"O, if you had heard the horrid yell of malignancy which arose, and echoed through the black chamber of that region of wickedness and misery, it would have made you shrink into nothingness with terror. They fairly gnashed on me with their teeth in impotent rage. At length old Adams got upon a whiskey-still—they have such things in hell—the pattern was got from there when introduced here, and made a speech to his associates. From what he said, I found that he had minute information of all that was going on in this region.
"'Old Graves,' he said—'our very best man, has already been so reduced in his business by this accursed temperance movement, that he has recently thought seriously of giving up. This must not be. We cannot lose him. No mind receives our suggestions more readily than his.—If he gives up, we lose a host. You all know, that our influence on earth is powerless, unless we have men to carry out our plans. If they will not listen to our suggestion—if they will not become our agents, we can do nothing there. As spiritual existences, we cannot affect that which is corporeal, except through the spiritual united with the corporeal—that is, through spiritual bodies in material bodies. In other words, we can act on men's minds, and they can do our works on earth for us. Now, seeing that we can do nothing to stop this temperance movement, except through the self-love of the rum-sellers and rum-makers, it will never do to let old Graves fall. We must help him to some new scheme by which to bring back his diminished custom. Now what shall it be?'
"'Some device that will call attention to his bar-room, is what is wanted,' remarked one.
"Yes, that is plain enough,' replied old Adams, who seemed to be a kind of head devil there—'but what shall it be? That's the question!'
"'Suppose we put him up to getting a woman to walk a plank,' suggested one.
"'No. That has been tried already; and if it is tried again so soon, these temperance men will cry, humbug!'
"'How would it do for him to get a pretty girl behind his bar.'
"'That might do. But then, his wife is a sort of religious woman, and wouldn't let him do it.'
"Couldn't we induce him to poison her, and so get her out of the way?'
"'No—That's out of the question. He kind of likes the woman too well for that.'