“Sure, and it’s all right. They missed the train through stopping too long to eat. They’re on their way now safe and sound, and happy as larks—and due in half an hour. They’d have let ye know, but couldn’t tell where to reach ye!”
And he would have nothing but the regular toll for the service. But he put his hand on my shoulder and said:
“Happy to meet ye. It’s a pleasure to serve such as ye. Come, now, and have something on me!”
And right there I came as near accepting a drink as I ever did in my life. But there is one thing I did do. I declined the honor of running for Congress on the Prohibition ticket after receiving that kindly Christian service from a saloonkeeper.
I told this story to a missionary who had spent much of his life among rough-and-ready customers. His comment was:
“Many a hog will put on a white necktie, and many a saint will wear a flannel shirt, and one not overly clean at that. The best judge of a necktie is the hangman, and the final judgment over the boiled shirt is made at the washtub. He who sells beer brewed in charity is a better man than he who delivers sermons stuffed with cant and selfishness.”
I presume he is right, but how can a deaf man distinguish the virtues and vices of the dispenser of selfish sermons from those of the dispenser of charitable beer—when he cannot hear the sermons and declines to taste the beer? However, since that night I have not been able to trust the combination of white vest and necktie and a taste for “burnsides.”
My experience with this variety of costume had begun years before, when I happened to be a receptive candidate for Governor of New Jersey on this same Prohibition ticket. My boom never developed beyond that receptive stage, but I started for the convention feeling well disposed toward myself—as I presume all candidates do. At Trenton I had to hunt for the convention hall, and, as usual, tried to select the proper guide from his appearance. On a street corner stood a portly, well-filled gentleman, wearing a suit of solemn black, with a beard to match; also there was the white necktie and the voluminous white vest. In truth, he was a prosperous grocer come to town to marry his third wife, but to me he looked like the chairman of the coming convention.
“Can you tell me where the convention is to be held?”
“What convention?”