CHAPTER NINETEEN—A House Divided
THE Old Soak has been looking rather well for some time; he seems prosperous and happy, for the most part, and contented with the quantity and quality of the hootch he has been gettin'. But yesterday he dropped in to see us with just the slightest shade of gloom on his features. We asked him about it.
“It's that there son of mine,” he says. “He's too young to know enough to let well enough alone, like the Good Book says to do. They's a lot of these young fellers you can't learn nothing to.
“This yere son-in-lawr of mine I been tellin' you about, that is a revenooer, got my son made into a revenooer, too. And it ain't long before my son gits jest as good an automobile as the one my son-in-lawr's been drivin'. And joy out to our house has been unconcerned, with everyone exceptin' the Ol' Woman, and she's been prayin' agin the rest of the fambly.
“But this yere son o' mine, he gets too much hootch under his belt one day, and he gets into this yere brand-new automobile of his'n and he starts onto one of these yere raids. Which would of been all right, bein' as it's what a revenooer is for, if he had only used a leetle bit o' jedgment. But the young has got a lot to learn, and babes and striplings, the Good Book says, jest naturally has their dam fool streaks.
“This yere raid my son goes onto turns out all wrong. For whilst he is pinchin' who does he pinch in the gang of wicked sinners but that there son-in-lawr of mine, the revenooer as got him his job, said son-in-lawr bein' off duty and pickled hisself at the time.
“So this here son-in-lawr of mine, he mighty nigh loses of his job as a revenooer, bein' took up in one of the raids he was legally supposed to be startin' himself, and they was quite a fuss about it, so I understand, and the thing was finally settled with a compromise—it wasn't my son-in-lawr lost his job, but they compromised it and fired my son out'n his job.
“But now my son, he has went and got sore at my son-in-lawr, and he says unless he gits his job back as a revernooer he will tell all he knows.
“So my house is a house that is sided against itself, like the Good Book says, and every member of the fambly has took sides one way or the other 'twixt my son and my son-in-lawr, and the Ol' Woman is agin both on 'em, and agin me, too—a-prayin' an' a-prayin' an' a-prayin'.
“'You went and prayed for years an' years so as to get prohibish'n,' I tells her; 'an' now you got it—you got more on it than any woman I knows, for it's come right into your own home. An' now you got it you ain't satisfied with it—there you be onto your marrow bones prayin' agin the revenooers.'
“I s'pose I was too hifalutin' an' ambitious, wantin' to keep two members of my fambly into the revenooer job. And as long as my son-in-lawr stays into office and continues to make his home with me I won't have no kick cornin', but will take my hootch in thankfulness and humility, like the Good Book says to do, eatin', drinkin' an' bein' merry. This yere leetle cloud of gloom what you notice is due to the Ol' Woman's prayers. I cain't help but feel she is goin' direct agin Scripter and her husband's best intrusts.”
CHAPTER TWENTY—Continuing the History of the Rum Demon—the Barroom and Manners
ANOTHER thing about those barrooms that has been vanished forever is the fact that most of them was right polite sort of places if a fellow edged up to the bar and knocked over your glass of whiskey or something like that he would say, O excuse me stranger and you would say sure, but look where in hell you are going to after this.
Sure he would say no offence meant. No offence taken you would say to him. Have one with me he would say.
No sooner said than done.
But nowadays all you see and hear is bad manners and impoliteness with people hustling and bumping into each other on the subways and stepping on each other and women and children amongst them and nobody ever begging anybody's pardon and hard feelings everywhere.
The trouble is everybody is sore and wanting a drink all the time and there is no place where the younger generation is going to learn good manners now that the barrooms is gone. What is the young fellows just growing up to manhood going to do for their manners now that the barrooms is closed, is what I want to know.
It used to be you would get onto a subway train and there would be two or three women standing up and you would be setting down and there would be three or four drinks under your belt and you would be feeling good and you would say to yourself am I a gentleman or ain't I a gentleman.
You're damned right I am a gentleman, you would say to yourself, here, lady, you set down, and don't let any of these here bums roust you out of that seat.
If any of these here bums tries to roust you out of that seat I will put a tin ear onto them.
That's the kind of a gentleman I am, lady, they would have a hell of a time, lady, getting your seat away from you with me here.
And she seen you was a gentleman and she smiled at you and you hung onto a strap and felt good.
But nowadays there ain't no manners, with no place to get a drink or anything.
You are setting in the subway and a lady comes in and has nowheres to set, and you say to yourself let some of these other guys get up and give her a seat.
And you think a while and you say to yourself I'll bet she is a Prohibitionist anyhow. Let her stand up. She has got to learn you can't have any manners with the barrooms all closed and everything.
Well, that's another thing closing the barroom has done. It has took away all the manners this town ever had.
In my next chapter I will get down to brass tacks and tell just what those barrooms was like for the benefit of future posterity that has never seen one.