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+Project Gutenberg's The Old Soak, and Hail And Farewell, by Don Marquis

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

+

+

+

+Title: The Old Soak, and Hail And Farewell

+

+Author: Don Marquis

+

+Illustrator: Sterling Patterson

+

+Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51920]

+Last Updated: March 13, 2018

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD SOAK ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by David Widger from page images generously

+provided by the Internet Archive

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+THE OLD SOAK, and HAIL AND FAREWELL

+

+By Don Marquis

+

+Line Drawings By Sterling Patterson

+

+Garden City, N. Y., and Toronto

+

+Doubleday, Page K Company

+

+1921

+

+[Illustration: 0010]

+

+[Illustration: 0011]

+

+

+

+ACKNOWLEDGMENT

+

+The author thanks the Publishers of the New York Sun, in which the

+following sketches and verses originally appeared, for permission to

+reissue them in book form.

+

+

+

+

+

+OLD SOAK

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER ONE--Introducing the Old Soak

+

+

+[Illustration: 0021]

+

+OUR friend, the Old Soak, came in from his home in Flatbush to see us

+not long ago, in anything but a jovial mood.

+

+“I see that some persons think there is still hope for a liberal

+interpretation of the law so that beer and light wines may be sold,”

+ said we.

+

+“Hope,” said he, moodily, “is a fine thing, but it don't gurgle none

+when you pour it out of a bottle. Hope is all right, and so is Faith...

+but what I would like to see is a little Charity.

+

+“As far as Hope is concerned, I'd rather have Despair combined with a

+case of Bourbon liquor than all the Hope in the world by itself.

+

+“Hope is what these here fellows has got that is tryin' to make their

+own with a tea-kettle and a piece of hose. That's awful stuff, that is.

+There's a friend of mine made some of that stuff and he was scared of

+it, and he thinks before he drinks any he will try some of it onto a

+dumb beast.

+

+“But there ain't no dumb beast anywheres handy, so he feeds some of

+it to his wife's parrot. That there parrot was the only parrot I ever

+knowed of that wasn't named Polly. It was named Peter, and was supposed

+to be a gentleman parrot for the last eight or ten years. But whether

+it was or not, after it drank some of that there home-made hootch Peter

+went and laid an egg.

+

+“That there home-made stuff ain't anything to trifle with.

+

+“It's like amateur theatricals. Amateur theatricals is all right for an

+occupation for them that hasn't got anything to do nor nowhere to go,

+but they cause useless agony to an audience. Home-made booze may be all

+right to take the grease spots out of the rugs with, but it ain't for

+the human stomach to drink. Home-made booze is either a farce with no

+serious kick to it, or else a tragedy with an unhappy ending. No, sir,

+as soon as what is left has been drank I will kiss good-bye to the

+shores of this land of holiness and suffering and go to some country

+where the vegetation just naturally works itself up into liquor in a

+professional manner, and end my days in contentment and iniquity.

+

+“Unless,” he continued, with a faint gleam of hope, “the smuggling

+business develops into what it ought to. And it may. There's some

+friends of mine already picked out a likely spot on the shores of Long

+Island and dug a hole in the sand that kegs might wash into if they was

+throwed from passing vessels. They've hoisted friendly signals, but so

+far nothing has been throwed overboard.”

+

+He had a little of the right sort on his hip, and after refreshing

+himself, he announced:

+

+“I'm writing a diary. A diary of the past. A kind of gol-dinged

+autobiography of what me and Old King Booze done before he went into the

+grave and took one of my feet with him.

+

+“In just a little while now there won't be any one in this here

+broad land of ours, speaking of it geographically, that knows what an

+old-fashioned barroom was like. They'll meet up with the word, future

+generations of posterity will, and wonder and wonder and wonder just

+what a saloon could have resembled, and they will cudgel their brains in

+vain, as the poet says.

+

+“Often in my own perusal of reading matter I run onto institutions that

+I would like to know more of. But no one ever set down and described 'em

+because everyone knowed all about them in the time when the writing was

+done. Often I thought I would 'a' liked to knowed all about them Hanging

+Gardens of Babylon, for instance, and who was hanged in 'em and what

+for; but nobody ever described 'em, as fur as I know.”

+

+“Have you got any of it written?” we asked him. “Here's the start of

+it,” said he.

+

+We present it just as the Old Soak penned it.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER TWO--Beginning the Old Soak's History of the Rum Demon

+

+

+I WILL hereinunder set down nothing but what is the truth, the whole

+truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Well, in the old days,

+before everybody got so gosh-amighty good, barrooms was so frequent that

+nobody thought of setting down their scenery and habits.

+

+Usually you went into it by a pair of swinging doors that met in the

+middle and didn't go full length up, so you could see over the top of

+the door, and if any one was to come into one door you didn't want

+to have talk with or anything you could see him and have a chance to

+gravitate out the door at the other end of the barroom while he was

+getting in. But you couldn't see into the windows of them as a habitual

+custom, because who could tell whether a customer's family was going

+to pass by and glance in. Well, in your heart you knew you was doing

+nothing to be ashamed of, but all families even in the good old days

+contained some prohibition relations. The Good Book says that flies in

+the ointment send forth a smell to heaven. Well, you felt more private

+like with the windows fixed thataway. They was painted, soaped, and some

+stained glassed.

+

+It had its good sides and it had its bad sides, but I will say I have

+been completely out of touch, just as much as if I was a native of some

+hot country, with all kinds of morality and religions of all sorts, ever

+since the barrooms was shut up. From childhood's earliest hours religion

+has been one of my favourite studies, and I never let a week pass

+without I get down on my knees some time or another and pray about

+something any more than I would let a week pass without I washed all

+over. It was early recollections of a good woman that kept me religious,

+and I hope I do not have to say anything further to this gang. Well,

+in spite of my religion I never went to church none. Because it ain't

+reasonable to suppose that a man could keep awake. He thinks, “What if

+I should nod,” and he does. So that always throwed me back onto the

+barrooms for my religion.

+

+Well, then, the first thing you know when you are up by the free lunch

+counter eating some of that delicatessen in comes a girl and says to

+contribute to the cause. Well, “What cause are you?” you ask her. Well,

+she says, Salvation Army or the Volunteers, or what not, and so forth,

+as the case may be, or maybe she was boosting for some of these new

+religions that gets out a paper and these girls go around and sell it

+for ten cents, which they always set a date for the world coming to an

+end. Well, then, you got a line on her religion, and you was ashamed

+not to give her a quarter, for you had spent a dollar for drinks already

+that morning. And then all through the day there was other religions

+come in, one after another, or maybe the same religion over and over

+again.

+

+Well, then, you kept in touch with religions and it made a better man

+out of you, and along about evening time when you figured on going home

+you felt like it wouldn't be right to tell any pervarications to your

+wife about how you come to be so late, so you just said over the phone:

+“I am starting right away. I stopped into Ed's place to play a game of

+pool after work and met a fellow I used to know. I couldn't get away

+from him and I was too thoughtful of you to insist for him to come home

+to dinner so he insisted I ought to have a drink with him for old

+time's sake.” And if it hadn't been for being in contact with different

+religions all day you would of lied outright to your wife and felt mean

+as a dog about it when she found you out.

+

+Well, then, it needs no further proof that the abolishment of the saloon

+has taken away the common people's religions from them, but it is my

+message to tell just what the barrooms was like and not to criticize the

+laws of the land, even when they are dam-foolish as so many of them are.

+So I will confine myself to describing the barroom and the rum demon.

+

+Well, I never saw much rum drunk in the places where I hung out.

+Sometimes some baccardy into a cocktail, but for my part cocktails

+always struck me as wicked. The good book says that the Lord started the

+people right but that men had made many adventures. Well, then, I took

+mine straight for the most part, except when I needed some special kind

+of a pick-up in the morning.

+

+And the good book says not to tarry long over the wine cup, and I never

+done that, neither, except a little Rhine wine in the summer time, but

+mostly took mine straight.

+

+Well, then, to come down to describing these phantom places over which

+the raven says nevermore but the posterity of the future may wish to

+have its own say so about. Well, there was a long counter always kept

+wiped off, not like these here sticky soda-water counters which the boys

+and girls back of them always look sticky, too, and their sleeves look

+sticky and the glasses is sticky, but in a decent barroom the counter

+was kept swiped off clean and selfrespectable.

+

+And there was a brass rail with cuspidors near to it, if you wanted to

+cuspidate it was handy right there, and there's no place to hawk and

+cuspidate in these here soda-water dives. Not that I ever been in them

+much. All that stuff rots the lining of your stomach. As far as I am

+concerned, being the posterity of a lot of Scotch ancestors, I never

+liked soft stuff in my insides.

+

+I never drunk nothing but whiskey for comfort and pleasure, and I never

+took no medicine in my life except calomel, and I always held to the

+Presbyterian religion as my favourite religion because those three

+things has got some kick when took inside of you.

+

+Well, then, to get down to telling just what these places was like, it

+would surprise this generation of posterity how genteel some of them

+was. Which I will come down to in my next chapter. Well, I will close

+this chapter.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER THREE--Liquor and Hennery Simms

+

+

+[Illustration: 0030]

+

+I NEVER could see liquor drinking as a bad habit,” said the Old Soak,

+“though I admit fair and free it will lead to bad habits if it ain't

+watched.

+

+“In these here remarks of mine, I aim to tell the truth, and nothing but

+the truth, so help me Jehorsophat, as the good book says.

+

+“One feller I knowed whose liquor drinking led to bad habits was my old

+friend Hennery Simms.

+

+“Every time Hennery got anyways jingled he used to fall downstairs, and

+he fell down so often that it got to be a habit and you couldn't call it

+nothing else. He thought he had to.

+

+“One time late at night I was going over to Brooklyn on the subway, and

+I seen one of these here escalators with Hennery onto it moving upwards,

+only Hennery wasn't riding on his feet, he was riding on the spine of

+his back.

+

+“And when he got to the top of the thing and it skated him out onto the

+level, what does Hennery do but pitch himself onto it again, head first,

+and again he was carried up.

+

+“After I seen him do that three or four times I rode up to where Hennery

+was floundering at and I ast him what was he doing.

+

+“'I'm falling downstairs,' says Hennery.

+

+“'What you doing that fur?' I says.

+

+“'I'm drunk, ain't I?' says Hennery. 'You old fool, you knows I always

+falls downstairs when I'm drunk.'

+

+“'How many times you goin' to fall down these here stairs?' I ast him.

+

+“'I ain't fell down these here stairs once yet,' says Hennery, 'though

+I must of tried to a dozen times. I been tryin' to fall down these here

+stairs ever since dusk set in, but they's something wrong about 'em.

+

+“'If I didn't know I was drunk, I would swear these here stairs was

+movin'.'

+

+'“They be movin',' I tells him.

+

+“'You go about your business,' he says, 'and don't mock a man that's

+doing the best he can. In course they ain't movin'.

+

+“'They only looks like they was movin' to me because I'm drunk. You

+can't fool me.'

+

+“And I left him still tryin' to fall down them stairs, and still bein'

+carried up again. Which, as I remarked at first, only goes to show that

+drink will lead to habits if it ain't watched, even when it ain't a

+habit itself.”

+

+“Do you have any more of your History of the Rum Demon written?” we

+asked him.

+

+“Uh-huh,” said he, and left us the second installment.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER FOUR--The Old Soak's History--The Barroom as an Educative

+Influence

+

+

+WELL, as I said in my first installment, some 'of them barrooms was

+such genteel places they would surprise you if you had got the idea that

+they was all gems of iniquity and wickedness with the bartenders mostly

+in clean collars and their hair slicked, not like so many of these

+soda-water places, where the hair is stringy.

+

+Well, this is for future generations of posterity that will have never

+saw a saloon, and the whole truth is to be set down, so help me God, and

+I will say that it took a good deal of sweeping sometimes to keep the

+floor clean and often the free lunch was approached with one fork for

+several people, especially the beans. Well, it has been three or four

+years even before that Eighteenth Commandment passed since free lunch

+was what it once was. And some barrooms was under par. But I am speaking

+of the average good class barroom, where you would take your own

+children or grandchildren, as the case may be.

+

+They was some very kind-hearted places among them where if a man had

+spent all his money already for his own good they would refuse to let

+him have anything more to drink until maybe someone set them up for him.

+

+But to get down to brass tacks and describe what they looked like more

+thoroughly I will say they was always attractive to me with those

+long expensive mirrors and brass fixtures like a scene of elegance and

+grandeur out of the Old Testament where it tells of Solomon in all his

+glory. And if a gent would forget to be genteel after he took too much

+and his money was all spent and imbue himself with loud talk or rough

+language and maybe want to hit somebody and there was none of his

+friends there to take charge of him often I have seen such throwed out

+on their ear, for the better class places always aimed to be decent

+and orderly and never to have an indecent reputation for loudness and

+roughhouseness.

+

+Well, I will say I have not kept up with politics like I used to since

+the barrooms was vanished. My eyes ain't what they used to be and

+the newspapers are different from each other so who can tell what to

+believe, but in the old days you could keep in touch with politics in

+the barrooms. It made a better citizen out of you for every man ought

+to vote for what his consciousness tells him is right and to abide in

+politics by his consciousness.

+

+Well, closing the barroom has shut off my chance to be imbued with

+political dope and who to bet on in the next election and I am not so

+good a citizen as before the saloons was closed. I would not know who to

+bet on in any election but I used to get straight tips and in that way

+took an interest in politics which a man is scarcely to be called an

+American citizen unless he does.

+

+Well I see everywhere where all the doctors and science sharks says to

+keep in touch with outdoor sports if you want to keep young. I used to

+know all about all those outdoor sports and who the Giants had bought

+and what they paid for him and who was the best pitcher and what the

+dope was on tomorrow's entries at Havana, but all that is taken away

+from me now the saloons is closed and I got no chance to get into touch

+with outdoor sports and I feel it in my health. Some of these days the

+Prohibition aliments will wake up and see they have ruined the country

+but then it will be too late. Taking the sports away from a nation is

+not going to do it any good when the next war comes along if one does.

+

+Well, I promised I would describe more what they looked like. I will

+tackle that in the next chapter, so I will bring this installment to a

+close.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER FIVE--Look Out For Crime Waves!

+

+

+[Illustration: 0036]

+

+THEY'RE going to take our tobacco next, are they?” said the Old Soak.

+“Well, me, I won't struggle none! I ain't fit to struggle. I'm licked;

+my heart's broke. They can come and take my blood if they want it, and

+all I'll do is ask 'em whether they'll have it a drop at a time, or the

+whole concerns in a bucket.

