Peter—Zounds! Jack! Arouse them, or we are lost.
Jack—They have one eye open, and the gilded stuff will soon open the other.
Peter—Jack, what do you mean? Have I not kept open house for three days and nights, and swilled yourself and comrades with liquor for a week, and haven’t you all been drunk at my expense for several days? By Jupiter! Jack! you won’t desert me, after drinking so much of my best rum, will you?
Jack—The boys won’t expose their eyes and nose, and teeth and skulls, and bellies to the sharp claws and big fists, and stones and clubs of your political adversaries, without some money in advance, to tickle the palms of the surgeon and nurses at the Hospital. For doctors and nurses won’t trust the poor, you know, and especially the boys who get their skulls cracked at the primary elections.
Peter—Well, Jack, tell the boys that I will fill them with good rum until the primary election is over, and then, if I am victorious in the Nominating Convention, I’ll reward them liberally with money.
Jack—(With his fingers whirling like a windmill over his nose)—The boys an’t so green as to trust the politicians until they have fought their bloody sieges, and elected them to offices where they can steal fortunes from the people, including many a chunk of choice grub from our own mouths. No, no, Peter. It won’t do. Down with the cash, and all will go well.
Peter—Have I not often got yourself and friends out of the Watch House?
Jack—And have we not long bought your grog, although you adulterated it more than other liquor dealers? And have we not fought your public battles, and exposed ourselves to imprisonment, and periled our lives to give you political influence to liberate us from the Watch House, when we got into a bad scrape on your account?
Peter—You lie, you thief and drunken vagabond, if you say I adulterated my liquor more than other rum sellers.
Jack—Have a care, Peter, have a care, for did I not catch you in the very act of pouring water by the pailfull into a rum hogshead last week, that was only about half full of spurious alcohol, when you began to adulterate it?