CHAPTER THIRTEEN—Peace and Contentment
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.