+

+“All I say is: _Watch out for Crime Waves!_ I don't threaten nobody, I

+just predict. If you ever waked up about 1 o'clock in the morning,

+two or three miles from a store, and that store likely closed, and no

+neighbour near by, and the snow drifting the roads shut, and wanted a

+smoke, and there wasn't a single crumb of tobacco nowheres in the house,

+you know what I mean. You go and look for old cigar and cigarette butts

+to crumble into your pipe, and there ain't none. You go through all your

+clothes for little mites of tobacco that have maybe jolted into your

+pockets, and there ain't none. Your summer clothes is packed away into

+the bottom of a trunk somewheres, and you wake your wife to find the key

+to the trunk, and you get the clothes and there ain't no tobacco in them

+pockets, either.

+

+“And then you and your wife has words. And you sit and suffer and cuss

+and chew the stem of your empty pipe. By 3 in the morning there ain't

+no customary crime known you wouldn't commit. By 4 o'clock you begin to

+think of new crimes, and how you'd like to commit them and then make up

+comic songs about 'em and go and sing them songs at the funerals of them

+you've slew.

+

+“Hark to me: If tobacco goes next, there'll be a crime wave! Take away a

+man's booze, and he dies, or embraces dope or religion, or goes abroad,

+or makes it at home, or drinks varnish, or gets philosophical or

+something. But tobacco! No, sir! There ain't any substitute. Why, the

+only way they're getting away with this booze thing now is because

+millions and millions of shattered nerves is solacing and soothing

+theirselves with tobacco.

+

+“I'm mild, myself. I won't explode. I'm getting my booze. I know where

+there's plenty of it. My heart's broke to see the saloons closed, and

+I'm licked by the overwhelming righteous... but I won't suffer any

+personal for a long time yet. But there's them that will. And on top of

+everything else, tobacco is to go! All right, take it--but I

+say solemn and warningly: _Look Out For Crime Waves!_

+

+“The godly and the righteous can push us wicked persons just so far,

+but worms will turn. Look at the Garden of Eden! The mammal of iniquity

+ain't never yet been completely abolished. Look at the history of the

+world--every once in a while it has always looked as if the pious and

+the uplifter was going to bring in the millennium, with bells on

+it--but something has always happened just in time and the mammal of

+unrighteousness has come into his own again. I ain't threatening; I just

+predict---_Look Out For Crime Waves!_

+

+“As for me, I may never see Satan come back home. I'm old. I ain't long

+for this weary land of purity and this vale of tears and virtue. I'll

+soon be in a place where the godly cease from troubling and the wicked

+are at rest. But I got children and grandchildren that'll fight against

+the millennium to the last gasp, if I know the breed, and I'm going to

+pass on full of hope and trust and calm belief.

+

+“Here,” concluded the Old Soak, unscrewing the top of his pocket flask,

+“here is to the mammal of unrighteousness!”

+

+He deposited on our desk the next installment of his History.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER SIX--Continuing the Old Soak's History--The Barroom and the Arts

+

+WELL, I promised to describe what the saloon that has been banished was

+like so that future generations of posterity will know what it was like

+they never having seen one. And maybe being curious, which I would give

+a good deal to know how they got all their animals into the ark only

+nobody that was on the spot thought to write it down and figure the room

+for the stalls and cages and when it comes to that how did they train

+animals to talk in those days like Balaam and his ass, and Moses

+knocking the water out of the rocks always interested me.

+

+Which I will tell the truth, so help me. It used to be this way: some

+had tables and some did not. But I never was much of a one for tables,

+for if you set down your legs don't tell you anything about how you

+are standing it till you get up and find you have went further than you

+intended, but if you stand up your legs gives you a warning from time to

+time you better not have but one more.

+

+Well, I will tell the truth. And one thing is the treating habit was a

+great evil. They would come too fast, and you would take a light drink

+like Rhine wine whilst they was coming too fast and that way use up

+considerable room that you could of had more advantage from if you had

+saved it for something important.

+

+Well, the good book says to beware of wine and evil communications

+corrupts a good many. Well, what I always wanted was that warm feeling

+that started about the equator and spread gentle all over you till

+you loved your neighbour as the good book says and wine never had the

+efficiency for me.

+

+Well, I will say even if the treating habit was a great evil it is an

+ill wind that blows nobody any good. Well, I promised to come down to

+brass tacks and describe what the old-time barroom looked like. Some of

+the old timers had sawdust on the floor, which I never cared much for

+that as it never looked genteel to me and almost anything might be mixed

+into it.

+

+I will tell the whole truth, so help me. And another kick I got is about

+business advantages. Which you used to be lined up by the bar five or

+six of you and suppose you was in the real estate business or something

+a fellow would say he had an idea that such and such a section would be

+going to have a boom and that started you figuring on it. Well, I missed

+a lot of business opportunities like that since the barroom has been

+vanished. What can a country expect if it destroys all chances a man has

+got to get ahead in business? The next time they ask us for business

+as usual to win a war with this country will find out something about

+closing up all chances a man has to get tips on their business chances.

+

+Well, the good book says to laugh and grow fat and since the barroom

+has been taken away, what chance you got to hear any new stories I would

+like to know. Well, so help me, I said I would tell the truth, and the

+truth is some of them stories was not fit to offer up along with

+your prayers, but at the same time you got acquainted with some right

+up-to-date fellows. Well, what I want to know is how could you blame a

+country for turning into Bolshevisitors if all chance for sociability is

+shut off by the government from the plain people?

+

+Well, the better class of them had pictures on the walls, and since they

+been taken away what chance has a busy man like me got to go to a museum

+and see all them works of art hand painted by artists and looking as

+slick and shiny as one of these here circus lithographs. Well, a country

+wants to look out what it is doing when it shuts off from the plain

+people all the chance to educate itself in the high arts and hand

+painting. Some of the frames by themselves must of been worth a good

+deal of money.

+

+The Good Book says you shalt not live by bread alone and if you ain't

+got a chance to educate your self in the high arts or nothing after a

+while this country will get to the place where all the foreign countries

+will laugh at us for we won't know good hand painting when we see

+it. Well, they was a story to all them hand paintings, and often when

+business was slack I used to talk with Ed the bartender about them

+paintings and what did he suppose they was about.

+

+What chance have I got to go and buy a box to set in every night at the

+Metropolitan Opera House I would like to know and hear singing. Well,

+the good book says not to have anything to do with a man that ain't got

+any music in his soul and the right kind of a crowd in the right kind of

+a barroom could all get to singing together and furnish me with music.

+

+A government that takes away all its music like that from the plain

+people had better watch out. Some of these days there will be another

+big war and what will they do without music. I always been fond of music

+and there ain't anywhere I can go that it sounds the same sort of warmed

+up and friendly and careless. Let alone taking away my chance to meet up

+with different religions taking away my music has been a big blow to me.

+

+Well, I will tell the truth so help me, it was a nice place to drop into

+on a rainy day; you don't want to be setting down at home on a rainy

+day, reading your Bible all the time. But since they been closed I had

+to do a lot of reading to get through the day somehow and the wife

+is too busy to talk to me and the rest of the family is at work or

+somewheres.

+

+Well, another evil is I been doing too much reading and that will rot

+out your brains unless of course it is the good book and you get kind

+of mixed up with all them revelations and things. And you get tired

+figuring out almanacs and the book with 1,000 drummer's jokes in it

+don't sound so good in print as when a fellow tells them to you and I

+never was much of a one for novels. What I like is books about something

+you could maybe know about yourself and maybe some of them old-time

+wonders of the world with explanations of how they was made. But nobody

+that was on the spot took the trouble to explain a lot of them things

+which is why I am setting down what the barroom was like so help me.

+

+Well, in the next chapter I will describe it some more or future

+generations will have no notion of them without the Constitution of the

+United States changes its mind and comes to its census again.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER SEVEN--An Argument With the Old Woman

+

+

+[Illustration: 0044]

+

+THE Old Woman and me had quite an argument last Sunday,” said the Old

+Soak. “It ended up with her turning a saucepan full of hot peas onto my

+bald spot, which ain't no way to treat garden truck, with the cost of

+things what they be.

+

+“But I won one of these here moral victories, even if she did get the

+best of me and chase me out of the house.

+

+“It all come about over some pie we had for dinner on Sunday. It looked

+like mince pie to me when she set it on the table, and I says to her why

+don't she make some rhubarb pie or apple pie or something, for this is

+a hell of a time of year to be having mince pie. And mince pie ain't no

+good anyhow unless you put a shot of brandy or hard cider into it. She

+knows I orter be careful what I put into my stomach, which is all to the

+bad since I can't get the right kind of drink any more, and I told her

+so.

+

+“'Well, then,' says she, 'this ain't mince pie. This is raisin pie.'

+

+“'Raisin pie!' I says, and I was shocked and scandalized. 'Raisin pie!

+Good lord, woman, are you crazy? You don't mean to say you've went and

+took hundreds and hundreds of good raisins and went and wasted them

+thataway by puttin' 'em in a _pie!_ It's the most extravagant thing I

+ever hearn tell on! Ain't you got sense enough to know that in these

+days raisins ain't something you eat?'

+

+'“Well, what are they, then?' she says.

+

+'“Raisins, I told her, 'is something you make hootch out of, and you

+know I'm reduced to makin' my own stuff these days. And yet here you be,

+puttin' at least a quart of good raisins into a gosh-darned pie!'

+

+“Well, one word led to another, and, as I said, she hit me with the

+peas. But I got away with that pie. I won the moral victory. I got that

+pie fermentin' now, in the bottom of a cask full of grape and berry

+juice and other truck I picked up here and there. No, sir, there ain't

+goin' to be no raisins wasted around my house by eatin' of 'em in this

+here time of need!”

+

+The Old Soak was silent a moment, and then he said: “This here

+installment of my diary of booze takes up that very point of quarrellin'

+with the Old Woman.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER EIGHT--The Old Soak's History--More Evils of Prohibition

+

+

+WELL, another kick I got on the abvolition of ' the barroom is the fact

+that you got to stay around home so much and that naturally leads to

+having a row with your wife.

+

+When there was barrooms my wife used to jaw me every time I come home

+anyways lit up and I just let her jaw me and there wasn't any row for I

+figured better let her get away with it who knows maybe she thinks she

+is right about it.

+

+But now I stick around home a good deal of the time and it leads to

+words.

+

+Well, she says to me, why don't you go and get a job of work of some

+kind.

+

+Well, I tell her, mind your own business I always been a good pervider

+ain't I. You have got five or six children working for you ain't you and

+a man that pervides his wife with five or six children to work for her

+is not going to listen to no back talk.

+

+Well, she says, you ought to be ashamed to loaf around home all the

+time.

+

+Well, I says, I'm thinking up a big business deal but that's the way

+with women they never understand they got to keep their mouth shut and

+give a man peace and quiet to do his thinking in so he can make them a

+good living all they think about is newfangled ways to spend the money

+after he has slaved himself half to death making it.

+

+Well, she says, I ain't seen you slaving any lately.

+

+Well, I tells her, I done all my hard slaving when I was young and I got

+a little money coming in right along from them two houses I own, and I

+ain't going to work myself into the grave for no extravagant woman, and

+me with a heart pappitation you can hear half a mile on a clear day.

+

+Well, she says, what rent money them two houses brings in don't any more

+than pay for the booze you drink.

+

+Well, I says, you Prohibitionists done that to me. You went and made it

+plumb impossible to get good liquor for any reasonable price. That there

+rent money used to pay for three times the booze I drink.

+

+Well, she says, you oughta get a job.

+

+If I was to tie myself down to a job, I tells her, what chance would

+I have to trade and dicker around and make little turnovers, let alone

+thinking up this big business deal I am working on.

+

+You are a liar, she said, and if I knowed where your whiskey was hid I'd

+bust every bottle and what kind of a business deal are you thinking up.

+

+It is an invention I says to her and you mind your own business just

+because I have stood for you intrupting me for forty years is no sign I

+am going to stand for it forty years more.

+

+You can quit any time she says and good riddance the children will keep

+me and there will be one less to cook for besides being ashamed of you

+before all my own friends and the nice people the children know.

+

+Well, I said, here I set turning over the leaves of the Bible and you

+attack me that way and me trying to think up a business deal to buy you

+an automobile and the pappitation in my heart that bad it shakes the

+chair I am setting in and if a man with one foot in the grave can't get

+any peace and quiet to read his Bible in his own home against the time

+he is going to cash in then I will say that Prohibition has brought this

+country to a pretty pass.

+

+Well, she says, what is that pappitation from but all the liquor you

+drunk.

+

+It is from my constitution, I says, as the doctor will tell you if

+it hadn't been for a little mite of stimulant now and then I would of

+cashed in long ago and you would now have the life insurance money.

+

+Well, she says, what kind of an invention is this you claim you are

+thinking up all the time?

+

+Yes, I says, I would see myself telling you, wouldn't I and you blabbing

+it the next time a lot of them church women meets at our house and some

+old church deacon getting hold of it and getting rich off of it and me

+wandering the streets in destitution with the rain running down often my

+beard and the end of my nose because you and the children cast me into

+the street.

+

+Well, she says, where is that thousand dollars that my uncle Lemuel

+willed to me and I give it to you for one of them inventions nearly

+thirty years ago and never seen hide nor hair on it since then.

+

+Well, I says, that thousand dollars is gone and it went the same way as

+that money I loaned to your cousin Dan when he failed in business and

+would of starved to death him and his family if I hadn't come across

+with the cash that is where that thousand dollars is.

+

+Well, that's the way it goes, until I get tired of trying to make her

+see any sense and sneak out to where my stuff is hid and fill me a pint

+bottle for my hip pocket and go and find a friend somewheres.

+

+And in just that way Prohibition is breaking up millions and millions of

+homes every day.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER NINE--Preparing for Christmas

+

+

+[Illustration: 0050]

+

+CHRISTMAS,” said the Old Soak, “will soon be here. But me, I ain't

+going to look at it. I ain't got the heart to face it. I'm going to

+crawl off and make arrangements to go to sleep on the twenty-third of

+December and not wake up until the second of January.

+

+“Them that is in favour of a denaturized Christmas won't be interfered

+with by me. I got no grudge against them. But I won't intrude any on

+them, either. They can pass through the holidays in an orgy of sobriety,

+and I'll be all alone in my own little room, with my memories and a case

+of Bourbon to bear me up.

