves of some spirit or other during the spare hours of each day, so that he imbibed 219,000 glasses of spirituous liquors in the course of fifty years. The publicans may boast of this amazing toper as a proof that all worshippers of the bottle do not end their days like the hero of George Cruikehank’s pictures, or like M Zola’s Coupeau. His oldest acquaintances aver that they never remember to have seen the old man quite sober.