Then his brother-in-law moved into the place, and opened a cider-mill and a saloon—manafactered and sold cider brandy, furnished all the saloons round him with it, took it off by the load on Saturdays, and kep’ his saloon wide open, so’s all the boys and men in the vicinity could have the hull of Sunday to git crazy drunk in, while he wuz a-passin’ round the contribution-box in the meetin’-house.
For he wuz a strict church-goer, the brother-in-law wuz, and felt that he wuz a sample to foller.
Wall, Ellick Gurley follered him—follered him to his sorrer. The brother-in-law employed him in his soul slaughter-house—for so I can’t help callin’ the bizness of drunkard-makin’. I can’t help it, and I don’t want to help it.
And so, under his influence, Ellick Gurley wuz led down the soft, slippery pathway of cider drunkenness, with the holler images of Safety and old Custom a-standin’ up on the stairway a-lightin’ him down it.
Ellick first neglected his work, while his face turned first a pink, and then a bloated, purplish red.
Then he begun to be cross to his wife and abusive to little Rob, the beautiful little angel that had flown to them out of the sweet shadows of Eden, where they had dwelt the first married years of their life.
Finally, he got to be quarrelsome. Annie wuz afraid of him. And all of his money and all of hern went to buy that cider brandy (it makes the ugliest, most dangerous kind of a drunk, they say, of any kind of liquor, and I believe it from what I have seen myself, and from what Annie told me of her husband’s treatment of her and little Rob).
Finally, he got to be quarrelsome.
And at last she begun to suffer for food and clothin’ for herself and the child.