+

+“I never could look on Christmas with the naked eye. It makes me so

+darned sad, Christmas does. There's the kids... I used to give 'em

+presents, and my tendency was to weep as I give them. 'Poor little

+rascals,' I said to myself, 'they think life is going to be just one

+Christmas tree after another, but it ain't.' And then I'd think of all

+the Christmases past I had spent with good friends, and how they was all

+gone, or on their way. And I'd think of all the poor folks on Christmas,

+and how the efforts made for them at that season was only a drop in the

+bucket to what they'd need the year around. And along about December

+twenty-third I always got so downhearted and sentimental and discouraged

+about the whole darned universe I nearly died with melancholy.

+

+“In years past, the remedy was at hand. A few drinks and I could look

+even Christmas in the face. A few more and I'd stand under the mistletoe

+and sing, 'God rest ye merry, gentlemen.' And by the night of Christmas

+day I had kidded myself into thinking I liked it, and wanted to keep it

+up for a week.

+

+“But this Christmas there ain't going to be any general iniquity used to

+season the grand religious festival with, except among a few of us Old

+Soaks that has it laid away. I ain't got the heart to look on all the

+melancholy critters that will be remembering the drinks they had last

+year. And I ain't going to trot my own feelings out and make 'em public,

+neither. No, sir. Me, I'm going to hibernate like a bear that goes to

+sleep with his thumb in his mouth. Only it won't be a thumb I have in

+my mouth. My house will be full of children and grandchildren, and there

+will be a passel of my wife's relations that has always boosted for

+Prohibition, but any of 'em ain't going to see the old man. I won't

+mingle in any of them debilitated festivities. I ain't any Old Scrooge,

+but I respect the memory of the old-time Christmas, and I'm going to

+have mine all by myself, the melancholy part of it that comes first, and

+the cure for the melancholy. This country ain't worthy to share in my

+kind of a Christmas, and I ain't so much as going to stick my head out

+of the window and let it smell my breath till after the holidays is

+over. I got presents for all of 'em, but none of 'em is to be allowed

+to open the old man's door and poke any presents into his room for him.

+They ain't worthy to give me presents, the people in general in this

+country ain't, and I won't take none from them. They might 'a' got

+together and stopped this Prohibition thing before it got such a start,

+but they didn't have the gumption. I've seceded, I have. And if any of

+my wife's Prohibition relations comes sniffin' and smellin' around my

+door, where I've locked myself in, I'll put a bullet through the

+door. You hear me! And I'll know who's sniffin', too, for I can tell a

+Prohibitionist sniff as fur as I can hear it.

+

+“I got a bar of my own all fixed up in my bedroom and there's going to

+be a hot water kettle near by it and a bowl of this here Tom and Jerry

+setting onto it as big as life.

+

+“And every time I wake up I'll crawl out of bed and say to myself:

+'Better have just one more.'

+

+“'Well, now,' myself will say to me, 'just _one!_ I really hadn't orter

+have that one; I've had so many--but just one goes.'

+

+“And then we'll mix it right solemn and pour in the hot water, standing

+there in front of the bar, with our foot onto the railing, me and myself

+together, and myself will say to me:

+

+“'Well, old scout, you better have another afore you go. It's gettin'

+right like holiday weather outside.'

+

+“'I hadn't really orter,' I will say to myself again, 'but it's a

+long time to next holidays, ain't it, old scout? And here's all the

+appurtenances of the season to you, and may it sing through your

+digestive ornaments like a Christmas carol. Another one, Ed.'

+

+“And then I'll skip around behind the bar and play I was Ed, the

+bartender, and say, 'Are they too sweet for you, sir?'

+

+“And then I'll play I was myself again and say, 'No, they ain't, Ed.

+They're just right. Ask that feller down by the end of the bar, Ed, to

+join us. I know him, but I forget his name.'

+

+“And then I'll play I was the feller and say I hadn't orter have another

+but I will, for it's always fair weather when good fellows gets

+together.

+

+“And then me and myself and that other feller will have three more,

+because each one of us wants to buy one, and then Ed the bartender

+will say to have one on the house. And then I'll go to sleep again and

+hibernate some more. And don't you call me out of that there room till

+along about noon on the second day of January. I'll be alone in there

+with my joy and my grief and all them memories.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER TEN--Continuing the History--the Old Soak Fears for the Growing

+Children

+

+

+ANOTHER thing wrong with Prohibition that will one day make them sorry

+they passed that commandment onto the constitution is the way it will

+bring liquor in front of the growing children and if the children learns

+to drink it too young what will become of this country I would like to

+know when the next war comes along.

+

+I guess they didn't think of that, all these here wise Johnnies when

+they passed that law.

+

+When you used to get all you wanted in a barroom you went there for it

+and the children didn't see you and they couldn't go into them places

+and it wasn't sticking around under the children's noses at home all the

+time making them ask Pa what do you need with so much of that medicine

+and can I have some Pa.

+

+But now you have it at home and it is sticking under their noses all the

+time and the chances are millions and millions of children will learn

+to drink too soon just because it is sticking under their noses all the

+time and that is what Prohibition is doing for this country for everyone

+knows if they drink it too soon it will stunt their growths.

+

+It is a great responsibility to bring up children right and Godfearing

+and be sure they say their lay me down to sleep every night like

+the Good Book says they should, and what I want to know is why

+this government don't help the parents and fathers with all them

+responsibilities instead of being a stumbling block in their way and

+putting liquor in the home where the growing children will smell it all

+the time and if they smell it they will want some of it.

+

+Of course a young feller has got to learn to drink some time but there

+is such a thing as learning too young and it stunts their growth and the

+good book says keep it out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.

+

+Maybe a little beer is all right if a baby is puny to fatten him up but

+I never give my children any hard liquor till they had their growth and

+I got no use for a government that turns in and puts liquor in the home

+to make drunkards out of the little innocent children.

+

+Maybe if a child has got a cold a little whiskey is good for him and

+what is left in the bottom of the glass when their dad is done with it

+if they put some sugar and water in it and play they are like Pa won't

+hurt none of them any and will help make them so they can hold their

+share when they get growed up, but that is different from forcing it

+down their poor little innocent throats all the time and every day,

+which is what that Prohibition commandment amounts to.

+

+I knowed a child once in a fambly where they thought it was smart to

+let him have some hard liquor and he growed up with goggle eyes and all

+rickety from it and took to smoking these here cheap cigarettes and it

+was a shame as any person with any heart a tall would have said and does

+this government want the whole future generation of posterity to grow

+up goggle eyed and rickety like that by forcing liquor into the home and

+where will they get their strong soldiers from in the next war.

+

+I will say they got no conscience to do a thing like that to the whole

+passel of children waiting to grow up and go to be soldiers.

+

+It is enough to make any honest man stop and think and his heart bleed

+when he thinks of all them millions and millions of innocent children

+and the way they are being ruined with liquor in the home and maybe

+helping their daddies make it with yeast and raisins and things and

+cornmeal in the cellar.

+

+I teached my boys to drink in the barroom just as fast as they growed

+up and teached them to tell good liquor from bad liquor and not to mix

+their drinks and not to go in for fancy drinks and to drink along with

+me for a comfort for my old age and a father had ought to make chums of

+his boys like that and give them the right example and they stay close

+to him and he knows what they are thinking about and can give them good

+advice and my boys has been a comfort to me.

+

+My boys is all growed up, but what worries me is the millions and

+millions of little children that is going to learn to drink too young.

+

+Well, in my next chapter I promise to get down to brass tacks and tell

+just exactly what those barrooms was like that has been vanished.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER ELEVEN--Jabe Potter's Optimism

+

+

+NO, SIR,” said the Old Soak, “I ain't got so darned much left. It may

+get me through a year, and it may run me only about ten months.

+

+“But I don't want so much as I use to, for some reason. In course, no

+gentleman of the old school figgers on less than a quart a day, but

+there has been times when I exceeded that there limit. Looking back

+on them times, I don't know whether to be glad or sorry. It's a

+satisfaction to remember that I had the liquor, but it's a grief to know

+I won't never have that same liquor again.

+

+“But at a quart a day, if I'm careful, and don't give any parties to

+new acquaintances that is took sudden with a love and admiration for

+me, I'll toddle along fer ten or twelve months yet. And by that time,

+something or other will happen in my favour; you see if it don't.

+Either the country will backslide into iniquity again in spots; or else

+somebody will die and leave me an island down near Cuba; or else Old

+Jabe Potter, my friend out on Long Island I told you of, will get his

+smuggling works started into operation.

+

+“Fact is, Old Jabe is already set, and his smuggling works is ready to

+operate right now, only there don't seem to be nothin' to smuggle, Jabe

+says. He's got one of these here gasolene boats, and he goes out and

+makes signals to the ocean liners to and from Europe, but they

+ain't onto Jabe's signals, or something. I tell him he's got to make

+arrangements in advance with some of them transatlantic bartenders, for

+they don't know what he's driving at. 'Well,' Jabe says, 'you'd think

+they could tell by my looks I'm thirsty, wouldn't you?' Jabe, he's

+romantic and optimistic; but them notions of his is all right if they

+was only organized.”

+

+He paused a while, refreshed himself from his pocket flask, and then

+took up another line of enquiry.

+

+“What I would like to know,” he said, “is what mean folks is going to

+blame their meanness onto, now that booze is gone. It used to be a good

+excuse for a lot of people that wasn't worth nothin', and knowed it,

+and acted ornery... booze was the answer, everybody said. If they did

+anything they hadn't orter, people said they was all right except

+when they had a drink or two, but a drink or two changed their entire

+disposition, and the drink orter be blamed, and not them. My own

+observation and belief leads me to remark that them kind of folks was

+less ornery and mean when they had booze than when they didn't have it.

+

+“Well, I notice in myself a kind of a habit growing up to blame

+everything onto Prohibition, just as Prohibitionists used to blame

+everything onto booze. I want to be fair to the drys, and I will say

+that neither Prohibition nor booze has much to do with making a mean man

+mean. I want to be fair to the drys, so as to show them up; they ain't

+fair to me, and when I'm fair to them it shows how superior I be.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER TWELVE--More of the History--As It Used to Be of a Morning

+

+

+WELL, I promised I would tell just what those vanished barrooms was

+like, and I will tell the truth, so help me.

+

+One thing that I can't get used to going without is that long brass

+railing where you would rest your feet, and I have got one of them fixed

+up in my own bedroom now so when I get tired setting down I can go and

+stand up and rest my feet one at a time.

+

+Well, you would come in in the morning and you would say, Ed, I ain't

+feeling so good this morning.

+

+I wonder what could the matter be, Ed says, though he has got a pretty

+good idea of what it could be all the time. But he's too kind hearted to

+let on.

+

+I don't know, you says to Ed, I guess I am smoking too much lately. When

+you left here last night, Ed says, you seemed to be feeling all right,

+maybe what you got is a little touch of this here influenza.

+

+It ain't influenza, Ed, you says to him, it is them heavy cigars we was

+all smoking in here last night. I swallered too much of that smoke, Ed,

+and I got a headache this morning and my stomach feels kind o' like it

+was a democratic stomach all surrounded by republican voters, and a

+lot of that tobacco must of got into my eyes and I feel so rotten this

+morning that when my wife said are you going downtown without your

+breakfast I just said to her Hell and walked out to dodge a row because

+I could see she was bad tempered this morning.

+

+What would you say to a little absinthe, says Ed, sympathetic and

+helpful, a cocktail or frappy.

+

+No, says you, if you was to say what I used to say, I leave that there

+stuff to these here young cigarettesmoking squirts, which it always

+tasted like paregoric to me.

+

+Yes, sir, Ed says, it is one of them foreign things, and how about a

+milk punch, it is sometimes soothing when a person has smoked too much.

+

+No, Ed, you says, a milk punch is too much like vittles and I can't

+stand the idea of vittles.

+

+Yes, sir, Ed used to say, you are right, sir, how about a gin fizz. A

+gin fizz will bring back your stomach to life right gradual, sir, and

+not with a shock like being raised from the dead.

+

+Ed, you says to him, or leastways I always used to say, a silver fizz is

+too gentle, and one of them golden fizzes, with the yellow of an egg

+in it, has got the same objections as a milk punch, it is too much like

+vittles.

+

+Yes, sir, Ed says, I think you are right about vittles. I can understand

+how you feel about not wanting vittles in the early part of the day.

+And that makes you love Ed, for you meet a lot of people who can't

+understand that. There ain't no sympathy and understanding left in the

+world since bartenders was abolished.

+

+How about an old-fashioned whiskey cocktail, says Ed.

+

+You feel he is getting nearer to it, and you tell him so, but it don't

+seem just like the right thing yet.

+

+And then Ed sees you ain't never going to be satisfied with nothing till

+after it is into you and he takes the matter into his own hands.

+

+I know what is the matter with you, he says, and what you want, and he

+mixes you up a whiskey sour and you get a little cross and say it helped

+some but there was too much sugar in it and not to put so much sugar in

+the next one.

+

+And by the time you drink the third one, somewhere away down deep inside

+of you there is a warm spot wakes up and kind of smiles.

+

+And that is your soul has waked up.

+

+And you sort of wish you hadn't been so mean with your wife when you

+left home, and you look around and see a friend and have one with him

+and your soul says to you away down deep inside of you for all you know

+about them old Bible stories they may be true after all and maybe there

+is a God and kind of feel glad there may be one, and if your friend says

+let's go and have some breakfast you are surprised to find out you could

+eat an egg if it ain't too soft or ain't too done.

+

+Well, I promised, so help me, I would tell the truth about them barrooms

+that has perished away, and the truth I will tell, and the truth with

+me used to be that more than likely it wasn't really cigars that used to

+get me feeling that way in the mornings, and I will take up a different

+part of the subject in my next chapter.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER THIRTEEN--Peace and Contentment

+

+

+[Illustration: 0066]

+

+PROHIBITION,” said the Old Soak, “is doing more harm than you can see

+with the naked eye. Formerly when a man called up and told his wife that

+he was detained at his office by an unexpected caller on business just

+as he was starting home his wife knew he had stopped to take three or

+four balls with the boys on the corner and thought very little about it.

+Now she wonders if that unexpected caller could have been a lady.

+

+“When a man came home late with the smell of liquor on his breath he

+knew he was in bad, but he knew just how bad in he was. Now everything

+is uncertainty and guesswork everywhere, and intellects is cracking

+under strains on all sides.

+

+“It must 'a' been the same way back in the historic days of iniquity

+and antiquity, when the Roman Empire switched all of a sudden from being

+heathen to being Christian; everybody had to be good all of a sudden,

+and only a few had learnt how; and everybody that hadn't quite succeeded

+in turning Christian went around for a while wondering if everybody

+else was as gosh-darned Christian as they let on to be. I know a lot of

+people now that says they're on the wagon, but I'd hate to go so sound

+asleep in a street car that I wouldn't wake up if they tried to pull my

+flask out of my pocket. I don't struggle none trying to be good, myself.

