"Just as well as anybody. It will make an end of me or—of all that is good in me. Rum and ruin, you know, sir. They go together like twin brothers."
"Why don't you get out of the way of temptation?" said I.
"It's easy enough to ask that question, sir; but how am I to get out of the way of temptation? Where shall I go, and not find a bar in my road, and somebody to say—'Come, Sam, let's take a drink'? It can't be done, sir, nohow. I'm a hostler, and I don't know how to be anything else."
"Can't you work on a farm?"
"Yes; I can do something in that way. But, when there are taverns and bar-rooms, as many as three or four in every mile all over the country, how are you to keep clear of them? Figure me out that."
"I think you'd better vote on the Maine Law side at next election," said I.
"Faith, and I did it last time!" replied the man, with a brightening face—"and if I'm spared, I'll go the same ticket next year."
"What do you think of the Law?" I asked.
"Think of it! Bless your heart! if I was a praying man, which I'm sorry to say I ain't—my mother was a pious woman, sir"—his voice fell and slightly trembled—"if I was a praying man, sir, I'd pray, night and morning, and twenty times every day of my life, for God to put it into the hearts of the people to give us that Law. I'd have some hope then. But I haven't much as it is. There's no use in trying to let liquor alone."
"Do many drinking men think as you do?"