My honest belief is, that the saloon could be easily dispensed with, if the government would place on sale sealed bottles of genuine rye whiskey for medicinal purposes, at a fair price. I do not believe in prohibition to the full letter of the law. Whiskey is a medicine, and we need it just as badly as we need any other poisonous drug. I am subject to chills, and whiskey is the best remedy I ever discovered for chills. The only bad effect is that the more whiskey I have in the house, the more frequent are my attacks of chills. I use more caution, too—I take a jigger occasionally to prevent the very first symptoms of a chill.
THE HOMESICK CHILD
It was in the cool of a summer evening that I saw the child leaning over the railing of the river bridge and looking through her tears toward the opposite side of the stream. I knew intuitively that the tears in her eyes were sad ones, because sorrowful tears seem to stand in pools and only gush out at intervals. Tears of joy well out as fast as generated, for the eyelids stiffen under the influence of gladness and eject the tears automatically. In sorrow the eyes seem to recede and the eye-lids grow flabby and helpless, and the tears stand in pools around the corners of the eyes, as though lacking the courage to gush out and part with the aching heart beneath.
“Are you sick, little girl?” I asked. She tried to answer, but the words would not come. She only sobbed, and the pool of tears gushed out under the new disturbance and ran down her pale cheeks. “Don’t talk, if you don’t care to, child, but if you are in trouble I may be able to assist you. Have you a home?”
“Oh yes, sir!” she burst out, as though the word “home” opened the door to her heart. “My home is far out over this river and beyond those hills you see in the west!”
“And why are you here?” I asked kindly.
“Oh, I’m out at service. I’m working in Sheriff Barker’s kitchen, helping the misses with her work. I’m earning my own living, besides giving some money to papa for the other children. There’s so many of us, you see.”
“How old are you?” I asked, not out of curiosity, but out of sympathy.
“Oh, I’m twelve years old! There are four younger than me, and three older. We all go out at ten years and rustle for ourselves.”