+I'm a dipsomaniac, and I know it, and I'm contented to be that way.

+

+“Years ago I used to struggle, and think maybe I would quit drinking

+some time, and it kept me unhappy. But as soon as I come right out and

+acknowledged Booze as my boss and master, and set him up and crowned him

+king, a great peace fell onto me, and I ceased to struggle, and I been

+happy and contented and full of love for my fellow men ever since. There

+ain't nothing like finding out which gang you belong to and sticking

+to your own crowd consistent. If I had only been brought up to be a

+drunkard when I was young I would 'a' settled into it natural and been

+saved a lot of worry and struggle and uncertainty. But there was years

+when I fit against it, from time to time, and it kept me unsettled and

+discontented, and I wasted a lot of good time trying to keep sober when

+I might 'a' been drunk and cheerful, radiating joy and happiness into

+the world and being of some use to my fellow men. But I s'pose everybody

+thinks if they had their life to live over again they'd do different,

+and the main thing is to reach peace and contentment toward the end, as

+I have reached it.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER FOURTEEN--Continuing the History of the Rum Demon--Unfermented

+Grape Juice

+

+

+WELL, as I said in my last chapter, it is time for me to get down to

+brass tacks and describe just what those barrooms that has been vanished

+was like so that future generations of posterity will know what they

+missed, and to tell the truth in all particulars, so help me.

+

+Some of them was that arted up with hand paintings that if you had

+all them paintings in your home you would feel proud of yourself, like

+Solomon in all his glory, and would feel like you was living in the

+midst of a high art museum, and the shining brass cuspidores to spit in

+and the brass rail and all them shiny glasses and bottles and mirrors

+made up a scene of grandeur and glory like the good book mentions and

+you would think you was King Faro of Egypt, if you lived in the midst of

+all that or Job in all his riches before the itch broke out on him.

+

+Well, speaking of the Good Book, my wife has always been more or less of

+a prohibitionist in order to show me that she is independent of me, and

+one day one of these here church friends of hers tries to tell me all

+the liquor that was drinked in the Bible wasn't nothing but unfermented

+grape juice.

+

+Yes, it was, I said, don't you believe it was, like hell it was. You go

+and get your testament and see where King Solomon talks about the stuff

+that makes the heart merry and then go and swill yourself with grape

+juice and see if you could get the way he was when he wrote eat, drink,

+and be merry for tomorrow ye die. And how about the time them two women

+came to him with that one child and both claimed that it was hern and he

+says to the officer on duty, let me see that there sword of yourn for

+a minute I'll darned soon see who this kid belongs to. And verily the

+officer drawed his sword and the King he heaved it up and was about to

+cut the kid in two when one of the women says to stop unhand him King

+and not do the rash act it is the other woman's yew lamb and let her

+have it, it being her own all the time and her one yew lamb and her

+preferring to see the other woman grab it off than have half of it.

+

+Well, says the King, half a loaf is better than no bread, but with

+infants it is different, take the child, it is yours woman, and go and

+sin no more.

+

+Well, now, I ask you, was King Solomon drinking the unfermented juice of

+the grape when he got that there hunch, or was he not? I will say he

+was not. Them radical and righteous ideas never come to a man when he is

+cold sober. He has got to have a shot of something moving around under

+his belt before he gets thataway.

+

+And how about them Bible hangovers, I said to this here church person.

+Man and boy I been a student of the Bible from cover to cover for a good

+many years now and I never seen a book with more evidences of hangovers

+and katzenjammers into it. How about that there book that says vanity,

+vanity, all is vanity. Well, I ask you, did you ever get that way in the

+morning after you had spent the night before drinking the unfermented

+juice of the grape.

+

+That there Book of Exclusiastics is just one long howl from the next

+morning head. Things seem right, says old Exclusiastic, and they look

+right; but if you bite into them they don't taste right, or words to

+that effect. And you stick around awhile, says old man Exclusiastic, and

+you'll darned soon see they ain't nothing right nowhere and never will

+be again. Moreover, says he, I was wrong when I used to think things was

+right; there ain't never anything anywhere been all right and I was all

+wrong when I was a young feller and used to think things was right and

+the wrongest thing about the whole business is the darned fools like

+I used to be who go around saying things is all right, and the sum

+and substance of everything is vanity, says he, vanity, vanity, all is

+vanity.

+

+You could tell some folks that that there old Exclusiastic was writing

+as the result of unfermented grape juice, but a man with any experience

+of his own knows a good deal better and what kind of a taste was in his

+mouth. You can't tell an old Bible reader like me anything about this

+unfermented stuff. The trouble with these here church people is that

+too many of them ain't never read the Bible, or if they did read it they

+read it with the idea that it was saying something else like they wanted

+it to say.

+

+I always stuck to the Bible in spite of the church folks and I always

+will for it has got some kick into it. There is three things in the

+world I always stick to, the Bible and hard liquor and calomel, for

+they has got the kick to them. You can have all your light wines and

+unfermented stuff and all your pretty new-thought religions and all your

+new-fangled medicines you want to, but for me I will stick to the Old

+Testament and corn whiskey and calomel like my forefathers done before

+me. You can't pull any of that unfermented stuff on me and get away with

+it.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER FIFTEEN--Political Talk

+

+

+[Illustration: 0073]

+

+THE Old Soak came in to see us during the recent Presidential campaign.

+

+“What I expected has come to pass,” he said, sorrowfully. “This here

+Cox that everybody hoped was a Wet Prohibitionist ain't that at all. He

+ain't nothin' but a Dry Liquor Man. I been a Republican ever sense the

+days of Abraham Lincoln, but I had an idee this year I was goin' to have

+fer to leave the old party flat on account o' rumours I hearn that this

+here Cox was comin' out for liquor. My conscience is Republican, but

+my religion is liquor; an' I would of voted agin any conscience fer the

+sake o' my religion. But I ain't goin' to be compelled fer to make that

+sacrifice. I'd ruther vote fer an outan'-out Prohibitionist than one of

+these here fellers that gits the word passed private to the wets that

+they'll be a stick in the lemonade, and gets the word passed private to

+the drys that what he means is nothin' but a stick o' pep'mint candy.

+They ain't no hope fer liquor in public life no more; it has become a

+question fer the home. As fur es my own private stock is concerned, it

+mostly ain't. But I got a grand idee workin' up. My old woman's got a

+niece who's come to live with us, an' I'm tryin' to marry that there gal

+to a revenue agent. I see by the papers they are always trackin' down a

+couple thousand gallons somewheres or other, and I don't hear no glass

+crashin' nowheres to indicate where them bottles is bein' busted. I

+wants somebody in the fambly that will take me along on some of these

+here raids I read about.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER SIXTEEN--The History Continued--Prohibition and Winter Weather

+

+

+WELL, when I seen all them men shovelling snow and ice in the streets

+and no place to go for a drink and maybe one of them spring thaws coming

+along soon now which they are always full of these here la grip germs

+I says to myself them Prohibitionists think they have done something

+pretty smart but they got another think coming to them.

+

+I never been much of a hand to kick against the weather. As a fact, I

+use to like all kinds of weather as it come along.

+

+You went into a place and you said to Ed it looks like one of them cold

+rains is going to start up pretty soon, Ed.

+

+Yes, sir, Ed says, it is pretty raw. The wind is rawring. What will you

+have?

+

+Well, I use to say, I was wondering about a little Scotch with boiling

+water into it and a lump of butter and a lump of sugar into it I knowed

+a fellow used to treat himself thataway one time.

+

+No, sir, says Ed, I wouldn't advise anything like that sir, it will get

+you sweating inside of you all around your stomach and lungs and then

+you will go out and swallow some cold damp air and take one of

+them inside colds, sir, and it may run into new-monia or this here

+pellicanitis.

+

+Well, Ed, I don't want to ketch none of them germs, you would say to

+him, and how about some rock and rye.

+

+You better stick to straight rye and leave out the rock. When you was in

+here a little bit ago you was drinking straight rye and you don't want

+to be mixing them too much, says Ed.

+

+And no sooner said than done.

+

+Or maybe it was summer time and a hot day and you would say to Ed I

+wonder how many people is getting sun struck to-day, Ed.

+

+A good many says Ed they drink too much cold water and it gets to them.

+

+I am glad I don't have to go out into the awful heat, you would say.

+

+The main thing is to keep your pores open says Ed for if you stop the

+presspiration that means a sun stroke. The main thing is to encourage

+the presspiration to sweat itself out of you.

+

+I think you are right Ed you says and I was wondering about some beer.

+

+No, sir, not for you, says Ed, I wouldn't advise no beer. You put these

+here temperance drinks like beer and sassperiller into your stomach,

+sir, and it takes up a lot of room you will wish you had later in the

+day. For some people I would say beer wouldn't do no harm, sir, but I

+should say, sir, that it was the wrong thing for you.

+

+One of them long silver fizzes with ice shook up into it would sound

+nice to my ears as it went down my oozlygoozlum you would say to Ed.

+

+Ed he is kind of lazy with the heat and he don't want to shake it up so

+he says to you on a hot day like this you are taking chances with your

+life every time you put ice drinks into you and he says what's the

+matter with that rye you been drinking all the early part of the day

+that is the best thing to keep the presspiration coming out of your

+sweat pores.

+

+Well, no sooner said than done.

+

+The number of times them old-fashioned bartenders has saved my life

+summer and winter with good advice is as too numerous to mention as is

+the stars in the sky and their name is legend as the good book says.

+

+In them days when there was a barroom on every corner and sometimes four

+barrooms on every four corners I never cared about the weather at all

+for I knowed no matter what the weather was I could keep my health safe.

+

+If you was to look out the barroom window and see a sudden change in the

+weather you could make a sudden change and switch to some other kind of

+drink and keep yourself protected from them sudden changes.

+

+But in these days when a sudden change in the weather comes what

+protection have you got I would like to know. You are running the risks

+of them sudden changes all the time day and night, and no chance to

+change your drink to meet them with for you are lucky if you have one

+kind of liquor let alone all the different kinds of ingredients you used

+to ornament your digestion with.

+

+Nowadays when the weather ain't just right I have to stay home in my own

+room up to the top of the house where I got that little bar rigged up

+where I wait on myself and staying to home all the time ain't any too

+good for me.

+

+It don't give me a chance to get any outdoor exercise, staying at

+home don't and a man needs outdoor exercise if he is going to keep his

+health.

+

+That is another thing Prohibition has done to me: it has took away all

+my chance for outdoor exercise.

+

+I reckon them Prohibitionists will be satisfied when they got

+everybody's health broke down on account of them sudden changes in the

+weather and nobody getting any outdoor exercise any more.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN--The Old Soak Finds a Way

+

+

+[Illustration: 0079]

+

+YES, sir; yes, sir!” said the Old Soak, with a happy smile on his face.

+“I've done found out the way to beat the game--! Ask me no questions,

+and I'll tell ye no lies as to how I done it.

+

+“Ye see this here bottle, do ye? Kentucky Bourbon, and nothin' else.

+Bottled in bond, an' there's plenty more where that comes from.--Ask me

+no questions, and I'll enrich ye with no misinformations!--Ye see that

+there little car parked out there by the curbstone, do ye? Well, sir,

+that there car is _my_ car, and under the back seat of it is twelve

+quarts of this here stuff!--And it ain't home brewed, neither; it's

+some of the best liquor you ever throwed your lips over!--How do I do

+it?--Don't ply me with no questions, and I won't bring you no false

+witnesses!

+

+“Notice these here new clothes of mine? Well, sir, that there suit's a

+bargain.--It only cost me two cases of rye.--I got three new suits like

+that to home, an' I'm figgerin' on buying one of these here low neck an'

+short sleeve dress suits for to wear to banquets this winter.--They's

+a whole passel o' folks would like to give me banquets this cornin'

+season.--How do I do it?--Ask me no questions, and I'll give you no back

+talk!

+

+“If you was to come out to the house, I'd interduce ye to quite a lot of

+good liquor.--Can't drink no more, huh?--Ain't ye got a friend ye could

+bring?--I'd like to have ye meet my son-in-law.

+

+“Yes, sir; yes, sir! Daughter was married two months ago. The youngest

+one. Her and her husband is makin' their home with us temporary.--I'm

+tryin' to persuade of 'em to stop to our house permanent.--Yes, sir, my

+son-in-law, he is one of these here revenooers.--Well, so long!--I gotto

+see an old friend o' mine that lives up to the Bronx this afternoon.--He

+ain't had a real drink fer nigh onto three months, he tells me.--I'm

+headin' a rescue party into them there regions.

+

+“Yes, sir; yes, sir! I figger my daughter married well!--Bring up yer

+kids in the way they should go like the Good Book says, and Providence

+will do the rest.--Henry, that's my son-in-law, is figgerin' mebby he

+can get my son Jim made a revenooer, too.--Ask me no questions, an I'll

+give away no fambly secrets!”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN--The History Continued--the Barroom's Good Influence

+

+

+[Illustration: 0082]

+

+ANOTHER thing I miss in regard to all them vanished barrooms being

+closed up is kind feeling about respect to the old especially to parents

+and them that has departed.

+

+Where is the younger generations of posterity going to learn how to be

+kind hearted about home and mother now that the barrooms is all closed

+up I would like to know?

+

+It used to be that a lot of fellows would get all tanked up of an

+afternoon or evening and in the right sort of a place they would get to

+singing songs.

+

+All them songs about home and mother and to treat her right now that

+her hair had turned gray. I never was much of a one to sing myself

+especially unless I had a few drinks into me.

+

+But whether I helped sing them or not all them songs would make a better

+man of me. You stand up to a bar or sit down at a table and listen to

+them songs for two or three hours and if you are any kind of a man at

+all you will wish you had always done the right thing and now that all

+them songs about home and mother has been took away from me I ain't the

+man I used to be at all.

+

+I feel myself going down hill because my softer emotions and feelings

+ain't never stirred up by nothing any more.

+

+Well, this Eighteenth Commandment is going to make a hard-hearted

+country out of this here country. Nobody is never going to think as much

+of home and mother as they used to. And I guess them prohibitionists

+won't feel so smart when they see all them old ladies with gray hair

+flung out onto the streets in the rainy weather just because nobody

+would pay the mortgage off. Lots of times when I was a young feller

+after hearing them songs for awhile I would say to myself I will set

+right down and write a letter to my mother, I ain't wrote her for five

+or six months. And when I got older after she passed on I used to say

+to myself some of these days I will have to make a visit to the old home

+place and take a look around there.

