The cold glare in my gray eye froze the words on his lip. “You ask me to go to the Liquor Power for help! Do you know who you’re speakin’ to?”
“Yes,” sez he feebly, “I’m speakin’ to Josiah Allen’s wife, and I want to set.”
His axent wuz heartbroken and I fancied that there wuz a little tone of repentance in it. Could I influence him for the right? Could I frighten him into the right path? I felt I must try, and I sez in a low, deep voice:
“I’ll help you to set if you’ll set where I want you to.”
“Oh, tell me! tell me,” sez he, “where you want me to set.”
“Not in the high halls where justice is administered, not up there with the pictures of your numerous wives on your heart to make laws condemnin’ a man who has only one extra wife to prison for twenty years, which same law would condemn you to prison for ’most a century. That wouldn’t be reasonable. Presidents and senators are sot up there in Washington D. C. as examplers for the young to foller and stimulate ’em to go and do likewise. Such a example as yourn would stimulate ’em too much in matrimonial directions and land ’em in prison.”
He muttered sunthin’ about lots of public men havin’ other wives in secret.
“In secret?” sez I. “Well, mebby so, but it has to be in secret, hid away, wropped in disgrace, and if the law discovers it they are punished. That’s a very different thing from makin’ such a life respectable, coverin’ ’em under the mantilly of the law, embroidered too with public honors.”
He turned away despairin’ly and murmured mekanically the old heart-broken wail, “I want to set.”