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.