+

+But all them softer feelings has been took away from me now and what I

+would like to know is how is the younger generation going to grow up.

+Hard hearted, that is how.

+

+Some of these here fine days I may be cast out into the street myself

+with the rain drops dripping down offen my hat brim into my eyebrows

+just because nobody won't pay a mortgage and it has got to be a

+hard-hearted country.

+

+I hope none of them there smart alick Prohis will be flung out onto

+the street thataway. Because they got no friends would pay off their

+mortgages and they would just naturally be destituted to death. I ain't

+hard hearted like they be and I hope that don't happen to none of them.

+But if it ever did they would find out a few things.

+

+In my next chapter I will get down to brass tacks and give a true

+description of them barrooms that has perished off the face of the

+earth.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER NINETEEN--A House Divided

+

+

+THE Old Soak has been looking rather well for some time; he seems

+prosperous and happy, for the most part, and contented with the quantity

+and quality of the hootch he has been gettin'. But yesterday he dropped

+in to see us with just the slightest shade of gloom on his features. We

+asked him about it.

+

+“It's that there son of mine,” he says. “He's too young to know enough

+to let well enough alone, like the Good Book says to do. They's a lot of

+these young fellers you can't learn nothing to.

+

+“This yere son-in-lawr of mine I been tellin' you about, that is a

+revenooer, got my son made into a revenooer, too. And it ain't

+long before my son gits jest as good an automobile as the one

+my son-in-lawr's been drivin'. And joy out to our house has been

+unconcerned, with everyone exceptin' the Ol' Woman, and she's been

+prayin' agin the rest of the fambly.

+

+“But this yere son o' mine, he gets too much hootch under his belt one

+day, and he gets into this yere brand-new automobile of his'n and he

+starts onto one of these yere raids. Which would of been all right,

+bein' as it's what a revenooer is for, if he had only used a leetle

+bit o' jedgment. But the young has got a lot to learn, and babes and

+striplings, the Good Book says, jest naturally has their dam fool

+streaks.

+

+“This yere raid my son goes onto turns out all wrong. For whilst he is

+pinchin' who does he pinch in the gang of wicked sinners but that there

+son-in-lawr of mine, the revenooer as got him his job, said son-in-lawr

+bein' off duty and pickled hisself at the time.

+

+“So this here son-in-lawr of mine, he mighty nigh loses of his job as a

+revenooer, bein' took up in one of the raids he was legally supposed

+to be startin' himself, and they was quite a fuss about it, so I

+understand, and the thing was finally settled with a compromise--it

+wasn't my son-in-lawr lost his job, but they compromised it and fired my

+son out'n his job.

+

+“But now my son, he has went and got sore at my son-in-lawr, and he says

+unless he gits his job back as a revernooer he will tell all he knows.

+

+“So my house is a house that is sided against itself, like the Good Book

+says, and every member of the fambly has took sides one way or the other

+'twixt my son and my son-in-lawr, and the Ol' Woman is agin both on 'em,

+and agin me, too--a-prayin' an' a-prayin' an' a-prayin'.

+

+“'You went and prayed for years an' years so as to get prohibish'n,'

+I tells her; 'an' now you got it--you got more on it than any woman I

+knows, for it's come right into your own home. An' now you got it you

+ain't satisfied with it--there you be onto your marrow bones prayin'

+agin the revenooers.'

+

+“I s'pose I was too hifalutin' an' ambitious, wantin' to keep two

+members of my fambly into the revenooer job. And as long as my

+son-in-lawr stays into office and continues to make his home with me I

+won't have no kick cornin', but will take my hootch in thankfulness

+and humility, like the Good Book says to do, eatin', drinkin' an' bein'

+merry. This yere leetle cloud of gloom what you notice is due to the

+Ol' Woman's prayers. I cain't help but feel she is goin' direct agin

+Scripter and her husband's best intrusts.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER TWENTY--Continuing the History of the Rum Demon--the Barroom and

+Manners

+

+

+[Illustration: 0088]

+

+ANOTHER thing about those barrooms that has been vanished forever is

+the fact that most of them was right polite sort of places if a fellow

+edged up to the bar and knocked over your glass of whiskey or something

+like that he would say, O excuse me stranger and you would say sure, but

+look where in hell you are going to after this.

+

+Sure he would say no offence meant. No offence taken you would say to

+him. Have one with me he would say.

+

+No sooner said than done.

+

+But nowadays all you see and hear is bad manners and impoliteness with

+people hustling and bumping into each other on the subways and stepping

+on each other and women and children amongst them and nobody ever

+begging anybody's pardon and hard feelings everywhere.

+

+The trouble is everybody is sore and wanting a drink all the time and

+there is no place where the younger generation is going to learn good

+manners now that the barrooms is gone. What is the young fellows

+just growing up to manhood going to do for their manners now that the

+barrooms is closed, is what I want to know.

+

+It used to be you would get onto a subway train and there would be two

+or three women standing up and you would be setting down and there would

+be three or four drinks under your belt and you would be feeling good

+and you would say to yourself am I a gentleman or ain't I a gentleman.

+

+You're damned right I am a gentleman, you would say to yourself, here,

+lady, you set down, and don't let any of these here bums roust you out

+of that seat.

+

+If any of these here bums tries to roust you out of that seat I will put

+a tin ear onto them.

+

+That's the kind of a gentleman I am, lady, they would have a hell of a

+time, lady, getting your seat away from you with me here.

+

+And she seen you was a gentleman and she smiled at you and you hung onto

+a strap and felt good.

+

+But nowadays there ain't no manners, with no place to get a drink or

+anything.

+

+You are setting in the subway and a lady comes in and has nowheres to

+set, and you say to yourself let some of these other guys get up and

+give her a seat.

+

+And you think a while and you say to yourself I'll bet she is a

+Prohibitionist anyhow. Let her stand up. She has got to learn you can't

+have any manners with the barrooms all closed and everything.

+

+Well, that's another thing closing the barroom has done. It has took

+away all the manners this town ever had.

+

+In my next chapter I will get down to brass tacks and tell just what

+those barrooms was like for the benefit of future posterity that has

+never seen one.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE--Sympathy Wanted

+

+

+YES,” said the Old Soak, “I get plenty of hootch nowadays. My son is

+back into the revenoo business, and my son-in-lawr is with it, too. I

+gets plenty of whiskey. I've got some into me, and I've got some onto my

+hip, and I know where I'm going to get some more when that's gone.”

+

+And he sighed.

+

+“Why so gloomy, then?” we asked. “You should be radiating a Falstaffian

+joviality. You should be as merry as the merry, merry villagers in an

+opera on the Duke's birthday. But on the contrary, you shake from out

+your condor wings unutterable wo, as E. A. Poe has it. Wherefore?”

+

+“I miss,” he said, “the next mornin' sympathy... the next mornin'

+ministration. Any one can get drunk under the auspices of Prohibition,

+but it takes the right kind of barkeep fur to get you sober agin and

+make you like it.

+

+“Where is the next morning barkeep? He ain't. He was wise as a serpent

+and gentle as a dove like the Good Book says. He knowed right off what

+ailed you, at 11 o'clock on a cloudy morning, and what was good for it.

+A little of this, out of the long green bottle, and a little of that,

+and some ice tinklin' in it, and the white of an egg mebby, and... oh,

+you know! One of them, and there was salve onto the sore spot of your

+soul. Two of them and you began to forgive yourself. Three of them, and

+you could hear about breakfast; you could look an egg into the eye.

+

+“And he never asked no question about your past, that barkeep didn't.

+He didn't need to. He knowed. He seen last night's history in this

+morning's footnote. He was kind. 'Feel a little better now, sir?'

+he'd ask. 'Two or three of them is enough, sir, if you ask me. Get your

+breakfast, now, sir, and you'll be quite O. K. Yes, sir, I learned to

+mix them in New Orleans...' You talked to him, and he let you. He was

+like a mother's knee to a three-year-old that's bumped his head, the

+old-fashioned barkeep was.

+

+“But now, he ain't. Now, when you get up, Gloom stands on one side of

+you and Conscience on the other, and Remorse is feeding lines of both of

+'em.

+

+“'Well,' says Gloom, 'this is a fine, cheerful morning, this is! This is

+about as full of sunshine as the insides of the whale that drank Jonah.'

+

+“'It is,' says Remorse, 'and then some. Conscience and me feels so bad

+about it that we're gonna jump off the dock together.'

+

+“'I ain't, neither,' says Conscience. 'I'm gonna save myself for the

+worst. The worst is yet to come. And I want to be here when it comes.'

+

+“'I ain't gonna be here when it comes,' says Gloom. 'I'm going over to

+the Aquarium and rent myself out for a fish.'

+

+“Just then,” went on the Old Soak, “a strange party sticks his head in

+at the door and says, 'Never again!' “'Who be you?' says Gloom. 'I'm

+Repentance,' says the buttinski, 'and I calls on you guys to mend your

+ways!'

+

+“And Gloom, he looks at the hard liquor left in the bottom of the

+bottle, and at the sky, and at the door of the closed-up barroom across

+the street, and he says, 'It can't be done without some uplift. I need

+soothing words, and an educated hand.'

+

+“'We got what's coming to us,' says Remorse. 'And there's more of it

+coming,' says Conscience. 'Better quit!' says Repentance. 'I ain't gonna

+quit,' says Gloom, 'without the right kind of a drink to quit on. I

+ain't never yet quit without the right kind of a drink to quit on, and

+I'm not going to start any innovations on a rotten day like this.'

+

+“Well,” went on the Old Soak, “you sits on the edge of your bed and you

+listen to these yere guys talking, and you think how right all of them

+is, and you wonder whether it's any use getting up, and you think of all

+the barkeeps you used to know, and after a while you suck an orange

+and think of one of them long silver fizzes with frost on the glass and

+charity and loving-kindness in its heart, like Ed used to shake up,--you

+think of it so hard you well-nigh taste it, and then the meerage fades

+away and you ain't nothin' but a camel in the desert again with a

+humpbacked taste in your mouth.

+

+“Yes, sir,” said the Old Soak, “I can get all the booze I want, but I

+can't get sympathy. What a man needs in the morning is a kind heart for

+to comfort him, and a strong arm to lean on. Anybody can give me good

+advice, but it don't soothe me any; what I want is a quick friend in a

+white apron, wise as a bishop and gentle as a nurse.

+

+“What I want is the Al's and Ed's I used to know. But they've went.

+Forever. I won't meet 'em in Hell, because they're too kind hearted

+to go there, and I won't meet 'em in Heaven, because I won't go there

+myself.

+

+“I reckon,” concluded the Old Soak, “I'll have to go to England.”

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO--The History of the Rum Demon Concluded--Prohibition

+Is Making a Free Thinker of the Old Soak

+

+

+ANOTHER thing that going without barrooms is doing for this country is

+it is destroying Home Life.

+

+It is pretty hard to get along with your wife after you have been

+married to her for twenty or thirty years and kind of settle down and

+realize you are going to be married to her as long as she lives for

+better or for worse unless something happens which it seldom does.

+

+Not that you don't kind of like her and you know she kind of likes you

+but the thing is that her and you is apt to treat each other mean now

+and then because you get to thinking what a good time you could have if

+you didn't have to turn in so much of your money to making a home run

+smooth and you know even if you do row with each other you will make up

+again and you get to kind of looking forward to the rows because anyhow

+that is a change.

+

+But sometimes you carry them rows too far and then you don't know how

+to get your Home Life running right again because she is always too

+stubborn to give in and you won't be the first one to give in because

+you know she is wrong.

+

+But when there was liquor to be had in plenty it was easier to make up

+after one of them rows and Home Life went along smoother.

+

+You would get up in the morning and she would say to you, would you have

+a boiled egg for breakfast or a fried, and you would say hades what an

+idea. Can't you never think of anything but eggs for breakfast. And

+she would say yesterday I didn't have eggs and you was sore because you

+wanted eggs. You would say just because I wanted eggs yesterday is that

+any sign I want them every day of my life till death do us part. I was

+only asking what you wanted she would say.

+

+I will go where I can get what I want, you would say. I will eat my

+breakfast at a restaurant this morning and maybe I can keep them from

+shoving eggs in front of me when I don't ask for eggs. The trouble with

+your stomach is not what you put into it in the morning, she would say,

+but what you put into it the night before. The trouble with my stomach,

+you would say, is that I am worried to death and worked to death all the

+time trying to keep this house running and it gives me the dis-pepsy. It

+is the liquor gives you dispepsy she would say.

+

+If it wasn't for a little stimulant in my stomach, like the Good Book

+says, you tell her, my dispepsy wouldn't let me digest anything at

+all and I would starve to death and the mortgage on the house would be

+foreclosed and you would go to the old woman's home. Whose money pays

+the interest on that mortgage she would say. Whose? you would say. Mine,

+she would say. You wouldn't have any money you tell her, if you paid me

+back what your relations has borrowed of me.

+

+Well, one word leads to another, and you go off without any breakfast,

+for you see her taking the Bible down to set and read it, and when she

+sets and reads the Bible you know she is reading it against you and it

+gets you madder and madder.

+

+And in the old days when there was barrooms you would go into one

+still feeling mad and say Ed, mix me one of the old-fashioned whiskey

+cocktails and don't put too much orange and that kind of damned garbage

+into it, I want the kick.

+

+No sooner said than done.

+

+And after a couple of them you would say, well after all, the Old Woman

+means well, I wonder if I didn't treat her a little mean this morning I

+orter call her up on the telephone and give her a jolly.

+

+And then you would think of her relations that you hate and get mad at

+her again on account of always sticking up for them, and say, Ed, that

+don't set so well, let's try a whiskey sour.

+

+And you would meet a friend and have another with him, and pretty soon

+eat some breakfast and think how, after all, it was eggs you was eating

+for breakfast and they wasn't cooked no ways as good as the old woman

+would of poached them for you on toast if you hadn't been so darned mean

+to her.

+

+And your friend would say his old woman blowed him up for coming home

+pickled.

+

+And you would have another drink and say that was one thing your old

+woman never done to you. My old woman has got some sense, you would say

+to him, she knows how a man feels about taking a drink, and she never

+blows me up.

+

+And you would set and brag about your old woman and you had never had a

+cross word between you in thirty years. And then he would begin to brag

+about his old woman, too.

+

+And pretty soon you would say to yourself you better go to the phone and

+call her up. She has her mean streaks all right, but who knows, she may

+have been right this morning after all, and you take another drink and

+get her on the telephone, and give her a chance to say how sorry she was

+about the way she treated you that morning and maybe you go and pay an

+installment on a new carpet sweeper for her.

