"Yes Jeanette we will meet in less than twenty years, but before then your glad light eyes will be dim with tears, and the easy path you have striven to walk will be thickly strewn with thorn; and whether you deserve it or not, life will have for you a mournful earnestness, but notwithstanding all your frivolity and flippancy there is fine gold in your character, which the fire of affliction only will reveal."
Chapter III
[Text missing.]
Chapter IV
"How is business?"
"Very dull, I am losing terribly."
"Any prospect of times brightening?"
"I don't see my way out clear; but I hope there will be a change for the better. Confidence has been greatly shaken, men of[?] business have grown exceedingly timid about investing and there is a general depression in every department of trade and business."
"Now Paul will you listen to reason and common sense? I have a proposition to make. I am about to embark in a profitable business, and I know that it will pay better than anything else I could undertake in these times. Men will buy liquor if they have not got money for other things. I am going to open a first class saloon, and club-house, on M. Street, and if you will join with me we can make a splendid thing of it. Why just see how well off Joe Harden is since he set up in the business; and what airs he does put on! I know when he was not worth fifty dollars, and kept a little low groggery on the corner of L. and S. Streets, but he is out of that now—keeps a first class Cafe, and owns a block of houses. Now Paul, here is a splendid chance for you; business is dull, and now accept this opening. Of course I mean to keep a first class saloon. I don't intend to tolerate loafing, or disorderly conduct, or to sell to drunken men. In fact, I shall put up my scale of prices so that you need fear no annoyance from rough, low, boisterous men who don't know how to behave themselves. What say you, Paul?"
"I say, no! I wouldn't engage in such a business, not if it paid me a hundred thousand dollars a year. I think these first class saloons are just as great a curse to the community as the low groggeries, and I look upon them as the fountain heads of the low groggeries. The man who begins to drink in the well lighted and splendidly furnished saloon is in danger of finishing in the lowest dens of vice and shame."