Distiller. I will feed the torrent no longer. The fires of my distillery shall be put out. From this day, from this hour, I renounce the manufacture of ardent spirit for ever.
DIALOGUE II.
WHOLESALE DEALER’S COUNTING-ROOM.
Conscience. (Looking over the ledger with a serious air.) What is that last invoice from the West Indies?
Rum-Dealer. Only a few casks of fourth proof, for particular customers.
Conscience. And that domestic poison, via New Orleans; and on the next page, that large consignment, via Erie Canal?
Dealer. O, nothing but two small lots of prime whiskey, such as we have been selling these twenty years. But why these chiding inquiries? They disquiet me exceedingly. And to tell you the plain truth, I am more than half offended at this morbid inquisitiveness.
Conscience. Ah, I am afraid, as I have often told you, that this is a bad business; and the more I think of it, the more it troubles me.
Dealer. Why so? You are always preaching up industry as a Christian virtue, and my word for it, were I to neglect my business, and saunter about the hotels and steamboat wharves, as some do, you would fall into convulsions, as if I had committed the unpardonable sin.
Conscience. Such pettish quibbling is utterly unworthy of your good sense and ordinary candor. You know, as well as I do, the great difference between industry in some safe and honest calling, and driving a business which carries poverty and ruin to thousands of families.