+

+Well, it was that way in the old days. Liquor kept your Home Life

+running along o. k. You would get mad with your wife and then you would

+get sorry for her and give her an excuse to make up with you again.

+

+But now, with no chance to get a drink when I am away from home if I

+treat the Old Woman mean in the morning I don't give her a chance to get

+on my good side again. And I can see sometimes that it is breaking her

+heart.

+

+That's what prohibition is doing to this country. It is breaking the

+women's hearts and it is breaking up the Home Life on every hand.

+

+What is going to become of a country where all the Home Life is broke

+up?

+

+And what is going to become of the children if there ain't any Home Life

+running along smooth any more?

+

+These Prohibitionists that is so darned smart never thought of that I

+guess when they put that Eighteenth Commandment across onto us.

+

+Whenever I think of all them women's hearts that is breaking and all

+that Home Life that is going plumb to the dogs all on account of the

+barrooms being closed up it well-nigh makes a free thinker out of me.

+

+I don't claim to be a church man, but I never was a free thinker before,

+neither. But all the sorrow that is going on in the world on account of

+them barrooms being closed is making a free thinker of me.

+

+

+

+

+

+

+HAIL AND FAREWELL

+

+

+

+

+

+I--A LAST DRINK

+

+

+To George McDaniel

+

+

+[Ill 0103]

+

+

+     Hail! Barleycorn... they said you

+              weren't Nice!

+     Salve! You bum, and Vale! Hail! Farewell!

+     Your feet, the Prohis say, go down to Hell;

+     You led men into Poker, Fights and Dice,

+     You filled the world with Murder, Lust and Lice,

+     You made a Bar Fly of the Howling Swell,

+     You bought the blood that deep-dyed bandits sell--

+     You might lead one in time, I fear, to Vice!

+

+

+     Old blear-eyed mutt, beloved and accurst!

+     Before you go, a song for old sake's sake;

+     A song memorial to the days and nights

+     When I companioned with the Dipsas Snake

+     And bared my throat unto his febrous bites,

+     Quenching a thirst to gain a greater thirst.

+

+

+

+

+

+II--IN THE OLD DAYS

+

+

+To Paul Thompson

+

+

+     Liquor there is, but, oh! the Bar is gone!

+     The long Brass Rail above the Sawdust Floor,

+     The gay Hot Dog, the gleaming Cuspidore,

+     The bright, brave Nose that brave, bright lights

+              shone on,

+     The jocund Barkeep, Ed or A1 or John,

+     The ribald jest I loved, the answering roar

+     That jangled the glasses, shook the swinging door---

+     Liquor there is, but these delights are done!

+     In the old days when bubbles winked at me,

+     In the glad days when I was steeped in Rum,

+     I played the Prospero to fantasy,

+     I drank, and bade my Ariel fancies come.”

+      But I have lost my ancient wizardry

+     And mine old self, my lyric self, is dumb.

+

+

+

+

+

+III--A DIPSEY CHANTEY

+

+

+To Ned Leamy

+

+

+[Ill 0106]

+

+

+     Ho! Heave the anchor! Heave! Fetch her up!

+     Twist! with the corkscrews! Steward, lend a hand!

+     Let her prance out to sea like a frolic-footed pup,

+     For the ship is full of liquor, and to hell with the land!

+     Ghosts from the ocean abysses, clambering, clamour-

+             ing, come;

+     Climb to our decks and roar: “Broach us a puncheon

+             of rum!

+     We are scaly with salt and sand; we've had nothing

+     but water to swallow--

+     Stave in a hogshead of rum! Let us roll in the

+     scuppers and wallow!”

+

+     Heh! Splice the main-brace! Ho! She smells the

+           gale!

+     The shipper walks the bridge with a bottle to his eye;

+     She rollicks with her boilers full of good Bass Ale--

+     By the timber peg of Silver, the sea shall not go dry!

+     We have raxed 'em out of the deep, they follow

+           through shine and fog,

+     Phantoms of ancient mariners, lured by the reek

+     of our grog;

+     Noah and Hawkins and Kidd, up from the green

+          abysses,

+     And there, in a wine-stained galley, the ghost of

+          great Ulysses!

+     Eric the Red in a whale-boat, and with him, cheek

+          by jowl,

+     Silver begging a drain, God bless his wicked soul!

+     Ho! How she snorts! Hey! Hear her snore!

+     The wind slaps her nostrils, she hiccoughs for her

+          breath!

+     Steward, a corkscrew! You poor fish ashore,

+     By the bones of Reuben Ranzo, you can choke to

+          death!

+     With eyes of the darting witch-fire, like mist the

+          poor ghosts come,

+     And an anguished wind from the mist bellows and

+          whines for Rum--

+     They have been thirsty so long! Let us be good

+          fellows still,

+     And open a hundred casks and let 'em wallow and

+          swill!

+     Quick! With a corkscrew! Oh, damn the wheel!

+     The captain's in his hunk, with a bottle to his eye!

+     The engineer is stoking with Scotch and lemon 'peel!

+     By Davy Jones's locker, the sea shall not go dry!

+

+

+

+

+IV--A CERTAIN CLUB

+

+

+To Winfield Moody

+

+     Ah, dead and done! Forever dead and done

+     The mellow dusks, the friendly dusks and dim,

+     When Charley shook the cocktails up, or Tim--?

+     Gone are ten thousand gleaming moments, gone

+     Like fireflies twinkling toward oblivion!

+     Ah, how the bubbles used to leap and swim,

+     Breaking in laughter round the goblet's brim,

+     When Walter pulled a cork for us, or John!

+     I have seen ghosts of men I never knew,--

+     Great, gracious souls, the golden hearts of earth--

+     Look from the shadows in those rooms we love,

+     Living a wistful instant in our mirth;

+     I have seen Jefferson smile down at Drew,

+     And Booth pause, musing, on the stair above.

+

+

+

+

+V--A TEMPERANCE TRACT

+

+

+To Bob Dean

+

+

+     Cocktails are the little brooms

+     That whiskey way your will-power!

+     A dark disease is Bright's disease,

+     And will not yield to pill-power.

+     Some may upon red rums descant

+     Who never did decant rums,

+     But I have eaten bitter bread

+     Where bitters breed their tantrums.

+     The fool will give his life to booze,

+     The wiser man taboos that,

+     And I'm a sad Budweiser man

+     Than when I used to ooze that.

+     I owned a bank, and for a fad

+     I cultivated two lips;

+     If I had owned the mint itself

+     'Twould all have gone for juleps.

+     Mumm's extra dry makes some men grow

+     As dry as any mummy,

+     But when I'm tight I loosen up--

+     A punch, and I am chummy.

+     Except when I swore off in Lent

+     With borrowers I mingled;

+     They'd make my pockets cease to clink

+     Whenever I was jingled.

+     But though I drank with scarce a check

+     My drafts saved people trouble,

+     For I would often pay dubs twice

+     Because I saw 'em double.

+     O, cognac is a fearful drink

+     To brandy man with shame, O!

+     He will, that drinks diluted gin,

+     Die looted of good name, O!

+     I wined till I began to ail,

+     And then I whined with aleing,

+     Until to crown the woes I cite

+     I found my eyesight failing.

+     “Sir, fits will come,” my doctor warned,

+     “Surfeits will bloat the mind, sir!”

+      I laughed and took my glasses off

+     And said, “I'll go it blind, sir!”

+      Champagnes and real incider me

+     Set my high spirits flagon;

+     Still with gay dogs I played the wag,

+     Deriding of the wagon.

+     My tongue was like a cotton bale,

+     All whitish from the gin, sir--

+     The doctor said “No tongue can state

+     The state your tongue is in, sir!”

+      “With so much rye and corn you cope,

+     Your crowd are cornucopers--

+     How can earth be Utopia

+     When peopled by you topers?”

+      But still I dodged from fête to fête,

+     Still followed by my fate, O!

+     Still floating loans and liquids till

+     My bank did liquidate, O!

+     Buns use up dough; what my fun did,

+     Were it refunded one day,

+     Would fund the Banks of Newfoundland

+     And float the Bay of Fundy.

+     Don't hitch your wagon to a star

+     Upon the brandy bottle;

+     If you your neck to nectar ope

+     Your hope 'twill surely throttle.

+

+

+

+

+VI--A VISION IN THE NIGHT

+

+

+To Grant Rice

+

+

+     Beyond Arcturus, in a peevish wind,

+     I met a rumpled devil beating home.

+     “And whence, poor Fiend,” I challenged, “hast

+         thou come

+     With ragged plumage ravelled out behind

+     And splintered teeth and lamps all blear and blind?

+     What Fate hath bent a skillet o'er thy dome?”

+      He sighed, and in that sigh I read a tome

+     Of bleeding sorrows and

+          an aching mind.

+     “Rough Stuff,” he moaned, “was what I got for

+          mine!

+     It was fierce Virtue put me on the bum,

+     Trampled my slats and wronged my winsome face--

+     Once I was loved and called the Angel Wine!

+     Kicked hellward now, and hurtling out through space,

+     I am known only as the Demon Rum!”

+

+

+

+

+VII--THE LAST CASE OF GIN

+

+

+To Loren Palmer

+

+

+     The Tullywub is singing by the Willywinkle's grotto

+     His passionate devotion, though he knows he hadn't

+          ought to,

+     And she wipes away a teardrop with a little furtive

+          fin;

+     She is fluttered, but she's frightened by his outburst

+          of emotion

+     In their somewhat formal corner of a rather proper

+          ocean--

+     And I can understand 'em, for I've got a crate of gin.

+     Interpretative theses on the psychochemic state

+     Induced in the batrachia by fear or love or hate

+     I find are rather easy since I've opened up the crate,

+     And I'm gonna be a scientist by morning.

+     A Willywinkle's seldom a sprightly thing or elfish,

+     But morally she's rigid as the most exclusive shell-

+           fish;

+

+     She cans her rash admirer, but she cans him with a

+          sigh!

+     An analytic novel might be reared upon the basis

+     Of a very earnest study of the looks upon their

+          faces

+     And their brave renunciation when they sobbed and

+          said good-by.

+     I claim that the transmission of their fortitude and

+          pain

+     To succeeding generations will improve the moral

+          strain

+     Of the species here considered and their loss result

+          in gain;

+     And I wish I had some Angostura Bitters!

+     I have a strong impression of the immanence of

+           morals

+     In this quite extensive cosmos, from castor beans

+          to corals,

+     And Science and Religion, I will tell the world, are

+     one;

+     I should prove it, gentle reader, had we leisure time

+           before us,

+     I should prove it or expire in the act of hurling

+           Taurus--

+     I wonder where the dickens has that silly corkscrew

+           gone?

+     I find, as I grow older, the pert Subliminal

+     Keeps butting in to chatter with egoistic gall:

+     Romance I meditated; this isn't that at all--

+     But anyhow I have some limes and siphons!

+

+

+

+

+VIII--CROWNED SINGERS

+

+To Charley Bayne

+

+

+     Liquor there is . . . but we knew happier

+          days!

+     When jug by jowl in many a tavern booth

+     We sat and glimpsed the world's ulterior truth,

+     And followed life through all its secret ways--

+     What light flashed up on us in golden rays

+     Out of the booze, to blend with fire of youth!

+     Crowned singers, we! although, forsooth,

+     The Dipsas Snake still rustled in our bays.

+     Hail, Rum! Sweet Demon of my wastrel years!

+     Farewell, old mellow Angel, ripe with Vice!

+     Dreamers and singers, cronies, let us drink

+     A stirrup-cup of laughter and of tears!

+     Omar and Falstaff, both are on the blink--

+     The Bitter People say they are not Nice!

+

+

+

+

+IX--DOWN IN A WINE VAULT

+

+

+To Harold Gould

+

+

+     [Ill 0118]

+

+

+     Down in a wine vault underneath the city

+     Two old men were sitting; they were drinking

+          booze.

+     Torn were their garments, hair and beards were gritty;

+     One had an overcoat but hardly any shoes.

+     Overhead the street cars through the streets were

+          running

+     Filled with happy people going home to Christmas;

+     In the Adirondacks the hunters all were gunning,

+     Big ships were sailing down by the Isthmus.

+     In came a Little Tot for to kiss her granny,

+     Such a little totty she could scarcely tottle,

+     Saying, “Kiss me, Grandpa! Kiss your little Nanny!”

+      But the old man beaned her with a whiskey bottle!

+     Outside the snowflakes began for to flutter,

+     Far at sea the ships were sailing with the seamen,

+     Not another word did Angel Nanny utter.

+     Her grandsire chuckled and pledged the Whiskey

+          Demon!

+     Up spake the second man; he was worn and weary,

+     Tears washed his face, which otherwise was pasty;

+     “She loved her parents, who commuted on the Erie;

+     Brother, I'm afraid you struck a trifle hasty!

+     “She came to see you, all her pretty duds on,

+     Bringing Christmas posies from her mother's

+           garden,

+     Riding in the tunnel underneath the Hudson;

+     Brother, was it Rum caused your heart to harden?”

+      Up spake the first man, “Here I sits a thinking

+     How the country's drifting to a sad condition;

+     Here I sits a dreaming, here I sits a drinking,

+     Here I sits a dreading, dreading prohibition,

+     “When in comes Nanny, my little daughter's

+           daughter;

+     Me she has been begging ever since October

+     For to sign the pledge! It's ended now in slaughter--

+     I never had the courage when she caught me sober!

+     “All around the world little tots are begging

+     Grandpas and daddies for to quit their lushing.

+     Reformers eggs 'em on. I am tired of egging!

+     Tired of being cowed, cowering and blushing!

+     “I struck for freedom! I'm a man of mettle!

+     Though I never would 'a' done it had I not been

+          drinking--

+     From Athabasca south to Popocatapetl

+     We must strike for freedom, quit our shrinking!”

+      Said the second old man, “I beg your pardon!

+     Brother, please forgive me, my words were hasty!

+     I get your viewpoint, our hearts must harden!

+     Try this ale, it is bitter, brown and tasty.”

+      Said the first old man, “Hear me sobbing.

+     “Poor little Nanny, she's gone to Himmel.

+     Principle must conquer, though hearts be throbbing!

+     Just curl your lip around this kimmel!”

+      Down in a wine vault underneath the city

+     They sat drinking while the snow was falling,

+     Wicked old men with scarcely any pity--

+     The moral of my tale is quite appalling!

+

+

+

+

+X--ANACREON

+

+

+     To Ned Ranck

+

+

+     In the sunless land where thou art gone,

+     The shadowy realm of Proserpine,

+     Hast wine to drink, Anacreon?

+     Still hast thy lute its laughing tone,

+     Still do thy nymphs the ivy twine,

+     In the sunless land where thou art gone?

