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itself will get to you in full. Nor is it true (in my experience, at least) that a double Scotch, say, diluted with a lot of soda takes longer to put down than the same with a little, so reducing your effective intake. The opposite of all this is truer. Spirits distilled out at 70° British proof, which are what you will usually meet, are too strong in the neat state to be wholly absorbed by the system; a proportion is eventually passed without ever having reached you. Dilution with just less than an equal amount of water is the point at which all the alcohol will enter your bloodstream— a fact known, without benefit of science, to Scotch and Irish drinkers for two centuries. So, in fact, spirit-bibbers should try drinking neat un-iced spirits, a practice so gruelling that their actual intake is almost bound to drop too.

I pass over such unhelpful prescriptions as being tall and fat; it is nevertheless true that your degree of drunkenness depends on a proportion between how much you drink and how large a frame you have to spread it over, with the result that big men, other things being equal, can take more than small men. Other things, of course, never are equal, though there is not much that can be done about them either. Not being tired, not being depressed, not being specially elated—these and other negative states will also stiffen your resistance to alcohol, but I know they do not descend at will. It can be said, however, not very cheeringly, that you should watch your drinking rate when you are tired, depressed, etc., (in fact always, because x drinks drunk in y minutes are more potent than x drinks drunk in 2y minutes).

Fatigue is an important element in the hangover, too. Alcohol gives you energy, or, what is hard to distinguish from it, the illusion of energy, and under its influence you will stand for hours at a stretch, throw yourself about, do exhausting imitations, perhaps fight a bit, even, God help you, dance. This will burn up a little alcohol, true, but you will pay for it next morning. A researcher is supposed once to have measured out two identical doses of drink, put the first lot down at a full-scale party and the second, some evenings later, at home with a book, smoking the same number of cigarettes on each occasion and going to bed at the same time. Result, big hangover and no hangover respectively. Sitting down whenever possible, then, will help you, and so, a fortiori, will resisting the temptation to dance, should you be subject to such impulses.

An equally unsurprising way of avoiding fatigue is going to bed in reasonable time, easily said, I know, but more easily done, too, if you allow the soporific effects of drink to run their natural course. This means staying away from stimulants, and that means avoiding coffee, both on its own and with liquor poured into it: the latter, by holding you up with one hand while it pastes you at leisure with the other, is the most solidly dependable way I know of ensuring a fearful tomorrow. Hostesses, especially, should take note of this principle, and cut out those steaming midnight mugs which, intended to send the company cheerfully on its way, so often set the tongues wagging and the Scotch circulating again.

Avoiding things can hardly help coming up more than once in the present connection. To proceed, then: avoiding very strong drinks is more than the piece of padding it may seem. The alcoholic strength or proof of a wine, spirit, etc., is not a straightforward index of its power to intoxicate. The relationship is non-linear, or, if you must have everything spelt out, the graph plotting proof against kick is not straight. Above the standard strength of spirits it bends sharply upward, so that for instance green Chartreuse, which is distilled out at 96° proof, is not just a bit over a third as strong again as, say, a gin at 70°, but several times stronger in its effect.

I once shared a half-litre bottle of Polish Plain Spirit (140° proof ) with two chums. I only spoke twice, first to say, “Cut out that laughing—it can’t have got to you yet,” and not