guess that ere Sherman won't be a hanging round the Honey no great deal after this; if he does I'll put another flea in his ear fur I ain't a going fur tu see her throwd away on no beer-soaker."
Thus soliloquized Daddy, as he watched with evident satisfaction, the hurried departure of the young gentleman, whom, when we last left him he had just released from his inevitable trap.
A horrible oath sounded in Daddy's ear, and he lay sprawling on the pavement. "Call me a beer-soaker again will you," and out rolled another oath, but Daddy did not hear it. The fall had stunned him, and he was taken up insensible.
Absorbed in the subject which was agitating his mind at the time he received the blow Daddy had raised his voice to a high pitch, and, "beer-soaker," rang out loud and clear, reaching the ear of a passer-by, who, being pretty well soaked in the beverage mentioned, or in something stronger, resented the imagined insult after the manner described.
Proud of his achievement, which he had just sense enough to see was not generally approved by the crowd that had gathered round, Daddy's assailant proceeded defiantly to defend his cruel deed. "He'd better never say beer-soaker to me again, the cursed scoundrel, nor look it either, curse him. Let any man in this crowd say that he didn't deserve what he got, and I'll——
"You'll come right along with me, my friend," and the foolish boaster was marched off by the city authorities, whom from past experience, he well knew it was useless to resist.
This same man, now led away amid the exertions of Daddy's friends, had gone out from his humble home that beautiful sunny morning with the solemn promise on his lips to keep sober for that one day at least. His hopeful long-suffering wife had watched lovingly his receding footsteps, as in days, when a fond husband and father, he always returned sober. All day long she went trustingly about her work with kind glad words to her little children, whose pleased surprise to receive, as of old, their father's fond caress, she delighted to imagine.
But alas! it was the old story. The man's will was too weak to withstand the pursuasions of drinking companions, and the tempttations of the liquor seller. He yielded, and, when once he had got the taste, wife and children and all were forgotten. At a late hour that night the little ones were put sadly away to bed; the supper table, spread in joy, was cleared away in sorrow, and the wife and mother was again doomed to wait, and watch, and weep.
But let us return to Daddy. Stretched on a couch of suffering he lies; impatient, vociferous and generally unmanageable.
"Hurry up that ere doctor afore I die," he exclaims; "hurry him up I say. Lord, that ere pain in my shoulder; now its in my long ribs; now its in my short ribs; I ken feel it clare down to my heel cord and toe cord. Take away that ere infernal brandy," he cried, raising his voice to its highest pitch, "ye don't spose I want fur to drink pison, do ye, when I'm most dead already?"