“Tongues was made to use, and the better the cause, the more it needs to be talked about.”
“There’s no getting away from that,” said Crupp. “Talk’s all right in its place; but when anybody’s sick in your family, you don’t hire somebody to come in and talk him well, do you?”
The auxiliary replied by pressing perceptibly closer to the bale of blankets against which he had been leaning, and Crupp was enabled to concentrate his attention upon Father Baguss. But the old soldier had in his military days unconsciously acquired a tactical idea or two which were frequently applicable in real life. One of them was that of flanking, and he straightway attempted it by exclaiming,
“I’d use money quick enough on drunkards, if I saw anybody fit to use it on,” said he; “it would do my old soul good to find a drinking man that I could be sure money would save. But they’re a shiftless, worthless pack of shotes, all that I see of ’em. There wuz a young fellow—Lije Mason his name was—that I once thought seriously of doin’ somethin’ fur; but he went an’ signed the pledge, an’ got along all right by himself.”
“But there’s your own neighbors, old Tappelmine and his family—they all drink; what have you done for ’em?” asked Crupp.
“A lot of Kentucky poor white trash!” exclaimed Father Baguss. “What could anybody do for ’em? Besides, they do for ’emselves; they’ve stole hams out of my smoke-house more’n once, an’ they know I know it, too.”
“Poor white trash is sometimes converted in church, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Crupp; “and what’s to keep poor white trash from stopping drinking? what but a good, honest, religious, rum-hating neighbor that looks at ’em so savagely and lets ’em alone so hard that they’d take pains to get drunk, just to worry him? I know how you feel toward them; I saw it once: one Sunday I passed you on the road just opposite their place; you was in your wagon takin’ your folks to church, and I—well, I was out trying to shoot a wild turkey, which I mightn’t have been on a Sunday. They were all laughin’ and cuttin’ up in the house—it’s seldom enough such folks get anything to laugh about—and I could just see you groan, and your face was as black as a thunder cloud, and as savage as an oak knot soaked in vinegar. The old man came out just then for an armful of wood, and nodded at you pleasant enough; but that face of yours was too much for him, and pretty soon he looked as if he’d have liked to throw a chunk of wood at your head. I’d have done it, if I’d been him. The old man was awfully drunk when I came back that way, two or three hours later. That was a pretty day’s work for a Son of Temperance, wasn’t it—and Sunday, too?”
The casing to Father Baguss’s conscience was not as thick as that to his brain, and he was silent; perhaps the prospect of getting some mill stock aided the good work in his heart.
Crupp continued: “I’m a ‘Son’ myself, now, and I know what a man agrees to when he joins a division. If you think you’ve lived up to it—you and the other members of the Barton Division—I suppose you’ve a right to your opinion; but if my ideas, picked up on both sides of the fence, are worth anything to you, they amount to just this: the Sons of Temperance in this town haven’t done anything but help each other not to get back into bad ways again, and to give a welcomin’ hand to anybody that’s strong enough in himself to come into the division with you; and that isn’t the spirit of the order.”
Crupp got his sugar, and no one pressed him to stay longer; but, as he slowly departed, as became a soldier who was not retreating but only changing his base, Father Baguss followed him, touched his sleeve as soon as he found himself outside the store door, and said,