+     A Bacchus on a reeling throne,

+     Thy temples bound with trailing vine,

+     Hast wine to drink, Anacreon?

+     From cool deep caves of delved stone,

+     Do slaves still fetch thee Samian wine,

+     In the sunless land where thou art gone?

+     Or is a cup's mere semblance shown,

+     Then snatched from those parch'd lips of thine?---

+     Hast wine to drink, Anacreon?

+

+     Like Tantalus dost thou make moan,

+     Plagued by a mockery malign?

+     In the sunless land where thou art gone

+     Hast wine to drink, Anacreon?

+

+

+

+

+XI--THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE OLD DAYS

+

+

+To George Van Slyke

+

+

+     Gog was a giant,

+     Likewise so was Magog;--

+     Gog says, “It's Christmas,

+     Please pass the Egg-nog!”

+      Gurgle! Gurgle! Gurgle!

+     Glug! Glug! Glug!

+     Gog says to Magog,

+     “It is full of Nutmeg,--

+     Guzzle! Guzzle! Guzzle!

+     Glog! Glog! Glog!”

+      Magog says to Gog,

+     “Have some Haig and Haig!”

+      Gargle! Gargle! Gargle!

+     Grog! Grog! Grog!”

+      Gog says to Magog,

+     “Your eyes are all a-goggle!

+     You are all agog!”

+      Magog says to Gog,

+     “Your feet wiggle-woggle,

+

+     You're gigglish as a gargoyle

+     And logey as a log!”

+      Gog says to Magog,

+     “I'm as gleg as a grig!

+     Gurgle! Gurgle! Gurgle!

+     Glug! Glug! Glug!”

+      Magog says to Gog,

+     “I'm jolly as a polly--

+     Wiggle--waggle--wog

+     That's turning to a froggle,

+     A friggle--fraggle--frog!

+     Guggle! Guggle! Guggle!

+     Glog! Glog! Glog!”

+      And Gog filled his noggin,

+     And Magog his mug,--

+     Magog was a giant,

+     Likewise so was Gog;

+     On New Year's morning

+     Both were on their legs,

+     And sat down to breakfast

+     And ordered ham and eggs!

+

+

+

+

+XII--IN AN OLD-TIME TAVERN BOOTH

+

+

+To Ben De Casseres

+

+

+     Drinking, I doze, and see the gods go by;

+     They wave to me the hand of comradeship,

+     For I am one with them, and at my lip

+     The cup of wisdom bubbles ... up the sky

+     A blur of moondust drifts to dull mine eye,

+     But through the veil my romping visions slip

+     To dance among the careless stars, outstrip

+     The racing planets where they swoop and fly,

+     And then . . . from somewhere east of Mars

+          a keen

+     Thin wind whines for a Dime; I drop one in

+     A sad Salvation Army tambourine

+     And hear a weary homily on Sin . . .

+     “Sister,” I say, “you're right, and yet the Truth

+     Sometimes sits near me in this tavern booth.”

+

+

+

+

+XIII--THE OLD BRASS RAILING

+

+

+To Charley Still

+

+

+     Our minds are schooled to grief and dearth,

+     Our lips, too, are aware,

+     But our feet still seek a railing

+     When a railing isn't there.

+     I went into a druggist's shop

+     To get some stamps and soap,--

+     My feet rose up in spite of me

+     And pawed the air with hope.

+     I know that neither East nor West,

+     And neither North nor South,

+     Shall rise a cloud of joy to shed

+     Its dampness on my drouth,--.

+     I know that neither here nor there,

+     When winds blow to and fro,

+     Shall any friendly odours find

+     The nose they used to know,--

+

+

+[Ill 0127]

+

+

+     No stein shall greet my straining eyes,

+     No matter how they blink,

+     Mine ears shall never hear again

+     The highball glasses clink,--

+     There is not anywhere a jug

+     To cuddle with my wrist,--

+     But my habituated foot

+     Remains an optimist!

+     It lifts itself, it curls itself,

+     It feels the empty air,

+     It seeks a long brass railing,

+     And the railing isn't there!

+     I do not seek for sympathy

+     For stomach nor for throat,

+     I never liked my liver much--

+     'T is such a sulky goat!--

+     I do not seek your pity for

+     My writhen tongue and wried,

+     I do not ask your tears because

+     My lips are shrunk and dried,--

+     But, oh! my foot! My cheated foot!

+     My foot that lives in hope!

+     It is a piteous sight to see

+     It lift itself and grope!

+     I look at it, I talk to it,

+     I lesson it and plead,

+     But with a humble cheerfulness,

+     That makes my heart to bleed,

+     It lifts itself, it curls itself,

+     It searches through the air,

+     It seeks a long brass railing,

+     And the railing isn't there!

+     I carried it to church one day--

+     O foot so fond and frail!

+     I had to drag it forth in haste:

+     It grabbed the chancel rail.

+     My heart is all resigned and calm,

+     So, likewise, is my soul,

+     But my habituated foot

+     Is quite beyond control!

+     An escalator on the Ell

+     Began its upward trip,

+     My foot reached up and clutched the rail

+     And crushed it in its grip.

+     It grabs the headboard of my bed

+     With such determined clasp

+     That I'm compelled to scald the thing

+     To make it loose its grasp.

+     Sometimes it leaps to clutch the curb

+     When I walk down the street--

+     Oh, how I suffer for the hope

+     That lives within my feet!

+     Myself, I can endure the drouth

+     With stoic calm, and prayer--

+     But my feet still seek a railing

+     When a railing isn't there.

+

+

+

+

+XIV--ONCE YOUTH WAS MINE

+

+

+To Frank Stanton

+

+

+     Once the wild raptures and the beating wings

+     Of Song were mine, the sun, the climbing flight;

+     The wind's great fellowship upon the height. . . .

+     Once Youth was mine, and the young heart that

+          sings!

+     But now the little things, the trivial things,

+     Beat down my spirit with their leagued might . . .

+     Could I, within some friendly Dive to-night,

+     Meet the Old Gang, 'twould make me young, by

+          jings!

+     As the mad lark rises, drunk with joy and sun,

+     When morning bends above the dewy meadow,

+     And his clear call proclaims: “The day is won!”

+      Over a hurried rout of driven shadow,

+     So should I rise and sing, had I a Bun.

+     O would that we were soused together, Kiddo!

+

+

+

+

+XV--IN A TAVERN BOOTH

+

+

+To Bob Lillard

+

+

+     Out of my forehead now the long thoughts reach

+     In level rays that melt the Pleiades,

+     Which, melting, somehow smell like toasted

+          cheese . . .

+     I know Life's secret now, but have no speech

+     To utter it: indeed, small wish to teach

+     My truths to trivial planets such as these

+     Whereon the populations drone like bees

+     That have no honey-gift, each stinging each . . .

+     And yet I will speak, too!... the slow words

+          come

+     With pain out of my deeps of ecstasy,

+     Burst from my soul as from a beaten drum

+     In a hoarse pulse of sound . . . But hark to

+          me!

+     “Life's secret is that all things cool somewhat

+     Like golden bucks”...but, somehow, that

+          seems rot.

+

+

+

+

+XVI--AN ENGAGEMENT

+

+

+To Kit Morley

+

+

+     There is a place, not far from Gissing Street,

+     In Paradise, where one can dream and laugh

+     You go through Shelley Lane, striking your staff

+     Upon the cobbles, turn with eager feet

+     Down Benêt Place, and there you are! I'll meet

+     You, Christopher, and we shall quarrel and quaff

+     Our pewter tankards full of Shandygaff,

+     And eat and eat and eat and eat and eat!

+     And must we die first? Well, it's worth the trouble

+     I shall go first, because I'm old and gray,

+     And permanently I'll reserve a booth--

+     And when you come, no doubt I'll see you double,

+     And as you land from Charon's skiff I'll say:

+     “Here, kid, taste this! Roll this upon your tooth!'

+

+

+

+

+XVII--THE BATTLE OF THE KEYHOLES

+

+

+To Jimmy Farnsworth

+

+

+     The keyholes to the right of me

+     Were dancing of a jig,

+     The keyholes to the left of me

+     Were merry as a grig,

+     The keyholes right before my face

+     Were drunk and winked at me,

+     And I stood there alone--alone!--

+     With one

+     small

+     key.

+

+     They frightened me, they daunted me;

+     I turned back to the stair,

+     And faced nine keyholes pale and stern

+     That lay in ambush there.

+     Six keyholes on the ceiling sat,

+     Eight keyholes on the door,

+     And seven saddened keyholes lay

+     Hiccoughing

+     on the

+     floor.

+

+     I crawled through one, I crawled through two,

+     I crawled through keyholes three--

+     And then I saw a vistaed mile

+     Of keyholes waiting me!--

+     “I will not crawl another yard

+     Through keyholes, though I die!”--

+     Oh, when my fighting blood is up

+     A Turk

+     am.

+

+     They leapt at me, they flew at me,

+     They whistled as they came,

+     They gritted of their gleaming teeth,

+     They stung and spurted flame;

+     I put my back against the floor

+     And fought 'em gallantly--?

+     But what could anybody do

+     With one

+     small

+     key?

+

+     Keyholes at the front of me,

+     And keyholes on the flank,

+     And as they rushed at me I smelled

+     The liquor that they drank;

+     Keyholes on my spinal cord,

+     And keyholes in my hair--

+     And with a “Heave together, boys!”

+      They rolled

+     me down

+     the stair.

+

+     It bumped me some, it bent me some,

+     It broke a nose or two,

+     And when the milkman came, he said:

+     “What Kaiser Belgiumed you?”

+      I says to him: “It might have been

+     The same with you as me

+     If you like me had had to fight

+     A gang of keyholes all last night

+     With one

+     small

+     key!”

+

+

+

+

+XVIII--IN A TAVERN BOOTH

+

+

+To Sam McCoy

+

+

+     I thought a Sun pursued; through endless space

+     I fled the following thunder of his feet;

+     Snorting he came, his breath a withering heat,

+     Blown soot of cindered comets freakt his face;

+     My hide caught fire and crackled with the pace,

+     My burning heart with jets of anguish beat;

+     Flaming I leapt, in flame leapt on the fleet

+     And savage star . . .  We slashed our fiery trace

+     Ten constellations broad in screaming red

+     Across the startled purple of the night;

+     A word tremendous clove mine ears and head,

+     A great arm fell and stripped my wings of flight:

+     “Hey, Mister, pay your check!” a brute voice said.

+     It was a red-haired barkeep known as Ed.

+

+

+

+

+XIX--YEARNINGS AND MEMORIES

+

+

+To Jimmy Fisher

+

+

+     Liquor there is--but how I miss the Bar!

+     I miss a certain attitude of mind,

+     Congenial, which I seek but never find

+     Except beneath the golden triple star

+     Which from the brandy bottle shines afar.

+     I miss a type of jest that was designed

+     For roaring barrooms warmed with booze, and

+          kind--

+     Good Gawd! how coarse and low my real tastes are.

+     I miss an ambling, splay-foot waiter's beak,

+     Which like some red peninsula of hell

+     Glowed through the humming barroom's smoky

+          reek--

+     I miss the lies I used to hear men tell

+     Over the telephone to waiting wives--

+     What sweet aromas had these joyous lives!

+

+

+

+

+XX--DO YOU REMEMBER?

+

+

+To Harry Dixey

+

+

+     Do you remember that first Morning Drink

+     When Ed would smile and say, “What shall it be?”

+      “Would you advise a Gin Fizz, Ed, for me?”

+      “It is too early for a Fizz, I think.”

+      “And would an Absinthe put me on the blink,

+     I wonder, Ed?”--“Absinthe would not agree

+     This morning, sir.”--“Then what's your recipe?”

+      “A bland Club Cocktail, delicate and pink!”

+      O kindly Barkeeps that have raised me up

+     From morning glooms and made me live again,

+     Where are ye now, and where your wizardry?

+     As dead as great Ulysses' faithful pup!

+     As dead as Babylon and James G. Blaine!

+     As dead as Gyp the Blood and Nineveh!

+

+

+

+

+XXI--AND YOU MAY KECALL THIS

+

+

+To Charley Edson

+

+

+     --“I wanchya meeta 'nol' 'nol frien' o' mine!”

+      --” Umgladdameecha! Bill's frien's my frien's, too!”

+      --“Thish frien' besh frien'! I gotto open wine!”

+      --“You gotto le' me buy thish drink f'r you!”

+      --“I gotto buy thish drink f'r 'nol' 'nol' frien'!”

+      --“Now, lishen, Jim! You gonna love thish lad!”

+      --“Billsh friensh is my friensh to th' bitter en'!”

+      --“Now, lishen, Jim! thish besh frien' ever had!”

+      Honest, hardworking drunkards! Hour by hour

+     They toiled on at their chosen task until

+     They bent beneath the burdens that they bore,

+     They bent and swayed, sustained but by the power,

+     Each one, of his Indomitable Will,

+     Which ever bade him conquer Just One More.

+

+

+

+

+XXII--TRUE, BUT WHAT OF IT?

+

+

+To Gilbert Gabriel

+

+

+     Old Demon Rum, they say you ruined homes,

+     Bashing the piteous Wife betwixt her eyes.

+     Stabbing Aunt Tildy with her own hair-combs,

+     And teaching your young offspring stealth and lies

+     Angel! they say that one night, lost to grace,

+     You filched the infant's coral from her crib,

+     Hocked it, and blew the loot at Leery's Place-

+     Then strangled Baby Sister in her bib

+     Because it purchased only sixteen beers!

+     Demon! they say you used to cut up rough,

+     Sowing the earth with poverty and tears--

+     And I believe it readily enough!

+     I do admit your crimes as charged above,

+     But, Angel! crime can never kill my love!

+

+

+

+

+XXIII--A SUMMER DAY DREAM

+

+

+To Foster Follett

+

+

+     If there were many miles of me

+     How I would love to trail

+     My length along the cooling sea

+     Above the brown sea kale.

+     Were there five thousand feet of me

+     Instead of five feet four,

+     A thousand times as cool I'd be

+     Swimming from shore to shore.

+     And when I saw a brewery

+     Upon some cape or isle

+     I'd crawl out of the dripping sea

+     And greet it with a smile.

+     Then all my lovely coils I'd wrap

+     Around that brewery,

+     And when I'd squeezed out every drap

+     Slide back into the sea.

+

+

+

+

+XXIV--ON SWEARING OFF AGAIN

+

+

+To Dan Carey

+

+     [Ill 0144]

+

+

+     Barleycorn, my jo John!

+     They say that we must part!

+     'Twill mend my stomach, maybe,

+     But, O! it breaks my heart!

