Why, out of every hundred dollars that them poor laboring-men had earned so hardly, and paid into the saloons for that which, of course, wus ruinous to themselves and families, and, of course, rendered them incapable of all labor for a great deal of the time,—why, out of that hundred dollars, as many as 2 cents would go to the government to enrich it.
Of course, the government had to use them 2 cents right off towards buyin' tight-jackets to confine the madmen the whiskey had made, and poorhouse-doors for the idiots it had breeded, to lean up aginst, and buryin' the paupers, and buyin' ropes to hang the murderers it had created.
But still, in some strange way, too deep, fur too deep, for a woman's mind to comprehend, it wus dretful profitable to the government.
Now, if them poor laborin'-men had paid that 2 cents of theirn to the government themselves, in the first place, in direct taxation, why, that wouldn't have been statesmanship. That is a deep study, and has a great many curius performances, and it has to perform.
Cicely tried her very best to get the executor to change in this one matter; but she couldn't move him the width of a horse-hair, and he a smilin' all the time at her, and polite. He liked Cicely: nobody could help likin' the gentle, saintly-souled little woman. But he wus sot: he wus makin' money fast by it, and she had to give up.
And rough men and women would sometimes twit her of it,—of her property bein' used to advance the liquor-traffic, and ruin men and wimmen; and she a feelin' like death about it, and her hands tied up, and powerless. No wonder that her face got whiter and whiter, and her eyes bigger and mournfuller-lookin'.
Wall, she kep' on, tryin' to do all she could: she joined the Woman's Temperance Union; she spent her money free as water, where she thought it would do any good, and brought up the boy jest as near right as she could possibly bring him up; and she prayed, and wept right when she wus a bringin' of him, a thinkin' that her property wus a bein' used every day and every hour in ruinin' other mothers' boys. And the boy's face almost breakin' her heart every time she looked at it; for, though he wus jest as pretty as a child could be, the pretty rosy lips had the same good-tempered, irresolute curve to 'em that the boy inherited honestly. And he had the same weak, waverin' chin. It was white and rosy now, with a dimple right in the centre, sweet enough to kiss. But the chin wus there, right under the rosy snow and the dimple; and I foreboded, too, and couldn't blame Cicely a mite for her forebodin', and her agony of sole.