Of course these things have not always worked out just so. There have been the tragic mischances. But in the main, an oppressed people learn how to outsmile or outsnarl the oppressor. The Eighteenth Amendment may yet live to wish it was dead. Mr. Volstead seems to have believed that the nonsenseorship game was new and exciting, and could be trusted to carry itself by storm. Not while the ancient wisdom of long-borne bans and communicadoes looked out of the female eye. There was a body of experts in existence of whom, apparently, he had never even heard.
He never once thought how the twentieth century was to become known as the Century of The Home, with the home brew, and the subscription editions, and the sagacities of women. If he should complain that there is no honor and fine living in all of this, we shall have to agree with him. But we can answer that by guile we have preserved our joys, and cleared our way out from the shadows of his big totem pole. If we have but little magnificence, we have as much as anybody can ever have who is hounded by the legal virtues. And if we may keep a little gaiety for life, by that much do we make him bite the dust. It isn't pretty, but it's art.
OWED TO VOLSTEAD
[Illustration: Wallace Irwin composing under the influence of synthetic gin and Andrew Volstead.]
WALLACE IRWIN
I—First Round
Prune extract and bright alcohol, so wooden
One kills its flavor in rank fusel oil!
C2-H3-HO—a rather good 'un
To mix with fruity syrups in our toil
To give our social meetings after dark
Their necessary spark!
And you, most heavenly twins,
Born of one mother—
Although our woe begins
When, through our mortal sins,
We can't tell which from 'tother—
Ethyl
And Methyl!
Like Ike
And Mike
Strangely you look alike.
Like sisters I have met
You're very hard to tell apart—and yet
The one consoles more gently than a wife;
The other turns and cripples you for life.
Such spirits as these, and many more I summon
From many a poisoned tin,
Or many a bottle falsely labelled "Gin."
Or many a vial pathetic,
Yclept "Synthetic."
Like Dante on his joy-ride Seeing Hell,
Fain would I take you down
Through sulphurous fires and caverns bilious brown
Into the Land of Mystery and Smell
Where Satan steweth
And home-breweth
While thirsty hooch-hounds yell
Their blackest curse,
Or worse:
"Vol-darn our souls with each Vol-blasted dram
That burns our throats and isn't worth a dam!
We drink, yet how we dread it—
Vol-stead it!"
They've said it.
II—Short Intermission to Change Meter