Says I, with a awful dignity: “I’d love to see myself givin’ you anything to drink. You are drunk as a fool now; that is what ails you.”
“Cider hain’t tox-tox-toxicatin’; Bobbet said ’twuzn’t. He said his cider-mill was harmless, easy ’ntreated, as peacible a one as he ever see. Will take a glass, if you please. I wouldn’t drink a tox-tox-toxin’ bevrig, not for dollar. Guess Bobbet knows what’s pious drink and what hain’t. Cider’s pious bevrig—called so—peacible, pious drink.”
“Pious drink!” says I, sternly. “I have seen more than one man made a fool and a wild man by it, pious or not. Oh!” says I, eppisodin’ out loud and eloquent, entirely unbeknown to me, “how Satan must laugh in his sleeves (if he wears sleeves) to see how good men are deceived and blindered in this matter. Nothin’ tickles Satan more than to get a good man, a church member, to work for him for nothin’. When he gets good, conscientious, christian folks to tackle his work of ruinin’ souls, unbeknown to them, and let him rest off a spell,—why it tickles him most to death.
“And when anyone plants the first seeds of drunkenness in a person, no matter how good-naturedly it is done, no matter how good the ones are who do it, they are workin’ for Satan and boardin’ themselves, entirely unbeknown to them. That is, the good ones are; some know and realize what they are a doin’, but keep at it through selfishness and love of gain.”
“Likker’s bad, wrong; but cider’s in’cent, in’cent as a babe, a prattlin’ little babe; it’s called so.”
“Good land!” says I, “do you s’pose I care a cent what a thing is called?” Says I: “I have seen cider that three glasses of it would fix a man out so he couldn’t tell how many childern he had, or fathers and mothers, no more than he could count the stars in the zodiact. And couldn’t walk straight and upright, no more than he could bump his old head aginst the moon. When a man is dead what difference does it make to him whether he died from a shotgun or billerous colic, or was skairt to death? And what difference does it make when a man is made a fool of, whether it is done by one spunefull or a dozen, or a quart? The important thing to him is, he is a fool.”
“Yes, ’n I’ll take a glass of cider, if you please.”
I started right straight for the back stoop and hollered to Josiah.
That skairt him. He started kinder sideways for the door, got holt of the latch, and says he:
“I come to labor with you, n’ I don’t want to leave you goin’ the broad road to destruction; but I will,” says he, with a simple sort of a smile, and as foolish a wink as I ever see wunk, “I will if you’ll give me a drink of cider, if you please.”