REFORM WITH MONEY IN IT.
Tom Adams, driver of the brick-yard wagon, and signer of one of the
pledges circulated at the great temperance meeting, was certainly
a man worth saving. He had a wife and was rich in children. His
wife was faithful, good-natured, and industrious, and his children
were of that bright, irrepressible nature which is about the most
valuable of inheritances in this land where other inheritances do not
average largely in money value. For the good of such a group it was
very desirable that the head of the family should be in the constant
possession of strong arms and all his wits. And even for his own
sake Tom was worth a great deal more attention than men of his kind
ever receive. He was perfectly honest, a hard worker, cheerier in
temperament than any pastor in the village, quicker-witted than most of
the lawyers within the judicial circuit upon which the town of Barton
was situated, and more generous in proportion to his means than any
of his well-to-do fellow-citizens. During the season for making and
delivering bricks he worked from sunrise to sunset, rendered fair
count to seller and buyer, and never abused his employer’s horses.
His regular pay was seventy-five cents per day, which sum, in a land
where flour was sold at two cents per pound and meat was only twice as
high as flour, and a comfortable house could be hired at four dollars
per month, paid his family expenses. But the season at the brick-yard
lasted only during six months of the twelve. During the remaining six
months Tom gladly did any work he could find: he drove teams where any
hauling was to be done, chopped wood, worked in the pork-houses where
merchants prepared for the Southern market the fatted hogs which were
the principal legal-tenders for the indebtedness of farmer customers,
formed part of the crew of one of the many flatboats which conveyed the
meat to market, and did whatever other work he could find. But in the
winter season, when the family appetite was most industrious, Tom could
not find employment for all his time, while the merchants who trusted
him made more frequent requests for money than Tom was able to honor.
When he was idle, he found himself more welcome at the liquor-shops
than anywhere else; when he grew despondent at his inability to pay, he
sought solace at these same places; when in the steady work and long
hours of the summer season he became gradually “worked out” and “used
up”--experiences not infrequent with Tom--he went to the liquor-shops
for the only relief he had ever been able to find. His experience did
not differ greatly from that of men of higher social standing, who,
under similar mental and physical conditions, drink high-priced wines.
He gradually increased the quantity of his potations, and went through
the successive experiences of being unmanned by liquor, striving to
rebuild himself by the power which had broken him, becoming by turns
gay, silly, boisterous, pugnacious, sullen, apathetic, and finally
penitent. Each of his sprees cost him several days in time and several
dollars in money--a fact which no one realized more clearly than Tom
himself; yet the feeling which had made him take the first drinks of
these frightful series was one which had its seat in his own better
nature, and which he had many times found more powerful than every
influence he could bring to bear against it. He had listened to many
a private lecture on the subject of his weakness, and had honestly
admitted the truth of all that was said to him on the subject; he had
signed many a pledge in the most agonized earnest, and had broken every
one of them.
On the Monday which followed the temperance meeting Tom Adams was
nearly frantic with his old longing. The rest of Sunday had been a
hindrance rather than a help to him, for he had already suffered
several days from the effects of abstaining from his usual after-dinner
and after-supper potations. The amount usually drank on these occasions
had not been great, but the habit had for some years been so regular
that his amazed and indignant physique protested against the change.
Had he been capable of spiritually withdrawing himself from the
world on the day of the Lord, he might have found help and strength;
but he was as incapable of such a thing as were nine-tenths of the
church-members in Barton. While he remained at home, his children were
noisy enough to have hurried a rapt seer back to the realization of
earthly things; when he went abroad he could not, as was his usual
Sunday habit, step quietly into the back door of Bayne’s liquor-store.
He strolled down to the stable-yard of the Barton House, hoping to
find some one with whom he could talk horse; but the hostler was not
in sight, and the stable-boy, who had been heard to say he “didn’t
count much on them fellers what signed the pledge and went back on
their friends,” eyed him with evident disgust. In the street he met
people going to and from church and Sunday-school, and they looked at
him as if their eyes were asking, “Are you keeping your pledge?” Then,
to crown all, his wife gave him such a beseeching and yet doubting look
every time he left the house and returned to it that he almost hated
the good woman for her affectionate anxiety.