+     I hoped that we should grow old

+     Cheek by jowl together,

+     Boozing by the fireside

+     Through the wintry weather;--

+     With white hair and red face,

+     Full of dreams and liquor,

+     Watching from an armchair

+     The firelight flicker;--

+

+     But Barleycorn, my jo John,

+     Fare ye well forever!--

+     The preachers have my soul, John,

+     The doctors have my liver!

+     And I shall have an old age

+     Dry and dull as virtue--

+     But never think, my dear friend,

+     I'm happy to desert you!

+     Barleycorn, my jo John!

+     To think that we should part--.

+     They say 'twill save my eyesight,

+     But, O; it breaks my heart!

+

+

+

+

+XXV--AFTER SEVERAL HIGHBALLS

+

+

+To Clive Weed

+

+

+     I saw three roses on the wall,

+     Three red, red roses on the wall,

+     Repeated in a pattern:

+     The first, I Cleopatra call,

+     The second one's named Sadie Hall,

+     The third one is a slattern.

+     Three flowers, all curlycues and swirls,

+     Each blare-mouthed like a trumpet;

+     One used to fish for swine with pearls,

+     The second was the best of girls,

+     The third one was a strumpet.

+     Three red-mouthed roses on the wall

+     As bright and hot as blood;

+     The first one caused an empire fall,

+     The second was just Sadie Hall,

+     The third died in the mud.

+

+

+

+

+XXVI--CHANT ROYAL OF THE DEJECTED DIPSOMANIAC

+

+

+To Hal Steed

+

+

+     Some fools keep ringing the dumb waiter bell

+     Just as I finish killing Uncle Ned;

+     I wonder if they could have heard him yell?

+     A moment since I cursed at them and said:

+     “This is a pretty time to bring the ice!”

+      --Old Uncle Ned! Two times of late, or thrice,

+     I've thought of prodding him with something keen,

+     But always Fate has seemed to intervene;

+     Last night, for instance, I was in the mood,

+     But I was far too drunken yestere'en-----

+     My way of life can end in nothing good!

+     At Mrs. Dumple's, last week, when I fell

+     And spoiled her dinner party I was led

+     Out to a cab; they saw I was not well

+     And took me home and tucked me into bed.

+     I should quit mingling hashish with my rice!

+     I should give over singing “Three Blind Mice”

+

+     At funerals! Why will I make a scene?

+     Why should I feed my cousins Paris Green?

+     I am increasingly misunderstood:

+     When I am tactless, people think 'tis spleen.

+     My way of life can end in nothing good.

+     Why should one cry that he is William Tell,

+     Then flip a pippin from his hostess' head

+     That none but he can see? Why should one dwell

+     Upon the failings of the newly wed

+     At wedding breakfasts? Can I not be Nice?

+     I am so silly and so full of vice!

+     Such prestidigitator tricks, I ween,

+     As finding false teeth in a soup tureen

+     Are not real humour; they are crass and crude,

+     And cast suspicion on the host's cuisine:

+     My way of life can end in nothing good.

+     My wife and her best friend, a social swell,

+     Zoo-ward I lured to see the cobras fed;--

+     “We can't get home,” I giggled, “for the El

+     Is broken, Sarah--let's elope, instead!”

+      I spoke of all she'd have to sacrifice,

+     And she seemed yielding to me, once or twice,

+     Until my wife broke in and said: “Eugene,

+     Your finger nails are seldom really clean;--

+     I'd loose poor Sarah's hand, Eugene, I would!”

+      How weak and stupid I have always been!

+     My way of life can end in nothing good.

+     I drink and doze and wake and think of hell,

+     My eyes are blear from all the tears I shed:

+     I'm pitiably bald: I'm but a shell!

+     I sobbed to-day, “I wish that I were dead!”

+      I wish I could quit drugs and drink and dice.

+     I wish I had not talked of chicken lice

+     The Sunday that we entertained the Dean,

+     Nor shouted to his wife that paraffin

+     Would make her thin beard grow, nor played the

+          food

+     Was pennies and her face a slot machine:

+     My way of life can end in nothing good.

+     --That bell again: A voice: “Is your name Bryce?

+     These goods is C. O. D. Send down the price!”

+      “Bryce lives,” I yell, “at Number Seventeen!”

+      Bryce doesn't live there, but I feel so mean

+     I laugh and lie; my tone is harsh and rude.

+     --Uncle is gone! I'm phthisical and lean--

+     My way of life can end in nothing good!

+

+

+

+

+XXVII--PROVERBS XXIII, 29

+

+

+To Oliver Herford

+

+

+     From many a classic scroll and tome

+     In golden texts the warnings shine:

+     “If you must drink, get soused at home!

+     Will you get pickled? Then use brine!”

+      Each generation gets a sign,

+     But each one needs another prod

+     From scriptures human or divine--

+     The Wastrel always drops his Wad!

+     Sleek Athens from the Attic loam

+     With ill intention coaxed the vine--

+     Arcadian Simps admired the foam

+     While hair-oiled City Gents malign

+     Dropped philters in the neatherd's stein--

+     Soon Corydon upon the sod

+     Lay coinless with a cloven chine--

+     The Wastrel always drops his Wad!

+

+     When Gallic ginks Cook-toured to Rome,

+     Or roaring Teutons from the Rhine,

+     The thought would fill some yokel's dome

+     To dally with the stranger's wine--

+     Next reel: tough students sprain his spine

+     And bean him with a curule rod

+     And roll him down the Palatine:

+     The Wastrel always drops his Wad!

+     Raus! Bacchus, with that breath of thine,

+     And sad eyes like a bilious cod!

+     Me for the Tracts--I've learned, in fine,

+     The Wastrel always drops his Wad!

+

+

+

+

+XXVIII--AN OBJECT LESSON

+

+

+To Bobby Rogers

+

+

+[Ill 0152]

+

+

+     A young man in a Mu-se-um

+     Was showing me a mummy

+     Who lay there patiently, but glum,

+     A-clasping of his tummy. . .

+     Cophetua or Kafoozelum,

+     Or some such regal rummy.

+     “In youth,” says I, “this king was gay,

+     In spite of Mrs. Grundy;

+     He burnt the Nile one Saturday,

+

+     But where was he on Sunday?”

+      I added, in my learned way,

+     “'Sic transit gloria mundi!'

+     “He conquered princes not a few;

+     They voted as he bid 'em.

+     From Babylon to Timbuctoo,

+     From Sheba up to Siddim,

+     He thought of things he shouldn't do,

+     And then he went and did 'em!

+     “He loved to send out royal bids

+     For high Egyptian jinkses

+     Where pretty Theban katydids

+     And little Memphian minxes

+     Would trot among the pyramids

+     And tango round the sphinxes . . .

+     “But now, in his sarcophagus,

+     How quite deceased we find him,

+     With sand in his aesophagus

+     And all his past behind him,

+     While Time (the anthropophagus!)

+     Is whetting teeth to grind him.

+     “Then note, my lad, the end of kings!

+     Therefore, avoid ambition,

+     For earthly greatness all has wings.

+     You stick to your position,

+     And if men come with crowns and things

+     To tempt you, go a-fishin'!”

+      “Was I a Kingly Souse,” says he,

+     Impressed from A to Izzard,

+     “Would I wind up so leathery

+     As this departed wizard,

+     With baldness on the dome of me,

+     And gravel in my gizzard?”

+      “You would without a doubt,” says I,

+     “Lose wealth and health and hair, O!”

+      Shaken with sobs he made reply,

+     “I promise, and I swear, O!

+     That I will never drink!--and try

+     And never be a Pharaoh!”

+

+

+

+

+XXIX--A KANSAS TRAGEDY

+

+

+To Charley Stansbury

+

+

+     I started from Missouri,

+     The western part of Missouri,

+     To ride to Nicodemus,

+     To Nicodemus, Kansas,

+     In the western part of Kansas;

+     Not far from Happy, Kansas,

+     In Graham County, Kansas . . .

+     Across the State of Kansas I started in a flivver . . .

+     A jolty little flivver with a rhythm rather jerky . . .

+     Irregularly rhythmical, when rhythmical at all . . .

+     I had to get to Nicodemus

+     By noon on Saturday to pay the mortgage

+     On a farm near Nicodemus,

+     Graham County, Kansas,

+     Belonging to a sweetheart who would otherwise be

+          rooned

+     Financially and so could not afford to marry me. . . .

+     As I entered into Kansas,

+     And crossed Miami County,

+     At the town of Ossawatomie

+     I received a telegraphic message

+     From my love at Nicodemus.

+     “Hasten with the money,” said the telegraphic

+          message,

+     “Hasten with the money you are bringing from my

+          Uncle.

+     From my Uncle Jethro, in Missouri,

+     For the man that holds the mortgage,

+     Banker Jasper Grinder, who holds the fiendish

+     mortgage,

+     Has said he will foreclose it

+     And take away the homestead at noon on Saturday,

+     Or else I'll have to marry him,

+     To keep him from foreclosing,

+     Marry Banker Jasper Grinder to keep him from

+     foreclosing . . .

+     I would hate to marry Grinder,

+     But, on the other hand,

+     I would hate to lose the whole alfalfa crop .  .  .

+     Hasten with the money,

+     From my Uncle Jethro,

+     Hasten to your true love, Miss Elvira Simpkins,

+     At Nicodemus, Kansas.”

+      Three hundred miles away

+     Was Nicodemus, Kansas,

+     Nicodemus, Graham County,

+     Not so far from Happy, Kansas

+     Could I do it in a flivver

+     In ten hours?

+     from Ossawatomie I started with a burst of speed,

+     That carried me to Quenemo,

+     To Quenemo, in Osage County, Kansas,

+     At the rate of forty miles an hour .  .  .

+     At a garage in Quenemo

+     I paused for gasolene,

+     At Quenemo, in Osage County, Kansas .  .  .

+     But the man that ran the place

+     With shrill bucolic snicker

+     Said: “There ain't no gasolene!

+     The gasolene in Kansas

+     Has all been took and contrabanded,

+     Leastways, commandeered,

+     Just one hour ago,

+     By order of the Governor,

+     The Governor of Kansas,

+     On account of military operations “...

+     No gasolene in Kansas!

+     And three hundred miles away my love,

+     My love, Elvira Simpkins,

+     Was waiting for the money I had got from Uncle

+          Jethro

+     To save the home at Nicodemus

+     From the clutch of Jasper Grinder!

+     “I will telegraph the money!” I shouted

+     With a flash of inspiration.  .  .

+     But the station agent told me,

+     “There ain't no telegraph nor nothing

+     Runs into Nicodemus,

+     To Nicodemus, Kansas.

+     As fur as I can see in this here book!”

+      And I looked at the wire from Elvira again

+     And saw it had been sent from Happy, Kansas,

+     And all the time the precious

+     Minutes fluttered by

+     Banker Jasper Grinder, in Nicodemus, Kansas,

+     Minute after minute,

+     Was approaching nearer to the hour of his desire . . .

+     I could hear him chuckle,

+     The dry and throaty chuckle that village bankers

+          chuckle

+     In the semi-arid regions

+     Another inspiration came to me and I cried:

+     “I will run my flivver

+     To Nicodemus, Kansas,

+     On alcohol, by heck!

+     I can make the engine in my little flivver

+     Run to Nicodemus, Kansas,

+     On alcohol, by Henry!”

+      But the crowd that gathered around me

+     Laffed and laffed and laffed . . .

+     “They ain't no alcohol in Kansas,”

+      Said the crowd, between its chortles--

+     “Kansas is a dry State,

+     It's prohibition Kansas,

+     And you'll never get to Nicodemus

+     Graham County, Kansas,”

+      Just then the village toper

+     A gentle creature and decayed

+     Thrust into my hand a gallon

+     Of Stutter's Stomach Bitters,

+     He handed me four big quarts

+     Of Stutter's Stomach Bitters,

+     And I poured 'em in the tank and left the town of

+     Quenemo, with the engine doing lovely

+     And the flivver going strong

+     And I reached the town of Skiddy,

+     The town of Skiddy, Kansas, in Morris County,

+          Kansas,

+     And I drew up by the drug store and I yelled

+     For Stutter's Stomach Bitters . . .

+     “I must reach Elvira Simpkins, in Nicodemus,

+          Kansas,

+     'Ere the clock strikes 12 . . .

+     Give me Bitters, give me Bitters!

+     Fill the tank with Bitters, for I race to raise the

+     mortgage

+     But the druggist said: “There's been a run on Bitters!

+     Considerable colic in this watermelon weather!--

+     How about Stewroona?”

+      On a gallon of Stewroona I ran from Skiddy, Kansas,

+     As far as Elmo, Kansas,

+     And there I laid in nineteen quarts

+     Of prohibition appetizer:

+     Doctor Bunkus's Discovery for Kidneys

+     Westward, aver westward;”:

+     To my love,- Elvira Simpkins

+     At Nicodemus, Kansas,

+     I ran on Doctor Bunkus, through the dryest belt of

+          Kansas,

+     Through the prohibition centre,

+     Dear Old Doctor Bunkus urged my little flivver;

+     From Elmo, to Palacky,

+     Six quarts of Lily Gingham's Discovery

+     And a dozen more of Bunkus

+     Took me nearer, nearer, nearer,

+     To my love, Elvira Simpkins .  .  .

+     From Palacky west to Pfeifer,

+     Through the town of Fingal,

+     Then northward to Ogallah,

+     I ran on Si wash Injun Soorah,

+     A Remedy for Liver Trouble,

+     Take a wineglass full before each meal.

+     Nearer, ever nearer, to my love at Nicodemus

+     From Ogallah north to Happy,

+     North to Happy, Kansas, in Graham County,

+          Kansas,

+     North and west to Happy, word of glorious omen . . .

+     And the villagers came down to sniff the glad aroma

+     Of the flying flivver

+     As I turned north to Nicodemus

+     At thirteen minutes until noon,

+     Filled once more with! Stutter's Stomach Bitters

+     I raced into the presence of my love,' Elvira Simpkins.

+     Alas! Alas! Ala:

+     Elvira did not clasp me in her sturdy Kansas

+           arms

+     She sniffed the air and said:

+     “I never will be wedded

+     To a man who reeks with liquor!

+     Give me Uncle Jethro's money!

+     And don't you leave that drunken flivver on the

+           streets of Nicodemus.

+     And she went and married Jasper Grinder after all.

+

+

+THE END

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+End of Project Gutenberg's The Old Soak, and Hail And Farewell, by Don Marquis

+

+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD SOAK ***

+

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+        http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/2/51920/

+

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       The Old Soak, and Hail And Farewell, by Don Marquis

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