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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.