Tom was up bright and early Monday morning, and though he soon mounted
his wagon and left his wife’s eyes behind him, he found his longing for
liquor as close to him as ever. Reaching the brick-yard, he was rather
startled to find there Deacon Jones, his employer, and owner of a store
as well as the kilns. The deacon looked at him as all the religious
people had done on Sunday, and Tom inwardly cursed him.
“How are you, Tom?” inquired the deacon, and then, without waiting for
a reply, remarked:
“There’s somethin’ I’ve been a-wantin’ to talk to you ’bout, Tom, an’
I was sure o’ catchin’ you here, so I came over before breakfast. You
signed the pledge t’other night.”
This latter clause was delivered with an accompanying glance which
caused Tom to put a great deal of anger into his reply, although his
words were few.
“Yes, an’ kep’ it, too.”
“I’m glad of it, Tom. There’s been times when you didn’t, you know.
Well, what I want to say is this: Some folks say that some men drink
because they have to work too hard, an’ because they have trouble.
Now, mebbe--I only say mebbe, mind--_mebbe_ that’s what upset you
those other times. Now, if I was to give you work all the year round
at seventy-five cents a day, an’ not work you more’n ten hours a day,
would it help you to keep straight?”
“Would it?” said Tom, scratching his head, wrinkling his brows, and
eying the deacon incredulously “Why, of course it would.”
“Well, then,” said the deacon, “I’ll do it. As long as the brick
business is good you can work at haulin’ from seven to twelve, an’
one to six. Don’t you s’pose you could put two or three hundred more
brick on a load without hurtin’ the hosses? I don’t want to lose any
more’n I can help, you know, by cuttin’ down your time. Rainy days I’ll
keep you busy at the store some way; them’s the days farmers can’t do
much on the farm, so they bring their butter and eggs to town, and
there’s a sight of measurin’ an’ weighin’ to be done. An’ after the
brick season’s over I’ll find you somethin’ to do at the store. You can
put the pork-house an’ warehouse to rights before the packin’ season
begins, an’ you can weigh the corn an’ wheat an’ oats an’ pork when
they come in, and mend bags, and work in the pork-house three months
out of the six. You wouldn’t object to takin’ night-spells in the
pork-house instead of day-spells, would you, when we have to work day
_and_ night? Night-wages costs us most, you know, an’ you ought to help
us make up what we lose on you when there’s nothin’ doin’.”
“Just as _you_ say,” replied Tom. He did not clasp the deacon in a
grateful embrace, for the deacon had, in his thrifty way, prevented
Tom from feeling especially grateful. The owner of the brick-yard had
intimated that the new arrangement was for Tom’s especial benefit, but
his later remarks caused this feature of the arrangement to speedily
disappear from view. But, although not doubting for an instant that
the deacon meant to get his money back with usury, Tom felt his heart
growing lighter every moment. At the same time he felt angry at the
deacon’s occasional suggestions that the arrangements were partly of
the nature of charity. So he replied:
“Just as _you_ say; but, deacon, I ain’t the feller that wants money
for work I don’t do, _you_ know that. The arrangement suits me
first-rate, but I’m goin’ to work hard for my money; you can bet all
your loose change on _that_.”
“Thomas!” ejaculated the deacon sternly, “I am not in the habit of
betting. It’s a careless, foolish, wasteful, sinful way of using money.”
“That’s so,” replied Tom reflectively; “unless,” he continued, “you’re
one of the winnin’ kind.”
“It is a business I don’t intend to go into, so the less said of it the
better. So my offer suits you, does it?”
“I’ll shake hands on it,” replied Tom, extending his hand.
“Wait a moment,” said the deacon, retiring his own right hand to a
conservative position behind his back. “If it suits you,” continued
the deacon impressively, “you agree to stick to your pledge; no foolin’
with whisky again, mind.”
