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.”