“Well,” said the Squire, “they must pray, and act like men.”
“Some of ’em don’t believe in prayin’, and some of ’em can’t act like men, because ’tisn’t in ’em. There’s men that seem to need whisky as much as they need bread; leastways, they don’t seem able to do without it.”
“If I’d been you, and believed that, Crupp,” replied the Squire, with noticeable coolness and deliberation, “I wouldn’t have signed the pledge; that is, I wouldn’t have stopped selling liquor.”
“P’r’aps not,” returned the ex-rumseller; “but with me it’s different. There’s some men that b’lieves that sellin’ a woman a paper of pins, and measurin’ out a quart of tar for a farmer, is small business, an’ beneath ’em, but they stick to it. Now I believe I’m too much of a man to sell whisky, so I’ve stopped.”
The Squire took the rebuke in silence; however much his face may have flushed, there were in Barton no tell-tale gas-lamps to make his discomfort visible. The Squire had grown rich as a vender of the thousand little things sold in country stores; he had many a time declared that storekeeping was a dog’s life, and that he, Squire Tomple, was everybody’s nigger—but he made no attempt to change his business.
“What I mean,” continued Mr. Crupp, “by needin’ help, is this: I know just about how much every drinkin’ man in town takes, an’ when he takes it, an’ about when he gets on his sprees. Now, if there’s anybody to take an interest in these fellows at such times, they’re going to have plenty of chances mighty soon.”