"Michael Henchard have busted out drinking after taking nothing for
twenty-one years!"
Elizabeth-Jane jumped up, put on her things, and went out.
33.
At this date there prevailed in Casterbridge a convivial
custom--scarcely recognized as such, yet none the less established. On
the afternoon of every Sunday a large contingent of the Casterbridge
journeymen--steady churchgoers and sedate characters--having attended
service, filed from the church doors across the way to the Three
Mariners Inn. The rear was usually brought up by the choir, with their
bass-viols, fiddles, and flutes under their arms.
The great point, the point of honour, on these sacred occasions was
for each man to strictly limit himself to half-a-pint of liquor. This
scrupulosity was so well understood by the landlord that the whole
company was served in cups of that measure. They were all exactly
alike--straight-sided, with two leafless lime-trees done in eel-brown
on the sides--one towards the drinker's lips, the other confronting
his comrade. To wonder how many of these cups the landlord possessed
altogether was a favourite exercise of children in the marvellous. Forty
at least might have been seen at these times in the large room, forming
a ring round the margin of the great sixteen-legged oak table, like the
monolithic circle of Stonehenge in its pristine days.
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