“Nary drop,” said Tom, with great emphasis. “Ten minutes ago I wouldn’t
have given a pewter dime for my chance of sticking it out through the
day, but now I wouldn’t give a cent for a barr’l full of ten-year-old
rye.”
“All right, then--shake hands. And we begin to-day--or say
to-morrow--there’s lots of bricks wanted to-day--here’s the orders. And
may the Lord help you, Thomas--help you to hold out steadfast unto the
end. Now I reckon I’ll get home to breakfast.”
As the deacon walked off he soliloquized in this manner:
“There! I wonder if that’ll suit Crupp an’ Brother Wedgewell? What a
queer team them two fellows make! Queer that Crupp should have bothered
me two hours Saturday night, an’ the preacher should have come out
so strong about bein’ our brothers’ keepers the very next day. ’Twas
a Christian act for me to do, too. ‘He that converteth a sinner from
the error of his ways’--ah! blessed be the promises. An’ I won’t lose
a cent by the operation--_I_ can keep him busy enough. When folks
know what I’ve done an’ what I done it for, I guess they’ll think
I’ve got my good streaks after all. I declare, I ought to have told
him I couldn’t pay for days when he was sick; ’tain’t too late yet,
though--he won’t back out on _that_ account. Mebbe I can talk him into
j’ining the church, too--who knows, an’ some day in ’xperience meetin’
mebbe he’ll tell how it all came about through me. He must bring his
dinners with him when he’s workin’ about the store. I ought to have
done that with my clerk before he took to lunchin’ off the crackers and
cheese busy days--these little things all cost. But it _does_ make a
man feel good to do kindnesses to his fellow-men.”
As for Tom Adams, he mounted the wagon, seized the reins, and exclaimed,
“By thunder! ’fore I haul a durned brick, I’ll just drive home by the
back way and tell the old woman. Reckon she won’t look at me any more
in _that_ way then. Like enough he’s right when he says _some_ says
mebbe workin’ too hard makes fellows drink. It never got into _my_ head
before, though.”
As Tom drove through a back street in which Mr. Crupp lived, that
worthy stared at the empty wagon inquiringly.
“The old man’s engaged me for a year, at six bits a day, and only ten
hours a day to work,” shouted Tom in explanation.
“The devil!” replied the new reformer, and seizing his hat he hurried
off to the Rev. Jonas Wedgewell. The pastor was discovered through an
open window at his matutinal repast, and the eager Crupp thrust his
head in the window and shouted,
“First blood, parson! Old Jones has hired Tom for a year, and he’s only
got ten hours a day to work.”
The holy man raised his hands, despite the incumbrances of half a
biscuit and a coffee cup, and exclaimed,
“Bless the Lord for the first fruits of the seed so newly sown. Who
would have thought so undemonstrative a man would have been the first
to heed the word of exhortation?”
“He’s the first to see money in it--that’s why,” explained Crupp.
“My dear sir, do you really ascribe Deacon Jones’s meritorious action
to sordid motives?” asked the old pastor, opening his mouth and eyes as
if the answer for which he waited was to come through them.
“Hum--well, no--I reckon ’twas a little mixed,” replied Mr. Crupp,
meditatively analyzing a blossom of a honeysuckle growing by the
pastor’s window. “I dinged at him, you preached at him, he thought it
over, and whatever Jonathan Jones thinks over long is pretty sure to
have money in it somewhere in the end. He’ll make mor’n he’ll lose on
Tom, an’ it’s best he should--he’ll have a better heart to try another
experiment of the same sort one of these days. But I didn’t mean to
interrupt your breakfast--beg your pardon, Mrs. Wedgewell and young
ladies, for not ringing the bell, but I was too full of the news to
behave myself. Good by.”
And Mr. Crupp started for his own breakfast-table, while the Reverend
Jonas’s eyes seemed directed at some object just out of sight, as he
abstractedly raised his coffee cup to his lips.