AN AMUSING TOPER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1178, 24 November 1883, Page 3

AN AMUSING TOPER.

A notable drunkard, who has died at Paris in his 70th year, has kept a diary of his *' drinks" for the last half century. The curious book contains a scrupulous account of all that he drank from day to day. It appears that it was his custom to take four bottles of wine as his daily allowance; so that in fifty years he must have emptied down no fever than seventy-three thousand bottles ! He could never eat until he had taken a dram of absinthe, and, as he regularly had three meals every day, he must have swallowed down 109,500 drams of absinthe m the half century. In addition to this deleterious appetiser, he found it necessary to his comfort to drink about twelve petits verres of some spirit or other the spare hours of each day, so that he imbibed 200,000 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 rot end their days like the hero of George Cruikshank's pictures, or like M Zola's Ooupeau. His oldest acquaintances aver that they never saw the old man quite sober.