[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.